Newly elected to its leadership and soon to be editor of its paper, Max Shacthman reports on the debates and accomplishments of the Young Workers League second national convention held in Chicago during May, 1923.

‘The Second Convention’ by Max Shachtman from The Young Worker. Vol. 2 No. 6. June, 1923.

“THE first National Convention of the Young Workers League was the gathering place, the point of union of all the revolutionary class conscious young workers who all accepted more or less the leadership of the Young Communist International. It is the task of the Second National Convention to lay the basis for a League which can take into itself any young worker whether he happen to be a communist at the moment or not. By working in the spirit of the Young Communist International we can become the training school for Communism.”

These were the words of Harry Gannes, Secretary of the Young Workers League of America, as he declared the Second Convention of the League open; and every decision of the three days’ sessions was an indication of a distinct move in that direction.

Thirty-one delegates gathered at Chicago, thirty-one delegates who represented nearly 2,000 members. Many of the branches were financially unable to send delegates, but 13 states were represented in spite of that. They came from Seattle, Los Angeles, the Twin Cities of Minnesota, Chicago, Milwaukee, Gary, Cleveland, Neffs, Pittsburg, Boston, Philadelphia, New York and cities in between; from the mine, the steel mills, the universities, the factories, the stores, the needle shops, the construction works, the machine shops and the offices.

The delegates were serious. They had a task before them and their working spirit was made evident when they were obliged to refuse with regret the invitation extended by the Voice of Labor to attend the meeting of James P. Cannon, who was to speak at night; it would have meant the loss of a session!

Without any delays, the convention started to work. The rules of order were adopted, and in according with good, democrats principles, provisions was made for minority reports. Comrade Abern was elected first chairman, with Bill Schneiderman, of Los Angeles, as permanent secretary of the convention.

The first question which was disposed of was that of International Affiliation. After a report by Martin Abern, one of our delegates to the recent Congress of the Y.C.L. in which he sketched its rise and growth, the convention unanimously accepted the proposal to maintain the same relations with the International as heretofore, with the hope that the time was near when we could become the official American section. As though in answer to the decision, a cablegram was read from the Executive Committee of the International:

GREETINGS SECOND CONVENTION. ONLY YOUTH ORGANIZATION SHOWING RESULTS. GREAT TASKS. FIND WAYS AND MEANS WINNING MASSES. LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONAL!”

As well as any others, the words “ways and means winning masses^^ expressed the actions of the convention until the moment when the last bars of the International announced the end of the three days of constructive work.

The groundwork for the new League was laid when the plan for reorganization from the territorial to the shop nucleus branch was accepted. The last detail had been worked out, not only for the plan in its final, ideal form, but as it would function in the transition period between the two opposite forms : the geographical and the industrial; the branch based on a group of young workers, who had nothing in common except residence in a certain section, and the branch based on a group of young workers whose vital interests—their means of sustaining life—were one and the same because they toiled in the same factory, mine or mill. It was the same plan as the one adopted at the Congress of the Young International and its inauguration had increased, in the period of two months, the membership of the German League by 10,000 young workers!

The N.E.C., in whose name the plan was presented by John Edwards, was not laboring under any illusions as to the immediate “workability” of the Shop Nuclei. It was admitted that it was an experiment, but an experiment which we were certain would succeed in practice. Within a year, however, the League should be organized on that basis, within a year of energetic and sincere work. In Neffs, Ohio, for example, the plan had been put into practice by our branch long before it had been heard of in the rest of the country; and the Neffs branch is composed exclusively of workers and it sent a miner from the earth’s guts to the convention.

“Every young worker an agitator on the job,” was the slogan. On the job was the place to organize, to spread propaganda to your bench mate, or your friend in a coal pocket, in the department store or the high school. That was how the I.W.W. built up a native American membership of tens of thousands and failed only because it was a dual organization which fell into the hands of anarchists and anti-political syndicalists.

Following them in their organizational form, we have the advantage of not being dual in form, but a supplementary organization, and of having a strongly centralized leadership in a political organization. On the job, literature can be distributed, the class position of the worker pointed out, and the class nature of the State indicated when the policeman’s club hits Mr. Scissor Bill, Jr., on the head when he is picketing. At the point of production, as the wobblies liked to call it, was where applied Marxism could be taught which would be worth a month of unattended study classes with their sectarian exclusiveness, gaining in size every day—but in the same direction as an ingrown nail.

A minority report by Herbert Zam (N.Y.) attempted to reconcile both the present and the future form, to keep these anomalies side by side. As delegate after delegate pointed out, this was impossible. One excluded the other. And when the vote was taken, only two voted against the National Executive Committee plan and even those two in a statement pledged themselves to carry out the decisions of the convention to a “t”.

It was really the reorganization plan that killed the foreign language question. Organized on the job, the young workers speaking a different tongue would be drawn together with the others and be forced by circumstance to give up their tendencies towards seclusion into their own little branches, more concerned very often, with the problems of the country of their birth than with those of their country by residence. One of the delegates from the Workers Party, comrade Jay Lovestone rightly said that Federations had been the bane of the movement in this country; and it was a mere formality which sent a resolution to the incoming N.E.C. to decide on all matters relating to foreign language branches. The “problem” had died naturally. At the convention there was no sentiment for either a “conference” or a “federation.”

It was Jonh Edwards, too, who reported on the economic demands of the League. In the richest country of the world, millions of youths are being exploited. Over a million and a half of young workers between the ages of 10 and 15 are deprived of the joys which are Youth’s due in order that more profits may be made for the bursting strong boxes of Capital. Thousands are killed annually in the more dangerous trades.

A letter from the Monesson, Penna., branch of the League was read at the convention:

“A young worker, 16 years of age, had reached the center of the foundry of the Pittsburg Steel Co., when a crane carrying a ladle of molten steel, moving overhead suddenly broke; the boy ran but was caught in the molten current. He kept on running and when rescued he was crippled for life; he had no legs, only, yes only, stumps.

“In the Duquesne Steel Works recently a worker overcome from the heat fell into a huge ladle of molten steel and the result was not a trace was left of him. Chalk up another for Gary’s twelve hour day.

“In the American Sheet and Tin Plate Co., at Monessen recently the huge housing of a rolling mill toppled over on a worker—he was fortunate he only had both legs chopped off.

“Hot grease and oil is always splashing and burns are not rare in this hell. In winter it is the finest place to catch pneumonia in the world. The heat of the steel brings the temperature up to around 80 to 90 degrees, sometimes more; suddenly the doors are thrown open to admit an engine to enter and the temperature in a few minutes drops to 20 or 30 degrees and chills their sweat-covered bodies. You know the results.

“These are just a few of the incidents that are an everyday occurrence. To see them creates a bitterness in one to work onward to the abolition of the system that creates these conditions. To you comrades who sometimes tire of the incessant struggle we charge you do not desert us for to do so at this time is treason to your class in the highest degree.”

It was conditions like this which caused the convention to formulate economic demands which have as their ultimate aim the Transformation of Youth Labor and its Socialist Reorganization. We demand:

1. Abolition of Child Labor.

2. Equal wages for equal work for young and adult workers.

3. Minimum wages ranging from subsistence minimum upwards.

4. Establishment of six hour day and five day week for all youth labor with full pay.

5. Abolition of all overtime and night work for youth labor up to 20 years of age.

6. Fully paid four weeks annual vacation.

7. Abolition of piece work and speed-up system.

8. Prohibition of young workers up to 20 years being employed in shops and industries injurious to their life and health, (mines, chemical mills, steel industry, glass works, etc.).

9. Unemployed young workers should be paid regular union rate of wages for period of unemployment.

10. Two years apprenticeship, including the probation period.

11. Strict supervision of apprenticeship by organs of the working class (trade unions, shop councils,)

12. Shop vocational training for all young workers up to the age of 18. Setting up of apprentice departments in all places of work. These departments to be controlled by labor unions, full wages to be paid the young workers at union rate of wages.

These are demands on which every trade unionist, every young worker, whether he be communist, socialist or no “ist” at all, can unite. All that is necessary for one to have in order to unite on these demands is a desire to be a human being and not some sort of a creature whose condition is just below that of a Chinese coolie.

It was conditions like those described in the Monessen letter which led the convention to call on the new N.E.C. to draw up a letter to the Organization Committee of the A.F. of L. asking them to inaugurate a campaign for the organization of the young slaves of America. This is no empty gesture, no rhetorical phrase. The workers of America will hear more of this, and in the very near future.

Besides enslaving the Youth in the workshops and mills, Capitalism doses them regularly with carefully prepared double portions of rot in the form of “education” whose sole purpose is the raising of the knowledge of the Youth only to the point where they know enough to carry on their work in the shop. Incidentally they are taught to accept Capitalism and abjure the radicals, for all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The Educational Program of the Young Workers League, prepared by Martin Abern was adopted without change as an enlarged supplement to the “education on the job” and a powerful weapon, not only for counteracting Capitalism’s drugs but for molding a leadership in the army for the overthrow of the Capitalist System.

Like the old emperors of Rome who kept their slaves contented by amusing them with gladiatorial combats, the bourgeoisie play on the instincts of the Youth by offering them various sports in order to keep them from thinking of their daily drudgeries. Bourgeois sports, with its sordid intrigues and “game- fixings” must be replaced by workers’ sports. As pointed out in Alfred Albright’s report on Sport Organization, the League must take the initiative in forming an American section of the Red Sport International which already has a large following in such countries as Germany, Russia, France, Chechoslovakia, the Scandinavian countries, Italy and England. A beginning in this direction has already been made by us in the League.

In accordance with all Communist Youth organizations, the League placed itself firmly in the rank of anti-imperialism. In a resolution adopted as soon as the convention opened we were pledged to fight for the release of all class war prisoners and to join in with any movement whose aim was the prevention of the rise of an American White Guardist organization, whether its name be the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti or the American Sentinels. It was therefore logical to accept the report on anti Militarism by comrade Albright. Not a pacifist struggle which calls for the disarming of the workers; not a Christian struggle which treacherously demands the turning of the other cheek, but the communist struggle against the germs of Imperialism and its child, War, the incessant fight against Capitalism itself, which is the breeder of wars just as surely as cows bear calves.

To prepare the future victim of Imperialist Wars, it is necessary to teach them the truth. Give us the child until seven years of age, said one of the Jesuits, and then you can have him for the rest of his life. With the definite birth of our Children’s Section, we will not only have sown the seeds of proletarian truth but shall have a section from which our future strength can be drawn. In the formation of such a section the Workers Party will of course be of signal aid. The children of its members will be the kernel of the movement, and their friends will soon gather by the hundreds. The success of the section is well assured and it will soon have its own paper, too. It will have to be written largely by children themselves and a substantial circulation has already been guaranteed by sections of the Party. The individualistic, anarchist, Modern School methods, as well as the neither-here-nor-there Socialist Sunday Schools of the past will be supplanted by a definite, well-directed organization of working class children all over the country.

Comrade Gannes reported that the Young Worker had been set up on its feet after the most difficult circumstances, but that it had been, in substance, an organ of the N.E.C. They had even to resort to the subterfuge of writing under thinly disguised names. The membership seemed to have a strange fear of writing. Though the last few issues showed an advance in the right direction, there was much to be desired. The membership, the young workers as a whole, in fact, must make the Young Worker their organ by writing in it of their daily lives and activities in their places of work and in all the fields of League activity. The circulation must be increased so as to permit the lowering of the price and the weekly publication of the paper. It must be made accessible to Mr. Scissor Bill, Jr.

Changes were made in the constitution so as to allow for the new system of organization, for the experience gained in the past year and more strictly in accordance with communist centralization. It was also decided that a League member at the age of 25 must join the Party and a Party member at the age of 20 or under join the League. This was done in response to Comrade Lovestone’s appeal for closer cooperation and in answer to the feeling of greater organizational unity which the sharpening struggle demands. We also went on record in favor of moving the Party headquarters to Chicago, for as Jay Lovestone said, “Every little bit helps.”

Our program was accepted as a basis for discussion during the year and for adoption at the next convention. It is a piece of work of which we may be justly proud. It starts out with a review of the situation in America, the causes of the breakdown of the Capitalist system of production and distribution, the position of the Young workers in society, with regard to Wars, the role of the State, the function of the League and the historic tasks of the revolutionary youth. It is a document simply written, but as fine a Marxian communist program as has ever been placed before the young workers of any country.

After a short speech by the delegate from the Young Communist League of Canada, Leslie Morris, a fine, blue-eyed fighting Welshman, in which he described the movement across the border and the obstacles it was overcoming, the convention sent communist greetings to the Young Communist League of Canada and of Mexico, with the hopes that close contact would be maintained in the future. Similar greetings were sent to the Leagues in Italy, Russia, and to the French and German Leagues congratulating them on their splendid fight in the Ruhr valley.

The convention drew to a close with the election of a National Executive Committee. The preponderance of Chicago comrades is explained by a resolution which was passed providing that at least six of the nine members be residents of the city in order that the committee’s work be more effective. The new National Executive Committee consists of:

Martin Abern, Chicago; Alfred Albright, Chicago; Sydney Borgeson, Minneapolis; John Edwards, Chicago; Harry Gannes, Chicago; Nat Kaplan, New York; Max Salzman, Chicago; John Williamson, Seattle; with the comrades

Nat Carmen, New York; Natalie Gomez, Chicago; Paul Klein, Chicago; Max Lerner, New York; Barney Mass, Kansas City; Rebecca Sacherow, Cleveland; Wm. Schneiderman, Los Angeles; Max Shachtman, New York as alternates.

Then:

“The International Party Shall be the human race,” and the convention was at an end.

It is customary to end an account of a radical convention by writing that “it marked a turning point” and that “we go onwards with new vigor”; and some comrades read and smile skeptically. They have heard these phrases before. But we can say with absolute truth that the convention DID mark a turning point. We HAVE laid the basis for a new organization whose strength shall be drawn from the masses of American young workers and whose inspiration will be drawn from the leadership of the Young Communist International. On that foundation and with that inspiration^ it is the duty of the membership to go forward with vigor, with faith, with assurance of victory. The word now lies with the membership, the rank and file, with Jimmie and Jane Higgins.

Onward, ever onward, clear-eyed to the Dawn!

The Future belongs to us.

The Young Worker was produced by the Young Workers League of America beginning in 1922. The name of the Workers Party youth league followed the name of the adult party, changing to the Young Workers (Communist) League when the Workers Party became the Workers (Communist) Party in 1926. The journal was published monthly in Chicago and continued until 1927. Editors included Oliver Carlson, Martin Abern, Max Schachtman, Nat Kaplan, and Harry Gannes.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/youngworker/v2n6-jun-1923-yw.pdf