Those who affect such horror at the idea of a teachers’ strike argue that the teachers are public servants, dedicated to a sacred cause. Of course; and all I want to do is to extend the boundaries of this service and this cause. I contend that coal-miners are also public servants, and likewise oil-workers and railway-workers, and every man or woman who contributes the labor upon which civilization rests. I assert that all these workers now occupy the status of industrial serfs, and must raise themselves to the status of industrial citizens. The way to do it is the way of organization, education, agitation; and the strongest weapon is their power to give or to withhold their collective labor.
CHAPTER LXXXIV
WORKERS’ EDUCATION
Some teacher who is not in touch with the labor world will read the story I have told about labor government in San Francisco and in Butte, Montana, and will ask, is that what I mean. It isn’t what I mean; and for the benefit of newcomers, I hasten to explain. I wish that there existed in modern society a beautiful and altruistic labor movement, instead of what does exist, a part of the capitalist system, partaking of the weaknesses and corruptions which are automatically produced in human societies by the continuous operation of mass rivalries and greeds. The American Federation of Labor is a machine, precisely like the Republican party, or the National Education Association; it is a vested interest of high-salaried leaders, whose function is to dicker with Big Business for the best terms obtainable in the labor market. Many of these leaders are sincere but ignorant men, who have grown up in the present system and can imagine nothing else. Many others have accepted without realizing it what I call “the dress-suit bribe.” Still others are cynical corruptionists, who sell out their deluded followers, and permit labor unions to be used as weapons in the partisan wars of Big Business. Any teacher who goes to the labor movement without realizing these things, will suffer bitter disillusionment.
Underneath this machine is the great mass of the workers, groping their way toward freedom and self-government; betrayed a million times by leaders throughout the ages, they continue to grope, and to learn. The modern machine process has brought them together by tens of thousands, and the printing press and the soap-box have given them the means of spreading information. Many new organizations may have to be made and broken, many new weapons constructed by the masses; but they are on their way toward freedom and self-government, with a movement like that of a glacier. To understand the workers and their needs, and to help them to find their path—that is the task to which the teacher may contribute. Let her go to the labor movement, not expecting too much, but ready to give the precious things which she has.
The teacher who goes in that spirit will not be disappointed. She will find in the toiling masses a deep and touching reverence for her profession. The teacher is well known to the masses, she has messengers who carry good words about her to the homes of the people. The great bulk of our wage-slaves have but little hope for themselves; what ambitions they have are for their children. They send these children to school, and they think of the teacher as the children’s friend, the guardian of the children’s future, the keeper of a magic key. To the very poor in the slums, the teacher comes as a missionary; she is the only representative of authority who assumes any aspect of kindness. As one who has been in the labor movement most of his life, I say that I have yet to hear a labor man speak of teachers without respect; or to hear of an American city in which the teachers made an appeal to the working masses without getting a response.
That portion of the labor movement which has especial need of the teacher, and which should command the teacher’s especial regard, is workers’ education. I have devoted a chapter to this subject in “The Goose-step,” and do not want to repeat information which is given there. Suffice it to say, that the organized workers have grown tired of seeing their best brains stolen from them, they have set out to educate their own youth, and train their own leaders. There are now workers’ colleges or schools in all the leading cities of America, and to know them and to help them should be one of the joys of progressive teachers. In places where there is not yet a labor school, it only waits for some group of teachers who will go to the labor men, and advise with them, and help them to break into this new field.
There exists in New York a center of information, the Workers’ Education Bureau, 465 West 23rd Street, which works in harmony with the old-line labor unions and has received their endorsement. This bureau has established fifty labor colleges in America in the six years of its existence. It holds a convention every spring, and if you will read its proceedings, you will pity the N. E. A.
The more radical labor unions have their own educational centers, concerning which you may have information for the asking. The Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, under the presidency of James H. Maurer, a clear-visioned Socialist, has established a department of education and labor research at Harrisburg, and has promoted labor classes in a dozen cities throughout the state. It will send you much interesting literature on request. The Brookwood School at Katonah, New York, has twice as many pupils as it had last year, and you will wish to know about this charming place. You will meet here several of the kicked out college professors whom you read about in “The Goose-step”; one of them is Professor A. W. Calhoun, who writes:
We are planning to give this summer a course of interest to teachers who may care to work into the labor education movement. Opportunity will be given to such teachers to get the labor point of view and to associate with labor people. In addition there will be special attention to the fundamentals of economics, and other matters that teachers ordinarily need to approach from the labor view point.
I mention also that the I. W. W. have their Work Peoples’ College at Duluth, Minnesota (Box 39, Morgan Park Station). Mrs. Kate Richards O’Hare has moved to the Llano Colony at Leesville, Louisiana, and has started there Commonwealth College, under the direction of W. E. Zeuch, a college professor whose adventures you may read in “The Goose-step.” The International Ladies’ Garment Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers are maintaining elaborate educational programs for their members in many cities.