should have stayed behind the lines since they couldn’t afford to lose him. i S 5 , Ask any man of the Lincoln Washington if he knew Steve Nelson and the answer will always be the same:

“Do I know him? Steve’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Steve Nelson was born in a small company owned steel town in We- stern Pennsylvania 34 years ago. His father was a worker so he had

to go to work at the age of twelve, getting a job in a slaughterhouse in

Philadelphia. Eager for knowledge he was studying nights and enrolled in a course in architecture in the Phila YMCA.

Working in the Cramp’s Shipyards in Philadelphia he became ac- quainted with a member of the Socialist Labor Party and through him became interested i11 social problems. He kept on reading and studying, and logically, step by step, he came closer to the Communist position. He joined the Co-mmunist Party on the first anniversary ‘of Lenin’s death, at a memorial meeting held in Philadelphia.

From the time he joined the Party he Was active in its work, holding various o«ft'ices, doing organisational work among the miners, steel workers and later on in the Depression, among the unemployed. As the leader and organizer of the Unemployed Council of Chicago he was brutally beaten—up by the police in a demonstration, thrown into jail, the first of many similar experiences.

He was vice—preside11t of the Workers’ Alliance in Pennsylvania and :sub district organizer of the Communist Party when the Spanish re- bellion broke out. He came to Spain as a volunteer and the rest of it is a story that is familiar to every man in the XV Brigade. C

S. M.

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