EDUCATING THE EDUCATORS
There is another group in the colleges which must help to reform them,
and that is the students. I have already shown that the student-body
alone cannot dominate a college for any length of time; but in the
student body is always a little group of thinking men, and these
constitute a leaven which can work mighty changes in a great mass of
solid dough.
The first organized effort of college students to educate themselves,
and incidentally to educate their educators, was the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society, which was founded by the writer some eighteen years
ago. That was after I had come out from nine years of college and
university life without knowing that the modern Socialist movement
existed; I resolved to do what I could to make it less easy for the
plutocracy to accomplish that feat in future. Some twenty or thirty
people got together in New York City, and elected Jack London as
president, and he delivered his famous address, “Revolution,” within the
shuddering walls of the Universities of California, Chicago, Harvard and
Yale. We were careful to specify our purpose: “to promote an intelligent
interest in the study of Socialism”; but even with that moderate
statement, only a few institutions would let us in under our own evil
name, and we had to disguise ourselves as liberal societies, and open
forums, and social science clubs.
The name Socialism became so unpopular during the recent flood-tide of
patriotism, that the organization has now called itself the League for
Industrial Democracy. It has as its directors the Reverend Norman
Thomas, editor of “The World Tomorrow,” and Harry Laidler, author of an
excellent text-book, which ought to be used in every college, “Socialism
in Thought and Action.” The purpose of the league is declared to be
“education for a new social order, based on production for use and not
for profit.” It undertakes “research work, the development of pamphlet
literature, and the thinking through of concrete problems of social
ownership.” The president is Professor Robert Morss Lovett of the
University of Chicago, and the vice-presidents are Charles P. Steinmetz,
Evans Clark, Florence Kelley and Arthur Gleason. The league holds a
winter convention in New York and a summer conference lasting a week, at
Camp Tamiment, belonging to the Rand School. The address of the league
is 70 Fifth Avenue, New York.
Recently another student organization has entered the field, the
National Student Forum, product of the labors of a group of young
Harvard liberals, with John Rothschild as secretary. They publish a
fortnightly paper, “The New Student,” at 2929 Broadway, New York; they
have drawn up a “preamble,” which is so much to the point that I quote
it in full:
“Realizing that these are times of rapid social change, the liberal
spirited students of America are building this organization as an
instrument of orderly progress.
“It is apparent to them that if the social changes now in process are to
proceed sanely, those whose education is fitting them for positions of
leadership must be better informed than hitherto regarding the
contemporary affairs of the world in which they live. The students who
founded The National Student Forum are aware that already in almost
every institution of learning there is a group of students whose
interest in social problems has brought them together into some local
organization. It is their belief that to be of influence in the student
life of America the scattered groups must effect an association through
which they may learn from one another’s experience, and publicly share
the search for new light.
“With this in mind they have founded and now maintain The National
Student Forum. They dedicate this organization to the cultivation of the
scientifically inquiring mind; they declare it unbiased in any
particular controversy, yet permitting within itself the expression of
every bias; they declare its one principle to be freedom of expression,
for they realize that without intellectual liberty the students of
America cannot attain the completeness of vision and the social
understanding which will enable them to be effective in the progress of
the community.”
As an illustration of the activities of this group I mention that the
Harvard Liberal Club, during the year 1922, had sixty luncheon speakers
in five months, including such radicals as Clark Getts, Lincoln
Steffens, Florence Kelley, Raymond Robins, Frank Tannenbaum, Roger
Baldwin, Percy Mackaye, Clare Sheridan, Norman Angell, and W. E. B.
Dubois; properly balanced by a group of respectable people, including
Admiral Sims, Hamilton Holt, President Eliot, and a nephew of Lord
Bryce. What it means to the students of one of our universities to have
such a corrective to the provincialism of its curriculum is something
which only the students themselves can tell you, after they have had a
chance to notice the difference. They come with bright eyes and eager
faces, they listen and applaud, and they stay for hours to ask
questions. They go away, knowing at least this much: that there are
ideas in the world which are not tedious and dusty, and that the free
use of the intellectual faculties can be as interesting as fraternity
gossip and waving flags at gladiatorial combats.
So to the little group who come from free-thinking homes, or from the
working classes, and do not mean to sell out their own people, I say:
face the gales of ridicule and scolding, and see to it that while you
are in college the students become acquainted with modern ideas. Get
together a little group, and invite in speakers of all shades of
opinion, and if the radical ones are barred, make an issue of it, and
agitate for freedom of discussion. Join with those members of the
faculty who are sympathetic to your point of view, extend their
influence among the student-body, and back them up in controversies with
the administration. Constitute yourself a ferment and leaven the
dough-heads! I do not mean by this that you should be “fresh,” or should
go out of your way to seek trouble. Take the time to study, and know
what you are talking about, so that when you take a position you will
not be easily put down. When you have really studied and thought, then
do not be afraid of being laughed at; for you will surely never do
anything new or worthwhile in your life without being laughed at by
fools and idlers.
Choose the big issues, and choose men and women who really have
something to bring to the student-body. You will find them nearly always
willing to come—all except the conservatives; but invite these also, and
keep after them, and advertise the fact that you have done it. You have
nothing to fear from their arguments, however masterful may be their
air; we can handle them, I promise you—I have been through the whole
question from A to Z, I have read the best that the opposition has to
produce, and they cannot refute the claims of the workers for freedom,
for social justice, and for light. If I had only one message to give to
college students, it would be this: there exists in the modern
revolutionary movement a vast treasure of idealism and inspiration,
which your elders seek by every means in their power to keep from you.
This treasure is your birthright, and to make it yours is your life’s
great success.
That they cannot answer the arguments of the social rebels, is something
which the League of the Old Men knows perfectly well, and that is why
they are afraid of us. In the literature of the Better America
Federation of California it is again and again admitted that the
immature minds of the young cannot be trusted to resist the temptations
of idealism; if they meet these beautiful-sounding ideas they adopt
them—and so they must be kept from knowing that the ideas exist! The
soundness of this fear has been proven, wherever free discussion has
been tried out. For example, in the state of Colorado, one of the great
centers of metal mining and corruption in our country, the various
colleges organized a State League for Debating, and they held a debate
on the “open shop,” and one of the teachers reported to me the results.
There were eleven members of the “team,” and they came from the homes of
the employing classes, and everyone of them believed in the “American
plan.” At the end of the debate two were in doubt and nine opposed to
the plan! Another team consisted of four women, and three of these were
converted.
There is another interesting college movement, which has taken its rise
in the West, under the leadership of B. M. Cherrington, a young Y. M. C.
A. worker of the new type, who has seen the light and is preaching the
social gospel. This organization is taking college students out into
industry in the summer-time, not merely to earn money, but to learn the
facts about labor conditions, and to understand them. The students are
required to read books on the subject, and to prepare papers on what
they have found. There was a street railway strike, in which more than
sixty persons were shot. The students attended the conferences over this
strike, and heard both sides presented. At the end of the summer’s work
they held a convention and drew up a statement, as follows:
“Having been associated, under the leadership of men of high ideals and
Christian motives, for the purpose of intensive study of the human
factor in industry, and having, as a result, come to a realization of
the present seriousness and possible disastrous results of the turmoil
and unrest which is now gripping the industrial world; and further
realizing that those who are to become the business, professional and
political leaders of tomorrow, the present college men, are, through
lack of knowledge of and interest in these conditions, not only
neglecting a vital part of their education, but are actually committing
an injustice against humanity in failing to prepare themselves to meet
the inevitable crisis, we, the members of the Denver Summer Study Group
of 1920, undertake to expand that organization under the name “The
Collegiate Industrial Research Movement.”
The same thing is being done by the Young Women’s Christian Association.
There was a movement of this kind under the direction of Miss Caroline
Goforth, and I heard an interesting story about one of the girls, who
was running an elevator, and had her foot caught and injured. She was
dressed like a “lady,” and looked like one, and the surgeon took her for
a passenger, and was courteous and helpful—until he discovered that she
was an employe, when he became abrupt and negligent. Our interlocking
newspapers profess to wonder at the existence of “parlor Bolshevists”
and “pink tea Socialists,” and may be interested to know how such
creatures are made. Here was one made in a few minutes, by sharing the
actual bitter experience of the workers!
I have narrated how the working class students at Bryn Mawr proceeded to
unionize the “help” at that college. This is another work which liberal
students may undertake with profit at many American colleges and
universities. I have already referred to the experience of a group of
students who set out ten years ago to reform conditions of labor at the
University of Wisconsin. They organized an industrial union of all
working students; the university authorities tried to break it up, and
threatened to expel a group of forty active students from their jobs—and
therefore from the university. They locked out a hundred and fifty from
the University Commons. But the students succeeded in getting publicity;
they brought in labor organizers, who surveyed the working conditions,
and showed up the graft in the running of the university dining-rooms,
the purchasing of milk and other supplies. They showed that two carloads
of potatoes had been allowed to rot, that a car of apples had been
allowed to freeze; also that the university was working girls in
violation of the state industrial law.
The interlocking regents were called in, and also the board of visitors,
and there was great excitement. One of the students reminded President
Van Hise that the Milwaukee Trades and Labor Assembly controlled a
hundred and fifty thousand votes; which apparently produced the effect
intended, for the business manager of the university retired. The
interlocking trustees showed their appreciation of his fidelity to the
principles of exploitation by immediately calling him to become
president of Tufts College! Tufts gave him an honorary degree, and Brown
and Clark followed suit, and now he is chairman of the Massachusetts
Security League!