The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 13, 1926, Page 14

eR * ee By Bertram D. Wolfe. gee fate of workers’ education is hanging in the balance, The Car- negile corporation, the largest of the many funds created out of the mil- lions wrung out of the American steel workers by the late Andrew Carnegie, is openly out°to buy up and corrupt, with the philosophy of class collabo- ration, the entire working class move- ment of the United States. It has al- ready given to the Workers’ Educa- tion $25,000 at a clip for a publica- tion fund, and its resources for the corruption of the first beginnings of a workers’ education movement in the United States appear to be unlimited. The consciousness of this fact hung like a shadow over the Third Annual Conference of teachers engaged in workers’ education, called by Local 189 of the American Federation of Teachers, at Brookwood College, February 19, 1922.. The agenda of the Conference seemed to promise a more or less platonic discussion of the rel- atively non-essential matters con- nected with © workers’ education. Questions of psychology, of the main- tenance of interest, of the develop- ment of a demand for workers’ edu- cation, of promotion and maintenance, of the use of the drama, ete.—such were the formal subjects scheduled for discussion. But, running thru every paper and every general dis cussion was always the underlying preoccupation with two fundamental questions: Why is workers’ educa- tion? and how shall we resist the financial octopus that threatens to engulf it? The manner of: deciding both of these questions will determine the fate of the movement for work- ers’ education in America. As I expressed it in a conversation with Lloyd M. Cosgrave, secretary of the Workers’ Education Bureau, “Working class education in America has a great future but no past.” It is, in fact, in its infancy. Hitherto the American labor movement “has always been interested in education, but it’ is “oOnlyeewithin recent years that it has become interested in its own education” and it has still to de- termine what character its own edu- cation shall take. HE representation at the confer- ence ranged all the way from uni- versity professors who wanted to ex- tend the benefits of bourgeois “sweet- ness and light” to the working class, to coal miners who thought that the purpose of workers’ education wag to teach the workers how to get more of what they produced and take over the government and the mines. Thus the field of workers’ educa- tion in America is at present a bat- tleground between these warring ten- dencies and one of the most heated discussions at the conference was pre- cipitated when I attempted to define the class basis of workers’ educatiog. I pointed out that the university ex- tentionists, the cultural philanthro- pists and the open shoppers wgre uni- ted in claiming that “the moment it (education) attempts to impose a cer- tain curricula (sic) as representative of the needs of wage earners, it must defeat its own purposes and the in- terests of its supporters.” (Law and Labor, Vol. 8, No, 1—Jan., 1926—Law and Labor is the legal organ of the open shoppers.) I tried further to point out that education, controlled by the workers, financed by the work- ers and permeated with their point of view was as necessary as were unions, controlled and financed by the work- ers and expressing their point of view. or as newspapers so controlled and so financed. This elementary concept, that all workers must hold, was attacked by people at the confernece as “ugly, brutal and-damnable.” One speaker went. so far as to declare, “Education for the workers is not education at all,” and another: “I hate the phrase ‘the workers.’ I hate all generalizing phrases. I hate this phrase to get into our general vocabulary. They always tend to make us feel that the workers are a specialized class, that they are the other fellow.” conflict, thru which British workers’ education went a little earlier, is now being fought out ideo- ment of the American workers. But, before the conference was over, there was not the shadow of a doubt but that the majority of those present ac-, cept the view that workers’ education must be controlled and financed by the workers and must serve their class interests, altho there was wide difference of opinion as to what these class interests really are, But the question which dominated the conference and gave to the often futile discussions a vague background of historic bigness, was the question of how to defend workers’ education from the enveloping movement which had been begun by the powerful Car- negie Corporation. Again and again vague references were made to the question of “taking money from the enemies of labor,” but always in such & way as to leave the uninitiated in doubt as to whether this was really a vital question that had to be decided then and there, or whether it was an abstract theoreti- cal discussion on the. principle of financing workers’ education. But, as the conference continued, the in- creased repetition of these references, in always more and more definite forms, gradually made it clear that the speakers were bothered by a liv- ing reality, by a danger which threat- ened the very life of the labor move- mnt and its educational activity. At last, on the final day of the con- ference, the vague doubts took defi- nite form and the names of Rocke- teller and Carnegie were brought into the sessions and tied up with the question of financing working class education. Many of the delegates still did not believe that this could really be so. Paul W. Fuller, educational director of Sub District 2, United Mine Workers of America, declared: “If. any workers’ institution ever got such funds and if it got to District 2, you could preach the funeral of that organization as far as the miners are concerned.” A delegate, active in workers’ education € thought the whole’ thiig-was @ joke and said: “I do not know how it is in America, but in Germany it is hope- less to try to get funds from em- ployers for workers’ education. We do not have to worry about that.” A SHORT time before cBsing time of the final scheduled session of the conference a resolution was finally introduced by the secretary of the conference in the name of a group of delegates, reading as follows: “Resolved, That the members of the American Federation of Teachers, invited to attend the conference on workers’ education, in session at Brookwood Feb. 22, 1926, go on record as opposing the acceptance, by agencies for work- ers’ education, of money or other assistance from institutions such as the Carnegie Corporation, the General Education Board or other organizations fundamentally op- posed to the interests of the work- ing class.” 2 This resolution at last convinced every delegate that they were faced, not with an abstract discussion on finance, but a concrete question of the fate of workers’ education. A desul- tory discussion started, but it lacked only a few minutes for the final ad- journment of the conference. On my motion, a special session was called for the afternoon of the same day to consider exclusively this resolution. This special session was carried on under a changed atmosphere. The air seemed charged with intensity as the delegates began their first dis- cussion of vital significance. Muste and Arthur Calhoun, who had attended the conference called by the Committee on Adult Education of the. Carnegie Corporation, in an unofficial capacity, reported their observations on that conference. Calhoun described the plan of the Carnegie Corporation as “a Universal and limitless scheme for bringing workers’ education under their control.” “They have, at their disposal, limitless financial means and are ready to subvert any workers’ ed- ucation movement that will accept their support.” UESTIONING of Calhoun, Muste and Spencer Miller, secretary of _in, _ Germany, | A. I Workers’ Education at the Turning Point logically in the infant education move-+———— A Sketch tromh Lite-by & Worker Correspondérit, Ac £.-Potiock, = 1° = =?! the Workers’ Education. Bureau, re- vealed that the Carnegie Corporation had called a preliminary conference in Cleveland in October 1925, to con- sider the question of adult education, including workers’ education; that then a committee of seven had been set up to call regional conferences. This committee of seven had sum- moned a conference on adult educa- tion in New York to which*they in- vited various representatives of work- ers’ education movements, such as: Fania Cohen of the International Ladies’ Garment -Workers’ Unjon, A. J. Muste and Arthur. Calhoun of Brookwood and others, (The Work- ers’ School was not among the invited guests.) Some of these declined to attend and others had attended to in- vestigate ‘the matter. They found there representatives of university ex- tension movements, of the motion pic- ture interests, of the museums, of the public lectures, of: the naturalization and Americanization activities and various other elements interested in one or another form of adult “edu- cation.” Cross questioning revealed that the committee of seven, which called this conference, included none other than Spencer Miller, secretary of the Workers Education Bureau, himself. Thereupon, he took the floor and was subjected to a cross fire of questions as if he were on trial before the bar of justice (and perhaps more than he realized, he was on trial before the American labor movement.) He admitted that the Carnegie Cor- poration had insinuated that it was ready to give money to the cause of workers’ education and that his bureau had asked for $25,000 in De- cember which the Carnegie Corpora- tion granted on Feb, 15 of this year. Then, one by one, the gelegates ex- pressed themselves, in no uncertain terms, as condemning the acceptance of this enormous sum from a source so hostile to labor. The opposition ranged all the way. from that cautious viewpoint that “the Workers Educa- tion Bureau would lose prestige among the workers if it did not keep ° its skirts clean,” to the view that no working class movement can possibly accept finances from the Carnegie Corporation if there were not some- thing wrong in the matter. “By ac- cepting the money, the Workers Edu- eation Bureau ‘has aided the Carnegie Corporation in its scheme to corrupt the workers’ education movement and give that corporation prestige before the American working class,” de- "\ clared Calhoun. “We do not want the Workers Education Bureau to become j financially independent of the labor movement,” was Dana’s point of view. David Saposs, one of the members of the Workers Education Bureau ex- ecutive, revealed that he and -Fania Cohen had voted against -accepting the money, but that all the others, in- cluding James Maurer, (socialist) John Brophy, Matthew Woll and John P, Frey, had voted in favor. The ele- ven members of the executive include Jos. W. Perkins. HE feeling of the conference was such that when I declared: “If the Carnegie Corporation has given us money for a publication fund, it should convince us that there is some- thing wrong with the character of the publications that we have been - putting out and it is time that we : published some works of such char- ' acter that only the workers could pos- sibly support our publication activi- - ties,” the applause was general, The final result of the conference was a unanimous vote, 18 being re- corded in favor and no one, not even Spencer Miller himself, voting against f the resolution. Thus, the conference marks a big step forward in the development of working class education, financed and controlled by the working class and giving their point of view and aiming to serve them in their struggle for emancipation. LLNS NLL E TOT ET