Marvelous reflections on the age-old question of ‘youth’ from A.J. Muste, then Director of the Brookwood Labor College, ending with a list of ten ‘don’ts’ for young activists from the already veteran labor leader.

‘Appeal to Youth’ by A.J. Muste from Labor Age. Vol. 16 No. 7. July, 1927.

Arouse and Attract New Blood

There are many countries in the world today which one of the most striking and significant developments is a youth movement. In not a few instances this is a labor movement. China, India, Italy, several of the South American countries, Austria, Germany, Holland, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, England, come to mind in this connection.

In certain spheres of our own American life there is a strong organization and movement of young people, in some cases at any rate, beginning to achieve distinctive and creative expression. Among the younger young people, there are, for example, the various kinds of Scout movements. Among the older young people there are the numerous church organizations and the student movement in the universities and colleges.

The American trade union movement has, according to all available figures, a relatively small proportion of young members and it has no young people’s movement to speak of. The only semblance of a youth movement having any connection with American labor is in the extreme left wing movement.

American unions need a steady infusion of young people, need perhaps a youth movement of some sort. That any organization is in constant need of new blood, if it is not to stagnate and die, is so obvious that it is perhaps hardly worth saying it. We may note, however, that there are certain factors in the present situation, such as the steady loss in membership in some trade unions, the falling off in attendance at union meetings, the lack of enthusiasm, which are disturbing our most loyal and most conservative trade unionists.

Not only do our existing unions need young people and the contribution which they can make but it seems likely that we shall have to depend to a very considerable extent upon American labor youth to organize the unorganized. We frequently hear people calling desperately upon the American Federation of Labor to organize the basic industries. Doubtless the A.F. of L. has a responsibility for assisting organization work wherever opportunity may offer and is seeking means to meet that responsibility. We have to bear in mind, however, that the A.F. of L. is not primarily an instrument for organization purposes. Under our American plan, responsibility for organizing is placed primarily upon the international unions. In the case of many of our basic industries today, no international union, however, has clear jurisdiction. In other cases, jurisdictional lines are so hopelessly confused that it seems impossible to solve the difficulty except by some process of cutting the Gordian knot. In any event, every group of workers must in the last analysis organize itself. Nobody else can do the job for them. Organization, like liberty, is something that cannot be handed to people from without or above. It must be fought for and achieved.

If this is in some measure a correct view of the situation, then it would appear that in organizing the unorganized, we are going to need a good many foot-loose young people who are not yet burdened with heavy personal or family responsibilities, who can afford to travel about, to lose their jobs frequently, as a penalty for attempting organization work, who can carry on various kinds of organizational work at small expense to the bodies that may sponsor their activities, who can afford to take risks, to go to jail, and so on.

The problem of utilizing the energies of our labor youth has to be approached from two angles. There is on the one hand the question of introducing new people — from time to time into the leadership of our local, district, state, national and international labor organizations. And there is on the other hand the larger problem of utilizing the energies of the rank and file of our young people as a whole. In connection with the first. much might be learned from the practice of the great modern business enterprises. Not only is big business prepared to spend millions of dollars upon educational enterprises either of a general character or specialized schools of business administration, but there is a deliberate policy of encouraging young people of ability and initiative to rise in business organizations and all possible sources of supply are eagerly searched for such young people. Under our highly competitive modern conditions no big business enterprise would expect to survive on any other basis.

In connection with the second phase of the problem, that of enlisting the energies of the rank and file of young workers, it seems to me that we might profitably consider the possibility of developing something in the nature of a trade union or labor youth league. Religious, charitable and political organizations of all kinds have such auxiliary youth organizations and would not think of carrying on without them. It is true that a special difficulty needs to be guarded against in the case of the trade union since the trade union could not possibly tolerate anything in the nature of a dual organization that might attempt to take over the union’s bargaining function. But while this is a danger to be considered, it hardly seems to be an insurmountable one. There is probably no inherent reason why a labor youth organization should displace the union any more than the numerous young peoples’ religious organizations have in any sense displaced the churches with which they are affiliated.

In some such youth organization, young people would receive training in running a successful enterprise and might learn to correct many of the mistakes which otherwise they might perpetrate in later years in attempting to administer the affairs of the union itself. It would immensely strengthen the morale of the unions if thru their own organizations young people obtained a great deal of their recreation in connection with the union, instead of obtaining it from the boss through the company union, as is so often the case at the present time. 

The workers’ education movement would be strengthened and enriched if it were a spontaneous movement, rising from among young people eager for the training that would enable them to function in their own organizations. Furthermore, in connection with organization campaigns, strikes, civil liberties conflicts, there would be numerous practical services to the movement that young people could render.

So soon as we begin to talk about getting new blood into the movement, we encounter a certain resistance among us older people. Young people coming along in the various labor enterprises with which we are connected often receive a cold reception or a hot one or a lukewarm one, but very seldom a warm and cordial one from us. We are afraid of losing our jobs. We dislike being disturbed in the routine way of doing things which we have developed. We are afraid of the bungling and the haste of young people, remembering the harm we wrought by bungling and haste in our own younger days. We are afraid of that thing in young people to which at the present time we usually apply the term bolshevism. That is to say, afraid of their rebelliousness, their ardor for better things, their willingness even to smash what already exists in order to get at something that seems better. All of these difficulties are perfectly real. Young people do, whether they realize it or not, often want to take older people’s jobs away from them. It is human for them to think that they can improve upon their elders. It would be very unfortunate for the world if frequently it were not so. Young people do have a way of wanting to do things differently and so disturbing the routine. They do bungle many times; they are often in too much of a hurry and they are disposed to be rebellious, whether in a particular situation rebellion be needed or not.

Recognizing these difficulties does not, however, solve the problem. The fact remains that the labor movement, like any other movement, must choose one of three possibilities. First, either the movement uses the energies of youth, harnesses them to the work that needs to be done, or, second, the movement fails to attract young people and presently dies of dry rot, or, third, the movement having young people but failing to use them will in some way be rent asunder by the explosive energies of its own youth.

Don’ts for Youth

If, however, we thus encounter a psychological resistance among us older people which makes it difficult to achieve effective use of the energies of youth in the movement, it is also true that young people frequently complicate the problem unnecessarily. At the risk of being didactic and preachy, I venture to set down a few maxims which it seems to me are worthy of some consideration on the part of young people who want to be truly useful in the labor movement.

1. Don’t be somebody who is going to do something TO the labor movement. Be somebody who is going to be and do something IN the labor movement. In every union there are plenty of humble tasks to be done. Set about doing some of them, get people familiar with you, accustomed to seeing you as a part of the picture, before you put your own pet idea in the front window. Perhaps after you have been in the movement for some time you may get the opportunity to do something to it if you still want to.

2. Don’t get the Messiah or the Moses-lead-the-movement-out-of-the-wilderness complex. That may be all right if you happen to be a Moses, although I think that even Moses got away with it in spite of his complex and not because of it. People under fifty who try to tell people over fifty just how to run the world have simply never been popular.

3. Don’t be in a hurry. Don’t go off half-cocked. Some things have to grow; they can’t be made. There are some things that you will be able to do after you have been in the movement for ten or twelve years that you could not do the first year, even if you were the greatest genius ever born.

4, Don’t be a cry baby. A cry baby is anybody who quits trying. A cry baby is anyone who always finds someone else to blame except himself. When things go wrong and even your most honest efforts meet with opposition, don’t always blame the A. F. of L. or the labor fakirs; blame yourself once in a while. There is no royal welcome awaiting you in the movement; you are not entitled to it. No seat is worth anything anyway that is built for you by somebody else.

5. Don’t become the clever fellow who plays the game from the side lines. Young people in the movement usually profess a very great disdain for the intellectual. It might be well to remember that the psychoanalysts tell us that if we develop a very bitter and blind hate for something it usually means that at the bottom of our hearts, we want to be that thing ourselves. Be in the game, take your part in the day to day work of the movement; don’t play the game from the side lines.

6. Don’t be a nut. A nut is someone who is so obsessed with his own idea that he doesn’t see it in relation to other ideas nor in its effect on the people he is dealing with. He is the kind of person who can make a speech, for example, and keep right on talking even when everybody has left the hall. Don’t become a nut about anything, not even about workers’ education.

7. Don’t play for the limelight all the time. There are still somethings that can’t be done effectively in the limelight, such as making love or bringing up babies. Much of the important work of the movement, for example, has to be done quietly in committee meetings. There is no more misleading notion than the one a good many young people have, that the success of a cause depends upon the number of vehement speeches you can succeed in making about it.

8. Play for a chance to do work, not for a chance to exercise power, and do not forget that it is human nature many times to be seeking for power, when we think that we are only looking for a chance to work.

9. Don’t be afraid of being called names. I don’t tell you to be a bolshevik but I do tell you not to be afraid of being called one. On the other hand don’t fall a prey to the hypnotism of words. Use your head; let your mind deal with realities, not with slogans. Don’t be one of these people who throws a fit every time the A. F. of L. is mentioned or Moscow; every time someone says “class collaboration” or “class struggle.”

10. Finally, and most important of all, don’t become a cynic. Don’t grow up; don’t get old; don’t settle down; don’t lose your nerve, your gayety, your willingness to take a risk. People are supposed to acquire wisdom as they grow older. A good many of us acquire precious little wisdom but we do develop a disease which causes our minds to set and our hearts to grow stale, which makes us mental and spiritual skeletons or ghosts, even while we grow fat physically. The worst injury you can possibly do to yourself or to the movement is to let that happen to you. All the mistakes you could possibly make by haste, bungling, irreverence for your elders and the other supposed shortcomings of youth, could not possibly be as devastating. You should not get fired out of your union if you can help it. You shouldn’t get thrown into jail, if you can help it. You shouldn’t fail, if you can help it. But it would be infinitely better to be fired out of your union, to be thrown into jail, and to fail in the world’s estimation than to lose that burning thing in you which is of the essence of life—your nerve, your gayety, your determination at every cost to build a better movement and a better world than now is.

Labor Age was a left-labor monthly magazine with origins in Socialist Review, journal of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Published by the Labor Publication Society from 1921-1933 aligned with the League for Industrial Democracy of left-wing trade unionists across industries. During 1929-33 the magazine was affiliated with the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) led by A. J. Muste. James Maurer, Harry W. Laidler, and Louis Budenz were also writers. The orientation of the magazine was industrial unionism, planning, nationalization, and was illustrated with photos and cartoons. With its stress on worker education, social unionism and rank and file activism, it is one of the essential journals of the radical US labor socialist movement of its time.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/laborage/v16n07-jul-1927-LA.pdf