The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-08-27

against wage cuts in the textile indus
try. 1t also had a shoe campaign on,
campaign in the shoe industry. Com
rade Minor was sent into the textile
field and he sent to the DAILY
WORKER a number of very well writ
ten stories describing in detail the
conditions of the workers in the in
dustry, the assaults made upon them
by the textile bosses, the attitude Of
the state authorities in the struggle,
ETC., just the kind of stories calculated
to interest workers facing q slash in
their wages and confronted with the
need for struggle against them. But,
comrades, l am inclined to believe
that the only workers in the textile
industry who know that the DAILY
WORKER carried these stories are
those to whom Comrade Minor talked
in few mass meetings. 1t was i'm
possible, even after repeated effort, to
get the Boston comrades to take a
number of issues of the DAILY
WORKER or a special edition built
around the struggles in the textile in
dustry for distribution in their dis.
trict, and so far as benefit to our
party was concerned received thru the
DAILY WORKER the trip of Comrade
Minor and the trouble the DAILY
WORKER went to to chronicle the
struggles of the textile workers was
absolutely wasted due to the fact, Of
course, that the Boston comrades did
not understand the role Of the party
press, its relation to the party, and
their relation towards it.
Now, the record everywhere is not
as bad as this, however. In these
same districts and IN other districts
there have been specia' distributions
of the DAILY WORKER, special edi-
tions based on some issue the working
class was interested in, some struggle
in which they were engaged.
In Detroit, for instance, the com
rades made number of distributions,
one Of them reaching the total Of
10000 in the automobile industry, but
these special campaigns, this concen.
tration of effort for few days on one
particular issue, while it helped our
press, while it stimulates the interest
of the workers in our press and gives
our comrades experience in distribu-
ting and using our press, nevertheless
is not the kind Of work or the method
by which a real mass Communist
press is built. The building of a
Communist press is year-around
task, task for every day and for
every Communist, and think one of
the weaknesses of the circulation of
our press is exactly that criticized in
the thesis on the Bolshevization of
our press, that there is too much spe-
cialization or a tendency that way,
that once an agent of the DAILY
WORKER is appointed in a certain
city the other comrades are only too
willing that he should have all the
work of distributing, circulating, build.
ing the Communist press in that dis
trict
Reasons for Small Circulation.
We should try, think, to inculcate
in our party the fixed idea that the
Communist press is the care of every
comrade and that no communist will
go to any kind of a working class
meeting unless he is supplied with
copies Of the official organ of the
party.
But the small circulation of our
press, its lack of influence in the
labor movement, the general mass
movement of the American working
class, cannot be ascribed to mechani-
cal weaknesses in circulation or even
to the lack of understanding of the
role Of our press by many of the com
rades. Our press itself has certain
weaknesses, altho | think that in the
last year some of these weaknesses
have been corrected somewhat. Never
theless, there are some of them re-
naming to constitute an obstacle be-
tween us and the masses. What are
some Of these difficulties? In the first