Formed that September, the Communist Labor Party organizes its first local in Kansas as Ella Reeve Bloor motorcycles into the mining village, now ghost town, of Gross a few weeks later. Much of the C.L.P.’s support came from wobbly regions like Kansas.

‘The Communist Labor Party Organizes Kansas’ by Ella Reeve Bloor from Workers World (Kansas City). No. 27. October 3, 1919.

The honor of forming the first local of the Communist Labor Party in the state goes to the comrades at Gross, Kansas, where a local was formed Sunday with 24 charter members. I went to speak there on Saturday for the Workers’ World and the miners asked me to stay over Sunday and help get the new local started.

We held both meetings in the moving picture house owned by Comrade Obitz. Saturday is his big night for “movies,” so at first we had Douglass Fairbanks and Billy West. There were crowds of children and tired mothers, so we couldn’t hold a very long meeting after so many pictures. But on Sunday afternoon we had a real good, revolutionary meeting.

Gross is about four miles from the trolley and Comrade Creviston lives a mile and one half from Gross, so I had to ride in a jitney over some miles of country before I discovered the “Red Onion” mine, which is “just next door to Comrade Creviston’s.” After the “movie” meeting Saturday evening, I had a fine ride to the trolley to go back to Pittsburg, where I had a room. Some of the “boys” might have had a good laugh to see me sailing along in a boat-shaped attachment to Comrade Creviston’s motorcycle, but it was fine and I recommend it to all organizers who follow me to Crawford County.

Comrade Obitz and his wife joined the new local and said that any time the members wanted a meeting, they could have it rent free.

Louis Galena, the new secretary, can speak both English and Italian and is an active spirit among the miners. 500 copies of the Workers’ World were distributed free at the two meetings and one collections taken of over $13.00. In spite of low wages and many strikes in this locality, the miners are ready to do their duty to the utmost.

One good friend who was with us at the meeting Saturday evening, with his two little children, Joe Bean, had to go to work in the mine early Sunday morning and had his back broken by a fall of rock.

I left sub cards for the Workers’ World with the secretary, who is already a subscriber, and he will do his best to boost the paper among the miners.

The Workers World, published weekly in Kansas City, Missouri during much of 1919 was a mix of regional and national working class news, international socialist events, and the growing fights within the Socialist Party. It was one of many left-wing Socialist Party journals inspired by the Russian Revolution to emerge. Edited alternatively by future Communist Party leaders James P Cannon and Earl Browder, The Workers World ceased publication in November, 1919 as writers and readers moved on to build the Communist movement and its early parties.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workersworld/n27-oct-03-1919-workers-world-G.pdf