When labor goes to school. A story of the Worker's educational movement

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When Labor Goes
To School

5vGenevieve M. Fox

WHEN LABOR GOES
To SCHOOL

A Story of the Workers' Educational Movement

By GENEVIEVE M. Fox

Research Worker, Industrial Committee

National Board

Young Womens Christian Associations

New York

1920

Copyright 1920, by

The National Board of the Young Womens Christian Associations

of the United States of America

New York

FOREWORD

More and more thinking men and women are realiz-
ing how largely shortages in people's lives are due to
shortages in their education. A large percentage of
the membership of the Young Women's Christian
Association consists of women whose education has
been cut short at an early age, and who are for this
reason seriously handicapped not only in the business
of earning a living, but also in the business of living.
To enable these women to bridge over the gaps in
their education is, therefore, becoming an increasingly
important concern of this organization, especially now
that women are assuming heavier responsibilities as
citizens than they have ever shouldered before.

If this organization is to continue to be a pioneer in
supplying to women supplementary opportunities for
education, it must keep informed as to what efforts
wage-earning men and women are making to educate
themselves, and must be able to give intelligent infor-
mation to those of its members who are seeking fur-
ther opportunities for education.

It is the aim of this pamphlet to give an idea of the
spirit and purposes of recent movements on the part of
labor organizations and universities to educate their
members ; what subjects they are most wanting to
study and by what means, and in what spirit they are
going about studying them. It is a subject which con-
cerns not simply one group in the organization, but
the entire membership, inasmuch as it deals with the
efforts of hundreds of men and women to obtain fuller
and more abundant lives.

FLORENCE SIMMS.

487365

"There can be no true democratic com-
munity which has not adopted the ideal of
education for all according to the needs of
all." — ALBERT MANSBRIDGE, Contemporary
Review.

WHEN LABOR GOES TO SCHOOL

A Class of Students Who Wouldn't Go Home

A class that refused to be dismissed after a two-
hour session but adjourned to the sidewalk until they
were accused of interfering with traffic and thereupon
followed their teacher to the railway station and even
took the train with him to his home ! No, this is not a
pretty piece of fiction; it actually happened. But it
happened not in the public school or in some big uni-
versity, but in a school conducted by a group of work-
ing men and working women. These men and women
were going to school not because they had to, nor
even because they expected to get a better job by so
doing, but simply because they wanted the power and
the fullness of life and the broadened vision that
knowledge alone can give. They were not studying
something someone else thought they ought to learn
but were seeking to learn those things which they had
found through experience that they needed.

This is only one instance of the many working men
and women in this country and in other countries who
are squeezing into seats designed for school children,
or gathering in some vacant room of a public library
or at the headquarters of some local trade union to
study English or economics or international law or
political economy or public speaking or anything else
that they want to learn and can find a teacher to teach.

THE BEGINNINGS OF A WORKERS'

EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT

IN ENGLAND

The urge for education of their own choosing, on
the part of working men and women has been felt in
England for several years. Among the very earliest
expressions of this need are the classes of the Roch-
dale Cooperative Society, that pioneer venture in con-
sumers' cooperation which was started by some poor
flannel weavers of the little town of Rochdale in 1844.
From the first year this little band of cooperators gave
two-and-one-half per cent of the profits of their co-
operative store for education. In those days when
there were no public libraries and reading rooms and
when newspapers cost from eight to twelve cents,
they opened libraries and reading rooms of their own
and in order that all might enjoy the books and news-
papers they established evening classes. Thus they
were pioneers not only in cooperative selling but were
also pioneers in bringing libraries, news-rooms and
evening classes within the reach of wage-earning
men and women.

To-day the British cooperative societies have study
classes for men and women of all ages; summer
schools ; literary and dramatic circles ; lectures on varied
topics, and social entertainments. In addition to the
classes which they themselves organize, cooperative

6

societies have given money to help universities in their
extension work and have encouraged their members
to attend university extension courses. They are now
working to establish a cooperative college for the
special purpose of training men and women in the
principles and management of cooperative enterprises.

The First Working Men's Colleges

It was in the 1840's also that the idea of a college
for working men first found expression in England, a
People's College being opened in Sheffield in 1842. In
1854 a Working Men's College was opened in London
by a little group of far visioned men among whom
were John Ruskin and Charles Kingsley. These men
saw even then that industrialism and the high cost of
an education tended to split society into two sections
neither of which understood the other. The aim of
this college was to bring together the men of the uni-
versities and the men in trades and in industry that
each might learn of the other, and to place a liberal
education and the comradeship of college life within
the reach of the workers at the lowest possible cost.

I
Ruskin College

In 1899 two Americans, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Vroo-
man, established Ruskin College at Oxford. The de-
sire of its founders was to develop the leadership of the
workers and to foster a spirit of cooperation rather
than an over-pronounced desire for individual achieve-
ment. They wished to emphasize the importance of

7

high-minded, ambitious men remaining in the ranks of
labor and raising its level rather than training them-
selves to rise out of the labor movement into
professions.

At Ruskin College men of all ages and all trades
come together in classrooms and in dormitories each
bringing a little different type of experience and each
looking at life from a little different angle. Perhaps
the interchange of experiences that results is even
more valuable than is the regular classroom work.
One year and two year courses are given supplemented
by correspondence courses. Football teams, cricket
teams, boxing matches, dramatic societies and a col-
lege magazine are evidences that Ruskin students also
get a taste of so-called "college life."

The management of the College is in the hands of a
council made up of representatives of trade unions, co-
operative societies and the universities. Any labor
organization which supports one or more students at
the college can elect from its members one represen-
tative. The fees are very low and a large number of
scholarships are given.

Since the ending of the war a number of changes
have been made in the work of Ruskin College which
will make it a more flexible means of education for the
workers. One democratic change is the admission of
women and another the introduction of short courses
for those who cannot give an entire year or more to
study.

It was probably the feeling of inflexibility in the
college work that led to an organized protest on the
part of a group of Ruskin College students in 1909

8

who established a college of their own called the Cen-
tral Labor College. It is now under control of some
of the larger unions.

The Workers' Educational Association of

England

The Workers' Educational Association, formed in
1903, marked the beginning of a wide-spread move-
ment for workers' education in England, a movement
which was due directly to the efforts of the workers
themselves and was an expression of what they knew
they wanted. Beginning in 1903 as one little class in
Birmingham with about thirty students, it has grown
into a society which has over 170 branch societies and
includes nearly 3,000 organizations ; trade unions,
trade councils, working men's clubs, cooperative
societies, universities, boards of education, teachers'
associations and literary societies. Its members
represent every variety of opinion on religious matters
and every political party from Tory to Socialist. It is
governed by a Central Council which includes Oxford
graduates and tool-makers, unionists and non-union-
ists, and both men and women. It brings together
people of every kind of experience and unites them in
the task of "making England an educated country in
the best sense of the word." And this is the great
strength of the Association, that it joins together into
one great federation all the organizations and all the
groups that are interested, and enables them to work
together using the machinery for education that is
ready at hand rather than setting up new machinery of
their own.

This Association makes it possible for groups of
workers all over England to get together and state
what they need in the way of educational opportunities
and either to go about securing them for themselves
or to apply to a university or other educational au-
thority, to supply the ways and means. They may
form study circles, forums, short courses or lectures,
or university tutorial classes, and study any subject
which the members desire.

University Tutorial Classes

It is the tutorial classes which have attracted the
most attention to the Workers' Educational Associa-
tion, because they prove how intense is the desire of
labor for higher education. These classes were started
in 1907 by a determined group of working men and
women in the little town of Rochdale, who pledged
themselves to attend classes two hours in length for
twenty-four evenings during each of three years, to
write fortnightly essays and to do as much reading as
possible outside of class. Fortified by these high resolves
they knocked at the gates of Oxford University, or
rather the local branch of the Workers' Educational
Association knocked for them, and secured for a
teacher of their class Mr. R. H. Tawney, now a fellow
of Balliol College and a member of the Royal Coal
Commission held in London in the spring of 1919.

The same year that the Rochdale class was formed,
the workers in the Potteries of Longton got together
a similar group also taught by Mr. Tawney. The
Longton class is a good illustration of how quickly an
idea can spread. At the end of the three-year period

10

that the class was supposed to last, those who had
joined it still wanted to go on studying and brought in
new students. At the end of seven years the class was
still in existence with several of its "charter members"
still pursuing knowledge and many of them organizing
and teaching other classes in more than twenty mining
villages round about. The original thirty had grown
to many hundred. Today every university and univer-
sity college in England and Wales is taking part in
this movement and it is being especially developed in
Australia.

The tutorial class is conducted on a "fifty-fifty"
plan. The teacher has half the two-hour class period
to lecture, and the pupils have the other half for dis-
cussion. A recent writer on the subject characterized
the "lecture as one" and the "discussion as one thous-
and." This is very likely a proportion which both
teachers and pupils would agree Upon ; for it is in the
discussion hour that theories are held up before the
white light of practical experience and tested out. The
texts for the last half of the period are often living
documents in the subjects. Such a "living document"
was the railwayman in a class which was discussing
industrial accidents and the Workmen's Compensation
Law. When the Oxford professor, who was teaching
the class, had finished his lecture on the subject, this
man rose from his chair, called attention to H:he
wooden stump he wore in place of a leg and told how
the Compensation Act had worked in his case. The
result of a class conducted in this manner is a pooling
of the experiences of a whole group of people and

11

their joint thinking, the thirty pupils and the teacher
all studying together.

Examples are many of the zeal of the students in
these classes. In one of the early classes there was a
working man with a large family who, in order to get
a time for study when the house was quiet, would go
to bed at seven, get up at midnight and work for two
hours and then go back to bed again. Hard working
men and women have been known to travel long dis-
tances to attend a class, and absences except for sick-
ness or some equally unavoidable reason were un-
known. The master of Balliol College or Oxford
University who examined the papers written in eight
different tutorial classes to see if they were of univer-
sity grade was amazed to find that 25 per cent of these
essays written at odd moments after a long day's work
were equal to essays written by regular honor students
at Oxford.

A Working Women's College

On February 12th, 1920, a Working Women's Col-
lege was opened near London under the direction of
the Educational Committee of the Young Women's
Christian Association of Great Britain. This college
is the result of much thought on the part of the com-
mittee, who felt the need of equal opportunities in
education for working men and women since they
share the same responsibility in industry, in politics
and in the home.

This college offers to a group of about twenty
women the opportunity to live together and study to-

12

gether for at least a year in a beautiful house set
down in a big garden in the country. The course of
study includes comparative religion, social and indus-
trial history, economics, literature, elementary
hygiene, elementary psychology, singing, applied arts,
and physical culture.

The instruction is built around the English system
of a tutor in residence with a large number of fully
qualified visiting lecturers from universities. The
cost to the student is sixty pounds a year and several
scholarships of forty pounds are offered. The initial
heavy expense is covered by a guarantee fund raised
by the committee.

The question, "What are you going to educate them
for?" is answered thus by the committee: "We hope to
educate our students for a fuller and wider life in
whatever sphere they may be called upon to live, for
except in this sense, education truly understood is not
'for' anything."

A New Source of Strength in English Life

With leaders of labor and thousands of men and
women in the ranks of labor, who have been honor
students at universities, England has reason to feel
that she has a new source of strength welling up
within her. She has the satisfaction of knowing that
while the workers are demanding for themselves more
power they are at the same time fitting themselves to
use that power, not for the advancement of a few
individuals or one or two little trades or crafts, but
for the betterment of all society. Already the Work-

13

ers* Educational Association has made itself felt as a
force in the whole field of education. From the first
it has sought not simply to get what its members
wanted for themselves but has insisted upon the need
of an educational system in England that should more
nearly achieve the development of the gifts and char-
acters of all for the common good. This Association
had no small share in creating a public opinion that
demanded the progressive education bill passed by
Parliament in 1918. One of the most important pro-
visions of this bill is the requirement that boys and
girls must not only attend school regularly until they
are fourteen years old, but that up to the time they
are eighteen they must attend continuation school for
at least eight hours a week, between the hours of 8
a. m. and 7 p. m.

14

PEOPLE'S HIGH SCHOOLS IN DENMARK

The People's High Schools of Denmark are in some
respects like the university tutorial classes in England,
but they have grown out of a somewhat different soil and
have their own peculiar characteristics.

These high schools are really boarding schools where
young men and women from farms and from towns can
come for short periods of study and inspiration. There
is usually a winter term of five months for men and a
three months' summer term for women. In some schools
the winter courses are for both men and women. A few
schools offer a two years' course. The tuition is extremely
low and a large number of scholarships granted by the
state enable the poorest student to enter.

The two men who brought about the founding of the
first Danish high schools in the 1840's left a strong
impression upon the whole movement. One was Bishop
Grundtvig, who lived in the years between 1783 and 1872
when Denmark was passing through a period of spiritual,
political and economic stagnation. It became his pas-
sionate desire to awaken his countrymen to a newer life
and he gradually came to the conviction that this desire
could be fulfilled by the founding of schools "accessible
to young people all over the land, where they may readily
get leave and opportunity to become better acquainted
not only with human nature and human life in general,
but with themselves in particular, and where they can

15

receive guidance in all civic relations and become well
acquainted with their country's needs in all directions
. . . thus will be opened a well of healing in the land,
which will be sought by crowds from generation to
generation."

The other leader in the folk high school movement was
Kristcn Kold, the son of a poor shoemaker who lived
between 1816 and 1870. Kold by birth and temperament
was fitted for fully understanding the lives of working
men and women, and at the same time, like Bishop
Grundtvig, had the vision and the spiritual inspiration of
the seer.

From the days when these two men taught the young
men and women of Denmark to the present, the teachers
have been men of exceptional high-mindedness and spiri-
tual vision. The whole Danish folk school movement lays
especial emphasis upon the teacher's message.

Of the seventy high schools that were existing in 1918,
a little over half gave a purely cultural education ; history,
literature, languages, mathematics, sociology, natural
science and so forth. The remainder added technical
subjects.

The awakening and enlightenment which the peasant
youth of Denmark have received from the high schools
is said to be the reason why there is not so great a dis-
tance between the work of the few outstanding agricul-
turalists and that of agriculture in general, and also the
reason why the farmers of Denmark have worked
together so successfully in cooperative undertakings.

16

AN INTERNATIONAL PEOPLE'S
COLLEGE

The fall of 1920 will witness the opening in Denmark
of an International People's College which will bring
together in a little community working men and working
women from many countries, where they may live to-
gether, study together and work together for com-
mon ends.

The plan for such a college was inspired by the Danish
Folk High Schools. Denmark has been chosen as the
location because of the work of its high schools, because
of its central position and its neutrality during the war,
and because it is such a small state that it could not be
suspected of using the college for political ends. A build-
ing has already been secured for the college and funds
are now being raised for endowments and scholarships.

Further information as to plans for this college may
be secured from Mr. Richards, Students' Bureau, Ameri-
can Scandinavian Foundation, 25 West 42nd Street.

17

WORKERS' EDUCATION IN THE
UNITED STATES

Within the last two or three years we have begun to
hear of labor colleges and workers' universities in this
country in our larger cities. It is becoming increasingly
evident that wherever a group of wage-earning men and
women have secured wages and hours that enable them
to think of something besides the struggle for the mate-
rial things of life, the desire to fill in the gaps in their
education has become a compelling urge.

"Ten Nights in a Schoolroom"

"Ten Nights in a Schoolroom" and "Education in
the Fourteen Points" were nick-names given to Boston's
Labor College when it opened in April, 1919, offering
fourteen courses of ten lessons each. This college holds
its sessions not in an ivy-covered college hall, but in
one of the city's high school buildings. Its students
bear little resemblance to the college undergraduate who
figures in the college novel or play and is famous in pro-
portion to his ability to perform on the ukelele, dance at
"Prom" and play football. They are working men and
working women ; pressmen, stone cutters, cigar strippers,
garment workers. They know what the world is like
and what they are studying and why they are studying it.

But while Boston's Labor College lacks some of the

18

distinguishing external marks of a college, no one can
doubt its right to the name who has looked over its list
of lecturers and has sampled the kind of thinking that
goes on in its classes. In the opening term courses were
given in English, economics, law, history of trade union-
ism, government and science. On its staff of teachers
were Professor Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Harvard
Law School, Professor Harold Laski of Harvard, Pro-
fessor Felix Frankfurter of Harvard, formerly chairman
of the War Labor Policies Board, and other men equally
well known for their contributions to education.

Much of the material given in a course on "Shop Com-
mittees" by William Leavitt Stoddard has gone into his
book of the same title, and the lectures by Professor Laski
are now a part of his book on "Representative Govern-
ment." It is a fairly safe guess that these two books
will withstand criticism the better for having been tried
out in part and having taken shape in a classroom of
students who could test their theories by practical expe-
rience. And a Harvard professor could hardly test his
theories on a group more representative of the rank and
file of the American people than were the students in
the opening classes of the Labor College. There were
middle-aged men and women and mere youngsters.
There were representatives of the white, yellow and
black races and of nearly every nationality, and there
were workers in nearly every kind of trade or industry.
In one small class there were Negroes, Chinese, Italians,
Irish, Canadians and pure Yankees, who were stenog-
raphers, stablemen, type setters, telephone operators,
machinists, and carpenters.

19

The Labor College an Experiment in
Democracy

Never was there a more complete experiment in
democracy in education than this labor college established
by the Boston Central Labor Union. Its board of trus-
tees is a Committee of Sixteen, which represents both
teachers and pupils, eleven being members of the unions
affiliated with the Central Labor Union and five chosen
from the teaching body. This committee brings together
representatives of stablemen's unions, milk wagon drivers'
unions, painters' unions and nearly every kind of manual
worker with Harvard professors and lawyers and
writers. At its first commencement exercises last June
the three chief speakers were Michael Murphy of the
stablemen's union, Chairman of the Committee, Profes-
sor Pound of Harvard, and the Governor of Massachu-
setts. What better omen could there be for the coming
of an era of better understanding and of cooperation?

The reasons for founding a labor college can best be
summed up in the words of a Boston labor leader:

"There isn't a laboring man but wants education," he
declared during the debate at the headquarters of the
Central Labor Union when the founding of the college
was under discussion. "We all of us had to work pretty
young, most of us before we finished our schooling at
the public schools. We couldn't go to college because
it cost too much. The great state of Massachusetts does
not provide free college education. It ought to, and
organized labor has always been in favor of a state
university. There doesn't seem to be much chance of
getting one, and so it seems about time to start a uni-
versity of our own. Let's show the state of Massachu-

20

setts that labor is willing to sacrifice for its own educa-
tion, and perhaps they will believe us when we say that
labor wants education and is bound to have it."

A Worker's University in New York City
Boston's Labor College is but one of many movements
among industrial groups to secure for themselves an
education. One of the pioneer groups to organize edu-
cational work on a large scale is the International Ladies'
Garment Workers' Union, which has established a
Workers' University in New York City.

Evening classes are conducted by this union in a half
dozen of the city's public schools. Following is a list
of one week's activities:

19 classes in English — three times a week.
4 health lectures weekly.

(The lectures are given by prominent physi-
cians and have an attendance of from 200 to
500.)

3 classes in literature or reading circles.
3 classes in gymnasium work.
1 moving picture center.
3 classes in public speaking.

A special class for business agents.

Lectures on the following subjects are also given regu-
larly :

Social interpretation of literature.
Evolution and the labor movement.
Problems of reconstruction.
Sociology and civilization.
Labor legislation.

21

Social problems.

Trade unionism.

Cooperation.

A thousand pupils an evening was the average attend-
ance at the classes of this Workers' University last win-
ter. Concerts, dramatics, dancing classes, and traveling
libraries are some of the other activities carried on by
this group. The same organization is conducting classes
in Philadelphia and plans to extend its work to other
cities.

"Art, Labor and Science"

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers and several other
large unions with a total membership of over 250,000
have formed in New York City a United Labor Educa-
tion Committee which has adopted the slogan, "Art,
Labor and Science." Its executive board is made up of
representatives of every labor organization which is a
member of the committee and its budget is made up of
contributions from every organization. In addition to
electing a representative to the Executive Board, each
union appoints an educational committtee of its own to
cooperate with the Central Committee in arranging work
which shall fit the needs of its own members in various
sections of the city.

As one would expect from its motto, the purpose of
the United Labor Education Committee is to enrich the
lives of its members in a many-sided way by bringing to
them not only the principles of science, the mechanics of
language, etc., but also opportunities to know the best in
literature and in art and to have recreation of a higher

22

standard than the "tinsel joys" of our cities. In carrying
out their ideals they have secured the help of a group of
men and women, well known for their work in the fields
of art and science, among them Professor Charles Beard,
Professor James Harvey Robinson, Dr. Louis Harris,
Josef Stransky, conductor of the New York Philhar-
monic Orchestra, and many well-known actors and musi-
cians. Any subject is taught for which there is a demand
by twenty-five or more members, and for which a teacher
can be found. In addition to the formal course of study,
popular lectures are given in science, economics, biology,
literature, and drama. Symphony concerts and special
performances of opera and of worth-while plays are pro-
vided by arrangement with managers at rates so low as
to give every member a chance to enjoy them. The New
York Philharmonic Orchestra is giving a special series
of concerts for this group of men and women and special
plans are on foot for the opening of a workmen's theatre
by this committee some time in the near future.

"For Unity, Education and Spiritual Advancement"
was the slogan of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
New York City in their recent campaign to raise money
for a $600,000 building. Educational work is considered
by the builders to be the most important of the uses to
which this building will be put. The plans include twenty
classrooms and a large library for students.

The Movement Grows

In Chicago the Women's Trade Union League and the
Federation of Labor are cooperating in conducting classes
in English, parliamentary law, practical citizenship, history
of trade unions, public speaking, etc.

23

Labor colleges, similar to Boston's Labor College, have
been opened in Washington, D. C, and in Seattle, con-
trolled in each case by a Central Labor Council and plans
are being made by trade union leaders for opening such
a college in Minneapolis.

In some cities consumers' cooperative societies, follow-
ing the example of the British cooperators, are conduct-
ing classes for their members. Certain political groups
and certain private organizations in various cities are
carrying on educational work similar to the workers'
college in its aims and in its type of instruction. The
New School of Social Research, recently founded in New
York City as a sort of laboratory for the study of social
problems which should be more flexible in its course of
study than the average university, is giving a special
course for those who wish to teach in labor colleges and
has already supplied several teachers during the past
season to the International Ladies' Garment Workers'
Union.

These various experiments in education by and for the
people are all very much alike in their methods. They
are managed by committees or councils which represent
both pupils and teachers. The fees are so low as to
keep no one out; the teachers are recruited from the
public schools and from neighboring universities, more
emphasis being placed on a high standard of work than
on the building in which the work is done. Usually the
cooperation of local school boards is secured in the use
of school buildings. In most instances the course of
study is determined wholly by the needs and desires of
the students.

One of the things that labor men and women particu-

24

larly want to learn is how to speak and write good Eng-
lish. The man or woman who has left school at fourteen
or the foreign-born who have at their command only the
rough and colloquial English which they have picked up
by chance, realize keenly that first of all they must learn
to express themselves clearly and forcefully. They feel
especially the need of supplementing their hard-won
knowledge in the realm of industry and business by the
understanding of economic principles and of industrial
history. Not only do working men and women wish to
be better fitted for their struggle with material things,
but also to enrich their lives by increasing their power
to enjoy the best of music, drama and art.

The Spirit of Labor College Students

At the opening of Washington's Trade Union College,
one of the teaching staff of the college, who had been a
public school teacher for several years, said that for the
first time in her life teaching school was going to be
what she had expected it would be when she started out
on her career, teaching pupils who were interested and
eager to learn instead of forcing knowledge upon unwill-
ing victims.

The genuine hunger for an education; the stillness in
which one can hear a pin drop that prevails during lec-
tures ; and the avalanche of questions that follows during
the discussion hour are constant sources of surprise and
delight to teachers in trade union classes. A teacher in
Boston's Labor College tells how one evening a pupil in
his class left his seat during the lecture to get a drink of
water from a faucet in the classroom. The indignation

25

upon the faces of his fellow students at the slight dis-
turbance was a stinging rebuke, and at the end of the
class one of the students apologized to the teacher for
the incident and told him he could be sure that it would
never happen again. "Never have I seen more earnest
and conscientious attention to business in any classroom,"
is the comment of one teacher in a labor college.

When H. G. Wells was in this country a few years
ago, he is reported as having remarked that the American
college student seemed to have the impression that the
world's thinking had all been done by a few great men
many years ago, and that it was the business of the
present-day student merely to collect the souvenirs. No
one could hear the questions and discussions in one of
these groups without realizing that the labor college stu-
dent has no such idea of education. He is very much
aware that the great thinkers of the past are but chal-
lenges to him to go on blazing the trail where they left off.

26

HOW LABOR COLLEGES HAVE COME
ABOUT

As a spontaneous expression of the educational needs
of a large part of the population the Workers' Educa-
tional Movement is worth careful study. It has come
into existence because working men and working women
are realizing that if they are to shoulder the heavier
responsibilities that they are asking for and if they are to
develop a sane and efficient leadership and if they are to
enter upon the fuller and more abundant life they are
seeking, they must go to school. They are realizing that
not higher wages nor shorter hours but a knowledge of
the truth will make them free.

This urge for a higher education on the part of labor
has by no means developed over night. It is but the
expression of a long felt shortage in our whole educa-
tional system. The boys and girls of the early nineteenth
century used to work on the farm or in the home during
the spring and summer months when work was heavy and
go to school during the winter when there was little work
to be done. Sometimes when obliged to leave school
altogether they would study at odd times with the min-
ister of their church or a leading lawyer in their town
and would often fit themselves for professions in this
way. But with the coming of a great industrial era, the
boundary line between school days and work days became
very sharply marked. One had a certain number of years

27

of all school and no work and then this period suddenly
came to an end and gave place to a period of all work
and no school. If a boy left school and went into a
factory or business house at the age of fourteen or fif-
teen, the chances were that he would go through life with
only a grammar school education. The situation in edu-
cation was very much as the food situation would be if
the only people who could get a dinner were those who
could afford the time and money to go to an expensive
restaurant and get a many course table d'hote meal.

THE NEED OF EDUCATIONAL LUNCH
COUNTERS

It soon became apparent that there was need of edu-
cational lunch counters and lunch wagons if the require-
ments of a whole community were to be met. Gradually,
school boards and college trustees and the public in gen-
eral are realizing that education should not be a matter
of a few years but of a lifetime, that it should meet the
needs of men and women of all ages and all types of
experience, that it should be served at lunch counter
hours and prices instead of simply as a great banquet,
and that it should be brought to people instead of forcing
people to come to it.

Within the last fifteen or twenty years there have been
many attempts to make education more elastic and more
democratic. The public schools have opened evening
high schools, the universities have conducted extension
courses, the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. and other
organizations have held evening classes ; but almost every
form of extension education fails of being completely

28

democratic, in that, while it is education for the people,
it is not education by the people; it is something pre-
scribed by one group for another group. The evening
high school, while it makes it possible for boys and girls
to take the prescribed high school course or in many
instances to train themselves for special vocations, at
hours which do not interfere with their earning a living,
does not take into consideration the man or woman who
neither wishes to pursue the regular high school course
or to study for some special trade, but simply desires to
enrich his life. Several of our large universities through
their extension work are making definite progress toward
becoming people's universities by finding out what people
all over the state are needing and wanting to learn,
whether they be engaged in agriculture, in home making,
in industry, in business or in professions, and then put-
ting the means of securing an education within their
reach through special short-term courses, through corre-
spondence courses, through traveling libraries, traveling
lecturers and people's forums. However, many university
extension courses fall short of attaining their purpose by
charging fees that are so high that few wage-earners
can afford them. But university extension courses, even-
ing classes, civic forums and church forums have all
helped to develop a democratic ideal of education.

POSSIBILITIES OF THE MOVEMENT

If the experiments in workers' education which are
now being tried in this country can meet with the friendly
cooperation of educators and educational agencies, the
movement can prove to be a tremendous source of

29

strength and saneness in American life. It can break
down the high barriers that divide the so-called "brain
workers" and "hand workers" into two separate camps,
although their interests are identical. It can clear away
some of the fog banks that are befuddling much of our
thinking today by bringing into the studies of professors,
writers, editors, law makers, etc., glimpses of life as it is
being lived in the workshop, in the foundry, under the
earth, in mines and in subway construction, in the holds
of ships, and high up on the steel skeletons of sky-
scrapers, and by bringing to those under the heaviest fire
in the army of industry the kind of scientific knowledge
that shall make them see clearly and choose wisely.

Too long have men sat apart from life and dispensed
knowledge as remote in its bearing upon the future lives
of their pupils as the tree-shaded serenity of a college
campus is remote from the rush and roar of industry and
commerce. Too long have men made fine plans for salva-
tion of the so-called "masses" with little, if any, first-hand
knowledge of the lives of the men and women who make
up those "masses"; and too long have the men and
women in the ranks of labor failed to realize their com-
mon interests with the "highbrows," as they have been
wont to class all who did not do manual work.

The movement for workers' education is more than a
movement for the improvement of one particular class.
It can be a mighty force in bringing together groups of
men and women who are groping for the same goal of a
more abundant life, but for the darkness cannot see that
it is the" same goal.

30

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