The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-04-20
PARTY LIFE
Worker CiUeS Valuable Points
on Recruiting Ne,O Members
Convince Workers to Join Party by Concrete
Action, Not Merely Words
Points on Successful Recruiting

Points on Successful Recruiting
Within a period of seven weeks,
I have recruited into the Party five
fishermen, one member of the A.
F. of L., one C. w. A. worker. and
few others, a cement worker and
several agricultural workers. This
makes an average of more than one
week.
1t took me three weeks or more
to sign up the first fisherman. 1t
took me two weeks to recruit the
A. F. of L. member. The rest of
them took a matter of ten or fifteen
minutes.
In a number of cases, other COM
rades had approached these con-
facts. Some of them had been in
our T. U. U. L. unions, or Unem-
ployed Council, for year or two.
Why hadn't they joined the Party
before? Was it that they were not
ready for the Party?
All the workers to whom I talked,
with one or two exceptions, were
ready to join the Party. The main
trouble was that the Party was not
presented to them in the correct
manner. Our comrades did not tell
the workers that, first of all, our
Party was Party of ACTION. They
did not show the workers where our
program of action concretely IN
CLUDED that worker and the
workers in his industry. In other
words, our comrades agitated GEN
ERALLY without bringing the ques-
ton of the Party home to the pro-
Spective recruit.
Another reason our comrades did
not succeed in their recruiting al
though 1 did after them, was failure
to simplify the role of the Party to
the workers. Whenever I talked to
worker, I showed the Party in its
simplest terms, stressing its program
of action, showing how it worked
through units and fractions; and
how it constantly moved toward
its main revolutionary objective. I
did not try to teach them historical
materialism, surplus value, and
Leninism overnight.
I always made it my business to
have an application card on hand,
and never failed in the course of
the recruiting to bring it out. If
the worker hesitated at all, I al
ways asked him to tell me what
objections he had to joining at this
time. We discussed the objection.
Often, I found that the worker
understood the main role of the
Party but held back for trivial rea-
sons, lack of initiation fee; the
question of dues; the question of
fear of exposure; the question of
lack of time, family complications,
etc. Take the case of the G. w. A.
worker. A unit organizer had talked
to him without success and then
asked me to help in the recruiting.
I discovered two reasons why he
had not joined. One, the Organ
izer had not asked him to sign an
application card; second, he had no
money and said he could not afford
the dues. He told me he had a
check coming in a week or so. 1
asked him if he knew how much
the dues were. He said no. Need
less to say, when I told him he
signed up. Afterward, I spoke to
the Organizer and asked him why
he did not tell the worker about
the dues. He said well, he never
asked me-" If our Organizer had
tried to find out what the obstacles
were, he could have overcome them
himself.
My first recruit was fisherman
whom our comrades had been try
ing to recruit for six months. The
first week, I talked to him twice.
I did not ask him to join, but out
lined to him our plan of work in
the f1shermen's union. I attended