The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-08-15
By SID TRENT

HINDER huge sign proclaiming
y THE Socialist Party" we en-
tered the convention headquarters
at High Point, N. G. I had come
to this convention with much
curiosity. Scarcely a year ago I
had been one of these socialist or
ganizers in the south. I had seen
the Socialist Party leadership's
policy of splitting workers. jim
Growing the Negroes, and spouting
lot of radical words. I left it to
join the only true working class
Party-the Communist Partyl
Yes, it was the old crowd. Same
old boys I'd known year ago.
There was Alton Lawrence, state
secretary, who comes from New
York. There was Jack Flies, the
financial backbone Of the North
Carolina Socialists. Flies has in
vestments in Alabama. His uncle
is one of the big coal ba1ons of
Birmingham where the coal miners
have been waging such q fierce
struggle against police clubs, gun
thugs, National Guards and star
vationl Dividends from this Ala
bama murder pen help finance the
North Carolina Socialist Party!
We went into the Office. I in
PRODUCED our Communist District
Organizer, Paul Crouch, a native
North Carolina mountaineer. His
people were among the first pioneers
to break dirt in these southern
hills. I thought of our Y. C. L.
Organizer, one who went through
the Gastonia struggles, one who has
always known the drab music Of
spindles and looms rafting in a
southern cotton mill. And my own
background was quite similar to
these, of native mountain people,
Scotch-Irish mixed with Cherokee
Indian. Our other organizers
native born mill workers and share
choppers, Negro and white. But the
Socialists had cried "Outlanders!",
repeating the stock phrase of the
capitalist bosses.
mo" they told us, we couldn't
present our united front proposals
to the body of the convention. 1t
was so hard to get any intelligent
action" from a body of people!
Lawrence later referred to the
southern workers as dumb brutes."
That bought mighty bad personal
reaction from me, because re-
membered when in the mountains
we would have beat an "outlander"
up for less than that9
We WERE told to come back in
" the afternoon and present our
proposals to the new state execu-
tive committee. We did come back.
The Committee had already met,
discussed, and of course decided, on
our proposals. But we went through
the motion of discussing them
again. I noted the membership of
their new state committee. Not a
single Negro. In this state Of such
large Negro population, the Social
list Party hasn't a single Negro on
its executive body! There was
Lawrence, the polished New Yorker
and the other college-carved faces.
1 couldn't help but compare the
difference between this white col
Jared group of petty bourgeois pinks
with our own District Committee.
I remembered our last meeting, lobe,
the giant textile worker with bent
shoulders and gnarled hands, John,
the keen eyed Negro cropper, and
the other Negro and white work
ers all of them hard listed and
toil-lined, fresh from the mills
and fieldsl
Well, these Socialist misleaders
hemmed and they hawed. They
seed and they sawed. They wiggled
and twisted-trying to crawl out
of tight hole, trying to frame
some excuse for not joining us in a
united front. Finally their chair
man, maybe little hair Drained or
in a forgetful moment, blurted out
the real reason why they did not
want the united front. I quote his
exact words: ITO be frank about
it," he said, at would put us on
the spot"
Lawrence said: "It would come
out in the capitalist papers that
the Socialists were united with the
Communists" That would put the
Socialist leadership on the spotl
The capitalists hate the Commu-
nists so intently, because they know
the Communists are really leading
the workers against their oppres-
sion! The Socialist leaders are
afraid of having any of this hatred