The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-02-03
SOME EXPERIENCES IN A
RAILROAD CENTER
BY G. r.
Conclusion

ANOTHER example We made
n contact with a worker, an en-
gineer, who was interested in our
paper and movement. Now after
four months, when am q personal
friend of his, he tells me, 'you
know how I came into this move
ment. l thought 1t was pretty
good wrote to friend of mine
in Chicago. He. told me he thought
1t was o. K, 50 came in. Be-
fore he came into the movement
he wanted to ind out who we were
and he never came to us but wrote
to a friend OF his to find out. This
fellow was against the reds, and
Foster in particular" But after
doing little bit of work there he
came and told me that one of the
fellows he had lined up as 81 Red,
who reads the Daily Worker. He
had subscribed to the Daily Worker
for one or two years. I went to
see him few weeks ago and found
that there were three railroad
workers reading the Daily. One
of these fellows, think, still be-
longs to the knights of Columbus.
He likes the Daily and think
if we do real work, we could get
them into the Party. This fellow
who is against the Reds" has
changed since he is working among
them.
THE next question is, after you
have the groups, what do you Go
with them? When the workers
start work with us, they are very
soon found out by the company
let's not fool ourselves-if we really
do work, they are going to find out
very soon. If We permit these work
ers to become isolated, they are
picked out, fired, terrorized and
the group breaks up.
This brings me to the problem
OF leading the work in the shops
in such way that the small groups
we have are merged in actions and
are not picked out by the boss. If
We do this we can build strong and
solid organization everywhere. And
l don't mean we need 80 or 40
workers before we can start. When
I speak Of struggle, I don't mean
only strikes; even if a leaflet wins
a demand for a worker. that is a
form of struggle. I want to illust-
rate with concrete experience. We
got connected with a certain
worker who has a lot of influence
in his shop. After a talk with him,
he felt that the question of the
speed-up was burning question,
and we felt that if we got large
group around this issue, we would
not need q strong union organiza-
ton. This worker began to ap-
proach the workers to discuss ways
and means Of stopping the speed
up Two months ago. We got seven
workers together and we used to
meet right after work on the street
corner around midnight-we had
no other place to meet in, no hall,
etc, because Of the late hour. These
fellows began TO spread the word
that we have to stop the speed
up and slow up little. This be-
gan to take effect, to an extent.
All the workers began to slow up.
The company soon became aware
of this slowing up, and they also
knew we had an organization. For
a period of month and a half
they were able to stop the speed
up and the foremen were pretty
much stnnped and couldn't get
very far, because we had a solid
bloc.
Well, we still have seven or eight
workers who meet at midnight, out
side the place, but because we were
able to develop a movement which
didn't involve only a small group,
we we're able to win the sympathy
Of these workers and show them
that we can get somewhere.