Following its loss on the floor of the Detroit Convention, the Old Guard then took its case to the rank and file of the party, which had been called upon to either approve or defeat the new Declaration of Principles in referendum vote. A Committee for the Preservation of the Socialist Party was established and an agitational pamphlet published. New York State Assemblyman Charles Solomon was the author of the group's first polemical piece urging defeat of the 1934 Declaration of Principles by the membership at referendum, entitled "Detroit and the Party." In this pamphlet, Solomon decried the Detroit Declaration of Principles as "reckless", observing pointedly that "furious phrases cannot take the place of organized mass power". Solomon noted that over "the past three or four years" there had arisen "certain definite groups" in the ranks of the Socialist Party. He continued by saying the following: