‘Working Class Youth Receives Excellent Training at Summer School in Waino, Wisconsin’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 3 No. 156. July 15, 1926.

WAINO, Wis., July 13. The young workers’ summer school, conducted by the Workers (Communist) Party and the Young Workers (Communist) League with the support and co-operation of numerous co-operatives, workers’ clubs and women’s sections in the Minnesota-Wisconsin-Michigan district, opened several weeks ago at Waino, a farming community six miles from Brule and about 40 miles from Superior, Wis. A large part of the population here are Finns, among whom there is a strong progressive tendency which is led by a comparatively well-organized and active Workers (Communist) Party and Young Workers League group.

We now have 60 students at the school. Most, of them are between the ages of 16 and 21, with a few a little younger and four or five beyond 21. Most of the students are from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, but we have one or two from North and South Dakota as well as two boys from Astoria, Ore. Most of the students are American-born youths of Finnish parentage. It is our hope and purpose to draw into the school more of the youth of other nationalities, also in the schools that will be held in the future.

Comrades A. J. Hayes, of Superior and Oliver Carlson are our instructors. Comrade Toivo Tenhunen, who has been very active in building the Young Workers (Communist) League movement in this district, and who was a student at the courses held last year, is now technical manager of these courses and occupies himself in making everyone’s stay here comfortable, attending to the numerous details that are necessary in the school community. And last but surely not least, we must mention the two capable cooks, Comrades Sannah Hill and her assistant, Mrs. Nurmi.

Four Periods.

The following subjects are taught by Comrade Hayes: Sociology, Public Speaking, American Social and Labor History. In addition he directs in learning red songs, group games and athletics. Comrade Carlson instructs in Marxian or Political Economics, Current Events and Workers Journalism, Working Class Theories and particularly revolutionary class struggle theory. Both Hayes and Carlson lecture on “forum” subjects, that is, subjects that are of special interest but do not require more than two or three periods at the most, such as lectures and discussions on religion, workers’ youth and capitalist sports, etc. In the forum period it is planned to hold debates between students on various subjects. Special lectures on the cooperative movement have to be delivered by Comrades George Halonen, educational director, and Eskel Ronn, manager, of the Cooperative Central Exchange. One of the most important subjects on the curriculum is Young Workers (Communist) League organization and the entire forenoon each Saturday Is taken up by the work of the model shop nuclei. The students are divided into nuclei according to their own occupations and the entire group operates as tho they were an actual local organization of the league. We even have cards, stamps and other supplies.

Nuclei Function.

Separate from the model league organizations and other activities, which include circle discussions, etc., the student body meets each Friday to discuss and act on matters pertaining to student activities at the school, such as discipline, entertainments, the work of our numerous working committees, etc. The students have elected from among themselves a Student Council of nine members, which is the highest body in the system of student control. Chairman of all the important standing committees, as the committees for discipline, the wall-paper or editorial committee, school correspondents committees and others, are members of the executive council, which is a permanent organization for the whole school period but any of its members may be recalled and new ones put in their places whenever that is desired. In the meetings of the student body the instructors have voice but no vote. In disciplinary matters the final decision rests with the instructors, however, as the short duration of the school does not make it possible to develop a complete and self-reliant system of student control.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

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