"Large Section of Old Local [Cuyahoga County, OH] Back in Party (NY Call) [event of Sept. 28, 1919] Brief news account from the Socialist Party's New York daily detailing the visit of party NEC member William Brandt to a large Sept. 28, 1919, gathering of Local Cuyahoga County, Ohio -- the massive local organization from which both Communist Party Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg and Communist Labor Party Executive Secretary Alfred Wagenknecht hailed. Brandt had been denied the right to address the gathering on behalf of the Socialist Party, which limited presentations to the two rival Communist organizations. CLP NEC members Wagenknecht and Alexander Bilan spoke on behalf of the Communist Labor Party and Ruthenberg had spoken on behalf of the CPA. Debate followed, after which the gathering voted overwhelmingly for the affiliation of Local Cuyahoga County to the Communist Party -- the CLP astoundingly mustering only 3 votes of support. The vote for affiliation prompted an immediate bolt of a small number of loyalists to the Socialist Party, who proceeded to reorganize as Local Cuyahoga County, Socialist Party, with former Cleveland City Council member John G. Willert as Secretary. NEC member Brandt assured the rest of the SPA's NEC that "the English membership was with the party, as was the membership of the Jewish and Finnish branches," according to the news report. "Brandt estimates that while 25 percent of the membership is inclined toward the Communist Party, at least 25 percent is loyal to the Socialist Party, with 50 percent indifferent. He feels that the better part of this 50 percent can be brought into the Socialist Party," the report optimistically continues.

 

"Otto Branstetter Named Secretary of Socialist Party: Edmund Melms Sees Huge Increase Coming in Party Membership." (Milwaukee Leader) [Oct. 1, 1919] Following Adolph Germer's mid-September resignation as Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party, the party's governing 7 member "temporary" National Executive Committee quickly moved to fill the vacancy. Their choice was was long-time Oklahoma party functionary Otto Branstetter. The decision was announced to the SP daily, the Milwaukee Leader, by NEC member Edmund Melms, returning home from the NEC's quarterly gathering in Chicago. "Encouraging reports were received from Ohio, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Indiana, and California, an from indications it will be only a short time when the Socialist Party of the United States will witness a new growth and a tremendous increase in membership, as the result of overcoming the recent troubles forced upon it," Melms optimistically told the paper. Melms proclaims the Communist Labor Party to be a stillborn organization: "The so-called Communist Labor Party is dead. One of the strongest states that it claimed was Ohio, and that state is hopelessly lost to it. Some of the strongest industrial cities have repudiated it. In Cleveland, in the city and country convention just held, the Left Wingers [CLP] were able only to muster the votes of 3 delegates seated in the convention." Plans for aggressive expansion of the SP's membership ranks are noted by Melms.

 

"Be a Socialist -- Join the Party," by Otto Branstetter [Oct. 6, 1919] This article by new Socialist Party Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter provides an excellent example of the relatively simple agitational literature which that organization issued in copious quantities. It also provides a window upon the dominant SPA ideology in the months following the September 1919 party split. Branstetter draws parallels the Socialist Party to several broad membership social and fraternal organizations -- the Methodist church, the Masons, the trade union local. The notion of the SP as a "vanguard party" is entirely lacking in this construct; rather, joining of the Socialist Party (and paying its dues) is seen as a matter of civic duty for those sharing the socialist vision. Branstetter declares: "I know of but two reasons why a man who calls himself a Socialist does not join the organization. The first is that, while he believes in the principles of Socialism, he does not realize the need of the party organization. In this case he has missed the essence of Socialism -- cooperation, organization, concerted effort, and united action on the part of the working class for their own advancement and their own emancipation... If, on the other hand, he realizes the need of organization ... and then he refuses to get into that organization which he knows to be necessary -- he is unfaithful to his principles, to the party and to his class, and is unworthy of being called a 'comrade' or a 'Socialist.'" Branstetter states epigrammatically that "It is well to agitate, it is good to educate, but it is absolutely necessary to organize." The activity of the broad Socialist Party in the electoral sphere is seen as the mechanism for the victory of the Socialist system, the SP "a political movement that will become a power for the benefit of the working class in your city and in the nation."

 

"Mounted Police Trample Men, Women, and Children in Assault on Russian Parade: Many Wounded By Cops' Clubs; 2 Children Are Reported Dead... 8 Paraders Arrested: Nightsticks, Poles, Stirrups, Straps Used in Attack -- Men Dragged from Hallways and Beaten." (NY Call) [event of Oct. 8, 1919] A forgotten incident of anti-radical police brutality recalled: On October 8, 1919, an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 Russian-Americans gathered in New York City to conduct a peaceful protest march in protest of the undeclared act of war against the Soviet Russian Republic represented by the blockade of the nation. A squad of mounted policemen, swinging clubs ferociously, rode into the crowd, followed by more than 100 foot policemen and plainclothes detectives, headed by Chief Inspector John Daly and Detective Sergeant James J. Gegan of the NYC "Bomb Squad." "Cries for help arose, abut there was no help. The very men sworn to uphold the law and protect life were violating the one and seeking to destroy the other. Men threw themselves in front of women and were beaten down; women tried to shield their children and were trampled on; the children fled, screaming, among the flying hooves and rhythmically pounding clubs, seeking in vain for an escape," this eyewitness journalist account from the New York Call indicates. Protesters were trapped in alleyways by mounted policemen and beaten mercilessly without provocation. The police arrested 8 in conjunction with the "riot" which resulted from the police attack.

 

"Police Batter Down Paraders With Clubs: Brutality of Mounted Cops Exceeds That of Men in Trenches, Says Woman Writer, Eyewitness of Charge on Men, Women, and Children," by Louise Bryant [event of Oct. 8, 1919] Prominent Left Wing journalist Louise Bryant (wife of CLP founder and fellow journalist John Reed) was a witness to the brutal attack by New York City police on the Oct. 8 anti-blockade protest. She calls the action by the police against some 2,000 to 2,500 unarmed and peaceful protesters "the most disgraceful scene of my life," more callous and brutal than anything she had seen in war or revolution. Bryant recalls "The mounted police galloped along the sidewalks. There was nowhere for that big crowd to hide. Many ran down the steps of the [Hotel] Brevoort leading to the cafe, others ran up the front steps leading to the lobby, some hid behind the little iron fence, but there was not room enough for all. From everywhere policemen on foot came running, striking out with their heavy clubs right and left, and plainclothesmen appeared. The latter armed themselves quickly with stout poles from the fallen banners. And they also began beating the people." She recounts the brutal technique used by the purported guardians of order: "They would pull a man from behind the iron fence or from the edge of the sidewalk and begin to club him. He would try to protect himself, but would soon find it no use. A whole mob of plainclothesmen and police would attack him; then he would run, and as he ran he would receive blow after blow." In a memorable word picture, Bryant recounts pulling a Russian woman to safety: "She was absolutely beside herself and kept saying in Russian: 'Like Cossacks! They ran over us like Cossacks!' We dragged her behind the iron fence. A fat woman leaned down from the balcony and looked at us with a cold smile on her face. She held in her hand the biggest gold-mesh bag I ever saw. 'She isn't hurt,' she said, 'she's only bluffing...' Then she glanced up the street and watched with interest another poor Russian being beaten. I never saw such a cruel expression, not even at a bull fight." Bryant then was then confronted by a NYC policeman: "Then a detective came up to me and told me to go home. He said, with his crafty animal eyes close to mine, 'I'd like to put you where you belong.' And a middle-aged gentleman with a cane and his chin quivering from excitement came up and asked me if I was born in America. He wanted to arrest me, but the policeman shook his head. 'No, she's an American,' the policeman explained. That was not the full explanation. I had on good clothes." Bryant characterizes the October 8 violence as "a riot started by the police and kept up by the police."

 

"Six Victims of Cops' Brutality Get Six Months in Workhouse: 'Why Don't They Go Back to Where They Came From?' Magistrate Sweetser Asks..." (NY Call) [event of Oct. 11, 1919] In the aftermath of the October 8, 1919, orgy of unprovoked and unilateral police brutality in New York City at the "Hands Off Russia" march of some 2,500 Russian-Americans, justice was swiftly meted out -- not against the outrageous excesses of Detective Sergeant James J. Gegan and his associates in beating and crushing the unarmed protesters, but rather against 7 innocent demonstrators arrested in the police's dragnet. Sentences of 6 months in the county workhouse were pronounced upon 6 of the demonstrators by ultra-nationalist magistrate Howard P. Sweetser. "These foreigners assail the institutions of the country and especially the constitution, but when they get pinched they hide behind it and ask for protection," Sweetser belligerently declared at the sentencing. ""The constitution is for Americans, not for foreign Russians," Sweetser asserted. The 6 were tried en mass, 4 arrested for carrying literature and banners to the Washington Square site of the demonstration (without ever making it to the scene, apparently); 2 were IWW activists carrying leaflets and the Wobbly paper New Solidarity. A 7th defendant, an American citizen, escaped with a $10 fine when it was admitted in court that the defendant was "courteous and submitted to being taken into custody," belying charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Evidence as to the real nature of the police-riot was given in the course of the trial by a major in the Army's chemical warfare section and the personal secretary to the 3rd Assistant Secretary of the War Department, the latter of whom implicated Detective Sergeant James J. Gegan as one of the most brutal figures in the vicious suppression of the demonstration.

 

"Will Go Over Enright's Head; Major Swears to Cops' Acts... Evidence Piles Up: Object of Fight is to Get Mayor on Record as Opposed to Government by Police Clubs." (NY Call) [Oct. 13, 1919] Defeated in court by a blindly partisan conservative magistrate, attorney Charles Recht prepared to take the matter of police brutality in the Oct. 8 "Hands Off Russia" demonstration over the head of unsympathetic Police Commissioner Richard Enright to the mayor of New York. As part of this effort sworn affidavits were taken from various witnesses of police misconduct during the affair. This news report from the New York Call reproduces the text of one such affidavit concerning police brutality, the testimony of Maj. Richard C. Tolman of the Ordinance Dept. of the US Army, who was eating lunch at a Washington Square tearoom at the time of the police-riot. Tolman states that "the crowd seemed to me unusually orderly and very patient" until the arrival of foot policemen, who roughly jostled the crowd, led to the procession starting up Fifth Avenue in a "disorderly fashion." "Suddenly about 12 or 15 mounted police rode down from Washington Square into the head of the column, beating the crowd on the head unmercifully with their nightsticks," Tolman states. "The crowd tried to disperse, but the foot policemen and mounted policemen were so placed as to make this extremely difficult. The plainclothesmen and foot policemen stationed themselves on the sidewalk and the horsemen drove the crowd into them. The foot policemen beat people in the crowd over the head and, in particular, Sergeant Gegan took a long staff from one of the banners carried by the paraders and beat the men up unmercifully." Tolman attests that he "saw no case of retaliation by members of the crowd upon the police, for in every case they were running away as rapidly as possible."

 

"Dr. Ackerman Also Swears to Cops' Brutality at Russ Parade: Secretary to Third Assistant Secretary of War Makes Affidavit to Be Handed Hylan... Head of 'Bomb Squad' Was Most Active Among Uniformed Assailants is Charge." (NY Call) [Oct. 14, 1919] Text of an affidavit by Dr. Phyllis Ackerman, personal secretary to a prominent War Department official, gathered by attorney Charles Recht as part of his effort to prevent future incidents of police violence against individuals attempting to assert their constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of their grievances. Ackerman declares in her sworn testimony that "Members of the crowd themselves insisted in keeping the roadway clear for traffic. There was perfect order, good nature, no jostling, no noise, no protests of any kind at the long delay." The crowd remained peaceful despite 4 or 5 officers throwing themselves "with all their force against the crowd," Ackerman states. "Suddenly there was a clatter of hooves and about a dozen mounted policemen crashed down the avenue from the direction of Washington Square and galloped at full speed into the crowd, swinging long clubs. They drove them against the iron fence and into the areaways of the houses, beating violently on all sides of them."The mounted police meanwhile rode up and down the sidewalk to catch chance passers and when these refugees attempted to come out, as the police had commanded them, the police, both mounted and men on foot, stood on either side of the sidewalk and beat them. Conspicuous among these police was the heavy-set, gray-haired man whom I have since had identified as Sergeant Gegan. He had picked up a long pole, which had broken off one of the banners, and was beating so violently at everyone who came past that he was gasping, red in the face, and perspiring. At every opportunity he rained brutal blows on every man or woman who came within reach." Ackerman notes that "It was conspicuous that anyone in working clothes, or who seemed to be a member of the working class, was beaten, shoved, told to move on, and followed up; whereas I, who deliberately pushed my way in with all my might among 3 policemen, was deliberately left alone, the policemen stepping aside. A tenement woman spoke of the policemen as brutes. Five of them pursued her with swinging clubs, but failed to hit her. I stood in front of 6 policemen and said the same thing with greater force, but they merely looked abashed and did not know what to say. The point I wish to emphasize is that the only disorder there was provoked by the police themselves, by deliberate brutality of the most violent and unwarranted kind."

 

"Rhode Island Party Reorganized: One Week's Whirlwind Campaign Puts State Back Into Socialist Ranks." (NY Call) [events of Oct. 20-25, 1919] The Socialist Party experienced a brief interlude of euphoria in the aftermath of the 1919 party split, marked by rosy vistas of rapid recovery of organizational size and energy with the departure of the organization's dissident Left Wing. State and local organizations were rapidly reorganized for the newly purged SPA and the outlook seemed positive. This report from the pages of the New York Call details the efforts of Socialist Party organizer William Kruse to relaunch the organization in Rhode Island, a state which previously went over to the Communist Labor Party by a vote of 60 to 30 at an October 1919 state convention. Bill Kruse arrived on the scene on Oct. 20, and within a week had successfully managed to reconstruct a state organization with 9 branches (5 English, 2 Finnish, 2 Yiddish). A colorful account of an Oct. 24 YPSL meeting is included, featuring what seems to have been a spontaneous emergence of the sort of obnoxious disruptionism that would come to characterize the factional warfare of the American Left over the two subsequent decades: "After a motion to adjourn by the CLP members was defeated, about 8 of them arose and stamped noisily out of the room, yelling and singing. They went to the room above where they stamped on the floor and yelled 'Bolshevik' and sang 'The Internationale' -- very much out of tune... The meeting was held successfully, even after the bolters came back into the room to make more noise there." "Even those Yipsels who were sympathetic with the CLP were disgusted at such tactics," it is remarked.

 

"Left Wingers Invited to Rejoin Party." (Walter Cook) [Oct. 29, 1919] It is simple to interpret Socialist Party of New York State Secretary Walter Cook's appeal to Left Wingers to return to the ranks of a revitalized party as a crass bid by the now-impoverished SP for dues money, the organizational apparatus having just been safely ensconced in the hands of Oneal, Gerber, and the SP Regulars. However, Cook's appeal may be also interpreted as a Hillquitian olive branch to those who had previously been dissatisfied with party tactics but who were at heart loyal to the SP organization -- those who had been inadvertently cast aside in the suspensions of Left Wing branches and locals and their hasty reorganization (the New York Call in the same issue ran a display advertisement from the Communist Labor Party announcing its own organizational meeting, a sign of an effort towards coexistence between the feuding radical siblings). Secretary Cook (himself later a member of the Workers Party of America) notes that, unlike the practice during the run-up to the Emergency National Convention, it is not necessary for suspended members seeking readmission "to re-sign any application for membership or sign any new statement or pledge." Cook states that "in order to retain their continuous and unaffected party membership, [suspended members] are earnestly requested to attend the meeting of the branch or local in their respective districts at their earliest convenience for the purpose of paying up such back dues as may have accumulated during the period of their inactivity and to have the branch authorize its secretary re-enroll them.... We appeal to you, therefore, comrades, to renew your activity within our ranks and assure you of a warm welcome back to your former places in the party."

 

"The Necessity for Legal Work," by J. Wilenkin ("J. Morris") [c. Sept. 1, 1921] This article by veteran Russian Federationist Dr. J. Wilenkin from the underground official organ of the unified CPA details the thinking behind the recent move of the governing Central Executive Committee of the party towards a legal political organization. The two Communist Parties had begun as open organizations, a status which "succeeded in attracting the attention of the broad toiling masses and have helped considerably to spread our ideas among them." Soon thereafter, Wilenkin recalls that "we were compelled to go underground to protect the movement, strengthen our organization, to create a strongly centralized party, and to develop a clearly defined revolutionary program," since "only through an underground organization could we make clear to the proletariat of this country the ultimate necessity of armed insurrection for the overthrow of the bourgeois state and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat." Wilenkin asserts that "the CPA has now reached a point where a change of tactics is an absolute necessity. This change is vital not only to the party but to the progress of the entire American labor movement. The mountain did not go to Mohammed, so Mohammed must go to the mountain. The masses do not and will not come to our underground organization, so we must organize above and carry out agitation on a legal basis." Wilenkin states that "our isolation was affecting the entire party," causing it to become "more and more sectarian." Wilenkin declares "the purpose of legal work is, through propaganda and agitation, to awaken in the proletarian masses an interest in the political struggle," and towards this end the party must be prepared to work with a variety of outside organizations, including those headed by a reactionary leadership. Wilenkin indicates that "The proletarian masses are instinctively revolutionary as the Russian Revolution has demonstrated" and argues that to suppose that the rank and file of such organizations are automatically reactionary is incorrect and narrow, a manifestation of what Lenin called the "infantile disorder of Leftism." Wilenkin about the question of armed revolution, acknowledging that one argument put forward "against legal Communist propaganda is that at the present time we will be compelled to refrain from propagating openly some of our principles, such as the necessity of armed insurrection." Wilenkin states that the continued existence of a controlling underground apparatus punctures any such objections: "Whatever cannot be circulated through legal means can and must be given publicity through our underground political party. The illegal party remains the controlling factor. It directs all the agitation and propaganda of the illegal as well as of the legal organization." Wilenkin provides a quotation from Comintern head Grigorii Zinoviev's at the recently completed 3rd World Congress of the Comintern validate the CEC's conception of dual underground and overground political organizations. Zinoviev had said: "We must advise our American friends to learn to work not only within the limits of the illegal party, but to organize notwithstanding the White Terror, a legal and semi-legal movement, functioning parallel to the party, in order to win over larger circles of the working class."

 

"The Party at the Crossroads," by Jay Lovestone ("Roger B. Nelson") [c. Sept. 1, 1921] This article by Central Executive Committee member Jay Lovestone portrays the unified Communist Party of America as being at a crossroads -- facing a decision whether to continue on the underground path towards isolation, sectarianism, and irrelevance or whether to take the new path of legality, leading to contact with the American working class, leading toward a mass organization and opportunity for success in the coming struggle for power. Lovestone's conception of the pivotal role of the Communist Party is clear: "The Party must fulfill its historic role of serving as the guiding, unifying, and directing center of the class struggle. We must lend unity of plan and purpose to the American labor movement....Propaganda alone is not sufficient for the realization of working class victory. It is high time that we act. The Party must develop such a machinery as will enable the entire membership to actively participate in all the struggles of the working masses. We must further give these struggles a political character and direct them into revolutionary channels." Lovestone directly quotes from the "Theses on Tactics" proposed by the Russian delegation to the 3rd World Congress of the Comintern earlier that summer, which explicitly told the Americans "it is the Party's duty to try all ways and means to get out of the illegalized condition into the open, among the wide masses." "It is therefore the inviolable duty of every member of the Party to give the Central Executive Committee undivided support in its efforts to build a Party of life, of action, of revolutionary power," Lovestone declares.

 

"Circular Letter to All Districts and Federations from John Ballam, Secretary of Central Caucus, Summarizing the Results of Meeting of Oct. 24-25, 1921." This document may be aptly characterized as an internal bulletin from the "Central Caucus" to its adherents -- dissidents in the unified Communist Party of America hailing from the old Communist Party of America who organized factionally in September 1921 and quickly departed the party en masse, declaring themselves to be the legitimate bearer of the Communist Party of America's mantle. This report details what amounts to an expanded plenum of the Central Caucus, including not only the regularly attending representatives of the Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Latvian, and Polish Federations, but also its de facto District Organizers ("Caucus leaders") from the Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh districts. The October statement to the Comintern by the minority of the unified CPA's CEC -- John Ballam, Charles Dirba, and George Ashkenuzi -- was the basis for discussion of the meeting. A summary of the views of each of the Federation representatives and district Caucus leaders is providing, showing that the Lithuanian Federation was the least irreconcilable to the majority of the CEC of the unified Party and its line, stating that they "Cannot oppose Comintern on question of [a Legal Political Party] but absolutely against form proposed by CEC" and urging that "no action to be taken which would give reason for being thrown out of Comintern." The statement of the 3 CEC Members was taken up by the meeting seriatim and amended, and was to be then signed and prepared for distribution to the "entire membership."

 

"Circular Letter to Districts and Federations of the Central Caucus from John Ballam, Secretary, Nov. 13, 1921." An internal bulletin of the Central Caucus faction, compiled by its Secretary, John Ballam. Ballam notes that the Statement of the 3 CEC Members had been sent to all districts and translated and transmitted by the officials of the faction's 6 federation caucuses -- Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Latvian, and Polish. Ballam notes that arch-Legal Party advocate Max Bedacht had been named the editor of the underground organ and internal bulletin of the unified CPA and that in the coming week "ALL FEDERATIONS WILL BE NOTIFIED TO 'RAISE THEIR BRANCHES INTO LPP IN SYSTEMATIC MANNER, LANGUAGE BY LANGUAGE.'" The actual split was near at hand; groups of the Polish Federation had ceased paying dues to the unified CPA, some Yiddish-language party groups were refusing to obey directives to "raise" their branches from the underground despite threats of expulsion from the unified CPA. The Central Caucus (that is to say, the directing council of federation representatives of the faction)had decided to immediately send a representative to Soviet Russia to argue its case, Ballam notes -- although another archival document indicates that no representative was actually sent at this time in connection with this decision. The document includes district-by-district and federation-by-federation summaries of the activity of the Central Caucus faction.

 

"Historical Timeline of the Central Caucus-CPA (Sept. 17, 1921 to Jan. 6, 1922)." [Jan. 7, 1922] This is an extremely valuable document consisting of short summaries of the results of the weekly sessions of the Central Caucus (the council of representatives of the rebellious wings of 6 language federations of the Communist Party and their officials). It is noted that the Central Caucus was established on Saturday, Sept. 17, 1921 (presumably in New York City), that it had undertaken to organize factional leaders on a district-by-district basis on the following Tuesday, that it had considered and adopted its first factional document, "Statement No. 1," outlining its grievances on Sept. 27, 1921, and that the appeal of the 3 CEC Members to the Comintern was first read at its Oct. 17 session. The actual organizational break was set in motion at the Nov. 7, 1921 meeting by a narrow 4 to 3 vote, it is revealed, when it was decided "to notify all Districts and Federations that where parts of groups, branches, or sections are raised [forced overground] into LPP, those who are with us an opposed to joining LPP at once organize themselves, elect their own captains, branch organizers, section organizers, etc.; and hold their meetings separately before going into regular underground meeting, in order to maintain the present form of party organization and to prevent the total liquidation of our party." A call for a "National Conference" of the faction, which ultimately declared itself the "Emergency Convention of the Communist Party of America," was issued on Nov. 28, 1921, and the decision that membership dues should be paid to the Central Caucus rather than to the CEC of the unified CPA was made December 5, 1921. The National Conference/Emergency Convention was actually held in New York from Jan. 7-12, 1922, it should be noted.

 

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REVISED EDITION

"Appeal of the Minority Members of the CEC of the Communist Party of America Against the Policies of the CEC on the Question of the Formation of a Legal Political Party in the United States." [circa Oct. 25, 1921]. ** Revised Edition: Refines estimated issue date, adds a footnote, and expands archival citation.** The formal appeal of the CEC minority (i.e. the Central Caucus faction) to the Communist International seeking a halt to the actions of the CEC majority's actions with regard to establishment of a legal political party. While stating their agreement with the notion of legal political action and their willingness to adhere to the final decision of the ECCI in the matter, this appeal outlines the case of the minority: that the CEC majority had misrepresented the position of the ECCI and Lenin himself on the Legal Political Party; that its action in forcing the entire underground party into the open legal organization would put it at grave danger of arrest and destruction; that the duplication of legal and underground personnel would inevitably result in liquidation of the underground organization; that the proposed transformation of the American Labor Alliance for Trade with Soviet Russia into a full fledged Legal Political Party was counter to the Unity Agreement joining the old CPA with the UCP in May 1921 and artificial -- as the ALA had no mass membership outside of the underground CPA; that the CEC majority had failed to call an emergency convention of the party to work out details of this drastic change of the party line, thus resulting in confusion and a lack of confidence among the rank and file in the party leadership; that major preparatory work among the working class needed to be done before any Legal Political Party could be considered. For good measure, a litany of the offenses of the CEC Majority on other matters are tagged on the end, ranging from botched opportunities for mass propaganda to apathy to engagement in a policy of factional "crushing" of the former members of the old CPA.

 

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