In 1933, he helped found the Mechanics Educational Society of America (MESA), which he served as national secretary of the group from 1933 until his death in 1958.
[4] In the United States, Smith resumed his radical pro-labor activities and eventually met socialist lawyer Maurice Sugar.
Smith helped form the Mechanics Educational Society of America in February 1933 and Sugar served as its lead counsel during its initial strike in Flint, Michigan in September 1933.
Founded among skilled tool and die workers in Detroit's automobile industry, MESA was known for class-conscious militant unionism which opposed the craft union-dominated American Federation of Labor.
In July 1938, the Smith-led MESA rejected an invitation to merge with the recently-organized Congress of Industrial Organizations, citing "fundamental differences in policy" while also arguing the CIO's established union in the auto-industry, United Autoworkers (UAW), was run by a "quasi-dictatorship.