The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-06-15
Work in the NeighborhoOds
J.H. LAPIDUs (sec. 6 New York,

L.
I WANT to tell few experiences of how to
make new readers for the Daily Worker
organizationally When I was transferred by
the Section to Unit as organizer. my first job
was to thoroughly investigate the Unit terri
tory. I found it to be a poor working class
territory, many unemployed large minority
of the population being Negro workers, all news
stands having no Daily Worker for sale, few
workers being acquainted with our D. w. and
much less with our Party and revolutionary
trade unions, even though our headquarters is
located few blocks away from this territory.
After discussing it at the Unit Buro, I gave a
report on the situation of the workers in the
Unit territory at the first meeting of the Unit,
and concretized this report with the mobiliza-
ton Of the Unit membership in building
DIV. carrier route, considering the Importance
of our press as the first elementary training
school for the average workers
An open resistance to the building of car
rier's route was quite evident. Comrades CIV
ing excuses such as sit is impossible, workers
here will not read our paper, we must wait yet;
some comrades stated that sit is a crazy idea"
However we convinced the comrades and
canvasing of the territory started At the same
time we, in the spirit of revolutionary COMPETE
ton, challenged another Unit in the Section
that "Unit 4, will within weeks built car
rier's route for the DIV. of Is readers and gain
new members for the Party" (this was to be
achieved by May 1sb. Some of the comrades
we're skeptical about realizing such a quota
However with the willingness on the part OF the
comrades we canvased the territory and by May
1st we secured n deliveries for the Daily Worker
and new members into the Party.
When our Unit reached over 40 deliveries for
the DIV we we're confronted with the problem
what shall we do next?" How can we bring
| them together and establish friendship" The
| Unit Buro proposed to arrange gathering for
all the DIV. readers and their friends A good
| committee was elected, A very good letter was
| printed and inserted in the Daily for two con-
| secutive days while it was being delivered. we
| spoke to a large number of them personally; on
| the evening of the affair comrades went into
| the house of the workers and brought them to
the hail. the result being far beyond our ex-
| pectations While arranging the affair we ex-
| pected to get about SO to so workers to the
| affair, however we had 1870 workers who came to
| our gathering, go of them being Negro workers
| which form the largest percentage OF our Daily
| Worker readers. The Negro workers came with
| their wives and children and friends The hal
| was damned. We wanted to give these workers
| something to remember and we arranged to
show a news reel Of the May LIST demonstration
and one picture showing the advance OF the
workers in the Soviet Union The workers liked
4 it very much We had a speaker from the
Daily Worker staff who spoke and called upor
the workers to give suggestions on how to i'm
prove the Daily and at the same time calling
upon those present to write stories of shop con-
ditoins, etc for the Daily. number Of sug'
gestions we're given by the workers which shows
that they feel they are part of our movement
A speaker from the Section spoke and made al
appeal to the Daily Worker readers to join tn
Party Nine Negro workers joined, three o
them being women workers.
We had mimeographed revolutionary songs ant
had them distributed among the workers VIII
Joined in singing revolutionary songs Tn
Unit succeeded in involving members the WON
ems Council in lbs work. All this was accom-
plished within period of weeks. When W
deliver the paper we want them to read. w
have discussion with them about their work
ing conditions home conditions, and othe
things In this way we can surround ourselve
with scores Of sympathizers for o,r movement.