A series of Daily Worker articles on the life and death of leading Communist in Youngstown, Ohio of the 1930s, a steel worker, and an artist, killed fighting fascism in Spain.

Joe Dallet Dies in Action At Saragossa. October 23, 1937.

The death in action of Joseph Dallet, Jr. political commander of the Mackenzie-Papineau of Canadian-United States anti-fascist volunteers with the Spanish People’s Army, was announced yesterday by the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Dallet, leading unionist and unemployed organizer in the United States before he made his way to Spain with a group of companions, WA 30 years old. He had been a member of the Communist Party since 1929.

He was arrested with his companions by a French patrol ship while they were making their way to Spain. They were given short jail sentences

When released, they managed to reach Spain and immediately joined the International Brigades.

As political commander of the Mackenzie Battalion at the Saragossa front Dallet was responsible for leading his men in the face of the greatest danger.

Always in the forefront of battle, he fell as scores of courageous Americans have died–in defense of the Spanish people and world democracy.

Steel Workers of Ohio, Pennsylvania Mourn Joe Dallett. October 26, 1937.

By John Steuben

One more soldier of the great International Brigade fell on the Spanish battlefield. A fascist bullet struck again and this time it was Joe Dallet. The news of his death was a great shock to thousands of steel workers in Youngstown, Warren, Niles, Weirton, Steubenville, McKeesport, Farrell, New Castle and Gary.

For in all of these steel centers, Dallet was well known. He was organizing the steel workers at a time when there was no C.I.O. and when the A.F.L. had completely abandoned this field. Almost single-handed, with no other help, but that of the Communist Party, Joe carried on the work of organizing the steel workers.

Joe’s life was rather a unique one. He came to our Party and to the labor movement not from a mine or a steel mill. Joe was the son of a well-to-do family. In his childhood and boyhood he had everything that he needed. He was tutored in private schools, went to Dartmouth College and was also a very talented pianist, of the latter, only his closest friends knew. He was so emerged in the work of the movement that he had very little time for music.

INTEREST IN SACCO-VANZETTI

He first became interested in the movement during the Sacco-Vanzetti days. He also attended Sacco-Vanzetti meetings, heard such outstanding labor leaders as William Z. Foster and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and became completely engrossed in the struggle against the vicious American frame-up system. He was soon able to connect the Sacco Vanzetti case with the broader aspects of the labor movement. He began to read Marxian literature and gradually began to lose interest in his past and in the position that his father provided for him. He read extensively of the struggles of the workers and became infatuated with the work of the I.W.W. But it did not take him very long to realize the difference between the I.W.W. of the present and the past.

JOINS COMMUNIST PARTY

In 1929, Joe decided to completely break away from his bourgeois past and become a worker himself and assimilate himself inside the ranks of the proletariat. He left a swell, home on Long Island and went to Pittsburgh to look for job in a steel mill. It was in a steel mill In the Pittsburgh district that he first learned by his own experiences of the lot of the workers. He also worked on the docks and other places, in 1929 he found himself idle with millions of others.

The movement of the unemployed developed rapidly. He attended a demonstration of the unemployed in Pittsburgh. Pat Devine was the speaker. As soon as Pat Devine began to speak, he was grabbed by the police and arrested. Joe could not stand such a high-handed attitude of the police. He rushed to the platform, jumped up and started to say something.

A policeman’s club came down over his head and he was dragged into the police wagon. It was in a cell of a Pittsburgh jail where Pat Devine outlined to Joe the principles of our Party, Joe walked out of the Pittsburgh jail a member of the Communist Party. From that day on, Joe was a most devoted and tireless soldier of the revolution.

His own experiences in a steel mill, his close association with the lives and problems of the steel work and the book by Comrade Foster on the 1919 steel strike, made at profound impression on Dallet. Almost uninterrupted, his time and work until he left for Spain was connected with the workers in the steel industry.

He was one of the outstanding leaders of the Steel and Metal Workers Union. He led the Republic steel strike in Warren, Ohio, and actively participated in all other struggles led by the Steel and Metal Workers Union. During the NRA period, he was the District Organizer of the union in Youngstown. In spite of great difficulties placed in the way of the union by Republic Steel, Youngstown Sheet and Tube and Carnegie-Illinois, the union under Dallet’s leadership carried on splendid educational campaign among the thousands of steel workers. Many an active worker in the steel union today got his first trade union education from Joe Dallet.

LEADER OF JOBLESS

Then came the revolt of the rank and file in the old Amalgamated Association against the “do-nothing” policies of the old leadership. Here too Dallet actively participated in this movement, especially were his contributions great in helping the rank and file put out the Progressive Steel Worker and other publications.

When the Trade Union Unity League merged its forces with the Amalgamated, Joe began to devote some of his time to the unemployed steel workers. He led many unemployed demonstrations and marches as well as individual families, helping them to obtain relief.

No sooner had he found a WPA Job than he began to organize these workers into the Hod Carries and Laborers Union. He was elected secretary of the union and remained. In this rapacity until the International office insisted that if he did not resign the local would be expelled from the organization.

Dallet spent several years in Youngstown. Ohio was his state. He developed a great attachment to the workers of Youngstown. Literally, the overwhelming majority of the population of Youngstown knew Joe Dallet. As the Party candidate for mayor and congressman, he put up a splendid campaign in popularizing the program of our Party as well as exposing the political agents of the Steel Trusts. Shortly after, Joe became the organizer of the Party and helped the Communist steel workers in their union work.

STEEL WORKERS MOURN HIM

When the struggle in Spain broke out and when he heard that many Americans volunteered to go to Spain to fight fascism, he immediately wished to go to Spain. Soon it became a burning desire. Many nights Joe and I spent together discussing the situation in Spain. It finally reached a point where Joe became very restless; his body and soul was in Spain. He finally organized a group of volunteers and left for Spain.

From Spain he wrote many enthusiastic letters. In one of them he said, “Soon I will be in the trenches, I am raring to go.” Joe did go and died as he lived–fighting for democracy, freedom and progress.

Many a steel workers’ home in Youngstown has been filled with deep sorrow by the news of his death.

Our Party in Youngstown and in Ohio has lost one of its finest sons. Personally, I lost one of my nearest and dearest friends, a co-worker since I have become active among the steel workers. I together with his many other comrades and friends in Youngstown and other steel centers shall carry on towards the realization of the principles and ideals for which Joe Dallet fought and died.

Ohio C.P. Mourns Joe Dallet’s Death. October 25, 1937.

Youngstown Communist Leader Died Fighting with Loyalist Army in Spain–Party Pledges Living Memorial

CLEVELAND, Ohio, Oct. 24. The Ohio State Committee of the Communist Party issued the following statement today:

“With deepest feelings we announce to our Party and all progressives that one of the outstanding Communist leaders in Youngstown, Joe Dallet, has been killed in action on the Saragossa front this week, where he served as political commissar of McKenzie-Papineau Brigade. Our Joe died as he had lived during the past eight years of his life, fighting in the front ranks of the workers and oppressed peoples, a true and loyal member of the Communist Party.

“Comrade Dallet’s death at the hands of the fascists is a great loss not only to the forces of democracy in Spain but to the Youngstown workers and to the Communist Party in Ohio.”

Appealing to Youngstown, the statement continues, “Let us be determined to follow the example of Joe in working devotedly, unsparingly as true Communists, mobilizing and organizing the people of Youngstown in fighting for the progressive movement. Let us build, as Joe has urged continuously in his letters from Spain, a mass party of steel workers in Youngstown, a real living memorial to the memory of our beloved comrade and friend.”

Foster Pays Tribute To Dallet as ‘Brave And Loyal Fighter’. October 27, 1937.

Chairman of Communist Party Expresses Sorrow on Death of Steel Organizer Fighting Against Fascism in Spain

Upon learning of the death of Joe Dallet, for many years a leading Communist in the great steel areas of Pennsylvania and Ohio, who was killed while leading a charge against the fascists in Spain, William Z. Foster, chairman of the Communist Party, yesterday expressed his deep sorrow in a statement made to the Daily Worker. Dallet was for many years a co-worker with Foster and others in the building of the early steal union. Foster’s statement in the form of a telegram sent a committee organizing a big memorial meeting to be held in Youngstown, Ohio, Oct. 31, read:

“It came as a great shock to me to learn that comrade Joe Dallet had been killed in action in Spain. He was a real fighter and his death is a deep loss to the revolutionary movement and a personal grief to his host of friends.

“Joe was one of those courageous militants who built the Steel and Metal Workers Industrial Union (Trade Union Unity League) in the face of Steel Trust gunmen and sluggers. He was a trail-blazer for the big C.I.O. campaign that has at last brought the steel workers into the folds of organized labor.

“In the class struggle in this country, Joe was always on the front line, and it was quite in accord with his militant revolutionary spirit that he should go to Spain to help beat back the hordes of a barbarous fascism. Such a brave and loyal fighter is a credit to the Communist Party, of which he was long a member. It is revolutionary fighters like Dallet who will write the epitaph of capitalism.”