Activity

The party soon completed its transition from persistent and vitriolic critic of Roosevelt and the New Deal to staunch supporter. On January 1, 1938, District 13 launched a new newspaper, People’s World (PW), a daily paper replacing the semiweekly WW. Al Richmond, the new managing editor, twenty-thr…

Though the CPUSA moved toward the Front populaire slowly and uncertainly in 1935 and 1936, the party was fully committed to working with New Deal Democrats by mid-1937. During 1937–1939 the California CP moved very close to the political mainstream—partly through circumstances over which the party …

Throughout 1935 the Western Worker continued to attack Roosevelt and the New Deal, condemning the work-relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as “a wage-cutting, anti-strike club held over the heads of every worker.” The Western Worker also condemned “the strike-breaking activit…

The West Coast strikes of 1934 came as the Executive Committee of the Comintern was moving away from the Third Period analysis and toward what in France was called the Front populaire, the People’s Front, and was usually called the Popular Front in the United States. Georgi Dimitrov, head of the Co…

The striking unions agreed to arbitration. The CP generally opposed arbitration. In the end, the arbitration board granted the ILA’s major demands: the six- hour day, a wage increase (less than the union had wanted, but significant), and union control of dispatching through a jointly funded hiring …