276

several visits to our laree financial backers to explain the situation after the
publicity in the papers.71

The least that can be said is that the CP and the young Socialist militants of
the PUL did not gravitate toward each other, despite some convergences of
political orientation, especially around racism. Undoubtedly the Communist
Party's Third period position that identified competing liberals and socialists as
"social fascists" had its effects. On the other hand, Baltimore's Socialists were not
themselves free from sectarianism, as their purge of a PUL local controlled by
Communists and the lack of support the PUL gave the besieged seamen of the
MW1U in mid-1934 indicate. Nevertheless, in Baltimore, whether because of lack
of forces or working-class "purism," the CP organized very little among middle-class
intellectuals as a group (although they accepted the stray recruit from this stratum)
- the group from which the younger socialists emanated. During the later Popular
Front period, the PUL would find itself in the national unemployed organization,
the Workers Alliance of America, with a less sectarian CP. But in Baltimore, in
early 1933, the CP and the young Socialists of the PUL, operated largely in
different spheres.