A valuable look at the work of the Brookwood Labor College in the 1920s by its journalism instructor Helen G. Norton.

‘Brookwood Labor College in Its First Decade’ by Helen G. Norton from Labor Age. Vol. 20 No. 5. May, 1931.

TWO workers’ education institutions celebrate their tenth anniversaries this spring—Brookwood and the Workers Education Bureau. The W.E.B. observes its birthday by not holding its regular convention. In fact, since the W.E.B. has become the “educational arm of the American Federation of Labor” and rid itself of the annoyance of having on its executive board people who were actually doing workers’ education, it has practically ceased to function. Its secretary, Mr. Spencer Miller, Jr., contents himself with contributing the “literary part of the program” to adult education institutes and collaborating on a book, ‘‘The Church and Industry.” Whether the A.F. of L. finds the present activities of the Bureau sufficiently innocuous or whether it will find it necessary to discontinue the Bureau “for financial reasons” is a matter of conjecture, but the fact remains that at the end of 10 years, the Workers Education Bureau has practically abandoned its original purpose of a clearing house for workers’ education projects and its publication of workers’ books.

Brookwood, on the other hand, at the end of its first decade 1s a power in the labor movement. Its graduates are functioning through trade unions, through the C.P.L.A., through the Socialist and Communist parties, in the cooperative, youth and farmer movements, workers’ education classes, the industrial department of the Y.W.C.A., and as labor correspondents in this country and abroad. The school does not operate in cloistered academic seclusion. Through the extension department it has been drawn recently into the struggle of southern textile workers to free themselves from the exploitation of employers and of the miners to free themselves from the double exploitation of the employers and corrupt union leaders. At the Brookwood workers’ education conferences are to be found representatives of all the progressive groups in the country.

In these 10 years, Brookwood has graduated 186 young men and women, industrial workers, and the close of this year will see 37 more added to that number.

They came from 27 states and seven foreign countries. Of the 172 students from the United States, over 70 per cent were from the highly industrialized states of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts. However, California, Washington and Oregon; Colorado, Montana and Wyoming; Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio and Iowa; Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas; Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland; Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Maine have been represented by from one to six students. Of foreign students there have been 14—four from England, three from Canada, two each from Denmark and Belgium, one each from Germany, Sweden and Japan.

The youngest students have been 18 and the oldest 50. The median age was 26. As to sex, 115 or 61 per cent have been men and 71 or 39 per cent, women. And as for nationality, there have been Americans, Italians, Poles, Germans, Jews, Englishmen, Swedes, Negroes, French Canadians and pure French, Irish, Slavs, Hungarians, Armenians, Belgians, Danes, Scotch, Bohemians, Finns, Japanese, Russians, Spaniards and Norwegians studying together. In the way of religion, there has been everything from Catholics to fundamentalist Methodists, and some with no religion at all, save that of the labor movement.

Thirty-five unions have been represented by 150 students from the United States and Canada, constituting 85.7 per cent of the whole number, leaving 14.3 per cent non-union, largely from unorganized industries. The garment trades have been most largely represented with 58 students or 33.1 per cent. Mining is next with 23 students or 13.1 per cent. The metal, building and transportation industries have had 14, 12, and II students respectively. With few exceptions these were all union members. Twenty students came from miscellaneous trades — coopers, laundry workers, radio workers, typographers, clerical workers, paving cutters, food workers, pocketbook workers. Students, teachers and social workers have been present to the number of nine. Five have come from the cooperative and farmer movements.

What Happened

“What will happen to Brookwood now?” was the question in more than one quarter when the A.F. of L., after several years of non-cooperation and veiled attack, came out in the open and denounced the school, ostensibly as being “un-American, atheistic, and red,” but really because it ventured to subject A.F. of L. policies to the same scrutiny and candid evaluation as it did any phenomenon of the movement. It was feared that the school would be hampered in getting students, or at least trade union students from important industries, and that its graduates would have difficulty in functioning in the movement.

It is now possible to advance a tentative answer to these questions, not from conjecture, but from a study of the students and graduates. Brookwood has graduated eight classes, the class which came in in 1921 finishing in 1923. Variations from year to year may not be significant, but if we compare the 1923-1926 classes with those of 1927-1930, certain tendencies are observable. This division is made, not because eight divides nicely into two fours, but because workers’ education in general seemed to cease to rise about 1926, and because the class which was graduated in 1927 was the incoming class in 1925 when the A.F. of L. first began openly to show displeasure at Brookwood’s activities. The classes which were graduated between 1923 and 1926, then, had come to Brookwood when workers’ education was on the upgrade; when the International Ladies’ Garment Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers maintained workers’ universities of their own; when the Boston Trade Union College and the labor colleges of Philadelphia and Seattle and Portland were flourishing; when Tom Tippett’s educational work among the Illinois miners was going strong; when Pennsylvania Federation classes were functioning ; when the Workers Education Bureau was approximating its purpose as a clearing house for workers’ education; and when the needle trades unions and the Machinists and the railway unions at least were relatively progressive.

The classes which have been graduated in the last four years have seen the Left-Right struggle embitter and hamper many unions and, with the coming of the Communist dual union policy, bring about civil warfare. They have seen machine control in the unions tighten until no opposition could function at all. They have seen Brookwood attacked from the right and the left, from within and without, and the complete emasculation of the Workers Education Bureau. They have seen the disintegration of the once powerful United Mine Workers and the loss of textile strikes in Passaic, Elizabethton, Marion and Gastonia. They have seen—and felt—the swing from prosperity to panic (Brookwood knew that money was tight long before Wall Street did).

Tendencies

What, then, have been the observable tendencies as between the two periods?

1. The number of students remained about the same—92 from 1923 to 1926 and 94 from 1927 to 1930. The school has been practically filled to capacity all the time. We can accommodate only 35 or 40 students and it must be borne in mind that in any one year there were two classes here—the incoming and outgoing.

2. Brookwood has extended its field both geographically and industrially. While the largest percentage of students still come from the Middle Atlantic states (39.3 per cent in 19271930), this is a drop of 27 per cent from the previous period. Enrolment from the southern states increased from five students to 13, from the north central states from I5 to 22, from the New England states from 5 to 12, and from the western states from three to seven. More “American” and fewer foreign-born students are coming.

In the first four classes, needle trades workers were 44.5 per cent of the students. In 1927-1930, this drops to 22.8 per cent. There was a slight decrease in metal trades students, but textile workers, who were only 3.6 per cent in 1923-1926, constituted 20.7 per cent of the total enrolment in the second period. Similarly, transportation increased from 1.2 per cent to 10.9 in the second period and there was a slight increase in the number of building trades workers. There were fewer students, teachers and social workers in the second period than in the first. Despite the A.F. of L. ban on Brookwood, the proportion of trade union members actually increased slightly from 85.5 to 85.9 per cent.

3. Forty-nine graduates of 19271930 are active in trade unions as against 45 graduates of 1923-1926, although there is a noticeable tendency to rank and file activity rather than official jobs, paid or unpaid. Part of this may be due to the fact that those more recently graduated have not yet had time to establish themselves, but this is not the whole story.

I have said before that 150 students were members of trade unions when they came to Brookwood. Our records show only 94 now active in unions. Though “membership” and “activity” are not exactly comparable, and though our records, depending on correspondence and hearsay may be somewhat incomplete, there is enough of a difference to be significant. What has happened?

What Students Do

Some of them can’t get jobs in their own industries. Some of our Illinois miners have not worked a day in the mines since they left Brookwood. One of them who has been in Kenosha, Wis., Chicago, and Detroit, writes: “I! am still alive but very much disgusted. The unemployment situation is terrible. I have managed to work four months this year, taking any job | could find.” A needle pusher who, in addition to a series of poor seasons in the trade, was in the bad graces of his union because of his opposition to the machine, has only recently obtained a job in another industry and joined that union, after having demonstrated for four years that man can live without eating. A machinist, failing to find work in his home town, went up into Michigan to try a career in sugar beets. He wrote an article for Federated Press on “How to Lose $35 in 17 Weeks” and to Clint Golden he wrote, “I may have to give up my membership in the union for the same reason —lack of money.”

Trade union politics has been a contributing factor in non-activity. Some graduates have been expelled; others have quit in disgust. One man, however, practically blacklisted by his union because he defended Brookwood, organized two locals for another railway union, one of which is named for Brookwood.

Some graduates have been blacklisted by employers because of strike or organizational activity and have gone into other and unorganized industries.

Some have turned to the Communist or Socialist party. The fact that the number of graduates engaging in labor political activity has risen from 13 in the 1923-26 group to 30 in the 1927-30 may be considered a result of the stagnation of the trade union movement. Be it said to Brookwood’s credit that it has not manufactured any Republicans or Democrats.

A few students have been washouts because, although in theory they are the most ardent advocates of the cooperative commonwealth, in reality they are natural born leaders of one main parties. They prefer to retire to Olympian heights and wrap themselves in gloomy garments of superiority to await the coming of the millennium—their own particular pet brand of millennium in which they will condescend to function. It may safely be said, however, that Brookwood has not induced this attitude in most cases —they brought it with them. Unemployment, union politics, blacklisting by the employers, political differences, personal maladjustment— these causes are operative in greater or less degree for most of the persons not now active in union work. It would be difficult to say which was the chief cause. At the moment, possibly our old friend, economic insecurity. I have listed some of the graduates in the “inactive” column very reluctantly because they are heart and soul in the movement, but bodily they are looking for something to eat.

4. More graduates of the later years are teaching or sponsoring workers’ education groups, although their work is on a less ambitious scale than in the early years of the movement. Nevertheless, Brookwooders to the number of 14 are promoting or teaching workers’ classes in Marion, N.C., Barnard Summer School, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Denver, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin Summer School. There is good teaching material in the present Brookwood student body and this number will probably be increased.

5. Brookwood is not educating workers out of the movement. Of the nine graduates attending other schools, only three are taking non-labor work.

If the class of 1930 may be taken as symptomatic of immediate tendencies, then there are some contrasts. This was a large class (33) because last year Brookwood completed its change to a one-year basic curriculum and both one- and two-year students were graduated. The average age was 26, as in former years. In nationality, it takes a definitely upward swing in the previously gradual tendency toward more native-born students. This is partly accounted for by the large number of southern textile workers. The percentage of trade union members was the lowest of any year—60.6. This is in line with a definite policy on the part of Brookwood to draw more upon the unorganized, unskilled workers. The present student body exhibits this same tendency, lessened somewhat by the large quota of miners.

Not Hampered by A.F. of L.

Judging from the number of applicants, Brookwood had not been hampered by the A. F. of L. attack and even profited from the reams of free advertising it furnished. Judging also from the general level of last year’s and this year’s classes which is as high or higher than in former years, we have not suffered. True, we no longer receive so many scholarships from trade unions, but this is compensated, or in other sources, and our experience with handpicked scholars has not been unadulteratedly happy. Moreover, we still get applications from members of some of the most hardboiled unions.

The point at which a break with the official labor movement may have the most effect is in the functioning of students immediately after graduation. The unions view their “educated” members with suspicion and students who have come from unorganized industries may find it hard to create their own base of operation.

Nevertheless, after ten years of workers’ education, Brookwood has reason to be proud of its graduates, an unsuspected number of whom are doing the difficult and dreary job of pounding away at local opposition and inertia. Brookwood as an experiment was something unique which excited curiosity; Brookwood as the leading workers’ education institution in the country has passed the romantic pioneer stage, but its influence is widespread. It has not contented itself with educating workers in theories, but has had its finger in many labor pies throughout the country. And it is certainly significant that while the Workers Education Bureau celebrates its tenth anniversary by not holding a convention, independent workers’ education representatives, meeting at Brookwood under union auspices, lay plans for another clearing house, such as the W.E B. was intended to be.

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/v20n05-May-1931-Labor%20Age.pdf