"Exclusive Story of SP Convention Shows Collapse: Party Disintegrating and in Complete Control of Communists, Milwaukee Delegate Writes" by Frederic F. Heath [events of March 26-29, 1937] Published in The New Leader [New York], vol. 20, no. 14 (April 3, 1937), pp. 1-2. Published in USA between 1923 and 1978 with no copyright notice in first publication, public domain. Pioneer Milwaukee Socialist and founding member of the Socialist Party Frederic Heath offers a disillusioned and bitter account of the tumultuous 1937 national convention of the Socialist Party of America in Chicago. He and his moderate Wisconsin comrades had "felt as if they had blundered into an alien gathering to which they did not belong," he writes in a convention account for the New York Social Democratic Federation weekly, The New Leader. The first day of the gathering had been a shock, "surrounded by leering, victorious Communists who have made a complete capture of the movement we have given much of our lives to help build up," Heath notes. The fact that the convention had been placed "completely in the control of the enemy" was "a miracle that had been made possible by the arch betrayer, Norman Thomas," in Heath's estimation. A second part of the account, written two days later is more sanguine. Instead of seeing himself as part of a minority against a monolith in a 75-25 delegate split, Heath writes of delegates who were "not Communists in fact who had been stung by the direct actionistsâ tsetse bug" and who attempted compromise with the Wisconsin delegation, including 2 designated seats on the forthcoming 15 seat NEC. The ultimate way the Socialist Party of Wisconsin would proceed in the wake of the expulsion of the Old Guard New York organization and departure of the Pennsylvania and Connecticut organizations from the SPA was not yet known, Heath indicates. "There will be no relish, to state it mildly, for a national party with a shipload of Communist pirates aboard and manning the guns," he remarks. Edited with footnotes by Tim Davenport. Published by 1000 Flowers Publishing, Corvallis, OR, Feb. 2014. Uploaded to Archive.org by Tim Davenport ("Carrite") on Feb. 12, 2014. Non-commercial reproduction permitted