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From Fourth International, Vol.6 No.11, November 1945, p.322.
Transcribed, marked up & formatted by Ted Crawford & David Walters in 2008 for ETOL.
With this issue of Fourth International we welcome two new literature agents. From Milwaukee, Carol Andrews writes:
“First of all I would like to notify you that I have been elected the new literature agent for Milwaukee. We have been placing FIs on a down town newsstand every month, each time selling out. I am planning on getting it on another newsstand, if possible.”
Our new Pittsburgh agent, Leona Massey, is also starting off with plans for increased sales. In her letter announcing her appointment as agent, she says
“Will you please send me ten more copies of the September issue and increase our regular bundle order by five copies monthly.”
More news from C.M. Hesser, of Portland, Oregon, who has introduced the FI in that city.
“Inclosed you will find check for $2.00 on our FI bill. We will try and pay the rest up as soon as possible. We are in a state of growth with more going out – than in.
“We placed the FI on the newsstand as I told you in another1etter – they have sold all the copies, so want to double the amount this coming issue.
“If we had a little more money to start with – am sure that we could sell twice that number by putting the FI on other stands – but everything in time.
“On the whole, we are having lots of good luck – with just a little bad.”
New York continues to do well with sales at meetings. Sylvia Stein, agent, writes:
“We, of Militant Labor Forum, are happy to announce to you that we sold five copies of the September issue of the FI at our first meeting this season. The chairman mentioned two outstanding articles, Guerin’s Introduction to Fascism and Big Business and Trotsky’s Nationalism and Economic Life.”
Trotsky’s article was also reviewed by agent Dan Shelton before another group in New York. Literature agents can promote the FI through such suggestions to groups with gratifying results. Lou Cooper, another New York agent, based a lecture The Invasion of Japan on Li Fu-Jen’s series of articles which appeared in the February-March-April l944 issues of the FI. Art Simmons, literature agent of the New York Trotskyist Youth Group, writes us that in preparing educational for young workers and students, the FI is largely used for material. We would welcome letters from agents in other sections on the use they make of the FI for educational purposes.
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C.J.B. of Oberlin, Ohio, writes:
“Enclosed you will find $1.00 for a 6-month subscription to Fourth International. As I am a sympathizer I enjoy reading this theoretical magazine. I like the analysis of the world situation in the light of the Marxist viewpoint the best.”
A Maryland reader sends a suggestion to the editor:
“The current (No.24) issue of Scott Nearing’s World Events contains this statement: ‘The Soviet Union has repudiated profiteering in both theory and practice.’ I have in the past mailed you several issues of this World Events Sheet. In it, Scott Nearing as you will see, continually and consistently ‘toots the horn and bangs the drum’ for everything that Moscow does, or even threatens to do. To me it has become nauseating, and I am asking if it would not be splendid business for one of the staff of Fourth International to go through every issue of Nearing’s World Events (it’s about 16 months old now) and take the thing apart, exposing it for what – to me – it obviously is ... a mouthpiece of Stalinist policy here in this country.”
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More and more of our foreign readers are writing to us. A Dublin reader acknowledges receipt of the magazine and says,
“The material sent to us is utilized in the best possible manner, and the quality of each successive publication of the US party is phenomenal. The cessation of the war in Europe has not wrought any perceptible change in the general condition of the country. We here in Ireland will miss the turbulent period of reconversion presently being experienced by yourselves and the British comrades. On the other hand the impoverished European economy and Ireland’s total dependence on same, places the rehabilitation of Ireland on the list, as a non-priority.
““Flowing from this, the present emergency restrictions will remain in operation, presupposing the wage freeze and the other anti-working legislation that maintains at a coolie level, the living standards of the workers ... In view of the foregoing there will undoubtedly be a radicalization of the masses here in Ireland. When the Irish workers consider that the economy was not devastated by the conflict raging on their threshold and the comparative easement of conditions in the rest of Europe has no counterpart in Ireland, the stage will be set for the emergence of a new socialist consciousness and the development of the Trotskyist party as the combat party of the working class.”
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The manager invites comments and criticisms from our agents and subscribers on the contents and make up of Fourth International. We feel that now is the time to get the magazine into the hands of more and more people, who are coming to realize the bankruptcy of capitalism and are receptive to the Marxist answer. We for our part promise to study seriously all comments, suggestions and criticism that we receive. By joint effort we can make Fourth International the magazine we want it to be: The authoritative theoretical journal of the American revolution.
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Last updated on 10.9.2008