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history the league became a member of the BFL, its members began to participate

•JO

fully in that body, and it received the BFL's endorsement.

PUL organizers also developed strong links with the important segments of
the industrial union movement with the help of Socialist Party contacts. Like BFL
head Broening, Hyman Blumberg, former president of the Baltimore ACW Joint
Board, who had risen by early 1933 to the vice presidency of the national union,
publicly endorsed the PUL and its program at the organizations inception. And
like the BFL's McCurdy, Blumberg's successor as head of the ACW Joint Board,
Ulisse De Dominicis, was a consistent supporter of the League. The industrial
unions, though, did far more than the craft unions. The ACW, along with a few
other unions, contributed money to the PUL, and, while such unions generally
attempted to help their unemployed members themselves, they also channeled
jobless garment workers to the PUL. Those locals strongly based in ethnic
communities, along with the other socialistically-oriented community institutions,
gave PUL legitimacy in and entry to those communities. The ACW was probably
the crucial link in this process. When Frank Trager wrote Norman Thomas in
March 1934 about the progress of the PUL, he singled out the ACW in particular as
PUL's most dependable supporter. In fact, it is likely that the alliance of younger
and older socialists at the core of PUL was consolidated during their common

*70

support work for the 1932 Amalgamated Clothing Worker's strike/-*

The relationship of the PUL-based Socialists and the leading circles of the
more militant non-Communist-led industrial unions rapidly became extremely close
and reciprocal. Frank Trager emphasized this years later:

Those of us who were active in the PUL were also teaching for the trade
unions, and those of us who were teaching for the trade unions were also
active as more-or-less unofficial and sometimes official trade-union
organizers for the textile workers, the clothing workers, the needle trades ~
mostly the clothing workers and textile.

ACW leader Sara Barron had similar memories. Years after the fact, she