The daily worker., 1934-06-25
Y. c. L. Meet Maps
Program to Win
WOrkingcIass Youth

q
Of the Communist International, we
will surely lead the working class
CT America to final victory"
BroWder then launched into a Bit
ing and whitening attack on one
year Of the NR.A., and the results
Of the New Deal" A year ago,
he said. the masses were intoxicated
with the bourgeois demagogy Of
the Roosevelt regime, but now they
are waking up with a terrible head
ache. "A year ago, young workers
and old workers, in large numbers.
had their eyes fastened On that
blue eagle which they expected
would lay a golden egg for them;
but if the blue eagle laid any golden
eggs they were all in the nests Of
the Wall Street bankers and their
corporations. What it put into our
pockets was not golden eggs"
He pointed out that the young
workers were the shock troops on
all picket lines in the great wave
of strikes, and that it was up to the
Y.CL. to win these youth for the
revolutionary way out, for Soviet
Power.
EIecting Leading Bodies
Amid great cheering and applause
praesidium governing commit
tee of the convention) and honorary
praesidium were elected. The prae@
sidium comprised: Earl Browder,
Gil Green, Claude Lightfoot, Negro
worker from Chicago who in the
last elections received $4,000 votes;
Gurk, a Ford worker. Davis, a De- p
troit auto worker; Sam Herman, dis
trict organizer of Cleveland Dave
Doran, young marine worker, dis
trict organizer in Pittsburgh, Frank
Hill, steel worker. who participated
in the heroic Ambridge steel strike;
Lou Cooper, trade union youth or
ganizer of New York; Ellen Allen,
red-haired district organizer from
the farming region Of Nebraska;
Gertrude Gay, Negro nut picker
from ST. Louis; Fritz, steel union
organizer from Sparrows Point, Nd;
Robert Lee Minor, marine worker;
Harry Miller, young Negro share
cropper; Jack Alison, district organ<
izer Of California. ".
The reading of the honorary -
praeSidium was punctuated with
cheering and applause at the read
ing Of each name, comprising the
following:
Stain, Dimitroff, Thaelmann,
Chemedanoff, secretary of the
Young Communist League; VIII
liam 2. Foster; Alexander, of the
Cuban Y.C.L.; Gross, OF the Ger
man Y.CL.; secretary Of the Can
adian Y.C.L., Bill CASTOR; Angelo
Herndon. Young Negro sentenced
to 20 years on the Georgia chain
gang; and the Scottsboro boys.
Prom the South, where the Me-
gro masses and the poor white share
croppers have been oppressed for
centuries by the LANDLORDS" said
Comrade Harry Miller of Alabama,
young Negro share cropper in his
greetings to the convention, who
not only own the land of the South,
but control the administration of
government, I bring greetings from
the share croppers, white and Ne
gro"
Comrade Miller was chairman Of
the first business session of the
convention on Saturday.
"We pledge to our young comrade
Angelo Herndon, fettered on the
chain gang of Georgia" declared
Claude Lightfoot, Negro delegate
from the South Side of Chicago,
mot only to build up such a fight
ing mass campaign that will loosen
his chains in Georgia, but that we
pledge that we will bring into our
ranks from this convention thou
sands Of young Herndons to fight
for the freedom of the entire work.
ing class!"
The opening mass meeting con-
cluded with a presentation by the
Young Pioneers Cast of scenes from
Strike Me Red operetta by Harry
Allan Potamkin.
AT the outset it is necessary to
say that in the period since the
9Th Convention our League hes
made progress" declared Comrade
Green in his report on the first point
of the Conventions agenda. at the
first business session. Saturday af-
ternoon, st has grown. 1t has be-
come consolidated politically and
organizationally. 1t has improved
its connections with the basic
masses of youth as reflected in its
social and national composition; and :
it has both in quantity and quality
improved its leading cadres." He
said that from shop units at the
9Th convention he could now rerort J.
that the League had so shop nuclei.
While recognizing the progress
made by our League, and while
fighting any tendencies to under
estimate and minimize this progress,
it is the duty of this convention to
give an answer as to why this prog
ress has been so small, why our
League has not yet become a mass
organization larger than our Party,
in every sense the leader Of the
masses of toiling youth"
He then pictured the inability Of
capitalism to solve its crisis, show
ing that the working youth through
out the world were faced with new
bloody imperialist war and the drive
towards fascism; that only in the
Soviet Union where socialism is be-
ing built was a new life, new future
opening up to toiling humanity.
Boldly Recruit Youth"
The situation today confronting
the Y. c. L., said Comrade Green, is
that similar to the situation in Rus
STA when Lenin wrote: Wider and