The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-02-12
Functioning of District
Departments

THE Importance and fundamental reasons 1or
organizing functioning Departments OF an
leading Party Committees have been dealt WIN
so MANY times in articles, resolutions ana the
PARTY Organizer that we will not repeat Vfle
same here Suffice to stress one point, namely
that the mass work of the Party among the
workers on all fields is so pressing that 10 lall
to distribute both the leadership and detalleo
attention and development OF work III IS unoer-
stood always under the coordnated leadership
of the Buro) means to actually retard and stfle
PARTY work and leadership among the masses
because no District Organizer and Org-Secretary
can physically handle all the work properly and
at the same time give it the proper pohtlcai
attention
Departments of the District Committee in Chi
cago were, up to certain time, like the majority
of Districts cited recently in the Daily Worker,
which meant sther nominal existing Depart
ment which seldom met or non-ezistant even IN
this formal way. We then understood TO eS-
tablish functioning Departments with some sue
cess but these were only consultative IN cnar-
acter BY this mean the head OF the Depart
ment brought in all reports, ETC., and executed
all decisions of the Department The other mem
beers were only there to express agreement, dis
agreement or make changes to all reports ana
proposals of the head of the Department
The reason for this latter situation is gener-
allv because those who had been chosen for the
Department were overloaded with several other
tasks This brings us to the point that in choos-
ing the personel Of the Department, we must
select comrades who already have some expert
ence plus some newer comrades who Will heip
gain this experience in the course of the work
of the Department. ALI comrades should be
those involved in the carrying thru OF Party
work, both in the lower Party circles as well
as in the mass organizations. 1t also means that
at least half of the comrades chosen must have
their work so assigned as to make it possible
for them to take certain responsibility for De-
partment work.
At present there are the following function
ing Departments Organizational, Agitprop,
Trade Union Functioning poorly and primarily
through the department head but with regular
meetings are the Negro, Finance and Language
Departments (the last two are essentially sub
departments of the Org. Dept) and still largely
non-existant, except for an assigned personnel and
irregular meetings are the Women's and Anti
Imperialist Depts. AS yet there is no Agrarian
Dept. organized.
The three listed functioning Departments have
finally succeeded to an extent to distribute the
work amongst their members. For instance, in
the Drg-Dept comrade has been assigned to
be responsible for Party fractions in the Trade
Unions, together with registration, second for
shop nuclei's work, third, together with two
other comrades has charge Of fractions in Ian
guage mass organizations; finances Except dues)
are handled by fourth comrade as Finance
Secretary Of the district In the Agit-Pprop Dept.
different members are responsible for literature,