The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-02-04
SHOP ACTIVITIES AND
THE DAILY WORKER
BY GERTRUDE HAEsSLER.


DAILY WORKER in connection
with activities in the shop. In fact,
l want to touch on only one phase
of Daily Worker activity in the
shop, and that is Worker Cores
pondence. But this phase of activ-
ity embraces almost everything @
worker can do in the shop for and
with the Daily Worker.
We often hear comrades In the
shops complain about the character
Of the Daily Worker-that it is not
close enough to the conditions and
struggles of the shop workers.
Everyone admits the present faults
of the Daily Worker, but it is these
very comrades in the shops who
can help 10 improve our Daily.
If the workers from the shops send
in letters themselves about the
conditions in the shops, and the
attitude of the workers, the strug-
giles going on, it will go a long way
toward bringing the Daily" more
toward this activity, and thus i'm
proving it as real mass organ,
in close touch with the daily lives
of the workers.
NATURE OF
WORKERS CORRESPONDING
When news comes in through the
district or section Office, in report
ing style, it is handed to a rewrite
man on the Daily, the facts con-
denSed as much as possible, and
then put into the news section as
news. But when worker him
self writes from his shop, the let
ter is handled in an entirely diff
ferent way. This letter goes to the
Worker Correspondence depart
ment, where the greatest possible
use is made Of it,
FIRST Of all, it is usually printed
L as it was wristen-in the work
er's own language. which makes it
more vivid reading. A letter like
this is grouped with other letters
from shops in the same industry,
which makes the entire Worker
Correspondence Section Of particu-
lar interest to the workers of that
industry.
This method lends itself very
easily to special distribution of a
particular issue, and has been sue
cessfully used in number OF our
concentration factories. For in
stance, if a steel worker at Spar
rows Point gets copy of the Daily
Worker carrying letter from one
of his shopmates and sees in the
same section a letter from a
worker in the Bethlehem Steel at
Chicago, and from large steel plants
in other parts of the country, he
begins to look upon the Daily as
a fighting organ for steel workers.
The same is true of the farmers,
the veterans, the miners, etc. -
and in all these industries and
many others, we have run these
special sections.
EXPOSE BOSS PROPAGANDA
Another valuable thing about
running letters from workers, Is
that they very wildly expose by
their own experiences the methods
of creating boss illusions in the
working class. For instance, a
worker writes of a big order his
concern received, and the hula
baloo the newspapers made OF this
as sign of returning prosperity.
But this same worker tells how the
order was not big enough even to
keep the shops minimum crew
busy for 8 week or two, to say
nothing Of taking on laid-off men.
Another worker writes how the
Teagie "Share-the-W Work, COM
monty called the share mis-
cry" plan works out in practice.
1t is instituted in his own shop,
and he figures out exactly how big
a wage-cut for the employed this
means, and how much of the bur-
den of unemployment was shifted
| from the shoulders of the capital
lists to those of the employed work.
ers.
Still another worker writes how
| conditions in his shop Immediately
| improved when the shop paper ap-
! peared, and how the boss im1medi-
ately attacked with a wage cut
when the shop paper died. And he
appeals for the resistance of the
! paper
A farmer himself writes an ac-
! count of blocking an eviction and
forced sale. He was there, he gets
| in little important details, and the
farmers elsewhere like to read it,.
and they take a notion to write OF
their own experiences.
How much more vivid these stor-
les are from workers themselves!
And when this writing is combined
with carefully arranged special dis
tributio1, this becomes q very ef-
fective means of drawing other
workers in the same industry closer
to us, and stimulates them to write
too.
rOMRADE :, from SparroTs
v Point, has already made ar
rangement with us for special dis
tribution on certain days-he TO
furnish the material, and we to see
to 1t that the material gets into
the DAILY" on those days, and that
the bundle gets to him. This can
be done with any shop and any
locality. Other places have the
same arrangement. Some places
have a standing order for certain
number of copies for any issue in
which their stories appear.
This is how we are going to root
the Daily" in the shops, among
the strategic sections of the work
ing class. For this, We also need
The cooperation Of the unions, so
far some of the unions have coop