The Workers’ Bookshelf will contain no volumes on vocational guidance, nor any books which give “short cuts” to moneymaking success.
The series will not be limited to any set number of volumes nor to any programme of subjects. Art, literature and the natural sciences, as well as the social sciences, will be dealt with. New titles will be added as the demand for treatment of a topic becomes apparent.
The first use of these books will be as texts to educate workers; the intermediate use of the books will be as the nucleus of workingmen’s libraries, collective and personal, and the last use of the Workers’ Bookshelf will be to instruct and delight all readers of serious books everywhere.
In our modern industrial society, knowledge—things to know—increases much more rapidly than our understanding. The worker finds it increasingly difficult to comprehend the world he has done most to create. The education of the worker consists in showing him in a simple fashion the interrelations of that world and all its aspects as they are turned toward him. On the education of the worker depends the future of industrialism, and, indeed, of all human society.
The author of Joining in Public Discussion is professor of rhetoric in Wellesley College and instructor in the Boston Trade Union College. His book “is a study of effective speechmaking, for members of labour unions, conferences, forums and other discussion groups.” The first section is upon “Qualifying Oneself to Contribute” to any discussion and the second section is upon “Making the Discussion Group Co-operate.” A brief introduction explains “What Discussion Aims to Do.”
The following titles of the Workers’ Bookshelf are in preparation:
Trade Union Policy, by Dr. Leo Wolman, lecturer at the New School for Social Research and instructor in the Workers’ University of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.
Women and the Labor Movement, by Alice Henry, editor of Life and Labour, director of the Training School for Women Workers in Industry.
Labor and Health, by Dr. Emery Hayhurst of Ohio State University, author of “Industrial Health Hazards and Occupational Diseases.”
Social Forces in Literature, by Dr. H. W. L. Dana, formerly teacher of comparative literature at Columbia, now instructor at Boston Trade Union College.