International Unemployment Day
The Unemployment Day marches, organized by the Communist International and coordinated by its various member parties, resulted in two deaths of protestors in Berlin, injuries at events in Vienna and the Basque city of Bilbao, and less violent outcomes in London and Sydney.
A total of 30 American cities in all saw mass demonstrations as part of the March 6 campaign, including Boston, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Cleveland, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Seattle.
By 1930, the economic boom of the 1920s was a mere memory, replaced by a stock market crash and severe contraction of the interlocked capitalist economies of the world.
The Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) in Moscow was preoccupied with the worsening economic crisis from its outset, and identified escalating unemployment as capitalism's potentially most inflammatory flaw.
In his main report to the "Enlarged Presidium" of ECCI in February, in which he declared that the forthcoming March 6 demonstrations would enable workers to protest against the ruling class's efforts to "shuffle off all the consequences of the ripening world economic crisis on their shoulders".
[3] Manuilsky's report identified the United States as the center of the world economic crisis and pegged American unemployment at 6 million.
The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) prepared for the March 6 actions with agitational meetings and leaflets, over 1 million of which were circulated in anticipation of the event.
"[8] The crowd vehemently responded in the negative, and Foster immediately began leading an impromptu march down Broadway to City Hall.
[9] Foster was arrested together with Communist Party leaders Robert Minor, and Israel Amter on the steps of City Hall.
William Miller of the rival Communist Party (Majority Group), headed by Jay Lovestone, asserted that about 30,000 workers had answered the call to demonstrate on March 6, joined for a brief time by about 45,000 downtown employees off during lunch hour.
[11] Moreover, Miller notes, CPUSA District Organizer Jack Stachel had gone into hiding two days before the event and did not even witness the purported incidents about which he so breathlessly wired the Daily Worker.
[12] Despite the climate of fear, an estimated 50,000 turned out for the International Unemployment Day protest, marching through the streets 12 abreast for about four hours.
[6] According to the CPUSA press an additional 15,000 assembled at LaFayette Square in Buffalo, New York,[13] a like number in Canton, Ohio,[14] while 10,000 marched in Washington, DC.
[16] In all the CPUSA claimed that more than 1.25 million workers "demonstrated on the streets in face of the police terror and poisonous propaganda of the American Federation of Labor and Socialist Party".
[18] Events in Wilkes-Barre (29 participants, of whom 6 were arrested) and New Bedford (150 in attendance, 50 actually marching) were held up as examples of CPUSA organizational failure.
[20] Turnout in Paris was modest, with demonstrations banned, and only about 2500 protestors willing to challenge the large force of police and soldiers positioned to keep order.
[24] Historian Harvey Klehr has noted that already by the end of April "there were rueful admissions that the March 6 success was due less to Communist capture of the masses than to the spontaneous outpouring of hundreds of thousands of workers with no other outlet for expressing their feelings.
At 10:00 am on June 9, 1930, a new "Special Committee to Investigate Communist Activities in the United States" was called to order by the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time.
