On the train going home, Professor Dana decided that his academic dignity had been infringed upon; therefore he sent a telegram to President Thomas, saying that he was unable to agree to the terms. He sent a copy of this telegram to Rose Schneiderman, one of the working class leaders, who had been charged with selecting the girls: the effect of which procedure was instant collapse on the part of President Thomas. She wrote saying that Professor Dana had entirely misunderstood her, she had not intended anything of the sort. Dana had asked that there should be student representation on the board controlling the experiment, and President Thomas now said that she had had that idea in mind all along. So they provided a system of student representation, with an open vote, and the balance of power in the hands of Bryn Mawr graduates, who were helping at the summer school with the title of “tutors.” A harmless working girl, not a trades unionist, was selected as representative of the girls.
The union girls, of course, understood perfectly what was being done to them; they would smile to Professor Dana and say: “You must remember, they aren’t used to democracy. You must be gentle with them. You see, they haven’t suffered.” (Stop and think about that beautiful phrase!). The “tutors” would gossip among themselves, telling about funny mistakes which the working girls had made, such as not knowing to what century Shakespeare belonged. They would correct the table manners of the girls—and without ever thinking that the girls also had secret laughter over the mistakes of the “tutors.” Thus, some tutor had asked: “What do the letters A. F. of L. stand for?”—which seemed to the working girls quite as important a matter as the date of Shakespeare’s birth. One of the tutors asked: “Is the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union the same as the Third International?”—and that seemed the funniest thing in the world to these union girls.
More serious matters arose quickly; for you see, these girls have convictions, and take them just as seriously as Bryn Mawr girls take their table manners. The first thing they did was to go to the chambermaids and discover that these women there were working twelve and fourteen hours a day. They proceeded to organize the women, and the college authorities were confronted with a demand for an eight-hour day—which they granted! They granted a number of other things before they got through. Teaching economics and social science to union girls was quite a different matter from teaching it to the daughters of the leisure class. In the winter time Bryn Mawr professors can get by with formulas, but in these summer months they had to come down to brass tacks; for to these girls an economic theory meant some particular place, some particular set of circumstances: “When I was in such and such a shop,” or, “When I was on strike in New York!” This made an entirely new thing out of the subject of economics.
Also, it made a new thing out of literature. Professor Dana was selected to read poetry to the girls at chapel, and poetry, as we know, is an important source of culture. Dana read one or two poems on Russia, at which the dean in charge seemed shocked. She asked him to read poems at least a hundred years old. Dana thought it over, and answered that he would do so, and next morning he read in chapel two poems which were exactly a hundred years old—Shelley’s “Mask of Anarchy,” and his
Men of England, wherefore plow
For the lords who lay ye low?
This Bryn Mawr experiment was repeated last summer, with much hurrah in the newspapers; but needless to say, Harry Dana was not one of the teachers, and neither was a woman professor who proved too sympathetic to the working girls. Also a Bryn Mawr teacher, who “got the vision” from the girls, and prepared to teach some of them in the winter time, was omitted this year. Nevertheless, the leaven works, and two of the “tutors,” Bryn Mawr students, were arrested during the summer school term while picketing a clothing shop in Philadelphia, during a strike by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. Once let the rich girls realize what the poor girls suffer, and some of the rich girls will protest!
I had a pleasant experience in Cambridge. I was guest in a home which is the shrine of pilgrims from all over the United States—that of New England’s favorite poet and Cambridge’s most eminent citizen, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Here lives the poet’s grandson, who is also a grandson of Richard Henry Dana, a born teacher, and incidentally a warm-hearted and most lovable man. Nicholas Murray Butler has not invited him back to Columbia; nor has it occurred to President Lowell to invite him to step around the corner from his home and lecture on the literature of social protest to Harvard students. Nevertheless, Harry Dana has found some teaching to do; he travels over to the Boston Labor College, and teaches workingmen. One Sunday morning I attended a committee meeting of this institution—several college professors and several labor leaders, conspiring in the home of the poet Longfellow to overturn academic authority in the United States!
Then I traveled across the continent to my home in Pasadena, and found that Professor John Scott had been kicked out of the Pasadena High School in the interests of one hundred percent reaction, and with the help of progressive labor leaders had started a workers’ college in Los Angeles. So it goes, in one city after another; any time a group of labor men want to save the brains of their young people, they can find a kicked-out professor; and any time a kicked-out professor is willing to cultivate his self-respect on a little oatmeal, he can manage to get together a group of class-conscious labor men, and can greatly increase his influence and effectiveness. When Dana was fired from Columbia, he lectured to classes of six and eight hundred people at the Rand School; while Scott Nearing assures me that continuously during the eight years since he parted from the University of Pennsylvania, he has had not merely larger audiences, but more serious and more interesting audiences.