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The Communist Party of America—1923

1923

Undated

“Letter to Clarissa “Cris” Ware from Jay Lovestone.”[date undetermined, 1923] This letter was extensively quoted in Ted Morgan’s biography of Jay Lovestone, a glimpse at a little soap opera inside Workers Party Headquarters. A love triangle emerged between Research Department staffers Lovestone and Cris Ware (divorced wife of party agricultural expert Harold Ware) and Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg. This letter was handwritten by Lovestone to Ware and features her marginal retorts to Lovestone’s thoroughly pathetic love-smitten wailing. While not significant from a political perspective, the letter adds color and texture to our understanding of life at the party summit between two of the party’s top figures, Ruthenberg and Lovestone—elite social history, if you will. “By your work and by your work alone—through your work and through your work alone—can you and I know each other. You have absolutely severed whatever bond may have existed between us and I only ask that as a white man you will never refer to it—the past or present—to me or to any other living being," Ware demands. A second, more catty, note from Lovestone to his estranged object of desire, passing along office gossip purporting Ruthenberg (father of a grown son from a first wife) to be a score-keeping Lothario did not fare as well as this initial dollop of insecure bleating, the latter boorish note being torn in half by Ware and returned. Ware tragically died on Sept. 27, 1923, of an infection sustained during the course of an abortion, capping the melodramatic saga. Ware was later spewed upon in the tall tales of Ben Gitlow, who seems fairly clearly to have had sexual insecurity issues of his own...

 

 

Outline for a History of the Communist Party in America, by Alexander Bittelman [circa 1923] One of the more obscure general histories of the early American Communist movement, these seem to have been extensive notes for a book-length treatment, somehow obtained and appended to the record of 1930 Congressional hearings on the American Communist movement. Date of writing is unclear—last date mentioned is September 1922, use of the word “Leninism” at one point might be indicative of authorship in 1924, the lack of discussion of the Farmer-Labor Party controversy of 1923-24 would seem to favor the earlier rather than the later of these dates. Although terse and shorn of illustrative quotations, Bittelman’s main narrative thread is surprisingly comprehensive, beginning from origins in the Socialist Party Left Wing of 1910-12. Of particular interest is his analysis of the National Conference of the Left Wing of June 1919, the ideology of the Michigan Proletarian University group, and discussion of events in the Jewish Federations—observing that the Jewish Federation featured a Socialist-Communist split which predated the shattering of the SPA itself. Bittelman depicts the organizational development of his factional ally William Z. Foster in overly rosy hues. Also important is the first mention of a September 1922 (i.e. post-Bridgman) convention of irreconcilable members of the Central Caucus faction which was addressed by a representative of the Comintern and convinced to rejoin the unified CPA and legal WPA in exchange for representation on the leading party bodies.

The Fifth Year of the Russian Revolution: A Report of a Lecture, by James P. Cannon [1923] Full text of a pamphlet published by the Workers Party of America in 1922 by party leader Jim Cannon, detailing a 7 month stay in Soviet Russia dating from June 1, 1922. Cannon notes that Soviet Russia was well on the way recovering from Civil War — the famine had ended, White armies had been defeated, production was being steadily restored, buildings were being renovated, and the Soviet government was supported by the Russian workng class. Commentary is also provided on the Show Trial of the Socialist Revolutionary Party leaders then taking place. Cannon attended the first day of the trial and he unhesitatingly recalls here: “It was a fair trial — nothing like it ever occurred in America. The defendants were allowed to talk as freely and as much as they pleased. There was no restriction whatever on their liberty to speak in their own defence. The trouble with them was that they had no defence. The Soviet government had the goods on them. A number of the prisoners had repented of their crimes against the revolution, and they testified for the Soviet government. The case was clear. These leaders of the SR Party, defeated in the political struggle with the Communist Party, resorted to a campaign of terror and assassination. They murdered Uritsky and Volodarsky. They dynamited the building which housed the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party and killed 14 people. They had Trotsky and Zinoviev marked for assassination. It was an SR bullet that brought Lenin down and from which he still suffers today. They went even further than that. They went to the point that all the opponents of the Soviet system go in the end. They collaborated with the White Guards and they took money from the French government to do its dirty work in Russia. All this was clearly proven in the trial; most of it out of the mouths of men who had taken active part in the campaign.”

 

“The American Foreign-Born Workers,” by Clarissa S. Ware [Early 1923] Full text of a pamphlet published early in 1923 by the Workers Party of America. Clarissa Ware worked in the WPA’s Research Department; this is her only publication as she died later in 1923. The pamphlet details the demographic composition of the American working class, measures being implemented and contemplated by the capitalist regime against foreign-born workers in America, and announcing the formation of a new mass organization called the “Council for Protection of the Foreign-Born Workers,” dedicated to organize the nearly 35% of first- or second-generation Americans and their allies in the labor, labor political, and benefit society movements against the legislative offensive against the foreign-born. A National Committee of the Council for Protection of Foreign-Born Workers containing representatives of national organizations is called for, as well as the formation of Local Councils established on the same basis. The work of this new organization was to be financed through “voluntary contributions from the affiliated organizations,” according to the pamphlet. “All the American Workers—native and foreign-born—have but one enemy—the capitalist class that exploits and oppresses them,” Ware states, noting that “the executive committee of the capitalist class, the Government” was active in evicting striking foreign-born miners, suppressing the labor movement via the injunction, and sending armed troops against striking foreign textile, mine, and steel workers. “Let there me one mighty army of labor! The United Front of the Workers against the United Front of the Capitalists! One front against the one enemy—the employinbg class that robs and oppresses all the workers!” the pamphlet concludes.

 

“’Militants, Notice!’: An Advertisement for the Trade Union Educational League,” (circa 1923). Machine-readable facsimile of an advertisement appearing on the inside front cover of an early TUEL pamphlet by William Z, Foster—almost certainly written by Foster himself. The ad states that the Trade Union Educational League is “in no sense a dual union,” but rather is “purely an educational body of militants within existing mass unions, who are seeking through the application of modern methods to bring the policies and structure of the labor movement into harmony with present day economic conditions. TUEL is called “a system of informal committees throughout the entire union movement, organized to infuse the mass with revolutionary understanding and spirit” and basing its work on the existing union structure rather than upon “starting rival organizations based upon ideal principles.” It is this tendency of progressive unionists to establish dual union organizations that is “one of the chief reasons why the American labor movement is not further advanced,” the ad declares.

 

JANUARY

“Minutes of the Meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party of America: New York City—Jan. 3, 1923.” On Jan. 3, 1923, the governing Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party of America met to reorganize itself after the recently completed 2nd Annual Convention. A new body called the “Executive Council” was created to replace the former “Administrative Council” as the CEC’s executive committee, “to function between the sessions of the CEC.” Eleven were elected to sit on the body: Alex Bittelman, Jim Cannon, Bill Dunne, Marion Emerson, Louis Engdahl, Edward Lindgren, Ludwig Lore, Theo Maki, Moissaye Olgin, C.E. Ruthenberg, and Harry Wicks. Various new Federation Bureaus, elected by conventions of the Federations, were approved and other personnel matters addressed. Resolutions from locals demanding action against Jacob Salutsky for his behavior at the December conference of the Conference for Progressive Political Action were referred to Salutsky’s local so that disciplinary action might be begun.

 

“Why An Independent Labor Party?” by W.R. Snow [Jan. 5, 1923] Acknowledging that there had been “splits, re-splits, counter-splits, duplicate splits, and other splits in the Socialist Movement of America in the past 5 years,” State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Illinois W.R. Snow writes this article to declare that the establishment of a Labor Party was no simple solution for the SPA, but rather represented “an immediate danger ahead.” Snow notes the irony that the greatest critics of the former Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party for aping the tactics of the Russian Bolsheviks were themselves the most starry-eyed and infatuated advocates of aping the tactics of the Independent Labour Party of Great Britain. Snow notes the additional irony that both the Bolshevik-wannabes and ILP-wannabes were advocating exactly the same tactic—formation of a federative Labor Party (while seeking to exclude the other party from participation from the same). “Are the Socialist principles and fundamental philosophy unsound?” Snow asks, “If so, we have been on the wrong track all the time. If the fundamental principles of Socialism are sound, then why try to build another movement on a false foundation? If we can’t build a labor party out of the Socialist Party, we can’t build it out of anything for some generations to come.” Snow adds: “We can make a real labor party out of the Socialist Party within the next 15 or 20 years, or we can, like the children of Israel, wander in the wilderness for the next 40. Some of our eminent Socialists seem to be headed for the jungle. Shall we sidetrack the real thing for the counterfeit?”

 

“The Second Convention,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [Jan. 6, 1923] Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg dons his rose-colored glasses to portray the recently completed 2nd Convention of the Workers Party of America in an extremely upbeat manner. Factional warfare over delegate credentials was nonexistent and with each resolution introduced by a member of the Central Executive Committee “practically every resolution was adopted unanimously at the close of the debate, although wide differences of opinion sometimes manifested themselves during the debate,” Ruthenberg proudly declared. The convention was declared to be a “landmark in the history of the Communist movement in this country” in that the WPA had firmly established itself. General topics of discussion are briefly mentioned in a list. “The relations of the party with the Communist International was a special point on the agenda and was thoroughly discussed and a resolution establishing fraternal relations adopted,” Ruthenberg notes.

 

“We Go Forward to Victory! Second National Convention of Workers Party Makes History in American Class Struggle,” by J. Louis Engdahl [Jan. 6, 1923] Editor of WPA English-language weekly, The Worker , J. Louis Engdahl, recounts the events of the 2nd Convention of the WPA, held in New York City from Dec. 24-26, 1922. Principle decisions of the convention included (1) the sending of delegates to the forthcoming Convention for Progressive Political Action and endorsement of the CEC’s decision to work for establishment of a Labor Party; and (2) endorsement of the tactic of working within existing unions for the amalgamation of craft organizations into powerful industrial unions in accord with the program of the Trade Union Educational League. Decisions were additionally taken to defend foreign-born workers from the legislative assault which they were facing; against mass emigration to Soviet Russia; for the continuation of foreign language groups within the WPA, albeit under the central control of the party; for establishment of a party educational program; and for dedicated work directed towards women and youth. The convention heard speeches from four of the recently-released CPA Bridgman convention defendants, elected a new Central Executive Committee of the WPA and attended a banquet hosted by Local New York, Engdahl notes. The successful 2nd Convention was heralded by Engdahl as a refutation of the claim that the Communist movement had been crushed by state repression in 1920.

 

“Letter to Ella Wolfe in Mexico from Jay Lovestone in Chicago.” [Jan. 8, 1923] One of many surviving letters from Jay Lovestone to and from the beautiful wife of his factional ally, Bert Wolfe, a man who had boldly fled the anti-Communist repression of 1919-20 in New York for an assumed identity in San Francisco and thence to Mexico, all without party permission. Lovestone thanks Ella for a letter which “made me feel momentarily at least that I was free from boring Party routine and tiresome Party company.”He proceeds to pass along a brief account of the Dec. 1923 Workers Party convention held in New York: “For the second time in 2 years I have finished a Convention in the minority though coming to it as a member of the majority ruling administration. This time as at Bridgman [Aug. 1922] I was trimmed, I got trounced and trounced rather handily. I made a more vigorous [effort] than I did at Bridgman, but this was due only to the fact that the majority against my position here was much more decisive than in Michigan.”He adds: “By this time you must think that there is nothing I enjoy more than fighting losing battles or fighting for the sake of fighting. That is not so at all. In my opinion there was [a] very important point of view at stake.”Lovestone continues: “On the surface they adopted our proposals and formally voted for it in the convention. But throughout the year and even in the debates in the convention it was definitely established that some comrades were afflicted with a narrow point of view towards the class conflict. The broad political point of view of communists was narrowed in their cases by a too strong emphasis on the importance of the Party being in the good graces of certain progressive labor leaders... Practically everything our side stood for was adopted. Yet we were voted down. There was considerable enmity to Pepper. Most of the opposition to him was petty, personal, and conceived in jealousy and reared in infamy. “

 

“Letter to the Workers Party of America from the Communist International, January 1923.” The Second Convention of the legal Workers Party of America, held in New York in December of 1922, formally applied for admission to the Communist International. This reply of the CI informs the WPA that its party is admitted only as a “sympathizing party” rather than as a fully affiliated organization. The CI calls on the Americans to support the workers in every strike and carefully follow their daily life so as to better bring the proletariat into alliance with the party “against the capitalist offensive.” Trade union work is particularly important, the Comintern advises, stating that in the “correct application of united front tactics” it was essential to “unite the masses over the heads of the yellow leaders” of the trade union movement.

 

“Organize National Council for Protection of Foreign Born: News Release from the Workers Party of America Press Service, Jan. 23, 1923.” News release from the Workers Party Press Service announcing the formation of a National Council for Protection of the Foreign Born. The new organization had been “initiated” by the Workers Party at its 2nd National Convention, held in December of 1922, according to the press release. A “provisional National Committee” was being established which would “likely” include members of the Farmer-Labor Party, the Trade Union Educational League, the Chicago Federation of Labor, the Minnesota State Federation of Labor, and the Workers Party. In additiion, officials in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union had expressed approval of the project and were also anticipated to participate. After the permanent National Council was established “a call will be issued by that body for the organization of local councils in every industrial center of the country,” according to a statement. The report includes a short direct quote by William Z. Foster, stating “The proposed laws for registration, fingerprinting, photographing, and punishment of foreign born workers for strike activities are a blow directed at the whole American labor movement. The bosses hope by keeping the foreign workers unorganized through such oppressive measures to weaken the whole organized labor movement.”

 

“Letter to the Workers Party of America and all its Language Federations from the Executive Committee of the Communist International, January 25, 1923.” The ECCI salutes the seeming unity of action coming from the WPA’s Dec. 1922 Second Convention and congratulates it for solving the question of Language Federations in a “satisfactory way, in that it regards the Federations merely as propaganda sections of the Party.” The 16 foreign-language sections of the WPA are unique among the world communist movement, it is noted, and represent both a beneficial way to communicate with the most hyper-exploited segment of the American working class, the foreign born workers, as well as a fetter to broad revolutionary propaganda. The immediate task facing the party is the establishment of an English-language daily organ, the letter states, contrasting the existence of ten foreign-language WPA dailies with the lack of a single daily in English. The Language Federations are directly challenged to take up this “most urgent” task and to “demonstrate whether the WP is a unit or not.” Without an English daily newspaper, the WPA would have no means to reach sufficiently broad masses of American workers with its revolutionary message; the slogan of “An English daily for the WP by November 7, 1923”“Russian Revolution Day—is proposed.

 

FEBRUARY

“Statement to the Members of the Society for Technical Aid to Soviet Russia,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [circa Feb. 1923] The Society for Technical Aid to Soviet Russia was established by the Communist Party as a parallel mass organization dedicated to fundraising to purchase tools and agricultural machinery for Soviet Russia. The organization served as a means for émigrés from Tsarist Russia to return to their homeland as participants in model agricultural communes established in conjunction with the technology being imported. In practice, these new communes were economic failures and did little to alleviate the difficulties of Soviet agriculture during immediate post-revolutionary period. Furthermore, economic scandal swept the organization when some of the top leadership of “the TA” were implicated in economic activity for private gain as part of the business operations of the organization. Early in 1923 the Workers Party brought the troubled “TA” under direct party control, ousting the members of the group’s governing Central Bureau and replacing them with a group including the top leadership of the WPA (Ruthenberg, Pepper, Jakira) and others regarded as disciplined members of the WPA. This news release announces the change in leadership of the “TA,” assures members of the group that it is not to be liquidated and merged into the Friends of Soviet Russia organization, announces changes of policy, and asks for the loyal support of members of the organization.

 

“Letter No. 6 to the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow from C.E. Ruthenberg in New York, February 6, 1923.” Message from the Executive Secretary of the American Communist Party to the CI that not only would the CPA be acting on the instructions of the Comintern to amalgamate the underground CPA and the “legal” Workers Party of America, but that even prior to the CI statement “the CEC decided to take steps to convert the Party into an open Party.” Ruthenberg states that since the 1922 Bridgman Convention, the CPA has been working harmoniously, with the three former factional groupings (Goose Caucus, Liquidators, Central Caucus) actively working to advance policies that had previously been underappreciated or even regarded as anathema. The division of the American bourgeoisie over the question of repression of the Communist movement and expansion of sympathy for the Communist movement among the working class and the ability of the WPA to work more and more as an open Communist Party had changed the situation in the country, Ruthenberg notes. “We trust that we will be able to carry out the reorganization of the Party without a crisis. It is possible that a few sectarian elements will leave the Party. But we are convinced that no organized faction will fight against the policy of the CEC and the CI, and that we will be able to lead the Party into the open without a split,” Ruthenberg concludes.

 

“Letter from Edgar Owens in Chicago and C.E. Ruthenberg to Vasil Kolarov in Moscow, Feb. 17, 1923.” This is an informative review of the status of “political” cases in the United States, in response to a request from Moscow for information in conjunction with the formation of a new international legal defense organization. Owens details the activities of the National Defense Committee for Deportees and Political Prisoners (which he headed) and the Labor Defense Council in fighting against the prosecutions initiated by federal and state authorities against the radical movement. According to Owens, as a result of recent releases on bail, only three prisoners were being held for explicitly Communist activities: Israel Blankenstein, Joseph Martinowitz, and Charles Spinack. Others were held in jail on political charges which predated establishment of the Communist movement, including J.O. Bentall and a host of IWW prisoners. Still others, including Benjamin Gitlow, Harry Winitsky, I.E. Ferguson, C.E. Ruthenberg, and 35 Philadelphia party members, were free on bail pending appeals or initial legal proceedings. Owens summarizes the results of the 1922 Bridgman prosecution as a positive for the party, which was said to have established solid new contacts with the progressive wing of the labor movement and to have exposed the nature of the spycraft of private detective agencies as a result of the trials. The new “International Relief for the Fighters of the Revolution” organization is welcomed by Owens, who promises close cooperation through the party’s legal defense organizations.

 

“Letter from C.E. Ruthenberg in New York to Vasil Kolarov in Moscow, Feb. 17, 1923.” The early Communist International is frequently misrepresented in the literature as a paramilitary command-and-control system, issuing binding orders arbitrarily deduced in Moscow to blindly obedient Communist Parties around the world. In reality, there was a give-and-take, with information flowing from the periphery to Moscow, which was often called upon to provide tactical advice, to mediate disputes, and to rectify factional schisms. This letter from Workers Party of America Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg to General Secretary of the ECCI Vasil Kolarov is an example in which the Comintern was used by national parties as a mediator. Ruthenberg protests the establishment of a new Soviet relief organization, the Volunteer Fleet, noting three relief organizations are already in existence: the Friends of Soviet Russia, Technical Aid, and the Yidgescom. The Workers Party was attempting to centralize these relief efforts in the hands of the FSR, a task which Ruthenberg argued was being needlessly complicated by the ill-considered establishment of the Volunteer Fleet fundraising apparatus. Concrete suggestions are made to make use of the ECCI’s Ausland Committee to transmit information on future relief campaigns to the Friends of Soviet Russia, which was to coordinate such drives.

“Letter from William Z. Foster in Chicago to Grigorii Zinoviev in Moscow, February 17, 1923.” A personal letter from prominent American Communist and Trade Union Educational League founder William Z. Foster to the head of the Communist International. Presumably, Zinoviev directed a query to Foster soliciting his personal opinion about the “new policy” for the American Communist movement—that is, the termination of the primary underground Communist Party of America and the merging of that organization’s leadership with that of the “open” Workers Party of America, with “underground” work a subsidiary department of the new organization. Foster gives his ringing endorsement to the new organizational form, stating that he was “convinced that it fits American conditions and that a powerful Communist movement can be built upon it.” Interestingly, Foster gives high praise to the man who would soon become his greatest factional opponent in the American Communist movement, Josef Pogny [“John Pepper”], stating that “The underground apparatus, as outlined in the new policy, should amply take care of the work which cannot be done openly. The splendid work of Comrade Pogny has made unlikely the prospect of any very serious split in the application of this policy.” Foster calls the establishment of an American Labor Party “one of the first essentials in the development of a militant labor movement, both political and industrial, in this country.” He has harsh words for the American labor movement, deriding not only Gompers and the AF of L establishment, but also the “so-called progressive wing” as “almost as bad, its leaders lacking the foresight, honesty, and courage to declare even in favor of independent working class political action.” He similarly lambastes the syndicalists of the IWW, calling them “only a small sect” and “chronic dual unionists” who are “detached physically and intellectually from the organized masses.” The open Party and its “industrial department,” the TUEL, are in an excellent position to achieve its strategic objective of bringing militant American workers into the organization, Foster believes.

 

“Foster Admits Bridgman Meet Held Secretly: Radical Chieftain Declares “Power and Cash” to Decide Issue.”Feb. 20, 1923] Unsigned contemporary news account from the daily newspaper serving St. Joseph/Benton Harbor/Bridgman, Michigan. This short article quotes a Foster speech made at Grand Rapids in which he states that “the Communist Party in January 1920 was subjected to the heaviest persecution ever experienced by the movement when 5,000 persons were thrown into jail after raids. Was it going to walk into the lion’s mouth like the Christians in the arena? It now is only for the public to assume a more tolerant attitude. Then it will come out in broad daylight with its message. You can’t kill living ideas with terrorism. If the Communist Party can’t function legally, it will function secretly.”

 

“Letter No. 7 to the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow from C.E. Ruthenberg in New York, February 20, 1923.” Communication from the head of the American Communist Party to the ECCI informing them that administrative amalgamation of the underground Communist Party of America and the legal political party, the Workers Party of America, had taken place as per the Comintern’s instructions. Only one member of the CEC of the CPA, L.E. Katterfeld (“Carr”) had failed to agree with the CI’s decision to dissolve the formal underground apparatus, and he had accepted the decision of the majority as a matter of party discipline. Ruthenberg also provides a short update on the Cleveland Conference for Progressive Political Action’s failure to endorse a Labor Party, noting that instead various state Labor Parties had been established, some of which included the Workers Party as participants. Also includes brief notes on the Michigan Foster case, the campaign for protection of the foreign-born, trade union work (said to key on the struggle in the United Mine Workers of America), and forthcoming literature.

 

“Letter from Robert Minor in New York to the Editorial Committee, WPA, February 24, 1923.” A lengthy letter from member of the Workers Party of America Editorial Committee Robert Minor to his colleagues bluntly critical about the failings of the party press. Keying on the English language weekly, The Worker, Minor cites failings of both form and content, arguing the the massive and bold masthead of the publication makes it nearly impossible to run “scare headlines” which catch attention. Worse yet, Minor feels that these headlines do not illicit the interest of readers that factual information is to be imparted, but rather “that we are going to panhandle him for something—service or money.” Minor likens the publication to an amateurish advertising sheet, erroneously editorializing and sermonizing and making false calls to action in place of the presentation of factual news items. Minor calls for a strict segregation of opinion to a designated section of the paper and arguing that “the propaganda effect shall be obtained as the New York Times gets its propaganda effect in news articles—by sequence and juxtaposition of fact and by analytical treatment in the news writing, without permitting one sentence or phrase of opinion to be printed in a news item.” As an aside, Minor indicates the desire to return to political cartooning and asks the Editorial Committee to moot the question of excusing him from all obligatory writing chores so that he can concentrate once again on his craft.

 

“Call for the Third National Convention of the Communist Party of America, February 23, 1923.” Convention call for the 3rd and final Convention of the underground unifed CPA, signed by that organization’s Executive Secretary Abram Jakira [“J. MIller”]. The call announces that “conditions in the country have undergone changes which call for revision of the decision adopted at our last Convention on the question of an Open Party.” To wit, a letter from the Comintern “specifically instructs the CEC to proceed with transforming the LPP into an open Communist Party as soon as possible, preparing at the same time a strong apparatus to enable the Party to meet emergency situations and to carry on the necessary underground activities.” While the official organ is to be opened to discussion of this matter to the party membership, the convention call definitely implies the gathering is to provide formal ratification of a fait accompli rather than a venue for debate and decision of a controversial matter. Representation is to be on the basis of one delegate for each 250 average paid members (or major fraction thereof) for the period 11/22 to 1/23, with each district entitled to at least one delegate. The 3rd Convention was ultimately held in New York City on April 7, 1923, and was attended by 19 regular delegates and a total of 35.

 

“Scott Nearing and the Workers Party,” by James P. Cannon [Feb. 24, 1923] Recently elected National Chairman of the Workers Party of America Jim Cannon attempts to make hay from material recently published in the Socialist daily, The New York Call, which quoted economist Scott Nearing as asserting “The Socialist Party has had its day.... Since 1912 membership has steadily declined.... Through the Middle West recently I found the Socialist Party almost extinct” and concluding “the Workers Party has fallen heir to the present radical political situation in the United States.” Cannon sees “the rebel professor” Nearing as a significant figure, representative of a whole stratum of former members of the Socialist Party who stood outside of all organizational affiliations since the implosion of the SPA in 1919 and the driving of the Communist movement underground by state repression shortly thereafter. “Tens of thousands of radical workers in America are in that position today. More than half of the former members of the Socialist Party stand outside of any political organization. The collapse of the IWW as a revolutionary factor has left many good proletarian fighters without a center to call their own. The trade unions are honeycombed with virile militants who are looking for a lead. This is the living material out of which we must build our party,” Cannon writes. Cannon does not fail to criticize Nearing for singling out the Workers Party’s reliance upon “Moscow Dictators” to determine its line, pointing out that those same “Moscow Dictators” were the very same who pushed the American Communist movement out of its sectarian underground seclusion towards becoming an open and broad-based movement. Citing the failure of the federalized Second International, Cannon declares that “We flatly reject the idea of a decentralized International because it is fundamentally unsound in theory and has worked out most disastrously in practice. We think in terms of the International class struggle. That struggle can be waged successfully only if the proletarian vanguard in all countries is firmly united into one centralized Communist World Party.”

 

MARCH

“Are the Communists Ready?” by Max Bedacht. [March 1923] A brief summary of the development of the Communist International by a leading American participant. “The working class has only one rallying point in its struggle against capitalism—the Communist International,” states Bedacht, noting that the opponents of working class revolution have also learned from experience “the seriousness of the claims of the proletariat to political domination.” As a result, Bedacht indicates that the capitalists “organize a complete counter revolution even before a complete revolution has occurred—as in Italy.” “The Communist parties everywhere must rise to the occasion and meet it with revolutionary strategy, which neutralizes, paralyzes and fights the forces of the bourgeoisie, and at the same time recruits all the forces of the working class for the final battle,” Bedacht states.

 

“An Open Challenge,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. [March 1923] At the end of February 1923, jury selection for the first trial resulting from the August 1922 Bridgman, Michigan raid was begun. The best-known public figure among the defendants (regarded by the prosecution as the most threatening public enemy), William Z. Foster, was chosen by the prosecution to first face the jury. This article by C.E. Ruthenberg, published in the March 1923 issue of The Liberator, marks the beginning of this trial. Ruthenberg charges that the Palmer Raids of 1919-20 had as their goal not prosecution for crime but rather destruction of the radical movement and that the “bugaboo of violence” alleged of the revolutionary socialist left would be belied by the evidence presented at the Michigan trials. “No Communist advocates the use of violence in the class struggle in the United States today.... No Communist has been convicted of an overt act of violence in the United States,” Ruthenberg notes.

 

“Report on CPA District #9 [Pacific Northwest],” by “Ex-DO Gilbert” circa March 1923]A rare and extremely valuable glimpse of organizational disarray in the late underground period in the states of Washington and Oregon. “Gilbert,” a former member of the CEC of the CPA, was dispatched to the Pacific Northwest to serve as District Organizer for District 9 of the underground CPA. He arrived to find an organization on the brink of oblivion: “From [July 1922] until November when I arrived the CP did not function (except in Portland to a limited extent). No news was received by them. No need to argue about liquidation there, for the CP as such had already dissolved.” Party members were “bewildered,” organizational records seized, destroyed, or lost as a byproduct of the raid of the WPA’s district convention in July 1922 and the frightened aftermath. The organization was impoverished, the membership scattered and out of contact with each other and the center. Even party members had a poor understanding of the program and tactics of the party. No effort was made at recruitment, logical choices for party membership stood outside of the organization due to the low regard in which party officials were held. As a result “Many of the very best fighters who made the labor movement of Seattle famous are now doing nothing.” Concrete suggestions for “building up the CP anew” are provided—but the task promised to be daunting, expensive, and slow, as the underground organization had completely collapsed.

 

“What Kind of a Party?” by James P. Cannon [March 3, 1923] National Chairman of the Workers Party of America Cannon, recently returned from Moscow, where he sat on the Executive Committee of the Communist International, reflects on the two possible courses for the future of the WPA in America. On the one hand, some in the organization seek a small and doctrinally pure organization. This Left Wing feared the incursion of “Centrists” and opportunists into the party’s ranks, resulting in a dilution of the party’s theory and defeat of its revolutionary mission. Cannon, on the other hand, speaks for a broad and inclusive organization. Cannon remarks: “We see the best organized and most powerful capitalist class on earth; we see a highly developed labor movement and a strongly entrenched bureaucracy at the top of it, and we say: Only a big party can cope with this situation. Our greatest danger, from which we must flee as from a pestilence, is the tendency toward sectarianism, the tendency to let the party degenerate into a small, self-satisfied, exclusive circle of narrow partisans without influence on events about it and without receiving any control from them.” Cannon holds up the TUEL as a model, with its comparatively broad membership giving the Gompers regime in the AF of L “more concern than any small group of pure disciples ever did.” Cannon supports his call for a “mass party” by citing the words of the “great leaders” of the world Communist movement, such as Comintern President Zinoviev, who advocated this slogan of “A Million Members for the Party!” to the Communist Party in Germany—a smaller country than the United States. “Communist principles are living things. They have no significance standing alone. They are made to mix with the mass labor movement and from that mixture fruitful issue comes.... The movement to broaden the party, in its membership and in its activities, is not a departure from communist principles and tactics. On the contrary, it is based on the desire to really begin to apply them in America,” Cannon declares.

 

“‘Foster at Bridgman’: Spolansky. Identified by Testimony of US Operative: Defense Paves Way to Claim Evidence ‘Planted.’” [March 16, 1923] Details of the cross-examination of Department of Justice agent Jacob Spolansky and Berrien Co. Michigan Sheriff George Bridgman in the trial of William Z. Foster for alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism Law in association with the August 1922 convention of the Communist Party of America at Bridgman, Michigan. Sheriff Bridgman described the scene of the convention as “a deeply wooded ravine hidden away from the Wolfskeel dunes, 20 miles south of St. Joseph and on the shore of Lake Michigan,” according to this report in the St. Joseph, Michigan daily press. He also noted that Spolansky came to him to make an arrest of convention participants on Friday, Aug. 19, the actual raid being conducted on the morning of Tuesday, August 22. Three federal agents were named as being part of the arresting party, in conjunction with the sheriff’s posse.

 

“Inviting Debs to Soviet Russia: Letter from Israel Amter in Moscow to the Presidium of the Comintern, March 9, 1923.” Despite his decision to stick with the Socialist Party of America which he helped to found, the American Communists continued to hold out hope that Eugene Debs would turn his back on the SPA’s increasingly conservative leadership. This letter from the CPA’s man in Moscow, Israel Amter, noted that Debs had at last been persuaded to visit Soviet Russia to see the situation first-hand and requested that an invitation be cabled to Debs by the Soviet railway union, central trade union body, or government. Amter remarks that “when Debs came from prison, he was very angry with the Communists for their failure to do anything to obtain his release. Undoubtedly he was right in his contention, but the American Party not understanding proper tactics and incensed that he did not break away” from the Socialist Party and consequently “did not feel inclined to speak in his behalf.” A sentimental disposition, Ill-health, and his “yellow Socialist” brother had prevented closer collaboration between the Communists and Debs—who instead fell victim to the “trickery” of the SPA. Nevertheless, Debs’ honesty and love for the working class combined with “repugnance at the brutal attacks of the Socialist press on Soviet Russia have made him at last desire to see Soviet Russia with his own eyes and judge for himself.”

 

”’Not Yet!’ Frantic Cry Against Seating Workers Party Delegates in NY Labor Party Conference,” by J. Louis Engdahl [March 10, 1923] Participant’s account of the effort of the Workers Party of American to seat its delegates for participation in the 2nd Conference of the American Labor Party, held March 3-4, 1923 in New York City. As was the case at the 1st Conference of the ALP, the Workers Party found itself blocked by Credentials Committee and the convention itself, dominated by activists in the arch-rival Socialist Party of America. Leading the charge on the floor of the convention against the Workers Party was James Oneal, former member of the SPA’s National Executive Committee and one of the leaders of the anti-Left Wing party purge that preceded the split at the 1919 Emergency National Convention. The Workers Party sought to seat four delegates at the ALP Conference, including Engdahl, Alexander Bittelman, Ludwig Lore, and Harry Wicks. The WPA delegates and their program enjoyed the sympathy of “up to 30 to 40 percent of the entire delegation,” Engdahl notes, including delegates from trade unions, Workmen’s Circles, and “even a few of the Socialist Party delegates, who are anxious and sincere in their desire to build up a real United Front of the independent political forces of the workers, no merely a ‘Socialist front.’” Engdahl quotes the WPA’s nemesis Oneal as telling the assembled delegates: “The time will come when the Workers Party will be admitted here, but that time has not arrived yet.” Includes a list of the 25 members elected by the conference as the new Executive Committee of the ALP—a list heavy in members of the Socialist Party.

 

“Communists Throw Challenge In Face of Michigan Authorities: Ten of Participants in Bridgman Convention Walk into Courtroom at St. Joseph,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [March 10, 1923] Press release by WPA Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg detailing the surrender en mass of 10 indicted participants at the 1922 Bridgman Convention of the Communist Party of America, a gathering infiltrated by a government agent-provocateur and raided by state and federal law enforcement authorities. The surrender of the ten (decided upon by the CEC of the WPA) was not being made “because they have any faith in the justice of the capitalist courts and prosecuting authorities,” Ruthenberg indicates, as the defendants “have had too many experiences with these institutions showing the willingness of judges and prosecutors to ignore their own laws and rules in order to put Communists in prison.” Rather the matter was being put into the hands of the American working class, Ruthenberg states. Those surrendering included: John Ballam, Max Bedacht, Ella Reev Bloor, Jay Lovestone, Robert Minor, Edgar Owens, Rebecca Sacharow, A. Schulenberg,Rose Pastor Stokes, and William Weinstone. The ten were released on $1,000 bail each and freed on their own recognizance to raise the money over the weekend.

 

“Rose Pastor Stokes Gives Self Up: Walks Calmly into Court This Morning: Nine Others Appear in Court with Gotham Woman, Charged with Attending Communist Meeting at Bridgman.” [March 10, 1923] Unsigned news report from the local St. Joseph, Michigan daily newspaper detailing the sensational surprise surrender of 10 members of the Communist Party under blanket indictment for participation in the ill-fated August 1922 Bridgman Convention of the Communist Party. Interesting in its depiction of “settlement worker” and “protege and close associate of Jane Addams” Rose Pastor Stokes as the leading figure surrendering, despite the presence in the group of other top-level party officials, including Ballam, Bedacht, Lovestone, and Minor. The surrender is dismissed as a grandstand play designed to elicit sympathy and aid the Communists’ effort to spread their propaganda by one of the prosecuting attorneys.

 

“Venue Change Denied Foster: Trial Will be Started Here and Attempt Made to Get Jury.” [March 10, 1923] Unsigned news report from the local St. Joseph, Michigan daily newspaper detailing the last minute pre-trial jousting between defense attorney Frank P. Walsh and O.L. Gray for the prosecution. An attempt by Walsh to obtain a change of venue to another county in Michigan was denied by the judge in the case, who did, however, quash three of the four counts in the indictment against Foster, charging him with spreading a violent doctrine. The sole remaining count of the indictment charged that Foster met with an illegal organization, the CPA, “created for the purpose of advocating doctrines of criminal syndicalism.”

 

“The 1923 Foster Trial: The Reports of the WPA Press Service.” [March 12 to April 10, 1923]The Workers Party of Society Press Service covered the nearly month-long trial of William Z. Foster in St. Joseph, Michigan exhaustively, sending out reports of each day’s events to the party press. Only a fraction of this material was ever published in the of the weekly English-language organ, The Worker, the bulk being translated and run in the non-English daily press of the WPA. This 21-page document collects all 25 of these reports for the first time and provides what now stands as the best single blow-by-blow account of the landmark Foster “Criminal Syndicalism” case. The tone is, of course, sympathetic to the Defense, emphasizing the lies, distortions, and crass machinations of the Prosecution; a few non-factual statements of the Defense are reported without being challenged. These daily reports were authored by some of the WPA’s best journalistic talent, including C.E. Ruthenberg, Robert Minor, Edgar Owens, Joe Carroll, Earl Browder, Clarissa Ware, John Hearley, and Jay Lovestone.

 

”Open Letter to John Keracher, Executive Secretary of the Proletarian Party of America in Chicago from C.E. Ruthenberg, Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of America in New York, March 17, 1923.” The Workers Party sought to consolidate their growth in 1923 by incorporating the members of the Proletarian Party of America into their ranks. The PPA (formerly based in the Socialist Party of Michigan) is lauded by Ruthenberg as “an earnest self-sacrificing group inspired by the determination to help realize the goal of the Communist movement.” Membership in the Workers Party, with its “20,000 members” would enable these individuals to “render vastly greater service” to the Communist movement in America, Ruthenberg notes. Understanding the PPA’s fundamental belief that the current task of the Communist movement is to educate and enlighten the working class to prepare it for an eventually assumption of the reins of state and economy, Ruthenberg holds up the attractive possibility that PPA members might well play “very great” service “along the line of assisting in carrying on the educational work within the party.” Ruthenberg asks Keracher to take the issue of joining the WPA en masse up with the National Committee of the Proletarian Party.

 

“Memo from C.E. Ruthenberg to All WPA District Organizers on Infiltration of the Socialist Party, March 17, 1923.” A memo from Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg to all District Organizers of the Workers Party of America that a “left wing” movement seemed to be emerging in the Socialist Party and that “it is necessary for us to help crystallize that left movement.” The DOs are instructed to “select some trustworthy and capable comrades who should be instructed to make an effort to join one of their branches in their locality. This is to be done in every city of your district where they are strong. One or two comrades is sufficient for every branch. The comrades must be absolutely trustworthy.” This operation is to be secret: “The entire question is absolutely confidential and should not be made subject for discussion among the general membership for obvious reasons,” Ruthenberg notes.

 

“Report on the United States: Up to March 20, 1923.” [Selections] by Israel Amter Extensive excerpts taken from the lengthy digest of the news prepared for the Comintern by Israel Amter. Includes a long section of original reportage on the trial of William Z. Foster at St. Joseph, MI for his participation in the August 1922 Bridgman Convention of the CPA. Also includes information that provocateurs were being embedded by the WPA in the Socialist Party to sow dissention in the ranks; news of the affiliation of Scandinavian, Czechoslovak, and Romanian Federations with the Workers Party of America; details on the Olgin court saga in which he was hauled to court for publishing an unsigned letter making charges against the officials of the Furriers’ Union; info on the struggle in the miners’ union; and commentary about the emergence of a fascist movement in the United States, among other matters.

 

“Memo from C.E. Ruthenberg to All WPA District Organizers on Maintenance of Underground Apparatus, March 21, 1923.” The decision to move the “seat of party authority” from the underground to the “legal” political apparatus did not mean an end for secret operations for the American Communist movement. This communique from WPA Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg to the District Organizers of the party makes clear. Ruthenberg instructs that pending the decision of the CEC on future underground operations, “you are to see to it that safe connections are being kept with the CEC and with the lower units, that safe addresses are being kept and transmitted in code, that Party names are used in written documents, etc.” In addition, Ruthenberg added, it was essential that each party functionary maintain a substitution “who shall be supplied with all necessary connections and information, so that he would be able to proceed with the work without interruption in case of emergency.”

 

“Assembling With is Foster’s Crime: Steel Strike Secretary First Person Ever Tried on Such Trashy Accusation,” by Robert M. Buck [March 24, 1923] Staunch defense of William Z. Fosters and the Communists denied their constitutional freedom of assembly by state and federal authorities in the August 1922 raid of the CPA’s convention at Bridgman, Michigan. “William Z. Foster is on trial in this city on a charge that has never before been preferred against an individual in a criminal tribunal in this or any other country, so far as legal records show. He is charged with the ‘crime’ of ‘assembling with,’” Buck declares. Even the West coast workers railroaded and imprisoned for membership in the Industrial Workers of the World were at least accused of organizational membership—Foster faced prison merely for his association, Buck indicates. Adding to the unscrupulousness of the “trashy” indictment was the sordid fact that it was the vote of a government agent that tipped the CPA convention to retain the party’s “underground” status; thus government action directly perpetrated the continued organizational illegality that the government was prosecuting, a perspective emphasized by Foster’s chief counsel, prominent liberal attorney Frank P. Walsh.

 

“On the Foster Trial,” by Grigorii Zinoviev [circa March 29, 1923] With Secretary of the Trade Union Educational League William Z. Foster embroiled in a trial for “criminal syndicalism” over his participation in the August 1922 Convention of the Communist Party of America at Bridgman, MI, head of the Communist International lends his support with this article in the press. “The record of the American labor movement is one of persecution and attacks by the capitalist class through the means of armed guards and detective agencies striving to destroy the labor organizations,” Zinoviev says, noting that the charge against Foster are “old tactics employed by the capitalists in every country whenever the workers organize for the purpose of improving their conditions.” Zinoviev states that “America today is under the absolute dictatorship of Wall Street.... The radical workers advocate a government of the workers and farmers operating in the interests of the workers and the exploited farmers, just as the capitalist government is operating in the interests of the capitalists.” Zinoviev calls Foster “a true friend of the interests of the American workers and farmers” and states that he “cannot understand how a thinking worker or farmer living in America under the oppression of billionaire capitalism hesitates to accept” the program of the Workers Party of America.

 

“Foster’s Fate is in Balance: US Agents Keep Reporters Hootched Up and Have Free Access to Jury,” by Robert M. Buck [March 31, 1923] A new accusation is made against the behavior of the Department of Justice and its lackeys in this article from the pages of the offical organ of the Farmer-Labor Party of the United States: that reporters had been plied with booze and entertained by prosecuting authorities seeking favorable coverage in the press. “Dicks of the United States Department of Justice and others associated with the prosecution keep the newspaper reporters liberally liquored up with hootch and wine and nightly parties are held to insure that the reporters will be as enthusiastic in their thirst for the blood of the defendants as are the Department of Justice spies themselves,” Buck declares. “The attentions of the stool pigeons, showered upon reporters, show results in the sending out of stories of things that did not happen in court, and otherwise unfair to the defense,” Buck adds, singling out in particular the Chicago Tribune for its slanted coverage.

 

“Foster Jury Given Radical Education: C.E. Ruthenberg Acts As Professor of Communism and Capitalism in Michigan Syndicalism Case,” by Joe Carroll [March 31, 1923] Coverage by a reporter for the left wing Federated Press of testimony in the trial of William Z. Foster for alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism Law. Carroll details the testimony of Communist leader C.E. Ruthenberg in Foster’s defense, observing that the Cleveland radical looked “quite like a professor, talked fluently, as he sought to show that the gathering at Bridgman was a philosophical gathering not bent on violence and armed insurrection.” Carroll quotes Ruthenberg as testifying that “The Communist view is that force is not a weapon for a small group or party to use. If force is resorted to it must come out of the social and political conditions existing in a country. An advocacy of force in the United States today would be nonsense.”

 

“Judge Rules that Everything is Admissible at the Communist Trial in Michigan,” by Edgar Owens [March 31, 1923] Brief news article from the pages of The Worker, English language official organ of the Workers Party of America, on the progress of the William Z. Foster trial at St. Joseph, Michigan. Foster was charged with violation of the Michigan state criminal syndicalism law for his participation in the secret convention of the Communist Party of America at Bridgman, MI during August of the previous year. Article author Edgar Owens notes that Judge White had allowed a questionnaire purported to have been filled out by William Z. Foster introduced into evidence, despite Bureau of Investigation undercover agent Francis Morrow admitting that he had been 15 feet away from Foster when he filled out the form, with about 20 people between Morrow and Foster, and that the form had been deposited on a table along with 74 others. The judge also allowed the introduction, over defense objections, of the program and constitution of the Communist Party of America, two articles from the underground official organ, the theses and statutes of the 3rd Congress of the Comintern, and a copy of Nikolai Bukharin’s The ABC of Communism.

 

APRIL

“The Trial of William Z. Foster,” by Robert Minor. [April 1923] Labor cartoonist and Communist Party leader Robert Minor writes here about the start of the William Z. Foster trial. Foster was charged in conjunction with the 1922 raid of the CPA’s Bridgman, Michigan Convention with “unlawful assemblage” under the state’s Criminal Syndicalism Law, for which he could have been imprisoned for up to ten years. Particular attention is paid to the seating of the jury and efforts of the government—in conjunction with the Burns Detective Agency—to sway public opinion in the case. Minor states that “the prosecution of Foster is a bald attempt of the Harding Administration to mold the American labor movement in its own image. Before the jury was completed the prosecution had definitely outlined its purpose to eliminate the Trade Union Educational League from the American Federation of Labor, the imprisonment of Foster being one of the intended means.”

 

#8220;The Verdict in the Foster Case,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [April 6, 1923] Press release sent out by the Workers Party Press Service in the aftermath of the hung jury in the William Z. Foster “Criminal Syndicalism” case held in St. Joseph, Michigan. Workers Party of America Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg declares the result a “great victory for Communism in the United States" based upon Judge Charles E. White’s instructions to the jury, which set a high bar for finding of a guilty verdict. Highlights of White’s instructions are quoted here. Ruthenberg quotes a member of the jury as stating “The prosecution didn’t prove that the Communist Party advocated violence. That was the only thing we split on.”

 

“Foster’s Fate With Jury on Issue of Free Speech,” by Joe Carroll [events of April 6, 1923] Federated Press coverage of closing statements in the William Z. Foster trial in St. Joseph, Michigan. Carroll notes the extreme appeals to patriotism made by the prosecution, observing that "male members of the jury wept when Attorney General O.L. Smith offered his four little boys to his country for the next war." Tears were also drawn from female jurist Minerva Olson by lead defense attorney Frank P. Walsh, according to Carroll, when Walsh "told of the departure of his 18 year old son for camp in the recent war and showed how much better the world would be if there were no war and pacifists had their way." Carroll indicates that "there seems to be a strong public spirit of opposition toward the whole proceeding, evinced not only by discontent over the expense, but also through protest against enforcement of the all too comprehensive statute under which such prosecutions would be permitted." Carroll extensively reviews the testimony of Foster himself, called to the stand in his own defense.

 

“Foster Case in Hands of Jury: Verdict is Momentarily Expected; Only Defendant and Ruthenberg Testify,” by Robert M. Buck [April 7, 1923] On April 4, 1923, the case of William Z. Foster for alleged violation of the Michigan state criminal syndicalism law went to the jury in St. Joseph, Michigan. Buck contrasts the “childish brain” and “juvenile bunk” spouted by one of the prosecuting attorneys in his closing arguments and the far-fetched accusation by another that Foster had been fomenting armed insurrection at Bridgman with the “quiet, logical defense” made by Humphrey Gray and the “impassioned plea” of lead attorney Frank P. Walsh, which “held the crowded courtroom spellbound, interesting even the newspaper reporters.” Buck quotes a couple choice epigrams from Walsh, including, “There is more menace to you and to me in the mahogany desks in one building in Wall Street than there is in the 45 men who voted at the Bridgman convention” and “It is a very poor American indeed, one without faith in the institutions of his country or in the quality of his countrymen, who sees a menace in communism.”

 

“Michigan Trial Shows Fidelity to Truest Interests of Workers, Arouses Bitter Enmity of Capitalism,” by Rose Pastor Stokes [April 7, 1923] First-hand account of the Michigan trial of William Z. Foster by Workers Party members Rose Pastor Stokes, herself a delegate to the ill-fated August 1922 Bridgman Convention of the CPA. Stokes provides bits of local flavor, including an account of the detectives gathering for lunch daily at the Lake View Hotel in St. Joseph, across the street from the Whitcomb, where the defense gathered—the better to keep an eye on the intermingling of sympathizers with the “terrible Reds.” None of the Bureau of Investigation detectives on the stand did a particularly effective job, Stokes states, saying that Chicago-based agent Jacob Spolansky was “not believed” by the jury and that “hardly a question he answered was credited.” Star prosecution witness Felix Morrow is accused of having told tall tales about handling a key document inadvertently dropped by Alfred Wagenknecht (”Duffy”) which enabled him to in a single blow identify to the court the participation of 74 individuals at the convention. Morrow is quoted as saying of the laundry list of participants, “I remember every one of them except two who weren’t there, and those two are Cook [Jim Cannon] and Raphael [Alex Bittelman].” Stokes writes of Morrow that and then he named names, “Christian names, surnames, and party names, until you are certain that the “Stool” has studied daily and nightly since the raids, and not unaided, to acquire his extraordinary knowledge. Even those who weren’t there he has named....Thus 76 men get ‘identified’ at one whack.” This testimony was nothing more than “lying,” Stokes notes.

 

“Capitalism’s Howling Jackals Are Heralds of the New Day,” by J. Louis Engdahl [April 7, 1923] New York weekly Worker editor Louis Engdahl unleashes a torrent of vituperation against the multipronged anti-Communist offensive which erupted concurrently with the Foster trial in Michigan. Engdahl hammers Sec. of State Hughes and Sec. of Commerce Hoover for their “broadside of old falsehoods” against Soviet Russia. Journalist and American Defense Society functionary R.M. Whitney, author of a series of articles in the Boston Evening Transcript based upon seized documents from the Bridgman raid, is attacked for heading an amalgam of “100 Percent Plus” organizations which were engaged in an offensive against “such friends of Soviet Russia” as Paxten Hibben, Charles Recht, and Anna Louise Strong. The Socialist Party is attacked for “trailing with the same crowd,” a reference to the SP’s ongoing effort along with others in the international Socialist movement to win release of the members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party imprisoned in Soviet Russia in 1922. Former SP publicist William Walling is singled out for his ongoing diatribes against Soviet Russia in the pages of The American Federationist. All of these disparate critics of Soviet Russia and the Workers Party of America are likened to a pack of cowardly jackals, hunting in a group and attempting with their howls to keep out of the newspapers “any small particle of Communist truth that might drift into them from the Michigan courtroom.”

 

“Open Letter to the Members and the CEC of the Proletarian Party of America from O.W. Kuusinen, Secretary-General of ECCI, April 7, 1923.” In the spring of 1923, the Workers Party of America put on a full court press attempting to win over the members of the Proletarian Party of America to its ranks. This letter by the Secretary-General of the Executive Committee of the Communist International makes the appeal in no uncertain terms: “The whole Proletarian Party must join the Workers Party of America. All who accept the leadership of the Communist International must be inside the ranks. The Proletarian Party as the last detached organized remnant today asserting communist principles and adhering to the ideas of the Communist International must no longer delay in becoming part of the unified revolutionary working class movement of America.” The PPA is lauded for its “valuable educational work in Marxism” through the conducting of study classes, lectures, and street meetings. At the same time, it is held that the PPA “overestimated the value of purely educational activity,” which to be effective must be applied through participation in the mass revolutionary movement. “The party organizing the workers must have as its tactic the getting of larger and larger masses into action until ultimately the big mass of workers will be prepared for the final struggle for power,” Kuusinen states. Kuusinen calls the isolation of the small Proletarian Party “tragic” and urges the members of the PPA to “join the Workers Party, to accept the program, constitution, and decisions adopted by the last convention of the party, and help to develop it into the revolutionary mass party of the American working class.”

 

”Why Mrs. Olson Voted for Foster,” by Jay Lovestone [April 10, 1923] In the aftermath of the mistrial in the William Z. Foster case, one member of the jury gained her proverbial 15 minutes of fame — Mrs. Minerva Olson, the sole woman on the jury and an outspoken civil libertarian. This piece by Jay Lovestone, targeted to the Workers Party of America’s press, salutes Olson for her courage in expounding “the American spirit of fair play.” Olson declared that “The stage setting of the prosecution seemed over-employed with such a display of detectives and undercover men that it appeared more like trying to railroad Foster than like prosecuting him.” She added that “Agitation may not be altogether pleasant, but we must remember that it is the agitators who have brought progress into the world” and she expressed her conviction that the Foster Criminal Syndicalism trial “was really a big battle for human rights.” Lovestone encourages readers to write to Olson thanking her for her courage.

 

“C.E. Ruthenberg in New York to the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow on the Dissolution of the Communist Party of America, April 11, 1923.” Official notification by the Secretary of the Workers Party of America that the Third National Convention of the Communist Party of America [April 7, 1923] had adopted a decision “to dissolve the underground party, leaving the Workers Party of America as the only Party having relations with the Comintern.” Ruthenberg states while at present the name of the Workers Party and formal status of its affiliation with the Comintern as a “fraternal party” needed to remain unchanged, nevertheless the new unitary body should be accorded full rights of a member party of the Communist movement—the right of its members to transfer into membership of other member parties, including the Russian Communist Party, and full voice and vote for its delegates to Congresses and other sessions of the Communist International.

 

“Official Notification of Dissolution from the Communist Party of America to the Workers Party of America, April 11, 1923.” Pro forma letter by C.E. Ruthenberg to himself announcing the unanimous decision of the Communist Party of America by that organization’s Third National Convention to dissolve the organization. The letter states that henceforth, any organization calling itself “Communist” is actually “an impostor and an enemy of the Communist International” which “should be exposed as such by every Communist and every class conscious worker.” Communists are called upon to accept the discipline of the Workers Party of America as “a sacred duty” and that organization was duly authorized “when it deems it desirable, to adopt the name ‘Communist Party of America.’” The Third Convention of the CPA was a one day affair held on Saturday, April 7, 1923; this letter and a similar letter to the Communist International written in the name of the CPA on the following Wednesday may be regarded as the moment of formal termination.

 

“Report on the American Party Situation to the Enlarged Executive Committee of the Communist International, April 11, 1923.” This is an official report by the “Secretariat” of the Workers Party of America (C.E. Ruthenberg—Executive Secretary; Josef Pogny—Political Secretary; Abraham Jakira—Secretary for Confidential Work) to the Enlarged ECCI summarizing the American party’s work. A monthly dues-paying membership of “approximately 18,000” is claimed. The three old factions (“Liquidators,” “Goose Caucus” and the “Opposition” [Central Caucus faction] are declared eliminated. Instead, three “tendencies” are said to now exist in the party—a small “right” group opposed to underground organization, a small “left” group which considers underground operations the most important aspect of the party, and “the great majority” of party members who support the primacy of the open party. Details are provided about the Labor Defense Committee, the campaign to protect Foreign-born workers, the amalgamation campaign in the trade unions, the anti-Fascist campaign intitated by the WPA’s Itallian section, and the ongoing drive to establish an American labor party. The costs of legal defense of the Bridgman defendants are held to be oneroous: “We have been obliged to put all our energy into the work of raising money for the defense of the comrades arrested at Bridgman, for which tens of thousands of dollars have been needed. This has made it impossible for us to raise money for other party purposes and has left us in a very difficult financial situation. The needs of defense will require all the money we can raise for a considerable time to come.”

 

“William Z. Foster—Revolutionary Leader,” by John Pepper [April 14, 1923] Given the two fought a factional war to the knife for most of the rest of the 1920s, there is a certain element of irony in this Worker article by John Pepper holding that William Z. Foster was a living composite of the “splendid, typical characteristics of the American workers.” Pepper gushes about Foster in the waning hours of his trial in St. Joseph, Michigan, calling him “at once blood of the blood, flesh of the flesh, of the working masses—a worker himself, a leader of the masses, a trade unionist, a revolutionist, a Marxian, and a Communist.” Pepper escapes the charge of hagiography by listing a set of Foster’s “mistakes,” including misestimation of revolutionary tactics as a member of the Socialist Party, failure to appreciate the importance of political action and the role of the vanguard party as a member of the IWW, and a failure to recognize the importance of the “revolutionary minority” as an organizer in the AF of L. Pepper adds that “these mistakes were never his own individual errors but always in quest of possible steps of advance for the American workers. Foster himself has always been honest and militant.... In every movement in which he participated Foster picked up all that was good and worthwhile and left behind what was harmful and worthless.” Pepper concludes that “the American revolutionary will, after St. Joseph, know that Foster is their leader.”

 

“Debs and the United Front: An Open Letter to Eugene V. Debs from C.E. Ruthenberg, April 14, 1923.” Upon learning that Socialist Party leader Gene Debs had faced disruptions of his meetings by members of the Workers Party, Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg drafted the following open letter to the aging orator disclaiming responsibility. “No member of the Workers Party has been directed or authorized to carry on such activities in relation to your meetings,” Ruthenberg declares. Ruthenberg takes advantage of the opportunity to publicize the WPA’s ongoing effort to forge a United Front with other radical organizations, emphasizing a 6 point program for common action — amalgamation of unions, protection of foreign born workers, repudiation of international rivals of the Comintern, recognition of the USSR, fundamental transformation of the American system of government to a unicameral legislature with neither executive nor judicial veto power, and establishment of a labor party on the British model. Ruthenberg asks Debs for a statement of his views on these matters.

 

“Ruthenberg Jury Selection, Day 2,” by T.J. O’Flaherty [April 18, 1923] Chastised by a mistrial due to a hung jury in the trial of William Z. Foster, the prosecution in the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism case against C.E. Ruthenberg attempted to learn from its mistakes, placing special emphasis on jury selection. This first-hand account by Tom O'Flaherty relates the second morning of jury selection — a process which had placed a retired businessman, local Chamber of Commerce Treasurer, retired policeman-turned-detective, a justice of the peace, and nephew of a member of the Foster jury who had voted for conviction on the panel. O'Flaherty takes colorful ad hominem potshots at star prosecution witnesses Louis Loebl (of the Chicago office of the Bureau of Investigation) and Francis Morrow, likening the look of the former to "a cornered rat" who "would fill the picture of the popular conception of the dope peddler and pickpocket type." O'Flaherty remarks upon the "fairness and simplicity" of the judge in the case.

 

“Ruthenberg Jury Selection, Day 3,” by T.J. O’Flaherty [April 19, 1923] Reporter for The Worker T.J. O’Flaherty details the end of jury selection in the trial of C.E. Ruthenberg for alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism law. It was revealed that Michigan law required property ownership as a condition of jury service, resulting in the summary dismissal of a box factory worker from the jury panel. The state removed another former union member with its final peremptory challenge, O'Flaherty notes. "Taken in connection with the peremptory challenge by the state of the only union man on the jury list, our readers can draw their own conclusions, regardless of the fairness of the judge, as to the handicap under which C.E. Ruthenberg suffers in facing twelve men who must necessarily possess property and are presumably in favor of a system of which the private ownership of socially essential property is a cornerstone," O'Flaherty remarks.

 

"Testimony of Sheriff George I. Bridgman in the Trial of C.E. Ruthenberg," by John Hearley [April 20, 1923] First hand account of the opening of the trial of C.E. Ruthenberg for alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism Law, based upon his participation in the underground convention of the Communist Party held at an isolated resort near Bridgman, Michigan in August 1922. The first witness was Sheriff George I. Bridgman, who indicated that volition for the warrantless raid came from Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Jacob Spolansky. After two days of negotiation a posse of about 20 deputies was raised, Bridgman testified, who together with 4 federal agents raided the Wolfskeel Resort, making 17 arrests. It is noted that Sheriff Bridgman had paraded those arrested through the streets of nearby St. Joseph, MI while handcuffed and chained.

 

“NY Call in Conspiracy Against Russia; Also in War on American Communists; NY Socialists Hold Underground Meeting,” by H.M. Wicks [April 21, 1923] **CHANGE OF ATTRIBUTION, FROM ENGDAHL TO WICKS BASED ON STYLE** During the winter of 1922-23 and the spring of 1923, the Workers Party and the Socialist Party simultaneously engaged in an escalation of rhetoric, making permanent a rift in the ranks of the American Left that would last for decades. Aspects of this “Divided Front” included the ongoing effort of the Socialist Party to exclude and isolate the Workers Party from the Conference for Progressive Political Action (Dec. 11-12, 1922) and from the American Labor Party (March 3-4, 1923) and a covert operation of the WPA to infiltrate its members in the SPA down to the branch level (per March 17, 1923 memo by Ruthenberg). As was the case during the 1919 Socialist Party internal war, the SP daily New York Call was dragged from a position of relative neutrality in the internecine scuffle into the position of being an instrument of factional warfare on behalf of the SP Regulars. This article from the WPA weekly organ, The Worker, reports (on the basis of unnamed sources providing “absolutely trustworthy and authentic information”) a “secret meeting” held on the evening of Thursday, March 23, 1923. At this meeting, said to include representatives of the Call Managing Board, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the Jewish Daily Forward, and the Rand School—Call Editor David Karsner was said to have been subjected to serious criticism for pulling punches in the factional war and for soft-pedaling defects in the political practice of Soviet Russia. A resolution was unanimously adopted, according to the Worker exposé, which launched a systematic attack on the Communists and their efforts at “boring from within” in the labor movement, and directing Karsner to ignore Soviet Russia as much as possible. The Worker article cites New York Call content from the issues of April 3, 4, 6, and 7, indicating that this direction to Editor Karsner was put into practice. The Call was thus engaged in a “campaign of slander against the Communists and the Russian Revolution” and was further taking positions at odds with those of SP leader Gene Debs, who supported the Russian Revolution, the constitutional rights of the Michigan trial defendants, and the work of the Trade Union Educational League, the Worker article charged.

 

“An Open Letter to David Karsner,” by J. Louis Engdahl [April 21, 1923] Engdahl, a former leading editor of the official publications of the Socialist Party (now editor of the Workers Party’s English weekly), writes this open letter to David Karsner, managing editor of the New York Call, making an effective personal appeal to Karsner’s philosophy of intellectual liberty on behalf of the Workmen’s Circle Mandolin Orchestra and Jewish comedian Ludwig Salz, both threatened with repressive measures if they performed at organized gatherings on behalf of the Workers Party or its institutions. Engdahl intimates that The Call, financially supported by the vociferously anti-Communist Jewish Daily Forward and the anti-Communist leadership of the Workmen’s Circle, was complicit in the heavy-handed efforts to deprive these Jewish artists of their freedom of action, impinging upon the development of working class culture. “I was just wondering how you felt in the atmosphere created by those who fear for the existence of their own little dictatorship so much that they must needs resort to such diabolical suppression,” Engdahl asks of Karsner.

 

“Foster Verdict a Triumph for Communism in the United States,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [April 21, 1923] Executive Secretary of the Workers Party C.E. Ruthenberg hails the hung jury at the end of the lengthy trial of William Z. Foster for alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism Law at St. Joseph as “a great victory for Communism in the United States.” Particularly important, in Ruthenberg’s view, was the judge’s instruction that simple advocacy of Communist principles that historical change had been closely interlinked with resort to violence was not enough; rather, the prosecution needed to show that the Communist Party “taught and advocated crime, sabotage, violence, and terrorism as the method or one of the methods of accomplishing the changes in the organization of society desired by the Communists.” Ruthenberg remarks that “Under these instructions it is surprising that there should have been any struggle in the jury room and that a disagreement was the final result, for these instructions fully uphold the Communist right to do everything which they have done in the state of Michigan or elsewhere in the United States.” The thinking of the jury is revealed by jury member Russel Durm, who is quoted as saying: “The prosecution didn’t prove that the Communist Party advocated violence.That was the only thing we split on. We all agreed that Foster attended the Bridgman convention, knowing what was going on there and sympathizing with the movement.”

 

“NY Call in Conspiracy Against Russia; Also in War on American Communists; NY Socialists Hold Underground Meeting,” by J. Louis Engdahl [April 21, 1923] During the winter of 1922-23 and the spring of 1923, the Workers Party and the Socialist Party simultaneously engaged in an escalation of rhetoric, making permanent a rift in the ranks of the American Left that would last for decades. Aspects of this “Divided Front” included the ongoing effort of the Socialist Party to exclude and isolate the Workers Party from the Conference for Progressive Political Action (Dec. 11-12, 1922) and from the American Labor Party (March 3-4, 1923) and a covert operation of the WPA to infiltrate its members in the SPA down to the branch level (per March 17, 1923 memo by Ruthenberg). As was the case during the 1919 Socialist Party internal war, the SP daily New York Call was dragged from a position of relative neutrality in the internecine scuffle into the position of being an instrument of factional warfare on behalf of the SP Regulars. This article from the WPA weekly organ, The Worker, reports (on the basis of unnamed sources providing “absolutely trustworthy and authentic information”) a “secret meeting” held on the evening of Thursday, March 23, 1923. At this meeting, said to include representatives of the Call Managing Board, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the Jewish Daily Forward, and the Rand School—Call Editor David Karsner was said to have been subjected to serious criticism for pulling punches in the factional war and for soft-pedaling defects in the political practice of Soviet Russia. A resolution was unanimously adopted, according to the Worker exposé, which launched a systematic attack on the Communists and their efforts at “boring from within” in the labor movement, and directing Karsner to ignore Soviet Russia as much as possible. The Worker article cites New York Call content from the issues of April 3, 4, 6, and 7, indicating that this direction to Editor Karsner was put into practice. The Call was thus engaged in a “campaign of slander against the Communists and the Russian Revolution” and was further taking positions at odds with those of SP leader Gene Debs, who supported the Russian Revolution, the constitutional rights of the Michigan trial defendants, and the work of the Trade Union Educational League, the Worker article charged.

 

”Ruthenberg Opens Testimony in His Defense,” by Jay Lovestone [Morning, April 26, 1923] Report of preliminaries of the Ruthenberg trial for alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism law by the Communist Party leader’s right hand man, Jay Lovestone. This account of Ruthenberg’s testimony provides extensive detail about the Communist leaders educational, political, an employment history — his having attended a Lutheran parochial school and business college, having started his work career sanding picture moldings in a frame factory before moving to clerical tasks, and having come to Socialism in 1907 before joining the Socialist Party of America in 1909.

 

“Ruthenberg Permitted to State Teachings of Communist Party,” by Jay Lovestone [Afternoon, April 26, 1923] Lovestone documents extensive maneuvering between the prosecution and the defense to limit Ruthenberg’s testimony as to the overriding principles of the Communist Party of America — a shift in strategy from that followed in the just concluded trial of William Z. Foster, which resulted in a hung jury. Lovestone indicates that the prosecution spent 45 minutes attempting to rule all such testimony out of bounds, which lead defense attorney Frank P. Walsh successfully countered by arguing that such testimony went to the heart of the intent of Ruthenberg’s participation at the ill-fated August 1922 gathering in Bridgman, Michigan. Lovestone quotes Ruthenberg as testifying that “the Communist Party does not advocate and teach the use of force,” but rather it would be the capitalist class that would ultimately resort to force in an effort to maintain their privileged position.

 

“The Ruthenberg Trial,” by Caleb Harrison [Morning, April 27, 1923] Press release of the Workers Party’s Caleb Harrison detailing the morning of the second day of defense testimony in the Michigan trial of C.E. Ruthenberg. Harrison notes that the session was dominated by legal wrangling between prosecution and defense over the admissibility of a party document supported by Ruthenberg calling for the elimination of the underground party in favor of an open organization. The matter had been deferred on a technicality and Ruthenberg was temporarily removed from the stand in favor of 25 year old Jay Lovestone, who noted that since June 1921 he had been an employee of the Communist Party in a variety of capacities up to and including that of Executive Secretary. The proficiency of chief defense counsel Frank P. Walsh is remarked upon by Harrison, who notes that “when it comes to a struggle over law points, practically every big legal question in the case [had] been ruled in favor of the defense.”

 

“The Ruthenberg Trial,” by Caleb Harrison [Afternoon, April 27, 1923] A Workers Party view of the afternoon session of the second day of defense testimony in the Criminal Syndicalism trial of party leader C.E. Ruthenberg for participation in the August 1922 Bridgman Convention of the CPA. Reports from the convention read into evidence “gave the listeners the impression of widespread activities by the Communist Party in every field of working class organization; but nowhere was there a suggestion that the Communist Party had carried on activities violating the Criminal Syndicalist Law of the state of Michigan or any other state,” Harrison notes. The defense had repeatedly explained to the jury that “the Communist Party was not an underground, illegal organization because it was engaged in illegal work, but because raids and persecutions directed against it had obliged it to exist in an illegalized state in order to carry on its work,” Harrison says.

 

“Ruthenberg Second Michigan Defendant: Prosecution Jolted When First Juror Called Voices Opposition to Criminal Syndicalism Law,” by Joe Carroll [April 27, 1923] Federated Press news account of the first day of the C.E. Ruthenberg trial for alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism law for participation in the August 1922 Convention of the Communist Party of America at Bridgman, MI. “The veniremen questioned seemed to be either overanxious to get on the jury, or else equally overanxious to avoid such service,” reporter Carroll notes. Interestingly, the prosecution listed the name of Louis Loeber among the potential witnesses in the trial, an individual who was believed by Carroll to be a second undercover government agent attending the Bridgman Convention as a delegate. Two veniremen had passed muster and been named to the jury after the first day of questioning; there were no women in the venire of 30 for the Ruthenberg trial.

 

“Cahan Dictator of The Call as Karsner, Editor, Resigns; More Light on Anti-Soviet Plot,” by J. Louis Engdahl [April 28, 1923] The sudden resignation of New York Call editor David Karsner “confirmed” the reporting of The Worker on a change of political line at the New York Call, states this follow-up article by Worker editor Louis Engdahl. In reality, rather than regurgitating the melodramatic tale told April 21 of a “secret meeting” of New York’s leading “yellow Socialists,” this report retells the complete tale with more nuance, due in no small measure to the cooperation of “the best sources in the New York Call office”—meaning, it would seem from the content here, Karsner himself. The revised and enlarged saga is as follows: a dire financial situation in the call necessitated a March 29, 1923, meeting of the Board of Directors of the New York daily (previously described as the “secret meeting”). It was determined to bring the paper closer to the (anti-Communist) political line of the prosperous Jewish Daily Forward in hopes of winning temporary financial support from that quarter. A resolution introduced by Algernon Lee bound editor Karsner to follow this line. A committee of 3, including staunch Red-fighter James Oneal, was appointed to ensure Karsner’s obedience to this directive. Material critical of the Workers Party defendants in Michigan had been published before the Foster jury had arrived at a verdict at Oneal’s direction, over the objections of Karsner. A piece of anti-Soviet reportage from the New York Herald had been directed to editor Karsner from the Call’s city desk, and Karsner had run it on his own authority, attempting to follow the new line established for the publication. A firestorm of reader anger had resulted, and at the regularly scheduled April 6 meeting of the Call’s Board of Directors, Karsner had been subjected to harsh criticism for his failure in judgment. “In the quarrel which ensued, Karsner gave his resignation as editor, to become effective a few days later,” Engdahl states. The Board wrote an apologetic retraction of the story which had first appeared in the Herald and ordered its publication in the Sunday and Monday editions of the paper. The retraction had run in the Sunday edition, but Abraham Cahan of the Jewish Daily Forward raised an objection to the retraction and the Board had retreated, scrapping plans to run the apology again in the Monday edition. Engdahl concludes that “The reactionary “Abe” Cahan and the yellow Socialist Forward dictates the policy of The Call. It is a policy of war against Soviet Russia and the Communists. In this war the Socialists gladly ally themselves with the capitalist agents. It is the duty of all workers to boycott these prostituted sheets.”

 

“Problems of the Party (I): Limits of the United Front,” by John Pepper [April 28, 1923] Workers Party leader John Pepper begins a series of articles on “Problems of the Party” with a discussion of United Front tactics, spotlighting the broad-based United Front against Fascism built by the Italian section of the WPA. Absent from Pepper’s analysis are mechanical and dogmatic formulae about “United Front From Above” vs. “United Front From Below.” Instead, Pepper states that only those who loose any notion of their party while conducting joint actions with a broader Left are mistaken; In his words: “We become bad Communists when we forget our own Party within the United Front.” Pepper states that “We cannot allow a so-called Left group to stand outside of the United Front—not even if this group is not a real Left group, but one that is confused, unorganized, and at times even hostile.” On the other hand, “it is impossible to forget the hatred against the yellow leaders at the moment when the Socialist Party makes a formal conspiracy in an underground meeting against Soviet Russia, and against Communists in general,” he states. “We should form the United Front with every workers’ organization, and when it is necessary, even with yellow Socialist leaders, with confused Anarchists. But we should not forget for a moment our distrust and hatred for these misleaders.” Of particular interest is the primacy that Pepper places on the anti-Fascist struggle of the Italian Federation, a broad United Front which he calls for expansion to German, Polish, Jewish, Hungarian, Czechoslovak, and other language groups inside the party. Pepper also indicates the anti-Fascist struggle is being expanded on an international basis under the chairmanship of Clara Zetkin.

 

“The Workers Party and May Day,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. [April 28, 1923] A short May Day message from “The Worker” in which the head of the Workers Party of America contrasts the current situation with the grim days of 1920, when outcast American Communists, “despised and ignored,” were “driven underground, their organization destroyed.” By way of contrast, the party was in 1923 “on the road to becoming that powerful influence in the labor movement” in providing “leadership and direction in the struggle against capitalism.” It was the successful launch of the legal WPA that was responsible for this change of fortunes, this article implies.

 

“C.E.R.’s Trial,” by Caleb Harrison [Morning, April 30, 1923] Continued coverage of the Ruthenberg trial, entering the third day of presentation of the defense. Harrison notes the manner in which the prosecution pumped witness Jay Lovestone for information during their cross-examination of him, attempting to learn the relationship between the Communist Party and the Federated Press and to prove that the American Communist Party’s move to the legal Workers Party of America organization was a policy conceived by and directed by Moscow. Lovestone insisted under oath that “the call for the convention for the organization of the Workers Party had been issued long before any instructions had been received, and that the advice received from the Communist International had merely confirmed action already taken by the Central Executive Committee of the Party,” Harrison reports.

 

“The Negro Problem is Important,” by Otto E. Huiswoud [April 30, 1923] Short piece by top black Communist Otto Huiswoud directed to a sympathetic party audience and distributed through the Workers Party of America News Service. Huiswoud notes that the one-tenth of the American population of African ethnic extraction are the “most ruthlessly exploited of any working class group.” Huiswoud’s analysis is simple and clear: “Disappointed and disillusioned by the constant failures of the political reformers to secure any redress of their wrongs, many Negroes are turning to radical movements and are acting as a haven for the masses. They are at present race-conscious. It is the duty of the revolutionists to turn this race-consciousness into class-consciousness.” This conversion is particularly critical for Caucasian revolutionaries, Huiswoud indicates, since “just as they are used by the ruling class today as strikebreakers, so will they be used in the future to crush any revolutionary attempt on the part of the white workers.”

 

MAY

“On Trial in Michigan,” by William Z. Foster. [May 1923] On April 4, 1923, after 31 hours of deliberation and 36 ballots, the jury in the William Z. Foster case resulting from the Aug. 1922 Bridgman Raid was declared deadlocked 6-6 and dismissed, resulting in a mistrial. This is Foster’s interesting personal account of the trial, written in the immediate aftermath of the proceeding and published in the pages of the monthly TUEL journal, The Labor Herald. Foster noted that his case had been rightfully made into a test of Free Speech rights and that the mistrial represented a major defeat to the forces behind the case: the federal Department of Justice and the Burns Detective Agency. Foster asserts that government agent Francis Morrow was a provocateur who voted repeatedly for maintenance of the underground party at the Bridgman convention and who lied repeatedly on the stand in an effort to bolster the government’s case for conviction.

 

“Michigan in the Muck,” by Eugene V. Debs. [May 1923] Article on the heated legal battle in Michigan over the August 1922 raid of the Communist Party of America’s Bridgman, Michigan convention published in the pages of The Liberator. Debs, the most widely recognized member of the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee, unleashes a barrage on the “idiotic and criminal ‘criminal syndicalist’ law enacted by political crooks to seal the lips of industrial slaves” in Michigan. Debs charges that “The communists had as good a right to hold a convention in the state of Michigan and to discuss their affairs and formulate their program, any kind of a program that stopped short of the actual commission of crime penalized under the law, as the graft-infested Republican and Democratic parties have to hold such a convention.” The Michigan prosecutions were nothing but a “foul assault upon the Constitution and upon the elemental rights of citizenship,” according to Debs.

 

“Party United Front Policy is Approved,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [WPA Executive Council actions of May 7-8, 1923] Published summary of the actions of the 11 member Executive Council at its May 7-8 meeting. The Executive Council was a smaller group elected by the unwieldy 25 member CEC to conduct the business of the CEC between its plenary meetings. Ruthenberg indicates that the body decided the following: (1) to approve the United Front policy and instruct the Political Committee to launch an educational program on the limits of this policy; (2) to instruct the Organization Committee to work out a plan for party reorganization with more and smaller districts, and new units based in the workplace; (3) favoring the moving of WPA headquarters to Chicago, when practicable; (4) to accept the resignation of M.J. Olgin as editor of the Freiheit, and replacing him in that position with Benjamin Gitlow. The question of merging the two English language weeklies, The Worker (New York) and The Voice of Labor (Chicago) was also discussed, with this decision to be linked to plans for an English language daily. Final decision was delayed on this matter as was fundraising for a daily, due to demands on party funds to cover legal expenses.

 

“The United Front,” by Upton Sinclair [May 12, 1923] Invited by editor Louis Engdahl of The Worker to provide his views on whether the Workers Party should be admitted to the newly organized Labor Parties around the nation, author Upton Sinclair says yes and then unleashes a torrent upon the sectarians who dominated both the Workers Party and Socialist Party. He states: “I believe in the ‘United Front’; I have always practiced it, to the best of my humble ability, making it the motto of my life to keep my guns trained on the enemies of the working class, and to exclude personalities from my criticisms of working class tactics and activities. I regard it as the great tragedy of our time that so many leaders and would-be leaders of the working class can find nothing better to do with their time and energies than to fight one another. I quite understand that it is necessary to disagree about tactics, and where the life and future of the working class are at stake it is inevitable that men should differ vehemently. But they can do it without becoming personal enemies, and without splitting up their organizations and playing into the hands of the enemies of the working class. If they cannot learn to do it, they should be deposed as leaders, and other men should be put in positions of authority who can and will do it.” Sinclair indicates that the Trade Union Educational League was correct in its estimation that the best policy was to “bore within” the existing mass organizations of labor to make them more radical and asks: “We had a working class organization, the Socialist Party, and it was not satisfactory to some of its members. If so, why was it not wise tactics to bore from within that party—to stay in it and fight to make it more radical?”

 

“Problems of the Party (II): A Discussion with Upton Sinclair About the United Front,” by John Pepper [May 12, 1923] Reply by Workers Party leader John Pepper to Upton Sinclair’s call for a political amalgamation of the Workers Party with the Socialist Party. Pepper argues that a United Front of workers is possible due to the limited program of the unions—for more wages, fewer hours, and against incursions of the ruling class against the foreign-born workers, etc. Political parties, on the other hand, had large programs based on fundamental conceptions of tactics. The Communists and the Socialists differed on a whole array of ideological and tactical matters. Pepper states that Communists believed (1) that Capitalism was in a period of irreversible decay; (2) that imperialism was inherent in the system, not an accident; (3) that advantage must be taken of the “present world-crisis of Capitalism” by the radical movement and a “dictatorship of the proletariat” establishes so that capitalists could be eliminated; (4) that never in history had a ruling class surrendered its privilege without the resort to force; (5) that the revolutionaries must destroy the existing form of government and replace it with a new form, the Soviets; (6) that trade unions should be militant in purpose and that old conservative leaders must be cast aside. “Communists and Socialists—fire and water, revolution and reform, struggle and betrayal. How can Upton Sinclair for a moment imagine that these two elements can live in the same organization?” Pepper asks. Pepper also upbraids Sinclair for his contention that the 1919 split was caused by the Left Wing; rather, “the split in the United States was made by the same Hillquits and Victor Bergers who today sabotage amalgamation and the Labor Party.” Sinclair’s published work is saluted, but he is held to be possessed of “unclear” ideas—concepts which are either in accord with the Workers Party in contradiction to the Socialist Party or which, Pepper says, not only stand in opposition to every Marxist analysis, but also contradict the facts.

 

“For a Labor Party: Addenda to the Second Edition, May 15, 1923,” by John Pepper. There were three editions of the pamphlet For a Labor Party produced over the course of 1922-23, the second and third of which added additional commentary reflecting the developing situation. This document collects the vast majority of changed material from the original October 15, 1922, document (available as a separate file). Pepper excoriates the action of the Socialist Party delegates to the December 1922 Cleveland gathering of the Conference for Progressive Political Action, blaming them for the failure of the gathering to launch the Labor Party anxiously sought by rank and file trade unionists and poor farmers. Instead, the gathering chose to temporize, barring the Workers Party from participation, passing a virtually meaningless and watered down middle class platform, and following the AF of L’s line of non-partisan political action (“rewarding friends and punishing enemies”). The decision of the Socialist Party not to aggressively pursue an independent federated Labor Party was an act of premeditated treason against the working class, in Pepper’s view. It was left to the Farmer-Labor Party, which bolted the CPPA following it’s defeat of a proposal to form a Labor Party, to organize this new federative group and a call for a July 3, 1923, Convention to found a new party had been issued. This July 3 Convention would “represent hundreds of thousands, and will be the first real step to an organization of a mass party of the American working class,” Pepper asserts, adding that “the idea of a Labor Party is advancing, and it can no longer be stopped.”

 

“Letter No. 13 to the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party of America in New York from Israel Amter in Moscow, May 16, 1923.” One of the periodic updates by American CI Rep Amter detailing events in Moscow for the Workers Party of America at home. Amter obliquely details terms of Comintern support for an English language daily newspaper (using fractions code to hide the actual numbers). He emphasizes that “the understanding, I want to repeat, is that we will get what I asked for” in terms of financial support from the CI. As for the CI’s requirement that a portion of the funds for the Daily Worker be raised by the American Party itself, “what they want is the assurance that the party will make the proper effort to help itself,” Amter observes. Amter makes note of a May 1923 war scare over sabre-rattling by Great Britain. “The threat of rupture of relations with Great Britain has produced a tremendous effect. Hundreds of thousands of workers spontaneously protested against the attitude of the British government and the danger of war. And yet, although the Russian workers want peace, there is the greatest determination in case war should result. The demonstrations were even more gigantic than the May Day demonstrations. And these demonstrations show the wonderful power of the Party—they show the enormous influence that the Party wields.”

 

“The Conviction of Ruthenberg at St. Joseph,” by C.S. Ware [May 19, 1923] This is a first-hand account by Clarissa S. “Chris” Ware of the jury verdict in the Ruthenberg trial for alleged violation of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalism Law by the act of “assembling with” the Communist Party at its August 1922 Convention at Bridgman, MI. Unlike the first trial, that of William Z. Foster, which resulted in a mistrial through a “hung” jury, Ruthenberg was found guilty. Ware attempts in this article to provide an explanation for the different outcome in the Ruthenberg trial. Her reasons include: (1) a jury with “with particularly strong prejudices against the things which the Communists stood for,” including 8 farmers, a fruit buyer, a merchant, an oil salesman, and a gas station employee who was a member of the American Legion; (2) a prosecution which had learned from its previous mistakes, interrupting Ruthenberg’s testimony at every opportunity and not allowing him to provide a sound exposition of Communist principles; (3) a ruling by the judge that “it was unnecessary for the prosecution to prove that the Communist Party had advocated anything in the state of Michigan,” but merely “that the Communist Party elsewhere had violated principles which violated the law and that subsequently they had met in the state of Michigan.” (4) the allowance of the prosecution to read anti-religious passages out of two books by Nikolai Bukharin to the jury in an appeal to religious prejudices, and allowance of the prosecution to bring up Ruthenberg’s defiance of the wartime conscription law and subsequent jail sentence for the same in an appeal to patriotic prejudices; (5) an unfavorable jury instruction which no longer held that the Communists had a right to advocate “the Communist Revolution” or the Soviet form of government, but rather which asserted—at the prosecution’s request—“It is the contention of the prosecution that the advocacy of the Soviets includes the advocacy of force” because the Soviets could not be established without the use of force.

 

“Problems of the Party (III): My Party, Right or Wrong, My Party,” by John Pepper [May 19, 1923] In this third part of his “Problems of the Party” series, John Pepper takes aim at a tendency toward interest-group patriotism among many members of the Workers Party, instead of “Party Patriotism.” No monolithic and blindly-obedient party here—Pepper states that “It happens very often that Communists who work in a trade union or in a benefit society consider the special group interest of that particular organization as more important than the interests of their party.... These Communists who develop an AF of L patriotism are just as much in the wrong as those who have an independent union patriotism. Likewise, those who have become Benefit Society patriots are just as much in the wrong as those who have become Technical Aid patriots. They do not understand that the task of a Communist is not to be one-sided in upholding the interests of one group of workers, but that he must represent the common interests of the working class as a whole.” Pepper indicates that the failure of such party members to “identify themselves 100 percent with the party” is “the chief hindrance to the strengthening of the Workers Party.” Divided among 16 Language Federations and 1200 groups, “it is impossible that every member in such a party should possess the same uniform attitude on every question at all times,” Pepper states. However, he continues, party members “must develop just as much patriotism towards their party as capitalists develop patriotism towards their country” by adapting the slogan of the capitalists of “My Country, Right or Wrong, My Country” to their own purposes. “Every militant Communist should write on his shield: ‘My Party, right or wrong, my Party!’” Pepper insists.

 

“Problems of the Party (IV): Be American!” by John Pepper [May 26, 1923] In the 4th installment of his “Problems of the Party” series, party leader John Pepper analyzes the continued division of the Workers Party of America into a multiplicity of Language Federations, noting that not only the spoken language varies from group to group, “but often the ideology.” He notes that “Our Russian comrades have a different historical tradition from the Italians, the Germans from the Poles. The workers belonging to various nationalities are still very deeply rooted in the social and political conditions of their old countries.” Main issues of concern differed from group to group, as did their practical activity: “Our Italian comrades arrange a collection for the persecuted Communists of Italy, our German comrades send relief for the hungry children of German Communists. Our Hungarian comrades put forth great efforts to collect money for political prisoners suffering in Horthy’s prisons. Our Polish comrades have made a collection for the support of the Communist election campaign in Poland. Our Ukrainian comrades collect money for the support of the Ukrainian publishing activities in Europe. Our Russian comrades are of course with heart and soul interested in relief of Soviet Russia. Our Jewish comrades collect money for needy Jewish workers in the Ukraine.” Very often non-citizens and alienated from American political life, the Federations tended to retreat into their own “Ghettos,” Pepper states. Political education and political activity had to be directed towards bringing the foreign-born majority of the WPA membership into the real American political struggle. To this end, Pepper puts forward the slogan “Be American!”—a slogan which he says “means to struggle against the whole capitalist class of America; it means the hardest struggle against 100 percent nationalism of the jingoes. Be American means for the militant Communist to present the claim for the workers’ rule of America.”

 

“What Heinous Crime is This?” by H.M. Wicks [May 26, 1923] The spring 1923 attempt of the Workers Party of America to convince the Proletarian Party of America to discontinue its separate existence and to amalgamate was decisively rejected by the National Executive Committee of the PPA. The NEC went on the offensive, instructing PPA members to discontinue support of and participation in the Trade Union Educational League and insisting that it, the PPA, remained the sole legitimate vehicle of American Communism. Former PPA member Harry Wicks was called upon to return the salvo in kind, which he did with this article from the pages of The Worker. Wicks pulls no punches, calling his former comrades on the PPA’s NEC “boastful hypercritical super-Marxists (?)” who were tending towards the swamp of Centrism through their over reliance on rank and file spontaneity in lieu of vanguard leadership. Wicks ironically remarks that “The Proletarian Party favors independent political action of labor, but that action must be confined to the Proletarian Party and does not embrace a Labor Party. However, it will favor a Labor Party ‘if brought on by the rank and file.’ What sort of leadership is this? Here are those who pretend to be a part of the vanguard of the proletariat waiting for the rank and file to act, then they, as gallant leaders, will follow.” The Proletarian Party leadership dismisses the program of the Workers Party as a “fig leaf to cover old Centrist Leaders,” Wicks notes, but in actual fact, the PPA’s belief that a Labor Party was impossible without its development through the spontaneous action of rank and file workers was “as ridiculous as the opposite position held by J.B. Salutsky and his Centrist group,” who asserted that a Labor Party is impossible due to resistance of Samuel Gompers and the AF of L machine. These were two sides of the same coin, in Wicks’ opinion. “In the present case it is clear that the objective conditions for such a Labor Party are here, and evidence is accumulating every day that the subjective condition, viz., a strong demand for such a party from the rank and file of labor, also exists,” Wicks asserts.

 

JUNE

“Ruthenberg Convicted,” by Jay Lovestone. [June 1923] The second trial springing from the August 1922 raid of the Bridgman Convention of the Communist Party of America saw Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of America C.E. Ruthenberg in the dock. This article from The Liberator by former and future CPA Executive Secretary Jay Lovestone details the course of the trial, which resulted in a conviction of Ruthenberg under the Michigan “Criminal Syndicalism” law. Lovestone attributes the success of the prosecution to a number of factors: avoidance of mistakes made in the earlier Foster trial, the greater ease of linking Ruthenberg to actual membership in the Communist Party, the Michigan law by which only registered property-owners could serve on a jury, and one-sided instructions by the judge to the jury in which it was stated that “the advocacy of Soviets and of the dictatorship of the proletariat might impliedly be taken as an advocacy of force.”

 

“The Second Round at St. Joseph,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [June 1923] While the trial of William Z. Foster for participation in the convention of the underground Communist Party of America at Bridgman, Michigan, in August 1923 resulted in a hung jury, the prosecution’s second attempt to break the leadership of the Communist Party met with success, when Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg was convicted of having violated Michigan’s Criminal Syndicalism statute. The unfortunate defendant, writing in the pages of the Trade Union Educational League’s monthly magazine (probably because the defense organization, the Labor Defense Council, was targeted at the American trade union movement, with TUEL the logical conduit), attributes this unfortunate result to a Right Wing jury and a prosecution which had learned from its previous mistakes. Witnesses for the prosecution were generally practiced and efficient. Instead of allowing Ruthenberg to expound on the Communist philosophy for days on end, a steady stream of objections were launched when Ruthenberg sat on the witness stand in his own defense, breaking the flow. Finally, the instruction to the jury by Judge White was decidedly less libertarian than that issued in the Foster trial, when it was allowed that the Communists “had the right to advocate the establishment of a Soviet Government in the United States.” In the second case, the judge had added that “the prosecution claimed that the advocacy of Soviets in itself included the advocacy of violence as the Soviets could not be established without a resort to force and told the jury if it found this was true they must convict.” While unofficial reports indicated that the jury had split 9-3 for two ballots, in the Ruthenberg case a conviction was rendered, thus forcing the Communist Party into a precarious legal position, with the liberty of virtually its entire leadership hanging in the balance.

 

“Report from Alfred Wagenknecht (DO#14) in Wilkes Barre, PA to the National Office of the WPA, June 4, 1923.” Workers Party District 14 (the second use of this number) was established in mid-1923, incorporating certain Pennsylvania mining towns formerly included in other districts. The DO of this new district was Alfred Wagenknecht, living in Wilkes Barre. This is an interesting early report from Wagenknecht to the center detailing the composition of party branches in D14 and the activities of the Workers Party in the “progressive miners” movement, including conferences for each of the United Mine Workers union’s districts within the new WPA district. Wagenknecht laments the lack of English speaking cadres, noting that “we are handicapped by not having one English speaking WP member in these three anthracite districts.” He asks for the transfer of a good speaker from Illinois. He also asks that Antonas Bimba be sent to work amongst the Lithuanian miners in the region “for some weeks.”

 

“Socialist Party National Convention Delegates Remain Silent in Face of Attack on Soviet Russia: Cahan Rages in Attack on Soviet Rule,” by H.M Wicks [June 2, 1923] First-hand account of the Socialist Party’s 11th National Convention (May 1923) written by The Worker’s journalistic attack dog, Harry Wicks. Wicks sinks his teeth into the convention keynote speech of “notorious Bolshevik baiter and editor of the Jewish (Socialist) Daily Forward” Abraham Cahan—a “tirade that was so acrimonious, intemperate, and obviously false that the majority of the delegates were stunned.” Wicks quotes Cahan as calling Trotsky a “bombastic windbag,” Lenin a “muddlehead fanatic,” Radek a dishonest and shady adventurer, Bukharin a “simple-minded fellow—a mere baby in intelligence,” and Zinoviev a “rotten egg” responsible for mass murder with a Swiss bank account at his disposal. He repeats accusations in the capitalist press that the Soviet government had made available a “$13 million fund sent out...to corrupt the world.” Wicks quotes Cahan as saying of the Communists in America that “we must always fight them. Never show them any favors, but knock them in the head.” Wicks intriguingly adds (without providing any specifics) that “This advice seems to have been followed by the yellow leaders of some of the needle trades unions, who employ sluggers and gangsters against the ‘Left’ opposition in their own unions.” Only 6 of those present applauded Cahan’s ill-tempered remarks upon their conclusion, Wicks notes. Wicks also details the Socialist Party’s inability to pass any meaningful resolution on the question of International affiliation, sending the question back to committee from whence a carefully drafting and vapid resolution completely avoiding the controversial topic of alliance with the advocates of “Social Peace” issued forth.

 

“Socialist Party Convention Rejects the United Front,” by John Pepper [June 2, 1923] Workers Party of America leader John Pepper comments upon the recently-concluded 1923 Convention of the Socialist Party of America, which he characterizes as a “debacle without equal” and a “pitiful spectacle.” Pepper declares that the SPA, devoid of ideas and of leadership, had produced a gathering so vacuous that “the emptiest convention of the smallest trade union is more instructive and richer in content than this so-called National Convention of a so-called political workers’ party.” Pepper adds that “It may sound paradoxical, but it is true nonetheless, that in spite of its opportunism, the Socialist Party is nothing but a sect. We are accustomed to consider opportunism and reformism as maladies of mass parties. But the Socialist Party is a freak—an opportunist sect.” Pepper upbraids the SP for refusing to join the WPA in a United Front on common matters of interest to the working class. He notes that the accusation that the WPA is directed by Russians is preposterous coming from a party dominated by emigre Jews from the Russian Empire, such as Hillquit, Cahan, London, Shiplacoff, and Panken. Pepper asserts that the SPA’s claim to American origins is false, with its own statistics proving that “almost half of it consists of Foreign Language Federations, and when we examine more closely the so-called English-speaking elements in the SP, we see that even these are mainly foreign-born, principally Jewish elements.” Pepper declares that “The Socialist Party rejects the United Front with the Workers Party because it has degraded itself to an accomplice of the agents of the capitalists,” allying itself with Gompers and the lower middle class reformers of the CPPA against the interests of the working class in establishing an independent Labor Party. “In obstructing the United Front the Socialist Party becomes an agent of the capitalists,” Pepper asserts. Pepper also accuses SP leader James Oneal of falsifying quotations of Communist documents in order to subvert any movement towards a United Front.

 

“Debs - Chairman of the Socialist Party,” by John Pepper [June 9, 1923] This is perhaps as interesting for the presumptions which Workers Party leader John Pepper makes about the rival Socialist Party of America than for its concrete analysis. Veteran Left Socialist Eugene V. Debs has been elected to the National Executive Committee of the SPA for the first time since 1899, Pepper announces, and further elected National Chairman of the organization. As the titular leader, Debs now faced a “dilemma” of whether to continue to support the policies he had long advocated, including Amalgamation, support of Soviet Russia, and support of the United Front with the WPA—or whether he would cave in to support the “petty Tammany Hall” regime of “Hillquit and Berger” which stood as official party policy. “If he fights for his own political views, he must fight against the petty Tammany Hall of Hillquit and Berger. But the destruction of the petty Tammany Hall of the Socialist Party officialdom means the death of the Socialist Party. And yet, if Debs chooses the other way, and accepts the policy of the petty Tammany Hall of Hillquit and Berger, the laboring masses who have confidence in him today will quickly abandon him. That also means the death of the Socialist Party in another way.” Includes extensive footnotes by Tim Davenport examining various dubious assertions about SPA ideology made by Pepper in this article, which seems to have been essentially agitational rather than truly analytical.

 

“Letter No. 16 to the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party of America in New York from Israel Amter in Moscow, June 26, 1923.” Periodic update by the WPA’s Rep to the Comintern Israel Amter detailing events in Moscow for the party leadership at home. In this lengthy communique, Amter notes recently attending sessions of the Profintern with Charley Janson [Scott, Johnson]. At one of these Amter says “ I got into the trade union resolution the clause that : ’It is the duty of every member of the Communist International to join his union and work actively with the Communist faction, i.e. in the revolutionary opposition movement,’ etc. etc.... That will be a great aid in getting the comrades to join. In fact it was pointed out that no one should be allowed to be a member unless he joins—that it should be regarded as a matter of course that he joins a union.” This reflects once again the way that the early Comintern and Profintern were a two way street—not a narrow circle of bureaucrats blindly issuing dictatorial and universally binding instructions, but rather a centralized organization with international representation and input. In other matters, Amter notes that 3rd quarter funding for the WPA remains locked up: “The next will go forward ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE SENT A STATEMENT.” A fundraising campaign to establish an English language daily newspaper is greenlighted, the origin of the idea for the Comintern to provied a targeted grant only after the WPA makes an earnest effort to raise funds itself is reveal to have started with Amter, who writes: “ I myself proposed that what they would do for us should be done only when and if we did our share—as stated. They accepted. I knew that would spur on our members to greater efforts.” Amter asks for more WPA literature to be sent and for closer ties of American defense organizations with the MOPR. “It is necessary to centralize and coordinate all the prisoners’ relief activities so that international actions can be achieved,” Amter declares, indicating that the Labor Defense Council and National Defense Council should affiliate themselves with the Moscow-based international organization forthwith.

 

JULY

“The Role of the Workers Party,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. [July 1923] A somewhat mistitled article from The Liberator in which Workers Party of America Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg recounts the split of the socialist movement into right and left wings. Ruthenberg dates this split back to the 1914 start of the European War, which prompted an “inevitable sundering” in which the “reformist right wing leaders in the socialist movement the world over betrayed the workers and supported the capitalist governments in the imperialist war,” while “the left wing endeavored to rally the workers for the struggle against imperialist war and to turn this war into a struggle against the capitalist system.” Ruthenberg sidesteps the fact that in America the overwhelming majority of the Socialist Party backed the anti-militarist St. Louis Resolution of 1917, which he himself co-authored. The tasks of the Communists in America included amalgamation of the unions, education of the masses as to the necessity of replacing capitalist rule with worker rule (“the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”), and formation of a Labor Party, according to Ruthenberg.

 

“The Declaration of Independence of the American Working Class,” by John Pepper. [July 1923] The Hungarian revolutionary Jozsef Pogany [“John Pepper”] came to the United States in 1922 to assist with the Hungarian-language Federation of the American party and soon became one of the Workers Party’s most authoritative voices. Throughout his tenure in America, Pepper was an outspoken advocate for the formation of an American Labor Party—with Communist participation in that organization as a constituent body. In this July 1923 article from The Liberator, Pepper likens the forthcoming July 3-4 date of the Convention of the Farmer-Labor Party to the July 4, 1776, American Declaration of Independence, stating that it will mark the beginning of the formation of a “genuine Labor Party.” The Republican and Democratic Parties had virtually nothing to differentiate one from the other, Pepper stated, whereas “only an independent political party of the working class can represent the interests of the laboring masses of the factories and farms.”

 

“On Louis C. Fraina: An Excerpt from Israel Amter’s No. 17 from Moscow to the Central Executive Committee, WPA, in New York. July 5, 1923.” Excerpt from letter no. 17 from the WPA’s man in Moscow, Israel Amter. Amter responds to the news that Louis C. Fraina has returned to New York with words of warning. Having spoken with Osip Piatnitsky about Fraina, Amter says with emphasis: “THEY ARE THROUGH WITH HIM. THEY DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH HIM. I hope that this will be a guide for us. I trust that there is no fool in the US who will attempt to put him into the ranks again.... He has a weakness for drink, women and, I understand, for cards. That is enough to keep him out, regardless of his ability.... And just at this time, when so many shady characters and worse are being found in our ranks, to add him would be to undermine the party and hand it over to the D of J. Frankly, I do not trust him.”

 

“The Nucleus in America: A Secret Memo on Party Organization from the Executive Committee of the Communist International to the Central Executive Committee of the WPA, July 11, 1923.” The underground Communist Party of America was formally liquidated at a convention starting April 7, 1923, in New York City. This secret memo, probably written by Grigorii Zinoviev, reminds the WPA that despite the complete move to an “open” party, “American comrades would be greatly mistaken if they cherished the illusion that hence forward they will be in a position to carry on their work unhindered exclusively in a legal organization.” The memo instructs the party to base itself on a new form of organization based upon “factory nuclei” of three or more communists in a single workplace, with isolated individuals assigned to specific nuclei by the relevant party committee. This structure would allow for a quick transition to underground work should the need arise, the memo indicates. Importantly, these nuclei are to be comprised without respect to the native language of the participants—language groups are henceforth to be territorially-based propaganda organizations with multi-national factory nuclei the basis of organization. Due to the widely scattered nature of American production and the relative unimportance of the factory in daily life, geographic organizations are also to be permitted, says the memo. The WPA is to centralize its press, make use of all available legal means of agitation for communism, to mandate union membership of its members, to coordinate its defense organization with International Red Aid, and to play closer attention to conspiratorial methods—“even to the extent of removing comrades most responsible in this respect from responsible party work, and even exclusion from the party.”

 

“Letter to the Workers Party of America in Chicago from Vasil Kolarov in Moscow, July 12, 1923.” This letter from General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Communist International Kolarov came into the possession of American government representatives and was regularly trotted out as evidence that the American Communist movement followed “orders from Moscow.” Kolarov asserts that “ the imperialist powers of France, England, and America are making their plans to divide the spoils in Germany and reduce the working class to the position of coolies” and that it is the task of the Workers Party of America to organized the “vast sentiment for Communism” that it has aroused. Kolarov salutes the WPA’s attempt to forge both and economic and a political United Front, calling the establishment of the Federated Farmer-Labor Party “an achievement of primary importance” by bringing together “the militant farmers and workers for the attainment of political power against the control of the capitalist parties.” He calls for the Communists to make a great effort to unite the 29 state labor parties and farmer-labor parties into one United Front in the 1924 campaign. Kolarov is critical, on the other hand, of the lack of attention of the WPA on anti-imperialist work. “The huge profits from the war and the exploitation of foreign markets have enabled the American bourgeoisie to penetrate deeper into the Latin American countries,” he states, noting particularly American aggressiveness in Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama, and Colombia, and the initiation of great loans to various governments in South America. “American imperialism intends to conquer the Western Hemisphere and force the colonies under complete control,” Kolarov declares, adding that opposition to this trend “is a problem of vital importance to the American working class. Fearful imperialist wars face the country. The bourgeoisie is making ready. The government is perfecting its military machinery...”

 

“Report on the United States: From May 10 to July 25, 1923.” [Selections] by Israel Amter Extensive excerpts taken from the lengthy digest of the news prepared for the Comintern by Israel Amter. Includes a strong section on the July 3 Convention establishing the Federated Farmer-Labor Party including self-critical views of the tactics employed by the WPA in conjunction with the gathering. Also includes material on the June 27 convention of the Pennsylvania district of the United Mine Workers Union which preceded and influenced the FFLP conclave. Also included is the TUEL view of the Industrial Workers of the World, which is characterized of being composed of “four bona fide unions” worthy of support, with 36,000 members—lumber, agricultural, marine transport, and general construction—and 20 pseudo-unions with 1900 members which should be “absorbed into the mass organizations of the AF of L.” In addition to general economic and political reviews is included coverage on the May 1923 convention of the Socialist Party (whose claim of 12,000 members was “very doubtful”) and the June gathering of the Young Workers League (with 2,000 members claimed).

 

AUGUST

“The Federated Farmer-Labor Party,” byWilliam Z. Foster. [August 1923] This long day-by-day account of the founding convention of the Federated Farmer-Labor Party (July 3-5, 1923) was written in the immediate afterrmath of the gathering by William Z. Foster. This piece, published in the pages of the monthly magazine of the Trade Union Educational League, is gushingly upbeat and positive in its characterization of the founding convention: “Marked by a tremendous outburst of militancy and enthusiasm, it was a vibrant, thrilling, overwhelming demand by the rank and file of agricultural and industrial labor for the formation of a powerful political party of the toilers. Nobody who attended its sessions will ever forget them.” While Foster would very soon come to regard the WPA’s ideologically blinkered Farmer-Labor Party policy and TUEL’s subsequent loss of contacts and influence in the labor movement as the greatest of debacles—fuel for the factional war inside the Workers Party over the next several years—at this precise moment he was positively ebullient about the organization’s prospects, it’s founding marking a new epoch in American political history: “A mass party, led by militants, embodying the vital idea of a united political organization of workers and farmers, and operating in the midst of the present industrial and agricultural discontent, it is full of dynamic possibilities,” Foster declared. Foster dismissed the “supposed [old] Farmer-Labor Party bolt” as a “lie widely spread,” and he asserted that “the fact is that the most militant elements in the FLP, carrying with them the bulk of the organization, have declared for the new party.”

 

“Report on the 3rd Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Held in Moscow, June 12-23, 1923),” by Israel Amter [Aug. 1, 1923] Very lengthy official report on the proceedings of the 3rd Plenum of the Enlarged ECCI by Workers Party of America delegate Israel Amter—distributed to the party press with instructions from the CEC of the Party to translate and publish. Amter delves into the limitations of “Democratic Centralism”“stating that the Congress of the CI, not the national parties themselves, must have the power to determine the membership of ECCI and that the CI must have the power to alter the composition of national party leaderships, when necessary. With regards to religion, Amter states that the ECCI has taken the position that religious belief is a private matter between the individual and the state, but that Communist Parties exist not only to liberate workers economically and politically, but also ideologically, and that they “will not fail to conduct educational work for enlightening the workers on the nature and content of religion, and to free them from its domination.” Amter relates the ECCI’s position on the the world political situation, with special emphasis on Bulgaria, Germany, England,and France. The new slogan of “Workers’ and Farmers’ Government” was approved by the 3rd Plenum, Amter states, with credit for the slogan attributed to the Workers Party of America by Zinoviev. The importance of Anti-Fascist organization, trade union work, and the implementation of the “factory nucleus” form of party organization are noted by Amter.

The Workers Party and the Federated Farmer-Labor Party, by John Pepper [Aug. 1923] The immediate post-convention assessment of the new Federated Farmer-Labor Party written by the chief adherent of the Farmer- Labor Party tactic, John Pepper. Pepper depicts the new organization in the most rosy colors, calling it a “militant revolutionary party” and a “real mass party” to which 616,000 workers and farmers are affiliated through their organizations. Pepper ironically notes the contradictory behavior of Chicago Federation of Labor leader John Fitzpatrick, who split from the Dec. 1922 meeting of the Conference for Progressive Political Action in favor of a labor party, but split from the July Convention establishing the FFLP against formation of a labor party. “It is a pity about Fitzpatrick,” Pepper remarks, “He merited much in the labor movement and was a good leader,” but “the road to revolution is paved with the poltical corpses of well-intentioned leaders.” The Fitzpatrick bloc consisted of “not more than 50 or 60 delegates,” Pepper says, noting “the Workers Party was also in the minority” with a representatiion “through various militant unons and other labor organizations” of “not quite 200 delegates.” Pepper says the WPA won all four of the “great tactical batttles” which took place at the FFLP Founding Convention—the seating of every delegate by the credentials committe, the report of the organization committee to establish a labor party immediately, the continuance of the alliance with the farmers in the report of the agrarian committee, and the defeat of an attempt by the old FLP to adjourn and reorganize a new party barring the Communists. In the establishment of the FFLP at convention, the Workers Party had demonstrated itself a “real communist party,” Pepper states.

 

“Report on the 3rd Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Held in Moscow, June 12-23, 1923),” by Israel Amter [Aug. 1, 1923] Very lengthy official report on the proceedings of the 3rd Plenum of the Enlarged ECCI by Workers Party of America delegate Israel Amter—distributed to the party press with instructions from the CEC of the Party to translate and publish. Amter delves into the limitations of “Democratic Centralism”“stating that the Congress of the CI, not the national parties themselves, must have the power to determine the membership of ECCI and that the CI must have the power to alter the composition of national party leaderships, when necessary. With regards to religion, Amter states that the ECCI has taken the position that religious belief is a private matter between the individual and the state, but that Communist Parties exist not only to liberate workers economically and politically, but also ideologically, and that they “will not fail to conduct educational work for enlightening the workers on the nature and content of religion, and to free them from its domination.” Amter relates the ECCI’s position on the the world political situation, with special emphasis on Bulgaria, Germany, England,and France. The new slogan of “Workers’ and Farmers’ Government” was approved by the 3rd Plenum, Amter states, with credit for the slogan attributed to the Workers Party of America by Zinoviev. The importance of Anti-Fascist organization, trade union work, and the implementation of the “factory nucleus” form of party organization are noted by Amter.

 

 

OCTOBER

“Romance in Journalism: From The Chicago Daily Socialist to The Daily Worker,” by J. Louis Engdahl. [October 1923] Engdahl, editor of The Chicago Daily Socialist from the middle of 1910 until its demise in December 1912, recounts the story of its paper, including its origins as a by product of the 1906 Socialist Party election campaign, its greatest success during the Chicago newspaper strike of 1912, and its death as a result of factional fighting within the Chicago SP. The forthcoming Daily Worker is heralded as an ambitious resurrection of The Daily Socialist. The new paper is called “a new era in American working class journalism” in which “no fight will be too small to win attention” and “every battle will be interpreted in the light of its broader national and international significance.”

 

“District Boundaries and Organizers of the Workers Party of America (as of October 1, 1923),” compiled by Tim Davenport. A very useful handlist detailing the geographic boundaries of the 14 districts of the Workers Party of America and listing the name and address of the District Organizers for each, as of October 1, 1923. The party did not make use of District nos. 11 and 14 at this particular time, but did have a three state “Agricultural District” including North and South Dakota and much of Montana. Includes brief notes on the history of Districts numbered 11, 14, and 15 within the WPA.

 

“Notes from the Road: September 13—October 17, 1923,” by Max Bedacht Max Bedacht was one of several National Organizers which the Workers Party of America sent on the road in the fall of 1923—traveling from WPA headquarters in Chicago all the way through to California, up the Pacific coast to Washington, before heading east across Montana en route to Minnesota. There Bedacht spent time in the Twin Cities and in Duluth-Superior. Throughout his trip Bedacht sent back informative handwritten letters about the party situation in the various locales on his trip. These letters to Ruthenberg provide an extremely important glimpse of the state of the early WPA outside of its urban eastern strongholds. The material is well written, informative, and fun to read. Includes reports about Omaha, NE; Denver, CO; San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Oakland-Berkeley, CA; Portland, OR; Astoria, OR; Tacoma, WA; Aberdeen, WA; Spokane, WA; Butte, MT; Miles City, MT; Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN; and Superior, WI.

 

“Report on the United States: Up to October 20, 1923.” [Selections] by Israel Amter Extensive excerpts taken from the lengthy digest of the news prepared for the Comintern by Israel Amter. Includes a strong section on the strategy employed in the movement for the Federated Farmer-Labor Party. Amter interestingly notes that the Workers Party was prepared to join with the Socialist Party and FFLP in the “united front” candidacy of Eugene Debs for President of the United States. A great deal of commentary about the situation of the Party in the AF of L, which was launching a campaign to repress Communist influence in its member unions. This state of affairs was depicted in triumphant terms by Amter, who asserted that the expulsion of Bill Dunne from the Portland convention of the AF of L “has done the Communist cause a great deal of good, and shown the workers that the only body of men with measures that meet the situation are the Communists.” Also included in this report: decision of the CEC that William Z. Foster should not only “come out into the open not only as a member of the Party but also of the CEC"; announcement of a “Hands Off Workers Germany” campaign; information on the dispatch of Jim Cannon to Mexico to organize a Pan-American labor organization in opposition to that of Gompers; news of the anthracite miners’ strike; affiliation of the Hanshack Social Democratic Federation as an Armenian Federation of the WPA; and other topics of the day.

 

“Notes from the Road: September 23—October 30, 1923,” by Harry M. Wicks. Harry Wicks was one of several National Organizers which the Workers Party of America sent on the road in the fall of 1923—traveling throughout the Northeast speaking to public (“mass”) meetings and smaller “membership meetings” consisting of WPA members. This is the set of extant reports submitted by Wicks together with a few letters to Ruthenberg preserved in the Comintern archive in Moscow. Worthy of note is a nasty anti-Semitic comment by Wicks relating to the case of a Jamestown, NY Jewish Federationist named Drozen, who was expelled from the party in some incident related to a recent streetcar strike: “The Jewish Branch is still crying over the expulsion of that rat who scabbed on the street cars last winter. They are trying to take him back in the Party saying ‘really he is a good comrade and that it was just the doings of Wicks that he was expelled.’ Now I never saw the bastard or heard of him in all my life until I saw him last winter when charges were preferred against him.... Now the one question to be settled is whether we are going to please a bunch of half-baked kikes who want him in the Jewish branch and who are themselves scabs at heart, otherwise they would not defend his action, or whether we want to maintain the respect of the active trade unionists here.” Includes reports about Erie, PA; Jamestown, NY; Buffalo, NY; New Haven, CT; Bridgeport, CT; Revere, MA; Lynn, MA; Providence, RI; Elizabeth, NJ; Passaic, NJ; Reading, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Charleroi, PA.

 

“To All Labor Unions in Chicago: A Circular Letter Dated Oct. 31, 1923,” by Joseph ManleyIn the aftermath of the July 3-5, 1923 convention which established the Federated Farmer-Labor Party there was a great deal of acrimony directed at the Workers Party of America for their purported splitting of the farmer-labor movement. This letter to Chicago unions, signed by Joseph Manley (son-in-law of William Z. Foster and National Secretary of the FFLP) answered these charges. The body of this letter is actually a quoted letter stating the position of the Workers Party, signed by the Executive Secretary of that organization, C.E. Ruthenberg. Ruthenberg charges that it was the (old) Farmer-Labor Party of Fitzpatrick and the Chicago Federation which “got cold feet,” violated its previous understanding with the Workers Party, refused any further effort at mediation of differences, and which ultimately was ready to “sacrifice the labor party because Gompers threatened them.” The Workers Party was not at fault, Ruthenberg stated: “If there was any split at this convention it was not a split caused by the Workers Party. If there was a betrayal, it was not a betrayal by the Workers Party. The split and betrayal were the work of Fitzpatrick and the Farmer-Labor group.”

 

NOVEMBER

“Letter from C.E. Ruthenberg in Chicago to Morris Hillquit in New York, Nov. 3, 1923.” A cryptic note sent from the Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of the member to the leading light of the arch-rival Socialist Party of America. Ruthenberg notes that he will be in New York on Nov. 8, 1923, and that he seeks a conference with Hillquit to “talk with you” in regard to an invitation sent by the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to labor political groups for a Nov. 15 conference in St. Paul. This conference was an attempt to “come to an agreement on the question of calling a national convention for the nomination of a presidential candidate and the adoption of a national platform.” Despite the hostility between the two organizations, this document affirms that there was at least informal discussion at the top level about the possibility of joint action with regards to the Farmer-Labor Party movement.

 

“Letter from C.E. Ruthenberg in Chicago to Osip Piatnitsky in Moscow, Nov. 19, 1923.” A lengthy and illuminating review of the Workers Party of America’s Farmer-Labor Party strategy as it rapidly evolved in the fall of 1923. Ruthenberg relates the decision of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to call a convention at St. Paul in May of 1924 for the purpose of joint nomination of a candidate for President of the United States and adoption of a joint program—thereby uniting the various state Farmer-Labor organizations, the Federated Farmer-Labor Party, and other labor and political groups into a single organization. Upon learning of this initiative, Ruthenberg states that the CEC immediately sent him to Minnesota, where he met for two days with Minnesota FLP officials working out the details for a November 15 pre-convention conference. Interestingly, Ruthenberg states that it was his initiative over “considerable objection” to extend an invitation to the pre-convention conference to Morris Hillquit of the Socialist Party in an effort to bring the SP and its popular cachet into the new united organization. Ruthenberg also related the decison of the CEC to declare a truce in the ranks of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which was racked by a severe struggle between the union administration of Sidney Hillman and a TUEL-based left opposition. Hillman and the ILGWU were to be key players in the forthcoming Farmer-Labor Party movement, Ruthenberg indicated, while Hillman had the incentive to play the public role of peacemaker, thus consolidating his position in any forthcoming amalgamation of the ILGWU with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, believed by Ruthenberg to be in the offing in the not too distant future. This document demonstrates that volition in WPA action in the Farmer-Labor Party movement came from the party itself—that it did not blindly follow “orders from Moscow” on this matter but rather acted as it saw fit under the general line of the Comintern, providing information of its specific actions after the fact.

 

“Our Labor Party Policy,” by James P. Cannon and William Z. Foster. [Nov. 1923]The split of the Chicago Federation of Labor from the Federated Farmer-Labor Party Conference of July 3-5, 1923, came as a stunning blow to the Communist Party’s union-oriented activists—of which Bill Foster and Jim Cannon were in the first rank. That the New York-based Central Executive Committee attempted to spin the July Conference as a great triumph rather than an unmitigated debacle came as an insult to this Chicago-centric cohort. It was this matter that triggered a bitter factional war inside the Communist movement that lasted for the rest of the decade. This internal party document by Cannon and Foster is a salvo against the New York leadership of John Pepper and his co-thinkers. To split with the centrist progressive union movement “on the grounds that they are not good revolutionary militants is to reject the idea of alliance of the Communists with other elements in the labor movement, and to repudiate entirely the principle of the united front,” Cannon and Foster charge, adding that the result of the Federated Farmer-Labor Party blunder was sectarian isolation. “We have lost the issue of the united front labor party and are fighting now for our own labor party, the Federated. As a consequence our comrades are largely isolated, and face a united front of all other elements against them.” Convention delegates who voted for the new party and returned to their unions either recanted under the onslaught or were repudiated, Cannon and Foster state, noting “we captured the delegates for three days, but we did not capture their organizations for the FFLP. The claim that the FFLP is a mass party with approximately 600,000 members has absolutely no foundation in fact.”

 

“Letter from C.E. Ruthenberg in Chicago to Morris Hillquit in New York, Nov. 3, 1923.” A tantalizing and cryptic document sent from the Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of the member to the leading light of the arch-rival Socialist Party of America. Ruthenberg notes that he will be in New York on Nov. 8, 1923, and that he seeks a conference with Hillquit to “talk with you” in regard to an invitation sent by the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to labor political groups for a Nov. 15 conference in St. Paul. This conference was an attempt to “come to an agreement on the question of calling a national convention for the nomination of a presidential candidate and the adoption of a national platform.” Even though the Communists and Socialists fought like dogs—the Communists placing secret agents within the SP with the intent of splitting its rival and the Socialists attempting to freeze the Workers’ Party completely out of the Farmer-Labor movement by denying them the right of participation—the political lines of the two organizations with regard to an American Labor Party on the British model were virtually identical. This document indicates there may have been some sort of informal discussion at the top level about the possibility of joint action with regards to the Farmer-Labor Party movement.

 

DECEMBER

“Membership Series by District for the Workers Party of America. ‘Dues Actually Paid’—January to December 1923.” Official 1923 data set of the Workers Party of America, compiled from a document in the Comintern Archive. This document shows an average monthly paid membership of 15,395 for the WPA, with District 2 [New York City] accounting for just shy of 21% of the party membership. The second largest of the party’s 15 districts is D2 [Boston], accounting for 13.4% of the membership, followed by D8 [Chicago] at 12.9% and D9 [Minneapolis] at 11.5%.

 

Series by Language Federation for the Workers Party of America. ‘Dues Actually Paid’—January to December 1923.” Official 1923 data set of the Workers Party of America, compiled from a document in the Comintern Archive. This series shows a great numerical dominance of the WPA by its Finnish Federation, accounting for a massive 42.8% of the average monthly paid membership of the organization (6,583 of 15,395). The total of the English language branches is the 2nd strongest amongst the federations (7.6%) followed by the South Slavic (7.5%), Jewish [Yiddish language] (6.9%), and Lithuanian (6.0%) Federations. In all, there were statistics kept for 18 different language groups of the WPA in 1923, including the English and the barely organized Armenian sections.

 

Initiation Stamps Sold by District for the Workers Party of America. January to December 1923.” Official 1923 data set of the Workers Party of America, compiled from a document in the Comintern Archive. This series shows a massive 60% uptick in the 4th Quarter of 1923—which was exceeded yet again by nearly 20% in Q-1 of 1924 before the rate plummeted again, indicating a high probability of some sort of connection with the January 1924 launch of The Daily Worker . Further archival work and newspaper reading needs to be done to test this hypothesis. A total of 6,532 initiation stamps were sold by the WPA in 1923.

 

Initiation Stamps Sold by Federation for the Workers Party of America. January to December 1923.” Official 1923 data set of the Workers Party of America, compiled from a document in the Comintern Archive. This series once again (repeating the previous published 1924 series) shows a schizophrenic pattern of stamp sales among language groups . Some federations clearly did not collect the initiation fees called for in the WPA constitution at all (Jewish, German, Latvian) while at the same time the quantities sold via the English branches are ridiculously high. Over 53% of the initiation stamps sold for the entire WPA were credited to the English branches—nearly three times as many initiations than there were average duespayers in those English branches! Even assuming a significantly higher than average "membership churn" rate for English branches, there is clearly some other unexplained phenomenon at play in these English branch initiation stamp sale figures...

 

“Rules of Order of the 3rd National Convention of the Workers Party of America. Held in Chicago, Dec. 30, 1923—Jan. 2, 1924.” The predetermined rules for the 3rd Convention of the WPA and agenda for that same gathering. Of note is the fact that Robert’s Rules of Orders reigned supreme when not in conflict with convention rules and the apparent fact that the convention was slated to end January 1 but actually saw its business carry over and end on January 2, 1924. The reports delivered to the convention were later published as a pamphlet, The Second Year of the Workers Party of America: Report of the Central Executive Committee to the Third National Convention: Held in Chicago, Illinois Dec. 30, 31, 1923 and Jan. 1, 2, 1924: Theses, Program, Resolutions. Reports were delivered to the gathering by Ruthenberg (keynote), Foster, Engdahl, Lovestone, Minor, Lore, Ballam, Jakira, Bedacht, Manley, Abern, and Cannon.

 

“Report of the Daily Worker Campaign Committee to the National Convention of the Workers Party of America,” by John J. Ballam [Dec. 31, 1923] This report was delivered by chairman of the Daily Worker Campaign Committee John Ballam to the 3rd National Convention of the Workers Party of America. Ballam notes the particulars of the “$100,000 Daily Worker Campaign” of the 4th Quarter of 1923, in which financial quotas were set for each of the WPA’s 16 language groups. A complete financial accounting of the activities of the Campaign Committee is provided—and these figures are used in extensive footnotes by Tim Davenport as the basis for measurement of Ballam’s various claims and allusions against the unstated reality which was faced by the WPA as it prepared to launch its English-language daily newspaper. The argument is made by Davenport that Ballam’s claim of over $73,000 raised is probably deceptive and that the WPA appears from Ballam’s figures to actually have had a net of approximately $30,000 infused into party coffers by the Daily Worker campaign.

 

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