The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-04-14

tunists, and turned the Party resolutely towards
the correct Bolshevik policy of mass struggles
and mass organization. But the Party was still
very weak in practice 1t had only 7,545 dues
paying members; its factory nuclei were few
and functioned very weakly. The revolutionary
trade unions had no more than $4,000 mem
bers, and were poorly consolidated; revolution
airy work in the A. F. of L. was at its lowest
ebb; mass organizations around the Party,
mostly language and cultural organizations,
were not politically active and very generous
estimate Of all mass organization membership
could not possibly exceed 100000.
Since that time important changes have taken
place. Consider firstly only the dues paying
membership Of the Party. If we take this by
half yearly averages, we obtain the following
very instructive figures:
l93l-FirSt half .."................a........ $3.50
19S1-SecOnd half 9219
15SH-FrSt naH 1886
l9S2-Second half 14474
15SS-Flrst half 1884
1933-SecOnd half 1876
19S4-Three months .................. 24,5OO
From these figures it is clear that the unfit
cation of the Party and its correct general poll
tical line from the 7th Convention and during
the period of the crisis, has resulted in cons
tant increase in membership from half year to
half year. Today our Party is more than three
times its size at the 7th Convention. But 1t is
also clear that it is the past six months which
show the most decisive upward turn. This cor
responds with the period when the main body
of the Party began seriously to improve its work,
that is, since the Party studied and began to
master the Open Letter
This becomes even more clear when we study
the figures of our shop nuclei At the 7th Con-
vention, we had a little more than a hundred
shop nuclei. At the time of the Open Letter
there was still only 40. Even taking into con-
sideration that the intervening period had wit
messed the closing down of innumerabIe fac
tories, and the consequent destruction of many
nuclei, still it is clear that we only little more
than held our own. Since the Open Letter,
however, due to our concentration and i'm
proved work, assisted, of course, by the general
atmosphere of struggle that has swept the fac
tories, we can now report 1893 shop nuclei The
proportion Of total membership in shop nuclei
has risen from to 9 per cent, and the proper
ton of employed members is 40 per cent.
What kind of shops are these IMP Last year,
60 of them were in basic industries. This year,
Illc1c dIt 1o4, WIFI prOpOTGlONdGe increase IN
membership The majority of these shop units
are in small factories A growing number are
in the larger and more decisive factories. We
have shop units functioning now in our con-
centration points in the steel industry, the big
mills of Pittsburgh, Youngstown, and Calumet
Valley areas. We have nuclei in the important
auto snaps as well as in many of the smaller
shops; we have a growing number of mine
p1oi Tv, tI,a eI,0
nuclei operate, there are at work a total of over
$4,000 workers, showing general average of
about 1000 workers per shop.
In these enterprises where our shop nuclei
work, there was one year ago very little trade
union organization. The total membership of
all categories in the shops of the 140 nuclei
was little more than 1000. Today in the 33s
shops where our nuclei operate, there are over
10000 members of the revolutionary unions
more than 1000 members in independent unions
and over 21,00o members of the A. F. of l..