The Goose-step: A Study of American Education

by Upton Sinclair

I have been protesting in this book against class control of thinking. So the average American reader will be moved to say: “You object to capitalist class education, but now you are going to favor working class education!” There are a few words to be said on this subject before we enter the workers’ colleges.

Let us assume for a moment that, human nature being what it is, and the forces of capitalism being what they are, we have to have some kind of class control of education. Which would be preferable, capitalist class education or working class education? The first point in reply is that the workers outnumber the capitalists in our society by a hundred to one; education for the benefit of the workers would be, therefore, education for the benefit of a hundred times as many people. The next point is that the workers extend to all capitalists a cordial invitation to become workers; whereas the capitalists extend no such invitation to the workers. They may, of course, do it in Fourth of July speeches and political campaign platforms, but in everyday life they do everything possible to keep the workers from becoming capitalists, and compel them to remain workers. If the capitalists were to accept the invitation of the workers and become workers, we should have classes abolished in our society, and our workers’ education would be education for the benefit of all.

For this reason the program of the workers is generous and free, whereas that of the capitalists is selfish and repressive. The worker is able to face the truth, while the capitalist dares not face it. The worker has everything to gain by the truth, while the capitalist has everything to lose. So it happens that if you compare workers’ colleges with capitalist colleges, you invariably find this difference: the workers’ college believes in free discussion, and will hear anybody argue about any question; whereas the capitalist college fears free discussion, and invents a hundred pretexts to keep the other side from being heard. I have shown you everywhere throughout the country representatives of the working class being denied an opportunity to present their point of view to the students in capitalist colleges. I have never heard of a capitalist being denied an opportunity to explain his point of view to the students of workers’ colleges; on the contrary, I have known of many cases of capitalists, or representatives of capitalism, being invited to debate, and finding some excuse to decline the invitation.

In the above discussion I am using the word “workers” in the intelligent, revolutionary sense. I do not mean the men who dig ditches or who run machines; I mean workers of hand or brain, all those men and women who do the useful and necessary work of the world, whether it be digging ditches or surveying them, tending machines or inventing them, sweeping out the buildings of a college, or teaching in its class-rooms, or determining its policies. I am using the term workers in contradistinction to the owners, those who live by monopolizing the means whereby other men live, and exacting from the others a tribute for the right to work. Also, I should explain that when I speak of labor, I do not mean the old-style labor unions which hold the field today. I perfectly well understand that they are products of capitalism, animated by the greeds and jealousies of the profit system. Little by little, however, these labor unions are forced to widen their boundaries, to combine and take in larger groups of the workers; and at the same time they broaden their ideals, and approach the revolutionary point of view, which understands by social justice the right of all workers to access to the sources of wealth, and understands by freedom the right of all men to agitate, educate and organize for a society in which no man exploits his fellows.

In college after college we have seen the brains of the working class stolen away from them; we have seen young men and women who come from the working class, and who should fight for their class and save it, being seduced by the dress-suit bribe, the flummeries and snobberies of academic life, and becoming traitors to their class, betrayers and even murderers of their class. So come the organized workers to save their own; to teach their sons and daughters, first, class loyalty, and through that, loyalty to truth and social justice. Such is the meaning of Workers’ Education.

We have seen the capitalist college reveal its true colors on many occasions; but never does it reveal it more plainly than when the workers proceed to organize their own educational system. I have shown you Professor Egbert, Director of University Extension and Director of the School of Business of Columbia University, displaying himself to the extent of three columns in the New York “Times,” announcing that “workers’ education has virtually broken down in America.” But the interlocking professors do not content themselves with lying about labor education in the capitalist press; they and their masters intrigue against it, they boycott it, they turn loose their slander factories, their Helen Ghouls and “hundred percent” mobs against it. We have seen the typewriters and the teachers of the Rand School of Social Science being thrown down the stairs. We shall see professors of capitalist colleges being, figuratively speaking, thrown down the stairs for venturing to help in labor education.

Let us take, for example, the experience of the Workers’ College of Minneapolis, narrated in an affidavit by E. H. H. Holman, chairman of the education committee of some of the labor unions. The Workers’ College of Minneapolis laid down a very moderate program:

It is hereby proposed to organize an educational program for the workers of Minneapolis, under their own control, through which such educational work will be undertaken as will better fit them to serve society through a wider comprehension of social problems, through an understanding of the technique of industrial production, and through a better knowledge of the labor problem in general, thus to be in position to act effectively in the solution of pressing problems that grip the world today.

Not such a bad statement, you may concede. This statement was adopted in December, 1920, and classes were organized, among them a class in public speaking. Professor T. P. Beyer of Hamline University was asked to take charge of this class, and he did so. There were protests in the newspapers of the Twin Cities, and several of the interlocking regents of Hamline gave newspaper interviews registering their indignation. It had been stated in the contract with Professor Beyer that he was not expected “to advocate any theories or further any propaganda.” Nevertheless, the grand dukes of Hamline spoke, and Professor Beyer withdrew. Shortly afterwards Mr. Holman happened to meet President Kerfoot of Hamline University, a Methodist clergyman holding three honorary degrees; and this gentleman said that “it would never do” to have one of his professors linked up with radicals. “Those who contribute the money to support Hamline would never stand for it.”

Again in Topeka, Kansas, the labor men were conducting an open forum, and considering the project for a labor college. Some of the professors from Washburn College took to attending this forum, and meeting these labor leaders. The interlocking newspapers made a scandal out of it, the intrigue being conducted by the secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association, who was maintaining a black-list against union men. One of the professors at Washburn College received a threatening letter; it was supposed to have come from the labor group, but manifestly it came from this “M & M” agent, or some of his spies. Anyway, the Washburn College professors were compelled to cease attending the open forum.