Dealing with with the special circumstances of trying to organize Ford’s industries in and around Dearborn, Michigan where tens of thousands of workers lived under ‘King Henry,’ who controlled everything from the house on the street to the mayor of the city.

‘Methods of Mass Agitation Among the Ford Workers’ by Max Salzman from party Organizer (Internal Bulletin C.P.U.S.A.). Vol. 7 No. 1. January, 1934.   

PARTICULARLY because of the special position which the Ford Motor Co. occupies in the capitalist world, the activities of our Party among the Ford workers assume tremendous importance.

More than 150,000 workers were employed at the Ford plant during the course of the last few years. These workers live in many small Ford-controlled towns, as well as in Detroit and Dearborn. About 9,000 of these workers live in Dearborn, where the Ford plant is located. About 5,000 are employed at this time in the Ford plant.

Our agitation therefore has two sides, one, the direct agitation in the plant itself, and secondly the agitation among the Ford workers not employed at the time in the shop, but who are in hopes of being hired and who are employed for various periods from time to time. From this it is clear that any agitational material issued in the district reaches large numbers of Ford workers.

We distributed many leaflets to the workers in the Ford plant. At first we distributed long, large leaflets, but the reaction among the workers made it clear that short and concise leaflets had much greater effect. The most effective leaflets were those containing one idea around a special slogan. Such, for example, was the leaflet issued when the Ford plant shut down during the Briggs strike last January. The leaflet raised the slogan of demanding pay for every day lost as a result of the closing of the plant by Ford due to the strike. This was the most effective leaflet we had issued. This was valuable not only because of the issue raised but because its size, 4 1/4 x6, made it easier to distribute in and around the shop. Such a leaflet was also issued during the recent Tool and Die Makers strike.

Methods of Distribution

The problem of distribution inside the shop is difficult in view of the method of production, which keeps the men apart, as well as the strictly enforced rules which keep the men from talking to each other. Even during lunch time the men are prevented from talking to each other. We have used a number of methods of leaflet distribution, which have proven successful. One is the bringing of rolls of toilet paper which contain leaflets rolled in them. In this way quite a few leaflets get into the hands of the workers before the company gets wise. On the cylinder line the workers attached a leaflet which had been dampened with water to the warm core which passed along the line and was read by many workers before the foreman discovered it. During Christmas season a group of workers in one department got out a leaflet. It was folded to a very small size and a Christmas seal wrapped around it. The leaflets were dropped on the floor in various parts of the department and picked up by the workers. But the distribution inside the shop could not be very effective without considerable help from the outside.

The Ford plant was built with the idea of preventing any activity of workers. Street cars stop on Ford property and the workers are compelled to walk over a viaduct into the plant. Any worker who walks across the road under the viaduct is immediately fired. On a number of occasions we were able to get leaflets distributed here, but not with sufficient success. The best and most effective method of reaching the workers in the shop with leaflets from the outside was by distributing them in street cars and automobiles.

There are four main street car lines which carry workers into the Ford plant. By stationing ourselves at the street car junction points we were able to carry on an effective distribution. We distributed the leaflets at a time when almost everyone on the street car was a Ford worker. A bunch of leaflets were handed into the car and quickly found their way from hand to hand. The leaflets were thus discussed by the workers before they went into the shop. We reached the workers who went to work by auto by waiting at stop streets near the Ford plant and when the cars stopped we handed a leaflet to each occupant of the car. With other comrades assigned to places where workers who walked to work could be reached, our distribution was very effective. In the method described above, we have on a number of occasions distributed 10,000 to 15,000 leaflets in about one hour.

Another method was used in connection with the election campaign and in preparation for the Ford Hunger March. The road toward the Ford plant, either by street car or automobile, passes a number of railroad viaducts. By painting short slogans about one foot high, we bring them to the attention of the workers. Because the walls of the viaduct are of cement, the paint soaks in deeply. The Ford company has on every occasion covered the slogans with paint, but even this makes the workers discuss the slogan.

In carrying out our agitation we make some small use of the Ford Worker and the Daily Worker, but certainly not sufficiently. In the Ford section committee a plan was worked our for the selling of the Daily Worker at the street car junction points every day. Such a method will reach many workers with our press.

The Party Organizer was the internal bulletin of the Communist Party published by its Central Committee beginning in 1927. First published irregularly, than bi-monthly, and then monthly, the Organizer was primarily meant for the Party’s unit, district, and shop organizers. The Organizer offers a much different view of the CP than the Daily Worker, including a much higher proportion of women writers than almost any other CP publication. Its pages are often full of the mundane problems of Party organizing, complaints about resources, debates over policy and personalities, as well as official numbers and information on Party campaigns, locals, organizations, and periodicals making the Party Organizer an important resource for the study and understanding of the Party in its most important years.

PDF of full issue: https://archive.org/download/party-organizer_1934-01_7_1/party-organizer_1934-01_7_1.pdf