A Depression-era youth center is opened by the Young Communist League in the industrial, largely immigrant, northeast Cleveland neighborhood of Collinwood with mass unemployment well underway. We’ll check in on their work from time to time.

‘We Find Collinwood’ by R. Shohan from Young Worker. Vol. 9 No. 13. May 11, 1931.

The work in the Cleveland District since January brings forward one place of RESULTS…COLLINWOOD. This suburb of Cleveland was so little known to the YCL and the Party that no one even suggested it as a place for work when we first made up the plan in December.

When we chose the Fisher Body Plant we found that it was in Collinwood. As a result of work at the plant, through shop gate meetings, visiting of contacts, organization of the unemployed council and especially through the formation of a youth center we built a unit of three at first, now of 21 paid up members.

In the course of work we discovered “Collinwood.” It was like discovering America for us. In an area of 50 to 100 square blocks, populated by workers working in this area (mostly Italian, Slovenian, Polish, Hungarian) we have twenty or so large plants, some of the largest in Cleveland–all metal.

No less than 50 per cent of workers in above plants are youth. Collinwood is the industrial youth center of Cleveland.

In all Collinwood, we knew of only one organization sympathetic to the movement. It was a Hungarian Sick and Benefit Lodge. There we secured contacts of youth in large shops. Through these contacts we continued to build the YCL there. We went to one and with him to others. Within a week we had a League unit and contacts in most of the shops in Collinwood.

When we started the Youth Center, it raised problems which up to now were quite foreign to the YCL. We found that the new YCL members in the League one or two weeks were fully capable with the help of the district to run the Center.

Of the Italian young workers who attended the YCL meetings, two joined the League and the others we got into a sport club. Today that club has 21 members. In the unemployed council we have a wrestler who got a whole group of wrestlers who used the Community Center before it closed, to use our Center as soon as they get a mat. There are 30 of them, all workers. A girl’s sport club is being organized. A Lithuanian youth society of 50 will meet there beginning May.

A Negro sport club of 50 members meets there now. Altogether over 100 young workers, or closer to 150, use the center during the week.

It is impossible to build a general unit of the YCL in Collinwood. There are only 10 big shops, and so every member comes from some shop where our members work. Thus we built the first shop nucleus. It now has five and everyone but the first member was brought in by the comrades from the unit and the shop.

We are starting to build the Metal Workers Industrial League there now. Already we have two in another shop and perhaps can have a nucleus there soon. The dances and meetings of the Center are attended by young workers from every large plant in Collinwood.

Our work in the unemployed council gained us prestige among the workers. The activity of the leading YCL comrades, struggle at the associated charities, getting food, all these things laid the base of influence of the YCL among the workers and the young workers. Many mistakes were made by us especially in the field of complete neglect of unemployed youth work. Of this we will write separately.

One of the main tasks of the YCL in Collinwood is the struggle against white chauvinism. Since the Negro youth club meets in the Center there was an outcropping of chauvinism. This we fought against and will continue to do. Above all, every member of the nucleus was completely for our line and spoke in the discussion for the struggle for Negro rights. The basic task of the unit is the building of the MWIL. This is being started on a shop basis. We will get results. The results depend wholly on the leadership given by the District.

The work against the opponent organizations is important. The Slovenian Youth lodges have over 1,000 members in Collinwood. Our Youth Center is situated between the YMCA, YWCA, Salvation Army center, Slovenian halls controlled by Socialists, etc. Many of our members belong to these organizations. Just a week ago a girl joined the YCL who is the treasurer of one of the lodges. A large number of excellent issues present themselves there. The members have to pay 10 cents a month to the secretary, this was raised from 8 cents, so many quit. Unemployed are dropped, the lodge has no sports, etc. Excellent opportunity for the IWO. This we will start.

We have a manifest tendency to treat the unit as a hothouse plant. “Let it grow till it’s strong” before doing work. This is a fatal tendency. The unit will not grow and spread its influence until it leads the youth in struggle for their immediate interests. There may be a set back as we begin mass work. We may lose a few. But in their place will come still better young workers. The organization of the Metal Workers Industrial League and the shop nuclei, will go a long way towards defining the real role of the YCL Here we will not wait for “mythical” union forces. We will organize the MWIL ourselves.

The work for National Youth Day is developing. Many young workers will come from Collinwood. Shop delegations will be arranged.

Educational work must be developed. The leadership must be rapidly and properly developed. But circular methods won’t go here. The district organizer, the shock troops, the leading comrades must continue to work with these comrades, must have direct contact with non-YCL masses, must sell the Young Worker with the new members, must visit contacts with them, must teach them to speak at meetings and to young workers. The political line and understanding of these new comrades is not 100 per cent Leninist. But they are building the YCL, they built a nucleus before any other old unit did, and they will build others. We must teach these comrades. They are willing to learn.

The whole district, the whole YCL must learn the lessons from Collinwood. It did not need to take us three months to find it. There are other Collinwoods–Youngstown, Broadway, West Side in Cleveland, other districts have theirs.

Collinwood is an example of the first steps of the turn. A small example. Many errors, many shortcomings. The convention must analyze these. We must draw lessons, Youth Centers, work in opponents, contact with young workers by the leadership, work in unemployed councils, at shops. These are solutions to the making of the turn.

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/v09%20n01%20-%20n16%20Young%20Worker%201931%20Jan%20June.pdf