SLOVAK FEDERATIONS
The Slovak Federation began early in 1904 in Chicago. During its earliest years in maintained an independent existence, not affiliated to any political party. The Federation began the publication of its own weekly newspaper in the Slovak language, Rovnost Ludu, in that same year. Stefan Marincek was prominent as a speaker and organizer of the new Federation and Frank Klabik served as editor of the party organ for four years.
Slovak Federation of the Sociailst Party of America
The Slovak Federation affiliated with the Socialist Party of America in June of 1913. At that time the Federation counted 590 members in 22 functioning branches. A period of considerable growth followed, with 20 branches and 133 members added during the next year. In 1916 the membership of the Slovak Federation was approximately 800, with 38 branches spread across the midwest and industrial north.
The Slovak Federation produced an annual almanac in an edition of 3,000, containing original material and translations. It also began publication of a monthly Slovak-language paper in New York in the first half of the 1910s.
[fn: Paul Bruchtel, "The Slovak Socialist Federation" in The American Labor Year-Book, 1916. (NY: Rand School Press, 1916), pp. 142-143.] There were no primary party groups of the United Communist Party that spoke Slovak, according to that organization's December 1920 statistics.
The Czecho-Slovak Federation of the Workers Party of America
In June of 1922, the Czecho-Slovak Marxist Federation submitted the question of affilation with the Workers Party of America to a vote of its members. In July the Executive Committee of the group further took up the question, voting nearly unanimously to affiliate with the WPA. The organization published an official organ called Spravdelost from an office located at 1825 S Loomis St., Chicago.
[fn. Comintern Archive, f. 515, op. 1, d. 146, l. 168; d. 147, l. 73.]
JANUARY 1923 Workers Party of America Official Membership Statistics." [prepared circa Jan. 1924] A complete month-by-month account of the paid membership of the Workers Party of America expressed in terms of membership of the various language federations of the party as well as by membership district. At the end of 1923 there were 18 language groups of the WPA (ten largest: Finnish, English, South Slavic, Jewish, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian, German, Czechoslovak, Latvian) and 14 Districts (six largest: New York, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit). Average paid membership for the year was 15,395, of which a massive 42.7% were members of the Finnish language federation. While many members of the various language groups were fluent in English, the membership of the English language groups was just 7.6% of the WPA for 1923.
