The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-12-28
WE MUST PAY GREATER
ATTENTION TO KEEPING
OUR MEMBERS

rades to pay their dues in the District office,
and the sending of all tickets directly to every
member by mail. In such situation the NOR
NAL duties of all poor functioning nuclei
the limiting themselves to collecting dues and
distributing tickets, also to large ex-
tent taken from them. No wonder therefore
that the nuclei attendance fell below Il and
the Party organization did not function In
fact this was the liquidation of all organization
and a correspondence relation of the center
with each individual member This explains
why the workers whc came to us because they
wanted to fight n,,,iast capitalism did not
remain long in the Party.
1t is hardly necessary to mention that no
serious efforts are being made to educate the
new membership and to assign them systemati-
cally to Party work. To this must be added the
strangeness that new member feels when COM
ing into a Party nucleus. There is lacking
that necessary comradeship and helpfulness
which would make the member feel as if this
is the place where he belongs
Of course on top of all this the past fac
tional struggles have been responsible for many
comrades dropping from the Party. From
the day they Joined they were being recruited
into two separate Parties. They had to decide
which one to join if they wanted to be allowed
to function in the Party and very often they
decided to leave.
No doubt the failure to recruit the member
directly in the factory nuclei thru activity and
their being recruited just any old way is one
of the major factors for the large turnover,
but then this is exactly what we are discussing
the failure of the factory nuclei to function
properly.
How We Can Remedy the Situation.
We must remedy this situation if we are to
keep the new members that we will unques-
tionably recruit We must take the new men,
bers' application card and not put it away
with satisfaction that we have so many new
members, but rather consider the task before
us in making out of these application cards
good functioning members.
1. We must not wait weeks until the new
member is called. We must rapidly assign the
new member to nucleus.
2. We must, during the drive, start class
every week for those taken in during the week.
A short 4-weeks course on the meaning of the
Party. What it stands for and how it works
and what we expect of every member. Very
often we do not educate the new proletarlan
member, and instead the first mistake he makes
we are ready to drive him out as right wing
err. We must educate the proletarian elements
we recruit and they will be the best fighters
in the Party for the correct line for they come
to us now as result of the developing strug-
les and the crisis of capitalism.
8. We must see that the units show COM
radeship to the new members. Every nucleus
must assign a comrade from its ranks to be
responsible for and help every new member
taken in by the nucleus.
4. New members must be assigned to work
and they must not be shown the example OF
older members refusing to do work
5. The nuclei must become real functioning
organizations taking up the struggles of the
workers Details should be prepared by func-
tioning Nucleus Executive.
Comrades, we have great possibilities of Sc
curing 5000 new members, perhaps we will
even go beyond this number. Let US stimuli
taneously with our recruiting give serious at
tention to keeping the new members.