Название: American Gandhi
Автор: Leilah Danielson
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
Серия: Politics and Culture in Modern America
isbn: 9780812291773
isbn:
At Brookwood’s second annual summer textile institute, held in 1928, Muste urged the UTW executive board to step up their efforts to organize the South. Alfred Hoffman spearheaded the organizing drive in the Piedmont region, along with the help of other Brookwood students.31 Meanwhile, closer to home, in Paterson, New Jersey, the Associated Silk Workers, an independent union, called a strike on October 10, 1928, for the forty-four-hour work week, a uniform piecework scale, and union recognition. As the strike dragged on for several months, Brookwood organized relief for the striking workers, while Muste organized merger negotiations between the independent union and the UTW. The decision to have Muste serve as impartial arbitrator ‘‘was the unanimous choice of both sides,’’ President McMahon of the UTW commented.32
Brookwood formalized its move ‘‘into the field’’ in 1928 with the formation of an extension department. Under the direction of Tom Tippett, a former miner, the college provided not only classes and lectures to workers throughout the United States, but also participated in organization campaigns and strikes. Brookwood considered these activities ‘‘not as interruptions of school work but as genuine education, and students and teachers alike bring wiser judgment and a keener sense of reality to their classes in consequence.’’33
As Brookwood assumed a more substantial presence in the labor movement, the AFL moved to quash any evidence of independence or dissent within the movement. Even though the college worked hard to avoid public criticism of the federation, the very nature of workers’ education—as conceived of by labor progressives—conflicted with an official labor movement seeking loyalty and control. On the one hand, Muste and other advocates of workers’ education stated their allegiance to the labor movement and their conviction that education would make the movement stronger. At the same time, they were adamant that they would teach their students how to think, not what to think.34 What this meant was that a variety of ideological and political perspectives found expression in workers’ education initiatives, including those that were in opposition to the official policies of the AFL. A memorial service Brookwood held for Gompers offers a case in point, as it included speeches by students who favored the nonpartisan policy of the AFL as well as by devoted Leninists. The affair prompted William Green’s secretary, Florence Thorne, to write to Muste: while she appreciated ‘‘your difficulties in meeting the various tendencies of your Brookwood group,’’ she wondered if the college might refrain from publicizing such events. ‘‘This would . . . help to keep the ideals and policies of Brookwood more in line with our American labor movement.’’ In his response, Muste admitted to the ‘‘unfortunate’’ juxtaposition of Gompers and Lenin, but reminded Thorne that the college’s policy was ‘‘to allow of a certain freedom of discussion [in the college newspaper] which it might be difficult to maintain in the publication of the trade union.’’35
The divergences between a labor movement seeking ideological conformity and an educational movement committed to free discussion came to a head over the course of 1926 to 1928 and ultimately became the seedbed for the emergence of the ‘‘Musteite’’ movement at the end of the decade. In 1926, several of Brookwood’s students and instructors joined John Brophy’s ‘‘Save-the-Union Movement’’ to wrest control of the UMWA from the autocratic leadership of John L. Lewis. When the insurgent miners organized an anti-Lewis gathering in April 1928, Muste refused to exercise ideological control over students and alumni who attended the conference.36 The incident tied Brookwood to oppositionists and empowered conservatives in their efforts to seize control over workers’ education. As Irving Bernstein has commented, to openly defy John L. Lewis made a break ‘‘inevitable.’’37
Another incident occurred in 1926, this one involving workers’ education, that foreshadowed a split between Brookwood and the AFL. Unfortunately for progressives who had placed so much hope in workers’ education, Matthew Woll, one of the AFL’s most conservative vice presidents, had joined the executive council of the WEB as one of the AFL’s three representatives. In 1926, the adult education movement, which had emerged concomitantly with the workers’ education movement, made overtures to the WEB, offering it a grant of $25,000 from the Carnegie Corporation. Conservatives like Woll favored acceptance of the grant, while progressives viewed it as an effort to co-opt their movement. At a meeting of the WEB in April of 1926, progressives sought to clearly differentiate adult education and workers’ education. As James Maurer stated, the former was ‘‘designed, for the most part, either to give a bit of culture to the student, or else to lift him out of his present job into a higher one.’’ Workers’ education, by contrast, had a class perspective and agenda of educating the worker into the labor movement and of service to the working class. With twenty-one other progressives, Muste voted against accepting the funds, while a majority of forty-six voted in favor of acceptance, so long as the funds were given unconditionally.38
Yet the AFL of the mid-1920s simply would not tolerate dissent; Spencer Miller Jr., secretary of the WEB, was so offended by the sentiment against adult education that he questioned the right of Brookwood to remain affiliated with the WEB.39 Meanwhile, the AFL moved to tighten their control over the bureau. In 1927, at the AFL’s annual convention in Los Angeles, the federation recommended that the WEB limit the membership of the executive committee to national AFL representatives, a move that would have essentially stripped the executive board of any representation from those most directly involved in workers’ education. Muste went on public record in opposition to this ‘‘wrong step in workers’ education,’’ pointing out the need to have labor educators involved in executive decision making, and questioning the ability of teachers to maintain academic freedom when their institutions were solely under the control of personnel with no connection to workers’ education.40
Early in 1928, Brookwood began to anticipate an attack by the AFL. ‘‘Subordination, coordination, or independence—these are the terms which describe our choices,’’ labor educators concluded at their annual conference at Brookwood in February of that year.41 A few months later, Muste published an article in Labor Age responding to rumors that the AFL officialdom viewed labor education as ‘‘unpatriotic and un-American, atheistic and radical (Bolshevik).’’ In it, he questioned the worth of a labor movement that was unwilling to allow its rank and file to ‘‘examine their own opinions’’ in order ‘‘to develop critical, fearless, open, independent minds!’’ ‘‘Have we now a labor dogma, a labor creed, a labor orthodoxy, to which all must conform? Which must be taught . . . as a given system of doctrine is imparted in a sectarian theological seminary?’’ Such thinking was based on the assumption ‘‘that there is danger in a critical discussion of labor policies,’’ but, in fact, the real danger was in preventing free discussion in the first place.42
As the debate over workers’ education played out, several disgruntled Brookwood students sought to exploit the controversy over the UMWA in order to undermine the school. Passionate debate had been a central feature of Brookwood student life from the school’s inception, but these disagreements were generally expressed and resolved within the culture of ecumenism and academic freedom that Brookwood sought to foster. In 1927–28, however, the school had admitted several students from conservative backgrounds who deeply resented the radicalism of some of their peers, a resentment that was heavily tinged with anti-Semitism and misogyny. One of them was a miner who opposed Brophy’s ‘‘Save-the-Union Movement.’’ In 1928, he published an account of the fractious UMWA conference that exposed the Brookwood students who attended the conference СКАЧАТЬ