The Chicago Young Workers League plans three large simultaneous campaigns; for newspaper subscriptions, mass anti-militarist propaganda, and building a Communist nuclei in the 35,000 printing industry workers, many of them young, in the city.

‘Chicago Y.W.L. Holds Membership Meeting’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 2 No. 157. July 14, 1925.

THE membership meeting of the Young Workers League, Local Chicago, held Friday, July 10, at the Greek Hall, demonstrated that the Chicago league will carry on greater activities than ever before during the summer months.

Not only were plans laid for more intensive activities, but the activities will be launched and the Chicago league will show its strength by carrying on three important campaigns at once.

This membership meeting was called by the City Executive Committee especially to deal with these three important campaigns which are being started immediately, and the members responded enthusiastically to the call for volunteers to distribute antimilitarist leaflets, to get subscriptions for the Young Worker, and to carry on a huge campaign in the printing industry, the goal of which will be the organization of nuclei in the biggest printing plants in the city.

Anti-Militarist Activities.

In reporting on the campaign against the citizen’s military training camps, as well as against all capitalist militarism, Comrade Gilbert Greenberg reported that the Chicago league would distribute 30,000 leaflets against the citizens’ military training camps, all of which will be disposed of at the factories.

How They Will Be Distributed.

They will be distributed at the biggest plants in the city, and especially those plants which send young workers to the camps will be covered. Branch No. 1 will distribute 4,000 leaflets, Branch No. 2 will distribute 4,00; Branch No. 3, 3,000; Branch No. 4, 7,000; Branch No. 6, 4,000, and Branch No. 6, 3,000. Besides this squads will be organized on a city scale to cover two of the biggest plants in the city.

The Printing Industry Campaign.

Comrade John Harvey, reporting on the preparation that had been made for a campaign in the printing industry, told of the importance of conducting a campaign in this industry in Chicago.

Chicago is the center of the printing industry, which is one of the biggest industries in the country. Out of the 35,000 workers employed in the industry here, a large percentage are young workers, as it is greatly by employing thousands of young workers and a big percentage of helpers in comparison to the skilled bindery workers and printing, that the employers in Chicago have been to put the industry here so much on an open shop basis.

Different From Other Campaigns.

Comrade Harvey pointed out that there were many live issues on which we will fight in our campaign in the printing industry. The rotten conditions in the big open shops, the large number of unorganized young workers who work side by side with the union workers, the difficulty to get into the craft unions, the open shop apprenticeship schools, and many other issues vital to all young workers in the industry will be touched upon.

This campaign will be conducted much differently from the campaign in the mail order industry. It will be less of a journalistic and more of an organizational campaign, and while there will be plenty of interesting articles on conditions in the industry and stories on the various shops, the success of the campaign will be judged not by the number of papers we sell, but by the extent we are able to crystalize our activities into concrete shop nucleus results.

Will Last Seven Weeks.

The campaign will last seven weeks, and instead of having all of the articles in one issue of the Young Worker as in the mail order house campaign, the league will tackle one shop at a time, concentrating all of its forces at this shop three days of one week, when they will start on another factory, and the work of keeping up the campaign will be left to the area branch in whose territory the plant is located.

This will not only make It possible to accomplish more at each shop, but will make it easy for the branches to continue the campaign there, as during the whole seven weeks there will be much interesting material in the Young Worker, which the young workers in these shops will want to read even when there is no special story about their shop in that special issue.

The seventh week at the end of the campaign, there will be a special issue of the Young Worker which will be sold at all of the plants and will be the wind-up of the most intensive part of the campaign though far from the end for the branches, which will keep on going to the shop in their territory to see that organizational results are realized or to help the nucleus already organized.

Many Comrades Volunteer.

More than 60 comrades volunteered to go to the factories during the printing industry campaign, and In this way registered their enthusiasm and showed that the Chicago league could make this campaign a success. Comrades also volunteered to go to the factories at noon when there will be more time to speak to the young workers to get names, and when street meetings will be held.

This is the biggest number of volunteers that the Chicago league has had for any campaign, and coming right after an appeal for volunteers for the distributions of the anti-militarist leaflets, it showed plainly that the Chicago league had the forces to carry on intensive activities in several fields at once.

A Red Week For the Young Worker.

When Comrade Natalie Gomez reported on the preparations that had been made for a big subscription drive, which would start on Sunday, July 19, when the comrades will canvass the lists of subscribers for the DAILY WORKER and the language press in Chicago, as well as the Workers Monthly and readers of the other radical press, it looked as if the Chicago league was going to be able to get enough subs to fill its quota in the Red Star Subscription Drive before the national convention. With the help of the lists which have been prepared, the members will be able to canvass for subs without spending hours in visiting homes where they will not be listened to.

The drive for subs will not only be on this Red Sunday, but will continue thruout the whole week, and as there is a large list of names the comrades expect to get many subs both for the Young Worker and the Young Comrade.

Prizes Will Be Given.

Prizes have been arranged for those comrades getting five, ten, fifteen and twenty subscriptions, and as these are especially attractive prizes, the comrades will try their best to win them.

After Comrade Gomez finished her report, there were many challenges from comrades and branches who felt sure they could beat the other in getting subs. Branch No. 4 challenged Branch No. 1 to get 75 subs; Branch No. 5 challenged No. 6 to 60 subs, and No. 2 challenged No. 3 to 25 subscriptions.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n157-NY-jul-14-1925-DW-LOC.pdf