An adventure in working-class education : being the story of the Workers' Educational Association, 1903-1915

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AN ADVENTURE IN
WORKING - CLASS EDUCATION

The Author.
After a Drawing by William Rothenstein, December 1918.

AN ADVENTURE IN
WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION

BEING THE STORY OF THE

WORKERS' EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION

1908-1915

BT

ALBERT MANSBRIDGE, Hon. M.A. (Oxon.)

FOUHDEB AKD GEMEBAL 8ECBETABY, 1903-1915

With 13 Illustrations

(*3I 3<|

So - fr • a '

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1920

TO THE MEMORY

OF THOSE GALLANT SOULS

WHO SHARED THE ADVENTURE OF

THE W.E.A.

AND DIED FIGHTING FOR

THEIR COUNTRY IN THE

GREAT WAR, 1914-1918.

PREFACE

At a moment when the education of adults is attracting
renewed attention as a direct result of increasing determina-
tion on the part of men and women to realise a larger ideal
of citizenship, it is fitting that the adventurous story of the
W.E.A. should be told. The telling of the story may
help to develop, as well as to secure the preservation of, the
characteristic spirit of a movement which has come to be
regarded as one of the most forceful of our time.

It is probable that this could be done by a sympathetic and
close observer of the movement, better than by one who was, for
twelve years, immersed in the details of its daily work. The
encouragement, however, of many friends, and particularly
of one who is at this moment endeavouring to strengthen the
material resources of the movement, has emboldened me to
undertake the difficult task. I can only hope that the advan-
tages I possess of a unique and peculiar knowledge of its early
days, an anxious solicitude for its welfare, and a boundless
enthusiasm for the cause which it serves, will enable me to
convey to my readers some idea of the spirit of self-sacrifice
and fellowship which has characterised the movement from
the beginning.

At the outset I had to determine whether my story should
be personal or detached. My inclination being towards the
latter method I have adopted it on the whole, but there are
times when personal reminiscence, of necessity, prevails and
breaks the even line of the story.

vi PEEFACE

It only remains for me to express my gratitude to those
numerous fellow workers in the cause who made the story
possible, and especially to Mr. T. W. Price (Assistant Secretary
of the W.E.A.), Mr Huws Davies, and Miss D. L. Adler, who
more than anyone else have helped me to tell it ; also to Miss
Leila Thomas, a Tutor in the W.E.A. of New South Wales, who
helped me to prepare the book for publication.

ALBERT MANSBEIDGE.
April 1920.

CONTENTS

i.

Preface

Prologue. The Spirit of Adventure,

Adult Educational Effort in the Nineteenth
Century ....

II. The Beginning of the Adventure

III. Early Days

IV. Work in Town and Country
V. Responsibility and Government

VI. University Tutorial Classes

VII. In the Overseas Dominions.

VIII. The W.E.A. Spirit

IX. The War and After .

PAGB

V

xiii

1
9
16
23
29
36
46
54
61

APPENDICES

I. Statistics of W.E.A. Development ... 67
II. The First Year's Work of the Rochdale Branch 69

III. Note on the World Association for Adult

Education 72

IV. Bibliography ... ... 72

vii

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Author Frontispiece

After a Drawing by William Rothenstein, December 1918

Past and Present Members (August 1907) op
the Executive Committee op the Pioneer
Branch op the Association founded at
Heading in 1904 facing p. 15

The President of the Association . „ 17

Some Delegates present at the Third Annual
Meeting held at Birmingham, October
1905 23

Some Delegates present at the Fifth Annual
Meeting held at Birmingham, October
1907 ,,26

The Officials of the Association at Toynbee

Hall, January 1909 „ 32

Joint Committee on Oxford and Working-Class

Education, December 26, 1907 . . „ 35

The Pioneer University Tutorial Class at

Kochdale, 1907 „ 41

Tutor : R. H. Tawney, Balliol College, Oxford.
Subject : Industrial History.

The Pioneer Tutor in Australia, Meredith
Atkinson, and the Pioneer Secretary in
Australia, David Stewart ... „ 46

Mrs. Albert Mansbridge .... „ 51

After a Drawing by William Rothenstein, December 1917

ix a 2

x ILLUSTKATIONS

University Tutorial Class at Toronto, 1919. facing p. 53

Tutor : W. L. Grant, Principal of Upper Canada

College.
Subject : Political History.

A Discussion with the late Canon Scott
Holland in the Fellows' Garden at
Balliol College, Oxford ... „ 60

The two streams of labour and scholarship unite to make a
great and powerful river of education, which must by an unerring
law draw to itself most, if not all, the runnels and rivulets of
thought making their way to the open sea of a free people.

That is, at once, the condition and meaning of the Workers'
Educational Association.

It conforms to the very ideal of democracy, which preconditions
the gathering up of the true influence of every man, woman, and
child for translation into terms of the common life.

The Workers' Educational Association has developed because
it has drawn together men and women, not infrequently passionate
in their divergencies of experience and belief, and has constructed
for them a University, intangible and widely diffused indeed,
wherein they may, unhindered and in fellowship, advance know-
ledge, increase wisdom, and reveal truth.

As an organisation for education it stands unique, because it
has united for the purposes of their mutual development Labour
and Scholarship in and through their respective associations of
Trade Unions and Universities, and because of this unity, so
secured, the power of the spirit of wisdom has been increased in
the affairs of men, and the building of 'Jerusalem in England's
green and pleasant land * has become at least a nearer prospect.

PROLOGUE

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE IN EDUCATION

If the story of any movement which is in itself true be
rightly told, the spirit which ' by reason of its pureness ' goes
through the whole range of its activities will be perceived
with increasing certainty, as the days of its life pass under
review.

For this reason certain of my critics have urged that this
portion of the book is unnecessary, whilst others have asserted
that it is at one and the same time both prologue' and epilogue,
and obviously not one of them has felt that it is an adequate
expression of the forceful, deliberate, untiring spirit which gave
life to the Workers' Educational Association, and point to its
adventure.

After much thought, however, I have decided to leave it
where it is, recommending my readers to pass over it and
return to it at will, or to commence at Chapter I and not to
turn in their steps, for the adventure is still in the making
and there is no time to lose.

At a time when there is no adventure in education the
years are indeed lean, for it is as essential to strive to open
up new fields for educational activity as it is to seek
undiscovered lands or to search out the secrets of ancient
peoples.

Some day the story of educational adventures will be
written ; they are numerous and full of romance. By their
means all the activities of humanity have been penetrated, the
mysteries of the child mind explored, and those influences

xiii

xiv PKOLOGUE

searched out on which man depends for his development.
The names of the adventurers are numerous ; from Tubal Cain
to Plato they illumine the records of all times ; all nations
claim their own ; every great period of a nation's life reveals
their influence. At worst they are never entirely without
followers ; at best multitudes flock with them to the regions
which they have opened out, or sail with them over the seas
which they have charted. Yet they must be ' the first that
ever burst into that silent sea,' the first to press forward to
the fertile valleys dreamed of beyond the forbidding hills.
They must go out of the comfortable courts of the educa-
tional system of their time and, regardless of the con-
temptuous smiles of their fellows, seek out, uncompanioned
and alone, with no possibility of return, the method by which
to serve, and the spirit with which to inspire, the new time.
They cross their rubicon, their boats are burned, and there
are no bridges to help them.

Of the many who have lost themselves in the lands or seas
of their endeavour there are no records, but their adventures
were the condition of their lives. Had they stayed, hesitating,
ensconced behind the boundaries of their own knowledge,
they would have died in life. * And some there be which have
no, memorial. But these were merciful men.' In the affairs
of life no man has really lived until he has for a reasonable
purpose risked the loss of all that he desires.

It is, however, not always necessary that an educational
adventure should be made into an unexplored region, or
beyond the bounds of ascertained or recorded truth. It may
be sufficient simply to clear a passage through the accumulation
of the years ; in other words, such an adventure may be an
attempt to rediscover and reveal vital knowledge and principles
which have been obscured either during the preoccupation of
other days, or because a forgetful people has turned in other
directions. Once truth is uncovered it is magnetic and does its
own work. If a fundamental process of education is revealed,
men will flock to take advantage of it, provided that they are
not hindered by economic or physical barriers, and, even then,
the stronger souls among them will win through.

I have as yet attempted no definition of terms, nor do I
intend to do so, for the results of any such attempt would be

PROLOGUE xt

to defeat my purpose. To define education would be to define
life. To define truth would be to reveal the origin and
source of life. Nevertheless, all through the adventure of
which the story is to be told, education has been regarded as
the process of development of body, mind, and spirit, something
more than leading out and infinitely more than putting in —
a combination of the two by which the educated being becomes
daily purer in body, mind, and spirit, able to reach out to
the work which God intended that he should do. The most
educated man is he who most completely fulfils his allotted
task in spirit and in act, whether it be the digging of a trench
or the writing of a poem. In that nation which would most
fully correspond to its destiny, every unit would be sought out
through the wisdom of the whole, and developed for the tasks
necessary for the life of the whole.

Education has never been confused, in this particular
adventure at least, with the acquisition of the means of getting
on in life. Indeed, to have introduced that idea would have
been to have obscured truth, and to have repelled generous
souls whose thought of themselves was ever — and ever will
be — less insistent than their thought of the community in
which they live. On the other hand, the idea held has never
been exclusive. The application of the powers of a man to
the processes embodied in technical achievement is essentially
a part of the whole course of development, and, unless misused,
can serve in not a few types of persons the highest purpose of
their lives.

Education and knowledge must not be confused. Know-
ledge is the instrument in the hands of a man, and if he be
educated, and therefore reaching out to the higher things,
his knowledge will be used for purposes ministering to the
common good. If he be not educated, merely drifting down
the streams of opportunity, or aiming at lesser or unhealthy
things, then his knowledge will be used for false purposes.
The educated man can do no harm to the community. The
band of the educated work their way to ' Zion with their
faces thitherwards.' The field of education is a common
upon which all men can meet and exercise rights, no matter
what their differences may be in the ordinary activities of
life. They may differ in politics, even in religion, but, if

xvi PEOLOGUE

they be one in their determination to reach out to the things
which are eternal, then they may unite to promote the great
democratic adventure which needs the best thought and action
of every individual.

The equipment of those who would adventure is a belief
in the power of everyone to perform his or her true service.
The community is like a living mosaic. It has a pattern,
and the impulse and motion of men is towards their rightful
place in it. Ignorance, disease, and sin, the trinity of anti-
social forces, have distorted the pattern, but there is no rest
for the hindered man. All men and women, except when under
the influence of a dominating force, such as gambling, drink
or the like, are willing and ready to respond to an educational
message ; they all want to think of, to look at, to experience
the things which are worth while. This conscious or un-
conscious pursuit of the best is the condition of ordinary
human nature. Obscured by lesser affairs, hindered by lesser
men, people may forget the objective for a time, but if it
be only revealed to them they will rise and pursue it.

Every living person is potentially a student, although not
necessarily in the technical sense of the word. There are few
men and women, tired though they may be in the industrial
work of the world, whose faces will not light up at the sight
of a beautiful picture if only there be someone to help them
see its message ; not all are intended to force their way up
the heights of knowledge, but everyone has the capacity
for wonder and pure enjoyment, and it is one of the tragedies
of our present way of life that this capacity gets worn away.
It is the task of the educational adventurer to reawaken
or even to recreate this sense of beauty without which life
is always drab. Humanity is like a great army, its com-
ponent parts allotted to different tasks, some to learn,
some to encourage those who learn, but all to wonder at and
enjoy the beauties of the world. If it be not the purpose
or business of every man to study in the literal sense of the
word, yet it is certain that, out of every average group of
people, there will be a proportion of students who must
study if the society in which they live is to do its perfect
work.

This universality of desire may be revealed under any

PROLOGUE

condition of society at any time, but its effective expression,
so far as the individual is concerned, is largely though not
completely dependent upon economic and social conditions.
The spirit is a continual victor over the flesh, and some-
how or other enforces its will. Even overworked men will
turn to close study if they have the desire within them,
and find rest and peace in doing so, unless their powers have
been unduly strained. There is no greater sin than to cause
a man to be overstrained so that his mind and spirit hang
limp ; it is better to torture his body, for then, as with the
martyrs, his mind and spirit might still remain free. A
society in which all or even a large proportion of the people
were so maltreated would be a veritable hell on earth. It
would destroy itself. Fortunately in the England of our
time the conditions of Labour are steadily improving, and
the number of those who are overstrained is diminishing
every year.

Appeals to reach out to education for the purpose of getting
on in life have little power except when addressed to people
who are obviously in the mood for them, such as young men
and women planning their economic lives and therefore pre-
conditioned to hear them. But the general appeal to which
men and women of all ages respond in their degree must be a
spiritual one — for education is ultimately of the spirit and is
perceived by the spirit only.

A universal appeal must be made in terms familiar to
the listeners. It must harmonise with their experience, and
the action foreshadowed must be in line with their habits.
The most wonderful and most complete system of education,
perfect in method and content, were it not understood by
the individuals whom it was meant to serve, would evoke
no response. That indeed has been the tragedy of much
of English organised education in later years. It is only
here and there that humanistic studies, contemplation of
the mind, spirit, and actions of man, awakened a response,
because these studies were dealt with in terms which were
remote from the vocabulary of the people. Thus the only
education in England which has attracted any section of
people deliberately and persistently to institutions has been
technical education. That was why there grew up in England

xviii PEOLOGUE

many schemes, nearly all based upon ' bread and butter '
studies, and all the while those who had conceived higher
ideas either individually or in association reached out this
way, that way, often unaided, for the education they desired.
Those educationalists who desired to help them seldom knew
how to do it. They offered their own unfamiliar methods
and used their own misunderstood language.

It became a commonplace in Victorian England to assert
that working men and women did not care for education.
The educational schemes which were devised on their behalf
but not in co-operation with them tended to be utilised by
others. As we shall see, Mechanics* Institutes rose and fell.
University Extension, to its lasting concern, only here and
there reached those who laboured with their hands. Evening
Schools promoted by the School Boards of the time never
attracted more than a few of the older men and women.
Everything pointed to the fact that educational supply, even
if devised by excellent and devoted people, was almost entirely
useless unless there was co-operation with those who were
to be attracted to use it. In the development of working-
class education the scholar and administrator must sit side
by side with the adult student, at the same table, in perfect
freedom. The initiative must lie with the students. They
must say how, why, what, or when they wish to study. It
is the business of their colleagues the scholars and adminis-
trators to help them to obtain the satisfaction of their desires.
This means that scholar, administrator, and working man
must act together, and fortunately there are, and have always
been in England, many organisations of labour and scholar-
ship in a mood to do so in their corporate capacity.

The idea of a gospel of education to working men is an
old one, and happily ever since 1840 it has been preached by
themselves. The ideas of the Co-operative Movement have
been shot through and through with educational desire. The
great trade unions have been preoccupied with questions
of wages and hours, but they have never turned a completely
deaf ear to the educational appeal, neither have they failed
to initiate educational effort. As for the educational bodies,
the Universities have one and all associated themselves with
the Extension Movement which originated at Cambridge

PKOLOGUE xix

in 1872, with the desire of taking to the people the finest
n suits of scholarship, and of inviting them to share in its
dissemination and its progress. The University Bodies
responsible for this work were in a position to ally themselves
with the organisations of Labour, and in a temper to do so
gladly. Therefore it seemed that to create an organisation
would be easy. Obviously, there would be no great difficulty
either in finding working men or women keen to study, or in
finding very many more who would be willing to be keen.
That indeed followed from the great principle of universality
of desire which has been already put forward. The forbidding
ideas connected with the words school and education would
have to be removed, and the shyness of people who have
little knowledge, or who think themselves not clever,
overcome.

The educational system of this country has always tended
to set a premium upon cleverness. That premium must be
removed and set rather upon devotion than upon achievement.
There can be indeed no perfect group for the study of any-
thing unless it includes different types of men, some slow,
some quick, some superficial, some deep, because each man
gains in the attempt to explain himself to the others, and
shows himself in a new light. A class consisting entirely
of clever men would fail to achieve its object, just as much
as would a class consisting entirely of stupid men.

In spite of all these considerations the adventurers did
not seek to mark out wholly fresh fields for themselves. They
determined to use existing facilities to the full, and to do
no work which they could induce anyone else to undertake.
No successful effort was to be duplicated ; rather should
working people be urged to take advantage of the facili-
ties which were offered by the Universities, the Education
Authorities, and by voluntary bodies.

These were some of the ideas dominating the founders
of the W.E.A. movement. Since they were not education-
alists in the scholastic sense of the word, their ideas were
untested and unconfirmed by experience ; how they were
worked out and realised, discarded in part or as a whole, will
be seen as the story is told. The adventure was launched
with high hopes, and with the determination that labour

xx PKOLOGUE

and scholarship should no longer be divorced, for labour
was in no mood to be blind, and scholarship yearned to be
in contact with the fundamental facts of life, and to draw
for its inspiration and glory on all the worthy activities
of men.

AN ADVENTURE IN
WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION

CHAPTEK I

ADULT EDUCATIONAL EFFORT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Economic conditions in England during the nineteenth century,
much as they militated against the full development of the
people, were still not strong enough to repress entirely the
desire for knowledge. Throughout the century this spirit
continually reasserted itself and found expression in the
creation of educational opportunities which had no con-
nection at all with a desire for success in life or for technical
achievement.

All the educational experiments of the century at the height
of their success made it quite clear that the mere acquisition
of knowledge was not their goal. Knowledge was only an
instrument towards the development of a larger and fuller life.
This was expressed, although in different ways, by Adult Schools,
Mechanics' Institutes, People's Colleges, Mutual Improvement
Societies, Co-operative Societies, and Trade Unions, as, each
in their time and place, they strove to develop the education
of the people. It is impossible, for our purpose, to examine
in any detail the stories of these various movements, but it
seems advisable, and even necessary, to trace the main line of
work which led directly to the formation of the Workers'
Educational Association in 1903.

The popular educational movement of the early nineteenth
century resulted in the formation of Mechanics' Institutes and
Societies for Mutual Improvement or Instruction in a large

2 AN ADVENTUEE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION

number of English towns and villages. In the early years this
was accompanied by all the characteristics of a revival. So far
as can be traced there has never since been such a general move-
ment on the part of the people towards education. A writer
in the Edinburgh Beview, October 1824, alludes to the great
disposition among the working classes to learn, and the absolute
certainty a lecturer might feel of an attendance.

Macvey Napier, writing in 1824 from London to J. R.
MacCulloch, the Edinburgh economist, said —

The populace are seeking excitement in the formation of
Mechanics' Institutions and in the purchase of cheap periodical
publications. The number of these in circulation here is quite
incalculable. The Mechanics' Magazine sells about 16,000 copies
a week, The Chemists' 6,000, and so on. I was the other night at
the Mechanics' Institute there with Brougham. There were about
800 persons present, and I never saw a more orderly and attentive
audience. There are about 1,500 workmen subscribers at the
rate of a guinea a year each. The applications for admittance are
necessarily numerous, and it is estimated that in two or three years
there will be six institutions — four in London and two in the Borough
— all as large as the present one.

The course of the movement, as is so often the case, followed
the line of a curve, and by 1852 it had degenerated from an
intellectual point of view. Some of the institutes, however,
paved the way for great foundations, such as the Municipal
School of Technology at Manchester and the Midland Institute
at Birmingham. A few of these, as at Bradford, Crewe, and
Swindon, have been kept alive by the persistence of some strong
and permanent economic factor, such as direct connection with
a railway centre as at Swindon, or the possession of well-situated
land as at Bradford ; but the majority passed away, their build-
ings and libraries remaining as a bequest to other, sometimes
non-educational, bodies. No reliable estimate has ever been made
of the influence of these institutes upon popular thought ; but
it may be noted that events of epoch-making importance took
place during the years of their power — the passing of the Reform
Bill, the rise of the Chartists, the founding of the modern
co-operative movement, and the beginning of the development
of the trade unions.

The strange and rapid passing of the movement was probably

ADULT EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY 8

duo in part to tho overwhelmingly philanthropic nature
of the inspiring and matfcra force which made it pomble.

The extravagant emphasis laid upon this by Mr. Hudson,1 the
historian of the mo\ KMUMb unfamiliar and repellent

to the sensitive ears of a democratic age.

The unexampled efforts now making in every part of the kingdom
for the intellectual and physical improvement of the lower classes
of the community distinguish the present as the age of philanthropy
and good-will to all men. The middle classes vie with the rich in
promoting the great and good work of education. The brightest
minds in literature and science direct their talents to its develop-
ment ; preparing the ignorant by addresses, by lectures, and by
their writings, to receive and understand the great and interest-
ing truths which the Creator unfolds before them. The beloved
Sovereign of these realms lends her fair and royal name in behalf
of Bazaars, to increase the stores of Institution Libraries. The
lawned Divine and the ermined Duke feel a pleasure in presiding
over the festivals of the artizan and the day labourer. The press
is prolific with carefully collated proofs of the connection between
offences and ignorance, as they appear in the calendar of crime ;
civic magistrates begin to hold it a duty to take part in all meetings
which have for their object the dissemination of useful knowledge
amongst the multitude ; the agriculturist is alive to the importance
of the allotment system, and institutes Farmers' Clubs ; while the
manufacturer finds it profitable to form schools and factory libraries,
to rear amateur bands of musicians amongst his workmen, to en-
courage frugality by savings banks, benefit societies, sick clubs,
clothes clubs, burial associations, and by occasional tea meetings,
at which he and his family partake, to destroy that barrier between
men which pride and wealth sometimes ungraciously erects.

This note of patronage cannot be discerned in the movement
which originated in the middle of the century. The People's
College, founded at Sheffield in 1842, the precursor of Working-
Men's Colleges, was a fine instance of self-help. This remarkable
institution, founded by a nonconformist minister of Sheffield,
was carried on by the students for a period of thirty years,
during which time they refused to receive financial help from
anyone not connected with the College. They felt that economic
independence, accompanied by self-government, would result

1 The History of Adult Education, J. W. Hudson, Ph.D., 1851. Longmans.

y

4 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION

in a keener appreciation of education than, as they expressed
it, dependence * on eleemosynary funds, and on a government
in which they had neither interest nor control. . . . The
education to be valued must cost some reasonable acknow-
ledgment.' This attitude necessitated somewhat Spartan
methods of study. A picture of the early class-room is
happily preserved for us.

The class-room of the People's College at Sheffield was a ghostly,
whitewashed, unplastered garret, not fitted up with the necessities,
much less the conveniences, of study. In this place the morning
classes in winter were especially uninviting, and it required con-
siderable devotion to study to travel through snow at 6.30 in the
morning before breakfast to find a room probably without a fire,
or one but newly lighted by the monitor student to whose lot it
had fallen to perform that and kindred duties.1

The curriculum was broad and liberal ; Latin, Greek, Logic,
and Civil Knowledge were studied in classes at 6.30 in the
morning. The level of educational achievement Was high.
' It Was a remarkable thing to hear young working men reading
and translating with facility the modern languages, or demon-
strating difficult problems in Euclid.'2 The influence of this
College upon local government Was described by Mr. James
Wilson, an early student, afterwards proprietor of The Indian
Daily News, in the following words :

Locally, the College has furnished members of the Town Council,
invaded the Aldermanic Chairs and the Magisterial Benches, and
given to the City not the least able of its Mayors.' 3

The College closed in 1879, the year of the founding of Firth
College, afterwards the nucleus of the University of Sheffield.
The gospel of the early co-operators was entirely one of
self-help. They set out to redeem Society, financed by the
scanty pence of a group of ill-paid workers in Eochdale. They
determined to support education by devoting to it a percentage
of the surplus they gained by supplying one another with
goods. This action was the source of a stream of co-operative

1 Mr. Thomas Rowbotham, Sheffield Telegraph, September 30, 1859.

2 The Story of the People's College, Sheffield. G. C. Moore Smith, 1912.
Printed by J. W. Northend, 8 Norfolk Road, Sheffield.

3 Sheffield Telegraph, December 1, 1898.

ADULT EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY 5

educational effort which broadened as the century advanced,
and which gave inspiration and example to other educational
movements, notably, as we shall see later, to that of Univer-
sity Extension.

It was in connection with the problem of the Co-operative
Movement that Frederick Denison Maurice, one of the Christian
Socialists who later took part in it, devised the scheme of the
Working-Men's College in direct imitation of the People's
College at Sheffield. He discovered in the latter a principle
which experience has since proved to be fundamental. The
education of working people can never develop unless there
is frank and free intercourse on a basis of equality between
teachers and taught. * The working men themselves found
it out,' he said. ' We heard in 1853 that the people at Sheffield
had founded a People's College. The news seemed to us to
mark a new era in education.'

The London College was started in Red Lion Square, where
the Workers' Educational Association had its offices for so
many years. There great teachers — Tom Hughes, Lowes
Dickinson, Ruskin, and Kingsley — ' united with their pupils
for higher things. For this College did not aim at lifting the
working man into the middle classes. To those who founded
the College, every man, rich or poor, ignorant or educated,
was a spiritual being.' Fellowship was the keynote of it all.
* A College means a fellowship ' was the continual insistence
of the founder. * The barrier of class was entirely broken
down.' The College passed from Red Lion Square to Great
Ormond Street, and thence to a spacious building in Crowndale
Road, where it is still at work, and where what is called ' the
College Spirit ' reveals itself in all the common life of the place.

Maurice was obviously not content with founding one
Institution when he had discovered a principle, and for many
years he passed up and down England urging others to follow
the example of himself and his colleagues. He succeeded in
a number of places, but only the College at Leicester remains
in its original form ; and that has come more closely into con-
nection with the ordinary educational machinery of Leicester
than its founders contemplated.

Some of the Colleges were absorbed by greater institutions.
The classes of the Manchester Working-Men's College ' were

6 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

merged into the evening classes of Owen's College, and, indeed,
it was this fact which was the cause of the early success of
those classes.' Owen's College later became the University
of Manchester. In this way, at least one College has had a
part — if only a small part — in the development of a modern
University.

Throughout the period of the operation of People's Colleges,
the Co-operative Movement had been steadily developing its
work, and became, in the seventies, a platform for the operation
of University Extension, which had been called into being by
the energy of Professor Stuart, in connection with the University
of Cambridge. It was at Kochdale, where the co-operators
had asked him to lecture, that the plan originated of having
a class in connection with University Extension lectures.
Professor Stuart has told the story in his own words :

One day I was in a hurry to get away as soon as the lecture was
over, and I asked the hall-keeper to allow my diagrams to remain
hanging until my return next week. When I came back he said
to me, ' It was one of the best things you ever did leaving up these
diagrams. We had a meeting of our members last week, and a
number of them who were attending your lectures were discussing
these diagrams, and they have a number of questions they want
to ask you, and they are coming to-night a little before the lecture
begins.' About twenty or thirty intelligent artizans met me about
half an hour before the lecture began, and I found it so useful a
half -hour that during the remainder of the course I always had such
a meeting.

It has been commonly supposed that the justification of
University Extension work is to be found in its success in
attracting working men and women ; this is far from being
the case. It was established by the University of Cambridge
partly on the initiative of the North of England Council for
Promoting the Higher Education of Women, and it is essentially
a movement for extending the knowledge and culture to be
found in the Universities to the whole of the people. On
the other hand, it is certain that if it had not been for the
sense of a mission to working people, who were for the greater
part cut off from opportunities of acquiring knowledge, many
of its greatest enthusiasts might never have taken part in the
work. The attractive nature of the lecture courses drew, in

ADULT EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY 7

many cases, large numbers of working people ; but on the whole,
their participation tended to decline even in tho
where the movement was at the outset most active. This was
largely because they took little or no part in the management,
which, centrally, was carried out exclusively by the Universities,
and locally, by committees on which working people exert
little or no influence. There can, however, be no question
that the effect of the University Extension Movement upon
popular thought has been considerable. It is impossible to
read without being deeply stirred of the revival in educa-
tion brought about in the eighties by the Cambridge Uni-
versity Extension Movement among the miners of North
Durham ; and although the great Coal Strike cut short its
actual career, yet its spirit lives on, and is traceable in
the homes and in the institutions of the district to this day.

In addition to the University Extension and the Co-
operative Movements, there existed at the end of the century
the Adult School Movement, which originated as far back as the
eighteenth century in the desire of the members of the Society
of Friends to open up knowledge, particularly of the Scriptures,
to working men and women. After a long period of compara-
tive quiescence, this movement developed through the establish-
ment of numerous schools, particularly in the Midland districts
of England. These schools have a definitely religious basis,
dealing primarily with the life and teaching of Jesus, but they
also deal in various ways, by lecture and discussion, with the
subjects of ordinary humane education.

Any observer of English life would have discovered in
addition numerous societies, particularly in connection with
places of worship, directly concerned with the cause of educa-
tion, although there was a considerable decline in the number
of Mutual Improvement Societies, which were common in the
eighties and early nineties.

The first residential College for working men was founded
in 1899, through the initiative of an American, Mr. Walter
Vrooman.

We shall take men [he said] at Ruskin College, who have been
merely condemning our social institutions, and will teach them in-
stead to transform them, so that in place of talking against the
world, they will begin methodically and scientifically to possess

8 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

the world, to refashion it and to co-operate with the power behind
evolution in making it the joyous abode of, if not a perfected
humanity, at least a humanity earnestly striving towards perfection.

There was thus an abundance of force and organisation
upon which a new movement, which would embody the lessons
taught by experiments in the nineteenth century, could be
successfully created. Wherever work had been carried out
in a right way people flocked to it, despite the hindrances of
economic difficulties which we noted at the outset, just be-
cause the desire on the part of the individual for wisdom and
knowledge is so uniform as to constitute a law of life.

England, all through the nineteenth century, was making
step after step in the direction of political and social democracy,
and anyone who considered the future with any degree of care
must have been forced to the conclusion that the supreme
need of the country was that the education of the people should
at least keep abreast of the opportunities which they were
acquiring for participation in government.

CHAPTEK IT

THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE

The friendship which existed between University men and
Co-operators was always most marked. During the closing
years of the nineteenth century numerous attempts were made
to bring about joint action for the development of education in
citizenship. These attempts were largely due to the influence
of Arnold Toynbee expressing itself through such men as Dr.
Sadler (then Director of Special Enquiries and Eeports, at the
Board of Education) on the one hand, and Kobert Halstead
(Secretary of the Co-operative Productive Federation, an erst-
while weaver of Hebden Bridge) on the other. Mr. Hudson
Shaw, the most prominent of University Extension lecturers,
so far as working men and women Were concerned, deemed it
almost a sine qua non to have the assistance of the local Co-
operative Societies in industrial centres, if his work was to
succeed. There was a properly organised group of Co-operative
students, generally in charge of Eobert Halstead, at all Oxford
University Extension Summer Meetings.

This was the state of affairs when I began to devote myself
to the educational affairs of the Co-operative Movement, after
being concerned with University Extension as a student in
the early nineties and having been brought up from a child in
\j I a Co-operative and Trade Union atmosphere. The events
which led directly to the formation of the W.E.A. and those
which immediately followed it are so largely personal that I
must throw myself upon the reader's indulgence in recording
these as well as some later happenings as my own recollections.
The use of the personal pronoun can only be justified by its
indication of a particular human personality which is enabled
to express itself by the labour and affection of a number of

9

10 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

men and women. Some of these may have thought more,
and indeed achieved more, than the one who is privileged
to speak so that others may hear, or to organise so that an
adventure may succeed.

In 1897 I entered the service of the Co-operative Wholesale
Society, after a varied career in which commerce and education
were strangely mixed. My experience in both these directions
proved to be of use. After a short time I was appointed to
teach the History and Principles of Co-operation to such of
my fellow employees as would listen after an arduous and long
day's work. In the meantime, both by occasional contributions
to the Co-operative Neivs and by speeches in numerous con-
ferences, I sought to bring about an actual working alliance
between the Universities and the people.

It seemed to me in those days that the teaching of Economics
and Industrial History and Citizenship could be carried on so
much better in co-operation with the University Extension
Movement as to justify my claim that Co-operators should cease
trying to do it in isolation, and should rather concentrate on
the teaching of Co-operative Principles and Technique, in itself
an enormous task, necessitating a college for the purpose. I
advocated this so whole-heartedly at the Conference held with
Co-operators during the Oxford University Extension Summer
Meeting of 1899 as almost to Wreck, for the time being, the
cause I had at heart. As the result of a speech made at the
Peterboro' Co-operative Congress in 1898, 1 was invited to read
a paper at the Conference on ' Co-operation and Education
in Citizenship.' The comments of the Co-operative Press of
the time were caustic in the extreme. ' The writer of the
paper had aimed at the moon and hit a haystack.' It hardly
seemed as if I had managed to do even that. In spite, however,
of the opposition I had raised, a scheme was approved on the
same day whereby, under certain conditions, Co-operative
teachers would be recognised by the Oxford University Ex-
tension Delegacy. It proved to be largely ineffective, but it
is evidence of the drawing together of the two movements.

My later experience has led me to believe that the
Co-operative and other movements will succeed best in
educational work if they make themselves responsible for the
satisfaction of any demand which they stimulate among their

THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE 11

own members. They may not be so well fitted to assume thfe
responsibility as Universities or Local Education Authorities
would be, but their students will with them do their work
under familiar conditions in an atmosphere congenial to them,
and in the spirit of their own fellowship. Thus I would now
urge Co-operators to develop among themselves any and every
line of study which appeals to them, but I would also urge them
to encourage their students to attend, at least for a time, those
Classes, Summer Meetings, or Colleges which are provided for
the people generally, and to take their part in supporting
popular educational movements for the good of all. By this
method the knowledge possessed by the students will be
increased and their views broadened, whilst at the same time
knowledge of Co-operation and an appreciation of its spirit
will become more widely diffused.

It was not until Christmas 1902 that I again began to plan
an educational alliance. In the meantime I had been teaching
in the Higher Commercial Schools of the London "Board, on
five evenings a week during the winter. This in addition to
a full working day at the Co-operative Wholesale Society left
me little or no leisure. But I had never forgotten the invitation
given to me to write an article for the University Extension
Journal on the lines of my Conference paper. At the first
opportunity ' Democracy and Education ' wras prepared and
published in the January 1903 number of the Journal. At the
i time of writing I had little or no idea of organising a movement,
but it soon became clear that I should either have to do it
myself, or induce someone else to do so. The Editor of the
Journal, Dr. Holland Rose, was instant in his encouragement
and printed two further articles, also one in commendation
by Robert Halstead. In the course of these articles the plan
of action revealed itself as a Working alliance between Co-
operation, Trade Unionism, and University Extension. A
triple cord is not easily broken.

A small group of working men gathered round me, including
some who had formed a * Christian Economic Society,' which
met at my house. With this help at hand, together with the
encouragement of Dr. Holland Rose, my wife and I decided
to take action by becoming the first two members of * An
Association to Promote the Higher Education of Working Men,'

12 AN ADVENTUEB IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION

and at that symbolical meeting by democratic vote I was
appointed Hon. Secretary (fro tem.).

The first organising pamphlet of the Association was a
reprint of the articles from the University Extension Journal,
to which the following was a preface written by Dr. Holland
Rose :

1 Co-operation creates a new person, a new character, and a new
policy ; and the new knowledge required is as extensive and various
as that which has perfected the science of antagonism which we
call " civilisation." ' Such are the words written in 1891 by that
veteran Co-operator, George Jacob Holyoake. They are as true
to-day as they were twelve years ago ; and, perhaps, the need for
calling them to mind is as great now as th^n. The fathers of Co-
operation valued the movement as affording a training for character ;
and the Trade Union leaders in many cases have taken up a similar
standpoint.

Mr. Mansbridge, in writing these articles for the University
Extension Journal, has been actuated by the same spirit, namely,
to quicken the educational zeal of those who are associated with
these two great working-class movements. Having himself bene-
fited by courses of study in connection with University Extension
lectures, he believes that such lectures may be made far more widely
helpful to Trade Unionists and Co-operators than they have been
in the past. As one who is connected with the University Extension
Journal, I know that his articles have aroused great interest ; and,
on behalf of the Editorial Committee and of my brother lecturers,
I would assure those to whom Mr. Mansbridge especially appeals
that we are most anxious to make our movement as helpful as
possible to them. The spirit that animated Charles Kingsley and
Arnold Toynbee has never been more active at our ancient
Universities than it is to-day ; and the time seems ripe for an
educational advance on the lines here suggested.

On July 14, 1903, the Provisional Committee, consisting
entirely of Co-operators and Trade Unionists, met in Toynbee
Hall for the first time. There were present, Mr. A. H. Thomas
(Brushmaker) in the chair, Mr. George Alcock (Trustee National
Union of Railwaymen), Mr. W. R. Salter (Engineer), Mr. L. Idle
(Co-operative Employee), Mr. J. W. Cole (Co-operative Em-
ployee), and myself as Hon. Secretary. The first organisation to
enter into affiliation with the provisional body was the Co-opera-
tive Society at Annfield Plain, Co. Durham. On Saturday, 25th

THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE 13

August, in the Kxaminaf inn Schools at Oxford, tho Association
,\<d public recognition from the representatives of nearly
all I he Uni\ ( 'v<\\ lee and a large number of labour organisations.
Dr. Percival, then Bishop of Hereford, was in the chair, and
his place Was taken afterwards by Dean Kitchin, of Durham,
both of whom possessed the confidence of the working people
in a remarkable degree. Robert Halstead read a paper, in
the course of which he said —

No one really interested in the subject will be satisfied with
what has been done, or with the present pace of progress of higher
education among working men. It seems to some of us that the
prospects are not so promising now as they were some years ago.
Doubtless there were many reasons for this. University Extension
itself has become so successful in relation to other classes of society,
that its working-class aspect has now receded into the background.
Then, working-class organisations framed for other purposes are
now so large, and their officials so pre-occupied, that such a special
subject as the higher education of their members inevitably finds
a secondary place in their attention. Any individual efforts that
may be made to promote the cause, though they should be en-
couraged to the end of time, are obviously fragmentary, and in
addition to being exacting as to time, energy, and means, are too
much at the mercy of personal contingencies to be adequate to
what is required.

The promoters of this Conference, in the light of these con-
siderations, believe that if the higher education of working men has
to make desired progress, it will have to consolidate itself into a
special movement, adopt a special organisation, frame special objects
of propaganda, and appoint a properly equipped staff to carry out
its purpose.

It was left to me to introduce the proposed constitution of
the Association, and I commenced by emphasising ' the absolute
necessity for the successful working of a strong and powerfully
organised Association, so constructed as to be in distinct and
immediate relationship, equally with the Universities as with
Working Class Movements.'

The discussion was well maintained, and both labour leaders
and University teachers participated in it. Many critical
things were said, yet there was complete unanimity as to
procedure, and the note struck throughout Was one of eager
desire for education.

14 AN ADVENTURE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION

A strong committee was appointed to develop the work,
the members of which were : George Alcock (Trustee National
Union of Railway men), Professor S. J. Chapman (University
of Manchester), Alderman George Dew, L.C.C. (Amalgamated
Society of Carpenters and Joiners), Robert Halstead (Secretary
to the Co-operative Productive Federation, Ltd.), the Rev.
T. J. Lawrence, LL.D. (late Fellow of Downing College), Albert
Mansbridge (Battersea and Wandsworth Co-operative Society,
Ltd.), the Rev. W. Hudson Shaw, M.A. (late Fellow of Balliol
College), whilst two representatives each were authorised from
the Co-operative Union, Ltd., and the Trade Union Congress,
and one representative each from every University Extension
Authority and the Association of Directors of Education.

Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Ball were the hosts on that occasion.
They welcomed the delegates to St. John's College and provided
hospitality for them there. Thus the foundation of Sir Thomas
White at Oxford takes precedence as the first college to give
shelter to the new Democratic Movement. It is fitting that
the name of Sidney Ball should be so intimately associated with
the beginnings of the W.E.A. in Oxford, for he never failed
throughout a long University career to welcome and to assist
those who had progressive causes at heart. He held out both
hands to help young enthusiasts on their perilous ways. He
added his ripe wisdom to their energy, and so things happened
as they should, and adventures were sped on to their goal.

There were many difficulties and disappointments in the
days which followed the Conference, but the dominant fact
stood out clearly : Labour had made a definite move on her
own account to reach out for the best education the country
could offer or develop, and she had made the move deliberately
in alliance with Scholarship. Nothing could alter that. It
mattered little, therefore, that some of those who might have
been expected to help viewed the new movement with suspicion,
condemning it for overlapping and consequently for being not
merely unnecessary, but actually a cumberer of the ground ;
or that others said that it could not exist effectively unless it
secured a great deal of financial aid. It is true that the income
of the Association during the first three years of its life did
not amount to £500, but that was not an unmixed evil. As a
matter of fact, a little more opposition in those days would

S i—i
H

^ O

CO

p

H
M
g

THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTUBfc 14

havo been helpful. There was practically none of that kind
of active criticism which strengthens and nerves a young
movement, and keeps an old one healthy and vigorous.

In October 1904 the first Branch was formed at Reading,
and largely through its operation the Association discovered
both its possibilities and limitations ; although it was left to
the branch at Rochdale, formed a few months later, to reveal
the work in its many-sided richness.

CHAPTEE III

EAELY DAYS

The work which followed the Conference was exciting and
interesting as it has seldom been since, in spite of the ex-
pansion of the Association and the multitude of its adherents.
It was a great privilege to see the rapid working of the
magnetic power of the new idea. Eepresentative workers,
such as D. J. Shackleton, then President of the Trades Union
Congress, and representative University lecturers such as
Hudson Shaw, declared their unqualified adherence to its
principles. Financial support was accorded by working-class
societies of all kinds and degrees. The Co-operative Union,
the Working Men's Club and Institute Union, and the
Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress
entered into an association, which has never been broken,
but, on the contrary, has increased in power every year. They
did not merely express a sentiment, nor did they content
themselves with an annual grant ; they sent their best men
to co-operate in the work of the Association, and these have
been — and still are — amongst the most ardent advocates of
the movement.

By the beginning of 1906, branches had been formed in
eight towns, four in the South of England, one in the Midlands,
and three in the North. District Committees were at work
covering the North- Western and South- Western areas. Great
meetings had been held, including that which formed the first
branch at Beading and that which formed the first district at
Manchester.

+ The first great National Conference of the Association, on
a specifically educational problem, was held at Oxford on
August 12, 1905. The Dean of Christ Church presided over

16

William Temple,
President of the Association,

EARLY DAYS 17

an assembly of nearly a thousand persons, comprising delegates
from all parts. After a long discussion it was resolved to ask
the Board of Education to ascertain from the ' local Education
Authorities how far and under what conditions employer and
employed, in their respective areas, would welcome legisla-
tion having for its ultimate object compulsory attendance
at Evening Schools.' The consequent deputation, led by
Mr. Will Crooks, was received by Sir Wm. Anson and Sir
Robert Morant on November 22, 1905. It is believed to
be the first deputation composed entirely of working-class
representatives which has formally visited the Board of
Education. Although no immediate action resulted, the
Board referred the whole question to its Consultative Com-
mittee, which published a Report in 1909,1 and so the foun-
dation was laid for the consideration of the subject which
led to the Day Continuation Schools of Mr. Fisher's 1918
Bill.2

It was to this Conference on Evening Schools that Mr.
William Temple came quite by chance. As a result he be-
came a member, and a few years later was elected to be the
first President. In himself he has gathered up and expressed in
a marvellous manner the mind and spirit of the movement.

The first four branches — Reading, founded October 1904,
Derby, January 1905, Rochdale, March 1905, and Ilford,
March 1905 — are all steadily at work still, testifying to the
permanence of the branch method. The North-Western
Committee, appointed on October 8, 1904, has developed into
the North-Western and the Yorkshire Districts of the Asso-
ciation. The South- Western Committee, appointed August 6,

1904, has merged into the Western and South- Western Dis-
tricts. The Midland District was formed on October 14,

1905. It was at that meeting that the intense fervour and
zeal for true education as a means of development reached
that high plane which has been constantly observed, or rather
experienced, at so many Association meetings since. The

1 Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on the
Attendance, compulsory or otherwise, at Continuation Schools. 2 vols. 1909.
Cd. 4757, 4758. 3a.

* See Chapter IX for other forces affecting the 1918 Bill of the Board
of Education.

o

18 AN JAD VENTURE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION

meeting was arranged in co-operation with the Birmingham
District of the Co-operative Union, the Midland Co-operative
Educational Committees Association, and the Birmingham
Trades Council, whose chairman at that time, W. J. Morgan,
J. P., proved a most efficient secretary to the whole Conference.
It was addressed by Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Charles Gore, and
Eichard Bell, then M.P. for Derby ; six hundred delegates
and four hundred visitors were present. At the small but
representative Annual Meeting held on the morning before,
the cumbrous name of the Association was changed.1

Working women objected to the exclusive term ■ working
men.' It was always effective to explain that the term
* working men ' was equivalent to the * brethren ' of the
poacher, but unfortunately it was not always possible to do
so. Others felt also that there was an exclusiveness about
the term ' working men/ although no satisfactory definition
of that term has ever been given. However, the Annual
Meeting, by happy inspiration, developed the term Workers'
Educational Association, and the Association has ever since
been known by the fortunate combination of the initial letters,
W.E.A. In connection with this meeting two branches were
formed, one on the previous evening at Handsworth, and the
Birmingham Branch. At Handsworth two antagonists in
connection with local education, divided by the religious
difficulty in the schools, joined hands and went out to convert
to educational enthusiasm the local branch of the Amalga-
mated Society of Carpenters and Joiners.

The tale of conferences and meetings at that time is so long
that I will forbear lest I weary the reader before the list is
complete. It is necessary, however, to record the formation
of the first branch, at Reading. At the end of the first six
months of its work it had risen to a membership of 238 and
had 16 affiliated societies. So rapidly did the idea bear fruit
there that although the inaugural conference was only held
on October 1, the weekly programme of the branch, which

1 Some of the delegates to the above meeting are shown in the photograph
facing page 25 ; in order to appreciate the further growth of the movement
readers should compare the photograph facing page 29, which contains
some of the delegates to the Annual Meeting of 1908 held at Birmingham
three years later.

EARLY DAYS 19

has never since ceased during the winter months, was op
on November 80 with an address on tho aims of the
Association by the Principal of University College, Reading.
The most notable feature concerning the formation of this
branch was the development of the constitution and rules,
embodying the principles and many of the details which have
been present in all branch constitutions since, whether
established in England or in the Overseas Dominions. The
essential feature is the right of representation, upon the
governing body of the Association, of every society affiliated
to it. The inaugural conference itself was notable, and the
report of it was adopted as a pamphlet of the Association. It
was addressed by Richard Honter (now Director of Education
in Sierra Leone), Principal Childs, and the present Lord Chief
Justice, and it resolved itself into animated discussion,
participated in for the most part by local Labour leaders.

It will be obvious from what has been said that goodwill
and desire for the success of the new movement animated
most of those persons who came into contact with' its influence.
Indeed, it is almost safe to say that it had become a replica in
miniature of English life. The Second Annual Report analyses
the individual members as — authors, churchmen, co-operators,
educationalists, headmasters, journalists, lawyers, noncon-
formists, scholars, statesmen, trade unionists, and adds, ' The
last two members to join Were a shop assistant and a labourer.'
All the public utterances of the time make it clear that the
first condition of the power and life of the Association was
that at least three-quarters of its members should be actual
labouring men and women. Had it been otherwise, the
scholars of the time Would have regarded it as an unnecessary
body ; but they realised that the W.E.A. did itself naturally
represent the fundamental life of working people, who made
it abundantly clear in conferences and elsewhere that, in the
words of a leading article in the Manchester Guardian, they
desired ' a liberal as against a merely bread-and-butter
education/

There is neither need nor space to call to mind the varied

forms of educational activity undertaken by the rising move-

i ment. Then, as now, almost every form of reasonable

i educational activity found its place, but the Association was

20 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS^EDUCATION

still waiting for the time when it could satisfy the test of keen
educationalists like Canon Barnett and Dr. K. D. Boberts, by-
securing from the vast mass of working men and women real
students prepared to study thoroughly and continuously, in such
time as they could secure from daily work, the subjects in which
they were interested. Many working men Were indeed already
doing so. The head of an Oxford College tells how he had found
in Durham a working man who had been studying the philosophy
of the Schoolmen for twenty years, and had never met any-
one else who had studied it, until by chance he himself had
happened to pass that way. Anyone who knows working-class
life knows what persistency is put by many isolated scholars
into subject after subject, as it passes from the stage of a hobby
into the very condition of life. The Association hoped to
discover these scholars and bring them into contact with
one another, in order that isolation might be replaced by
companionship in study.

It must not be understood that the Association was in a
hurry to produce visible results. On the contrary, it knew
that its work would have to grow steadily, and, if it did devise
anything which would add to the educational experience of
the country, it would reveal itself in its own place and in its
own time. There were occasions during the first two years
When some of us thought that We were perhaps too general
in our aspirations, and that the same accusation of vagueness
could be brought against us which might be brought against
any * association for making people good.' Certainly many
who thought that we could not develop did praise us
unstintedly. The most penetrating critic of the early days
was Canon Barnett, who was of opinion that if we constructed
the Association it would be as a locomotive engine without
rails to run on. His metaphor of metals was indeed an
appropriate one when finance is considered, but our enthusiasm
was great in those days, and our answer was that if we could
contribute human energy we could go on a long way without
any money at all. It is clear that Canon Barnett, if he had
not convinced himself that our enthusiasm was sufficiently
strong and sane, at least hoped that it would prove to be so.
He decided to use all his influence and weight to further the
development of the work, and although the kindly critic

EARLY DAYS 21

remained a critic sfill, he was to the end of bis life the ready
helper, the wise counsellor, the firm friend, and not least among
those who sought to direct financial aid to the undertaking.

As I look back over the record of those years, I cannot
help feeling how generous and how unceasing were the
activities of the members of the committee, of the local
secretaries, of scholars and public men, for all the mass of
work had to be carried on without a regular central office,
without any permanent official, and with funds strikingly
inadequate. During the second year, the income of the
Association from subscriptions and donations did not amount
to £100, and a principle was therefore abundantly justified,
which it is well to recognise in the starting of all new voluntary
educational efforts. Such efforts are not worth undertaking
unless they can be maintained for the first year on a pound or
two. In other words, the most powerful influence should be
exercised by those who are willing to labour without reward
through unpromising days for the sake of an idea which they
believe to be sound. Moreover, all movements ought to be
small and poor at the commencement ; they should grow from
the seed upwards. There is no more difficult thing than to
keep a right spirit within a well-endowed or rich movement.
This is particularly the case where there is a great deal of
money in the early years.

The very mention of finance calls up one of the most
inspiring incidents of the whole period. I was working in the
office of my employers when there burst into it (for ' burst '
is the only word) a tall, venerable person, who proved to be
Dr. J. B. Paton of Nottingham. ' Can you tell me how to
find Mr. Mansbridge ?' he asked. ' I am told he has to do with
the Woolwich Co-operative Society.' When I told him that
my name was Mansbridge, 'he at once expressed delight at
the recent formation of the W.E.A. It seemed to him to
embody many of his own ideals, for which he had been labouring
as ten men through long years. He prophesied its power,
he blessed it with double blessings. Just at the time it was
struggling on — it had no money, — but the Doctor on that very
day said he had money placed in his hands to use, and he
would put £50 at our disposal. I remember we purchased a
typewriter and a copying machine — badly needed — and were

/<

22 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

thus enabled to employ in the evenings our first typist. Dr.
Paton encouraged and helped us from that time onward until
his death in January 1911.

There was, also, evidence of opposition which was restricted
to a few persons who declared that the Association was a
device to side-track the attention of working men and women
from their legitimate movement. It never rose to any great
proportions and, generally, those who, from misinformation,
had adopted this attitude gave it up when they came into
contact with the Association. There are notable instances
of this. Such opposition has never wholly ceased, but it has
always proved to the advantage of the Association to have
critics, even when those critics meant to do it harm. It may
easily have been that without critics the Association would
have slipped unconsciously into undemocratic or careless
methods. Looking back over the newspaper correspondence
of the time, which was frequently a severe tax on me, I
can now say that I am glad that we had this opposition,
because it always kept us on the alert. Moreover, it directly
brought into our service and friendship one who started out
as a determined enemy. He had been sadly misinformed.
A few years later he qualified as a doctor, and, humanly
speaking, was the means of restoring me to health and
strength after the severe attack of cerebro-spinal meningitis
in 1914 which caused my resignation from active service in
the W.E.A., and rendered me useless, in many respects,
throughout the years of the war.

CHAPTER IV

WORK IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

The burden of every address or lecture given by the W.E.A.
missionary was this : ' Discover your own needs, organise
in your own way, study as you wish to study. There are no
two towns or villages alike.' If the work was to be started in
a town the first thing arranged was a town meeting. Usually
the Mayor was asked to preside, and the Town Hall was
generally the venue. After a definition of the W.E.A. , a
resolution authorising a provisional committee, to consist of
one representative from every organisation agreeing to take
part, would be moved by a workman and seconded by an
educationalist ; this was usually carried by a large majority.

Only on occasions when the few though active opponents
of the Association could arrange an opposition based on class
conscious grounds was there any cause for anxiety. The
only time when the resolution was defeated was at Poplar in
1910 ; before the conference the local Labour bodies had been
canvassed ; their delegates came instructed to vote against
the resolution. There was a hammer-and-tongs discussion ;
a clear moral victory was won, but the vote did not harmonise.
Much useful work has been done in Poplar since, and the
leading opponents have in various places paid tribute to our
work. On another occasion at Watford, although the resolu-
tion was carried, the opposition was such as to wear down
enthusiasm, and the effort proved abortive.

These setbacks Were useful, for, as has been noted, a move-
ment which does not have to fight its way tends to lose its
vigour. Moreover, opponents who become friends as the result
of conviction are the most reliable of supporters. Strangely
enough, the policy of beginning work with large and successful

23

24 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

town meetings often proved dangerous, because people expected
the consequent work immediately to be on the same scale. The
best branches so often grew out of small apparently unsuccessful
beginnings, that in later years meetings of a few keen repre-
sentative men and women were preferred to the larger ones.

Almost every kind of educational method was adopted.
A Midland town organised an Annual Art Exhibition, chiefly
to satisfy the desires of a group of members who spent their
Saturday afternoons in sketching. The Saturday rambles
of a Wiltshire branch have become famous in the land. A
western town, acting in co-operation with Adult Schools,
arranged over a thousand lectures, mostly in courses of from
three to six, for Trade Unions, Adult Schools, Co-operative
Guilds, etc., in the district. A northern town developed to
an amazing extent the formation of classes through its affiliated
bodies. On one occasion its representatives went to a Carters'
and Lorrymen's Trade Union, urging them to say what they
wanted to study. Perplexity reigned until one said, * We're
always behind the horse. We don't know much about him.
Let us have a class on the horse.' As a result a hundred and
twenty carters attended a class for two successive winters.
It is said that the horses in that town had a much b'etter time
ever after. Yet another branch determined to increase the
attendance at evening schools, and did so by a hundred per
cent, in one year. As an example of the way in which local
work may be carried out, a report of the first year's work at
Kochdale, which was responsible for the carters' class, is printed
as an appendix. The town of Rochdale deserves well of any
movement with which it has been connected.

Sometimes a class would be formed apart from a branch,
and it is my firm conviction that a class can be made out of
any audience ; this is the result of experience. On an October
evening I Was in Canning Town addressing a Temperance
Society made up for the most part of casual labourers, who
were at the docks in winter and on the road in summer. At
the conclusion of my remarks a man rose and said, ' Can't we
have a class,' Guv'ner ? ' ' Yes, if you really want it,' was the
reply. The result was that a class in Industrial History ran
successfully through the winter. One of the men, full of
enthusiasm, said, ' Can't our wives have a chance ? ' That

WORK IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 25

request also was met, and many women attended an after-
noon class on ' How to Read Book-.'

The keenness among women is if anything greater than that
among men. I was once at a meeting in the East End of London,
and as I spoke of the splendour of education to the very poor
women there, mostly charwomen of advanced years, I saw
some of the faces glow. It appeared afterwards that they had
been members of a class, recognised for grant purposes by the
Board of Education, and had studied history for four years. The
teacher, who had distinguished herself in the Modern History
Tripos, came from a Cambridge Women's College. Some of
the women when they joined knew no history at all, but that
was an excellent reason for becoming class members. On one
occasion at Jarrow a conference of women met to hear about
and to consider education. Before the end of the afternoon
more than twenty of them, including a teacher, had enrolled
themselves in a class which was to meet on the following Monday ;
no one had any idea that a class would be arranged when they
entered the room. Every W.E.A. organiser could multiply
such instances. They were possible because of the ready
desire for knowledge and the generous attitude of those men
and women, especially of the latter, who had been fortunate
enough to receive an advanced education.

The work in London was greatly stimulated by the West-
minster lectures. These attracted on June Saturday afternoons
in three consecutive years many thousands of working men
and women. The lecturer on each occasion was Professor
Masterman. The first course was given in Westminster Abbey
on ■ The Story of the Abbey in Relationship to the History of
the English People ' ; the second and third were given in the
Royal Gallery of the House of Lords on * Parliament and the
People ' and * The House of Commons.' There were three
times as many applications for tickets as could be satisfied ;
each ticket-holder had to pledge himself or herself to attend
on every occasion. The ticket -holders were so eager that they
formed a long queue waiting for the doors to be opened. The
lectures were followed by discussion.1 On one occasion there

1 Amongst those who took the chair wore Mr. Balfour, Mr. J. W. Lowther,
the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir William Anson, Mr. G. N. Barnes, Mr.
Will Crooks, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, Viscount Harcourt, and Lord Haldane.

26 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

was a suffragette demonstration, and sixteen protesters Were
removed ; the only reason why I have ventured to record the
fact here is because they came back to subscribe to the collection
which Was being made for the purpose of providing scholarships
at the Cambridge Summer School of that year.

The extension of the W.E.A. in rural districts would have
proved to be a much more difficult matter if University edu-
cation had not spread to women in the last century. There
were many highly educated women who were not professionally
engaged, but who longed to do some useful work, and conse-
quently the educational movement came to them as a bene-
diction. These women threw themselves heart and soul into
the rural movement ; in some instances they did their work
so Well that hardly an eligible person stood aloof. Classes
were organised, lectures arranged, and plays produced. Village
classes were always astonishing, both as regards the numbers
who attended them and the persistence of the students. In
most of the villages the average attendance was about thirty.

The most notable village branches before the war were those
round about Swindon, with Woodboro' as centre. These were
inspired by students from the Swindon classes and assisted
by some of the staff at Marlborough College. Whilst the war
was in progress the Kent villages round about Ashford did
notable work, largely due to the influence of an old member
of Balliol College, and to the devotion of a local schoolmaster.
The Buxton Memorial lectures were most successful in Mid-
Sussex, whilst the classes in the mining villages of North
Staffordshire under the North Staffordshire Miners' Movement
are in many ways unique in educational experience. An
anonymous writer in the Bound Table (1914) imagines Erasmus
coming to England to meet his fellow scholars and going, not
to Oxford or to Cambridge, but to North Staffordshire.

In the later afternoon, when the factories close down, Erasmus
is fetched by a workman student, and carried out first by train and
then in an antediluvian carriage (specially provided for this occasion)
to an inaccessible village on the top of a hill. There in the school-
room he finds an eager audience gathered together from this
and the neighbouring villages. They have come to hear about
the French Revolution, to be thrilled with the story of a great
national drama. Erasmus, inured to lucubrations about scientific

WORK IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 27

methods and documentary authorities, had almost forgotten that
history is first and foremost a story. This evening reminded him.
He saw the Bastille fall under his eyes, and felt the news of its
capture reverberating through France. He lived for an hour in
1789, as the story rolled out from the lips of a trained public speaker.
The miners and the field labourers and the village shopkeepers
and the old village schoolmaster in the chair were in France too ;
question after question poured in till the primitive conveyance
stood once more at the door. And so back to the wayside station
and in the slow train to Stoke, with high converse on the way, of
which Erasmus will bear an undying memory back to Holland.

Among the many and varied experiences which fall to the
town-bred W.E.A. organiser, village meetings are the most
stimulating, perhaps because everything is novel and fresh.
He must, of course, let the meeting choose its own way. I shall
never forget a group of agricultural labourers and their wives,
crowded into a small schoolroom, heated by an ancient stove,
and seated in desks made for infants. They listened to an
address on education for the better part of an hour ; then they
were asked what they wished to study. After a long period of
intense silence and inaction, punctuated by the earnest appeals
of the lecturer, who adopted all the arts he could think of, four
hands were held up. They were obviously magnificent hands
for heavy manual work. The lecturer paused triumphantly,
and said encouragingly, ' Well ? ' The answer was ' Shorthand.'
Such an answer as that might well have brought the proceedings
to an untimely close, but somehow or other, perhaps owing to
a hint from an understanding person, perhaps through a know-
ledge of the workings of the rural mind, which is not given to
revealing its secrets or desires in public, I divined that they
wished to study history. Ever since they have been studying
history and kindred subjects in that village in classes for men
and women. There are few in the village who have kept aloof.

There have been one or two attempts at village settlements,
but so far none have proved to be permanent. The war, which
destroyed so much, will, it is hoped, have inspired such con-
structive and devoted work as will recreate village life, and
enable it to minister to the fundamental needs of our country.1

1 The work of Women's Institutes and of the Y.M.C.A. promise much in
this connection.

28 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

The experience of the W.E.A. has proved conclusively that
persistent study appeals to the rural labourer. At the same
time no facilities will tempt him, if they are imposed by others,
or suggested in a philanthropic spirit. He lives in a world of
his own which has its own effective methods and ways of
thinking. It is only by the extension of the same methods
and ways that he will enter the fields of knowledge. Wisdom
is the accompaniment of simple lives rightly lived. The force
which is often generated in villages is the force which creates
scholars and men of genius, and England dare not fail to foster
and strengthen this force.

CHAPTEK V

RESPONSIBILITY AND GOVERNMENT

The responsibility for the detailed work of the movement
originally rested for the greater part upon the workers at the
centre ; but the gradual increase of power in the district offices
made it possible in 1915 to take this over to such an extent as
to remove the burden almost entirely from the Central Office,
and to realise the intention of the pioneers of the movement,
which was to allow each part of the country to develop on its
own lines, and in its own way, within the natural limits of the
work of the whole Association. It will be noted that branches
were allowed autonomy from the beginning. In this absence
of centralisation lies one of the reasons for the success of the
Association as an organisation.

For the first three years my private residence first at Batter-
sea, then at Ilford, served as the office of the Association, and
the hours of work were early in the morning or late in the
evening. There are many who remember with wonder and
amusement the strenuous efforts of an enthusiastic and growing
staff to do their work in two small rooms at 24 Buckingham
Street from 1906-9, in two slightly larger rooms at 18 Adam
Street from 1 909-1 1 , and ultimately in two rooms and an apology
for one at 14 Red Lion Square from 1911-15. It has often
been said that movements with good intentions are shameless
in the manner in which they overwork their employees. The
W.E.A. in the first twelve years of its life was the worst of
offenders ; but everyone in the office caught the spirit of the
movement ; every success achieved was regarded in the light
of a personal victory. If an unexpected cheque came, enabling
new work to be carried out, the typewriting machines hummed
with triumph, whereas before such an arrival they contented

29

30 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

themselves with tapping out confidence. Any and every
visitor was a new promise of power, and not a few have told
us how cheered they were to find themselves greeted with
both welcome and hospitality by an obviously busy staff. It
would, of course, never have been possible for an Association
with no funds and no financial backing to meet its liabilities,
unless every member of the staff had worked and economised
to the utmost.

The District Offices have had even greater difficulties than
the Central Office. The secretaries have been expected to
combine all rdles in their own persons — speakers, teachers,
organisers, and financiers, and withal to keep fresh and cheerful
so as to be ever ready to inspire others, and all on an income
hopelessly inadequate. The story of the rise of the Association
in late years is largely that of their own successful efforts.
It is their work which made necessary the reconstruction of
the Constitution in 1915, and the responsibility for the future
development of the Association, as we have seen, now rests
largely upon their shoulders.

It is obvious that a Constitution devised by and for the
W.E.A. at any particular time would hinder rather than pro-
mote the work, unless it were regarded as a basis of action,
or, in other words, as a starting-point for future progress.
This does not at all weaken the effect of the Constitution,
because whatever progressive action is taken must be taken
in harmony with it. Eoughly speaking, this is the view which
has been taken of its Constitution by W.E.A. members. There
have been, during the first twelve years of its life, very few,
if any, appeals to constitutional authority, but, on the other
hand, it has been found necessary on two occasions to re-
construct the Constitution in order to bring it into harmony
with the growth of the Association ; but there have never been
alterations in the principles by which it is governed. These
principles have always ensured that the action taken and the
opinions expressed shall be entirely unsectarian, and without
party bias in politics. Moreover, the clear principle of demo-
cratic government has always been expressed in the sense
that every member, no matter how far removed from the
centre, shall have the right to express, through the channels
provided, his considered opinion upon any matter of education.

KESPONSIBILITY AND GOVERNMENT 81

The only condition of membership in a desire to promote the
education of the people.

Tho first Constitution, which was authorised at the Oxford
Conference, was quite simple, and expressed the objects of the
W.E.A. as follows:

To promote the Higher Education of Working Men primarily
by the Extension of University Teaching, also (a) by the assistance
of all working-class efforts of a specifically educational character,
(b) by the development of an efficient School Continuation System.

This made it clear that the immediate objective of the
Association was the adult, it being held that, if he were
interested in education, he would then take the necessary
steps to secure reforms in the educational system of the
country, particularly with regard to his own children. The
general attitude of the Association became symbolised in the
term ' Highway/ The old idea of the ladder of education
was too restricted and ineffective. The term * Highway '
was first used at the North of England Educational Conference
held at Sheffield in 1907. At least, I am unable to discover
the use of the word in this connection before that. It was
developed in a paper read by me from which I venture to
quote :

It has been customary in England to visualise the method of
approach to the University constructed for the children of the poor
as an ' Educational Ladder,' but the citizen condemns such narrow
possibilities. He does not altogether approve the ' Educational
Corridor ' suggested by the President of the National Union of
Teachers, but he is working to construct a free and open highway
upon which the only tolls are to be mental equipment and high
character. He desires to clear away the remnants of the barriers
of creed and sex which at one time entirely obstructed the way to
the Universities.

He knows that the invitation to the Modern University is
addressed to the whole world of students, therefore his great high-
way is to be in its earlier stages as broad as the area of the Primary
Schools, narrowing naturally at that point where the Secondary
School overlaps the Primary School, and narrowing yet again at
that later point where the Universities begin to draw students from
the Secondary Schools. Education to him, as to Mr. Haldane, will
never be right in England until Primary, Secondary, and Uriversity

32 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

Education are united by the stream of students upon such a high-
way. His imagination is stimulated by the recognition of the fact
that the Universities are the only educational institutions in England
which make it possible for students from all sections of society to
pursue their studies, side by side, unconscious of irrelevant dis-
tinctions. He believes that in the light of a unified educational
interest the diverse sections of society will cease to construct or
to maintain Primary and Secondary Schools in accordance with
1 class conscious principles.'

The term ' Highway ' was hailed at the time as new in its
application to the educational system of the country. Since
that date it has passed into general use, and has been adopted
by successive Ministers of Education. The magazine of the
Association, which was published shortly afterwards, received
the same appropriate name.

Provision was made in the first Constitution for an
Executive Committee and for local Committees, but the
local Committee clause was merely adopted in principle. An
Advisory Council was also allowed for and consisted, as laid
down, of representative educational experts. In the rush and
stress of work, however, it became largely inoperative and was
never actually convened.

The rise of the branches and districts made it necessary
to revise the Constitution at the Annual Meeting of October
1906. The Objects and Methods were defined more clearly as
follows :

Object. — Its object shall be to promote the Higher Education of
Working Men and Women.

Methods. — It shall, in its capacity as a co-ordinating Federation
of Working-Class and Educational Interests, endeavour to fulfil
its object in the following principal ways :

(a) By arousing the interest of the workers in Higher Education,

and by directing their attention to the facilities already
existing.

(b) By inquiring into the needs and feelings of the workers in

regard to Education, and by representing them to the Board
of Education, Universities, Local Education Authorities,
and Educational Institutions.

(c) By providing, either in conjunction with the aforementioned

bodies or otherwise, facilities for studies of interest to the
workers which may have hitherto been overlooked.

The Officials of the Association at Toynbee Hall, January, 1909.

L. V. GILL,
North-Western Secretary.

ALBERT MANSBRIDGE,

General Secretary.

T. Edmund Harvey,
Hon. Treasurer.

WILLIAM TEMPLE,

President,

T. W. PRICE,
Midland Secretary.

P. W. CUTHBERTSON,

Editor of the ' Highway.

I : KSPONSIBILITY AND GOVERNMENT 88

(d) By publishing, or arranging for the publication, of such
reports, pamphlets, books and magazines as it deems
necessary.

1 -'nil provision was made for the operation of the various
authorities of the Association, i.e. central, district, and local
branches. The powers of voting and of representation at the
Annual General Meeting were denned in detail, and it was
indicated that an official organ of the Association should
be published at the first opportunity. The principle of
government in the Association may be described briefly as
local and district autonomy, with, however, the reservations
necessary to preserve the unity of the whole movement.
There were minor alterations at subsequent Annual Meet-
ings until, in 1915, it seemed that the firm planting of the
Association in several of the districts, and the consequent
growth of active life, had given rise to a situation which
demanded an Executive Committee largely based on district
representation.

The Central Executive Committee was, as a matter of
fact, composed largely of the representatives of affiliated
bodies, and of those who had guided the centre in its difficult
work of planting and developing districts and branches, often
at great sacrifice to the peculiar work of the central body. Be
that as it may, there was a reasonable and right demand for
larger and more effective representation from the districts on
the governing body of the Association, i.e., the Council to which
all affiliated bodies had the right to send one, and the districts
to send two, representatives. This Council appointed the
Executive Committee which was responsible to it. The final
decisions of the Association could only be taken at the Annual
General Meeting, at which all members, societies, branches,
and districts had rights of representation. The Constitution
approved in 1915 was designed to remove these difficulties ;
it provided for a Central Council which represented in little
the whole Association.

The Annual Meeting was hopelessly congested, and at any
meeting proceedings might be rendered impossible by the
amount of business to be dealt with. It had clearly passed
beyond its first usefulness, and its functions were transferred
to the meetings of the Council, which were to be held at least

34 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

twice in the year. Thus the Council superseded the Annual
Meeting in the ultimate government of the Association.

Although individual members could join the central body
it was always intended that ultimately they would only be
able to join branches. This intention was not realised in 1915,
but the principle was set in motion by restricting individual
membership to branches and districts. The national body thus
became a federation of affiliated bodies and the representatives
of the districts. Every branch, of course, has the right
of representation on the District Council. Simple as these
arrangements may appear to be, they yet have tended to save
a good deal of confusion in the Association, for it was recorded
that one person had actually received, invitations to subscribe
to a branch, district, and to the Central Association, and,
moreover, had received invitations to attend three Annual
Meetings in the year. This, at least, could only now happen
twice over, i.e., in the case of the district and the branch.
Doubtless this anomaly will also be remedied at a later stage
in the history of the Association.

The event to which most enthusiasts in the work of the
Association looked forward was the foregathering at Annual
Meetings, henceforward to be Conventions with no direct
governing power ; in some respects, they were held in higher
estimation than the more lengthy educational gatherings at
the Summer Schools. An Annual Meeting was a time of real
inspiration, of the meeting of old friends, of the development
of fresh resources in the locality, and of bringing the movement
generally into the public eye throughout the country. There
were associated with these Annual Meetings demonstrations
which, on every occasion, were astonishing in their power.
The greatest of the series was held at Sheffield in 1909. The
Sheffield people felt anxious concerning the attendance, and
were inclined to take a moderate-sized hall in the city ; we
told them to take the biggest hall, and, moreover, to provide
for an overflow meeting. The Wesleyan Central Hall was
therefore taken, and on the platform were representatives of
eighty societies of Sheffield, and the great hall, holding three
thousand persons, was crammed half an hour before the
meeting. The overflow hall was filled and many people were
turned away. If a meeting on the education of the people be

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BESPONSIi HL1TY A V 1 ) GOVERNMJ 85

properly organised, there will never be any lack of attendance.
There was a linking platform : tho Archbishop of York, Mr.
Arthur Henderson, M.P., and Miss Margaret McMillan all
spoke. The atmosphere was electric. Ferrer had just been
shot at Barcelona, and the fact that he had been an
educationalist inspired the vast audience with the greatest
sympathy. Such was the beauty of the educational message,
and the high level at which it was delivered at this and
subsequent meetings, that they were regarded by many as
gatherings of spiritual significance.

Perhaps, however, the most striking event of any of the
Annual Meetings was the occasion upon which Dr. Gore, then
Bishop of Birmingham, after waiting a whole evening through
a drawn-out programme at Beading, found himself standing
up to speak just ten minutes before ten o'clock, when the
meeting was to be closed. He had had no intention of speaking
for more than ten minutes, but he delivered his message in such
powerful terms that when he had ended the vast audience rose
to its feet and clamoured for him to go on.

All this passion for justice will accomplish nothing, believe me,
[said the Bishop], unless you get knowledge. You may become
strong and clamorous, you may win a victory, you may effect a
revolution, but you will be trodden down again under the feet of
knowledge unless you get it for yourselves ; even if you win that
victory, you will be trodden down again under the feet of know-
ledge if you leave knowledge in the hands of privilege, because
knowledge will always win over ignorance.

CHAPTER VI

UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASSES

Many people regard the W.E.A. and the University Tutorial
Class Movement as one and the same thing. They treat the
terms as interchangeable, probably because the system of
University Tutorial Classes has been the most prominent
constructive work of the Association ; and that is the feature
which has earned the commendation of educational experts
wherever they are found. The rest of its work, even though
it may have been more important, has been intangible and
elusive. It may be of great moment to the nation to set
people's minds in the direction of things that are pure and
true, but such Work cannot be estimated, statisticised, visited,
seen.

There were not wanting those who, in the early years of
the W.E.A., said that its success would depend upon its ability
to create serious students. Among those especially experienced
in the problems of adult education, the names of Canon Bamett
and Dr. Roberts stand out prominently. The former, ever
since the foundation of Toynbee Hall, had striven with all his
might to bring the University to the workers. The latter, as
secretary to the Syndicate for Local Lectures at Cambridge,
and latterly as Registrar of the University of London Extension
Board, had perhaps given more attention than anyone else to
the question of the recognition by Universities of extra-mural
studies. It was the united stimulus of these two men that
caused the formation of a class in Battersea, of which Professor
Patrick Geddes was appointed tutor ; but. serious though the
intention of this class was, it was not a University Tutorial
Class, and did not become one for some two or three years.

The formation of the first class in 1906 was due to a very

36

UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASSES 87

wise use of University Extension at Roohdftlft, where the
W.E.A. branch, under the name of the Rochdale Education
Guild, had become powerful owing to the truly wonderful work
of L. V. Gill, F. Greenwood, and A. Carter, the three secretaries
of the branch. Working men and women began to attend
lectures in large numbers, and because they reached out for
something more, a new problem arose. After long reflection
I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to
ask Rochdale to get thirty students to pledge themselves to
make every attendance for two years and to write regular
essays. If they would do this we could get the best tutor in
England. Our part of the bargain was certainly a large one,
but we meant it, and it represented our enthusiasm at the time.
As the result of a letter I addressed to them the Rochdale
students pledged themselves for two years, and R. H.
Tawney, a Balliol scholar, agreed to teach the class for
the time being under the auspices of the Oxford University
Extension Delegacy. Mr. Tawney Was at that time Lecturer
in Economics at Glasgow ; he Was quite prepared to under-
take arduous work for the W.E.A. at any cost. In this
way a pioneer experiment Was initiated, of far-reaching
consequence for the education of the workers.

Fortunately, at the Oxford Summer Meeting of that year,
the members of a keen University Extension centre at Longton,
prominent among them being Mr. E. S. Cartwright, decided to
attempt to duplicate the Rochdale experiment in Longton.
They secured the requisite number of students under the same
conditions, and Mr. Tawney found it possible to undertake
that class also. The Rochdale members had chosen Saturday
afternoon ; Longton chose Friday evening. Thus it came about
that the first University Tutorial Class ever held in England
was held at Longton, although Rochdale was properly the
pioneer class.

It should be stated that the University Extension Delegacy
were enabled to undertake this experiment owing to a grant
made by New College, Oxford. When the question of making
the grant was under consideration the College invited our
Midland Secretary, Mr. Sharkey, a working brushmaker, and
myself to dine with the Warden and Fellows informally, in
order to discuss the matter. From that evening New College

38 AN ADVENTURE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION

has never looked back in its support of University Tutorial
Classes. It has been generous, even in difficult years. It
was on that evening also that Professor Zimmern, sometime
Honorary Treasurer of the W.E.A., first came into contact
with the work.

The public expression of the scheme for establishing classes
was effectively made by a conference held during the Summer
Meeting in August. The subject suggested for discussion was,
* What Oxford can do for Working People.' A resolution was
carefully prepared beforehand, asking the Vice -Chancellor to
appoint seven members of the University to meet seven
representatives of Labour nominated by the W.E.A. to inquire
into, and report upon, the whole matter. Some four hundred
delegates attended from all over England and Wales, the
Board of Education being represented by Sir Eobert Morant
and Dr. H. F. Heath. Dr. Gore, late Bishop of Oxford,
presided, and the subject was introduced by Mr. Walter Nield,
of the North- Western Co-operative Educational Committees'
Association, and by Mr. Sidney Ball, Fellow of St. John's College.
Among the invited speakers was Mr. J. M. Mactavish, the
present General Secretary of the W.E.A., at that time a
shipwright in Portsmouth Dockyard. The Conference was
full of excitement, and there Was a small but compact body
of persons who had evidently come to delay progress ; they
were prepared with strong arguments, but it seemed that Mr.
Mactavish 's speech was stronger. There were no mild and
pleasant things said about either Oxford or working people ;
both, it was agreed, had fallen short. Here was the opportunity
to unite for the future in the development of learning which
should be broadly based upon the facts of experience, as well
as upon the theories developed by scholars. After various
outbursts of excitement the Conference closed. The resolution
was carried with only four votes against it.

The movement for uniting Universities with the people had
taken a distinct step forward. The press was full of it on the
Monday, and very shortly afterwards the Committee appointed
settled down to the work of producing its report. Composed
as it was of such vastly different elements, the simple fact
that the Committee had a common objective unified their
considerations more than is usual with Committees drawn from

UNlVKfiSITY TOTORUti CLASS' 89

nilar iyp s of persons, and tho Report,1 ' Oxford and
Worl K<hi(\if ion,' stands as a monument to fl

labours. Thai Report not only laid down clearly the lines
upon which the new movement must be developed, but
induced, throughout the whole of the English-speaking world,
at least a new attitude towards Universities. Its popularity
was proved by its circulation, a second edition being rapidly
demanded. In the United States the press comments ran
somewhat in this way : * We started by accusing Oxford ; we
finish by excusing ourselves.'

Before the Report was finished arrangements had been
made for six other classes. The Oxford Colleges rallied to the
work, and useful contributions were made by several of them,
notably by All Souls, New College, and Magdalen. The
publication of the Report drew in all the other Universities
and University Colleges, and, before long, there was not a
University nor a University College in England and Wales
which had not established classes. More than that, they
actually met in a Central Committee which still exists under
the name Central Joint Advisory Committee for Tutorial
Classes.9 and is unique in that it is the first Committee upon
which there were representatives of every University and
University College in England and Wales. It was an historic

1 Oxford and Working-class Education. A Report of a Joint Committee
of University and Working -class Representatives on the Relation of the Uni-
versity to the Higher Education of Workpeople. Clarendon Press, 1909. Is.
(Out of print.)

* This Committee, over which Sir Henry Miers, Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Manchester, has presided from the outset, defines its work in
the following way :

As a matter of ordinary procedure it soon became evident that the
common problems of University Tutorial Classes could best be solved by a
Committee upon which each University and University College had repre-
sentatives together with the Workers' Educational Association. Such a
Committee was accordingly constructed by general consent, and in order to
emphasise its advisory nature it was called the Central Joint Advisory Com-
mittee on Tutorial Classes. Its functions clearly revealed themselves as a
method of approach to the Board of Education, the Gilchrist Educational
Trust, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees, and other possible sources of
revenue. In future it will continue the work of combining the experience
of Universities in regard to Tutorial Classes, and will continue to approach,
when authorised to do so, bodies which affect more than one University. At
the same time it does not, ond cannot in any sense, limit the right of any
University to take whatever steps it pleases in its own interests, nor can its
decisions bind the action of any Joint Committee. It will maintain its power

40 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

occasion when they all met under one roof for the first time, and
symbolical of their unity of purpose in regard to this matter.

The remarkable progress of the classes up to the time of the
war, and throughout its course, can best be realised by a con-
sideration of the statistics (see Appendix I). Let it be said at
once that students as a rule keep their pledges, that the first
Kochdale Class continued for four, and the Longton class for
eight years : indeed, the latter is in effect still at work, although
the personnel has changed. The quality of the work done
revealed itself rapidly as good. The judgment of Mr. A. L.
Smith, the Master of Balliol, was much quoted at the time.
He declared that 25 per cent, of the essays written were as good
as the work done by men who obtain First -Class Honours
in the Final Schools of Modern History at Oxford. He was
astonished, not so much at the * quality of the work as at the
quantity of the quality.' This high standard was the direct
result of keenness in unifying the practical experience of the
students' lives with the knowledge gained in the class.

Obviously, the men and women who would undertake
such a course were thoughtful people to begin with. Many of
them had read a good deal, if discursively. * Their technical
equipment was not great at the outset, but that rapidly righted
itself ; such minor matters as spelling and punctuation soon
ceased to trouble them unduly. The principles upon which
the classes were founded, in themselves secured good results.
No one was encouraged to join a class who did not really wish

by its efficiency in helping to maintain all the details of the work at the highest
possible level, and in the making of representations on behalf of the movement
in any way which would lead to its strengthening. It can, of course, and must
be, purely a body dealing with the supply of Tutorial Classes. The demand
for Tutorial Classes is best met by the organisation of the Workers' Educational
Association.

1 The problem of securing a reasonable supply of the more expensive
books of reference for the use of students has been largely solved by the estab-
lishment of the Central Library for Students, 20 Tavistock Square, London,
W.C. During the year ending February 28, 1920, this Library made 15,000
issues for periods varying up to six months each. The Library is supported
by voluntary contributions, and has been generously aided by the Carnegie
United Kingdom Trustees, also later by the Cassel Trustees. The Adult
Education Committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction recommend that
it be financed in part by the State in order that it may the more adequately
fulfil its purpose. This recommendation was unanimously endorsed by
Librarians in conference at Southport, September 1919, who further called
upon existing Libraries to support it also.

UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASSES 41

to study the proposed subject ; the class was also allowed to
select its tutor and to formulate its syllabus. The adoption
of these two methods caused some to be scornful who had
underestimated the psychological importance of this concession
to the initiative of students of mature years.

The tutor must of course in the first place have been
approved by the University Joint Committee established
in connection with each University, but a really good
tutor would never stand in danger of not being accepted
by a class. Moreover, the syllabus would also have to be
approved. There is a vital impulse in a class which starts the
study of a subject at the point which it desires, although,
naturally, this must be a suitable point. It is always best in
dealing with the education of people of any type to start from
the known in the investigation of the unknown. There is
much artificiality in teaching which deals with remote matters.
Perhaps, however, the principle which gave most life and vigour
to the classes was that each student was held to be a teacher
and each teacher held to be a student. A tutorial class, it
was said, consisted of thirty-one teachers and thirty-one
students. * The lecture is one but the discussion is one
thousand ' runs the old Persian proverb. The power of the
operation of this principle and the rapid development of the
subject as a result must be seen to be appreciated. The joy
in work which it produces makes tired men fresh. Otherwise,
how could men working seventy hours a week come to the
classes and write their essays regularly, as so many have done ?

This freshness and joy in work was one of the main notes
in the Report on the Classes published by the Board of
Education, and drawn up by Mr. J. W. Headlam and Professor
L. T. Hobhouse. They record there the case of a student
who, hampered by conditions at home, rose in the night,
wrote his essay for two hours, and then turned to sleep again.
The recognised period of a class meeting is two hours, on
twenty-four occasions during each of three consecutive years.
No really good class ever keeps to the two hours. They break
up, as a rule, only when compelled by necessity. There are
limits to the time during which buildings with caretakers may
be left open, but there always remains the street. A class in
Philosophy at Birmingham habitually continued its sessions

42 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

on the sidewalk, until an energetic policeman threatened to
charge the tutor with causing an obstruction. On one occasion
an Economics class, after a pavement session, accompanied
the tutor to the railway station ; and the argument not being
finished, some of the students entered the train with him and
went as far as they dared. The early tutors became the friends
of the students, visited' them in their houses, joined them on
all possible occasions, and, in fact, acted towards them in
much the same way as a tutor at Oxford towards his pupils,
subject, of course, to the limitations imposed by working hours,
and allowing for the more intimate friendship which is possible
between tutor and W.E.A. students of the same age.

As a rule the subjects studied are economic ; and a large
number of classes take industrial history. After a little while
students become keenly interested in literature and philosophy.
The preponderance of Economics studied has been deplored
by those who only know the Economics of the Universities.
In any case the actual subject of study is not of so much concern
as the spirit in which it is studied. In a tutorial class there
is little or no danger of narrow treatment. In any case the
range of subjects is limited to those which do not demand a
long period of school education ; for instance, mathematics
and languages are beyond this range, and the same may be said
generally of pure and applied science, although some of the
most successful classes have been held in biology. The Prime
Minister's Committee on the Teaching of Science reports on
a class at Halifax, and in doing so quotes the testimony of the
tutor : *

The success of Science classes for adult students depends in a
special degree on the character of the teaching and the personality
of the teacher. It is more difficult to secure the right sort of teach-
ing for adult students in Science than in such a subject as Economics.
The teaching of Science to adults may fail either because it is too
elementary and does not deal with scientific matters of general
interest — it is unreasonable to expect grown-up people to be pro-
foundly interested in the text-book accounts of the properties of
oxygen and hydrogen — or because it is too technical and specialised.

1 Natural Science in Education. The Report of the Committee on the Position
of Natural Science in the Educational System of Great Britain. 1918. His
Majesty's Stationery Office. Is. 6d.

UNIVEKSITY TUTORIAL CLASS' 43

It is not easy to get a teacher who will be successful in avoiding
bath thtM pitfalls. On the Other liaild, it is a profound mistake
to suppose that working men are naturally lacking in interest in
scientific matters. They are fully alive to really good teaching of
Science by a teacher who knows how to bring out their power
reflection and judgment. If they cannot get this kind of intellec-
tual stimulus in Science, they can as a rule get it in such a subject
as Economics, simply because they are themselves more or less
acquainted with the facts upon which the problems of Economics
are based.

It is difficult and perhaps unprofitable to try to trace an
effect such as the good and thoughtful work of the classes would
undoubtedly produce. It is a matter for speculation whether
or not the public mind would have been very different during
the great war if there had been no tutorial classes. Certain
it is that some 5,000 active working men and women had
received systematic and careful education in History and
Economics over a period of no less than three years. Many
trade union officials have as a result found that their work was
more powerful, and that they themselves were better informed
and equipped to deal with the problems which have arisen
in their meetings with the representatives of the employers.
There is abundant detailed evidence to this effect.

A new attitude was developed towards the Universities,
and towards learning in general, which rapidly took the place
of past misunderstandings, suspicion or indifference. Not
that there was necessarily approval of the actions of Universities,
or acquiescence in the fact that Oxford and Cambridge had
conformed to an aristocratic system, but there was a belief
in their possibilities and a trust in their integrity of purpose.
The absence from them of the mind and spirit of Labour was
held to be a hampering condition that was now gradually being
rectified. As for the University professors themselves, they
found a new joy in studying with these keen students, especially
when they came up to the Universities for Summer Schools.
The following is an instance of the new spirit : On an August
morning in 1909, the Professor of English Law at Oxford had
lectured on the Workmen's Compensation Act to a group of
railwaymen, weavers, and miners gathered together in Balliol
College ; after he had finished it fell to his share, in accordance

44 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

with the invariable custom in these classes, to listen to the
discussion and to answer questions for a space of time at least
equal to that which he himself had occupied. Almost at once
a railwayman, who had suffered the loss of a limb, rose and
discussed from the point of view of the injured workman the
effect of the Act, so far as he in his own person was concerned.
In this way it is possible by co-operation between teacher and
taught to envisage a subject both from the theoretical and
the practical point of view.

When the great war came, it was thought that the tutorial
classes might pass out of existence, but the enthusiasm which
developed them had spread to so large a circle that, even in
the winter of 1916-1917, when the work was at its lowest ebb,
nearly a hundred classes were meeting.

Apart from the Universities themselves, the greatest force
in securing their permanence was the Board of Education, which
consistently supported the classes, having assured itself by
all known tests that the work was sound and good. When the
Eochdale Class was started, it was only possible to earn five
shillings per student for each twenty-hours' attendance. By
an alteration of the Eegulations secured in the second year
this sum was increased to eight and sixpence. A few years
later a block grant of £30 per class for each of the three
years was given under Eegulations which were developed
by the classes rather than imposed upon them ; in 1918 this
was increased to £45. Sympathetic, skilled inspectors were ap-
pointed in the persons of Mr. A. E. Zimmern and Mr. J. Dover
Wilson. On the resignation of the former, Mr. Joseph Owen
was appointed, notable as the onlyVorking-man student who
had proceeded to Oxford in connection with the University
Extension Movement. The influence of each of these inspec-
tors is strongly felt in the W.E.A., for they have under-
stood its meaning from the first, and have spared no pains in
developing it. ^

The problem of the classes is still largely financial. It is
clear that every considerable town in England not only could
start a class but needs one. Moreover, the supply of tutors cut
off by the war will be augmented by women graduates who
have already proved their power in dealing with this type of
class. Accordingly, where hundreds of pounds have been

UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASSES 45

spent in the past, the developments of the future will need
thousands. The Government, as has been implied, has always
been impressed by the value of the classes, and it is expected
that in the reconstruction proposals, provision for their finance
will be included in such a manner as not merely to increase
the supply of tutors but also to enable them to be paid better.1
Of course, there is great danger in the fact that the experi-
ment of the early years may be overlaid as different people
come into it, but if each tutor really seeks to understand the
spirit of the movement of the W.E.A. he cannot go far wrong,
especially remembering that adult working men and women
are forceful people and, whilst working splendidly with a class
which enables them to develop, will naturally turn from one
which does not meet their needs.

1 Proposals to this end are contained in The Final Report of the Ministry
of Reconstruction Committee on Adult Education. Cd. 321. Is. 9d. net.

CHAPTEE VII

IN THE OVEBSEAS DOMINIONS

It was an adventure within an adventure which established
the movement in the Overseas Dominions, and particularly in
Australia and New Zealand.

The idea of adult education as the development of the being
and powers of man, in and through the fusion of labour and
scholarship, came as a recreating force to these powerful though
young communities. They indeed generated it themselves.
Their experience had convinced them that education, if not an
end in itself, is a permanent factor in all healthy individual
and social life, and is a deeper thing than training for livelihood
or even for direct social and political purpose.

Accordingly their attitude to those who came to tell them
of the alliance which existed between the organisations of
labour and of scholarship in England was one of confident
welcome.

This attitude was after all merely another instance of the
readiness with which in educational matters both Universities
and Departments of Public Instruction habitually receive
with open mind the ideas stirring not only in the New World
but in the Old. It is strikingly exemplified for our purpose in
the proceedings which culminated in the passing of the University
Amendment Act, New South Wales, 1913. That Act contained
a clause making provision for the establishment of ' Evening
Tutorial Classes ' for working people. The speech of the
Minister (Mr. Carmichael) clearly reveals the origin of the idea :

It is made incumbent on the University that it should carry out
Evening Tutorial Classes in certain subjects for the benefit of labour-
ing men. I know that in regard to the University of London such
classes have been taken advantage of by different members of

46

i

Z ;

h ^

-

-

C 5

IN THE OVERSEAS DOMINIONS 47

society, such as men on the lower rung of commerce, and more
especially by leaders of Trade Unions, and Trade Organisations.
I can see no better answer to those who constantly say that the
leaders of Trade Unions and Trade Organisations are uneducated
and unable to grapple with the big problems in which they have
shown themselves interested, than to say we will give these men the
opportunity to attend University Tutorial Classes so as to get into
touch with those higher studies which cannot but be of advantage
to them.

At the same time, owing to the enthusiastic advocacy of
David Stewart, a delegate of the Amalgamated Carpenters'
and Joiners' Society, the Sydney Trades and Labour Council
unanimously passed a resolution authorising steps to be taken
to form a Workers' Educational Association.

Whilst this was happening in Sydney, a Congress of Uni-
versities of the Empire was arranged in London, and both the
Universities of Sydney and Melbourne requested that University
Tutorial Classes should be one of the questions considered.
One of the representatives of the University of Melbourne,
Dr. J. W. Barrett, was so inspired by all that was said and done
there, that he made it possible for the University of Melbourne
to ask me to go to Australia in order to explain, propagate, and
establish the movement. There were three things in English
life which Dr. Barrett said impressed him more than all else
—the ' Round Table,' the Garden City Movement, and the
Workers' Educational Association. The invitation was after-
wards participated in by the other Universities of the Common-
wealth at Sydney, Adelaide, Hobart, Brisbane, and Perth.

I was enabled to accept the invitation without difficulty,
because the long strain of ten years' work had rendered a
change necessary, and, by the kind offices of some influential
friends and workers in the movement, a donation was made to
the Association to cover the extra expenditure which my
absence would involve. Thus it was that, sped on our way
by the enthusiastic good wishes of many W.E.A. friends, my
wife and I set sail for Australia on June 6, 1913, to carry out
what now seems to us one of the most effective pieces of work
in our lives.

It was a great adventure ; not well prepared for, as it seems
now, but we had been able to meet some representative

48 AN ADVENTUEE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION

Australians in London who had carefully explained to us the
prevalent conditions there. So far as introductions were
concerned we lacked nothing, whether of an official or private
nature, but, with the exception of arrangements which had
been made in Sydney and in Melbourne, it was left to us to
make our own way after our arrival. We had been warned
that Australia would not listen to an educational message
couched in spiritual terms, that all she was concerned with
was ' getting on ' and making more money. This, however,
only made the prospect of our work more pleasing to us, for we
were full of the W.E.A. belief that every human soul, under
normal circumstances, will listen to the larger educational
message. In the result it became quite clear, as we have already
said, that Australia did want to hear all that we could tell her
about education for the development of life, and was eager
to translate it into practice.

I can only call to mind one exception to this general eager-
ness, an exception due to my own excess of enthusiasm. Our
boat had hardly docked at Fremantle when I was addressing
the Triennial Labour Conference of Western Australia, as the
bearer of fraternal greetings from a large number of the most
important Trade Unions in England. The Conference was
glad to receive the greetings, but I discovered afterwards that
I was regarded as another globe-trotter with a * gold brick for
sale.' Not much harm was done, however, because there were
at the Conference old Tutorial Class students from England,
notably Mr. and Mrs. Foxcroft from Blackburn. They set
to work steadily with Professor Shann, who had known the
W.E.A. in England, and on our return, both at the Trades
Hail and at the University, we were accorded a real welcome.
At the same time it seemed obvious that the Goldfields were
not anxious for us to visit them, and, on our arrival at Kal-
goorlie, we found that no meeting had been arranged for us.
However, in the two days at our disposal we held a number
of informal meetings, and my wife aroused so much enthu-
siasm amongst the women that they came in great groups
to see her off, almost covering her with flowers.

In every Australian city which we visited we received
cordial welcome from all sorts of people. We met the Premier
and the Leader of the Opposition of every State, and were

IN THE OVERSEAS DOMINIONS 40

shown all that we could possibly fad time fco see, not only of
instil uf i<>n> hut of scenery. But of course our two particular
resorts were the Trades Hall and the University, each of
which WBB Ia\ish in welcome and hospitality. Perhaps our
greatest pleasure lay in visiting the schools and colleges,
in < .ilking to the children and undergraduates. They always
welcomed us very heartily and, when our visit was held to be
the occasion of a half-holiday, the cheers exceeded any other
cheers that have ever been accorded to remarks of mine. In
almost every place we met old W.E.A. people from England,
and the joy of that was inexpressible. There were enough of
them in Melbourne to join in making a presentation of books,
and of an Australian token to my wife and myself. There is
no space, nor indeed is my purpose here, to speak of the
many interesting aspects and problems of Australian life.
That must find a place elsewhere.

At Melbourne, Dr. Leach and Dr. Barrett had arranged a
full programme for us. It was there that it became clear to
us that our mission was bound to be successful, so lively was
the interest evinced, and so strongly expressed was the
determination to organise and to develop the extra-mural
work of the University ; it is the second oldest University in
Australia, founded in 1854 by the enthusiasm of Hugh
Childers at the age of twenty-three.

I was privileged to take some part in making sugges-
tions for the reorganisation of the University in regard to its
extra-mural work. The W.E.A. of Victoria was established
and Tutorial Classes were formed. One class of particular
interest consisted almost entirely of secretaries of State Trade
Unions.

But it was at Sydney, in connection with the oldest
Australian University, that we were able to carry out our
most complete piece of work, since before we left for Canada
we were authorised to cable to Professor Zimmern asking
him to approach Mr. Meredith Atkinson,1 at that time teaching
under the Tutorial Classes Joint Committee of the University

1 In 1918 Mr. Atkinson, after four years' untiring work in Sydney, was
appointed Professor of Economics in the University of Melbourne and Director
of University Tutorial Classes in Victoria. Mr. G. V. Portus, M.A., the first
Rhodes Scholar from Sydney, was appointed his successor, with Mr. F. A.
Bland, M.A., as Assistant Director.

I

50 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION

of Durham, with the definite offer of the post of Director of
Tutorial Classes in New South Wales.

Early in 1914 this pioneer tutor landed in Sydney and
assumed the chief responsibility for the development of the
W.E.A., not only in New South Wales but in all Australia.

This could not have happened had it not been for the
enthusiasm of the Government, especially of the Minister for
Education (Mr. Carmichael), and the Permanent Secretary
(Mr. Peter Board), resulting in an initial grant to the University
of £1,000, since increased to £5,000 per annum. We organised
an enthusiastic Tutorial Class in Sydney which determined to
meet throughout the summer months under the temporary
guidance of K. F. Irvine, Professor of Economics in the
University.

Before we left Sydney for the last time the New South
Wales W.E.A. drafted a Constitution embodying the essential
characteristics of the English movement, which was approved
at a representative gathering in the Trades Hall, over which
I was asked to preside. The event is memorable for me, since
it was, strangely enough, the first occasion upon which I had
taken the chair at a W.E.A. meeting of any kind or degree.

We had only ten days in Brisbane, but again our mission
won complete approval. It was there that the first Tutorial
Class student to sign the pledge of attendance for three years
was Mrs. Emma Miller, aged 73, well known throughout
Australia for her energetic advocacy of progressive measures ;
she has since passed away. The W.E.A. as we organised it
declined somewhat, but not before its power and value were
demonstrated, leading to the foundation by the Government
of the first W.E.A. Institute or College in Australia. It is
near the industrial part of the city and comprises rooms for
classes as well as an adequate library ; it was opened on October
14, 1916, by the Minister for Education (Mr. Hardacre).
The Government grant to the University of £1,300 a year has
enabled it to appoint two tutors, one in Economics and one in
Industrial History.

In Adelaide we were delighted to find that, owing to the
Oxford Keport on Working-Class Education, introduced there
by Mr. Temple a few years before, such keenness had been
generated amongst the Labour people of the State who were

Mrs. Albert Mansbridge.
After a Drawing by WILLIAM EOTHENSTEIN, December 1917.

IN TTIi; i DOMINIONS 51

then in power, and who had already appointed a Royal
Commission on Education, that they looked at the University
With entirely new and sympathetic eyes, and as a direct result
the Government made a grant of £100,000. Although in
Adelaide the reception of our message was in many ways
more cordial than elsewhere, events have moved more slowly
there, but happily a Director of Tutorial Classes has now been
appointed in the person of Herbert Heaton, an old W.E.A.
member, whom we first met at a Summer School Meeting for
which he held a Co-operative scholarship. He was inspired
by the Summer School to strive for University education ; he
distinguished himself at Leeds, and was appointed to teach
Tutorial Classes under Birmingham University before he went
out to Hobart for the same purpose.

When we reached Hobart it was clear to us that a new
University movement was in being, as the result of the
enthusiasm of graduates who, at that time, were holding
influential positions in the State. We spent only four days
there, but our efforts were so well seconded by the Trades
Council, the aforesaid graduates, and the Premier, Mr. Solomon,
who recommended Parliament to grant £500 for -a tutor, that
we completed our task.

The record of this adventure could easily degenerate into
a mere catalogue — so many things happened, so many things
were done. During our five months' stay in Australia we
had only two days of complete rest. They were happily spent
in the Blue Mountains with the relatives of Captain A. E.
Bland, one of the most devoted of W.E.A. tutors, who gave
his life for his country on the Somme in the advance of July 1,
1916.

There was no time to go into the back blocks, much less
to the borders of the ' Land of the Never Never.' We saw
no great sheep runs and had no chance of meeting the
shearers, although, as far as possible, we tried to ascertain
something of the condition of their lives and work, by discussion
with their representatives in the cities. We did, however,
visit, in addition to the capital cities, the towns of Wollongong,
Broken Hill, and Newcastle in New South Wales ; Ballarat,
Bendigo, Castlemaine, and Geelong in Victoria ; and Kalgoorlie,
Albany, and Boulder City in Western Australia. In each

52 AN ADVENTUKE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION

place we addressed meetings, and in several of them we were
accorded a mayoral reception. In most of th^se towns Tutorial
Classes are now at work.

My wife spoke on thirty separate occasions, and I gave in
all a hundred and eight lectures and addresses. In this way
we were able to present the W.E.A. ideals and method to all
types of Australian people. The great difficulty was in turning
from one type of mind to another, even though we had a
fundamental message. For example, it was not easy to leave
the railway arches after talking to the Labour extremists and
to visit directly the Sydney Club afterwards ; nor was it easy
to turn from a meeting of the Employers' Federation, as in
Melbourne, and proceed as rapidly as possible to a meeting
in the Trades Hall. The real difficulty, however, lay in the
fact that we not only had to talk but to organise, and that,
as it turned out, was too heavy a tax upon our strength. Still,
we did our best, and can look back happily to the beginning
of what is now an all- Australian movement.

There are University Tutorial Classes in every State. 1
The various Governments contribute over £10,000 per annum
between them, and a recent estimate places the student
members of the W.E.A. at three thousand. A Federal
Council has been formed which publishes an Australian
' Highway,' arranges for the publication of books, and intends
to make plans for bringing tutors and lecturers out from
England. Already England has profited greatly by the visits of
men and women tutors from both Australia and New Zealand.

The lengthening out of the work in Australia made it
impossible for us to attempt serious work in New Zealand,
but we visited Auckland and had talks with some W.E.A
enthusiasts there. Thus a little was done towards preparing
the way for the mission of Meredith Atkinson and David
Stewart in the following year. This visit was so successful
that the four University cities of New Zealand are each the

1 In New South Wales alone there were thirty-seven full Tutorial Classes in
existence during the year ending December 31, 1919. Eleven of these were
held in Sydney and twenty-six were scattered throughout the State. Eighty
organisations were affiliated to the W.E.A., including thirty-eight Trade Unions,
the University (which subscribed £150), and the Department of Public In-
struction. Four State Conferences had been held on problems of Education,
Trade Unionism, and Co-operation.

IN THE OVEKSEAS DOMINIONS 53

centre of independent association., 1 which out of their own
resources are bringing forth new proof that the fundamental
ideas of the Association are true in all places and for all time.
Par it does not seem an exaggeration to say that in the short
space of six years, of which five were disturbed by war, both
Australia and New Zealand have developed a force which is
of vital and immediate importance.

The Universities, which in spite of their excellent work were
tending to become remote from the common life, are now
better understood by the people. In some parts of Australia
and New Zealand they have, as a result, gained new power
and struck their roots deeper. Not only working men and
women but the rising race of scholars, encouraged by those
who have borne the burden and heat of the day, are finding
in the University Tutorial Class system a means whereby they
may learn things new and old, and as a result may help to
build life under the Southern Cross on the large and splendid
lines which are expected of them by the whole world.2

1 On December 31, 1918, there were four independent W.E.A.'s in Now
Zealand with a Dominion Council for them all ; 138 bodies were affiliated, of
which 106 were Trade Unions. The University contributes £100 in respect
of each of the four colleges. The number of full Tutorial Classes was twenty-
seven. The University allocated £775 to Joint Committees for their work.
A direct State grant of £500 per annum to each college has since been pro-
mised. Canterbury W.E.A. reports the formation of a Lucerne -growing
Association, due to a W.E.A. Conference, which takes pride in having
practically founded a new industry in Canterbury.

2 On our journey through Canada we established classes at Montreal and
Toronto, but merely to serve as object lessons. Both war and illness prevented
our acceptance of the proposals made to us to return and establish the move-
ment, but it is now developing well, and it is a pleasure to be able to include
the photograph of a flourishing class at Toronto.

In South Africa there are W.E.A.'s at Durban (carrying on work also
in six outlying villages) and Johannesburg. Proposals were also made to
us to visit the Dominion, but no opportunity has yet arisen. The work in
Durban was stimulated by the report of Mr. Narbeth (Principal of the Technical
College) on the W.E.A. at home (' Some Notes on Technical Education,' a
report presented to the Council of the Durban Technical Institute, 1915),
and in Johannesburg by Mr. R. J. Hall on his arrival from New Zealand.

CHAPTEE VIII

THE W.E.A. SPIRIT

The power of the movement lay in the fact that it inspired
its members, and those with whom it came into contact, to
give of their highest and best, because to do so was the way of
life. As we have seen over and over again, the objects to which
knowledge and training were to be applied were never thought
about. Education was recognised as a force enabling man to
develop to the furthest limits of his powers. All the time the
Association was confident that every true cause, particularly
that of justice for the labourer, would benefit in proportion
to the increase in the number of those who had made them-
selves into finer and purer men.

It was because of this conception that men, who were
flatly opposed to one another in the affairs of life, found a
unity altogether delightful in the W.E.A. gathering, class or
ramble. There was no test, implicit or otherwise, for admission,
all that was asked being a willingness on the part of all to hear
and to consider, with real respect, the arguments and facts
brought forth to commend a case, even though it might appear
to them to be wrong or defective. Tolerance only comes into
existence when a man knows he is right and is determined to
hold his ground, and is of a mind to rejoice in the fellowship of
those who would like to see him move on or off.

In actual practice there is little clashing in a group of
students, for the class is not intended for the passing of
resolutions, but is rather a means whereby all relevant facts
and arguments may be looked at and turned over. The
opportunity, indeed the necessity, for action comes in some
other place, when the class is over. Co-workers in a class
may be furious antagonists in the forum, but the association

64

THE W.E.A. SPIRIT 55

makes possible enduring friendship arising out of mutual
respect, and a perception that all sorts of ideas and types are
necessary to make a world. The vital principle on which the
movement depends is the full and free expression of the minds
of working men and women, based on their own experience.

The genesis of the Association was due to the lamentable
situation which had arisen in English life owing to the neglect
of education for the people. In this matter the ordinary
working man was disinherited ; but because there are so
many working men and women it was easy to secure their
full representation without making a class appeal. There
never was a single occasion upon which the ideals expressed
were not in harmony with the spirit of labour. The scholars
and others who joined the movement were as men watching
all the time how they could assist and forward the wishes of
the majority. Not that they for one moment abrogated their
rights in a democratic body, but always there was the manifest
desire to perceive and understand the spirit and needs of those
engaged in manual toil. Yet because scholarship is a vital
force the fusion of it with the experience of life and labour
produced a greater wisdom than could have been the case if
scholars had been absent or quiescent. That is indeed the
whole case for the Association.

It is impossible to express in words the spirit of a movement,
it is almost always undesirable to try, but there are times
when the risk must be run, because it is wise to recall the
fundamental principles of its existence. In any case some
definition is inevitable if others, especially friends in distant
countries, are to be given any aid in their attempt to understand
the reason and method of it all. The glow, and even glory,
that hung over the early meetings has vanished and cannot
be recaptured, but their memories abide in the minds of many
now scattered afar, and a brief record of some of them may
happily recall them, and at the same time give at least an
idea to those who come later.

After the Tutorial Classes Conference in Oxford a crowd of
members packed themselves into the large room of a Boarding
House. They covered the floor and sat on the window ledges.
Their discussion ceased long after midnight. It was the
complete expression of a Democratic Association ; England

I

56 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

was there in miniature. It just happened so : there was no
arrangement. Working men and women occupied the chairs
and most of the floor, but a

' chiel amang them takin' notes '
observed also a Banker, a Permanent Secretary of a Government
Department, Fellows of both Oxford and Cambridge Colleges,
a future Peer, a Bishop, a Training College Tutor, and School-
masters and Mistresses from Secondary and Elementary
Schools.

That was the kind of gathering which the Association
promoted in greater or less degree wherever it worked. No
one who took part in them will ever forget the joyous times
at Park Hall, the Co-operative Holiday Association Centre
at Hayfield, where business was done and fun almost ran
riot, in gatherings made up of those who never met on ordinary
days in conventional English life. But on no occasion was
the magnetic power of the idea of education, as expressed by
the W.E.A., more clearly revealed than at the gathering which
was held in April 1913 in the Maurice Hall of the Working
Men's College. There, speaker after speaker paid eloquent
testimony, based on their own peculiar experiences, to the
spiritual unity of the movement.1

Here, my Lord Chancellor [quoted Sir Charles Lucas], we do
' As adversaries do in law — strive mightily but eat and drink as
friends/

Wliile Mr. J. K. Clynes, full of anxiety concerning the whole
problem of popular education, said —

We are faced with this fact : that some six million working-class
children are in our primary schools : that about half a million of
those children leave the primary schools every year, and that only
a comparatively small number of the half-million can find their
way to secondary schools or to evening schools. . . . The hundreds
of thousands of working-class children who go from the school to

1 List of those who spoke : —

Sir Robert Morant, sometime Secretary of the Board of Education ; Mrs.
Eleanor Barton, President of the Women's Co-operative Guild ; Viscount
Haldane, Lord High Chancellor ; Mr. George Goodenough, miner ; the Master
of Balliol ; Bishop Gore ; Mr. George Alcock, Trustee of the N.U.R. ; Mr.
W. A. Appleton, Trade Union Official ; Mr. J. R. Clynes, Labour politician ;
and Sir Charles Lucas, Principal of the Working Men's College.

THE W.E.A. 8P1WT 57

the mill and the factory and ti, iop must be catered for if

we are to furnish to ourselves a self-respect in/, educated nation.
A nation is n<>! educated because we have places like Oxford and
Cambridge, for only a small minority of the*more fortunate of the
men and women of the country can find their way there. Imagine
what it would be if we could so instil the spirit of education into the
masses of our people as to cause a good portion of 120,000 men to
take a journey from Sunderland to the Crystal Palace in the interests
and in the name of the great cause of education ! How can we take
the tiniest step towards that great hope and ideal ? I can only
think of one way, and it is I h.i I our Ministers of State who have the
handling, not only of the subject-matter but of the money that
matters . . . should import into this educational work when speak-
ing to the people upon the platform of the country, if not all, then
some part of that magnificent spirit and soul of education mani-
fested ... by the founder of the movement. That I am certain
would go a long way. Meanwhile, the Workers' Educational""*
Association provides facilities for thousands of workers, men and
women alike, who would lack any fitting educational opportunity
in the absence of an organisation like this.

The spirit of the movement caused men from overseas to
marvel. For themselves they found welcome, and they never
ceased to wonder at an inclusiveness they had never witnessed
elsewhere. They came from France, Denmark, Germany,
Japan, the United States, Chili, and Belgium. It is interesting
to remember that some of those who came from Germany
longed with a passionate intensity to translate its spirit into
their own land, but their efforts were fruitless. A class was
actually formed at Cologne, but both University and Social
Democratic Party condemned it. Anton Sandhagen, a scholar
of Jena, wrote on the fly-leaf of a treatise on the Education
of Working People in England : —

To the inspirator of the W.E.A., which spirit to translate to the
German people is part of the object of this book. November 9, 1911.

Following in his steps, Dr. Wernher Picht came and
companied with the members of the W.E.A. for some time on
every possible occasion. He wrote of it :

With the members of the Association one gains a striking
experience : the Movement has become such an ingredient of their
life, that one cannot meet with them without the W.E.A. passing

!

58 AN ADVENTUEE IN W0EK1NG-CLASS EDUCATION

before one's eyes. They look upon themselves as members of a
brotherhood which is fighting the most important fight that has
to be waged to-day ; the fight for the spiritual life of the masses.
All are friends for the sake of the common cause.

The W.E.A. [he exclaimed] is to be understood as a spiritual
Movement, since only a spiritual Movement can solve the problem
of the education of the working man, which means bringing the
working man to education just as much as bringing education to
the working man.

He took as an example of this spiritual power the Annual
Meeting at Manchester in 1911, when three thousand men
and women gathered together, and in the presence of the
representatives of a hundred and twenty organisations of
Labour, and of leaders in all departments of the life of the city
and the towns around, evinced such entnusiasm for education
as to give the meeting all the qualities of a spiritual revival.

In the first years of the Movement, Camille Kiboud
investigated it as a subject for his doctorate thesis at Paris,
and he has remained a convinced friend and supporter of the
movement ever since. He wrote of it in restrained and judicial
language :

The ideas of the W.E.A. on the education of the workers resemble
those of the Christian Socialists. It maintains that they, like
others, have a right to something more than ' bread and butter '
technical education. They should be prepared not only for a trade
but for life — life, not livelihood merely. What they need first of
all is that education in citizenship, without which the political
and economic power which they wield is only a danger, both for
society and for themselves. But it is quite clear that this education
cannot be imposed upon them, — before giving them the means of
education, you must give them the desire for it. An educational
propaganda must be carried on that will reach the whole of the
working classes, and it is for this work that the W.E.A. recruits
and bands together men and women of good will of every rank of
society, of every party and of every creed.

The W.E.A. consists, as we have said, of individual members
and of affiliated societies. Through these societies it is a vast
federation of working-class bodies and can therefore claim truly
to represent working-class opinion, for its democratic character
cannot be disputed. On the other hand, its individual members are
largely highly educated men and women of University training.

THE w.i; A. SPIRIT 59

Each <»f these elements has part in the direction of the Association
and sends delegates to the Council and the Executive Committee,
and through these representatives is achieved the meeting and
co-operation of those who are to teach with those who are to be
taught.

It is perhaps too soon (1910) to form an opinion as to the in-
fluence of the tutorial classes, but the Rochdale class, which was
the earliest, may perhaps give some indications. Most of the
students are ' advanced ' : almost all hold Radical views and many
are Socialists — it would be surprising if it were otherwise. There
has been no change in their political convictions : one would have
expected none, and conversions, had there been any, would have
been of little interest. But those who were Socialists seemed to
know better why they were so, and similarly with those who were
not. All those with whom I was able to talk expressed regret for
the too cut-and-dried opinions and the too little informed talk which
they had formerly permitted themselves. They have gained some
exact knowledge, have learnt the importance of some great facts,
have been accustomed to discuss theoretic questions and to realise,
as one of them said, ' that there are two sides to every question —
even Tariff Reform.'

Visitors from the Dominions were frequent during the
summer months when the students foregathered at Oxford
and Cambridge, and one of them, Professor Kylie, who has
since laid down his life in the war, wrote in the University
Magazine, published at Montreal, that —

One of the most inspiring things in the modern educational
world is a summer session such as the Association holds at Oxford.
The whole proceeding, like so much that is best in England, is
marked by a simplicity and good feeling, and a complete absence
of anything resembling condescension or servility. To anyone
who has seen groups of working men and women reading in a college
garden or has heard their songs across the quadrangle, it is obvious
that the Association has found the deep harmonies in the national
life, and that by housing and assisting them the colleges, founded
for national objects out of the nation's wealth, are discharging a
real obligation.

Indeed, during these summer gatherings many people come
in to swell the number of workers in the movement. The
* W.E.A. Spirit,' as it was called, manifested itself there and
proved extraordinarily magnetic. It was during a summer

60 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

meeting that Sir William Anson, then Warden of All Souls,
became a supporter of the movement. Throughout the
remainder of his life he gave generous support to the work in
both word and deed, and was a source of great strength in all
the negotiations with the University of Oxford. Those who
knew him only as the dignified constitutional lawyer, or as
Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, would
have been interested to see the emphatic way in which, after
an enthusiastic meeting, he kept time in singing ' Auld Lang
Syne ' in a circle of energetic working men and women, joined
hand to hand.

On another occasion the concourse of students attended
at the Sheldonian and cheered a tutor friend, acting as Dean
of his College so mightily, that from sheer surprise he stumbled
over his Latin introduction of students to the Vice- Chancellor ;
and no cheers of undergraduates could possibly have been
more spontaneous and sudden than those to which over a
hundred working men gave vent when Canon Barnett received
the degree of D.C.L. He valued those cheers, and he had
earned them thoroughly.

It was at times embarrassing when, as was their custom,
the students attended Church in a body ; for some, unable to
restrain their manifest approval, expressed it in sounds un-
familiar in St. Mary's ; on the other hand, disapproval, when
they felt it, reduced them to silence if only for the time being.
There have, perhaps, never been keener discussions than those
on deep and grave subjects which followed the preaching
of sermons in the University Church. Immediately on the
conclusion of the service, a great part of the congregation
moved to the hall of Balliol College, which was always at the
disposal of the students, and there discussed with fixity of
purpose and unity of spirit, even if with a marked divergence
of opinion, on more than one occasion until the hour of
midnight. There are many, however, who would look back
to the quieter occasions at Cambridge as more in harmony
with their mood than the more forceful and passionate
gatherings at the sister University. The lecture-room in the
great court of Trinity, which it is customary for the College to
allot to the W.E.A. each summer, is almost a Mecca in the life
of many working men and women to-day.

ft

CHAPTER IX

THE WAR AND AFTER

In August 1914 the Association was in flood-tide. The previous
winter session had closed with 3,234 students in Tutorial Classes.
The confidence of Labour was expressed by the affiliation
of Trade Union bodies, while no University or University
College in England and Wales stood apart from its work.

At the very moment when the fatal news of the outbreak
of war became public property, the Summer Schools at Oxford,
Cambridge, and Bangor were in full session. The Government
took immediate toll of tutors, calling them to London for the
purpose of reporting on, and devising schemes to meet the
economic necessities of the crisis. Both tutors and students
were called to the colours, but many continued to the end of
the brief sessions, esteeming this their immediate duty.

Over 200 Tutorial Classes were planned for the winter of
1914-15, but in the event only 152 met, and these were in
many cases able to complete their courses without financial
disaster by reason of the generous attitude which persisted
throughout the period of the war of the Board of Education.

In common with many other National bodies the Associa-
tion suspended the Annual Meetings which had been arranged
to take place during October in Birmingham.

The movement suffered from the shock in its very
foundations, but no sooner had tutors, students, and organisers
left their work to share in the compelling task than their
places were filled by those whose occupation, age, or sex kept
them in the familiar though troubled ways. Thus the
structure was maintained intact, giving both opportunity
and shelter to those who were in a position to deal with the
new problems as they arose.

61 %

62 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION

The material resources of the movement were, as they had
always been, just sufficient to meet the daily needs. Thus it
was unable to make large and direct contributions of effort
to the development of educational work, whether of an
instructional or recreative kind, in the army itself ; moreover,
as is well known, the Y.M.C.A., which possessed a vast
equipment and a traditional facility for raising money, readily
seized the educational opportunity which was opened out.
But the home task largely fell to the Association (not forgetting
other well-established bodies), and it provided independently
or in combination with Universities innumerable opportunities
in all parts of England and Wales for the study of European
History and the problems suggested by the war. Several of
its prominent workers united to produce a volume of essays
on ! The War and Democracy,' x which achieved a large
circulation and wielded a widespread influence both at home
and in the Dominions.

In this and other ways the Association bore its part in
satisfying the hunger for knowledge which was stimulated, to
so remarkable a degree, by the strange and terrible happenings
of the time. Before many months of 1915 had passed* it had
adapted itself to the new conditions, and, as we have already
seen, in the October of that year it revised its Constitution
and entered upon a new period.

The official ' Eoll of Honour ' drew out steadily in those
days. Now a tutor, then a student, but always it was one
who, humanly speaking, could ill be spared from the greater
war with ignorance and disease.

Long before the war my wife had established a Comradeship
fund. This now became a War Time institution, and was
administered by Mrs. Furniss, who in common with devoted
colleagues made herself responsible for keeping in touch with
the men at the Front. My own last act as secretary was to
plan and compose a Christmas message, which proved in the
event to have strengthened the bonds between the movement
at home and the members abroad.

Gradually stories began to filter home of students striving
to carry on their work by organising classes behind the lines.
The weariness of long waiting in the trenches was, so we heard,

1 The War and Democracy. Macmillan. 2s. 6d.

TH WD AFTER 68

alleviated at times by debate and discussion on the old lines,
and steadily the demand for books such as scholars love began
to make itself felt.

Then later the Y.M.C.A. and the Army Education services
commenced their extensive work, and it was generally
admitted that the method and principles of the W.E.A. largely
influenced the details of their schemes and made success
possible. The British, Australian, and New Zealand armies
early called into consultation those who had gained experience
in the W.E.A. For my part I count my experience in help-
ing to train Education Officers for the Australian Army at
Cambridge, and for the British Army at Oxford, in 1918 and
1919, as among the most fortunate and interesting of my life.
At the least it gave me opportunity to put into practice my
theories concerning the education of adults, instead of merely
urging others to do so. In such work I found some com-
pensation for the gap in my life occasioned by the loss of
my office.

As the struggle wore on public opinion on educational
matters increased in force. The plight of the child worker
called forth not merely sympathy but indignation. Early in
1915 the Association, after having published a striking pamphlet
on the Employment of School Children, was gradually forced
to translate the ideal of the ' Highway ' into terms of possible
legislation. With the advent of Mr. H. A. L. Fisher to the
Board came the prospect of a new Act. In common with
other bodies the W.E.A. prepared a programme dealing with
education from the Primary School to the University. This,
coupled with the determined propaganda which had always
been a characteristic of the movement, helped not merely to
clear the way for the passage of the Bill, but brought it much
nearer than any previous Bill to the working class ideal.

At the moment England has gone as far as it is likely to go
in general educational reform, but even so the Fisher Act is
still largely inoperative, and public opinion, leading to public
sacrifice, must be persistently and clearly expressed, if the
system of Day Continuation Schools, for which provision was
made, is to become effective. The W.E.A. can render incalcul-
able service to the community if it concentrates upon this work
without impairing the clear expression of its forward ideas.

64 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION

At the present time problems relative to Oxford and Cambridge
as well as to Free Places and Scholarships in Secondary Schools
are under the consideration, the former of a Eoyal Commission
and the latter of a Departmental Committee. The W.E.A.
must prepare deliberate and well-considered evidence to present
to both bodies, for the construction of the * Highway ' will
either be speeded or retarded as the result of their reports.

In the early days of its work the Association deliberately
undertook the more difficult task of creating a desire for edu-
cation in the certainty, that once people were interested they
would strive to bring about reform in the national system
through the various bodies to which they belonged. It is
always difficult for a purely educational body to voice reform
as well as to create students. Yet the logic of events has forced
both tasks upon the Association. The original task is, however,
fundamental, for the inherent power of the ' Programme '
existed solely in the fact that it had been drafted for the greater
part by men and women who had subjected themselves to the
severe discipline of Tutorial Class study. Directly the W.E.A.
fails to arouse an enthusiastic desire for study amongst working
men and women of varying capacity, as well as to construct
facilities for such study, its influence will fall to the level of
the numerical total of its adherents.

The tone and temper of the movement should be of such
a nature as to repel any approaches which are made by those
who would ask of it aid for any other purpose than education
in the most fundamental sense of the term.

In an Association constructed as this has been, there is an
ever-present need for that loyalty which is in itself the essential
condition of unity. It is indeed all the more insistent because
the Association is open to all, and each component part is allowed
to express its own will and to act in its own way so far as purely
educational matters are concerned.

There may be at any time an influx of those who wish to
see the W.E.A. used for immediate economic, social or even
political purposes, or who believe in it as a * Class ' instead of
as a democratic institution. Such may display no intentional
disloyalty, but their inclinations may cause a drift in a branch
or a district or in the National Body towards the rocks, or at
least towards perilous and unhappy seas. The Association,

THE WAR AND AFTER 65

if it would avoid these dangers, must be powerful and confident
in its insistence on its own inclusive gospel of education, against
which no man, unless unduly prejudiced, can hold out for long.
There is no other way to maintain its integrity. The words
of Constitutions, of Standing Orders, of Resolutions, of Mani-
festoes can be altered in value even when not capable of varying
interpretations by unduly emphasising any one of the things
they allow or indeed encourage. The future of the W.E.A.
depends upon its devotion to the idea of education as a force
set in motion by all for the good of all, in which all may partici-
pate. Its own peculiar task is to see that the translation of
the ideal into the common life is made by working men and
women, who compose by far the greater part of the nation,
not indeed acting alone, but rather in co-operation with all
those others, especially scholars, who are engaged in occupations
necessary to the welfare of man.

On no account, no matter how great the temptation, even
though life itself seems to be at stake, should it bow the knee
in the house of those who promise support and power, undreamed
of, if it will chant their songs and utter their dogmas.

The texture of life is shot with gain and loss, with joy and
sorrow. It is beyond human powers to estimate the pro-
portions, but in the stormy times ahead the life of the W.E.A.
will gain immeasurably if, whether in seeming defeat or over-
whelming victory, it keeps to the course leading straight to
the highest ideal of an educated people ; the course perceived
and followed unswervingly in the old days when it was yet
sustained by those to whom this book is dedicated, who lie

In some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

After sixteen years the future still promises adventure
throughout the whole world. Because man desires education
and lives by it, the adventure must be pursued, sustained by
the strong bodies, enlightened minds, and pure spirits of men.
Adult education is a secular gospel. In itself it does not
transcend human limitations, but by its insistence on the
development of the legitimate faculties of man, a development
secured by concentration on things that are in themselves pure
and true, it draws men to the boundaries of human power,

66 AN ADVENTUEE IN W0KK1NG-CLASS EDUCATION

until they face the Unknown. The insistence upon this gospel
in human life was never more necessary than now. After much
endurance and patience on the part of labour a shorter working
day is about to be secured ; therein lies new opportunity. It
may well be that the right use of sufficient leisure will enable
men and women to realise once again their personalities by the
exercise of their inborn gifts. Hitherto economic need and
bad organisation have forced men away from the work they are
fitted to do. In the future it may not be so. In the hours not
spent in the mine or in the factory the workman will follow
his own bent, read his books or even write them, exercise
himself in music and song, and discover the secrets of life.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

STATISTICS OF W.E.A. DEVELOPMENT IN THE BRITISH ISLES

Year.

Branches.

Affiliated Bodies.

Individual Members.

1904

..

12

135

1905

8

100

1,000

1906

13

283

2,612

1907

47

622

4,343

1908

50

925

5,257

1909

54

1,124

5,484

1910

71

1,389

5,801

1911

86

1,541

5,345

1912

110

1,879

7,011

1913 1

158

2,164

8,723

1914 2

179

2,555

11,430

1915 3

173

2,409

11,083

1916

170

2,150

10,667

1917

191

2,336

10,750

1918

209

2,709

14,697

1919

219

2,526

17,136

1 In 1913 the W.E.A. was establsihed in the six States of the Australian
Commonwealth.

" In 1914 the W.E.A. was established in New Zealand and work was com-
menced in Canada.

3 In 1915 the W.E.A. was established in South Africa.

07

68 AN ADVENTUKE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION

ANALYSIS OF THE AFFILIATED BODIES IN 1914 AND 1919

Year.

Trade
Unions,
Councils,

and
Branches.

Co-opera-
tive Com-
mittees.

Univer-
sity-
Bodies.

Adult
Schools

and
Classes.

Local
Educa-
tion Au-
thorities.

Working
Men's
Clubs.

General.

1915
1919

953
1,075

388
384

15

8

341
199

16
35

175

100

667
677

UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASS STATISTICS
IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Year.

Classes.

Students.

1908-9

8

237

1909-10

39

1,117

1910-11

72

1,829

1911-12

102

2,485

1912-13

117

3,176

1913-14

145

3,234

1914-15

152

3,110

1915-16

121

2,414

1916-17

99

1,996

1917-18

121

2,860

1918-19

152

3,799

1919-20

230

—

APPENDIX II 69

APPENDIX II

A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF VOLUNTARY EDUCATIONAL EFFORT |
BEING A RECORD OF THE FIRST YEAR'S WORK OF THE ROCH-
DALE EDUCATIONAL GUILD, A BRANCH OF THE WORKERS'
EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION.

Originated by the University Extension Committee, the Guild
naturally felt that the first plank in its platform must be the con-
tinuance and furthering of Extension Work. But the scope of
the Guild's activities rapidly developed to a degree scarcely even
contemplated by its promoters.

University Extension Lectures. — The University Extension work
itself fully realised the hopes with which the Guild was set on foot.
Of the 500 or so in average attendance throughout the session, a
very large proportion were working people. Quite 200 stayed behind
after each formal lecture to ask questions of the lecturer, and to
join in discussing points raised during the evening. The lectures
were fortnightly and consisted of two courses of six each ; one on
' Six Selected Plays of Shakespeare,' by Mr. J. C. Powys, M.A.,
and one on ' The Life and Teaching of John Kuskin,' by the Eev.
W. Hudson Shaw, M.A.

A working man, in proposing a vote of thanks to Mr. Powys
at the close of the last lecture, declared ' The world is bigger for
us than it was before.' Mr. Hudson Shaw considers the gathering
together of such an audience ' nothing less than a miracle,' and
says he has been waiting for that kind of audience for twenty years.
It is hoped that the University Extension Lectures will maintain
their position in the town as the chief voluntary effort towards
the education of workpeople, and that an increasing number of
literary and discussion classes will arrange their syllabuses to
harmonise with the Extension subjects. The importance of this
is manifest.

Shakespeare and Ruskin Classes. — For the closer study of
Shakespeare and Ruskin classes were held fortnightly, alternately
with the lectures, and were attended by between twenty and thirty
earnest students. The Chairman of the Education Committee has
publicly described this as ' a high form of educational work.'

These classes were arranged by the Education Committee as
Evening Classes earning grant from the Board of Education, the
attendance at the lectures also counting as attendances at the

70 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION

class. This was the third session in which this arrangement was
made, in imitation of the plan first adopted at Littleborough, near
Rochdale, some years ago at the instance of Mr. E. E. Carter, a
brother of the Hon. Treasurer of the Guild.

Other Classes. — On the Guild's suggestion the Education Com-
mittee also conducted other classes, viz., in Elementary and Ad-
vanced English, and two classes each in Citizenship and Economics,
all attended by satisfactory numbers of students.

A new departure for Rochdale was the organising, again on
the Guild's recommendation, of special classes in Elementary
Subjects (Composition, Arithmetic, etc.) for adults only, in which
men, meeting in different rooms and at different times from the
mere juvenile students, might endeavour to acquire the rudiments
of knowledge. One of these adult classes, held on two afternoons
per week, was for policemen and postmen, and had an average
attendance of nearly thirty.

Six lectures on ' The Care of the Horse ' were provided, on
the suggestion of the Carters' and Lorrymen's Union (conveyed
through the Guild), by the Education Committee. They were
attended by audiences averaging considerably over a hundred, and
almost entirely made up of working carters.

Members of all these classes have enthusiastically testified to
the benefit they have received from them, and expressed their
hope that the work will be resumed next session.

Reading Circles. — Under the influence of the Guild, Reading
Circles have been held in various parts of the town on c Ruskin,'
4 Shakespeare,' and ' The Elements of Politics.'

Pioneer Lectures on English History. — Members of the Guild
have voluntarily drawn up and delivered, in three outlying districts,
a course of Six Lectures on English History. These were in re-
sponse to a desire expressed by some who felt themselves unable to
appreciate thoroughly, without a grounding in English History,
the Extension Lectures. A similar course will pave the way for
next winter's lectures.

Saturday Evening Lectures. — Five Saturday Evening Lantern
Lectures on Natural History Subjects have been voluntarily given
by local gentlemen. The success achieved in this series encourages
the Guild to continue this effort to provide cheap popular Saturday
evening fixtures at once entertaining and instructive.

Art Gallery and Museum Work. — This, the first public work
of the Guild, was commenced early last summer. Members of the
Field Naturalists' Society collected all through the summer specimens
of the flora of the district, which were carefully labelled, classified,
and displayed in the Public Museum. Four ' Botanical Talks'

APPENDIX [T 71

based on these specimens were girei on Bfttudaj evenings. Later
on four 'Geological Talks' were given on Tin aoJagi to

explain the fine collect ion in tin museum. The Head Master of
the School of Art has also delivered three ' Talks ' on the pictures
in the Art Gallery.

All these ' Talks ' were attended by large and appreciative
audiences, mainly composed of working men.

Similar work is already in hand for the coming summer, when
the following programme will be carried out :

May 26.

1 Ferns and their Allies ' .

Mr. A. Brierley.

June 16.

1 Extinct Plants and their Modern

Allies'

Mr. W. A. Parker, F.G.S.

June 23.

' Moorland Plants ' ...

Mr. H. Rae.

July 14.

1 Old-fashioned Garden Flowers '

Mr. F. Sharp.

July 28.

4 The Hades Hill Barrow '

Mr. W. H. Sutcliffe, F.G.S.

Aug. 2.

1 Weeds and their Ways ' .

Mr. E. Stenhouse, B.Sc.

Sept. 1.

1 Fruits and Seed Dispersion ' .

Mr. H. Boothman.

A Town's Educational Calendar. — During last summer a Manu-
script Diary was kept at the Free Library, where secretaries and
organisers entered their winter fixtures as they were arranged.
From this a Town's Educational Calendar was compiled and printed,
and circulated among Guild members and others. This will be
repeated on a larger scale for next winter.

Educational Excursions. — Two parties — numbering respectively
55 and 137 — visited matinee performances of Shakespeare's
' Tempest ' and ' Cymbeline ' in Manchester. A party of 24 visited
the Art Museum and University Settlement in Ancoats, Manchester

Scholar ships. — The Workers' Educational Association and
Cambridge University having offered a Scholarship tenable at the
Cambridge Summer Meeting in August 1906, the Guild has added
a sum sufficient to cover all expenses and loss of wages. Mr. Gordon
Harvey, M.P., has provided a second Scholarship on similar terms,
so that at least two students will be enabled to attend the Summer
Meeting without incurring any monetary loss whatever.

Summer Reading Circles. — Heading and Discussion Classes are
meeting this summer in preparation for next winter's Extension
Lectures on ' Shakespeare's Historical Plays ' and ' Political and
Social Problems.' Over fifty students have joined each of these
classes. They are free of cost and open to all.

Free Lectures to Women. — A course of three Afternoon Lectures
to Women on ' The Care of the Home and of Children ' will be given
this summer in two districts of the town, by ladies competent to
deal with the subject.

Other "Work. — Locally and further afield the Guild has been

72 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING- CLASS EDUCATION

able to do other useful work. It was a conference arranged by
the Guild which led to the formation of a branch of the Workers'
Educational Association at Littleborough. Other branches have
acknowledged the example and encouragement afforded by the
work done at Kochdale. In the town itself it has supplied speakers
and essayists for various societies. It is coming to be recog-
nised as a sort of educational ' Clearing House ' for the district.

APPENDIX III

The World Association for Adult Education, founded in 1918
as the direct result of representations made by dwellers overseas,
aims at bringing into co-operation, for mutual strengthening and
the interchange of information, all the diverse movements and
institutions for Adult Education throughout the world. It also
places itself unreservedly at the service of countries which are
desirous of developing such work. It publishes Quarterly Bulletins
which are sent to members, who pay a minimum annual subscription
of 6s. or the equivalent, and to supporting bodies which pay a
minimum of £2 2s. or the equivalent. On December 21, 1919,
its membership was scattered throughout twenty-six countries.
Chairman : Albert Mansbridge. Hon. Treasurer : Colonel Lord
Gorell, C.B.E., M.C., Director of Education in the British Army.
The Central Bureau of Information is at present at 13 John Street,
Adelphi, W.C. 2, to which all communications should be addressed.

APPENDIX IV

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Oxford and Working Class Education : A Report of a Joint Committee of
University and Working-class Representatives on the Relation of the
University to the Higher Education of Working People.' Clarendon
Press, 1909. Is. net. (Out of print.)

University Tutorial Classes : A Study in the Development of Higher Educa-
tion among Working Men and Women.' By Albert Mansbridge. 1913.
Longmans, Green & Co. 2s. Qd. net.

An Experiment in Democratic Education.' By R. H. Tawney. The
Political Quarterly, May 1914. Oxford Unive rsity Press.

APPENDIX IV 78

•Education and the Working Class.' The Bound Table. March 1914.

Macmillan.
'The Universities and Labour.' By Albert Mansbbidqe. The Atlantic

Monthly. Boston. August 1919.
1 Eduoation and the Working Classes.' By Albert MAMSBBrDOE. The Con-
temporary Review. June 1919.
* Reports of the Committee on Adult Education appointed by the Ministry
of Reconstruction.'
First Interim Report : ' Industrial and Social Conditions in Relation

to Adult Education.' 1918. (Cd. 9107.) 3d.
Second Interim Report : ' Education in the Army.' 1919. (Cd. 9225.)

2d.
Third Interim Report : * Libraries and Museums.' 1919. (Cd. 9237.)

3d.
Final Report. 1919. (Cd. 321.) U. 9d.
1 Special Report of H.M. Inspector, Mr. J. W. Headlam, and Professor L. T.
Hobhouse on certain Tutorial Classes in connection with the Workers'
Educational Association.' Reprinted in ' University Tutorial Classes.'
' Regulations of the Board of Education.' (Cd. 9152.)
1 Reports of the Workers' Educational Associations of England, Australia

and New Zealand.'
1 Reports of the Central Joint Advisory Committee on Tutorial Classes.'
1 Reports of Tutorial Class Committees at various Universities.'
' Ideen englischer Volkserziehung und Versuche zu Ihrer Verwicklichung.' Von

Anton Sandhagen. Jena. 1911.
'Toynbee Hall and the Settlement Movement.' By Werner Picht. Bell.

2*. 6d.
' L'Education civique des ouvriers en Angleterre.' La Workers' Educa-
tional Association et la R&orme d'Oxford. Par C. Ribovd. Paris, 1910.

Printed by Spottiswoode, Ballantyne 6- Co. Ltd.
Colchester, London 6- Eton, England

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