Garlin, a graduate, remembers the Rand School, an historically important institution of the Socialist movement in the U.S. that began in 1906 with an endowment from Elizabeth Rand, comrade and wife of George D. Herron, a leading figure and publisher in the Socialist Party. A workers’ education school, in addition a publishing house, research institute, as well as camps and retreats were developed. The school came under the Social Democratic Federation after the split in the Socialist Party in 1936 and changed its name to the “Tamiment Institute and Library” with Its collection forming the basis the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives at New York University today.

‘The Rand School: A Memory’ by Sender Garlin from The Daily Worker. Vol. 4 No. 34. February 22, 1927.

In 1906, when the Rand School of Social Science was founded, it had a couple of little rooms in one of the decayed brown-stone houses on East 19th Street, near Third Avenue. There weren’t many students, but they were earnest, hard-working, and eager. The faculty consisted of two: or three men, one of whom also acted as executive secretary of the school.

The students came from the shops, the factories, or the mills, to learn the facts about the capitalist system so they could return to their “home-towns” and spread the message. These were the “full-time’’ students, who spent a period of six months studying the history of the working class, economics, history, and sociology. Many of them later became organizers, speakers and writers for the Socialist movement.

Some of the students slept in the little rooms on the top floor of the building. Joints on Third Avenue were constantly being discovered where a big meal could be had for 25 or 30 cents. Some of them washed dishes in neighborhood restaurants for their meals; others brought a little money with them and were able to spend all their time in study. There existed then a spirit of comradeliness, co-operation, eagerness.

This was before the World War and the Russian Revolution and America was to gain the Co-operative Commonwealth by electing the lawyers in the party to the State Legislatures. The school was founded with a few thousand dollars bequeathed by Mrs. Carrie Rand, a lady with liberal and humanitarian instincts. The money she left didn’t amount to a great deal, but it was sufficient to start the school going. In the spring of 1917 the building at 7 East 15th Street was the headquarters of one of the branches of the Young Women’s Christian Association.

In that year the Socialist Party was very strong, numerically, in the United States, and particularly in New York City. Its academic opposition to the war; Morris Hillquit’s mayoralty campaign on the issue of cheaper milk; and a general program of petty reform attracted thousands of middle-class tradesmen and professional men to the party. That’s how the People’s House was obtained. (They also got the New York Call, a large building, and the fine printing presses). Between 1917 and 1919 was the “Golden Age” of the Rand School,

Thousands of men and women attended the lecture given at the school. A cafeteria was established, and a book shop, with a brisk and enterprising manager. Courses were given by some of the best radical thinkers in America. This was a period of expulsions of unorthodox professors from the Universities. There was one from. Pennsylvania, another from Columbia, and one from Clark. At this time the Rand School was in a true sense the intellectual center of the American radical movement.

Then came the left wing split in the Socialist Party in 1919. The Rand School became the citadel for the Right wing forces. Several of the instructors were “let go.” One of them a teacher of history and political science was made uncomfortable, because of his dangerous doctrines, and he parted company with the school. He had previously lost his job in a Brooklyn high school for a similar reason.

It was at this time that courses were introduced in interpretative dancing, psycho-analysis, and “The Ring of the Niebelung.”

It was natural, in this atmosphere of culture and refinement, that there should be soft jobs, administrative twaddle, fat salaries. There was an Educational Director, an Executive Secretary, an Assistant Educational Director, a House Manager, a Publicity Director.

And once, the three typists and office clerks had their pay cut two dollars each, because the “comrades ought to co-operate.”

One winter Morris Hillquit gave a series of talks on “From Marx to Lenin.” East Fifteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and Union Square was lined with limousines. In the crowded auditorium the Executive Secretary, who resembled a Dean of Women in a Middle-western University, beamed. The Socialist movement was making definite progress. It was gaining recognition.

Today the Rand School is a tomb.

In spite of attractive courses on Psychoanalysis, Appreciation of Music, and Current Poetry, few come. Even its gym classes have been liquidated. The library is usually empty. The large clock on the wall of the library stopped a few months ago. Nobody has taken the trouble to wind it up again.

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. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n034-NY-feb-22-1927-DW-LOC.pdf