Though much less known and resourced than the Communist Party-affiliated Labor Research Association or the Rand School’s Labor Research Department, affiliated with the Socialist Party’s right wing, the Militant Faction of the Socialist Party created the Labor Research Front in 1935. Issuing ‘Labor Bulletin,’ the Front’s work is now a valuable background for the rise of the C.I.O. and the labor movement of the later 1930s.

‘Research Workers Provide Facts For Socialists’ from Socialist Call. Vol. 2 No. 87. November 14, 1936.

In a small office in New York City, lined with filing cabinets, a squad of Socialist research workers are busy digging out the facts that constitute the weapons with which Socialists fight the system of economic exploitation that lives on ignorance.

Knowing how easy it is for radicals to content themselves with general, blanket tirades against the cruelty of capitalism, a group of Socialists last year banded together with the determination that Socialist leaflets and Socialist speeches would be models of accuracy, loaded with information.

Today, overflowing files, detailed newspaper clippings catalogued according to subject are available to the seeker after fact. A large staff of specialists, assigned to particular subjects, are busy preparing detailed outlines for the use of Socialist lecturers. Special studies have been prepared as guides for party members who are eager to go out to the unknowing and prove, on the basis of facts conceded even by capitalist sources, that a new social or der must be built to replace the tottering structure of the profit system which is cracking over our heads in this age.

FOUNDED A YEAR AGO

It was about a year ago that Labor Research Front was founded. Its first real test came with the 1936 campaign when misinformation and distortion of fact was pouring out of the propaganda mills of the Democratic and Republican Parties. For a time, because of the lack of funds, the Front had seemed to be in danger of stagnation, but the coming of the campaign awakened large sections of Socialists and Socialist sympathizers to a realization of the importance of building research agencies.

Throughout the campaign, Labor Research Front has serviced the national political drive as well as provided information for local and state campaigns.

More than sixty volunteer research workers, both party members and non-party members, poured a mass of material into the office of Labor Research Front. It was promptly transformed into “Speakers’ Notes” on particular questions; a great deal of it went into the “Labor Bulletin,” a monthly publication which today is to be found on the shelves  of more than one hundred libraries throughout the country.

PLAN FOR FUTURE

The need for facts with which to buttress Socialist propaganda did not end on November 3 with the elections. The need will be even greater within the next four years. Socialists realize that they cannot play an important part in the development of American political and economic life unless they are able to analyze concretely the programs and activities of the capitalist parties and the trends within the capitalist system, Labor Research Front is one of the most important weapons for the accomplishment of these ends.

Its monthly publication, “Labor Bulletin,” will continue to appear regularly, and its “Speakers” Notes’ will be issued at frequent intervals–chock full of careful studies on important current problems.

At the present time, there is available the November issue of “Labor Bulletin” and “Speakers Notes” on Social Security, an analysis of the Federal Social Security Act, the Republican security program and the New York unemployment insurance law.

With indefatigable James Lipsig as its executive secretary, the organization is building indispensable machinery for the spreading of the truth about present conditions. Even more research workers are needed than the sixty who are now sifting material. Funds are needed to put into print and in mimeographed form the results of their investigations. Labor Research Front invites contributions both of funds and services.

Its offices, located at 21 East 17th Street, are open to visitors who seek information.

LABOR RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

“Labor Bulletin” (monthly) for one year $.50. 12 sets of “Speakers’ Notes” -$.50. “Labor Bulletin” for one year and all “Speakers” Notes” Issued within one year-$1.00.

Socialist Call began as a weekly newspaper in New York in early 1935 by supporters of the Socialist Party’s Militant Faction Samuel DeWitt, Herbert Zam, Max Delson, Amicus Most, and Haim Kantorovitch, with others to rival the Old Guard’s ‘New Leader’. The Call Education Institute was also inaugurated as a rival to the right’s Rand School. In 1937, the Call as the Militant voice would fall victim to Party turmoil, becoming a paper of the Socialist Party leading bodies as it moved to Chicago in 1938, to Milwaukee in 1939, where it was renamed “The Call” and back to New York in 1940 where it eventually resumed the “Socialist Call” name and was published until 1954.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/socialist-call/call%202-87.pdf