The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-03-27
No Obstacles to Drawing New
Forces
BY BILL LAWRENCE

WITH the increasing unemployment and ire
mendous growth of influence OF our Party we
ind that on many occasions workers from small
industrial and company towns where the Party
carried on no activity whatsoever or had no con-
nectionS, write directly to the Party Office asking
for information about the Party or how and
where they can join the Party. In most of the
instances the Party D. o. or Org Secretary writes
letter to this worker accompanied by PAM
phlet and this ends it all.
On the other hand, we find that some of our
town sections are so big in territory that
at best either the sections concentrates in one
city thus neglecting the others or tries to embrace
the entire section thus carrying on the work in
very haphazard unsystematic way, not fol-
lowing up decisions with the result that very
little progress is being made.
A concrete example: Section No. 5 OF District
No. includes such important textile centers as
Allentown, EaSton the steel company town of
Bethlehem and the city of Reading with all its
political implications.
Well, what shall the sections do? The forces
are limited. The social composition in these
cities is entirely proetarian with comrades with
some exceptionS) working most of the time on
shifts thus the work on the outside falls most
OF the time on very limited number of COM
radeS. The District told Section No. that they
must carry on work in Reading and build the
Party unit there. The organizer took the inStruc-
tons of the District seriously and concentrated
on this city; Bethlehem and other cities were
neglected, not speaking of the fact that the Sec
ton had no time to pay attention to such import
ant industrial by-townS which constantly asked
for organization such as Lebanon, Kutstown,
Lancaster, etc. What is the solution? How can
we answer these workers who write letters ask
ing for organization?
First we must cut the size of the sections. We
must speed up and pay more attention to the
drawing in of new forces into the leadership
which can be done through assigning these new
members some work and the establishing of
classes which will raise their political under
standing. We must crush the tendency on the
part of some "old timers who believe that a
workers must be years in the Party before we
can assign him some responsible work In this
connection we wish to bring out an example of
in the form OF decision of the Reading Buro
bureaucracy of the worst type that took place
lin the absence of the Section Organizer) At
this buro in the presence of the Section TUUI.
secretary and two other old Party members they
unanimously passed the decision that certain
American worker who joined the Party recently
very active in the unemployed council and shows
all potentiaItes of seriousness and development
that this worker shall remain a rank and filler
i'll both the unemployed councils and Party and
OF this decision we were informed by these COM
rades that this worker likes to push himself to
the front. These comrades even succeeded in
convincing new and very sincere member of
the Buro to vote for this decision.
This is not an isolated case. We still have
this super approach to new workers who ioin
our Party. In selecting comrades for responsible
posts we travel too far beyond the necessary lin
1t in examining this comrade whether or not he
is mt Tor the job We must make sharp turn
in this respect If we are to live up to the pre-
sent needs and requirements we must imme-
diately begin to draw in new Americans, white
and Negro workers into the leadership of the
Party by assigning them responsible work and
under the guidance of the District Committee
which must not express itself only through Cir
cuar letters but through direct and personal
guidance help these comrades develop the work
Experience has shown that these new workers
who join our Party are willing to carry out the
tasks giveE to them. .