> I'm genuinely curious as to how "Jewish" and New York-centric was the CPUSA in 1930.
>
> Offhand, I know that members from East European immigrant families, notably Jews and Ukranians, were disproprotionately represented in the Canadian and American parties. So were Finns. This isn't surprising since all came from national minority groups who had strongly contributed to the revolutionary overthrow of Tsarism.
>
> But my understanding is that the party from its inception also had a strong base in those regions of the country and in those industries where the IWW and Socialist Party had sunk roots - among native-born American workers in working in the mines, on the docks, in transportation and shipping,
By 1930? I wouldn't use the phrase "strong base" in those areas.
Some info from "A Final Stab at Insurrection: American Communist Party, 1928-34" in this book: http://tinyurl.com/2f3cytc
To give some idea of what the party was like politically during the Third Period:
> That same year [1932] [William Z.] Foster's most unabashed book,
> Toward Soviet America, announced CPUSA intentions to liquidate 'all
> the capitalist parties, Republican, Democratic, Progressive,
> Socialist, etc.' along with the YMCA and 'such fraternal orders as the
> Masons, Odd Fellows, Elks, [and] Knights of Columbus.' ....For good
> measure, Foster promised confiscation of church lands....Without
> conscious irony, the candidate proclaimed 'the best of the
> skyscrapers' would be 'used to house the new government institutions,'
> including the communist party.
This might help explain the following data on membership:
> In the United States, Bolshevization [begun in 1925] sought also to
> 'Americanize' the party by destroying the foreign-language federations
> to which most communists belonged. Klehr and Haynes show that as a
> direct result, membership dropped from 16,325 in early 1925 to only
> 7,213 in October. From here to 1930, and despite recruitment, the
> party ranks remained thin, averaging only 9000 to 10,000 members. Even
> so, this costly change did not alter the movement's social fabric,
> because of the immigrants' residential patterns. 'In a practical
> sense,' most members remained in neighborhood clubs, rather than shop
> branches, and many of the former 'tended to be foreign-language clubs
> in all but name.'
>
> [...]
>
> Below the leadership level, the CPUSA's social composition underwent
> profound changes during the Third Period. Originally a party of
> Russian, Lithuanian and Ukranian immigrants, it had seen Finns from
> the upper-midwest outnumber Slavs by 1923, but never match their
> influence. By 1932, Jews in big cities held a commanding presence. The
> party had only about 8000 total members, but reached 18,000 the
> following year. As Klehr and Haynes note, the typical communist was 'a
> white, foreign-born male,' aged between 30 and 40, and 'unemployed.'
>
> [...]
>
> By late 1934, any thoughtful observer could recognize that Third
> Period strategy had failed. Although more than 10,000,000 Americans
> remained unemployed, CPUSA membership had climbed to only 26,000.
Also worth noting: The party's vote totals in 1928 and 1932 were 48,000 and 102,000. By comparison, in 1976 the SWP got 90,000.