“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.