Phi-(’3?

c 7

F3” 9

ABSTRACT

THE EDUCATIONAL THEORIES OF AMERICAN SOCIALISTS 1900-1920

BY

Joseleyne Slade Tien

It is the thesis of this study that from 1900 to 1920, a period when
the Socialist movenent in the United States reached its peak of success, a
distinctively Socialist educational ideology was developed and propagated.
This study is based upon an analysis of articles, book-reviews, commentaries
and news items on the subject of education in Socialist journals published
during this period. Journals which had a nation-wide circulation were
selected for study. Books and sections of books by Socialist authors
dealing with education were also consulted.

The dissertation opens with a review of the educational practices
and philosophies of the nineteenth century predecessors of American
Socialism. These include the communitarian Socialists, the utopian
authors Laurence Gronlund and Edward Bellamy, and Karl Marx. All of these
had an important impact upon the educational thought of twentieth century
American Socialists.

In their writings American Socialists clearly demonstrated the vital
connection between the economic condition and social status of the child
and his performance in school. Socialists recommended the introduction of
supportive social services, school meals, medical care, free supplies of

text books and other materials to alleviate immediately the de facto

Joseleyne Slade Tien

inability of the poor to benefit from the mere provision of free
schools.

Within the schools, Socialists were enthusiastic advocates of the
philosophies of John Dewey and the Progressive Education Association.
The emphasis upon activity, experimentation and the solution of meaningful
problems, in contrast to the traditional authority of teacher and prescribed
subject matter, had a direct relationship to the Socialist goal of edu-
cating the masses to take control of their own politics, economics and
culture. Socialists, however, generally insisted that principles of co-
operation and public service needed to be taught deliberately as well as
fostered indirectly by the new methodology. This was part of their aim
of replacing with a new Socialist ethic the competitive, individualistic
values that dominated the classrooms.

Socialists deplored the separation of industry from art, culture,
and education, as a result of the Industrial Revolution. As an immediate
goal, Socialists believed that industrial education should be incorporated
into the curriculum of all students, and apposed the tendency for such
education to become a substitute for general education and thus the
vocation of a special class of people. Socialists anticipated the problem
of the growth of alienation among industrial workers and, even within the
confines of capitalism, sought its alleviation through the provision of
spare time recreational and educational facilities. Socialists advocated
completely equal educational programs for women and black pe0ple, seeing
the educational problems of the latter in terms of the class struggle and
minimizing the issue of race.

As to higher education, Socialists criticized the dependence of the

colleges and universities upon the business establishment and its political

Joseleyne Slade Tien

allies in the legislatures. Socialists called attention to the cases of
dismissal of professors who were Open critics of the private enterprise
system, and the consequent deleterious effects upon the honest pursuit of
knowledge, particularly in the social sciences. Socialists also felt that
the universities effectively removed their graduates from any connection
with the masses of working peOple, reinforcing the desire among students
to achieve individual success rather than public good.

Realisation of the most basic educational goals of the Socialists
depended upon a commitment to Socialist philosophy which has not been
realised in the United States. Nevertheless, Socialist educational thought
remains vital and relevant in the face of mounting evidence that class

status remains the most significant single factor in educational failure.

THE EDUCATIONAL THEORIES OF AMERICAN SOCIALISTS 1900—1920

B)’

Joseleyne Slade Tien

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

College of Education

1972

. 5, C“. 41
C5" 2 EC} 12’.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express particular gratitude for the guidance,
sustained interest, and patient assistance given to me by Professor
J.G. Moore, Chairman of my doctoral committee and my long-time mentor
in educational history and thought at Michigan State University.

My thanks also go to Professor Douglas Miller for a thoughtful
appraisal of this study, and to Professor Richard Featherstone and
Professor George Ferree for their pertinent criticism and lively
discussion of this work.

And finally, I should like to express warm appreciation to
my husband, Ti, and to my children, Stephen, David, Adrienne and
Jennifer whose co-operation liberated the hours needed for this

non—domestic labour.

Chapter
I. Introduction.
II. The Educational Ideas and Influence of the
Nineteenth Century Communitarian Socialists .
III. The Educational Visions of the Utopian Socialists:
Laurence Gronlund and Edward Bellamy . .
IV. The Influence of Marxism on Educational Thought
in America . . . . . . . . . . .
V. The Socialist View of School and Society:
Radical Social Criticism. . . . . . . . .
VI. The Socialists, John Dewey, and Progressive
Educational Theory. . . . .
VII. The Socialist Criticism of Higher Education
VIII. The Fundamental Considerations and Principles of
Socialist Educational Thought, 1900 to 1920
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Appendix A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CONTENTS

Appendix B. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page

.11

.46

.58

111

138

169

181
192

194

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Something of the passionate commitment to Socialism that char—
acterized the American Socialists of the early twentieth century,
as well as their certainty of the inevitability of its success may
be illustrated iJI the extract below from Max Eastman's Addnebb to
the lady condudéng the Second Madcec Twice which took place in the
fall of 1918.

It is a faith which possesses more adherents all

over the surface of the earth who acknowledge its

name and subscribe to its principles, than any

other faith ever had, except those private and

mysterious ones that we call religious. It is

either the most beautiful and courageous mistake

that hundreds of millions of mankind ever made or

else it is really the truth that will lead us out

of our misery, and anxiety and poverty and war,

and strife and hatred between classes into a free

and happy world. In either case it deserves your

respect.
Before another year passed however the leaping flame of American
Socialism had dwindled to a flicker doused by the storm of govern-
ment repression that followed upon the war and the Russian.Revolu-
tion and the increasingly dismembering disputes within the Socialist
movement itself about the character of the new Soviet regime. But
from 1900 to 1919 the fires of Socialist thought had burned brightly
upon the American scene, and many illustrious names in politics,
literature, philosophy, art, and education had brought kindling to
the flames.

Historically, the Socialist movement,in its fervor and in its

opposition to established societies, their institutions and values,

invites comparison with the Puritan movement in seventeenth—century

England. Both Puritanism and Socialism, drawing upon radical doctrines
to elucidate human history and nature, challenged the old order with
far-reaching demands for change in government, economics, and conduct

of life. Both movements called forth bitter opposition and retrench-
ment from those with powerful interests or attachments to the established
order. Both movements rallied to their side a large and distinguished
following of intellectually outstanding men and women which was

clearly disprOportionate to the acceptance of these ideologies in

the population at large. In the case of the Puritans the central
interest was spiritual, the relationship of man with the Supernatural.
Their writing and thought were largely devoted to the intricacies of this
essential matter. For the Socialists the key factor in human

history was the economic one and the elucidation of economic rela-
tionships formed the core of their literature. However, both movements
had to grapple with the problem of simultaneously having to.live with
the imperfections of the present while undermining it and preparing
mankind for the more perfect state which was to come. Inevitably

then, Puritans and Socialists were deeply concerned with education

both in the broad sense of propagating their theories and in the more
formal matter of working through contemporary institutions to transform
them into vehicles for the transmission of their respective ideologies.
Puritanism in England, though ultimately failing to gain control of
government, had an enormous influence upon English character and
institutions. This influence was to last for centuries, infiltrating
all aspects of life, including educational philosophy and practice. The
degree to which, transplanted to American and less adulterated,

Puritanism succeeded in impressing its demand for a literate and devout

citizenry upon structures of American education has been well docu-
mented from the founding of Harvard and the Massachusetts Common
School Law to their replicas in the Western States.' As in the seven-
teenth century Puritanism exercised a pervasive influence in England
and in America so in the twentieth century Socialist ideas have
penetrated many areas of the world, and even in America Socialism,
broadly defined, has a history that goes back to the first quarter of
the nineteenth century and from then to 1919 a changing but steady
development. From 1900, beginning with the presidential candidacy of
Eugene Debs and the formation of the American Socialist Party, to
1919 nearly twenty years of vigorous political and intellectual
activity marked the high tide of Socialist influence in America.
Whether Socialism has been permanently eliminated as a potent force
in America is uncertain at this time, but that it played a direct

and significant part in the intellectual history of this country for
at least the first two decades of this century is certain. What

that contribution was in terms of educational philosophy and criti-
cism thus seems worth investigating through an examination of the
literature related to education.

During the period 1900 to 1919 scores of Socialist periodicals
were published in the United States.2 These included many weekly news-
papers published in foreign languages, German, Italian, Yiddish,
Bohemian, Swedish, Finnish, Slovakian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, and
Croatian. However, the vast majority were in English and testify to
the flow of Socialist thought into a regular tributary of the Amer-
ican stream of thought. It is impossible within the sc0pe of this

study to gain access to all the periodicals published by the Socialists

during this period from San Francisco to New York, from North Dakota
to Texas. At the high point in 1912 through 1913 there were some 323
such papers though some of the small town and rural weeklies were of
short duration because the animosity of businessmen and banks made
their financial burdens insurmountable.3 It was decided therefore to
concentrate upon the Socialist journals which were read in all parts
of the nation and which had the largest circulation over a considerable
part of the period under discussion. To these magazines serious arti-
cles designed to interpret, discuss and elucidate as well as propagate
Socialist ideas were contributed. As a means of gaining some in-
sight into American responses to Socialist thought these journals
have another value in that adherence to the doctrine of a proletarian
"elect" made the editors particularly anxious to publish contributions
by working men and women both in the form of letters and articles.
Although this effort was not very successful (articles by intellec-
tuals and professional writers forming the bulk of the Socialist
journals' content) there are nevertheless a few interesting selections
of opinion from working people on educational issues. Some difficulty
is involved in ascertaining the political identification of a few
subscribers. Not all were Socialists though just about all were fellow
travellers (to borrow a later term which is useful though somewhat
tarnished), serious critics of the status quo, and radical social
reformers.

In order of the original date of their publication, a brief
description of the journals examined, their editors, contributors, and

character is given below.

The Appea£.to Readon was a weekly journal published from 1895
to 1929. N.W. Ayers' American Newspaper Annual and Directory ascribes
a circulation of 761,747 to the Appea£.in 1913 and $29,132 in 1917-
1918. According to James Weinstein” this circulation made the Appeaf
one of the most widely circulated newspapers in the world, and indeed
it was on certain Special occasions printed in editions of one million.
The Appeal was controlled first by its founder, J.A. Wayland, until
his death in 1912, next by his sons, and then by editor Louis Kopelin
and E. Haldeman-Julius, another member of the editorial staff. For
many years the Appeai's "fighting editor" was Fred Warren. He was
indicted for libel in a case which aroused Socialists because of the
freedom of the press issues involved. Upon receiving an executive
pardon from President Taft in 1911 which reduced his fine from $5,000
to $100, Warren refused to pay a penny sending the pardon back with a
huge sticker attached, "Demand the Label on All Your Printing" because
the document did not bear a union label. [Published in Girard, Kansas,
the Appea£.to Readon.was the most successful of the Socialist journals
and was particularly influential in the farms, villages, and towns of
the Mid-West where it also spawned hundreds of Appea£.study clubs in
which such materials as A.M. Simons' Amenican Hidtoay 601 WonheMA se-
ries and Frederick Jackson TUrner's essays on frontier democracy were
discussed. Charles Kerr, Socialist publisher noted in the December 1970
issue of the Intetnationa£.30cia£idt Revieulthat the Appeai had a wide
audience in the Trade Union movement. He states that 550 local unions
ha'd subscribed to the Appea£.and that the magazine was to be delivered
t£l each of their members amounting thus to about 40,000 individual union

readers.5 If further indications of its influence are needed it should

be noted that it was the Appea£ which in 1905 serialized Upton Sin-
clair's novel The Jung£e. This book,fellow Socialist and novelist Jack
London called the "Uncle Tom'd Cabin" of wage slavery although its ef-
fect, as both writers and other Socialists noted ruefully, misfired.
Among the general public, the book aroused more concern about the state
of the meat than the state of the workers. Finally the Appea£ is of
great interest as a source of Socialist thought because in 1919 it
retained or more accurately regained (it was among the first Social-
ist journals to support President Wilson's pro-allied commitment in
1917) its old revolutionary spirit when vigilantism, government sup-
pression and internal divisions had decimated the Socialist press

in the West and Mid-West. Emanating from the very heart of America

the Appea£.to Readon was thoroughly involved in the enthusiastic
propagation of Socialist ideas throughout the first two decades of

the twentieth century with which this study is concerned.

The Inteknationai Sociaiidt RevieW’first appeared in July 1900
under the editorship of Algie Martin Simons, talented son of a poor
Wisconsin farmer, graduate student of Frederick Jackson Turner, and
long-time member of the National Executive Committee of the American
Socialist Party. The Reviewrwas published by Charles H. Kerr and
Company, a co-operative business located in Chicago which had spec-
ialized in bringing out first free thought, then utopian, and after
1899 Socialist literature. The Intennationa£.30ciazidt Revieulhad a
circulation of 42,000 in 1913, of 26,000 in 1916 and 1917 and its

aim was to educate the party leadership in the principles of scientific
Socialism, by introducing to its pages the most lively thought
from abroad as well as from the United States. In an early editorial

0f November 1900, A.M. Simons wrote:

We shall h0pe to secure expression of those new
tendencies in science, art, literature, educa-
tion and music which are known in the world of
economics as socialism. . . . The movement that
in literature seeks to free the mind from the
control of capitalism by substituting a healthy
"realism" for the corrupting productions of com-
petition will also be represented as a correlative
movement with the great economic revolt to which
the name of socialism is commonly narrowed.6
The Reuieu’included a regular book review section written for many
years by John Spargo; International Notes bringing news of the
international Socialist movement from as far away as Japan; News
of Labor; serialized novels and critical articles on a great var-
iety of topics including education. This subject was of particular
interest, along with the Women's movement, to May Wood Simons, graduate
of Northwestern University, a school teacher by profession and
candidate for superintendent of schools in Crawford County, Kansas.
Here, from 1910 to 1913, her husband A.M. Simons managed the Coming
Nation. This weekly magazine was a literary and artistic supplement
to the Appeal to Readon. After 1908 the editorship of the Intennationai
Sociaiidt Review passed to Charles Kerr, the orientation moved further
towards the left, and the cause of industrial unionism, the I.W.W.
in particular received strong support. However the quality of
contributions remained high. For example the Socialist poet Carl Sand-
burg's poems appeared, as did short stories by Jack London and
articles by George Herron. The basic purpose remained educational.
The most brilliant and famous of the Socialist journals of this
IPGriod was The Madded which began publication in January 1911 under
tire co-Operative ownership of a group of artists and writers which

included John Sloan and Louis Untermeyer. After an inauspicious

beginning under the management of the Dutchman Piet Vlag whose special

interest was propagandizing the co-operative movement, and a short
demise from August to December of 1912, The.MaddeA was brought back

to life with the election of Max Eastman as editor without pay.
Eastman, a former graduate student of John Dewey at Columbia had

been a member of the Socialist Party since 1912. He moved the maga-
zine firmly towards the left and to the support of revolutionary
Socialism. Nevertheless editorial policy abjured the pursuit of rigid
dogma in favor of almost no-holds-barred inquiry, humor, and aesthetic
concern for good writing and innovative art. A listing of the con-
tributors to The Maddeb reads like an inventory of the "names" in
American literature and art of the period. In literature there were
regular contributions from Floyd Dell, William English Walling, John
Reed, Louis Untermeyer, as well as occasional works by William Carlos
Williams, Sherwood Anderson, Vachel Lindsay. Artists were represented
by John Sloan (recently celebrated by a special postage stamp issue),
Art Young and cartoonists Robert Mirror and Boardman Robinson. Un-
fortunately education has rarely been a subject for the undivided
attention of the artist, literary or graphic, and the educational
contributions were made by less eminent writers. Nevertheless the
"fresh air" of irreverence and radical criticism extended to discus-
sions of education too, as will be seen below.

In connection with The Madded mention should also be made of
another interesting and useful Socialist journal to which frequent
reference has been made, The New Review. It was published from 1913
113 1919 by a group which might be described as the left-wing theor-
eticians of American Socialism, people like Louis Boudin and Louis

Fraina, but it also included articles by reform-oriented Socialists

like Charles Beard, John Spargo, and Harry Laidler. In 1919 The
New Review merged with The Madcec.

The study also includes the examination of books published
by American Socialists during this period, works on education and
philosophy, and the "larger aspects of Socialism" as William English
walling described tham.

References will also be made to authors not identified as Soc-
cialists but whose works were recommended in reviews and articles
as expressing Socialist ideals in educational theory and practice.

Substantially then the study is based on primary sources ex-
cept in Chapter II in which the nineteenth century antecedents of
Socialist educational ideologies are described, and in which use of

secondary as well as primary sources is made.

NOTES

Chapter I

Max Eastman's Addhedd to the Juhy in the Second Madded Thiafi
(New York: 1919), p. 18.

Detailed information both on the number and circulation of
Socialist newspapers and periodicals may be found in Ira Kipnis
The Amehican SocialiAIIMovement, (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1952), pp. 247-54); and in James Weinstein, The Dec££ne 06
Sociaiidm £n Amehiea, 1912—1925 (New York and London: Monthly
Review Press, 1967), pp. 82—93; and in N.W. Ayer and Son,
Amehican Newspapeh Annual.

James Weinstein, The Decline 06 Socia£idm in Amehica, 1912-1925
(New York and London: Monthly Review Press) p. 85.

Ibid., p. 85.

Charles Kerr, "Trade Union Support for Socialist Journals",
Intehnazional Socialidt Review 8 (December 1907)343.

A.M. Simons, Editorial, Intehnationai Sociaiidt Reuimu 1
(November 1900):318.

10

Chapter II
THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAS AND INFLUENCE OF THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY COMMUNITARIAN SOCIALISTS

INTRODUCTION
Crossing the Atlantic on the Flagship Ahbetta John Winthrop
addressed the new children of Israel

"Consider that wee shall be as a Citty uppon
a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us."

and Jonathan Edwards in Some.Thoqghtd Concehntng the Phedent
Reotuat of Religion in New Engtand writes

This new world is probably new discovered

that the new and most glorious state of

God's church on earth might commence there;

that God in it might begin a new world in

a spiritual respect.2
The moOd, becoming more secular, the Great Seal of the United States
carved out after the winning of Independence bore the motto Nevud
Ondo Sectonum.

The visionary sense of America as being a new beginning, as
having a special mission to mankind is one of the most persistent
themes in the consciousness of its pe0ple. Faced with the devel-
opments and social effects of the accelerating industrial revolution
as well as with the disintegration of corporate religious goals
two responses which are significant in the history of socialist
educational theory and which are characteristically, though not ex-
clusively, American occurred. First came the proliferation of com-

munity experiments, all in pursuit of a kingdom of heaven on

earth and secondly , as the larger society overwhelmed these

11

12

examples of a better way of life, visionary programs were described

in a utopian literature which profoundly influenced many peOple.

THE COMMUNITARIANS3

The communitarians may be divided into two groups-—the reli-
gious, who were inspired and united by a distinctive interpretation
of Christian purpose, and the secular. Of the two, the religious
communities were much more successful in realizing effective community
living over a long period of time. The Shakers communities, in
particular, spanned a century or more of American history beginning
with their organization into a community at Mount Lebanon, New York
in 1787. At the pinnacle of their success, there were some fifty-eight
Shaker communes with a population of over two thousand persons who
together owned about 100,000 acres of land.

The success of the Shakers in gaining so many members, the
peculiar qualities of their way of life and their religious prac-
tice attracted many curious visitors. Charles Dickens visited Mount
Lebanon at the conclusion of his tour of American and recorded his
impressions (rather dour) in his Amehtca - Noted 60h Ct/Lcutatt'on.l+
Harriet Martineau, ubiquitous observer of American society North and
South was another foreign visitor to a Shaker community.S Of course
rmmerous Americans were deeply interested in these experiments in
their midst and commented upon them in their writings. Ralph Waldo
Emerson visited the Shaker village at Canterbury, New Hampshire;6
Nathaniel Hawthorne based stories upon the Shakers;7 and numerous

31?ticles appeared in magazines describing various aspects of Shaker

'life. These are but a few examples to illustrate the interest taken

13

by their contemporaries in the alternative life style of the Shakers,
an interest which found expression in both literary and historical
writing.

To see the educational system of the Shakers in perspective it
is necessary to mention some of the distinctive characteristics of
their religious belief, since these affected their educational theory
and practice. First, the Shakers were millennialists anticipating
the imminent return of Christ and, like other Christian groups from
the first century to the twentieth living with this expectation, they
claimed the gift of tongues, the gift of healing, and exhibited
extreme physical excitement in the ecstacy of their religious wor-
ship. More extraordinary, and potentially revolutionary in its
concept, was the Shaker belief in the dual nature of God. They be-
lieved that Jesus had made manifest the masculine principle of God
and that Mother Ann Lee, the founder of their sect represented the
feminine side of the divine personality. The earlier appearance of
the masculine element, Jesus, and the derivative Christian inspiration
of the female, Ann Lee, act as a spiritual analogy paralleling the
story in Genesis of the physical creation of male and female. Inter-
estingly this understanding of the nature of the divinity led the
Shakers to be very early and radical supporters of the complete equality
cd'women. Their ministers, who were the central executive of the
Society, consisted, according to their rules of government, of "two
brethren and two sisters", a division of executive power that has
inarely been equalled in organizations with a bi-sexual membership. This

division of power between men and women extended to all their

activities which required management or supervision. 0n the other

14

hand it was true that certain kinds of work were regarded as more
suitable for one sex than the other. The women and girls worked

in the house, cooked, cleaned and did laundry for brothers while

the men and boys specialized in outdoor tasks connected with farm-

ing, crafts and the maintenance of tools, although females did help
with harvesting and gardening. This division affected learning
procedures in that the Shakers undertook to train the children who

came into the community in trades and occupations that would en-

able them either to work productively in the community or to earn

their living if they chose to leave for the outside world.

The other Shaker principle which needs to be noted here was

the belief in absolute continence for all the members of their
communion. They did not believe that marriage in the outer world was

a crime but that denial of the flesh, and virgin purity of behavior
were basic to that state of spiritual preparedness in which they
readied themselves for the millennium. Children there were however.
Some came under the care of the community as their parents were admitted
to full membership following the prescribed probationary period in
which the seriousness of their intentions was tested. Other child-

ren were adopted in a spirit of charity, having been orphaned,
abandoned, or given to the community for care by desperate impov-
erished parents. In the case of both groups, the Shakers, provided
bath in their formal education and by the provision of a small sum of
Inoney, for the survival of their children in the world outside. Mean-
While the two sexes were separated as strictly in childhood as were
their elders. Elementary education, reading the Bible, calculation, and
"riIILng were taught with the boys in one room, girls in another, or, in
sane communities, with boys going to school in the winter and girls in

the Slimmer.

15

Since the Shakers not only recorded the history of their sect
but also evangelized and publicized their beliefs as widely as pos-
sible,they published pamphlets and periodicals in pursuit of these
aims. This literature was also encouraged reading within the com-
munities themselves and presumed a certain level of literacy which
was not inferior to that of their comtemporaries among working people
outside. Central to their educational philosophy was the teaching
of skills that would be useful to the community. Agriculture was
the basic industry of all the Shaker societies but the communalization
of tasks as well as careful management and conscientious performance
provided time, encouragement, and materials for inventive activities.
Not only did the Shakers become important suppliers of improved seeds,
cattle, and sheep, but ingenious inventors of early household appliances
and designers of furniture. Obviously the education of the boys and
girls of a community in which co-operative labor was highly valued
would have included an everyday apprenticeship in both the planning
and practice of these diverse activities. The children of the
Shakers were clearly, in the conditions of their community, able to
observe, and practice a much wider variety of work activities than
their counterparts in a single family, hard pressed to sustain itself
in farm or workshop.

Music (hymn-singing) and art (the beautiful simplicity of

their famous furniture) were by-products of the religious and prac-
tical goals of the community. All adults and children participated

in the dancing which was an integral part of their worship. In

16

spite of the considerable prosperity that came to characterize
the Shaker communities young people were not sent to educational
institutions on the outside for higher education. That which the
colleges of the time could have provided neither accorded with
the philosophy and purposes of the Shakers nor provided any prac-
tical knowledge that they did not already possess or search

for just as diligently themselves. They had no need of lawyers
and their medical practice was directed primarily by a belief in
the healing power of faith and secondarily through their use of
herbs.

The educational practice of the Shakers then was perfectly
co-ordinated with their purposes and needs. All were working mem-
bers of the body of Christ and Mother Ann Lee which they consti-
tuted. Every talent and skill was exercised for the glory of God
and the general good of the whole body. These ends,both body
and mind were conditioned to serve and the goals were unchanging
from one generation to another.

The unusual nature of their religious beliefs and mode of
worship as well as their evangelism were two of the reasons that
the Shakers attracted so much attention. Another reason is that,
unlike the majority of religious communities, the Shakers were
English speaking, and their ideology was thus more readily acces-
sible to other Americans. However, the largest number of commun-
itarians were German immigrants and it would be well to review
briefly the philosophy and educational practice in one of these
settlements. The Amana community of True Inspirationists repre-

sented a rather typical type of nineteenth century community life.

17

The history of the Inspirationists as a communal sect began in 1842
with immigration to America and its vestiges remain to this day in
the form of a co-Operative corporation in Iowa. The Inspirationists
like the Shakers were one of the most successful of these communal
experiments, maintaining their principles of communal living over the
best part of a century.

The Inspirationists made their first settlement, Eben-Ezer, near
Buffalo and economic necessity led them to hold all land, buildings
and resources in common except their personal clothing and household
goods. Land titles were vested in sixteen trustees and a succession
of revelations from God to the religious leaders educated the member-
ship to accept the superiority of communism for religious as well as
economic reasons. The movement flourished and by the early 1850's
had expanded to include nearly a thousand persons. The nearby temp-
tations of Buffalo as well as the need for more land led the Inspira-
tionists to seek another area for settlement. Agents sent ahead by
the society purchased 26,000 acres in the Iowa River Valley, and after
selling their Eben-Ezer properties without loss, the group gradually
moved over the next ten year period to build seven associated villages
in Iowa, not very inspirationally called North, West, Middle Amana
and so on, the word Amana coming, by the way,from the mountain of
that name referred to in The Song of Solomon.

The basic principle of the Inspirationist phi1050phy was a reli-
gious one--the saving of his soul was the only central over—riding
purpose of human existence. The struggle was to subordinate all
other facets of life to the achievement of this aim. Only that mea—
sure of education which contributed to this end was necessary. Any

activity in school, as out of school,that might divert attention from

18

this goal was avoided. In Germany the children were not permitted

to attend the public schools for fear that they would come under the
influence of a less-single-minded clergy, so that the Inspirationists
had already established a tradition of educating their own young.

The Inspirationists like the Shakers did not take an exalted
view of marriage and human sexuality, regarding it as an impediment
in the way of a state of grace. Unlike the Shakers however, marriage
was permitted and even the "Instruments of Spiritual Inspiration",
Christian Metz and Barbara Heynemann who were the religious leaders of
the community indulged. Inspirationists were forbidden to marry before
the age of twenty-four and the couple had to wait one year after
giving notice of their intention. The marriage ceremony had a rather
funereal atmosphere accompanied as it was by an automatic demotion to
the status of "third-rate”, reserved otherwise for children and those
somewhat lacking in piety. However, promotion to one of the two
higher standards of spirituality was usual for those who were really
earnest about their religion. Since William Hinds mentions that there
were about 500 children in the Amana community when he visited in 1876
the psychological disgrace does not seem to have had too discouraging
an effect upon the ordinary human proclivity for reproduction.

In the Amana villages cooking and dining were done communally,
and the labor of the village women was pooled to perform the work of
preparing food for 30 to 50 people as well as a variety of other
tasks which also included work of a public-service nature like nurs-

ing the aged and sick, as well as some specifically educational tasks.

19

Pre-school children were, at least for part of the day, cared for
in groups of 20 to 25 children with 2 or 3 women in charge to free
their mothers. However, since families had their own houses when
they had children, communal care was obviously interspersed with
the attention of the child's own parents.

Each village had a school-house and from the ages of six to
thirteen children attended classes and followed a well-defined sched-
ule of work. There were two kinds of subject matter, the three R's
and manual work. From seven o'clock in the morning until nine—thirty
the children did their lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic.
From nine-thirty until eleven they knitted. After lunch the same
routine was repeated with lessons from one to three, and knitting
from three to four—thirty. Boys and girls knitted--gloves, wrist-
lets and stockings, apparently keeping their elders and juniors well-
suppliedeith woollies. One is not surprised to learn that woollen
goods are still a specialty of the Amana area. Pedagogically the
Society claimed that knitting taught the children manual dexterity,
concentration, and as a familiar by-product, kept them out of mis-
chief.

The kind of mischief that the community was particularly anxious
to avoid was any kind of sexual contact. To this end the boys sat on
one side of the classroom, girls on the other and the attention of
both sexes was drawn frequently to rule 54 in the Catechism concern-
ing play.

Have no pleasure in violent games or plays; do not
wait on the road to look at quarrels or fights; do

9’ not keep company with bad children, for there you

will learn only wickedness. Also, DO NOT PLAY WITH
CHILDREN OF THE OTHER 3Ex.8

20

This emphatic attempt to segregate children sexually was of
course reinforced outside the school-room by a number of practices
which sought to de-fuse sexual attraction. Loose long hair was for-
bidden, and black caps were worn by females of all ages to cover
their hair. Jewelry and brooches were not allowed and clothing was
dark and unrevealing. If the boys took a walk in one direction after
prayer meeting then the girls by custom set off in the opposite way
and males were further warned by Number XVIII of the Rated 60h Batty
Ltfie to

Fly from the society of women-kind as much as
possible, as a very highly dangerous magnet and
magical pie.

Formal education then aimed at literacy so that all members
might be able to read their Bibles and the spiritual experiences of
the community recorded in the Yeah Boohd 06 The Thue Indpthatton Con-
gnegatéom: witnecdec 06 the SW 06 God, whtch happened and wene
Apohen tn the Meeténgd 06 the Society thlwugh the InAULument/s, Bhothen
Chhttttan Metz and Staten B. Landemann. Their society ran a printing
press to produce these documents of their proceedings as well as their
other publications, all of a religious nature, such as Den Ktetne
Kemptb, Ode/L KuILze Sphuche and Geeete (The Little Kempis, or Short
Sayings and Prayers) which was written for the use of the children.
This was the literature which the Inspirationists aspired to read in
their classrooms, in their meeting houses and at home.

Education then, like that of the Shakers, was directed to the
two goals of spiritual salvation and economic viability. Two other
significant German religious communities were the Rappites of Harmony,

Indiana and Economy, Pennsylvania, and the Separatists of Zoar. Since

21

the Rappites voluntarily agreed to adopt celibacy in 1807 and from
then on, although both sexes lived in the same house, abstained from
sexual intercourse, the question of the education of children was

not of major importance to them. But for those children already a
part of the community the Rappites provided a good elementary educa-
tion and taught every child a useful trade, the boys also learning
agricultural skills. The Separatists of Zoar, on the other hand,
started out as celibates, but between 1828 and 1830 in order to raise
new members, decided to institute marriage in their society. At-
tempting to prevent a decline of the communist ethic through the
growth of families, they not only built a school house, but large
houses to accomodate children of three years and over in a communal
setting, boys in one house and girls in another, under the care of
persons other than their parents. After 1845 however, this practice
was found inconvenient and the spirit of social living seemed.so in
decline that Charles Nordhoff, visiting the school in 1874, found an
arithmetic problem concerned with the division of property among heirs,
being earnestly worked upon by the pupils.

To the twentieth century student of educational philosophy the
most fascinating of the millennial communitarian societies is the
Oneida Community of Perfectionists. Though a religiously inspired
society, the Perfectionists believed in creativity, individual self-
fulfilhment, and sexual happiness. They also became convinced that
industrial technology was essential to the improvement of the quality
of life. Moreover the Perfectionists were American both in their origin
and membership, with the exception of a few immigrant Englishmen. Unlike the

majority of the Shakers and the German communitarians, the Perfectionists

22

had a significant recruitment from the middle class, from well-educated
and professional people as well as laborers, mechanics, and farmers.
Their founder, John Humphrey Noyes, born in Vermont and a graduate of
Dartmouth College studied theology at Andover and later in the Yale
Divinity school before he developed his own dissenting theology in 1834.
At Putney, Vermont, Noyes gradually gathered a group about him
who subscribed to his beliefs but living communally did not begin until
1848. The hostility of the neighbors to the sexual teachings parti-
cularly led to harassment and the community moved to Oneida in
Madison County, New York. On a beginning forty acres of land, the
Perfectionists established themselves, and here was to be the cen-
ter of the movement, with another important establishment at Walling-
ford, Connecticut. For the first dozen years strict economy, hard,
rough work in which all participated and an exalted sense of purpose
characterized the life of the community. Gradually their perserver-
ance, honesty and expert craftsmanship impressed their neighbors, and
brought in revenues which ensured first their survival, and soon con-
siderable prosperity. It was their decision to engage in manufacturing,
particularly their fine steel traps and silverware that provided them
with the margin between subsistence and a pleasant degree of material
comfort. To learn the industrial techniques that were to be employed
in the community workshops the Perfectionists sent men and women out
into factories where these processes were already in operation. They
also encouraged the inventive application of ideas and skills already
present in their group and thus developed, for example, their fruit

preserving business and silk-measuring machine.

23

The educational policies of the Perfectionists contrasted markedly
with those of other religious communities though there were some com-
mon principles. But first, to capture something of the difference in
spirit that distinguished this community it is necessary to describe
briefly their discrete system of belief.

Unlike the Shakers and other millennialist groups who anticipated
the imminent return of Christ, the Perfectionists believed that his
Second Coming had already occurred within a generation of his death,
namely at the time of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Therefore all
the conditions for the establishment of his everlasting kingdom were
already in existence and the time was ripe for re-entry into that earthly
paradise which had existed in the beginning. Thus the atmosphere pervading
the group was one of joy and happiness. Sin, guilt and gloom were
sloughed off as the community grew closer to God and individuals to each
other. Pursuing this aim of promoting harmony and unity among those
who were intent upon entering this state of perfection Noyes perceived
that not only was private property a divisive element in society but
even more tending towards jealousies, envies, selfishness was the right
to own persons which characterized monogamous marriage. Further Noyes
and his disciples believed that Christ himself was quite explicit in
this regard for had he not commented that in heaven there is no giving
or taking in marriage. Property in persons as in things was an
attitude antagonistic both to the promotion of community and Christian
perfection. John Noyes explained and disseminated among his followers
both the idea of, and necessary (in a pre-contraceptive age) techniques,
for amative as distinct from propagative love. Free love and joyful

sexual contact between male and female members of the community were

24

not only encouraged but were an integral part of the Perfectionist
philosophy of life. Every man was the husband of every woman in the
community, each woman the wife of every man, though mutual willingness
was a necessary condition for sexual intercourse. Male continence
described by Noyes in The Behean was practiced to prevent both unplanned
births and to rescue women from the burden of incessant childbirth.9
The propagation of children was a matter for careful planning and
discussion within the community, unions for procreative purposes being
decided by the group with the consent of the partners. Pierrepont
Noyes, a son of John Humphrey Noyes and Harriet Worden, says that his
father seems to have arranged diplomatically for all the men who wanted
children to father one child but that the improvement of the physical
stock being a matter of concern to the community, there were males who
for their qualities were most frequently selected as "stirps".10
(Pierrepont Noyes is here referring to stirpiculture, the name John
Humphrey Noyes gave to his eugenic plan.) Between 1868 and 1881 fifty-
eight children were born under these provisions at the Oneida Community.
Perfectionist educational theory quite consciously held then
that Opportunity for the best deve10pment of the child began with pre-
conceptive planning by the community in partnership with the parents.
Certainly all the supportive services of the society, material and
spiritual, were unstintingly available to the mother during pregnancy,
childbirth, and nursing. The child was, of course, regarded as the
responsibility of the whole community at birth although the mother cared
for her offspring until weaning or walking. The length of this period
of intimate maternal care varied according to the time of the year and

the state of development of the particular child. The upbringing and

25

education of the children from this time on became increasingly a com-
munity concern. It was dominated by a social ideology which stressed
group rather than individual loyalties, co-0peration and mutual support
rather than competition and self-advancement.

During the daytime the weaned infants and small children were
cared for in departments of the Chidren's House according to age. Here
both men and women worked in half-day shifts. During the evenings these
young children returned to their mothers to spend the night. As they
grew older the children spent less time with their mothers but walks,
rides, expeditions with parents were certainly encouraged so long as
they did not interfere with the co-operative work of the community. The
importance of play was evidently recognized since $1000 was spent upon
a play house for the children.

Across the road from the main dwelling house, an extensive brick
mansion, was a school building, a lecture room and a chemistry labor—
atory which indicates the more sophisticated kind of educational program
which characterized the Oneida Community. In the school an elementary
education was provided for all the children, with the Bible playing
the usual leading role as a source of reading matter. However the
students were encouraged to carry their studies beyong the usual three
R's if they were at all inclined or able. Instruction was provided in
history, French, Latin and science though over-immersion in study was
no more encouraged than over-work in the community at large. Evi-
dently at the secondary level there were some deficiencies, at least
as measured by "outside" standards. Pierrepont Noyes found that he
needed an extra year's study to prepare himself at Colgate Academy
for entry to Colgate University. However, this was shortly after the

break-up of the original Oneida Community and undoubtedly the quality

26

of education suffered with the dissension that accompanied the retreat
from communism. Since enjoyment and entertainment were important char-
acteristics of life at Oneida, both vocal and instrumental music were
taught. I

There was little fear of defection at Oneida, so complete was
their confidence in the superiority of their own life-style, and it
was customary to send young people away to outside institutions of
higher education in pursuit of specialized knowledge that would en-
rich the community either culturally or practically. Talented young
women were sent to New York to receive special education in music and
a number of young men went to Yale to graduate in engineering, archi-
tecture, medicine and law.

It is important to emphasize that in spite of some specialization
of function on the part of those with professional training as well
as those with advanced technical skills related to manufacturing and
agriculture one of the most emphasized labor policies of the community
was the rotation of tasks. Consequently, in the course of their edu-
cation young people were exposed to and taught as many of the trades
practiced at Oneida as possible in order to increase the individual's
usefulness to the community and to contribute to a well-rounded per-
sonal development. Another, and radical, aspect of Oneida educational
philosophy was that the girls as well as the boys were taught trades.
They worked at lathes and as machinists for example, in fact in all
the occupations which they could handle without physical detriment.
Manual labor was not despised, though onerous and boring jobs were
rotated more rapidly than pleasant or absorbing work. Children were

involved not only in the customary helping with chores but when they

27

were old enough were actually engaged in.the productive economy of
the community. They regularly made the boxes for the Spool silk
which was manufactured at Oneida, thus contributing materially to
the economy of the group.

In charge of educational programs was one of the twenty-one
standing committees of the community, and the administration of
the school was carried on by one of the forty-eight departments.
Thus the members of the community participated fully in the organ-
ization, management and financing of educational activities.

A well-stocked library, a printing press, a daguerrotype shop,
the regular publication of tracts marked by humor as well as zeal,
theatrical entertainments, picnics and a host of other recreational
activities complete this picture of a group of peOple whose educa-
tional enterprises and innovations were not the least remarkable

of their activities.

THE SECULAR COMMUNITARIANS

Although the secular communities were less successful than the
religious, the educational ideas incorporated in them had a wider
appeal because they were not tainted by religious beliefs that were
regarded with some misgivings or hostility by those outside. In
fact, with the founders of the secular communities zeal for educa-
tional innovation played almost as important a role as religious
faith in the sectarian communities. Experimentation with new theor-
ies and practices in teaching children and adults was an integral

part of the secular communitarian purpose.

28

In 1824 Robert Owen and William Maclure met for the first time
in New Lanark, Scotland. Both had made fortunes in business and were
able to spend considerable sums of money on experiments which enabled
them to put into practice the reforms which they thought would amel-
iorate the dire conditions of the poor and thus prepare 'the way to a
more humane society. Both men were convinced that education was the
key to social improvement and yet to fashion a strong and well-cut
key that would unlock the rusty bolts of a corrupted political and
economic order they realized, was a formidable problem.

Robert Owen, self-made industrialist of genius had played the
competitive game to the hilt, won it and subdued it to his purpose.
His factory at New Lanark was not only a model of industry but of
educational pioneering. In his Institute for the Formation of Char-
acter he put into practice policies which were daring in their de-
fiance of earlier educational traditions. But these programs he in-
tended merely as an example of the way in which those three-fourths of the
population of the British Isles who formed the poor and working class
should be educated. In A N60 Vteu 06 Society Owen in his "Essay First"
summarizes the fundamental principles of his educational philosophy.

These plans must be devised to train children from
their earliest infancy in good habits of every de-
scription (which will of course prevent them from
acquiring those of falsehood and deception). They
must afterwards be rationally educated, and their
labour be usefully directed. Such habits and edu-
cation will impress them with an active and ardent
desire to promote the happiness of every individual,
and that without the shadow of exception for sect,
or party, or country, or climate. They will also
insure, with the fewest possible exceptions, health,
strength and vigour of body; for the happiness of

man can be erected only on the foundations of health
of body and peace of mind.

29

And Robert Owen could add:

The beneficial effects of this practice have

been experienced for many years among a pop-

ulation of between two and three thousand at

New Lanark, Scotland.12 .
In the New Lanark Institute Owen had indeed emphasized the importance
of the early years by providing infant classes, and his rejection of
punishment as an effective deterrent to anti-social behavior was evi-
dent in the substitution of kindly treatment for harsh discipline.
Open-air programs of observation, manual and physical activities, and
discussion predominated over book learning in the curriculum at New
Lanark, although the children apparently read well. The Duke of Kent's
physician, Dr. Henry Gray Macnab wrote in his Report that "the child-
ren and youth of this delightfu1 colony were superior in point of
conduct and character to all the children and youth" he had ever seen.
Indeed the fame of Owen's New Lanark project brought thousands of
visitors every year not only from Britain but from every European
country and from the United States.

This educational philosophy Owen had arrived at through his own
reflections influenced by his practical experience in factory manage-
ment and his own profoundly humane concern which compelled him to
press for expansion of schemes to redeem the poor and Oppressed.

In Switzerland, a visit to Pestalozzi's school at Yverdon and to
Fellenberg's institution at Hofwyl in 1818 confirmed for Owen the
essential correctness of his educational ideas. His observations there
also inspired him to further efforts on behalf of the education of

the masses.

30

William Maclure, after making a substantial fortune in Scotland,
settled in Philadelphia in 179613 This city, owing to Franklin's endeavors,
had become the center of scientific activity in the United States.

Here Maclure devoted himself to his interests in science and educa-
tion. In 1809 his publication of Oboe/wartime an the Geotogy 06

the United Stated, EXptanatoay 06 a Geotogtcat Map established his
reputation as a leading scientist. In 1805 Maclure too discovered Pes-
talozzi's school at Yverdon while on a geology expedition in Switzerland.
During the next seven years Maclure spent some time each summer
revisiting the school and absorbing Pestalozzi's ideas. Maclure

was then instrumental in persuading a number of distinguished disciples
of Pestalozzi to go to America and set up schools there. Joseph

Neef, Madame Fretageot and Guillaune Phiquepal d'Ausnant all

arrived in the United States within the next few years. With the
establishment of a school in Philadelphia by Neef and his publica-

tion in 1808 of the Sketch 06 a Ptan and Method 06 Education the Pes-
talozzian movement had made an effective start in America. Meanwhile
the indefatigable Maclure, in between roaming for rocks, decided that

a newly (and as it turned out very temporarily) liberalized Spain was

a suitable site for an enlightened educational experiment. In 1819

at Alicante he set up an agricultural school on Pestalozzian princi-
ples, combining physical labor with moral and intellectual instruction.
Unfortunately the experiment was short-lived. The hostility of the
church and invasion by the French army in 1823 led to the confiscation
of his land and necessitated his escape. It was from Spain that

Maclure went to Britain and to his meeting with Robert Owen, an

31

important development in the history of American education since
both men were ripe for suggestions and sites suitable to the more
fruitful execution of their social and educational enterprises.

Robert Owen's decision to establish a community in America rather
than in the British Isles was not determined by the usual visions of
this country as the New Jerusalem but by the decision of the Rappites
to sell their Indiana properties and move back to Pennsylvania. These
lands and buildings already built for community living were available
at a price which Owen could afford and roughly for one quarter the
amount he had estimated as necessary for a similar site in Britain
for his project. By early September of 1824 Owen had completed the
preliminary arrangements according to William Maclure who was almost
as anxious to test his educational theories on a suitable progeny as
was Owen to test his social theories in a suitable environment.

The hopeful optimism which surrounded the founding of the New Har-
mony Society in 1825, the explainable and yet inexplicable inability of
Owen to come to terms with the practical prOblems of organizing to meet
the immediate problems of such an innovative undertaking are contra—
dictions in the history of New Harmony that cannot be detailed here.
The rapid demise of the New Harmony community however, in no sense
invalidated the precise educational practices of either Owen or
Maclure. It does, as will be seen below, throw light upon a differ-
ence of opinion between the two men as to the source from which change
is initiated and carried through, a difference that is a crucial one in

the history of socialist educational thought.

32

Meanwhile from 1825 to 1826 many of Owen's educational ideas
were put into practice at New Harmony. First, the whole community
accepted responsibility for the provision of life-long education to all.
By December of 1825, even before Maclure's party arrived, 140 children
were all boarded, clothed and educated at public expense.

A second principle that is important both in the history of
American education and of socialist educational ideology is that no
religious instruction was given in the schools at New Harmony. Neu-
trality in matters of religion was important as a basic principle
as well as vital to the promotion of unity. In writing of the church
and its doctrines in A New Vtew 06 Society, "Essay Third" Owen said,

The doctrines which have been and now are taught

throughout the world must necessarily create and

perpetuate, and they do create and perpetuate a

total want of mental charity among men. They

also generate superstition, bigotry, hypocrisy,

hatred, revenge, wars and all their evil conse-

quences. . . . Let this source of wretchedness,

this most lamentable of all errors, this scourge

of the human race be publicly exposed; and let

those just principles be introduced, which prove

themselves true by their uniform consistency and

the evidence of our senses. . . .1”
Realistically appreciating that religious indoctrination held sway
over the minds of many of the adults who came to New Harmony (no con-
ditions had been imposed to screen members) the church building was
open to preaching by visiting clergymen although Sunday mornings were
given over to a lecture on ethics. In spite of the warm welcome

given to Owen in the United States by Presidents, elder statesmen,

political, social, and educational leaders, this did not prevent some

33

extremely vitriolic attacks upon Owen's religious apostasy by out-
raged defenders of the doctrine of original sin and human depravity.
They asserted that his belief that man's character was fashioned by
environment and circumstances undermined the sense of personal moral
responsibility, But Owen, an astute propagandist, seized these occa-
sions for debate as an excellent opportunity for the dissemination

of his own ideas. His marathon eight-day debate in Cincinnati in 1829
with the Reverend Alexander Campbell who defended orthodox Christian-
ity is an example of this.

The foundation of the children's program at New Harmony was the
Socialist principle that the individual realizes himself in the wel-
fare of the community.

The time the children will remain under the dis-

cipline of the play-ground and school will afford

all the opportunity that can be desired, to cre-

ate, cultivate and establish those habits and

sentiments which tend to the welfare of the individual

and the community. . . the precept which was given

to the child of 2 years old, on coming into the

playground, "that he must endeavor to make his com-

panions happy", is to be reviewed and enforced on

his entrance into the school; and the first duty of

the schoolmaster will be to train his pupils to ac-

quire the practice of always acting on this

principle. 5
To reinforce this principle, to use labor power efficiently and per-
haps to mitigate the possibly baneful influence of unenlightened
parents, plans were made for children to board at school after the age
of three.

The curriculum itself was notable for its insistence upon

providing materials of instruction suitable to the child's level of

development. The objectives were understanding and reasoning for,

34

said Owen,

"Has not this ever been and will not this ever

remain, the onlynpgth by which human knowledge

can be obtained?
Reading and writing Owen believed were instruments by which know-
ledge might be acquired but as means were in no way to be confused
with the end. This was to make meaning out of an assembly of facts.

Unfortunately the problems and mounting failures at New Harmony
in the matter of organizing economic affairs prevented the inter-
locking of the industrial and vocational program of the school
with the work of the village. Learning to produce and the acquisi-
tion of all useful and serviceable skills were certainly a part of
the intentions of the school system. In spite of the problems that
were to prove disastrous to the larger community the school children
were engaged in practical work as part of the curriculum, that helped
to finance the cost of the educational program.

That the pioneering at New Harmony was to prove so invaluable a
contribution to educational progress in America however must be
attributed as much to the work of William Maclure as to Robert Owen.
For one thing, the "School of Education Society" which Maclure took
firmly under his control as the larger New Harmony experiment disin-
tegrated was to continue its activities for another thirteen years.

Maclure's educational work at New Harmony had begun in January
1826 when he arrived at the community with a distinguished group of
scientists and teachers, the famous "boatload of knowledge". Although
Maclure had had some misgivings about the New Harmony arrangements he

had been deeply impressed by Owen's New Lanark educational institute.

35

Moreover he believed that a school directly and completely controlled
by the community as the New Harmony project intended, afforded the
opportunity for him to test his theory that "knowledge is power" if
the knowledge is not distorted to a particular class interest. Ma-
clure hoped that New Harmony would become a democratic, equalitarian
community in property and rights, for he believed education is an in—
strument of power and can be used for good or bad ends depending on
who controls it. America, he believed was not fulfilling its revolu—
tionary promise, because it had retained a large number of the laws
and customs of the colonial system and the elective power had been
manipulated by the non-productive classes to rule the productive clas-
ses as certainly here as they were ruled by hereditary power on the
other side of the Atlantic. In America educational institutions had
not escaped this captivation and distortion to their own use by the
ruling class. Maclure wrote

But in no slavish imitation of the follies of

EurOpe have we been so essentially injured in

our vital principles, as in the copy we have

taken and still continue to take, of their ab-

surd monkish system of education. The charters

of most of our colleges and universities are

copies of Oxford and Cambridge in Britain; all

occupied with creations of the imagination,

nourished by the priest, to the total neglect

of nature and her works!17
and he felt that in educational matters the rich had provided for the
consolidation of their own interests and for the advancement of their

own offspring

by granting exclusive charters, corporations,
and mon0polies. . . endowing universities, col-
leges and seminaries, for the education of the
children of the rich with the people's money
and neglecting to establish free schools for
the instruction of the millions.18

36

The persons who were associated with Maclure in the School Society
included not only the teachers Madame Fretageot, Phiquepal d'Ausnant
and Joseph Neef but also a group of distinguished scientists, Thomas
Say, the entomologist, Charles Lesueur, the geologist, and Gerard
Troost, also a geologist.

In Maclure's School as well as the implementation of the Pestalozzian
principles of combining mental and physical labor, and directing effort
towards knowledge that would contribute to human happiness there was a
notable advancement in the adoption of a scientific curriculum. A
close connection was encouraged between teaching, research and the
publication of newly gained scientific and useful knowledge. Chemistry,
minerology, zoology, geology, arithmetic, mathematics, architecture
were all systematically studied under the guidance of men of reputation
already well practiced in methods of research.

Learning from the failures that resulted from the attempt to in-
corporate all kinds of trades into the New Harmony economy (for instance
young William Owen had been baffled by the problem of putting three to-
bacconists to work) Maclure concentrated industrial training upon one
area, trades connected with publishing, that is printing, engraving and
coloring. He had long regarded the control of the press by the proper-
tied and powerful in America as another important factor in the purpose-
ful misinterpretation of the world to the working people and therefore
a part of their miseducation. Therefore he believed that for the people
to manage their own information services through the creation of their
own printing press would be a significant step forward in the acquisi-
tion and management of knowledge and power. The fruits of this enter-

prise were realized in the publications of the school press, including

37

Optntonb on Vahtoud Subjectd, the radical educational philosophies
of Maclure himself.

Significantly, although both Owen and Maclure were in agreement
on the importance of education in redeeming society, and on the gen-
eral principles of a system of education, they differed over the
means of achieving the new society. In explicating the failure of
New Harmony, Maclure concluded that Owen's generous input of his own
fortune had been one of the major reasons for failure. The benevo-
lence of Owen had corrupted the community, allowing the inhabitants
to consume and hot produce, to rely on Owen instead of directing things
themselves. In this explanation of the reasons for New Harmony's
failure, Maclure had arrived in 1828 at an analysis of change which
contained the germ of two later revolutionary socialist theories-~the
idea of the class struggle and the necessity for the working or
producing people to control their own economic, political, and educa-
tional institutions. He had been dubious about Owen's faith in the
goodwill of upper- and middle-class liberal reformers in England
towards the education and welfare of the working people, but in 1828
Maclure doubted the efficacy even of the goodwill itself. He became
convinced that the benevolence of the well-to-do was no substitute
for the will and activity of the people themselves to remedy their
condition in society.

Whence are the millions to expect aid or
assistance? From themselves--from the only
class that is interested in their welfare.
To look for help from any others, would be
to expect an effect without a cause.
As a final contribution to the emancipation of the working classes,

and as part of his educational work there, Maclure financed in New

Harmony a scheme of Working Men's Libraries.

38

Before leaving the Owenite community two other important aspects
of educational practice that were to form an important link with
twentieth-century socialist thought should be mentioned. One was the
equality of opportunity in every branch of education that was accor-
ded to women in the thought and practice of both Owen and Maclure.
It should be noted too that women were also active agents in the
school programs at New Harmony particularly in the persons of the
indomitable Madame Fretageot and Jane Owen, Robert's daughter. The
other innovation was the work of Robert Owen's disciple Frances
Wright carried out in the Nashoba Community she founded in Shelby
County, Tennessee. The particular objective of this community was
to provide a method for peacefully liberating black slaves,but it
was also an early experiment in racial integration. Wright was con-
vinced in the best Owenite tradition that "children collectively may
be taught any sentiments and habits" and sought to eliminate racial
prejudice by having young black and white children of the community
live, study, and work together at the earliest age possible.

Certainly New Harmony and the smaller Owenite societies asso-
ciated with it failed to convert America to the communitarian
principle, but a number of dynamic educational principles had been
brought to public attention. Through the working men's libraries
and through newSpapers like The Face Enqutaeh (formerly The Nev Hah-
mony Gazette) the educational philosophies of these early socialists
continued to be widely disseminated.

Although the projects of Owen, Maclure and their associates

might be described as the climactic high point in the introduction of

39

a revolutionary educational ideology to the United States, the Asso—
ciationist movement in the 1840's revived public interest in social-
ist principles of education and added one or two new ingredients.
Albert Brisbane's book The Soctat vetting 06 Man published in 1840
introduced to Americans the core of Charles Fourier's elaborate plans
for the reconstruction of society.20 The time was prOpitious.

The depression beginning in 1837 had caused much social distress so
that working peeple as well as the conscientious among the relatively
prosperous were looking for solutions to the depressions and conse-
quent miseries of the present ecomomic system. With little system-
atic planning, with insufficient capital but with great enthusiasm
dozens of ill-planned experiments in establishing Fourierist commun-
ities were started. Only three survived long enough to make any
meaningful observations of their way of life possible and apart from
the Brook Farm phalanx, none were remarkable for their educational
institutions. In fact, the North American Phalanx in Red Bank County,
New Jersey and the Wisconsin Phalanx in Fond du Lac County owed their
success apparently to their waiving of intellectual enrichment in
favor of economic viability, both eventually disbanding with some
profit to their participants. The case at Brook Farm was different.
Here, as at New Harmony, the educational venture prospered and made
its own separate impact upon the larger world although its quality
derived from its communitarian base. It is important to note however
that the Brook Farm Community owed as much to Transcendentalist as

to AssociationiSt or Fourierist principles but in respect to the edu-
cational philosophy some of Fourier's ideas merely reinforced, and

did not distort those already in practice at the school.

40

The members of the Brook Farm community counted themselves
richest in intellectual power, and because they believed the "natu-
ral business of a true society to be doing the work of education",
They decided early that they would accept children for fees to be
educated alongside their own children. This educational service would
be a way of assisting in the economic development of their society.21
The intellectual distinction of the members of the Brook Farm Community
and consequently the rich offerings of the school soon led to many
more applications than the community could accept.

Education at Brook Farm was an intrinsic part of the life of
the community. Learning was matched with productivity. John Van
Der Zee Sears, recording his school days at Brook Farm, describes how
he fed the rabbits and tended the garden in which herbs were culti-
vated for the Boston market.22 George Ripley, the founder of Brook
Farm wrote

Our objects are to insure a more natural union

between intellectual and manual labor than now

exists. To combine the thinker and the worker,

as far as possible in the same individual, to

guarantee the highest mental freedom, by provi-

ding all with labor, adapted to their tastes

and talents, and securing to them the fruits of

their industry; to do away with the necessity of

menial services by opening the benefits of edu-

cation and the profits of labor to all; and thus

to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent and

cultivated persons, whose relations with each

other would permit a more simple and wholesome

life than can be led amidst the pressure of our

competitive institutions.23
Thus at Brook Farm one sees again the principle of children learning
to participate actively in the economic life of the community as an

essential part of their education. This however was well mixed

with the aim of securing as many hours as possible from necessary

41

toil "for the production of intellectual goods".21+ The Brook Farm
community hoped to gather books, apparatus, and collections for
science, paintings, sculpture, and as many means of beautiful amuse-
ment as possible which would be held in common. .The honest toil
of agriculture and industry which they would share together would
be accompanied by a rich,creative,intellectual life. In the school
at Brook Farm this purpose explains the emphasis upon the develop—
ment of creative ability, for as an observer explained they said to
one another,

Let us go together and teach one another our

various knowledges and skills; and above all

let us teach our children according to their

genius, and according to the genius of human-

ity, neglecting all those customs and preju-

dices which have no life in them. 25
In pursuit of this the children who attended the Brook Farm School
could select the subjects which they wished to study, though having
chosen they were bound to follow the rules and programs of the
teacher. Although it is likely that some of the more radical members
of the community shared Henry David Thoreau's conviction that at
Harvard he had studied all the branches of knowledge but none of the
roots, the subjects that were available at Brook Farm included cour—
ses that would prepare the boys for college, and even carry them
through their college courses. But this pragmatism involved no loss
of liberal principle for Elizabeth Peabody writing on the Ptan 06
(debt Roxbwuj Community explains the curriculum and the priorities
within it.

As agriculture is the basis of their external

life, scientific agriculture connected with

practice, will be a prominent part of the in—

struction from the first. This obviously in-
volves the natural sciences, mathematics,and

42

accounts. But to classical learning justice
is to be done. . . The particular studies of
the individual pupils, whether old or young,
male or female are to be strictly regulated

according to their inner needs.26

No attempt was made to retain unwilling, uncoeoperative or even
unsuitable pupils at the school since voluntarism was a principle
to which all were deeply committed. Therefore, those who attended the
school as fee payers boarded at Brook Farm and were to work and enter
fully into the community life. The community believed that the freedom
of students to choose subjects, of instructors to find their methods
"in the nature of the thing taught and the condition of the pupil to
be instructed" would mean that "instruction would cease to be a
drudgery, and. . . learning no longer a task".

Two other radical principles that the Brook Farm community in-
tended to practice in their educational system need emphasis as we
shall see their re-appearance in twentieth-century socialist thought.
The firSt was the idea that equality of educational opportunity should
be provided for all children regardless of the financial status of
their parents. The opportunity would be limited only by the inward
gifts, heredity, but all would inherit a good education from society
and an independent place in it. Secondly it was hoped that the neces-
sity of subserving education to the provision of the means of earning
a living might be eliminated so that the true education of "individual-
ly self-unfolding" could begin in an atmosphere of complete social
security.

Educationally, the importance of the nineteenth-century socialist
experiments lies in their successful practice of the enlightened

theories they sponsored. Particularly in the case of New Harmony and

Brook Farm the educational arrangements were widely acclaimed

43

accomplishments that were only slightly tarnished by the failure of

the communities in which they took place. In all the communities,

the benefits of education were freely available to all members of the
community. Any distinctions in the kind of education obtained depended
upon variations in the ability or interest of the students. No class,
and only minor sexual,distinctions were made. The Nashoba Community
even offers an extremely early example of the principle of racially
integrated education in operation. While all the communities faced
problems of survival, all attempted to avoid over-specialization of

the individual, encouraging instead participation in, and enjoyment of,
a wide variety of physical, intellectual and manual skills. Although hard
work was necessary and was often followed by some degree of material
prosperity neither work nor wealth were seen as virtues in themselves.
Joy and happiness, either in communion with God or one's fellows were
more conspicuous as goals than individual accomplishment or riches.

Both technical and scientific experimentation were encouraged in the
Socialist communities. For example, the Shakers experimented with

seeds and invented a washing machine, while at New Harmony, Maclure

and his students conducted basic research in geology and natural history.
Except where doctrinal prohibitions hindered their development in

some of the religious communities, artistic expression in music,

dance, poetry and drama were a part of the educational program, as

well as the study and discussion of history and politics. Underlying
all educational activities, however, was the unifying indoctrination

in, and commitment to, the philosophy that individual fulfillment
proceeded from harmonious and close relationships with the other members

of the community and the pursuit of the common good.

10.

11.

NOTES

Chapter II

John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity", Ltfle and Lettetd
06 John ththhop, Vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1869),
p. 19.

Jonathan Edwards, "Some Thoughts concerning the Present Revival
of Religion in New Englan ", Noaht 06 Phettdent Edwande, Vol. 3
(New York: Leavitt, Trow and Co., 1844), p. 315.

Factual information on the religious communities is derived

mainly from the contemporary descriptions given by William Hinds

in Amehtean Communttted (New York: Corinth Books, 1961); by
Charles Nordhoff in The Communtdttc Soctetteo 06 the Untted Stated
(New York: Schocken Books, 1965); and by John Humphrey Noyes in
Htttvhy 06 Ameatcan Soctatttmd (New York: Dover Publications,
1966). Other more recent works on the communitarians which include
material on the Shakers, Inspirationists, Rappites and Perfec-
tionists are included in the General Bibliography.

Charles Dickens, Ameatcan Noted (on Genemat Ctacutatton (London:
Everyman's, 1907), pp. 211-15.

Harriet Martineau, Soctety tn Ameatca, Vol. 2 (New York:
Saunders and Otley, 1837), pp. 310-14.

R.W. Emerson, Complete Noaht, ed. E.E. Emerson, Vol. 1 (Boston:
Centenary Edition, 1903), p. 115.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Shaker Bridal", Vol. 1 of Comptete
Wehht, pp. 469-76: and "The Canterbury Pilgrims", Vol. 3 of
Comptete Noaht, pp. 518-30, (Boston and New York: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1882).

As quoted in Charles Nordhoff, The Communtdtic Soctetteb 06 the
Untted Stated, first published 1875 (New York: Schocken Books,
1965), p. 59.

John Humphrey Noyes, The Benean (New York: Arno Press, 1969)
passim.

Pierrepont Noyes, My Fathea'd Hoube (New York: Farrar and
Rinehart, 1937), p. 10.

Robert Owen, A Nan View 06.Soctety, a Facsimile Reproduction of

the third edition printed in London in 1817 (Glencoe, Illinois:
Free Press), p. 27.

44

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

45

Ibid., p. 29.

William Maclure's life is the subject of a chapter in David
Harris' Soctattdt Ohtgtnd tn the Untted Stated (The Netherlands:
Van Gorcum and Co., 1966). There are also many references to
the work in the United States, at New Harmony of both Maclure
and Robert Owen in Arthur Eugene Bestor, Jr.'s Bachnmodd

Utoptad.

Owen, op.cit., p. 107.

Obid., p. 96-97.

Ibid., p. 99.

William Maclure, Optntond on Vaatoud Subjectd, dedteated to the
Indudthtoud Phoduceao (3 vols., New Harmony, Indiant, 1831-1838),
Vol. I, pp. 105-106 as quoted in David Harris, Soctattdt
Ohtgtnd tn the Untted Stated (The Netherlands: Van Gorcum and
Co., 1966) p. 60.

Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 3 as quoted in Harris, op.cit., p. 61.

Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 72, as quoted in Harris, op.cit., p. 65.

Albert Brisbane, The Soctat Dedttny 06 Man (Philadelphia: C.F.
Stollmeyer, 1840) passim.

Henry W. Sams, ed. An Aatobtoghaphy 05 Bhooh Fahm (New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1958), p. 24.

John Van Der Zee Sears, My Fatendb at Bhooh Fanm (New York:
Desmond Fitzgerald, 1912), p. 68.

Sams, op. cit., p. 6.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 66.

Ibid., p. 28.

CHAPTER III
THE EDUCATIONAL VISIONS OF THE UTOPIAN SOCIALISTS: LAURENCE

GRONLUND AND EDWARD BELLAMY

The conditions of extreme poverty and wealth, deprivation and
excess, ignorance and privilege to which the communities offered
so sharp a contrast, became more exacerbated with the progression of the
Industrial Revolution in America. Between the peak period of experi-
mentation in community living and the twentieth century came the
blueprints for an improved society drawn by Laurence Gronlund and
Edward Bellamy. This chapter will attempt to show how the ideas of
Gronlund and their expansion and popularization by Bellamy added a
new dimension of universality to the development of a Socialist educa-
tional ideology in the United States.

Charles Beard and John Dewey independently compiling a list of
the most influential books published since 1885 in America, each
placed Karl Marx's Capttat in first place and Edward Bellamy's Loohtng
Bachwuhd in second. The profound influence of Marx upon Socialist
educational thought in America will be discussed in the next chapter.
The advance of Socialist thought in America, however, owes much also
to Gronlund's theory and to Bellamy's popular novel. Among those who
read and commented enthusiastically upon Bellamy's work was John
Dewey. He thought that Loohtng Bachwund might provide the same in-
spiration to social engineering that Uncte Tan'd Cabtn had provided
for the abolitionist movement.

Edward Bellamy of Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts was the des-
cendant of a long line of New England preachers, and the son of a

Baptist minister. He possessed an active conscience which turned

Al

47

towards the alleviation of social injustice. This had grown more
acute even in his own environment as Chicopee Falls developed from
a small rural town into an industrial community, with the familiar
influx of immigrant workers, the appearance of slums and the polariza-
tion of the community into rich and poor. After a couple of years at
Union College and a year in Europe Bellamy became a journalist and then,
because of uncertain health, he took up literary writing. His most
famous work Loohtng Backwaad, a science fiction novel, was published in
1887. Through the central character, Julian West, a young Bostonian
who wakes in the year 2000 A.D. after having fallen into a mesmer-
ized sleep in 1887, Bellamy contrasted the strife-ridden decaying
capitalist order with a harmonious cooperative commonwealth which
had evolved peacefully during West's extensive nap. The novel delivers
a carefully reasoned but deliberate and scathing indictment of the
state of affairs in the late nineteenth century and simultaneously
describes the outlines_of the new society which has taken its place.
Since Bellamy believed that this new society would emerge peacefully
as all classes realized the irrationality and immorality of the old
he, in effect, mapped out the guidelines of a social reform policy.
What were the origins of Bellamy's social thought? It proceeded
in the first place out of his humanitarian conviction and his sensi~
tive reactions to the discrepancies that he witnessed between the lives
of the rich and the poor. However there is little doubt that he ar—
rived at a solution based on socialist principles after his reading of
Gronlund's The Coope/Lattme Commonoeaé’th which had been published in

1884. Gronlund's discussion of the cooperative commonwealth incor—

48

porated much of the revolutionary social ideology of Marxism but
with some important modifications that appealed to Gronlund and
Bellamy, and which both thought would make Socialism more palatable
to the American public. Gronlund emphasizes in his introduction to
the reader

Socialism is no importation but a home—growth

wherever found. . . the social and political

phenomena in all progressive countries and par-

ticularly in our own country and Great Britain

are, in a perfectly natural manner, evolving

a New Social Order, a Social Democratic Order

which we have called the Cooperative Common-

wealth.2
And Bellamy, in an introduction to the American edition of the Fabtan
Eddaya stated that "nationalism was a form under which socialism was
brought to the notice of the American public."3 He believed that
the avoidance of the term Socialism would prevent the conjuring up,
however falsely, of the demons of atheism, free love and violent
revolution.

Although both Gronlund and Bellamy rejected the thesis of the
class struggle, unlike Rebert Owen and Maclure they did not think that
a satisfactory educational system could be put into effect until an
economic democracy had been achieved, that is until the means of pro-
duction were publicly owned and operated for the general welfare instead
of for profit.

The bread and butter question is therefore the
fundamental question. We see here again how
socialism, by revolutionizing the economic rela-
tion of society will revolutionize all other
relations. Education then will be the second
important branch of the activity of the new
commonwealth.“

Bellamy’s position, as a prophet of a new society as well as a practical

politician through his involvement with the Nationalist Clubs to which

49

Loohtng Buchwahd had given birth, was a little more complex. In the
latter role as an advocate of immediate educational improvement Bellamy
believed that the primary tactic should be the winning of public
ownership of the municipalities. Following or accompanying this, changes
in the school laws should be made to accomplish three major goals.
These were the raising of the age limit for compulsory education, the
prohibition of the employment of children during school hours, and the
payment of compensation to impoverished parents so that they could
afford to allow their children to attend school.5 This brief response
by Bellamy to the demands for some concrete objectives to work towards
in the present political system indicates however only a small part of
his educational philosophy. This is described in more detail in
Loohtng Backhand by Dr. Leete, Julian West's guide to the new society.
It parallels very closely Gronlund's reflections upon education in
The Coope/zattve Commonwealth.

The very fact that all progressive countries are committed to
the development of a common school system and concerned with the prob-
lems of an educational program for the masses is seen by Gronlund as
one of the signs that the birth of a new commonwealth is imminent.
It is, so to speak, the three R's on the wall. Significantly, for the
Socialist educational theories of the early twentieth century he
accepts as valid all the conservative arguments against any education
for the masses that goes beyond the most rudimentary. He agrees
that in the present system the capitalist quite correctly views with
alarm the prospect of a discontented over-educated work force, and
finds the refusal of the rich to subsidize the education of the poor

entirely appropriate to their interest in the present social system.

50

These are the mores of the old order and, like Saturn who consumed

his own children as they were born, the old would resist displacement
by the young and vigorous. However like Jupiter, who evaded his father's
jealous eye and gained his throne, the succession of the cooperative
order is inevitable too. All other observations and arguments about
the utility of educating the masses were irrelevant compared with

this one overwhelming inevitability, Gronlund believed. The economic
democracy, the interdependent commonwealth Bellamy and Gronlund agreed
would have to assimilate the industrial masses into the culture and
for the first time in history the poor would enter the madnstream of
society and partake of its benefits. The barriers which at the moment
separate the rich from the poor frustrate the development of each
individual as a complete personality. Only the well-to-do at present
have access to institutions of secondary and higher learning because
the system demands the payment of tuition fees. Profit is at the base
of higher education as it is the motivating force in industry and this
leads to the graduation of many unfit students while the latent
talents of those who have no leisure and cannot afford the fees which
the system demands go undeveloped.

The first principle to be established then in the cooperative
commonwealth is that of equal access to education, at all levels. The
need is for the provision of every possible opportunity that will en—
able individuals to discover their true merits and abilities. Gronlund
feels that the kindergarten, which had just begun to appear in the
United States had great potential value in this respect.

The institutions that have already shown them-
selves specially adapted to the discovery and

unfolding of these latent talents in children
are the kindergartens.6

51

Bellamy writes that for the general welfare of the community and

for the satisfaction of the individual, the discovery of aptitude
is an essential part of the educational process.

The principle on which our industrial army is

organized is that a man's natural endowments

mental and physical, determine what he can work

at most profitably to the nation and most sat-

isfactorily to himself.7

Specialization however, should not be the primary end of education.

Gronlund thinks that a man trained for one area only was never able to
exercise the best judgment even in regard to that area compared with
the man of broad education and sympathy. Schooling should certainly
include manual training, according to Bellamy and Gronlund. In Loohtng
Backwand youth is not only acquainted with a thorough theoretical know-
ledge of the nation's industries and agriculture but has to be familiar
with tools and methods of operating them. Everyone is to serve in an
industrial army for three years, doing work of a manual kind. Kinder-
gartens, Gronlund thinks, will also be important in encouraging in all
an early ability in, and taste for, manual activity. Regular visits to,
and long inspections of workshops and industrial enterprises are a
regular feature of Bellamy's school curriculum. While every attempt is
made to fit the necessary work of the nation to the preference of the
individuals, students are expected to prepare themselves for alterna-
tive occupations so that the system of training and employment has a
flexibility which enables it to adapt to changing techniques, inventions
and demands. Admission to professional higher education, to the schools
of "technology, medicine, art, music and higher liberal learning" is

open and free of course. However, the program of study for these

brain workers is long and arduous. Those who wish to undertake such

52

work are given many opportunities for self-testing before they make
a decision to enter these schools. No decision as to career however
is irrevocable and changes of occupation can be made. The performance
of tasks that are physically exhausting or disagreeable is made more
bearable by shortening the hours of work, or calling for volunteers.
Physical health and strength, as well as happiness, being a

matter of major concern to the nation, Bellamy's hero, Julian West
observes with surprise how magnificent is the appearance of the young
peOple compared with those whom he know in 1887. Dr. Leete explains that

The faculty of education is held to the same

responsibility for the bodies as for the minds

of its charges. The highest possible physical,

as well as mental development of everyone is

the double object of a curriculum which lasts

from the age of six to twenty-one.8

The true purpose of education for the individual is the harmon-

ious and balanced cultivating of all the faculties. The real end of
learning is not training, vocation, or profession but devotion to the
cultivation of knowledge, enabling people to develop intellectual
sympathies and refinements which have no reference at all to the sort
of work they do. Bellamy notes the results of this philosophy upon
the people of the new society.

All have some inkling of the humanities, some

appreciation of the things of the mind, and an

admiration for the still higher culture they

have fallen short of. They have become capable

of receiving and imparting, in various degrees,

but all in some measure the pleasures and in-

spirations of a refined social life.9

This fulfills the first requirement of the new educational system

which Bellamy says is

53

the right of every man to the completest educa-

tion the nation can give him on his own account,

is necessary for the enjoyment of himself.10

Public service not private good, however, is the ethic to which

all in the c00perative commonwealth subscribe, and which is the dyna-
mic of the educational system as indeed of the whole society. The
primary social object of education then is to establish firmly in
the minds of all students that there is an "indissoluble association
between their individual happiness and the good of all."11 Children,
Gronlund asserts, belong more to society than to their parents, par-
ticularly in matters of education since the effects of this will be
felt in society through the behavior of these children long after
their parents are dead and gone. While he is not opposed to the
family Gronlund feels that it can act as an anti-social force if
family exclusiveness is emphasized over public spirit. As it devel-
ops, modern democracy casts off the old patriarchal authority and
liberates the young for cooperative living and loyalty to everyone
in the community. In his discussion of the relationship of educa-
tion to society's needs Bellamy again and again uses the word 92313,
Like money making in the old capitalist system serving the community
is the aspiration of all in the new commonwealth. At the completion
of their formal education at the age of twenty-one all young people
enter the industrial army for three years service as common laborers.
Even after this service is completed there is never any difficulty
in finding volunteers to undertake onerous but necessary tasks
for the public good. Whenever any conflict arises between the need
of the nation and the desire of the individual, the former takes

precedence. For example, entry into the higher professional schools

54

is limited to those under thirty because too brief a period of service
to the public would remain if those of riper years were admitted.

Bellamy also gives priority to goals of sociability and harmony
over utilitarian considerations. If it were impossible to afford to
educate all then he would educate those who were by nature "coarsest
and dullest" since those well endowed are less in need of assistance
in attaining culture and refinement of manners. Sociableness is im-
possible where differences of knowledge, taste and interest are too
great. "A cultured man in your age was like one up to the neck in a
nauseous bog solacing himself with a smelling bottle," Dr. Leete com-
ments contrasting the confinement of education to the prosperous in
1887 with the general elevation of the whole population in 2000 A.D.12
Gronlund also believes that there is a greater need to diffuse that
knowledge which is already available than to collect more isolated in-
formation. The anarchy of opinion which characterizes the age
preceding the transition to socialism will be replaced by assimilation
and unification of ideas. "It is just as natural for healthy men to
think and believe alike as it is for healthy men to see alike," he
concludes.13

Gronlund and Bellamy were full supporters of an equal status for
women and girls. Both men attribute equal intellectual powers to the
female sex though both took a "vtve ta dtggenence" approach to the goals
of education for women, using such ambivalent terms as "appropriate
functions" and "true companionship". Gronlund felt that females would
be better educated in "institutions adapted for them" and rejoiced that
they would no longer be "trained to please the man-fool."1“ In a lengthy

chapter on the status of women in the cooperative commonwealth Bellamy

55

describes arrangements which might be characterized as separate but
really equal since their separateness did not prevent women from serving
in the highest branches of the executive and judiciary. Girls had the
same educational and career opportunities as boys, save only that heavy
labor was reserved for men, and that the girls worked in an auxiliary
industrial army for their post-graduate term of public service. The
abolition of distinctions of wealth and the realization of complete
equality meant that females no longer prostituted themselves either in
or out of marriage for material gain or advantage. In fact, women were
completely independent economically, receiving the same subsistence
and credit as every man in the nation. The result of these improved
marital and romantic conditions was that the children of the new
society were assured of a healthy physical inheritance through the
process of natural physical attraction. They also of course benefited
from having parents who were well educated and enlightened.

Finally one other important issue that is taken up by Gronlund
and, interestingly, at the class room level, is the source of power
and control. Bellamy, on the other hand, is cautious here. In Loohtng
Backwahd those over forty—five have the right to vote and regulate
the activities of the nation. Gronlund on the other hand suggests that
full democracy be extended to the class room with a scholar-jury,
scholar-suffrage in operation as proposed by Bentham. Thus, the
students themselves would govern themselves under the principle of
participatory democracy, determining relative achievement and the
position of each other in the class room. This would not only be proper

in itself to an interdependent socialist subcommunity but would teach

56

children that suffrage is a trust and that they should be in accord

with their fellows, not in competition with them or against them.
Gronlund and Bellamy envisioned the application of the educational

principles they described to the entire nation.. This would be

accomplished following the reasoned rejection of the capitalist

system because_of its mounting accumulation of inefficiency and violence

that accompanied it. The adoption of a Socialist economy would lead

immediately to the development of a Socialist educational system.

None of the major educational ideas practiced in the communities were

rejected, though in predicting a wholly secular state both Gronlund

and Bellamy dismissed religion as an element in education. Unlike

the communitarians Bellamy recognized the increasing complexity of

advanced learning and suggested methods of self selection, and even

some community imposed restrictions on absolute equality of access

to the higher professional schools. Both Gronlund and Bellamy firmly

supported the primacy of general as opposed to specialized education.

Bellamy also believed in theeprinciple of compensatory education.

It was essential, if educational resources were limited, to redress

the deficiencies of those who had been deprived by nature or circumstance

of enlightened minds. The more privileged in heredity or environment

could better take care of their own educational development without

detriment to the public. Gronlund was more radical than Bellamy in

encouraging the young to direct and manage their own educational

activities. Both Bellamy and Gronlund believed that from an early age

the concept of public service must be taught to prevail over notions

of private good.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

NOTES

Chapter III

Elizabeth Sadler, "One Book's Influence", New Engtand anatehty
17, December 1944, p. 533.

Laurence Gronlund, The Co-opeaattve Commonwealth (Lee G Shepard,
New York, 1884), p. 7.

Quoted in Sadler, op. ctt. p. 539.

Gronlund, op. ctt. p. 222.

Edward Bellamy, "Looking Backward Again", Neath Amehtcan Reuteu,
150, 1890, pp. 362-363.

Gronlund, op. ctt. p. 231.

Edward Bellamy, Loohtng Backwand, 2000-1887 (New American Li-
brary, New York, 1960), p. 59.

Ibtd. p. 152.

Ibtd. p. 151.

Ibtd. p. 152.

Gronlund, op. ctt. p. 224.

Bellamy, op. ctt. p. 151.

Gronlund, 0p. ctt. p. 233.

Ibtd. p. 232.

57

Chapter IV
THE INFLUENCE OF MARXISM ON EDUCATIONAL

THOUGHT IN AMERICA

Marx called the communitarian Socialists utopian not because
he scorned their ideas but because he thought that their method of
implementing Socialism could not transform the larger society.
Nevertheless Marx believed, with these Socialists, that man fulfilled
himself in association with others. He believed, in common even
with the millennial Christian Socialists although in a more down to
earth location, that the real awakening of the human spirit was to
occur in the future. Like Bellamy and Gronlund, Marx's vision of
Socialism involved the whole society in the inevitable creation of the
cooperative commonwealth. Unlike Bellamy and Gronlund, Marx saw in
history the conflict of social classes as the dynamic that moved society
forward. In the age of capitalism it was the dispossessed class of
working people who through their experience with, and education in,
their deteriorating economic position would struggle with the small
wealthy ruling class and eventually claim the ownership of the pro-
ductive resources. This conflict between these two classes would be
the result both of the concrete experiences of the working class with
the effects of the monopolization of wealth, education and culture by
the ruling class, and of the educational activities of Socialists.
They would act as catalysts of working-class consciousness until
conflict was resolved by their attainment of economic power. The
terms of the struggle would depend upon its national location. Where

political democracy was well established the transfer of the resources

58

59

and institutions to the control of the mass of the pe0ple might be
accomplished without force. Elsewhere, violent revolution might be
necessary for the seizure of economic and political power from the
reluctant ruling class.

The greatest dissimilarity between the nineteenth-century commun-
itarian and visionary Socialists and the Marxist Socialists is in the
defining of the locus of revolution and regeneration, in the masses
of the people themselves. Their assumption of ownership over the
means of production would result in a new quality of life in which
the conflicts of economic interest that have vitiated all previous
human history would no longer exist.

In scientific or Marxist Socialism vision then is combined with
activism in the creation of political parties and the aggressive dis-
semination of revolutionary ideas of all kinds relating to the
achievement of a new society and a new man. It is with the attempt
to organize an effective party to transmit the ideology that this
next section is concerned.

As millions of Americans were reading Loohtng BachWHAd attempts
were being made in America to form political parties based upon the
principles of scientific Marxist Socialism. Because Marxism was the
most important single influence upon Socialist thought in America
after 1890 this chapter will describe briefly its dissemination through
the organization of Socialist political parties in this country. Also
the subsequent impact of Marx's theories will be examined and the
translation of these theories into the educational thought of American

Socialists will be illustrated from their writings.

60

Even before the Civil War a convention of the General Working
Men's Association had called for "Education and Instruction" for the
workers through an extension of educational facilities. In every
attempt to form, first a political party to represent the working man's
interests and later, Socialist parties, a demand for the improvement
or provision of educational facilities for working people was a part
of the platform. William Maclure's belief that the ability to read,
write and reason would have to precede the assumption of control over
society by the producers for society seems to have been an assumption
of all workers' organizations. The Southern slaveholders' obsessive
fear of the literate slave involved a principle of control whose
implications were not lost on the working-class leadership. Educa-
tional reform was therefore a central concern of the labor movement.

When in 1868 a conference of delegates from the early trade unions
organized a National Reform Party, they received greetings from
the International Working Men's Association in London whose leading
light was Karl Marx. Although this small party had passed out of
existence by 1874 it marks the beginning of the attempts in America
to organize a political movement upon Socialist principles. In 1874
the Social Democratic Working Man's Party of North America was founded.
Most of its members were German immigrants who had withdrawn from the
International Workingmen's Association as it decayed in New York. In
1876 a national convention of working men was called by the Social
Democratic Party to bring about a union of all the nascent Socialist
organizations in the country. Members of the Labor Party of Illinois
joined with representatives of the Social Democratic Party and the Inter-
national Working Men's Association to bring about the birth of a new party

in the United States dedicated to workers' interests. Its platform was an

61

exposition of Marxist policy. In 1877 the name was changed to the
Socialist Labor Party of North America. However only about 10% of
the members were native Americans and the party was faced with the
problem of reaching out to win support from, and give education in
Socialist principles to, the American masses. Two policies alter-
nated in pursuit of these goals--the active promotion of and
participation in trade union growth and the attempt to gain electoral
victories at all levels of the political structure for Socialist
candidates.

The party grew rapidly with the financial depression, starva-
tion, misery and bloody clashes of the late 1870's to a membership
of 10,000 spread over twenty-five states. With the temporary return
of prosperity in the 1880's the active membership began to decline,
and during this decade the Socialist Labor Party remained predomi-
nantly German in its composition. In 1889, the conversion of Daniel
DeLeon, lecturer at Columbia Law School and until then ardent
supporter of Bellamy's Nationalist Crusade, to Marxism and membership
in the Socialist Labor Party was an important event in American
Socialist development. DeLeon, linguist, historian, lawyer, was a
skillful lecturer able to popularize Marxist theories on the platform
with his use of humorous and appropriate metaphor. His promising
academic career was abandoned for a comradely but squalid life in an
East Side tenement as he devoted himself to the Socialist cause. He
insisted upon the necessity for activity both in the political and

economic sphere.

62

If you have an economic organization alone you

have a duck flying with one wing; you must have
a political organization or you are nowhere. .

The capitalist is organized on both lines. You
must attack him on both.1

This ability on the part of DeLeon to see the necessity for pur—
poseful advancement of the Socialist message on all fronts, including
the need to make use of and transform the educational system, was an
important contribution to the clarification of tactics. However, his
dogmatic devotion to the principle of forging the Socialist Labor
Party into a proletarian revolutionary organization (based uncomprom-
isingly upon the class struggle thesis) led to the expulsion of those
who vacillated in matters of policy or who deviated from DeLeon's
decisions. From 1893 to 1901 a number of Socialists who did not see
eye to eye with DeLeon had been expelled from the Socialist Labor
Party and others had resigned as they found their separate judgments
on questions of policy and tactics opposed by the impervious will of
their leader. These men included Socialists of some ability like
Morris Hillquit, A.M. Simons, Victor Berger, who were later to play
important roles in the American Socialist Party.

In 1898, under the leadership of Eugene Debs who had been converted
to Socialism while in Woodstock Jail, the Social Democratic Party was
founded emerging from the membership of the American Railway Union and
the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth. The Social Demo-
cratic Party was a Socialist party though its Dectaaatton 06 Patnctpteb
shows its ideological links not only to Marxism but to the evolutionary

ideas of the now almost defunct Nationalist Movement. It called upon

all honest citizens to unite under the banner

of the Social Democracy of America so that we

63

may be ready to conquer capitalism by making

use of our political liberty and by taking

possession of the public power.2
An article in The Soctat Democnat however asserted that "The Social
Democracy is a political organization which recognizes the class
struggle and is based on the principles of International Socialism".3
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Social Democracy was its
colonization scheme which linked it with the earlier tradition of com-
munitarian experiments and indicated a connection, at least in spirit,
between them and the political Socialist movement. The Dectaaatton
said that one state of the Union would be selected for the concentra-
tion of the supporters of the Social Democracy and into this state
cooperative industry would be introduced. From this nucleus offiocial-
ism the National Cooperative Commonwealth would be brought into being
by a gradual extension of the cooperative method from one state to
another.

One other ideological movement that arose in reSponse to the chal—
lenge of Marxist philosophy and which cannot be omitted from a discus-
sion of the sources offiocialist ideas was the Christian Socialist
Crusade. It never embraced more than a minority of American Protestant
churchgoers but its message was convincingly preached by an articulate
leadership. Vida Scudder, a professor at Wellesley College, W. D. P.
Bliss, an Episcopalian minister and George Herron,a Congregationalist
minister and professor at Grinnell College believed that the ethics
taught by Jesus of Nazareth and the behavior practiced by him were So-
cialist. Christ, a carpenter had fed the hungry, praised the poor,
chastised the rich and renouncing the making of profit had lived the

life of perfect service to society. All the virtues which Christ had

64

exemplified in his own behavior and extolled in his preaching were
incorporated in Socialist philosophy and were antithetical to the
spirit of capitalism and rugged individualism. Bliss, who was the
principal spokesman of the radical clergy and laymen until 1896 re-
jected the necessity of the class struggle as a means of achieving
social justice, believing instead that American political democracy
would permit the peaceful evolution of Socialism. The Dawn: A Maga—
ztne 05 Chatdttan Soctattdm and Recoad 06 Soctat Pnoghedd was the
vehicle of the Society of Christian Socialists which Bliss founded

at Boston in 1889 with the motto, "He works for God who works for
man". Municipal ownership of productive resources and of all utili-
ties to provide for the welfare of all and to eliminate the division
between the few who possess and the rest of the people, was advocated
as the best way of realizing Socialism with a democratic control
which would remain close to the people.

George Herron's dynamic and controversial preaching, speech-
making, and writing enabled him to reach and influence (as well as
irritate) a much wider public than W.D.P. Bliss. Like Bliss and
Scudder, Herron believed that Socialism was compatible with the best
American traditions of extending the scope of freedom and could be
evolved through the democratic political framework already in exis-

tence. Herron asserted that the goals of Socialism were immediately

 

moral in eliminating the injustices visited upon the masses and ulti-

mately spiritual and idealistic in making possible "a vast and collect-

 

ive fulfilling of the law of love" which is the Christian gospel. Un-

like Bliss he agreed with the Marxists on the necessity of developing

65

a sense of class consciousness among the workers. This was not to
be confused with class hatred but was to be used constructively to
unite the masses for their task of creating a new society out of the
decay of capitalism. Having quietly supported the Socialist Labor
Party from 1893, Herron openly announced his allegiance to Socialism
as a political movement in 1899 with the formation of the Social
Democratic Party. In 1900 he opened, with Debs, the Socialist pres-
idential campaign and played a vital role in the reconciliation of
splinter members of the Socialist Labor Party with the Social Demo-
cratic Party. This led to the birth of the American Socialist Party
in 1901. The literature of American socialism in the twentieth cen-
tury reveals the very considerable influence in its midst of those
who were led to their political convictions by way of the Sermon on
the Mount as well as those whose socialism traces its origins to the
Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels.

The Socialist Party whose founding was celebrated by the singing
of the Marsellaise in Indianapolis in 1901.arose then out of a con-
fluence of radical philosophies and experiences. The great triumph
at Indianapolis was the merging of every significant Socialist organi-
zation in the United States except the DeLeon faithfuls in the Socialist
Labor Party. They continued their separate existence singlemindedly
devoted to no compromise with what they considered to be reformist

approaches to the achievement of Socialism.

66

The creation of a nationwide party with a predominantly American
membership meant that a vehicle stood ready to carry Socialist
programs and ideas for a new society into all sections of the country.

As the works of Marx were increasingly made available in America
his theories became heated topics of debate among intellectuals. Onto
the eclectic body of American Socialist thought that had grown up in
the nineteenth century Marx's ideas were grafted with varying degrees
of acceptance. It is essential to realize however that these theories
came to the Socialists of the early twentieth-century purely as theo-
ries. Although they were revolutionary, controversial and repugnant
to some, the ideas themselves had not been prejudiced by any large
scale attempts at implementation, however far removed such endeavours
might be from some of his principles. The Bolshevik Revolution was
still in the future. Further, in attempting to indicate the impact of
Marx's ideas upon educational thought a distinction has to be made be-
tween the pervasive, but probably rather incomplete influence of his
phiIOSOphy upon thousands of American Socialists and the absolute com-
mitment to certain of his premises which was confined to a relatively
small number. Marxism had become the main current in the river of
Socialism but in America old and vigorous streams continued to pour
into it also. The wide appeal of the American Socialist Party from
1900 to 1915 and from 1917 to 1919 can be attributed to its fusing of
radical viewpoints with versions of social reform that sought the
immediate amelioration of the worst effects of capitalism upon the
working people. The programs of the reform element were distinguishable

from progressivism chiefly in their theoretical bases and in the

67

Understanding of their authors that they were means to an end,
. not ends in themselves.

Marx's writings, though voluminous and comprehensive do not con-
tain any one work devoted to the development of a theory of education,
comparable for example, to Rousseau's Emtte. While Marx is restrained
in drawing up blue-prints for the classless society of the future, and
the nature of educational processes in it, he does portray Socialist
man as spontaneously creative, as he realizes his liberation from the
fragmentation and alienation that had characterized his condition under
capitalism. Marx's philosophy is thus as pregnant as Plato's with dis-
cussions of ends and means that are related to educational thought. There
are specific references in a number of Marx's works to educational
problems as well as a View of the direction which social development will
take which has important implications for educational practice. Art, law,
morals, education, literature, the whole range of mental life would be
transformed by the Socialist Spirit in action. The call to be aware of
the evolution of history, to be allied with progressive social forces
was the central dynamic of Marx's message. This challenged Socialists
to involve themselves in all kinds of educational, social and cultural
activities to move them in the direction of control by the people. The
breadth of the struggle to reach the new society is always emphasized, as
well as its roots in the conversion of the masses through education and
enlightenment. Democracy as the mere possession of votes was only of
partial significance, as William Maclure also had insisted, unless there
was understanding of the realities of history, economics, politics and

interest. The initial struggle was to enlighten the people and liberate

68

them from the control of those whose interests were opposed to the
masses and who consciously or unconsciously misled them and their
children. The moral core of Marx's thought regarding the education
of the individual appears in his early work, The Economtc and PhttO*
dophtc Manudcatptd 05 1844,
A being only considers himself independent when

he stands on his own feet; and he only stands on

his own feet when he owes his existence to himself.

A man who lives by the grace of another regards

himself as a dependent being. But I live complete-

ly by the grace of another if I owe him not only

the sustenance of my life, but if he has moreover

created my life--if he is the source of my life;

and if it is not of my own creation, my life has

necessarily a source of this kind outside it.”
In the present condition where labor is compelled under the pressure
of external necessities which preclude independence of choice and ac-
tion, each man has a particular line of activity from which he cannot
escape. Marx writes in The Genman Ideotogy

He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd or a cri-

tical critic and must remain so if he does now want

to lose his means of livelihood.5
This fragmented condition of man in which work is separated from self-
fulfillment and becomes itself an objectified, marketable commodity
is one of the developments of capitalism which will become so intoler-
able that it is one of the conditions directly leading to the revolu-
tion.

Two other developments however have to take place before the
intolerable point is reached. First the mass of the people would have
become completely dependent economically as opposed to the relatively
small group owning all the resources and economic power of the nation.

Secondly this situation would be accompanied by an enormous in-

crease in productivity which, with rational distribution,would eliminate

69

the necessity of struggling for the necessities of life. To accom-
plish the emancipation of the masses from poverty (which may be inter-
preted from Marx's description as a relative rather than an absolute
condition), to a state of independence and common ownership of the
productive process, Marx believes that the overthrow of the economic-
political power of the wealthy ruling class is necessary. Then will
be the commencement of the socialized state of man in which production
is regulated to satisfy the needs of people not the irrational demand
for profit. Resources will be rationally controlled and under the
collective ownership of the people. In such a state work will become
meaningful because it will no longer be performed under the compulsion
of external necessity.

The freedom in this field cannot consist of
anything else but of the fact that socialized
man the associated producers, regulate their
interchange with nature rationally, bring it
under their common control, instead of being
ruled by it as by some blind power; that they
accomplish their task with the least expen-
diture of energy and under conditions most ade-
quage to their human nature and most worthy of
it.

In such a state work will not be artificially specialized but the all
round development of the individual will be seen as a good for all as
possible and desirable for a real existence.

In communist society, where nobody has one ex-
clusive sphere of activity but each can become
accomplished in any branch he wishes, society
regulates the general production and thus makes
it possible for me to do one thing today and
another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to
fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the even—
ing, criticize after dinner, just as I have a
mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman,
shepherd, or critic.7

7O

Marx then is completely in agreement with the nineteenth—century
American Socialists previously discussed in insisting upon the
psychological satisfaction of an education which provides a well-
balanced, multi-skilled individual. A person's education should
encourage him to act (to be a hunter), to be patient in awaiting
results (to fish), to develop and create (to breed cattle), to
explore and imagine (to be a shepherd), and to philosophize, make
meaningful and judge (to be a critic). Some combination of all
these qualities of body and mind in the individual is to be the
goal of Socialist education, not the development of one capacity to
the exclusion of others as the demands of survival under capitalism
now dictate. Participation in the production of the means of life
is also part of the educational program, not for utilitarian rea-
sons primarily but to ensure completeness of personality. Marx
found this facet of Robert Owen's work particularly impressive and
wrote of it in Capttat

From the factory system budded as Robert Owen

has shown in detail, the germ of education of

the future, an education that will in the case

of every child over a given age, combine pro-

ductive labor with instruction and gymnastic,

not only as one of the methods of adding to

the efficiency of production but as the only

method of producing fully developed human beings.8
The antithesis between mental and physical labor will vanish.

If this ideal of producing the well-rounded man is not unfami-

liar in the history of education, particularly during and since the

Renaissance, it must be emphasized that programs designed to achieve

this end were intended for the sons, and occasionally the daughters,

71

of a social élite. Moreover consideration of any participation in
productive labor was neither thought to be necessary nor desirable
if any deliberate thought was in fact given to such an idea at all.
These students after all were being prepared for positions of lead—
ership in society, political, economic,or both combined in which
the few had responsibility for the management of the many. The
idea of extending such educational programs to the masses of the
peOple, or even to many peOple was not considered beyond occasional
references (as in John Locke's Some Thoughtb on Educatton, for ex-
ample) to increasing their diligence, efficiency and productivity
as laborers. Marx and the Socialists on the other hand were primar-
ily interested in the education and fulfillment of the humanity of
the masses, anticipating that for the first time in history they
might enjoy the benefits of civilization and not be separated from
the fruits of their own labor.

E. F. Andrews, in a review article The Monopoty 06 Intettect
thought that there was some similarity between the educational goals
of the Socialists and those of the British gentry in this respect.

The minor aristocracy, the gentlemen of

England, living on the soil, in the Open

air, in a life of independence at once

laborious and leisurely have been able to

give their children good opportunities for

development while at the same time they

have not been able to dispense them from

the necessiry of work. Now, this is just

the condition that socialism is seeking

to make universal.9
None, Andrews continued, would be able to escape from the need for
performing some kind of physical labor but all would be assured suf-

ficient leisure for the full development of their intellectual and

artistic faculties.

72

In a major article Educatton and Soctattdm, May Wood Simons dis-
cussed the goals Of a socialist education system in much the same
terms as Marx. Freedom for each one to develop his own methods of
thought and initiative is to be the object of the new education. The
system of today, she wrote in 1901, demands that children "toe the
mark". The same work and the same way of doing that work is required
of each one. Everything is dull and mechanical like the machines and
routines that most of the students in the public schools are destined
to man. "Skilled workmen in no way presuppose workmen with any indi-
viduality developed." Socialist education on the contrary would make
possible physical development as well as mental. The importance of
work with tools and materials is stressed so that the individual may
express in material form his inner being. "For education to be of
any value it must present a unity in the things taught", and thus
secure "the highest possible harmonious development of human beings".
Education under Socialist conditions, May Wood Simons continued, would
produce men and women, "not machines".10

A Latten Day Bloch Fahm, an article by Leonard Abbott describes
an interesting attempt to keep alive the Socialist ideals of the ori-
ginal Brook Farm in a Summer Brook Farm in the Adirondacks. Here Pres-
tonia Mann, a kinswoman of Horace Mann and for some years the editor of
The AmeAtcan Fabtan built a house in which she aimed to establish a
community which should express a "Socialist's ideal of fellowship and
beauty". She did not believe that great social changes could be wrought
through isolated experiments in social living, the author reports, em-

phasizing that she is a modern Socialist. Nevertheless, Prestonia Mann

73

did think that this summer community would keep burning the light
of the original Brook Farm. Cooperation, fraternity and equality
were the underlying principles of the house and a significant So-
cialist educational idea is seen in the participation of all in
performing the chores of the community.

The professor finds that his brain is sharp-

ened, not dulled by a morning's work in the

potato patch or the woodshed. The rendering

of Chopin and Liszt is not found to suffer

from the musician's useful labor in the kit-

chen or the hayfield.11
William English Walling in his book The Lahgeh AApectd 06 Soctattbm
correlates John Dewey's advocacy of "education through occupation
not education for occupation" with the educational goals of Social-
ism. The criterion of value in acquiring skills is not measured by
reference to any Specialized technical accomplishment but by their
contribution to the fullest possible development of the individual.
This, Walling says, contrasts sharply with the present view in which
the working class is considered in the whole social arrangement as
so much machinery, having no share in the work that requires the ap—
plication of either intelligence of imagination.12

The change from government by a plutocracy to truly democratic

government would mean a complete and radical revolution in the funda-
mental goals of the educational system. This was the opinion of William
Brown expressed in an article, Ptatochacy ah Democaacy. While plutocracy
reigns in America it has ordained that the purpose of the educational sys-
tem is to fit the individual to gain a living and, if he is lucky, to

manage private property. Thus the present curriculum is designed to

pursue these ends. Brown elaborates sardonically. Reading enables

74

a man to read the stock market quotations. Writing prepares him to
sign his name on checks and other commercial documents. Arithmetic
prepares him to count his money and compute his profits and losses.
While there are attempts to broaden the understanding of what con-
stitutes an education success will be beyond grasp so long as the
pursuit of private wealth is the over-riding drive in society. In
a Socialist democracy, on the other hand, Brown continues,

For the first time in human history education

will be free to follow the natural lines which

the real needs of men should dictate. The man

will be the chief concern and therefore he will

not be a money counter or a money getter. That

will no longer be the aim of life. It will be

possible then for men to live a true and ennob-

ling life.13

The theme of man liberated from economic dependency in a commun-

ity of free individuals was also discussed by George Herron, the
Christian Socialist. In the capitalist state, Herron wrote, nearly
all so-called truth is subsidized truth for

Religion, political economy, literature, edu-

cation, all have to pay their tribute of blood

money and submit to the marks of ownership.1“
Only in a society without economic debts can an honest account of
what society is, and what it ought to be,find acceptance in the acad-
emy. Instead what is permitted as a science of society is a lot of
academic jargon constructed upon foundations determined by capitalism.
But socialism will replace competition, economic and social enmity,
and the struggle of each man for himself,with cooperation and mutual-
ity of interest in the social order. Then

We can expect a free science and a free reli-

gion and a free art and free literature as well

. . . For the noblest thinker is more or less

directed by the economic sources from which he
draws his sustenance.15

75

Finally in illustrating how Socialists described their educa-
tional goals the comments of A. M. Simons in an editorial in the
Inteanattonat Soetattdt Reutev may be noted. .Voices are everywhere
being raised, he said, to demand that education be freed from the
throttles of industrial slavery and the competitive system. In
both England and America freedom is being sought so that

the hired hand shall again become the creating
artisan, and that the product shall be a thing
of beauty and an expression of the creative in—
stinct of the maker as well as a source of plea-
sure to the worker. . . which (demand) Mbrris
and Ruskin sought to impress upon the world.16

That this re-integration of manual work, art and intellect
would emerge from the emancipation of labor as a commodity to be
bought and sold, was the exhilarating educational goal towards which
American socialists aspired. It is with this conception of the
"good" in mind that they appraised the existing educational system
in the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century.

The view of history that Marx held is that "the mode of pro-
duction of material life conditions the social, political, and intel-
lectual life process in general". The educational system, like the
state itself and the law are parts of the superstructure of society
dependent upon the economic base. Moreover the ideas that support
and justify this superstructure are those of the class which has
control of material production.

The individuals composing the ruling class pos-
sess among other things consciousness and there—
fore think. In so far therefore, as they rule

as a class and determine the extent and compass
of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this
in their whole range, hence among other things
rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas and
regulate the production of the ideas of their

age; thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the
epoch.17

76

This monopolization of the means of generating ideas and setting
the boundaries of morality was seen by the American.Socialist, Louis
Boudin as being the most difficult problem to overcome in teaching
the masses. It was not only that the subject class was economically
dependent upon the ruling class but that the latter used the power
of moral suasion to sustain themselves in power. Religion had from
time immemorial served as the bulwark of temporal power but in recent
times its waning influence had been replaced by science and philoso-
phy. Engels,too,had commented on the distortion of Darwin's scien-
tific work by the spokesmen of the capitalist class to vindicate the
social effects of laissez-faire theories.

Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he

wrote on mankind, and especially on his coun-

trymen, when he showed that free competition,

the struggle for existence which the economists

celebrate as the highest historical achieve-

menti is the normal state of the animal king-
dom.

 

Science, philosophy and religion, not invented by, but used by the
ruling class all performed the same function of interpreting and
justifying the pre-eminence of the wealthy in society. Boudin writes,

The point is that usually the lower classes
get their "ideas" - their religion, science,
art, philosophy from the upper classes, and
they are apt to be such as express and repre-
sent - in short "idealize" - the mode of life
fO those classes and the principles underlying
the same. . . the economic visibility of the
ruling class expresses itself in a buoyant and
aggressive ideology which seems to and often
does, express the interests and aspirations

of society as a whole.19

This indoctrination had been managed more effectively by the ruling

class Of capitalism than in any previous age, Boudin believed,

77

because the working class had been permitted to participate in the
benefits of the Spread of knowledge and yet was,in a particularly
forcible way,absolutely dependent economically.

The German historian of Socialism, ProfeSsor Werner Sombart of
Breslau University who contributed a series of articles to the Inten-
nattonat Soctattat Reutoo at the time of Simons' editorship, found
this Situation described by Boudin to be particularly striking in
the case of the United States. In A Study 06 the thtohteat Devet-
moment and Euotatton 05 the Ame/ulcan Paotetantat he stated that in
America, the "Promised Land" of capitalism society and character had
attained traits of capitalism to a far higher degree than in any
other industrial country. The lack of a feudal nobility and tradi-
tion gave absolute supremacy to the magnates of industry and commerce
in the social realm. "Eminent spinners, influential shoe-black deal-
ers, extensive sausage makers" together with the "railroad kings"
have their feet upon the necks of the people. But Sombart found that
it was the intellectual culture of the United States that revealed
most infallibly the high development of the ideology of the dominant
class. Sombart felt that every aspect of life was conceived in quan-
titative or monetary terms. Even those who were not engaged directly
in trade were occupied with the question of how much they could make
with their talents. The standard of success was doing more, gaining
more, having more,than someone else. This quantification of life ob-
structed any attempt to create a harmonious and well—rounded life
and resulted in a ubiquitous restlessness of spirit since any endea—

vour seeking only quantity was by its very nature, endless.

78

Discussing this penetration of capitalist morality and ideology
to all levels in American society Sombart observed that the American
laborer was not in any way antagonistic to these aspirations and val-
ues as such. Rather he would earn all that his strength would permit,
ahmost without limit. As a result even the trade unions operated
not to elevate the condition of the proletariat as a class or to over-
throw capitalism but to advance the self-interest of particular
working-class groups. Only in the United States, Sombart deduced from
these observations, had capitalism developed as Marx had prophetically
imagined. Nevertheless, Sombart noted, American history also offered
in the birth Of the Republican Party a precedent for the creation of
a new party around a great issue, the abolition of slavery. There-
fore, he suggested that what had been attained by the abolitionists
in educating the country to the emancipation of black slavery might
be achieved by the Socialists in enlightening and preparing the masses
for the emancipation of white labor slaves from the fetters of capi-
talism.20

Joseph Cohen, a Socialist leader in Philadelphia thought that
Marx's historical analysis showing that concrete facts precede ethi-
cal constructs had turned the "Hegelian system right side up."
Observation of historical sequence demonstrates, he said, that "imagin-
ation cannot transcend experience. When philosophy tried to do so it
floated in the air and fought the battle of the shades." Ideas were
rooted in and responded to material historical fact. Nevertheless

Cohen cautioned that this did not mean that the educator was therefore

79

an impassive bystander powerless to effect any changes in the minds
of his students. This would ignore the fact that ideas were part of
historical data. Different men were the products of other conditions
and a changed education so that as society evolved it became divided
into two parts, one of which was elevated above, more perceptive than,
the rest of society. Marx had regarded Robert Owen as such a man,
for his writings contained the "most valuable materials for the enlight-
enment of the working class".21

As the Socialists saw it, economic determinism, the view that
ideas were formed by responses to material, objective conditions, no
more absolved the Socialist educator from the responsibility to edu-
cate than the doctrines of predestination acquitted the Puritan of
religious duties.
AT“, Johann Most, an immigrant Socialist, illustrated in his pamphlet
The React 06 Phopeaty the way in which this dilemma of educating within
a nonsocialist system was approached. Not until the "beast of property"
was destroyed could the real education of the peOple begin. Such an
education would secure them with the opportunity for equal development
of mind and body, "merry recreation” and work, alternating with
application of the mind. Most believed that this did not mean that
nothing could or should be done in a capitalist society to forward
the education of the masses. On the contrary, it was the Obligation of
all whose eyes had been opened to the villainy of the situation
which capitalism had imposed upon the people, to bend every effort to
explicate these conditions. Thus the peOple could become conscious
of the realities of their plight and more rapidly promote the transition

to Socialism.22

80

The scientific Socialist view of history in which ideas, laws,
institutions were seen as deriving from economic realities was not of
course new in America. James Madison's Fedenattat Raped Nwmbet Ten
had considered the problem of adjusting the oppOsite interests of dif-
ferent economic classes. John Adams had deplored, in one of his most
famous letters to Jefferson, the corrupting tendency in the state for
the aristocracy of wealth and descent to monopolize position and
power. A.M. Simons admired and made available to readers through the
pages of the Inteanattonat Soctattat Revteuy Frederick Thrner's The
Stgntfitcance 06 the Faonttea tn Ameatcan,thtoay as an excellent
example of the application of the materialist interpretation of history
to the American scene. However to economic determinism Socialists
joined the more controversial theory of the class struggle.

It was Marx's contention that throughout history different classes
had carried on a continuous struggle with each other, sometimes muted,
sometimes open and violent, and that from the conflict came either the
destruction of both groups or a revolutionary reconstruction of society.
Whereas in previous eras there had usually been several classes
existing simultaneously, the development of capitalism had narrowed
the number of classes to two, the ruling class, or bourgeoisie, who
owned the sources and means of production and the working class, or
proletariat, who sold their labor for wages with which to subsist.
Somewhat unclear was the situation of the intellectuals who, on the one
hand sold their brain power for wages but, on the other hand in their
life style and tastes more closely resembled the bourgeoisie. The
difficulty in defining the position of this intellectual class

in or out of the proletariat caused endless discussion among American

81

Socialists, a considerable proportion of whom were intellectuals.
They could certainly at least identify themselves with the sections
of the bourgeoisie who, as Marx said, join the revolutiontionary
class, the class that holds the future in its hands, as the defects
of the old society assume "violent, glaring" proportions.

Marx praised the bourgeoisie for its immense development of in-
dustry, commerce, navigation and all manner of enterprise, for its
"accomplished wonders far surpassing the Egyptian pyramids, Roman
aquaducts, Gothic cathedrals" and above all for its "constant revolu-
tionizing of the instruments of production". This energy has given the
world commodities which are like the ”heavy artillery with which it
batters down all Chinese walls". Not the least of the accomplishments
of the bourgeoisie is its great intellectual production and its uni-
versalization of this knowledge.23

Marx observed that the bourgeoisie whose ascendancy began at
about the same time as the discovery of America, building its own
wealth in the form of private property and securing power in the
control of the political institutions of the state, creates simul-
taneously an antagonistic class of proletarians. Their interests
are diametrically Opposed to those of the bourgeoisie and the
Opposition becomes more acute with the passage of time which exacerbates
the differences between the two classes. The ruling class meanwhile,
having been forced to extend some formal education to the laboring
class nevertheless maintains a firm control over the system of
education and as with everything else manipulates it for the
perpetuation of its own interest. Marx and Engels in the Communtdt
Mantfiebto commented on the interjection of ruling class values

into the school and its response to the needs of that class rather

82

than the needs of the students. They were responding to a question
concerning the takeover of the schools by the new Socialist state.

But the education you provide, is it not

socially determined? Is it not determined

by the social conditions within whose frame-

work you educate? Is it not determined di-

rectly or indirectly by society acting through

the schools etc.? The influence of society

upon education was not an original discovery

of communists! They merely propose to alter

the character of that intervention and to

rescue education from the influence of the

ruling class.2“
The transformation of the educational process into one which would
benefit the child and serve neither the interests of the bourgeoisie,
nor the need of the proletarian parents to exploit the labor of their
children was necessary, Marx thought. This outcome is dependent upon
the achievement of control over the system of education by the working
peOple themselves. Nevertheless, as Marx suggested, the bourgeoisie,
having to rely upon the proletariat, even soliciting the aid of the
proletariat in its struggle with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries
is thereby forced to supply the working class with "its own elements
of political and general education" thus providing the proletariat
with the weapons that it will need to struggle against and take over
the power of the bourgeoisie. The seeds of the Socialist future are
generated in the capitalist present.

In the part real, part mythological belief that American society

was open, mobile, and lacking in the rigid class structures of the old
world,this class-struggle theory, of all Marx's ideas, found the least

ready acceptance in American thought. Most Socialists accepted it how-

ever albeit with many disputes and discussions as to who constituted

83

the working class and much insistence by some that class struggle did
not mean class hatred. Max Eastman expressed a rather typical view,

The doctrine of the class struggle is flatly

opposed to class hate. . . the true spirit

for those on the underside of the class strug-

gle is summed up forever in the words of Mother

Jones to the warden of San Quentin--"Poor boy,

God damn your soul, ye can't help it."25

The class struggle thesis was frequently reflected in Socialist

writing about such matters as the control of the schools by boards that
contained mainly businessmen, the nature of text books, and the motives
behind specific programs in the schools,particularly the sponsorship
of industrial education programs. There was also much critical commen-
tary on the de facto exclusion of working-class children from secondary
and higher education.

AT». May Wood Simons diccussed the class nature of the educational sys-
tem in an article Educatton and Democaacy. There is, she wrote, one
system of education for the rich and another for the peor. Unforunately
the laborers think they are receiving an education because of the exis-
tence of a "nominal" system of common schools. The wider public con-
gratulates itself that its common school system is equalled nowhere in
the world. But the education supplied in all but a few of these common
schools is a "quantity education" that prevents any free action of the
mind.

The workers are taught, not alone from the
lecture platform and in the press, but in
the public schools, those things that will
best further and maintain the permanency of
the present capitalist class.2

The problem for these who control the educational process is not whether

to educate the children of the working class but how far it is safe to go

84

in making them intelligent while at the same time making sure that
they do not learn to think for themselves.

The signs of the irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie and there-
fore the urgent need for their replacement as the controllers of
education can be seen in their failure to distribute the benefits of
industrial productivity to enrich and humanize the lives of the work-
ing class, which constitutes the mass of the people. There has been,
Simons wrote, a tremendous increase in labor saving machinery and,
rationally utilized, this machinery should have been the means of
releasing a larger and larger portion of the population from manual
labor so that these people could have some time for intellectual de-
velopment. The menial labor that in former ages has been performed
by slaves and which, it was reasoned by the non-slaves, was a neces-
sary contribution to the creation of a civilized elite, could now be
turned over to "bands of iron and steel". Philosophers would still
be produced. The reason that this use of machinery has not occurred
is that it is privately owned and managed for profit, not for the
fulfillment of human needs. The use of the machines to free the labor-
er from constant toil and to afford him the leisure for the cultiva~
tion of his mind will require the ownership of the machinery by the

‘ people collectively, Simons concluded.

LTT; Walt Whitman was the favorite poet of the early twentieth-century
'Socialists and his lines were frequently quoted to support theiSocial—
ist belief that the realization of true democracy depended on the cre-
ation of new forms and institutions by the mass of the people themselves.
Whitman's dream was used in behalf of the Socialists' educational ideals

too as the following quotation shows.

85

I say that democracy can never prove itself be-
yond cavil until it founds and luxuriantly grows
its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology,
displacing all that existed or that has been pro—
duced anywhere in the past, under opposite influ-
ences.27

In connection with the discussion of the need for the prole—
tariat collectively to take control of education, Marx had some sig-
nificant remarks to make about educational reform programs within
a capitalist society. Marx's suspicion of the bourgeois controlled
state as a sponsor of educutional reform can be seen in his Catttctdm
06 the Paognam dubmttted to the Gotha Congnecc tn I875.

The German Labor Party led by LaSalle had demanded "universal
and equal education of the people by the state", and "general compul-
sory education with gratuitous instruction". Marx noted that free
education meant very little in a capitalist state, pointing for exam~
ple to Switzerland and the United States. In the United States, he
said, there was even gratuitous learning in higher education in some
of the states but this only meant in practice "that the upper class
have their cost of education defrayed out of the general taxbag".
Then Marx sarcastically denounced the idea that the state should be
the educator of the people saying that "especially in the Prussian-
German empire the state, on the other hand is in need of a very harsh
education by the people".28 Instead the state, as well as the church,
should be excluded from any influence upon the school.

This suspicion of the Socialists concerning the role of the state

and the government in education can be illustrated among Americans by

a news article and commentary from the Socialist Nev Reutmv.

86

In 1913, in the aftermath of the Pennsylvania Coal Strike and
the Lawrence Textile Strike a proposal was under consideration in
the United States Senate to impose a literacy test to restrict immi-
gration. Senator Elihu Root, speaking in favor of the proposal called
attention to the fact that 50% of the workers in basic industries
were from southern and eastern Europe, according to the reports of
the Immigration Commision. Unless a check were placed on this immi-
gration, Root felt, the continuance of the basic industries which
were necessary to all other industries would be threatened, and the
rights of the "industrial oligarchs" would continue to be invaded
by the "revolutionary aberrations of a collection of ignorant aliens!"

It is of vital importance. . . that the men

who are to consider the question of striking

. . . shall be men instructed, men who are

able to get in touch with the sentiments of

American life, with the principles of Ameri-

can institutions.29
The author of this news commentary who was not identified compared
the attitude of the slave holders and the capitalists to education.
While the former were adamantly opposed to having their chattel
slaves taught to read and write, the representative of the industrial-
ists insists that their workers be taught to read in order that they
can appreciate the "beauties of the wage-labor system" and so that
they will rebel less vigorously against it.

Another example of this view of bourgeois controlled education
as indoctrination-in-the-values-of—the-system is expressed by Arthur
M. Lewis in a review article, Benjamtn thd'd Rettgtoua Intehpheta-
tton 06 Htatony. He asserted that the newSpaper editor and the school

master had usurped the "antiquated vaporings' of the preachers' as

indoctrinators of the people.

87

The schoolmaster is able to produce a slave

psychology and at the same time develop this

necessary intelligence. . . to comprehend

the complex process of machine production.30
The ruling class with these superior weapons Of mind control at their
disposal has therefore, Lewis wrote, elevated the status and financial
rewards of the schoolmaster, editor, and professor while the majority
of preachers are nowadays almost starving.

In concluding this discussion of the application of Marx's philo-
sophy to educational thought in America there is one other basic ele-
ment that is significant--the evolutionary thesis. The Conmuntét Mant-
6edto was published in 1848, the Dhtgtn 06 Spectea in 1859. Within
the same decade, Socialists observed, Darwin worked out in biological
minuteness the same law that Marx had discovered in the complexities
of social and economic relationships. "Darwin's book is very important
and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in
history," Marx wrote. Unlike the gloom which settled over the liter-
ature of naturalism in America in the wake of Darwin's discoveries,
Marx's evidence interpreting evolutionary law in human history was
suffused with confident optimist that evolution moved towards progres-
sively higher forms of social organization. The belief that Socialism
was, whatever immediate problems lay in its way, the inevitable outcome
of capitalism, the certain next stage in the organic development of
society inspired Socialists with an elevated sense of being agents on
the side of history in the struggle forward. All things considered,
and even looking as they did with horror on the ravages of an indus-
trial revolution that had ridden rough shod over its human sacrifices,

the Socialists felt that what was now,was superior to what had been.

88

It was also inferior in every aspect to what would be--in politics,
in art, in literature, in education. The Socialist Joseph Cohen said
that the ending of the career of the ruling class was the beginning
of the career of the working class, and would clear the way for even
greater intellectual achievement. He recalled the prediction of
Emerson, "The reputations of the nineteenth century will one day be
quoted to prove its barbarism."32
Conservatives have been_defined as those who, looking back,
justify existing conditions and ideals by the standards of the past.
The Socialists, on the other hand judged the present in which they
found themselves by its failures to approximate a more beneficent
future. This is an important characteristic in their criticism of

American educational arrangements, as the next chapter will attempt

to demonstrate.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

NOTES
Chapter IV
Daniel De Leon, Revotatton 0h Regonm (New York: pamphlet,
1943), pp. 31-2.

Quoted in Howard M. Quint, The Fangtng 06 Ameatcan Soctatttm
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), p. 292.

Ibid., p. 295.

Karl Marx, Economtc and Phttocophtc Manuacatptz 06 1844
Ghoscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1961), pp. 98-114.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The GeAman Ideotogy, edited
and with an introduction by R. Pascal (New York: Interna-
tional Publishers, 1939), p. 22.

Karl Marx, Capttat: A Catttque 05 Pottttcat Economy, Vol. 3
(Chicago: Charles Kerr and Co., 1906), pp. 954-55.

The Genman.1deotogy, op. cit., p. 22.
Capttat, op. cit., p. 22.

E.E. Andrews, ”The Monopoly of Intellect," Intemnattonat
Soctatttt Revtenrl (June 1901): 765-67.

May Wood Simons, "Education and Socialism", Intehnattonat
.9th Revtew 1 (April 1901): 600—605.

Leonard Abbott, "A Latter Day Brook Farm", Intehnattonat
Sociaftct Revtew 1 (May 1901): 700-701.

William English Walling, The Langen Aspectz 06 Soctattam
(New York: Macmillan Co., 1913), pp. 272-75.

William Brown, "Plutocracy or Democracy", Inteanattonat
Soctattet Revtew 1 (July 1900); 13-14.

George Herron, "Socialism and Religion", Intehnattonat
.9th Revtew 1 (January 1901): 433-437.

89

15.

16.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

90

Ibid., p. 435.

A.M. Simons, "Editorial", Intehnattonat Soetattdt Reuteuil
(November 1900): 318.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Gehman Ideotogy, edited
and with an introduction by R. Pascal (New York: Inter-
national Publishers, 1939), pp. 39-40.

Frederick Engels, Inthoduetton t0 the Dtatectte 06 Natuhe
from Marx and Engels Selected Works Vol. 2 (Moscow: Foreign
Language Publishing House, 1958), pp. 75-6.

Louis Boudin, "The Concentration of Capital and the Dis-
appearance of the Middle Class", Intehnattonat Soctattdt
Reutou 7 (August 1906), p. 86.

Werner Sombart, "A Study of the Historical Development and
Evolution of the American Proletariat", trans. A.M. Simons,
IntZAnattonat.Soetatt6t Reuteu 7 (September 1905): 129-36.

Joseph Cohen, "Socialism for Students", Intehnattonat Soctattat
Revtew 9 (June 1909): 966-68.

Johann Most, The Beast 06 Phopeaty in Albert Fried, Documentary
History of American Socialism (New York: Doubleday, 1969),

pp. 213-220.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Mantfiedto 06 the Commantdt Patty,
from Marx and Engels Selected Nacho Vol. 1 GWoscow: Foreign
Language Publishing House, 1958), pp. 34-40.

Ibid., p. 2.

Max Eastman, "Editorial”, The Matted, December 1913.

May Wood Simons, "Education and Democracy", Intehnattonat
Soetattdt ReuteMTS (January 1902), pp. 90*96.

As quoted in William English walling, The Lahgeh Adpecta 06
Soctatttm (New York: Macmillan Co., 1913), p. vii.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

91

Karl Marx, Chtttctdm 06 the Pnogltam dubmttted to the Gotha
Congaebd 06 7875, Reprinted in the Inteanattonat.Soctattdt
Reutew 8 (May 1908): 658-59.

"Consideration of the Literacy Test for the Restriction of
Immigration", New Revtew (March 1913): 379-80.

Arthur M. Lewis, "Benjamin Kidd's Religious Interpretation
of History", Intehnattonat,Soctattdt Revtea18 (February
1908): 474-76.

Richard M. Hofstadter, Soctat.DamwtntAm tn Ameatean Thought
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 115.

Joseph Cohen, "Socialism for Students", Inteanattonat Soctattat
Revteu19 (June 1909): 968.

Chapter V

THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF SCHOOL AND SOCIETY:
RADICAL SOCIAL CRITICISM

Floyd Dell, Socialist, accomplished novelist, playwright and
managing editor of The Matted was also the author of an interesting
dialogue in which he argued for the "new education" against an assort-
ment of rather inadequate defenders of traditionalism. In obedience
to his opinion, that education need not be "written about in a heavy,
unintelligible and soporific manner", his argument resulted in the
book Wehe You Even a Chttd?1 which is an interesting exposition of
the philosophy and programs of progressive educators. The distinctive
characteristic of Dell's writing on education is its combination of
the ideas of Montessori, Dewey and Marx. This fusion of prOgressive '
educational theory with radical social criticism was typical of Social—
ist educational thought in the first two decades of the twentieth
century. The complementary existence of these two elements in Social-
ist educational thought differentiates it from that of all but the
most left of the liberals, for the Socialists saw the classroom not
only in the perspective of the wider society, but also in relationship
to the revolutionized society which they sought to bring about. Para-
doxically they felt that the economic democracy which they envisaged
was essential to the full implementation of progressive programs in
the schools. Yet, at the same time they believed that the adoption
of these programs would be an important factor in the creation of men
and women with a Socialist outlook. An education whose methodology
emphasized experimentation, self—reliance and the application of in-

telligence . to social problems seemed to almost all Socialists to be

92

93

more in tune with Socialist goals as well as intrinsically superior.
Traditional Subject matter and methods, most Socialists thought, were
too closely associated with an aristocratic past and were of dubious
value in an industrialized, scientific and democratic age. Walt Mason
expressed his disgust at the usual school curriculum in the following
verse which was published in The Appeat to Readon in 1911.

We know so much that doesn't count.

We load up with a vast amount

Of useless junk — of Latin, Greek,

And tongues the dread ones used to speak.
We learn to draw a little bit

And then old Euclid's stuff we hit.

We learn a string of useless dates -
Which learning nearly busts our pates.
And when from school we make our way,
In this broad world to put up hay,

We can't apply the things we've learned,
And all our little works are spurned.
The hopeful kids we send to school
Will study by an iron rule.

One may be built to twang a lyre,

And one to stoke an engine's fire.

One has Caruso's gift to sing,

And one to elevate the ring.

Whate'er the talent in the mind

They all must try the same Old grind.
And o'er their dog-eared volumes sweat

To learn the things they should forget.2
The public school in spite of its shortcomings was seen by Social-
ists generally as a splendid democratic achievement. Along with the

roads and the postal system, the Socialist Weekly, Appeat to Reaaon,

94

(in attempting to convey to its readers some idea of what things would
be like in a Socialist community), frequently referred to the public
school as an example of a socialized institution. American Socialists
were particularly proud of the secular tradition in the American public
school. One of the educational causes most fervently espoused by Euro-
pean Socialists and reported in the Socialist journals in America was
the struggle in almost every European country to wrest education from
the control of the churches. This dis-establishment had been accom-
plished in principle, American Socialists pointed out, at the birth of
the Republic. George Herron wrote that, in America people had conven-
tionally looked upon the public school as the "kindergarten and safe-
guard of their liberties". The influence of Rousseau, Paine, Jefferson
and Franklin had ensured that the "right to a free look at life" was
asserted, and that a public life free of ecclesiastical dominance was
made possible.3 William English Walling, in a letter published in The
Na» Reutev claimed that, although American education was still the cap-
tive of bourgeois methods of thought, matters still controversial in
Britain like corporal punishment and religious instruction had ceased
to be discussed long ago in the United States. It was the general '
Socialist consensus that free, public, secular education had been
thoroughly established in principle in the United States.

In practice however, Socialists found many contradictions between
this principle and the actual facts of American education. This meant
that Socialists had sometimes to defend, and often to challenge, the
implementation of the basic assumptions that were made about public

education. Could the secular nature of public education be maintained?

95

How free in fact was access to public education for the working class-
es? Were the public schools administered for the welfare of the public
or for the service of special interests?

George Herron felt that if the propertied classes had foreseen
the radical effects of the public school they would never have consented
to the separation of church and state but would have been anxious to
retain the influence of religion in education as a means of keeping the
masses in subjection to conservative ideologies. Therefore he saw as
a "matter of great pertinence and importance the gradual readjustment of
the public school system in accordance with the capitalist mind and

5 Those advances in human freedom which the American Revo-

psychology".
lution had accomplished and which had been incorporated into the school
system were in danger of being lost in the aggressive encroachments of
capitalist values upon the schools.

Whether acting as co-conspirators with capitalism or, more probably,
in pursuit of quite separate religious ends, Catholics were in some
places requesting the diversion of some Of the public school funds to the
support of religious schools. Consequently Socialist candidates for muni—
cipal offices found that they were engaged in rigorous fights as champions
of the principle of public funds for public schools only. On January 30th,
1909 the Appeat to Readon reported that during the ten years of Mayor Rose's
administration in Milwaukee only eight new school houses had been built,
with the result that many children were housed in barracks where they suf-
fered from the cold. Although in the spring of 1908 the peOple had voted

$300,000 in bonds for school purposes the mayor wanted to spend only $120,-

000 of this amount for the public schools. Moreover, he had recently made

96

a speech at the laying of the corner stone for a new Catholic church,
in which he advocated dividing the school fund between the public and
the church schools. The item concluded by stating that the sixteen
Socialists in the city council were making a vigorous fight for the
public schools. On April 20th, 1914 the Appeat reported the election
to the School Board, after a fierce contest, of Mrs. Victor L. Berger
and Mr. Frederic Heath. At issue in the election was the question of
diverting a portion of the school fund to the support of sectarian
schools. The Catholic churches had distributed "dodgers headed 'Citi-
zens Anti-Socialist Ticket'" and nearly 5000 Catholic women had ap-
peared on election day to work against the Socialist candidates. From
these incidents it would seem that Walling's contention, that the ques-
tion of religious participation in public education had been solved in
America, was overly optimistic. Certainly the Catholic church as well
as many Protestant denominations tried hard to identify the Socialists
with atheism, although most American Socialists were not hostile to
religion. Clarence Meily summed up the attitude taken by Socialists
towards religious observance and their determination to preserve secu-
larism in public activities.

The real proletarian attitude on these matters

must always be, from the necessities of the case,

one Of perfect individual freedom and collective

indifference.6

An issue of even greater importance because of its ubiquity was

the question of freedom of access to public education. Many Socialists
attributed the existence of the free public school system to the agi-
tation of the early trade unionists in the period from 1824 to 1830.

One of the dominant features of this early labor movement had been its

97

energetic insistence upon the provision of free educational facilities
for working people. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Horace Mann
of Massachusetts had vigorously supported this free school principle
and by the end of the nineteenth century, in the North at least, there
were few children who did not have an elementary school available to
their use, with its curriculum of reading, writing and simple calcula-
tion. It was the elementary school which in the early twentieth century
constituted education for the mass of the people. High schools had be-
come increasingly common, especially in the cities, since the Supreme
Court of Michigan in the Kalamazoo decision of 1872 had affirmed the
right of the school board to levy taxes for public high schools. But
it was widely recognized that economic pressures made attendance at
high school possible only for middle-class children. For the same
reason colleges were also inaccessible to all except the most ener-
getic, determined, and lucky of working-class children.'

Socialists pointed out that, in spite of the popular American boast
that nowhere did there exist a system of common schools equal to their
own, the facts did not measure up to the claim. The facts on the con-
trary pointed to gross and glaring inadequacy. Scott Nearing, a
Socialist, and at that time a member of the faculty Of the Wharton School
of the University of Pennsylvania referred in his book, Soctat Adjadtment,
to the educational facts unearthed by the Census Bulletin of 1905. He
reported that nearly one quarter of a million white children from 10 to
14 years of age, and born in the United States, could neither read nor
write. Most were in the South but 7,799 were in the North Atlantic
states and 21, 132 were in the North Central States. "The showing of
child illiteracy in the United States is astonishing to the civilized

foreigner", Nearing commented. The number of illiterates of all ages

98

compared most unfavorably with the other industrialized States of
western Europe where the rate ranged from as low as 1 per 1,000 in
Sweden, Germany, and Norway to a high of 58 per 1,000 in England.
Through every state spreads this army of

illiterates, presenting an unanswerable in-

dictment of the American schools, which have

fallen far below the schools of advanced Europe

in that they have failed to universalize the

fundamentals of education.7

May Wood Simons, in an article written in 1902, stated that the

average schooling per individual in the United States was but four
school years, although there were thousands who attended school for eight
to sixteen or more years.8 Of the sixteen million children enrolled
in elementary and secondary schools not more than 650,000 were in the
high schools. Scott Nearing, quoting from the 1908 RepOAt 06 the Com-
"acetonena 06 Educatton reported that 17,373,852 children were in the
elementary schools; 961,768 were in the secondary (high) schools; 149,-
700 were in colleges and universities; 63,256 were in professional
schools, 70,439 were in normal schools; and 727,348 were in miscellan-
eous schools. Somewhat less than two million children were in private

schools.9

Thus, the elementary school was the significant factor in
American education at this period although the numbers reaching the high
school were increasing from year to year.

[TT‘W Socialists had a number of explanations for the failures of the
public school system. First, there were those which they attributed
to the inherent abuses Of the capitalist economic system. The most
basic reason for the failure of the educational system was the triumph
of a social order in which extremes Of wealth and poverty co-existed.

As Horace Mann wrote in an article, calling for a more equitable dis-

tribution of wealth

99

Both the underpaid miner and the overpaid Newport

pinhead who sits at a table with a maudlinly-drunken

chimpanzee are an appalling reflection upon our

civilization, and a single Stroke of justice will

abolish both, for be it known that the extravagance

at Newport and elsewhere are the CAUSE of the death

in the miner's cabin.10
The conditions of the large impoverished class of working people, the
Socialists all agreed prevented them from benefitting from the exis-
tence of public schools for two major reasons. First there was the
prevalence of child labor with its importance to the survival of the
individual and the family. In every large city, May Wood Simons noted,
teachers found the children dropping out of school at the age of ten
or twelve, even where compulsory school laws existed. Even while at—
tending school, young children of the working class were often discov-
ered to be working from two to six hours a day out Of school to help
keep the family, Simons added. In the South the situation was much
more serious and showed that the problem of wide-spread illiteracy was
due, not so much to the large foreign population in the cities, as to
native whites in the South. In South Carolina, for example, no compul-
sory school laws existed and children were entering the textile mills
at five and six years of age. The teachers in the night schools that
were provided for these little children found that all attempts at edu-
cation were useless. These Observations were made in 1902.11 In 1909
conditions for these child laborers had shown no significant improvement.
Jack London in his essay, Revotatton, wrote of the 80,000 children "toil-
ing out their lives in the textile mills of the South alone", working

twelve-hour shifts and receiving, in many cases, no more than ten cents

a day in wages. "All are puny wrecks, distorted, stunted, mind and body."

100

When these children became sick and were unable to go to work,
men were employed to go on horseback from house to house to cajole
and bully them into going to work.12 The International Socialist
Review printed extracts from the Senate Repont on Women and Chttd
wage-fannemo tn the Cotton Induathy. This revealed that 34.8% of
the factories employed children under the legal age. "We cannot help
it if the parents tell us their children are older than they are,"
the manufacturers retorted.13

The Appeat t0 Readon of November 9th, 1912 reported that two
million children under the age of fourteen were working in the nation's
industries. John Spargo, Socialist, in his book The Bttteh Cay 06
the Chttdhen estimated that there were 2,250,000 child workers employed.1”
That the Socialists were not exaggerating the seriousness of the child
labor situation, or the collusion of society in it, can be seen by the
response to the problem of one of the most prestigious bodies of church-
men. In 1913, The Madden reported the rejection by the House of Bishops
of the Protestant Episcopal Church of a resolution condemning the employ-
ment of children under the age of sixteen.15 The Appeat to Reaaon re-
ported on February 12th, 1910 that Superintendant Robert I. White of the
Elgin Public Schools, investigating the causes for the large number of
children leaving school, found that in each case it had been found neces-
sary for the child to quit school "to assist in the support of the family".
In the southern factories the advent of the government inspectors was sig-
nalled and the children were sent running home or were hidden in closets
and waste boxes.16 North and South the employment of children was found

profitable by hundreds of employers, condoned by the churches and public

101

officials, and made absolutely vital to survival by the poverty of

thousands of families. As E. F. Andrews complained,
Intellectual achievement is a matter of Oppor-
tunity as well as ability and requires a cer-
tain amount of leisure and well-being for suc-
cess. . . There is a melancholy suggestiveness
in those rare instances of budding genius from
the ranks of the poor that sometimes make their
way into the lower grades of the common school
for a few weeks and then disappear to be heard
of no more. The avarice of the mill owners and
the ignorance of the children's parents have
thrown the better part of their lives along with
the raw cotton to be ground out in the mills. .

Apart from this problem,Socialists protested at the poor physical
condition of thousands of children who did attend school. Their weak-
ness and hunger prevented them from learning what was available in the
class rooms. A bulletin of the Bureau Of Labor published in May, 1906,
was examined in the Intehnattonat.Soctattat Reyipug The Reutav pointed
out that the families which had formed the group under investigation
had been chosen because they were headed by average working men and no
intoxicants were used, namely the "respectable poor". In several in-
stances it was discovered that the children were not permitted to go to
school because they were not properly clad. Shoes, in particular, were
a constant problem since they wore out and cash was needed to replace

T them.18

Another problem was the generally poor state of health of many
children. The Appeat to Readon mentioned the problem of tuberculosis.
The National Association for the Suppression of Tuberculosis had esti-
mated that there were one million children in the public schools of the
United States already suffering from this disease, who would die from

it before they reached the age of eighteen.19

102

The greatest barrier to satisfactory participation in school work
however was hunger. In the Socialist press dozens of news items, per-
sonal testimonies, stories real and fictitious testified to the never
ending quest of the poor "to keep enough stew in the pot". The most ef-
fective Socialist argument concerning the effects of hunger upon the
viability of the educational process came from John Spargo in The Btttei
Cay 06 the Chttdaen. The principle that an ill-equipped teacher or class-
room will prevent efficient, effective, education is well recognized,
Spargo stated, but not yet understood is the futility of expecting a
teacher to accomplish any meaningful educational work if the children
she has in the classroom are chronically underfed. Society assumes the
responsibility of educating children out of a self-interest as urgent
as that which leads it to provide an army and navy. That is the fear of a
devastating plague from within. Then that society must be bound to as-
sume the responsibility for seeing that the children are in a fit state
to receive some education. All the available data however show that not
less than two million children of school age are victims of a poverty
so desperate that they are denied the common necessities of survival, par-
ticularly adequate nourishment.20 Typical of Spargo's findings was the
one below from the city of Buffalo in New York. There in 8 schools with
a total attendance of 7,500 pupils, the principals estimated that 350 or
4.46% had no breakfast at all, and that 800 more had too little to insure
effective work. No less than 5,105 of the 7,500 children were reported
as having tea or coffee with bread only.

It would appear that no less than 17.33% of the
total number of children are believed to ap-
preciably handicapped by defective nutrition,

and that only 16.8% are adequately and satisfac-
torily nourished.21

103

The lunch problem, Spargo said, was even more serious.

Thousands of children who get some sort of

breakfast, even if it is only coffee and

bread, get nothing at all for lunch.22
And the evening meal is very often a repetition of the morning meal
of bread and coffee or tea. No fact has been more thoroughly estab-
lsihed, Spargo continued, than the physical superiority of the child—
ren of the well—to-do classes over their less fortunate fellows.

NO one who has studied the matter can doubt

that the physical deterioration which accom-

panies the impoverishment of the workers is

of tremendous significance educationally.23

Spargo did not retreat from answering the argument that by pro-

viding food for these children through the medium of the school the
society would be taking over parental functions. He asserted that all
legislation relating to children--child labor laws, education, guard-
ianship--were based upon the principle that the child belongs to society
as well as to its parents, that they do not have an exclusive propri-
etary right to it. Moreover the assumption by the public of the respon-
sibility for seeing to it that the children were adequately nourished
had the additional benefit of preserving those among the poor who were
the least likely to accept the dubious assistance of charity, that is
the most self-respecting of the poor. To those who argued that the
costs would be too exorbitant, Spargo replied that

it would be far better to feed them first,

neglecting their education altogether than

to waste our substance on the brutally sense-

less endeavor to educate them while they
starve and pine for bread.2”

104

In "News and Views", June 1908, the Intennationaz Sociaiibt Review
described the work of the Cmnnéttee 601 the Phgbicai Weflfiane 06 SchOOK
Chiidnen inspired by The Bitten Cay 06 the Childhen and the research of
another Socialist, Robert Hunter published in his book, Poueaxy. After
having a thorough medical examination performed on some 1,400 children
who were not from the poorest districts, the Committee published its
initial findings. They estimated that, as well as 1,248,000 children
nation-wide suffering from serious malnutrition, there were 12,000,000
in the schools who were in need of medical attention. The initial expo-
sures of the socialists had thus led to work by a group of reformers
and philanthropists that had uncovered a situation considerably more
serious than Hunter and Spargo had charged. The educational implica-
tions of this situation were summed up by Austin Lewis, a leftdwing
theoretician of the Socialist Party who maintained that the existing
economic system seriously, if not entirely, interfered with anything
like a soundly organized effort at public education.

. . . the poor physical development of the
children due to underfeeding and unsanitary
conditions in the tenements would of itself
be sufficient to prevent the realization of
the full benefit of any system of real edu-
cation.25 '

Socialists were very dubious that those who had political and econ-
omic power were seriously interested in providing a worth-while public
education system. William English Walling stated that "the demand for
special advantages for one's own children is perhaps the last which any
privileged class will abandon".26 The children who received little or

no education belonged to one class, the laboring class, Socialists insis—

tently pointed out.

105

The relatively minor interest of the ruling class in education
could be seen in its financing which a number of Socialist writers
pointed out as comparing very unfavorably with expenditures on
military expansion. This, Socialists felt, was a necessary corollary to the
imperialist ambitions of American business interests. In 1909 the
Appea£ to ReaAon estimated that the total annual expenditure for
education in the United States was about $350,000,000. Having pre-
sented the figures for the expansion of the army, navy and for mili-
tary pensions, and for interest on the war debt the Appeai concluded
that the amount Spent for education was "less than that expended during
1908 on the cause of murdering the workers who produce the wealth".27
Walling concluded similarly that "governmental expenditures on the army
and navy increased far more rapidly" than the funds made available for
education. Indeed Walling found that, quite apart from this revealing
indication of the priorities of a capitalist society, education funds
were not keeping pace with the increasing p0pulation. While $220,000,000
was spent in 1900 and $425,000,000 in 1910, a 15% increase in the pupils
had also occurred during those years. At the same time it took $1.25
to purchase in 1910 what could have been obtained for $1.00 in 1900.

The harsh fact was, Walling pointed out, that $4,000,000,000 was spent
annually in the United States on alcohol, jewelry, automobiles and to-
bacco. Consumption of these items was increasing faster than expendi-
tures on schools.28 The implementation of a really satisfactory edu-

cational program, would depend on increasing the school budget by four

or five hundred per cent.29

106

The motive of the ruling class in providing some education for
the masses was one of sheer self-interest and was limited to the ser-
vice of that self-interest, Austin Lewis argued in a long article on
”Socialism and Education". The needs of modern capitalism called for
a certain degree of literacy among the workers so that they could
manage the complications of production and distribution. Further, the
rise of political democracy which was a by-product of capitalism had
brought about the modern political state. In America, the proclama-
tions of political equality made the provision of some sort of public
education for citizenship necessary to give validity to the rhetoric.
Instead of intelligent political education in citizenship, Lewis said,
the children "are put through a series of patriotic devotions which is
in its ultimate the blindest of fetishism". The "little red school
house" has frequently been "carried in parades like a heathen statue
on a Roman holiday" such is the veneration that has been given to the
public school system. But, Lewis continued, the impossibility of achiev-
ing results either in learning or citizenship in a work of such impor-
tance dependent upon a capitalist base, has led to disillusionment with
the school system. This consequent loss of public confidence has in
turn provided the Opportunity for the public servants of the capitalist
masters to advocate further restrictions in the goals of education for
the masses. For example, Comptroller Grant of New York had stated,
Lewis said, that a proper system of education should be restricted to
sending from the elementary school "graduates having a practical know—
ledge of and correct use of the English language together with some know-

ledge of mathematics, history and geography. . . . In fact, Lewis

107

protested, Comptroller Grant and his supporter Chancellor Whitelaw
Reid were anxious that public education should turn out "tally clerks,
shop girls”, and their equivalent in servitude. The training of citi-
zens, in spite of "all the flag-flapping and patriotic genuflections"
is not really a part of the capitalist scheme of education at all.
The system is designed to train servants, not to educate citizens.30
William English Walling also commented on the non-democratic
educational policies supported by distinguished educational leaders.
These amounted to reinforcing existing divisions and furthering the
defence of a class-structured society. Through the encouragement of
these policies the denial of the benefits of civilization, and intel-
lectual cultivation to the working class would be continued. Ex-
President Eliot of Harvard, it was true, wanted to see four to six
times as much money spent on the public schools to bring them up to
the standards that were already supposed to be in existence, but he also
had advocated in the School Reuiflfi for April 1909 a three-class system
with the possibility of advance from one system to another made easy.
This, Walling pointed out, merely absorbed the cream of the working
class and delayed still further the democratization of education. Pres-
ident Hadley of Yale, Walling charged, had shown himself even more in-
sensitive to the interests of the working class and democratic principle.
In The Youth'b Companion of January 6th, 1910 he had recommended the
German system of charging fees for high school education to eliminate
those who were unwilling to pay. He had also praised the German system
of enforced military service for non—high school students since it in—

creased their efficiency as laborers. Any toleration of schemes such as

108

these amounted to a perpetuation of the present aristocratic system
in which knowledge and intellectual development, the tools of control,
remained the prerogatives of a privileged "brain" class while the
masses were relegated to the functions of "hands“.

As Socialists saw the situation the public functions of the school
were not being promoted. The narrowest kind of patriotic parochialism
was being substituted for active citizenship. Further the schools were
being forced by lack of funds, and by pressures from prestigious per-
sons unsympathetic to working class interests, to maintain narrow and
inferior courses of study for the masses. These courses would give
minimal academic and general education, thus training a dependent class
of workers. Further, the schools entirely lacked those supportive ser-
vices without which learning was impossible for large numbers of pupils.
Neither the society whose public interest was supposed to be maintained,
nor the individual who was supposed to be mentally nourished and devel-
oped by the public education system, were served as a result of these dis-
tortions of democratic educational purpose. The exigencies of capitalism,
whose main concern for the working class was their usefulness as profit-
makers, was proving inadequate to meet the human needs of the masses of
the people. Austin Lewis concluded

Briefly it appears that the educationalist
must turn revolutionist and attack the eco-
nomic conditions which paralyze his efforts

and render abortive his attempts at reform-
ation.32

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

NOTES
Chapter V
Floyd Dell, Wehe You Euet a Chttd? (New York:. Alfred A. KnOpf,
1919), p. 3.

Walt Mason, "Fool Knowledge", Appeat to Reabon, 23 October
1911.

George Herron, ”The Social Opportunity", Intennationat Soctattét
Review 4 (February 1907): S85.

Letter to the Editor from W.E. Walling, New Review (April
1915): 223.

Herron, op. cit., p. 585.

Clarence Meily, "Why the Working Man is without a Church",
Intennattonat Soctattét Revieu’7 (February 1907): 461.

Scott Nearing, Soctat.AdjuAtment (New York: Macmillan Co.,
1915), pp. 53-6.

May Wood Simons, "Democracy and Education", Intehnationat
Soctattbt ReuteMiS (January 1902): 89.

Nearing, op. cit., p. 314.

Horace Mann, "The Ideals and Shortcomings of Society", Inten-
nattonat Soctattbt ReuteMIS (January 1904): 473.

Simons, op. cit., pp. 90-91.

Jack London, EAAayA 06 Revott, edited and introduced by Leonard
D. Abbot (New York: Vanguard Press, 1924), p. 105.

Carrie W. Allen, ”Child Slaves of the Cotton Mills,” Intel-
nattona£.30cta£tbt Reuteu 11 (January 1910): 521.

John Spargo, The Btttem Cay 06 the Chttdnen (New York: Mac-
millan Co., 1913), p. 145.

"Editorial", The Met/$622.5, December 1913.

Allen, 0p. cit., p. 522.

109

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

110

E.F. Andrews, ”The Monopoly of Intellect", Intehnattonat
Soctattbt Reuteuil (June 1900): 765-66.

"Review of S.E. Forman's 'Living Among the Poor'”, Intehnattonat
Soctattbt Reuteui7 (June 1907): 718.

”Editorial", Appeat to Reason, 31 July 1909.
Spargo, op. cit., p. 117.

Ibid., pp. 83-4.

Ibid., p. 87.

Ibid., p. 100.

Ibid., p. 123.

Austin Lewis, "Socialism and Education", Intetnattonat.30cta£tbt
Review 9 (November 1908): 377.

William E. Walling, The Lodged Aépectb 06 Soctattbm (New York:
Macmillan Co., 1913), p. 315.

"Editorial", Appeat to Reaéon, 14 August 1909.
Walling, op. cit., p. 316.

William E. Walling, Letter to the Editor, New’Revtew (April
1915): 222.

Lewis, op. cit., pp. 373-75.

William E. Walling, The Lahgeh Aépectb 06 Soctattbm (New York:
Macmillan Co., 1913), pp. 309-11.

Lewis, op. cit., p. 378.

Chapter VI

THE SOCIALISTS, JOHN DEWEY, AND PROGRESSIVE EDUCATIONAL THEORY

During the first two decades of the twentieth century those in
the Socialist movement who were interested in education and who wrote
about it were almost unanimous in espousing the principles of progres-
sive education. There was nevertheless the knotty problem of whether
it was possible to effectively incorporate these progressive programs,
which were essentially co-operative and critical, into the schools of
a society which operated on an opposed set of values. Socialists were
more willing than the other progressive educators to take this problem
into consideration. This cautionary note however in no way interfered
with their enthusiastic endorsement of progressive educational theory
itself. Socialists were more concerned about the necessity of fighting
the capitalist system on every front than other progressive educators.
However they were no less equally convinced that the neotic skills
that would result from the adoption of progressive education programs
were essential to effective Socialist citizenship.

William English Walling said that

several of the best known writers on educational

questions are exceptionally radical and even so-

cialistic and between them have gone to the full

length of what socialism requires.l
The educational writings of Socialists attempted to develop a far-
soeing theory of what education ought to be. Further these Socialist
writers tried to demonstrate the ways in which progressive educational
theories were Socialistic in their implications and intent. The task

that Socialist educational writers set themselves was that of clarify—

ing the connections between enlightened, or progressive, educational

111

112

.theory and a Socialist society. The Socialists also condemned what
they felt to be the anti-democratic spirit of traditional education,
especially as fragments of it were applied in the elementary school
which constituted "education" for the masses of the people. While,
they felt, it was true that one of the characteristics of the modern
period had been the extension of education to all members of society,
in principle, the education thus extended had been that which had its
rise among a leisure class. Oscar Lovell Triggs, member of the Inter-
collegiate Socialist Society and president of the People's Industrial
College, wrote

. . the emphasis placed upon the mere symbols
of learning, reading and writing. . . the leisure
class theory of education is still in the ascen-
dant. The people as to their industrial activi—
ties remain unserved and even unrecognized. The
benefits of even the public schools accrue to an

intellectual aristocracy. The divorce between
the hand and the brain continue in full force.

2

Floyd Dell explained that the belief in the popular mind about
education has been that it is a kind of magic, "the black and white
magic of books", and that like all magic the possession of it bequeathes
a special power on its owners, lifting them above the ordinary mass of
men. This power is acquired by the mastering of certain difficult and
officially designated'great books: and is obtained in ever increasing
quantities by stepping firmly on the various stages of the school lad-
der. Once acquired its owners are absolved from the usual onerous tasks
that burden the ordinary man in his quest to make a living-~manual,or
tedious labor,or larceny. These fall to the lot of the uneducated. Thus,
Dell continued, popular awe surrounded the educational process and di-

vorced it from any association with the lives of the common people.3

113

In the classroom the children of the workers were subjected to

a monotonous and dull routine of learning which made no connection
with their experiences of life outside, Socialists observed. Jane
Addams, who was not a Socialist but was closely united with the So-
cialists on a number of philosophical issues, expressed their view—
point most succintly in this matter, as follows:

The one fixed habit which the boy carries away

with him from the school to the factory is the

feeling that his work is merely provisional. .

. that the sole object of present effort is to

get ready for something else. . . So, in the fac-

tory he earns his money by ten hours of dull

work, and spends it in three hours of lurid and

unprofitable pleasure in the evening.“
If education was to be related to an age of industry and made the in-
strument of a democratic culture accepting the present but foreseeing
the future, the whole of industry and life must be brought within the
sc0pe of the educational system. Failure to do this would make for
the increasing momentum of a school machine designed to serve the in-
terest of the present ruling class by turning out fragments of men,
educated to perform discrete functions in the capitalist machine--
brains, muscles, hands. They would be parts in a machine over which
they had no control, with which they had no moral connection because
there was no social consciousness of purpose. At present, May Wood
Simons wrote,

in the hands of the ruling class the school

has become a standardized institution, turn—

ing out children without greater variety than

the parts of 3 Baldwin locomotive.

This was completely antagonistic to the Socialist ideal of producing

persons completely developed in every aspect of their personality. On—

ly an education which attempted to make every individual a creative agcnt

114

in the co-operative organization of society could be acceptable to a
Socialist. Interdependence should not be confused with a specializa-
tion which implied the reservation of certain functions in which all
ought to participate, to special groups or classes. All should have
some knowledge of where the road they were building was going, some
interest in planning its direction, and a chance to travel along it.

Socialists were willing to state unequivocally that the child was
not the interest of his parents exclusively, that society had a direct
investment in his development. Socialists were usually ready there—
fore to have society intervene early in the upbringing of the child,
particularly if the conditions of his home life were likely to be det-
rimental to his physical and moral well-being. However, social dis-
tress was neither the only, nor the most important reason for an early
provision for childhood education. Early experiences in collective
living and co-operative play were clearly in accordance with a philo-
sophy which stressed working together and interdependence. Socialists
were aware, too, that the importance of the early years had been given
new stress by recent psychological research.

Willian English Walling called attention to the "real social enter—
prises" of Maria Montessori's method in which the activity of the child
is the point of departure as in Froebel's kindergarten. However, Wal-
ling pointed out, with Montessori the activity is concerned with tasks
in which the real usefulness is understood by the children and is unob-
scured by symbolism. Educational efforts, are directed in the first
place at mastering the material surroundings of the child so that he be-

comes increasingly independent. The employment of servants for the

115

fulfillment of any of the tasks which the child needs to perform is
persistently decried as encouraging slavish attitudes of dependence
which impede self-development. Both in the insistence on mastery and

in her protest against servants, "Montessori is’a thoroughgoing So-
cialist," Walling wrote.6 Walling approved Montessori's early intro-
duction of the child to reading and writing when it was acquired as
Montessori suggested as part of games-playing, and where interest was
exhibited by the child.7 Walling also agreed with Montessori that

undue interference by the teacher, with the spontaneous activity of

the child, should be discouraged as inhibiting self-direction. Walling
saw Montessori's combination of school and model tenements in the "children's
houses" as a long step towards the collective home. The termination

of the idea of the school as an institution performing some mysterious
function unrelated to the life of the community was also seen by Walling
as a positive development. Although this "Children's House" had
originated in Montessori's compassion for the plight of the children

of the working class, whose mothers were literally torn away by the
factories, Walling remarked upon the fact that Montessori had been
inundated with inquiries from others who were teachers and profes-
sionals. They also clamored for a reform in their living arrangements,
that would make possible a more educative form of child care for their
children who, at present, had to be left with untrained maids of all work.8
Thus, early co-0perative forms of childhood education would satisfy

a social need felt by all classes and indicated one of the improvements

that would be made in a Socialist community.

116

It was John Dewey, however, whose educational philosophy ex-
pressed what most Socialists felt to be the "pedagogical revolution".
Moreover, Dewey's system was most applicable to the period of ele-
mentary education which included the years when the largest prOpor-
tion of the population attended school. There, as Scott Nearing said,
the work of social adjustment would have to be done in the near future.
Writer after writer made reference to Dewey's experimental school at
the University of Chicago, and to his books. These were being pub-
lished steadily throughout this period and all received enthusiastic
reviews in the Socialist press. Dewey's own association with the So-
cialist Party was very close and, although he does not seem to have
been a member of the Party itself, he was active in the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society.9 This organization was founded in 1905 for the pur-
pose of promoting an intelligent interest in Socialism among college
men and women, and intellectuals generally. By 1915 the.I.S.S. had
chapters in sixty colleges and universities. Later, during the Depres-
sion, Dewey as a member of the Thomas and Maurer Committee of Ten
Thousand in 1932, and in 1936, worked actively for the election of the
Socialist candidate for the presidency, Norman Thomas. In view of the
high priority Dewey gave to experimentalism the doctrine of the class
struggle may have deterred him from aligning himself wholeheartedly
with the Socialist Party. However, there is no doubt at all of his pro-
found distaste for, and opposition to, the ethics of capitalism.
Unrestrained individualism in pursuit of economic advantage was
completely contradictory to the realization of a democratic society,
Dewey believed. The social Darwinist "law of survival of the fittest"

which the capitalists used to justify their brutal exploitation of

117

people and resources was not, Dewey thought, an intelligent response
to the liberation from the awful decrees of fate which Darwin's
discoveries had made possible.10 Dewey wrote of the novel, Looking
Bachwand

I wish that those who conceive that the abo-

lition of private capital and of energy ex-

pended for profit signify complete regimen-

ting of life and the abolition of all personal

choice and emulation would read with an open

mind Bellamy's picture of a socialized soc-

iety.11
For a few Socialists, John Dewey‘s philosophy was as potent an influence
upon their ideology as that of Marx. Max Eastman was one of these
and the passage below reveals his commitment to instrumentalism,
combined with his debt to Marxist thought.

To me Socialism was not a doctrinal belief

but a working hypothesis. . . Marx offered

a methodology, not a blueprint. The revo-

lution must be conducted in the spirit of ex-

perimental science, by completely flexible

minds. New events, new conditions, new in-

ventions, new ideas will enter the world in

the next few years and all our plans will

have to be drawn anew.12
Like Dewey, whose student he had been at Columbia, Eastman also be-
lieved in the redemptive powers of the "new education" for the culti-
vation of the democratic spirit.

William English Walling maintained that Dewey's social philosophy
was completely in accord with that of the Socialists. Indeed the most
positive aspect of the pragmatic philosophy was its evolutionary prin-
ciple. Walling emphasized the active presence of this element in So-

cialist phi1050phy too, contending that the principles of Marxism should

be in a state of constant evolution in response to the changes occurring

118

in the world around. Walling also predicted the imminent possibility
that Socialism would be facing the paternalism of "State Socialism"
or what today would be called the Welfare State, instead of private
capitalism.13
The first principle of Dewey's philOSOphy, Walling thought, that

had application to educational method, was his recognition that at
present mankind is dominated by habits of behavior and thought which
retard social evolution and prevent the reconstruction of society so
that it can respond to the needs of the whole public. Dewey wrote in
The Influence 06 Da/zwtn on PMtosophy

If they are to obtain more equable and com-

prehensive principles of action, exacting a

more impartial exercise of natural power and

resource in the interests of a common good,

members of a class must no longer rest sub-

ject in responsibility to a class whose tra—

ditions constitute its conscience, but must

be made responsible to a society whose con-

science is its free and effectively organized

intelligence.“+
Walling observed in this the recognition by Dewey of the Socialist
view that the morals and ideas of society are determined by its ruling
class and that they are based upon a class interest, not upon rational
appraisals of the welfare of all the people. Therefore these old cus-
toms and morals were undemocratic both in conception and effect.

Dewey's view of the function of education, as not only shaping the

individual but equally shaping society, Walling regarded as the most
socialistic element in Dewey's theory. Dewey, Walling said, considered

that the school was the only place where it was possible to work for

the formation of a higher type of social personality. In the social

119

setting of the school, in idea at least, it was possible to work free
of the restrictions and compromises that characterize business, the
professions and politics.

Similarly, Floyd Dell, in Wehe You Even A Chttd? explained his
commitment to this position taken by Dewey. He finds that the schools
represent an invaluable Opportunity for the child to learn democratic
behavior. The properly conducted school provides associations between
adults and children which are free of the emotional complexities of
the home, where parents are "well meaning, bewildered and helpless peo-
ple who are half the slaves of the children and half tyrants over them."15

Dell also rejected the authority in education which substituted the
memorization of alleged facts for active thought and experimentation.

And there is little that cannot be done by

the formation of proper habits to the com—

plete elimination of thought, the habits

will even take care of the regulation of

the emotions. For all practical purposes,

don't you agree with me that thinking might

be dispensed with?16
On the other hand, wrote Dell, the new education seeks to place the
child at the center of the educational process providing for him "games,
tools, books, scientific instruments, gardens, older persons with pas-
sionate interests in science and art and handicrafts" so that he may
act freely upon these outward things to educate himself.

For truth is reality brought into vital con—

tact with the mind. It makes no difference

whether we teach children that the earth is

round or flat, if it means nothing to them

either way. For truth does not reside in

something outside the child's mind; reality

becomes truth only when it is made a part of

his living. Truths are not true because some

body says so; they are true only because they

fit in better with all the rest of life than

what we call errors--because they bear the test
of living--because they work out.17

120

Dr. Oscar Lovell Triggs published in 1913 a book, The Changtng

Unden, A Study 06 Democnacy. This book is a collection of essays
and lectures delivered on cultural and educational t0pics before
such groups as the Illinois State Teachers' Association. In the
essay, "Democratic Education", Triggs also saw the school as having
a crucial function in achieving social ideals. He praised John Dewey's
experiment in "genuine democratic" education at the University of
Chicago, explaining that

The passage from the aristocratic, the prin-

ciple of dependency and passivity, to the

democratic, the principle of originalityaand

activity was there at length completed.
The school, Triggs wrote, prOperly organized, could provide community
of interest and "freed at once from the domestic and economic environ-
ments becomes the child's true home".19

Another principle of Dewey's educational philosophy that was re-

flected strongly in the educational thought of the Socialists was his
emphasis upon self-direction or shared leadership. This contrasted
with the passivity, receptivity, and obedience to authority which were
the characteristics of traditional education programs. These author-
itarian features, Socialists had found, were further exacerbated given
the economies of the usual public school. There, a "tomb-like silence
was necessary where one teacher presided over classes of fifty and six-
ty children who were to be filled up like so many pitchers" with matter
which held little interest for them as children, and had even less
relevance to their lives.20

William English Walling thought that Dewey's emphasis on the child lear-

ning to manage and direct his own activities was intrinsic to a Socialist

121

education. It would prepare the workers to manage not only their own
politics, but also to plan and direct the industries in which they
worked. Instead of an education fitting the child to the needs of
society as the existing system attempted to do, Dewey's method encou-
raged the adaptation of the society to human needs. These, all members
of the community should be encouraged to articulate. This was exactly
the aim of Socialism--to construct a rational and humane society
responsive to the needs of the masses. Dewey's method was based upon
the stimulation of curiosity, experimentation and problem solving in
a social context. Further, by the social context, Dewey meant a
cross section of society thus eliminating the idea of lower-class,
middle-class, and upper-class schools, and Walling quoted from Dewey's
book, How We Think, to demonstrate this interpretation.
Occupations bring people naturally together
in groups, develop a group consciousness and
power to divide and yet to co-operate harmon—
iously. Knowledge, scholastic attainments,
aesthetic culture, pursued as at present with
only personal ends in view, tend to egoism,
social stratification and antagonisms.21
Floyd Dell also believed that guidance in the ability to master
the environment was one of the most imporatnt elements in the new edu-
cation, from a Socialist point of view, implying as it did, the end
of both paternalism and the exercise of controls by intellectual, econ-
omic, and political élites. In the schools, Dell urged,
it is necessary to provide them with the real
world on a smaller scale. . . a world which is
theirs to observe, touch, handle, take apart
and put back together again, play with, work
with and become master of. . . a world from

which they can go into the great world outside
without any abrupt transition.22

122

May Wood Simons thought that Dewey's concept of education as a
process of living and not as a preparation for future living was also
the Socialist ideal. The present system, she remarked, destroys the
spirit of social solidarity and mutual interest since "for one boy to
assist another in his task is a thing for which to be punished". In con-
trast to this,Dewey's method was in accord with Socialist goals in en—
couraging the development of "social productive power" securing the
'highest possible harmonious development of human beings".23
Georgia Kbtsch, Secretary of the Women's Socialist Union in Oak-
land, California urged that teachers of children's classes in Social-
ism, follow the ideas of John Dewey whose theory "is directly in line
with the Socialist theory that we learn by doing instead of by cram-
ming".21+
The central challenge to the whole educational system, however,
in the twentieth century, as Socialists and Dewey saw it was to at-
tempt to bring about a reconciliation between work, play and art.
Socialists had been inspired to give thought to this difficult, and
still unresolved, problem of an age of factories, mass production and
division of labor, by the work of the English Socialists, William Mor-
ris and John Ruskin. Socialist interest in this was made urgent by
their concern for the life of the millions who toiled long hours at low
wages in the miserable environments of mines and mills. William Morris
had written,
It is right and necessary that all men should
have work to do which shall be worth doing and
be of itself pleasant to do and which should

be done under such conditions as would make it
neither over wearisome nor over anxious.

123

And John Ruskin, observing the effects of the division of labor upon
factory workers had protested, "Life without industry is guilt, and
industry without art is brutality."25
The process of education had become either utterly irrelevant to
the work that millions would spend their lives doing, or was used as
a means of possible escape from the mental and physical hardships in-
volved in the productive work of industry. For those who actually
produced the goods and resources of society there was no joy in their
labor. It was a drudgery to be escaped as rapidly as possible and life
was for living after work. Socialists made frequent comparisons be-
tween the monotonous, dull work demanded by the factory and the regi-
mented routines of the public school classroom. One was presided over
by a foreman, one by a teacher. All aspects of both procedures were
initiated, continued and controlled by forces beyond the control of
the individual. In both, the individual spirit was submerged by the
demands of the process. Enjoyment, excitement, recreation, self-
expression lay beyond the gates of the factory, the walls of the school.
Oscar Lovell Triggs summarized the dilemma.
Man is free politically. We have struggled
with thrones and tyrannies and have won vic-
tory. We have battled with priesthood and
ecclesiasticism and have gained the right of
worship according to our conscience. But in
the way of work, in what is for most of us
most intimate, we are little better than
slaves living under necessityé obeying ma-
chines, attending to masters. 6

The problem was how to liberate body, soul and mind, or as Triggs put

it, "how to make a freeman at play out of a slave at work".27

124

Everywhere, reacting to their disaffection from their work, the
masses were struggling for some balance between the work they were
forced to perform for wages and the opportunity to live. Essentially
the demand for shorter working hours was a process without end, given
the nature of the public's attitude towards industrial work. Mean-
while the ruling class was struggling to maintain a separate education
for their offspring while at the same time their wealth and power rest-
ed on their ownership and profits from industry. The capitalist would
be satisfied with a system of education for the children of the workers
which would confine their knowledge to the machines which they were to
operate. However, to prevent complete despair, before all would be
kept dangling the possibility of escape into the world of the ruling
class through a mastery of the traditional education.

With quite separate motives in mind both the Socialists and the
capitalists wanted therefore to bring industry into the schools or the
school into the factories. The capitalist wanted industrial education
in the narrowest sense. The Socialists wanted industrial education
included in the school program for all. They aimed at an integration
of hand and brain, at the reconciliation of art and industry. Indus-
trial arts, as Triggs called them, would be mastered by the child to
the end that the man could control the machines for his purposes and
could make them serve his creative wishes. This is what the Socialists
meant by the reconciliation of work, art and play. Dell wrote,

Play is effort which embodies one's own cre-
ative wishes, one's own dreams. Work is any

kind of effort which fails to embody such
wishes and such dreams.28

125

Unlike the craftsmen who built the medieval cathedrals, for example,
the contemporary wage worker was not expressing himself or any inner
spiritual or creative sense but was more or less unwillingly a slave
of machine production. With this, he had neither significant identi-
fication nor any moral connection since the purpose of the production
was outside his control and interest.
Walling asserted that this was what Dewey had in mind in his

plan of education through the "social occupations", and his desire
to bring the school into closer relation to the life of society as it
was. With Dewey, as with the Socialists, the central purpose in in—
troducing the machinery of industry into the school was its contribu-
tion to the full growth of the person. The acquisition of Special-
ized skills, technical skills, was secondary to the development of
a well-rounded individual. Industrial education was thus a part of
general education and, as Walling quoted from Dewey,

The study of industrial arts should develop

primarily industrial intelligence, insight

and appreciation, subordinating skill in man—

ipulation to thought content. Industrial

arts as a subject should incorporate all of

the values of manual training, domestic art,

domestic science and drawing appropriate to

the elementary school and should add a rich

body of thought giving them social meaning

and real value.2
Learning to master the machine in a social context would encourage the
scientific and experimental habit of testing the machine not for its
monetary results but for its production of pleasure or pain.

Using the public school as a training ground for machine operatives,

on the contrary, emphasized technical skills at the expense of thought

and would tend to produce adjuncts for the machines, without in any way

126

altering the basis of control. This remained with the capitalist
who owned the machine. In the capitalist plan of industrial educa—
tion, in which the purpose was muscular or sense specialization,
the relationship of the man with the machine remained unchanged.
He continued to operate the machine in response to a need that was
external to him, and unconnected with his own dream. He remained
thus a drudge. He had not become a freeman engaged in creative ac-
tivity with a purpose. To this notion of industrial education Dewey
and the Socialists were completely Opposed. Again Walling quoted
from Dewey to illustrate the point.
The ultimate value and (let us hope) destiny

of the present movement toward industrial educa-

tion will depend upon whether it becomes switched

off into a method of class education—~tn which

cause it woufld be bet/ten 5M tt to pe/u'Ah armadi-

atety--or whether it recognizes the fundamental

importance of training in typical and continuous

lines of activity which are of social value for

everybody.30 (Walling's italics)
Dell summarized the antagonism which arose in the social system from
the alienation of the masses as a result of performing work over which
they had no control, and in which they had no sense of fulfillment.

. . . they want to be the masters and not the

slaves of the machine system. And that is why,

as such a hOpe goes glimmering they join toge—

ther to wrest from their employers some control

over the conditions under which they work.31
The capitalist however would rather lose money in strikes than concede
control over the means of production, for the sense of mastery is cru-
cial. Many workers themselves, Dell observed, prefer white collar jobs

at lesser wages because this permits them the illusion of being a part

of the controlling class. The end of industrial strife depends upon

127

the evolution of a system which can combine performance of, enjoyment
in, and control over, the productive work of the community. For this
the new education would prepare the children of all classes.
. . these young men and women who have
learned to play with machinery, who know
it as a splendid toy, not as a hateful ty-
rant--perhaps a generation of such workers,
the products of a democratic and efficient
educational system will have the knowledge
and the power to take and use this machin-
ery to serve their own creative dream of
a useful and happy new society.32
The mechanisms of discipline, incentives, accountability, and test—
ing incorporated in Socialists'proposals all departed, with varying
degrees of radicalism, from the traditional methods of examination, pri—
zes, inspection, rules and hierarchical absolutes. Socialists agreed
with Dewey that incentives, derived from sources external to the child
himself, subverted progressive and democratic educational principles.
Following logically from the idea that real education preceded from the
interaction of the child's intelligence with the natural and social
environment, Socialist writers, like Dewey, felt that whether incentives
were in the form of rewards or punishments they destroyed the child's
incentive to undertake activities for their own sake. Rewards, no matter
how humane, undermined the principle of self-motivation, and set up
sources of authority extrinsic to the real intellectual center, the
child's perception of necessary activity.
Floyd Dell believed that punishment should be inflicted, if neces-
sary, by the child's peers.
. . the abdication of adults from the office

of judge-jury-executioner of naughty children,
destroys the last vestiges of the cast system

128

which separates children from adults. It

puts an end to superimposed authority, and

to goodness as a conforming to the myster-

ious commands of such authority.33
Punishment by the child's peers, on the other hand, would place him
in the same relationship to a group of equals as he would hold in
adult life. It, therefore, reinforced in the child the sense of re-
sponsibility to his fellows that a Socialist civilization required.

Arthur Wallace Calhoun, Principal of the public schools in Clear-
water, Florida, writing in 1912, also believed that the art of demo-
cracy that should be developed in the schools, both in spirit and in
method, would be encouraged by the introduction of self—government to
the students. He recommended the organization of school congresses
in which each grade should have representatives. "Such a system would
be a laboratory of applied democracy. . . it would go far toward ma-
king the school what it ought to be--the clearest possible approxima-
tion to the conditions of real life," he wrote. He also thought that
such a scheme would go far in solving disciplinary problems caused by
the autocratic system of authority. Calhoun suggested that as Social-
ists gained control of school boards they should seriously consider
the advisability of introducing this principle of self-government into
the schools under their jurisdiction.3”

William English Walling deplored the phenomenon, familiar to all
observers of the school scene, of the model student who has come abso-
1utely under the domination of the teacher through the persuasive praise,
kindness, and Special favors extended by the latter. "Arranging a many

sided environment for the child" was a more important function in teaching

than acting upon the child directly.35

129

Socialists were inclined to take a very rosy view of the free,
unshackled child. Felix Grendon, in an article on Children's Rights
which reviewed Shaw's preface to his play, Mtbatttance, commented
favorably on Shaw's injunction to children,

Always contradict an authoritative statement.

Always return a blow; when you are scolded for

a mistake. . . return the scolding with a blow

or an insult. Remember that the progress of the

world depends on your knowing better than your

elders.
Grendon went further than most Socialists in his demand for supportive
services to the child, suggesting that the community "pay our children
a dignified income from the moment of their birth".36

William E. Bohn deprecated the traditional method of evaluating
the outcome of the education process—~the examination system. If you
once suppose, he said, that the purpose of an education is not to fit
people to sit at desks, writing answers to questions, then the examina-
tion method becomes wholly inapplicable. . . "as ridiculous as testing
a locomotive for the amount of its smoke". Bohn held, in common with
most Socialists, that education had as its goal the production of men
and women who could,

think straight and think for themselves. . .

with some moral backbone, people who care

whether things are right or wrong. . . able

to do their part of the world's work, to re—

turn to society as much as they take from it

and a little more.
To discover whether the schools were producing such persons, Bohn pro-
posed a three part evaluation. First, a kind of inspection might take

place in which men and women, living among young peOple for a week or

two, could reach a more or less accurate conclusion as to the extent to

130

which the characteristics described above had been developed. A
second, very long-term follow up procedure, would evaluate the per-
son twenty or thirty years after his graduation from school to see
whether his formal education had led to further intellectual growth,
and to the addition of new powers or the imporvement of Old ones.
Thirdly, the peOple themselves, "carpenters, street-cleaners, house-
wives”, should estimate the progress of their children "in terms of
life rather than in terms of marks and promotions", and determine how
the children should be educated.37
. Socialists were more precise than Dewey in outlining specific
moral absolutes for the new education. Dewey's aversion to a pntont
judgments, and his confidence in the outcome of experimentation freely
conducted, made him reluctant to impose specific principles. Like the
Socialist educators Dewey located the moral purpose of education in
the encouragement of rational social interaction.

The child ought to have the same motives for

right doing and to be judged by the same stan-

dards in the school as the adult, in the wider

social life to which he belongs. Interest in

community welfare. . . is the moral habit to

which all the special school habits must be re-

lated if they are to be animated by the breath

of life.38
Nevertheless, the perplexing dilemma remained that while co-Operation
and interdependence were encouraged in the school, the larger society
affirmed and rewarded individual success. The Socialists definitely
asserted, therefore, the necessity of positively inculcating social
values in the school.

Dell believed that certain value questions needed to be applied to

the enterprises that were undertaken by children. Dell pointed out that

131

holding up trains like Jesse James required all the ingredients of
planning, co-operation, and experimentation, but was the outcome a
justifiable social good? Dell therefore suggested that the following
enquiries should precede the execution of any project planned. First,
is the activity of a socially constructive nature? Secondly, does

the projected activity interfere with the reasonable plans of others
in the community? Thirdly, if the scheme conflicts with the activi-
ties Of others, is it with a fundamentally altruistic intention suffi—
ciently valid to win the others to its support?

Scott Nearing thought that children should be instructed in so-
cial morality in much the same way as they were taught individual
morality.

It is antisocial to pay low wages, and the school-
children should know it; it is antisocial to main-
tain unhygienic living conditions in the houses
which you own, and the children should be told so;
the working life should be long and joyous, and
the schools should make this fact a part of the
consciousness of every child. . . the most funda-
mental, far reaching, and effective work must be
done by the schools--the elementary schools-~be-
cause they reach all of the people and reach them
when they are impressionable children.l+0

Arthur Calhoun wanted the emphasis upon personal and mercenary
success, ideals that were developed in the child by the very atmosphere
of the capitalist system in which he lived, to be somewhat dampened
inside the school. Instead an idealism of public service should be
stressed together with an awareness of the class struggle. This would

create an awareness of the changes that needed to be brought about in

order to achieve a genuine democracy.

132

Make real to our children in all its horrors
the enormity of our present economic and so-
cial system. . . let the "cry of the children"
ring through the very school room. . . and
fill them with the stern determination to con-
secrate their lives to its transformation.1+1
Oscar Triggs thought that the school's social mission included
correcting the "gross egotism of youth" by inculcating principles of
"mutual dependence" and a "sense of Obligation"."2
Socialists were generally less sanguine than Dewey in believing
that the theories to which they subscribed were possible of realiza-
tion within the context of capitalism although they enthusiastically
endorsed the dissemination of the "new education" theories. Walling,
in particular, warned against the capitalist "progressives" whose in-
fluence was being felt in politics and reform, but who, far from wanting
any fundamental changes along the lines proposed by Socialists, were
merely anxious to save the system from the most extreme of its defenders.
These "progressives", in contrast to the reactionaries, were in fact the
originators of those educational innovations which would tend to Obscure
the class nature Of the present system. Only if the economic and class
restrictions of the present system were removed as Dewey and the Social-
ists urged, would the public schools be "susceptible of revolutionary
development in every direction".l'3
One note of caution should be appended in attributing to the Social-
ists whole hearted endorsement of the principles of the "new education".
Felix Grendon, a member of the 1.8.8., and a frequent contributor to
the Na» Reutev and The MaAAeA was a Socialist of English origin and had

been a pupil for nine years in that country as well as a teacher in the

United States. From February to June of 1915, following his review

133

article, "Children's Rights”, Grendon carried on a correspondence with
Walling on the subject of American education. Grendon agreed with
many of the Socialist educational views stated above, particularly the
rights of children and the inadequacies of parents as educators. He
did not however share the suspicion of ”great books" that Walling in
common with many Socialists held. Walling thought that the literature
of childhood, especially folk-lore, was unhealthy and dangerous, encou-
raging weird and unrealistic ideas, and that
. the classical literature with which we

supply our young men and women in the univer-

sities is for the same reason, in very large

measure, fanciful, remote and dangerous.
Walling conceded that some works of "extraordinary power and brilliance",
Shakespeare for example, should be introduced into education but only
at a late stage and after careful preparation as to its reactionary na-
ture.““ Floyd Dell also was skeptical of what he called "Dr. Eliot's
five-foot shelf" with its aura of "hereditary academic approval".'*5

Grendon, however, defended the whole body of great or classical

literature, art and music, believing that it illuminated the evolution
of revelation. The new religion, Grendon said, puts its God at the End
of the world instead of at the Beginning. From his own experience
Grendon contested the view that great literature had a reactionary
influence upon its readers, and described his own revolutionary
response to the Bible to illustrate his point.

When I read the story of Eve's daring adventure

in behalf of knowledge with its sequel in Adam's

ignoble crying to the Lord, I became a FEMINIST.

When I got to the tale of the cruel punishment

God visited on Cain after first goading him to

fury by mercilessly partisan discriminations, I

became a SOCIALIST. When I reached the place

where John the Baptist enjoins the Pharisees to

look for truth in deeds not words, I became a
PRAGMATIST.“6

134

Socialists subscribed then to all the major elements Of progressive
educational theory and methodology. Socialists particularly appreciated
the revolutionary implications of the undermining of traditional
authoritarian elements in the educational process, and their replacement
by principles of self-reliance and democratic judgment. However, although
locating the source of activity and responsibility for that activity
in the individual, Socialists continued to affirm the corporate nature of
human experience, and purpose. Socialists were generally insistent
that the inculcation of a sense of social responsibility should be a
matter of direct instruction as well as being forwarded through the co-
operative activities of the class room. Socialist writers also sought
to extend the educational process into direct and continuous contact
with scientific, industrial and technological realities. Their goal
was to subject these powerful giants which determined life—styles in
the industrial age to the understanding and control of the masses of

the people.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

NOTES

Chapter VI

William E. Walling, The Langen AApectA 06 Sociaiiem (New York:
Macmillan Co., 1913), p. 257.

Oscar Lovell Triggs, The Changing OndeM, A Study 06 Democnacy
(Chicago: Charles Kerr and Co., 1913), p. 250.

Floyd Dell, Wene You Even a Chiid? (New York: Alfred A.
KnOpf, 1919), pp. 36-53 passim.

Jane Addams, Demochacy and Sociai Ethicb (New York: Macmillan
Co., 1902), p. 191.

May Wood Simons, "Building a New School System", Coming Nation,
10 June 1911, pp. 3-4.

Walling, op. cit., pp. 258-59.

Ibid. , p. 280.

Ibid., pp. 369-70.

The relationship of John Dewey to Socialism is an intriguing
one. Apart from his membership in the Intercollegiate Socialist
Society Dewey was active in the League for Industrial Democracy
and in the attempts to elect Norman Thomas, the Socialist can-
didate to the Presidency of the United States, both in 1932 and
in 1936.

See John Dewey, The Infiiuence 06 Danunn.on Phiioeophy, (New
York: Holt and Co., 1910).

John Dewey, "A Great American Prophet", as quoted in Albert
Fried, A Documentahy Hibtany 06 Amenican Sociaiism (New York:
Doubleday Co., 1969), p. 256.

Milton Cantor, Max EaAtman.(New York: Twayne, 1970), p. 109.
Walling, op. cit., pp. 27-29.

John Dewey, The Infiiuence 06 Danunn.on Phiioeophy, as quoted
in Walling, op. cit., pp. 226-27.

135

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

136

Dell, op. cit., p. 169.
Ibid., p. 140.

Ibid., p. 151.

Triggs, op. cit., p. 178.
Ibid., p. 173.

May Wood Simons, "Education and Democracy", Intennationai
Sociaiiet Revieu 3 (January 1902): 195.

As quoted in Walling, op. cit., p. 275.
Dell, op. cit., pp. 25-26.

May Wood Simons, "Education and Socialism", Intennationai Sociatibt
Review 1 (April 1901): 604.

Georgia Kotsch, "News and Views",1ntehnationai SociaiiAt
RevieulQ (April 1909): 819.

As quoted in Triggs, op. cit., pp. 160-62.
Triggs, op. cit., p. 157.

Ibid., p. 162.

Dell, op. cit., p. 92.

As quoted in Walling, op. cit., p. 284.

John Dewey, Pnognebéive Jouhnai 06 Education (February 1909)
and quoted in Walling, op. cit., pp. 274-75.

Dell, op. cit., p. 92.
Ibid., pp. 94-95.
Ibid., p. 177.

Arthur W. Calhoun, "Schools for Democracy", The Mabbeb,
May 1912.

Walling, op. cit., p. 227.

Felix Grendon, "Children's Rights”,New*Review (April 1916): 95.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

137

William E. Bohn, ”What Kind of Education?" New Revimv (April
1916): 113-15.

John Dewey, Monai Phincipieé in Education, as quoted in
Walling, Op. cit. , p.266.

Dell, Op. cit., pp. 157-166 passim.

Scott Nearing, Sociai Adjubtment (New York: Macmillan Co.,
1915), p. 321.

Arthur W. Calhoun, "Schools for Democracy", The MaAAeA,
May 1912.

Triggs, op. cit., p. 173.
Walling, Op. cit., p. 318.
Ibid., p. 318.

Dell, op. cit., p. 62.

Felix Grendon, ”Letter to the Editor", New‘RevieMl(May 1915): 46.

Chapter VII

THE SOCIALIST CRITICISM OF HIGHER EDUCATION

The American Socialist Party had a very large prOportion of
members who were neither proletarian in their work nor, in many cases, in
their origins. Journalists, lawyers, teachers, and ministers, in particu-
lar were professionals who had a disproportionately large representation
in the party. The influence of these intellectuals as propagandists and
Officers in the Party was even greater than their numbers. This situation
in a party whose purpose was the elevation and involvement of the masses,
gave rise to a great many interesting exchanges on the nature of intellec-
ectuals and the institutions of higher learning which produced them. Both
were critically appraised for their possible attributes or defects, as
catalysts of Socialist revolution, and as servants of the masses.

Robert Rives La Monte, an associate editor of the Intennationai
Sociaiibt Revieu said that there were two types of intellectuals in the
American Socialist Party

The eager youthful American, convinced that

Marx was outgrown, avid for the creation of

a New American Socialism, and the equally

eager, usually foreign young student of

Marx whose culture was narrow and more or

less barren, because he was as truly a one

book man as was the Seventeenth century

Puritan of Cromwell's army.1
Whether this distinction was as clear as La Monte suggested seems
doubtful. Marx was rarely ignored and Socialists who had been born
abroad were, if anything, more acutely aware than the native born of the
differences between the European and American experiences. Socialist

Party intellectuals sought with varying degrees of resourcefulness to

find both in Marx, and in relation to capitalist realities in America,

138

139

definitions of intelligence and intellectuality acceptable to Socialist
ideology that would not be tied to the mere possession of a college
degree. All agreed that the real revolution would be based upon the
deve10pment of the consciousness of the industrial proletariat. Some
Socialists argued that intellectuals were brain workers, and were a part
of the proletariat. Thus F.J. Maxwell, in a letter published in the
Intennationai.Sociaiibt’Review in 1907 wrote,

As I said before I am not a coal miner.
yet for many years have worked for wages
and earned my living as a bookkeeper and
feel that I am as much entitled to be
called a proletarian as our comrade
who is a coal miner.2

Carl D. Thompson, one of the former ministers in the Socialist
Party and a director of its bureau of information held a similar view.

A third section of the proletariat and one

that has always played a very decided

‘part in the development of the Socialist
movement has been called the intellectual
proletariat. These are the educated men

and women in the schools, colleges, univer-
sities, arts and sciences who find their

field Of employment constantly restricted

and hemmed in. . . . They do not own the means
of their employment. They belong technically and
in practically every sense of the word to

the proletariat.3

In 1912, Barnet G. Braverman, commenting on the conditions of pro-
fessionally trained persons also identified this group as proletarians.
The country, he said, was "overcrowded with doctors, lawyers, professors,
teachers, and scientists who were competing against each other in the
struggle for jobs and bread.

The college trained proletarian is becoming
conscious of his identity of interests

with his fellow workers who never had the
Opportunity to enter a university.‘'

140

In 1908 Henry Flury, President of the University of Pennsylvania
Socialist Society said that, forced by economic pressures, workmen and
small business men were sending their sons to college. He also noted
that engineering and scientific education showed a phenomenal growth in
enrollment compared to purely cultural and classical education. However,
in spite of the great burden and financial sacrifice involved in this
attempt to prepare for the vicissitudes of a capitalist economy, Flury
warned that

The engineer - civil, electrical, chemical,

mining or mechanical; the chemist, the

physician, the dentist, the lawyer and the

teacher will find in the very near future,

if not at present, that unemployment is

not a condition confined solely to unskilled

workers, but a condition existing in the

professions as well.5
Flury referred to the census of 1900 to prove that unemployment in the
professions had risen by 11.2% since the census of 1890. He calculated
that the census of 1910 would show a professional unemplOyment rate of
about 40%. "The law of the jungle prevails among college men just as
inexorably as among unskilled laborers", Flury observed. He predicted
that Socialism would become, therefore, a movement of intellectual as
well as physical workers.6

More difficult to resolve than the question of whether intellectuals
could be identified as proletarians was the problem of the role of
intellectuals in the Socialist Party. This arose from the tendency of
the intellectuals to assume positions of leadership and to dominate the
Party councils. Since in these years the Socialists thought that they

would soon attain power in America, this problem was widely discussed. It

is indicative of a significant contradiction in Socialist educational

141

thought. How can a high quality of mental activity be cultivated
without simultaneously creating an elite of leaders and bureaucrats?
There was also the doubt as to whether the existing institutions of
higher education were conducive to the development of a Socialist
intelligence. The discussions of these issues reveal the ambivalence,
at best, that Socialists felt towards the universities, their programs,
and their graduates.
Victor L. Berger, the Socialist congressman and leader of the

Milwaukee Socialist Party wrote,

I, for one, gladly welcome the collegiate

Socialists. We need the help and goodwill

and co-Operation of the college man and

woman to solve the greatest question of the

day, the social question. . . from the trained

scholastic mind of the college man we have

a right to expect valuable help in solving

the questions of the day.7
Carl D. Thompson declared that when Socialists shouted the Shibboleth,
"Workers of the World Unite", they did indeed mean all those who worked,
or wanted to, for wages and salaries.

An editorial in the New York Socialist newspaper, The Catt

favored the welcome and assimilation into the Party of widely divergent
elements. Although the Socialist Party was first and foremost the
party of the workers, "it had room and a warm welcome for the millionaire
and parlor Socialists too". And not forgetting the graduates the
editorial continued, benevolently,

Aye, it has room for intellectuals - such

intellectuals are sure of a hearty welcome

in the party of the proletarians whose aim

it is to make every worker an intellectual.
Charles Dobbs, in a short essay BmainA asserted that even after

removing the whole mass of "false and mischievous error" that charac-

terized much of the curriculum in educational institutions there still

142

remained a "certain residuum of positive knowledge which is the common
heritage of all mankind." Dobbs felt that the education which made
a person an intellectual was as valuable, and sometimes, more valuable
than the equipment which enabled men to run engines or harness nature in
the service of man. Marx, Dobbs said, had distinctly set forth the
idea that the man who works with his brain performs useful labor in
society.9
To La Monte, however, it was "a highly fallacious assumption that
the possession of a conventional bourgeois education is a guarantee
of the sort Of mental efficiency the Socialist Party needs." The
important thing to understand, in La Monte's opinion, was that no one by
reason of his privileged educational background should assume the
possession Of effective intelligence. Victor L. Berger, a lawyer
himself was nevertheless cautious about collegians. He commented that
it Often took more brains to put together and run a machine than it did
to run a banking institution or to be president of a college.
A.M. Simons tried to strike a balance between attributing too much

deference to intellectual training and paying too little respect to
the disciplined study of fundamental ideas.

No one can have a greater contempt for the

college diploma than we have, for we have

seen how frequently it is but a certificate

of misinformation and a testimonial that

the owner was so thoroughly impregnated with

capitalist psychology as to be absolutely

incapable of ever understanding any philosophy

not based on that psychology. All too

frequently we have seen men of whom we have

had the greatest hopes that they might

become active workers in the cause of the

proletariat become absolutely confused by
university instruction.

143

But Simons emphasized that it would be just as foolish to go to the other
extreme and condemn utterly the capitalist educated intellectual.12
The suspicion of the motives of the intellectual element in the

Socialist Party had been fueled by some of the critical theoretical
writings of the European disciples of Marx. Their works frequently
appeared in translation in the pages of the Intennationai Sociaiibt
Reiiew, particularly while A.M. Simons was editor. Engels warned of
the crowd of students who

regard the bourgeois university as a sort

of Socialist Saint—Cyr which gives them

the right to enter the ranks of the party

with the title of officer if not general.
Karl Kautsky admonished Socialists to be wary of those intellectuals who
sought in the Socialist movement the successes and prestige that the
capitalists had denied them instead of participating in the class
struggle. Such persons, Kautsky said, were a poor acquisition and could
become an impediment to the achievement of Socialism. August Bebel
said

Test new comrades well but test the intell-
ectuals two or three times.

Either from his experiences with some of the members of the American
Socialist Party or perhaps because of his close association with the
Indubtniai.WOnhenA 06.the Wonid, William Haywood shared these misgivings
about intellectuals. He confined his definition of the proletariat to
industrial workers. He declared,

I would rather spend fifteen years winning

one wage worker to the army of the Revolu-
tion than one day in converting a professional
man.13

Socialist intellectuals themselves were often the most vociferous

in their denunciations of the effects of being educated in the established

144

institutions and were Often the most sanguine believers in the superior
revolutionary potential of the proletariat.

La Monte's doubts about the efficacy of "conventional bourgeois
education" was a view that was not confined to Socialists, he said.
Scepticism had been expressed also by that arch-individualist H.L. Mencken.
He had declared that school teachers were probably the "most ignorant
and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers," and
that unfortunately a measure of their stupidity was undoubtedly passed
on to their students. La Monte suggested that these "fallacies,
delusions, imbecilities" described by Mencken should make suspect any
attempt to equate learning with intelligence. The only valid criterion
for judging "efficient brains" is the power to serve the working class,
La Monte wrote. Wherever these kinds of brains were found, in the "skull
of a professor or a coal-heaver", they should be utilized in the service
of Socialism. But, La Monte declared,

The modern Socialist knight who lacks faith

in the proletariat will never draw the sword

"excalibur" from the rock. He is marching

into battle unarmed.1l+
The early French Socialist Proudhon described the relationship between
experience, physical labor and intellectuality as compared with the duly
certified product of the capitalist university, which seemed to fit
the ideal of most American Socialist critics of education.

There are amongst the working masses plenty

of educated men capable of writing as well

as talking, informed on business matters,

more capable and worthier representatives,

. . . than the lawyers, journalists, writers,

pedants, intriguers and Charlatans on whom

the working men lavish their votes. . 15

This ideal was incarnated in the Socialist hero, Ernest Everhard of

Jack London's novel, The Inon Heei. Here was portrayed the most

145

desirable kind of party worker, organizer and theoretician, the educated
proletarian, not the 'intellectual' leader Of the proletariat.

A cartoon in the Coming Nation shows three black-gowned and very
ancient professors, each labelled respectively TRADITION, CONSERVATISM,
OBSOLETE TEXT-BOOKS. The caption underneath reads, "The faculty in a
Capitalistic College."16 This portrayal is a very rough summary of the
reflections of Socialists on the character of the American university
during the first two decades of the twentieth century. As Socialists
saw it, the universities and colleges, more than any other part of the
educational system, were financed directly by contributions from capitalists.
Charles Edward Russell, the muck-raking journalist who had joined the
Socialist Party in 1908 and who became the editor of the Coming Nation,
said that the university was the "hot bed of snobbery, the bulwark of
reaction and the fountain head of snobbery and pharisaical, smug-faced
reform." Russell went so far as to predict that the American university
was one of the worst evils of the capitalist system with which the
Socialists would have to deal when the showdown came.

How can you expect anything else when our

universities are financed by Rockefellers,

Archbolds, Amason Stones and Ryans, and

when they are conducted by men like old

Fog Horn Day and Nicholas Murray Butler?
Particularly illustrative of the sordid, even immoral value system of
these institutions was the fact, according to Russell, that of the young
men entering the Wall Street gambling dens, the brokers' offices, fifty
percent were univeristy graduates. These remarks were contained in an

editorial written in January of 1911. Feeling against the universities

or their graduates must have been running high that year, around Girard,

146

Kansas, at any rate, because in a column "Intellectual Prostitution",
the Appeai to Reaeon also blasted "lackey-artists, lackey-writers,
lackey-lawyers and lackey-intellectuals." These, the columnist stated,
were the genuine enemies of progress who lent their large capacities
to erect more effective barricades against the pe0ple's "rightful
inheritance of culture and happiness."18

Writing in 1900, William Brown admitted that plutocracy had been
powerfully instrumental in the development of the resources of the earth
and in sharpening the mind in certain directions, but asserted that it
was becoming more and increasingly evident that many lines of human
development were impossible under its control. Truth could only
be discovered if men were perfectly free to investigate and publish the
results of their research. Unfortunately, Brown said, it was a well
understood principle in the universities that the teaching of economics
had to be in harmony with the interests of capitalism.

A.M. Simons, in an editorial written in 1903, commented on the
extraordinary ignorance of Socialism that prevailed in scholastic circles.
Acquaintance with classes in economics and sociology in any great
university would reveal that much time was given to the theories of the
physiocrats, for example, or to theories of rent, interest, wages and
profits completely abandoned in all but scholastic circles, and yet
the vast majority of university curricula failed to mention Socialism
at all. Even if Socialism were the craziest of theories the very fact
that it was already the working phiIOSOphy of over thirty million people
would warrant giving some attention to its basic theories. Simons had

found in lecturing before students at the Universities of Chicago,

147

Wisconsin and at Harvard that only a handful of students among hundreds
who claimed that they had studied Socialism, had heard of the Canniniét
Manifiebto for example.

In the scope of [this] small pamphlet,

endorsed by hundreds of Socialist organiza-

tions, circulated during a half century by

millions of copies in every known language,

these fundamental principles of Socialism

are set forth in words no one can well

misunderstand. Surely, even if such a

pamphlet were filled with the veriest nonsense

it would merit attention because of its vast

circulation and influence.

Henry Leffman, one of the most prominent scientists in Pennsylvania,

in an article entitled, The Capitaiibt Contact 06 Education compared
the donations made to universities in the twentieth century with the
endowments made by the powerfu1 in the Middle Ages for chantries and
churches. Then the ruling class sought, by buying so many Masses, to
protect themselves from future justice whereas the present ruling class
hoped by their donations to educational institutions to Secure themselves
in the present by controlling knowledge in the service of their interests.
Leffman exemplified this by referring to the terms of the endowment of
the Wharton School of Finance and Economy at the University of Penn-
sylvania. The donor of the original gift of about $100,000 had acquired
a considerable part of his fortune in the manufacture of metallic nickel
under a protective tariff. Certain general principles were laid down by
the founder to be followed in the teachings of the Wharton School.
Among these was the following

the necessity for each nation to care for its

own, and to maintain by all suitable means its

industrial and financial independence; no apolo-

getic or merely defensive style of instruction

must be tolerated on this point, but the right

and duty of national self:protection must be
firmly asserted and demonstrated.

 

148

It was not only in the fields of economics and sociology that
Socialists charged intellectuals with subordinating the pursuit of truth
to capitalist pressures. Adam Israeli, in an article, "Capitalist Science"
described the biases displayed by medical journals. He referred to an
editorial in Amenican Medicine, April 1907, which asserted that the Negro
brain had been found to be considerably smaller than the brain of the
European, particularly that of the Anglo-Saxon. The article then went
on to recommend that anatomy be put to the service of statesmanship and
that the franchise be limited to the big brains. Israeli noted that just
as Providence was usually found on the side with the big guns, so expert
scientists were usually found on the side that could afford the fattest
fee. Israeli charged that the accredited representatives of a science
that was under the influence of capitalism was hardly a reliable court
of appeal for determining scientific truth let alone a fit judge as to
qualifications for exercising the right to vote.

Henry Leffman also drew attention to the role of scientific journals
as moulders of public opinion in technical and scientific areas. He
found that these journals were almost entirely under the control of big
companies as a consequence of the support that was derived from their
advertising. Even where important issues of public welfare were involved,
no serious opposition to these powerful interests could be expected.
Leffman, in an early appeal for the control of pollution noted that the
Chenicai.fngineea made light of these problems. Even where questions of
injury to the health and comfort of the people had been raised, as in the
ruin of farm lands by smelting operations, the Chemicai Engineea's
response was sarcastic regarding the public welfare, and duly submissive

to the company interest.

149

A great deal of maudlin sentiment has been

directed against the destruction of a few

fish by wood pulp mills, and while the fish

are no doubt less harmful and more useful

than some of the newspapers which are printed

on the product of these same mills. . . it is

only a question of time before the fish go

anyway, sulphite or no sulphite.
In such terms, Leffman protested, the professional journals made light of
vital public concerns to the advantage of the profit makers. The combin-
ation of the owners and editors of scientific and technical journals with
the administrators and professors in higher institutions resulted in a
complete unavailability to the public of viewpoints which challenged
orthodox views on economic organization. These, set forth in both lecture
halls and journals, of course vindicated the priorities, economic and
societal, of the capitalistic philosophy.23

Another reason for the hostility of Socialists to the university can

be illustrated from the well-known remark of William Rainey Harper, first
President of the University of Chicago.

It is all very well to sympathize with the

working man, but we get our money from those

on the other side, and we can't afford to

offend them.2“
Professors who were bold enough to criticize contemporary economic and
social arrangements, even to the extent of what today seems like rather
mild liberal dissent were liable to find themselves abruptly dismissed
from their posts. As an editorial in the Appeai to Reabon expressed it,

the man whose brain will work outside the

grooves set for it by capitalist society finds

himself a man without a country and without

the privilege of living even when he is

willing to work.25

There were indeed a succession of incidents in which men otherwise able

and even brilliant in the performance of research and teaching appear to

150

have been removed for criticizing existing economic arrangements or,

in at least one case, for openly acknowledging membership in the Socialist
Party. Looking, in chronological order, at the cases that particularly
aroused Socialist ire, it can be seen that academic freedom did not

extend to the airing of heretical views on the infallibility of the
capitalist system.

Edward Bemis' removal from the faculty of the University of Chicago
for his attack upon the conduct of the railroads during the Pullman
Strike did, in fact, lead the Chicago Joannai to describe the desirable
conduct for faculty members who were discreet. The Joannai.declared that
the pursuit of truth was not the duty of a salaried university professor.
It was, on the contrary, his business to teach established truth.

In 1899 George Herron offered his resignation to the trustees at
Grinnell College, trusting that it would not be accepted. The Board of
trustees, however, seized the opportunity to be rid of a controversial
presence on the campus. Although the situation was complicated by
Herron's relationship with Carrie Rand and his criticism of marriage
as a coercive institution, Herron and other Socialists believed that
the basic reason for the acceptance of his resignation was his Socialist
commitment. Herron stated that the facts surrounding his resignation
made it impossible for anyone to believe that freedom of teaching existed
in institutions of higher learning.26

In 1901 Socialists attributed the reorganization that affiliated the
Emmons Blaine School of Pedagogy with the University of Chicago, to an
attempt to degrade the work of John Dewey. As a result of the changes
Dewey was to be relegated to a subordinate position and his model school

disbanded, according to an article by A.M. Simons, in the Intennationai

151

Sociaiibt Review. The Review was not surprised to learn of this develop-
ment in regard to Dewey's experiments because

accepting the full logic of his philosophy

he has pointed out its sociological relations

and close connection with the doctrines of

Socialism. Such a man whether consciously

or unconsciously is most effectively propagating

Socialism. Indeed there is today no field

more full of promise of revolutionary action

than that of education.27

In 1901 also, Socialists were deploring the dismissal of Professor
E.A. Ross, a sociologist from Stanford University. Ross had publicly
and in the classroom expressed his disapproval of coolie labor, a position
which apparently did not endear him to Mrs. Leland Stanford. The result
was that President Jordan had seen fit to discharge Ross. Socialists
were pleased to observe in connection with this incident of "contemptible
toadyism" to capitalism that the American Economic Association, which was
the closest approach yet to a trade union among professors, had intervened
with a "somewhat pedantic document" exonerating Ross. The Intennationai
Sociaiibt Revieulalso reported the resignation of three professors who
refused to step into Ross's shoes, the discharge of another professor
who championed Ross and a large body of students who spoke in behalf of
Ross. Regrettably, the Revieulhad also to Observe that the university
had experienced no difficulty in securing scabs to take the place of the
professors who had been dismissed.

In 1911 the State University of Florida forced the resignation of
history professor, Arthur W. Calhoun. The Appeai to ReaAon reported that
Professor Calhoun was a Socialist and his resignation was demanded for
that specific reason. Calhoun was given the alternative of abandoning

his views on the subject of Socialism or surrendering his job. Letters

on his behalf described him as "the most devout Christian on the faculty",

152

and testified to the fact that his teaching was "constructive not destruc-
tive." But these did not alter the course of events.28 Three years
later, when he was Professor of Sociology and Economics at Maryville
College, Calhoun wrote an article, "Academic Slavery", which reflected
on his experiences as a Socialist academic. He wrote,

Some of us think that we know as much what

slavery means as does the man in the ditch.

We have less trouble in keeping our hands

clean and our shoulders straight, but find

it just as hard to keep our souls clean and

our spines straight.
A man could be the most brilliant teacher, Calhoun said, but if he gave
free rein to his judgment on matters of social and economic policy he
would be unable to keep his job. The result was mental servitude. From
his own experiences Calhoun recalled that if an academic made a public
address on Socialism the yellow press insinuated that ”he spends his
vacations with the comrades”. Even if a Socialist academic were a member
of the most conservative church in Christendom he would be stigmatized
as an infidel or atheist, if he ventured to display his colors as a
Socialist, Calhoun complained. He asserted that the opponents of Socialism
and social criticism had developed a philosophy of classroom behavior
to rationalize the silencing of expressions of dissent. These opponents
had determined that no feelings should be injected into the classroom;
that the professor must not be an advocate; and that the professor should
not exercise any influence over tender minds. Calhoun compared these
rules which were to apply to teaching in the fields of economics, history

and sociology with the teaching of art and literature where critical

value judgments were made as part of the educational process.29

153

In 1915, early in June Scott Nearing closed his Wharton School

desk at the University of Pennsylvania and moved to Arden, Delaware
for the summer. On June 16th, he received a letter from the office of
the Provost.

As the term of your appointment as assistant

professor of Economics for 1914-15 is about

to expire I am directed by the trustees of

the University of Pennsylvania to inform you

that it will not be renewed.

With best wishes, I am,
Yours sincerely,
Edgar Fahs Smith30

Nearing had been extremely active in the fight against child labor.
As well as publishing and speaking against this practice he had
gradually collected and amassed documentation to demonstrate that private
enterprise capitalism was unethical and anti-social in its behavior
and consequences. According to Nearing's own account he had been
summoned to Dean James T. Young's office and had received the following
advice, "Mr. Nearing, if I were in your place I would do a little less
public speaking about child labor." Other colleagues and friends,
like Professor William Lingelbach of the History department, had also
suggested

Go on with your teaching, collect your salary.

Take your promotions as they come along;

bank your royalty checks. Keep your mouth

shut on these controversial issues.3
The exact reason for Nearing's precipitate dismissal is not absolutely
clear, even today, he writes, but it was apparently connected with just
that oligarchical power exerted over the university by capitalists that
Socialists deplored. A prominent millionaire in the State Republican

machine was said to have made it known to the University of Pennsylvania

authorities that if they wanted the one million dollars appropriation

154

for the University to get through the legislature they had better get
Nearing off the payroll. In spite of the advances in academic freedom
that the adverse publicity surrounding the Nearing case brought about,
Nearing himself, in spite of his brilliant promise and the efforts of
sympathetic colleagues was not invited to join the faculties of any of
the leading universities. Instead he accepted an appointment at the
University of Toledo where a Socialist trustee, Dr. John S. Pyle, a
wealthy surgeon, and patron of the University had been responsible for
inviting Nearing.

These, then, were the cases most widely commented upon in the
Socialist press, because the victims either were Socialists or held
views that were opposed to the dominant economic powers of that period.
There seems to be little evidence against the Socialist contention that
learning freely, teaching freely and applying knowledge to the amelioration
of the conditions of the masses was seriously hampered by the fear of
capitalists that certain viewpoints, widely disseminated or accorded
more cogency when uttered by professors, would indeed imperil the freedom
of businessmen to accumulate wealth and to exercise unimpeded political
power.

There were, nevertheless, occasional small victories for the
Socialist side. In 1911, the Appeai to Reabon commented on an item
in the Evening New/.5 of Pensacola, Florida. The Mom was very much
disturbed by some contest orations that its reporter had heard at the
Florida College for Women. At least two of these speeches "would have
made Debs ashamed of himself", the Menu lamented. It went on to deplore
the courses in political economy and sociology that were leading the

college to turn out "Socialists by the classfulls.” The Appeai was

155

pleased to see the Institutions at Tallahassee fulfilling their legitimate
mission in "forwarding the cause of real democracy" by encouraging the
people to explore new thoughts and ideas.

In 1903 the Coming Nation was pleased to report the resignation of
the Reverend D. Taylor from Vassar College because "he could no longer
endure the growth of radical and woman suffrage sentiment among the students
. of that institution."3”

Occasionally there was praise for the work of the universities from
Socialist sources, as well as suggestions for the direction that its work
should take in order to serve the public. The University of Wisconsin
was praised by A.M. Simons for being closer to the people's interest than
any other educational institution in America. Wisconsin had made available
to the public the findings of its legislative research bureau, the services
of trained lecturers and skilled teachers for trade schools. Socialists
had made use of University of Wisconsin experts in establishing social
centers, playgrounds, trade schools, and engineering services during
their administration of the municipality of Milwaukee.35 In 1912 readers
of the Appeai were urged to demand that their own state universities
provide similar research and extension teaching services since the
University of Wisconsin had been inundated with requests for information
and help. The Appeai also suggested that the state universities provide
lectures on scientific subjects, particularly in country towns where life
was "intellectually flat" and a "mental desert." The people the Appeai
believed, would respond to intellectual activities initiated under the
auspices Of the state universities. The work of the agricultural
departments of these universities had inspired a measure of public

confidence in them among rural people.

156

If it was difficult, if not impossible, for Socialist faculty to
reconcile their own values with the realities of power within the
university, students by the score and then by the hundreds joined the
Intercollegiate Socialist Society. The ISS was founded in 1905. Even
earlier, in 1900, Socialist students from Harvard, Columbia, Brown and
Chicago had been present at the International Congress of Socialist
Students held at the Hotel Des Sociétes Savantes in Paris. By 1913 the
ISS was strong enough to afford the publication of a quarterly magazine,
the Inteacoiiegiate SociaiiAt. Ernest Poole, the esteemed author of the
Socialist novel, The Hanboa, reported on the state of the ISS in 1912
in the Coming Nation. The membership totalled 800 students in 41
chapters. There were, in addition, 5 alumni chapters with a total
membership of 350. The largest chapters were at Harvard, Yale and
WeSleyan (the college of Harry W. Laidler, for many years the ISS
secretary and organizer), with 50 to 60 members in each chapter.

Next came Cornell, Columbia, Barnard, Wisconsin, and Michigan where the
memberships were between 20 and 40 per chapter. There were also
fraternal delegates in many other colleges where no branch organizations
existed. A full account of the activities of the ISS needs further
research and its activities can only be briefly indicated here. Debates
were organized like the one at Wisconsin in 1907 where the university
Socialists were victorious in moving, "That the gradual introduction of
Socialism would subserve the best interests of the people."38 Sometimes
ISS chapters became engaged in activist struggles in behalf of students’
rights. Frank Bohn, an associate editor of the Inteanationai Sociaiiét
Reuimv and contributing editor of the Mabbeb reported on a hunger strike

at the University of Michigan in 1914. This strike protested the

157

starvation wages paid to students who were forced to work to support
themselves.

Hundreds of students were working from four

to six hours a day in kitchens, dining

rooms and offices. Most of them worked

for their meals. . . others tended a furnace

for twenty four hours a day for the privilege

of sleeping in the attic..
Clean food and reasonable working hours were demanded by these students
who had been organized into a union by the ISS chapter. Boarding houses
and restaurants were picketed. The strike was splendidly successful,
both as educational propaganda and for its achievement of material
benefits, Bohn wrote. He congratulated the Michigan chapter on its
graduation into "long trousers." Bohn theorized that the activities
of the Michigan ISS had involved the students in the class struggle
providing them an education in the conflict between workers and exploiters.39

Meanwhile other students acted to force the universities to introduce
courses that they wanted. For instance the Appeai to ReaAon reported
that in 1911 a course in Modern Socialism had been started at Harvard
with an enrollment of thirty students. This had resulted from the
circulation of a petition requesting the establishment of such a course
which had gained over 500 signatures in the previous academic year."0
Socialist grievances against instructional processes and the

senility of the classical curriculum were relatively few. Most were in
the form of occasional scornful remarks or cartoons. However, an article,
”The Relation of Instructors and Students," by Harlow Gale deplored
the failure to review the relevancy of traditional subjects and the

efficacy of the old methodology. Gale, whose article was originally

published in the Minnebota Magazine, felt that the attitude of antagonism

158

that prevailed between undergraduate students and their professors was
due to two factors. First, there was the continued presence in the
curriculum of subjects such as Latin, Greek, and Metaphysics, which were
perceived by students as being of dubious value in the modern world Of
industry and science. Secondly, these subjects and others of more certain
utility and interest were, more often than not, taught by methods which
derived their validity from Puritan asceticism. Instead of using
Observation and the inductive method by which real as against verbal
knowledge is Obtained, too many teachers continued to operate on the
pleasure-pain principle. If the learning of a subject were made as
difficult as possible, then those who subjected themselves to the pain
of learning it would be doubly rewarded by acquiring not only the knowledge
itself but also a disciplined mind. On the basis of this obsolete logic,
Gale continued, astronomy, for example, became a grim perusal of
logarithm tables instead of a close observation of the Vmarvelous stars.”
Meanwhile pleasure matched with learning was regarded by traditionalists
as an indulgent lapse into original sin, by the defenders of the traditional
disciplinary studies."0

Socialist dissatisfactions with the American university and college
led to a number of attempts to organize alternative institutions of
higher learning. Socialists were particularly anxious to free the social
studies from the strictures imposed by the need to maintain a capitalist
line of interpretation. In spite of some corruption, Socialists seemed
to feel that the work done in the physical sciences and in technical
fields was less susceptible to distortion and bias. As one writer

remarked,

t ‘»
'a“

159

Nearly all of the fruits of scientific
investigation are of especial value to the
working class in their struggles for better
conditions."2

Practically, too, the task of reproducing the laboratories and facilities
that were essential to research and studies in science and technology
would have imposed an impossible strain upon Socialist finances.

The two centers of attempts to organize alternative institutions
were in New York and Chicago. In New York, the trustees of the Rand Fund
which had been donated by George Herron's mother-in-law, were charged
with establishing a school to teach social science from the standpoint
of International Socialism. The trustees, in turn, empowered the American
Socialist Society, an incorporated body formed in 1901, to found and
maintain such a school. Thus, in 1906, the Society leased a building
at 112 East Nineteenth Street and prepared to begin classes on October lst.
Instructors were to be paid and moderate tuition fees were charged to
the students. The President of the School was Algernon Lee; Morris
Hillguit was the treasurer and W.J. Ghent, the secretary. A plan 0f the
courses tentatively offered for the Opening session of the School is
given below.

Systematic courses, with the use of text-books,
personal assistance of instructors, examinations,
and seminars on

1. Elementary Socialism

2. Economics of Socialism

3. History of Socialism

4. Nature and Functions of the State

5. Composition and Rhetoric
Lecture and Conference Courses, with
Opportunity for questioning instructors, on

1. Principles of Sociology

. Ethics

Social Theories

2
3.
4. Social History

160

Formal lectures on a great variety of subjects,

such as Methods and Tactics of the Socialist

Movement; Socialism and Art, History of the

Labor Movement, Physical Evolution, and such

special problems as those relating to Race

Antagonisms, the Middle Class, Trade Unionism,

Child and Woman LabOr, Old Age Pensions, '

Immigration, Housing, Proletarian Diseases,

and Labor Legislation.‘'3
The above description of courses illustrates not only, the wide scope of
Socialist intellectual interest, but also the ways in which Socialists
wanted knowledge developed and applied to the solution of the social and
physical problems of the masses. The emphasis on Social History and
Labor History in the prospectus also contrasts dramatically with the
absorption in political and military history that characterized the
history programs of the established universities in the period. Charles
A. Beard, at that time a young professor at Columbia was among the
distinguished scholars associated with the Rand School as a history
instructor. In a letter to the Intencoiiegiate Sociaiiit, he wrote
that men and women who claimed to be interested in the pursuit of knowledge
could not ignore Socialism, a force which was undoubtedly shaking the
old foundations of politics the world over, and whose theories were
penetrating science, art and literature.

The efforts to establish a viable Socialist college in the Chicago
area were less successful. In 1903, Ruskin College, which had originally
been established in Trenton, Missouri by Walter Vrooman as an American
branch of the Ruskin Hall movement of the English Socialists, moved to
Glen Ellyn, Illinois. There it amalgamated with the Chicago Law School.
An essential part of its work was the teaching of economics and sociOIOgy

by Socialists, not precluding however, presentations from a capitalist view-

point if they were thought to be useful. Charles Kerr wrote,

161

I can unhesitatingly commend the school as

one to which Socialist parents can send their
sons and daughters from fourteen years up,
with the assurance that their minds will not
be perverted by the capitalistic atmosphere
such as surrounds most colleges. ~It is also
the best possible place for a young working-
man who desires to get a broad education while
earning his living. ”

Problems in the relationship between Ruskin and the Chicago Law
School led to the demise of the former. Therefore, in 1904, A.M. and
May Wood Simons who had formed the core of the faculty of Ruskin,
announced plans for a new Socialist Institution

offering an opportunity for thorough,

scholarly, systematic study of sociological

material, and where especial emphasis will

be placed upon these phases of the subject

which are of interest to the working class

in their struggle for freedom."5
The Simonses maintained that the work of education in Socialism had become
"too great to be any longer carried on without division of labor," and
that special institutions for educational purposes were needed. They
cited the example of the New Univeltéity in Brussels which had been
decided upon by a meeting of Belgian intellectuals in 1894. The
suppression of Elisée Reclus, a distinguished philosopher and geographer
by the secular Free University of Belgium, for his support of the Paris
Commune had led Belgian Socialists to conclude, like American Socialists,
that the established universities had come to represent vested interests
more than the pursuit of ideas."6

The courses that were to be offered in the Socialist Institute in
Chicago were American Industrial History, by A.M. Simons; Political

Economy by May Wood Simons; Socialism by May Wood Simons; Biological

Sociology by Ernest Untermann; and Anthropology by Professor Jerome H.

162

Raymond of the University of Chicago. In addition to these courses which
were to be given during the day and which were to occupy the student's
full time, evening lectures were also proposed. These, on European
Capitals and their Social Significance, Industrial History and Social
Psychology, were to be given, it was hoped by Jerome Raymond, James
Minnick and George Herron, respectively.

A significant criticism (of the exploitation of student labor by
unscrupulous, ambitious professors) was made by A.M. Simons in his
description of the manner in which these courses would be conducted.
The work was to be carried on as a "co-operative investigation" by
faculty and students with frequent meetings for discussion, mutual
criticism and planning. Also, Simons added,

If thought to be of sufficient value by

the class the results will be published.

In all cases full credit will be given to

all participating in the work. NO "professor"

will "grow great" on the work of others, as

has so often been the case in our great

capitalist universities.“7
As sources for study the excellent library facilities of the Chicago
vicinity were cited. The John Crerar Library had the best collection of
Socialist and Trade Union publications in the United States, and
contained the Henry Demarest Lloyd Collection on labor problems and
monopoly. The Newberry Library, the Chicago Public Library, and the
Illinois Historical Society Library were all strong in American History.
Also available to the students was the private library of A.M. and May
Wood Simons with its very complete collection of recent American and
European works on Socialism.

The Socialist Institute was also to make ingenious use of materials,

invaluable for studies in the social sciences, like the U.S. Census which

163

could be secured by application to local members of Congress. Simons, at
this time editor of the Intehnationai Sociaiibt Revieun had articles
reprinted in that journal thus making some significant work inexpensively
available to the students. Simons also contributed his own sociological
research results. An example of this was the panphlet, Packingtnwn, an
investigation of the conditions of the Chicago stockyards and meat-packing
industry. Simons was also writing and using as reference material his
series on American History for the Workers praised by Frederick Jackson
Turner as "peculiarly effective" for their purpose. The Charles Kerr
Publishing House also put out inexpensive editions of Socialist classics
and other pamphlets useful to the student of Socialist economics and
philosophy.

The Chicago Institute, unlike the Rand School, lacked a rich
benefactor. In spite of the enthusiasm of its sponsors and lecturers
(and their ingenious attempts to circumvent inadequate financing) it
survived for only two years.

The Rand School continued for many years to Offer an extensive range
of courses of study to working men and women as well as to full time
students. The Rand School also sponsored, and published the results
of, research in the social sciences. Neither in the United States nor
abroad, however, were the attempted Socialist institutions of higher
education able to compete seriously as alternatives to the established
universities and colleges. These had the advantages of substantial
private and public endowments as well as their reputations and power as
accredited granters of the certificates, degrees and diplomas which
opened the doors to professional positions and prestige.

There is little doubt then that Socialists found the higher learning

of the American college and university a very flawed process. Their

164

student bodies were recruited almost entirely from the upper and middle
class. Those few representatives of the working class who did attend
colleges were liable to be corrupted and spoiled by their contacts with
bourgeois culture,and their inevitable acquisition of its values.

Personal success, material advancement and a swift rise out of the working
class to positions that ensured minimal contacts with industrial labor
were the major objects of study. Moreover, the close connection between
the university and the economic and political oligarchy directly discouraged
the critical investigation of crucial social, economic, even historical
problems. For the Socialists higher education could no more be divorced
from their philosophy of social morality than could progressive theory

in the elementary school. Learning meant much more than the production

of doctors, scientists, engineers. It had to include the co-ordination

of these special branches of knowledge with the social duty of advancing

the welfare, enlightenment and cultural involvement of the masses.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

NOTES

Chapter VII

Robert Rives La Monte, "The New Intellectuals", NeW’Reviflv

(January 1914): 45.

T.J. Maxwell, "News and Views", Inteanationai Sociaiibt Revien’ 9
(June 1909): 1014.

Carl D. Thompson, "Who constitutes the Proletariat", Inteanationai
Sociaiibt Revieu 9 (February 1909): 610.

Barnet G. Braverman, ”College Proletarians", The MaAAeA, March 1912.
Henry Flury, "College Men and Socialism", Intehnationai Sociaiibt
Review 9 (August 1908): 133.

Ibid., p. 133.

Victor L. Berger, "Education and the Masses", The Mabbeb, March 1912.
Editorial, The Caii, 5 December 1909.

Charles Dobbs, "Brains", Intehnationai Sociaiibt Review 8

(March 1908): 533.

Robert Rives La Monte, "News and Views", Inteanationai Sociaiibt
Review 8 (April 1908): 634.

Victor L. Berger, "Education and the Masses", The MaAAeA, March 1912.
A.M. Simons, "Editorial", Intennationai Sociaiiat Reuiev 4
(January 1904): 430-31.

William D. Haywood, "News and Views", Intehnationai Sociaiiat
Revieklll (June 1910): 1096.

Robert Rives La Monte, "News and Views", Intennationai Sociaiiat

RevieuIB (April 1908): 635-36.

165

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

166

Hubert Lagardelle, "The Intellectuals and Working Class Socialism,"
Translated by Charles Kerr. Intehnationai Sociatiét Revimv 8

(July l907):39.

Coming Nation, 14 October 1911, p. 16.

Charles Edward Russell, "Are the Universities Instruments of Evil,"
Coming Nation, 7 January 1911, p, 2-4.

Editorial, Appeai.to Reabon, 9 December 1911.

William Brown, "Plutocracy or Democracy," Inteanationai Sociaiibt
Review 1 (July 1900):9.

A.M. Simons, "The Ignorance of the Schools," Intetnationai Sociaiibt
Review 4 (September l903):l76.

Henry Leffman, "Capitalistic Control of Education," Intehnationai
Sociaiibt Review' 9 (July 1908):26.

Adam Israeli, "Capitalistic Science," Intehnationai SociaiiAt Review
8 (October l907):225-27.

Henry Leffman, "Capitalistic Control of Education," Inteanationai
.9th Review 9 (July 1908):32-34.

William Rainey Harper, as quoted in Chester Destler, Henay Demaaebt
Lioyd, and the Bnpiae 06 Refiamm (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1963), p. 368.

Appeai to Reabon, 24 April 1909.

As quoted in Howard H. Quint, The Fonging 06 Amemican SociaiiAm,
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1953) p. 133.

A.M. Simons, "Capitalism in the Universities,” Inteanationai Sociaiibt
Reuiav 1 (April 1901):667.

Appeal to Reabon, 28 April 1911.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

167

Arthur Wallace Calhoun, "Academic Slavery " New Revieu (February
1914): 95-97.

Quoted in Scott Nearing, The Making 06 a Radicai, (New York: Harper
Colophon Books, 1972), p. 83. 1

Ibid. p. 56.

Ibid. p. 94.

Appeai to Reabon, 9 September 1911.

Editorial, Coming Nation, 13 March 1913, p. 4.

Appeai.to ReaAon, 4 March 1911.

Appeal to Reabon, 20 April 1912.

Ernest Poole, "The Intercollegiate Socialist," Coming Nation,

13 April 1912, p. 8.

Appeal to ReaAon, 8 May 1909.

Frank Bohn, "A University Hunger Strike," The MaAAeA, May 1914.
Appeai.to Reabon, 11 November 1911.

Harlow Gale, "The Relation of Instructor and Student," Reprinted
from Minnesota Magazine. IntZAnationai.Sociaii6t Reviav 1

(February 1901):490-92.

A.M. Simons and May Wood Simons, "Plans for a Study Class in Sociology,"

Inteanationai Sociaiibt Revieul 4 (May 1904):760.

"The New Socialist Review School," Inteanationai Sociaiibt Rewimv
4 (June 1904):742-43.

Charles Kerr, "The Real Facts about Ruskin College," Intehnationai
Sociaiiit ReVieMI 4 (September 1903):192.

A.M. Simons and May Wood Simons, "Plans for a Study Class in

Sociology," Inteanationai Sociaiibt Revieul 4 (May 1904):760-6l.

46.

168

Odon Por, "The New University at Brussels," Intennationai Sociaiibt

Reutew 7 (August 1906):212.

A.M. Simons, "Investigation and Education for Socialists," Inten-

nationai Sociatiét Reviau 5 (August 1904):112-13.

Chapter VIII
CONCLUSION: THE FUNDAMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF

SOCIALIST EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT 1900 TO 1920

Three major characteristics may be discerned in Socialist educational
thought in the period from 1900 to 1920. One is the attempt to describe
an educational ideal which would be implemented in the Socialist society
which Socialists believed then, would emerge very soon from the inevit-
able break-down and failure of the capitalist system in America.

A second characteristic is evident in the arguments for immediate
reforms and adaptations of the existing system of education so that
its benefits would be extended to the children of the working classes.
It is here that Socialist educational thought approximates closely that
of other reformers like the Progressives. It should be emphasized,
however, that equality of educational opportunity was not substituted
by Socialists for the radical changes in organization and curriculum
which formed the basis of their educational ideology. Other groups
which have been identified as underprivileged or oppressed, in these
later decades of the twentieth century, were also included in Socialist
concern during this period. This is particularly true of the cause of
women's rights, where equality in education and the teaching profession
were enthusiastically advocated by almost all Socialists, including an
articulate group of women in the movement. The right of women to
continue teaching after marriage was a cause that Socialists resolutely
endorsed, for example. On the other hand, the educational plight of

black people was seen within the context of the class struggle and

169

170

there are few indications that it was perceived as being connected

with race rather than economic status. However, a series of articles

on black Americans by the Socialist historian, I.M. Robbins,
included one on their education which discussed the disagreement between
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBOis. Robbins' conclusion, in

line with general Socialist educational philosophy supported the
position of DuBOis and deplored the exclusive emphasis given by Wash-
ington to manual skill training for black people.

The third major characteristic is the emphasis given in Socialist
educational thought to the study of the social sciences - economics,
sociology, history and anthropology. Socialists were also enthusiastic
supporters of the inclusion of physical and natural sciences in the
curriculum of the schools and colleges. Their views on the place of
industrial and domestic arts were more complex. Socialists were
insistent that such education be sponsored by public authorities, be
a part of the curriculum in all_schools, in order that it not become a
system of class education reserved for the training of working class
children, and that it ought never to be an end in itself, substituted
for general education in academic subjects.

‘ The educational ideals which Socialists hoped to see realized were
intimately related to their perception of what constituted the good
society. Here Socialist educational writers challenged their fellow
citizens, educators in particular, to think out the implications of those
terms, freedom and equality, which were the core values of the American
nation. Socialists believed that these values, born in the humanistic and

rational atmosphere of the eighteenth century needed rigorous re-interpretation

171

following the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution which had
transformed economic and, therefore, social relationships. Freedom
and equality as values were considered worthy, indeed central to
Socialists as societal goads, but the transfer Of all significant
economic resources to the control of the few had created a situation
of gross inequality and as a consequence a condition of de facto
servitude for the masses. Such an economic situation nullified the
democratic promise of American life and involved the schools in a
constant contradiction between their expressed democratic goals and
the capitalist realities to which teacher, parent, and student

were subject.

The Socialists located their goals in human history, in the
deve10pment and enhancement of human happiness and fulfillment. Even
the pre-modern Socialism of the communitarians exhibited a concern,
unusual at the time, for the welfare of every individual in the
community, from cradle to grave. The central idea of Socialist
educational theory was the completest possible development of the
individual in every aspect of his being. This can be seen as a constant
in the Socialist tradition in educational thought, in Marx's objection
to the alienation of the laborer from the fruits of his labor, in the
Perfectionists' system of job rotation, in the American Socialist
Party's disapproval of an exclusive emphasis upon industrial education.
It derived, of course, partly from the Socialist belief that the
twentieth century should see the dawning of the day of the common man,
and that the traditional relegation of a whole class to the performance
of the arduous, often dirty and unpleasant but necessary labor of

society must end. Slavery and serfdom had been abolished. "Wage

172

slavery" must be next. It was with an Old radicallquestion that
Socialists challenged the educational system.

When Adam delved, and Eve span

Who was then the gentleman?
Some Socialists looked forward to the solution of the problem of who
should perform the onerous tasks of society in the application of
technology. More realistically, and with perhaps greater insight into
psychological needs, most American Socialists embraced another education-
work philosophy.

These Socialists believed that, with the removal of the profit-
motive in society, an integration of learning, work, art and service
to the community could be brought about. This view was an interesting
contrast to the Puritan work ethic although not completely Opposed to
its view of some work as duty. Paradoxically, the Socialist ideal more
closely resembled the aristocratic concept of work as pleasure and
pastime. It was here that the Socialists found themselves at one with
the theorists of progressive education. The Socialist admiration of
and Support for, Dewey's educational philosophy has been discussed as
well as Floyd Dell's espousal of the programs of the Association for
the Advancement of Progressive Education. In a truly democratic
society, Socialists envisaged no abrupt separation between education,
work and pleasure. The conditions under which choices could be made
about occupation, familiar to the upper classes but a luxury unattain-
able by the industrial laborers, should be made possible for all. The
drudgery of factory, mine, field and office would be abolished by

changing both the physical and moral conditions of the work performed

173

there. Since in a Socialist community, economic enterprises would be
controlled by the people for the people's benefit, the conditions

under which people worked would be arranged with their welfare as the
dominant concern rather than the maximization Of profit. The construction
and maintenance of plants, hours of work, facilities for study, cultural
activities, recreation would all reflect this priority. However impor-
tant the achievement of these improved material conditions might be,

this would be less vital than the spirit of co-operation and public
service which the achievement of economic democracy, that is Socialism,
would release and foster. This is why Socialists appreciated the
educational possibilities for Socialism of Dewey's educational philos-
Ophy with its emphasis on self-direction, co-operation with others in

the solution of problems, and its encouragement of the experimental
spirit. If the masses were to be proficient in the control of their
economy, their politics, their lives, the habits of subservience, and
passivity resulting from the traditional system of education, particularly
as it Operated among the lower classes, had to be replaced. As Socialists
saw it, the factory-like atmosphere of the common school descendant of

the Lancasterian classroom with its regimentation and hierarchies of
authority was admirably suited to the production of proletarian

operatives with just enough mental skills to run the machinery effi-
ciently. Instead, Socialist educators wanted an education that would
make free, active, intelligent citizens of all. And this aim, they
reiterated was after all the stated goal of the American School. If,
after the reformation of the conditions and meaning of industrial and
agricultural activity there remained undesirable tasks which were

essential to productivity and the maintenance of civil life, it was

174

understood, as suggested by Bellamy, that these were either rewarded
by some special privileges, or preferably performed by volunteers as
a public service. The point was that industrial productivity, as
examplified by the factory particularly, should be the responsibility
and interest of all.

In regard to these most basic principles of Socialist educational
thought, and since Socialists have never come to achieve power in the
United States, it is interesting to reflect upon the lines which
educational policies took in the Soviet Union and are taking in the
People's Republic of China. The first decade after the Russian Rev-
olution saw the triumph of Dewey's educational ideas in the class
room. Non-authoritarian methodologies, the dethronement of the teacher,
the de-emphasis upon grades and examinations, and the encouragement
of initiative and experimentation were the characteristics of Soviet
education in this era. In the 1930's however, the situation reversed.
Dewey's philosophy was vilified and Soviet educational practice
extolled the central role of the teacher as instructor, the importance
of mastering prescribed bodies of subject matter, passing examinations,
and the selection of an elite for specialized studies in the university.
The rejection of the Socialist democratic ideal in education might be
compared with the triumph of the authoritarian bureaucracy in the state.

In China, on the other hand, the Great Proletarian Cultural Rev-
olution which began in 1966 at Peking University opened with a challenge to
educational institutions to reject the accelerating return to tradition-
alism and authoritarianism with their de facto exclusion of the

children of workers and peasants. The Cultural Revolution, so far, has

17S

reasserted the importance of realizing Socialist goals. Students

and teachers are sharing in the tasks of production by working in

the fields and factories alongside peasants and workers. Studies in
the schools and universities are being more clOsely co-ordinated with
efforts to serve the masses of the people. For instance, the training
of bare-foot doctors, medical aides who are to go out to remote
villages to administer medicine, perform minor operations and advance
public health, is promoted vigorously. Experimenting upon themselves
to find new uses and Sites for the application of acupuncture in
performing operations and cures is also reported. Many of the educa-
tional ideas that have been put into practice during the Cultural
Revolution seem like the incarnation of Dewey's philosophy, and perhaps
illustrate the impossibility Of its execution in any but a Socialist
environment. This was, of course, the central contradiction facing the
American Socialists - the difficulty of introducing Socialist values
and goals into an educational system which in fact served the perpet-
uation of values like "getting ahead", competitiveness, and the
achievement Of individual success.

Where Socialist educators called for adjustments in the educational
system that would open it up to the children of all classes they met
with a wider sympathy. The exposures by the Socialists Robert Hunter
and John Spargo, in Hungen and The Bitten Chg 06 the Chiidnen led
to some attempts to provide school meals and medical attention. The
Inteanationai Sociaiiet Revia01reported in 1910 that even the Republi-
cans, in the Busse administration of Chicago had begun to supply penny

lunches to children. The demands for these services as a minimal effort

176

to enable the children of the economically deprived to benefit from
the provision of public education were the regular features of both
national and municipal Socialist campaign platforms, in the period
from 1900 to 1920. The sanguine prophecy of Grace Potter in 1913 that

within two years arrangements for providing

warm meals, dinner or lunch, if not break-

fast, for school children will be under way

in all large American cities and the most

progressive rural districts.1
has yet to be realized. The recent efforts of the Black Panthers, for
example, to provide breakfasts for poor black children illustrates
the far from complete acceptance of the principle advocated by
Socialists half a century ago that supportive services had to be
assumed by the community to make educational Opportunities a reality
for the children of the poor.

In connection with the process of learning itself, Socialists
demanded that school supplies and text books be given free to all
students. There were also suggestions that pensions be paid to
impoverished parents so that all children could stay at school as
long as they wished notwithstanding the need of their families for
the contribution of their wages. Socialists also belieVed that "a
complete educational ladder for all children from kindergarten to
doctorate without a penny of charge to the individual" should be
provided. Another insistent demand and one which was immediately
implemented in municipalities under Socialist control was for the
fuller use of school buildings. This was a minor illustration of the

Socialist belief in the integration of life, education, work and

culture, as well as meeting the practical need of the working peOple

177

for meeting places and recreational facilities. Floyd Dell stated
the case

Let us get over the notion that school

buildings are sacrosanct. We seem to regard

with jealous pride the utter emptiness and

uselessness of our school buildings after

hours; it is a kind of ceremonial waste-

fulness which appeals to some deep-seated

sense of religious taboo in us. We feel

that it is a desecration to allow dances and

political meetings to be held there.2

The imperfect realization of any of these reforms relating to
education proposed by the Socialists of the early twentieth century
indicates that, in spite of the sporadic sympathy they engendered,
a sustained public policy in these areas has not been achieved. This
is so in spite of the mounting evidence that good food and good health
are vital ingredients of mental as well as educational growth. These
supportive educational policies remain most relevant to the construction
of a system which aspires to the goal of equal educational Opportunity,
at least.
The third major component of Socialist educational thought -

which comprised the demand for a radical revision of the content of
the curriculum - indicates Socialist awareness of the use of the modern
educational system as a process Of indoctrination in the values of
the status quo. In the United States, as Socialists perceived it, this
meant that an effective, if subtle, system of censorship prevented
the presentation of viewpoints opposed to capitalist values. Socialists
cited, as we have observed, the control of higher education by the
same forces as controlled the great corporations, with the consequent

suppression of criticism. Even at the level of the local school, the

voice of the working class was inaudible and only the representatives

178

of business, and the middle class were on the school boards. Thus, in
the area of the social studies particularly, there was a non-development
of interpretations and even courses of study which would seriously
challenge the capitalist view of society. A whole new generation was
thus indoctrinated with the myths of the capitalist state and taught
that salvation depended upon individual success and good fortune.
George Herron wrote,

It is interesting and easy to see the trade marks

of capitalism all through our present public

school instruction; to point out the subtle yet

sure perversion of fact and of history; to record

omissions of things once taught in the schools,

and the addition of things not previously taught.

We may also note the introduction of the military

Spirit and ideal into the public school; the

instruction in, and insistence upon the child's

reverence for patriotism - patriotism, the super-

stition which our masters impose upon us in order

to keep the workers of the world divided against

each other; patriotism which has come to be little

more than greed with the flag over it.3
A non-Socialist discussion of the efforts by business to influence
the curriculum may be found in 8. Alexander Rippa's Education in a
Fnee Society.“

In conclusion, Socialists agreed that until a Socialist state
came into being their educational ideas could only be imperfectly
implemented. Socialists were convinced that the vision of a society,
encouraged by capitalist myth, where poverty would be non-existent and
where every individual could realize his full potential could not be
realized without a social and economic organization appropriate to its
accomplishment. Socialism as a political movement has failed, so far,

in the United States to gain the power to accomplish its ends.

Nevertheless the Socialist educational ideals generated during the

179

first two decades of the twentieth century continue to have relevance
to the American educational scene. Social class structure remains the
most important single factor in educational deprivation and failure.5
Supportive social services, remedial programs, econOmic assistance to
poor students and their families remain grossly inadequate to achieve
the goal of providing even for equal educational opportunity. The
problems of alienation, evidenced among industrial workers in increasing
sabotage, and among the business and professional classes and their
offspring in the questioning of life styles, suggest the fruitfulness

of the basic educational ideals that labor, intellect, art and service
need to be integrated in the individual. And finally, the disorder

and disintegration of civic and school life lend validity to the
Socialist criticism that the encouragement of rampant individualism

as a value cannot be substituted for the commitment to a healthy

community life, organized along principles of just distribution.

NOTES

Chapter VIII

Grace Potter, "School Feeding: A Book Review", New Review

(June 1913): 603.

Floyd Dell, Were You Even a Chiid? (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1919), p. 24.

George Herron, "The Social Opportunity", Inteanationai.30ciaii6t
Review 4 (February 1904): 586.

S. Alexander Rippa, Education in a Fnee Society (New York:

David McKay Co., Inc., 1967), pp. 265-82.

Christopher Jencks, Inequality: A Reabéebément 06 the Efifiect 06
Famiiy and Schooiing in Amentca (New York: Basic Books, 1972)
documents the failure of, and inability of educational institutions
to compensate for the disadvantages of being a member of the less
privileged socio-economic classes in the United States in improving

academic achievement.

180

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

I. BOOKS

Addams, Jane. Democnacy and Sociai EthicA. New York: Macmillan Co.,
1902.

Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backwand, 2000-1887. New York: New American
Library, 1960.

Bottomore, T.B. and Rubel, Maximilian, eds. Kant.Manx, Setected Wnitingb
in Socioiogy and Sociat Phiioaophy. London: Watts and Co., 1956.

Brisbane, Albert. The Sociai.DeAtiny 06 Man. Philadelphia: C.F.
Stollmeyer, 1840.

Caute, David, ed. Eééentiai Wnitingb 06 Kant Manx. New York: Macmillan
Co., 1967.

DeLeon, Daniel. Revotution on RefioMn. New York: Pamphlet, 1943.
Dell, Floyd. Wene You Even A Chiid? New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919.

Dewey, John. The Infituence 06 Dannwn.on PhiiOAOphy and Othen.E66ayw.
New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1910.

Engels, Frederick. Intnoduction to the Diatectic 06 Natune. Marx and
Engels Selected Works. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1961.

Fourier, Charles. Debign éon Utopia, with an introduction by Charles
Gide and translated by Julia Franklin. New York: Schocken
Books, 1971.

Gronlund, Laurence. The Co-openative Corrmonweatth. Boston: Lee and
Shepard, 1884.

Hillquit, Morris. Loobe Leaveb 6nom a Baby Li6e. New York: Rand
School Press, 1934.

Hughan, Jessie Wallace. Amenican Sociaiibm 06 the Pnebent Day.
New York: John Lane Co., 1911.

La Monte, Robert Rives and H.L. Mencken. Men venbub the Man, A
Correspondence. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1910.

182

183

London, Jack. Eaaaya 06 Revott, ed. Leonard D. Abbott. New York:
Vanguard Press, 1926.

London, Jack. The Inon Heei. New York: Bantam Books Edition, 1971.

Marx, Karl. Capitai: A Cnitique 06 Poiiticai Econany. Chicago:
Charles Kerr and Co., 1906.

Marx, Karl. Economic and Phiioeophic Manubcniptt 06 1844. Moscow:
Foreign Language Publishing House, 1961.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick. The.Genman Ideoiogy, edited and with
an introduction by R. Pascal. New York: International Publishers, 1939.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick. The Cmmunibt Manifiebto, ed. Francis B.
Randall, trans. Samual Moore. New York: Washington Square Press,
Inc., 1964.

Melvin, Floyd J. Soctattam at the Sociotogicat Ideat. New York:
Sturgis and Walton Co., 1915.

Mills, Walter Thomas. The Stnuggie fion Exiotence. Chicago: John F.
Higgins, 1904.

Nearing, Scott. The Mahing 06 a Radicai. New York: Macmillan Co., 1972.

Nearing, Scott. The Nev Education: A Review 05 Pnogneaatve Education
MovenentA 06 the Day. Chicago: Row, Peterson and Co., 1915.

Nearing, Scott. Sociat.AdjuAtment. New York: Macmillan Co., 1915.
Noyes, John Humphrey. The Benean. New York: Arno Press, 1969.

Noyes, Pierrepont. My Fathen'b Hoube, An Oneida Boyhood. New York:
Farrar and Rinehart Inc., 1937.

Owen, Robert. A New View 06 Society, A Facsimile Reproduction of the
Third Edition printed in London in 1817. Glencoe, Illinois:
The Free Press.

Parton, Mary Field, ed. Autobiognaphy 06 Mothen Jonee. Chicago:
Charles Kerr and Co., 1972.

Sams, Henry W., ed. Autobiognaphy 06 Bnooh.Fanm. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice—Hall, Inc., 1958.

Sears, John Van Der Zee. My Fntenda at Bnooh Fanm. New York: Desmond
Fitzgerald, 1912.

Spargo, John. The Bitten Cny 06 the Chiidnen. New York: Macmillan
Co., 1913.

184

Triggs, Oscar Lovell. The Changing Unden. Chicago: Charles Kerr
and Co., 1913.

Walling, William English. The Langen Aapecta 06 SociatiAm. New York:
Macmillan Co., 1913.

Walling, William English; Phelps Stokes, J.G.; Hughan, Jessie Wallace;
Laidler, Harry W.; and other members of the Intercollegiate

Socialist Society. The Sociatibm 06 Today. New York: Henry Holt
and Co., 1916.

11. ARTICLES

Abbott, Leonard, "A Latter Day Brook Farm." Intennationai Sociatitt
Review’l (May 1901):700-705.

Allen, Carrie W. "Child Slaves of the Cotton Mill." Intennationat
Sociatiat Review 11 (January 1910):521-23.

Andrews, E.E. "The Monopoly of Intellect." Intennationai.30ciaii4t
Review 1 (June 1901):765-68.

Bellamy, Edward. "Looking Backward Again." Month Amenican RevieW,
150, 1890, pp. 362-63.

Berger, Victor. "Education and the Masses." The Matbet, March 1912.
Bohn, Frank. ”A University Hunger Strike." The Matted, May 1914.

Bohn, William. "What Kind of Education?" The New Review; April 1916,
pp. 113-15.

Boudin, Louis. "The Concentration of Capital and the Disappearance of
the Middle Class." Intennationai Sociaiibt Revieul7 (August 1906):
73-90.

Braverman, Barnet G. "College Proletarians." The Mabbeb, March 1912.

Brown, William. "Plutocracy or Democracy." Intennationai SociaiiAt
Reviev 1 (July 1900):1-16.

Calhoun, Arthur W. "Academic Slavery." The New Reviev, February 1914,
pp. 95-97.

Calhoun, Arthur. "Schools for Democracy." The MaAAeA, May 1912.

Cohen, Joseph. "Socialism for Students." Intennationai SociaiiAt
Review 9 (June l909):965-74.

"Consideration of the Literacy Test for the Restriction of Immigration."
The New Review, March 1913, pp. 376-81.

185

Dobbs, Charles. "Brains." Intennationat.SociaiiAt RevieW’S (March 1908):
533-37.

Eastman, Max. "Editorial." The Maaaea, December 1913.

Eastman, Max. Addnebo to the Juny.ih the Second MaAAeA Thiat. New
York: 1919 .

Flury, Henry. ”College Men and Socialism." Intennationai SociaiiAt
Revien 9 (August 1908):131-34.

Gale, Harlow. ”The Relation of Instructor and Student." Reprinted from
the Minnesota Magazine. Intennationat Sociaiibt Review 1
(February 1901):486-92.

Grendon, Felix. "Children's Rights." The Na» Reuimu, February 1916,
pp. 87-96.

Grendon, Felix. "Letter to the Editor." The New Review; May 1915,
pp. 45-46.

Haywood, William. "News and Views." Intennationai Sociaiibt Review
11 (June 1910):1096.

Herron, George. "Socialism and Religion." Intennationai Sociatiat
Reviov 1 (January 1901):433-37.

Herron, George. "The Social Opportunity." Intennationai Sociatitt
Revien’4 (February 1904):577-96.

Israeli, Adam. "Capitalistic Science." Intennationai Sociatiot
Review 8 (October 1907):220-27.

Kerr, Charles. "Trade Union Support for Socialist Journals." Inten-
nationai Sociaiibt Revimfi 8(December 1907):343.

Kerr, Charles. "The Real Facts about Ruskin College." Intennationai
Sociaiibt Reviev 4 (September 1903):192.

Kotsch, Georgia. "News and Views." Intennationat Sociatiat Revimv
9 (April 1909):819.

Lagardelle, Hubert. ”The Intellectuals and Working Class Socialism."
Intennationat Sociattat Revien’B (July 1901):31-4l.

La Monte, Robert Rives. "The New Intellectuals." The New Reuiov,
January 1914, pp. 45-53.

La Monte, Robert Rives. "News and Views." Intennationai Sociatiat
RevieMIS (April 1908):634-37.

186

Leffman, Henry. "Capitalistic Control of Education." Intennationai
Sociatiat Review 9 (July 1908):26-33.

Lewis, Arthur M. ”Benjamin Kidd's Religious Interpretation of History."
IntMnationaK Socialist Review 8 (February 1908):474-76.

Lewis, Austin. "Socialism and Education." Intennationai Sociaiibt
Revieu19 (November l908):37S-80.

Mann, Horace. ”The Ideals and Shortcomings of Society." Intennationai
Soctatéat Review 3 (January 1904):47o-75.

Mason, Walt. '"Fool Knowledge." Appeai to Reabon, 23 October 1911.

Maxwell, T.J. "News and Views." Intennationai Sociaiitt Review‘9
(June 1909):1013-15. '

Meily, Clarence. "Why the Working Man is without a Church." Inten-
nationat,SociatiAt Reviev 7 (January 1907):459-61.

Poole, Ernest. ”The Intercollegiate Socialist." Coming Nation, 13
April 1912, pp. 8-10.

Por, Odon. "The New University at Brussels." Intennationai.Socia£iAt
Reviev 7 (October 1906):209-20.

Potter, Grace. "School Feeding: A Book Review." The New Reuimfi,
June 1913, pp. 603-607.

"Review Of S.E. Forman's 'Living among the Poor'", Intennationai
Sociaiiot Revieun 1 (June 1907):717-18.

Russell, Charles Edward. ”Are the Universities Instruments of Evil?"
Coming Nation, 7 January 1911, pp. 2-4.

Simons, A.M. "Capitalism in the Universities." Intennationai SociatiAt
Revieull (April 1901):666-68.

Simons, A.M. "Editorial." Intennationai Sociaiiot Reviev 1 (November 1900):
316-20.

Simons, A.M. "Editorial." Intennationai.Sociaii4t Review 4 (January
1904): 430-31.

Simons, A.M._"Ignorance of the Schools." Intennationat Sociaiibt
Revieu14 (September 1903):174-78.

Simons, A.M. ”Investigation and Education for Socialists.” Intennationai
30W: Review 5 (August 1904):112-13.

Simons, A.M. and May Wood. ”Plans for a Study Class in Sociology."
Intennationat Soctatibt Review*4 (May 1904):760—64.

187

Simons, May Wood. "Education and Democracy." Intennationat Sociaiiét
Revieu 3 (January 1902):90-96.

Simons, May Wood. "Education and Socialism." Intennationai Sociatibt
Reviev, 1 (April 1901):600-605.

Simons, May Wood. "Building a New School System." Coming Nation,
10 June 1911, pp. 3-4.

Sombart, Werner. "A Study of the Historical Development of the American
Proletariat." Intennationai Sociaiibt Revieul7 (September 1905):
129-36, (November 1905):293-30l, (December 1905):358-67.

Thompson, Carl D. "Who Constitutes the Proletariat?" Intennationat
Sociatitt Reviov 9 (February l909):603-12.

Walling, William English. "Letter to the Editor." The New Reviev, 15
April 1915, pp. 221-23.

"Editorial." Appeai to Reaaon, 31 July 1909.
"Editorial." Appeat.to Reabon, 14 August 1909.
"Editorial." Appeal to Reabon, 9 December 1911.
"Editorial." The Catt, 5 December 1909.
"Editorial.” Coming Nation, 13 March 1913.
"Editorial." The Maaaea, December 1913.
Appeat to ReaAon, 24 April 1909.

Appeai to Reaton, 8 May 1909.

Appeai to ReaAon, 4 March 1911.

Appeai to Reabon, 28 April 1911.

Appeat to Reaton, 9 September 1911.

Appeat to ReaAon, 11 November 1911.

Appeat to Reaaon, 20 April 1912.

Coming Nation, 14 October 1911.

SECONDARY SOURCES

I. BOOKS

Aaron, Daniel. Wniteno on the Lefit. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World, Inc., 1961. '

Armytage, W.H.G. HeavenA Betow. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961.

Bestor, Arthur Eugene Jr. Backwoodb Utopiaa. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1950.

Boudin, Louis. The Theoneticat Syétem 06 Kant Manx. Chicago: Charles
Kerr and Co., 1915.

Bowers, C.A. The Pnogneaatve Educatona and the Depneaaion. New York:
Random House, 1969.

Callahan, Raymond E. An Intnoductton to Education in Amentcan Society.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.

Cantor, Milton. Max EaAtman. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970.

Destler, Chester. Henny Demuneat Lloyd and the Emptne 05 Refiomn.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963.

Dickens, Charles. Amentcan Notea 60a Genenat Cincutation. London:
Everyman's, 1907.

Douglas, Paul. Amentcan Appnenticeahip and Induatniat Education.
New York: Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and
Public Law, 1921.

Egbert, Donald Drew and Persons, Stow, eds. Sociatibm and Amenican Lifie.

Vols. 1 and 2. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1952.

Edwards, Jonathan. anhb 06 Pnebident Edwanda. Vol. 2. New York:
Leavitt, Trow and Co., 1844.

Emerson, Ralph waldo. Comptete Wanna. Vol. 2, edited by E.W. Emerson.
Centenary Edition. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903.

Flory, Claud R. Economic CniticiAm in Amenican Fiction. New York:
Russell and Russell, 1937.

Fraser, Stewart E. Education and Corrmuniém in China. Hong Kong:
International Studies Group, 1969.

Freedman, Robert. Manxibt Sociat Thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace
and World, Inc., 1968.

188

189

Fried, Albert. Socumentany Hiatony 06 Amenican Sociatidm. New York:
Doubleday, 1969.

Harrington, Michael. Sociatitm. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1970.

Harris, David. Sociatitt OniginA in the United Stateb. The Netherlands:
Van Gorcum and Co., 1966.

Hofstadter, Richard M. Sociat Danwinitm in Amenican Thought. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1955.

Hawthrone, Nathaniel. "The Shaker Bridal", Vol. 1, pp. 469-766 of
Comptete Wonkb; and "The Canterbury Pilgrims", Vol. 3, pp. 518-30 of
Comptete WonkA. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1882.

Holloway, Mark. Heavenb on Eanth. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966.

Hook, Sidney. Manx and the Manxibtt. Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van
Nostrand and Co., Inc., 1955.

Hu, Chang-Tu, ed. Chinebe Education unden CommuniAm. New York: Teachers'
College, Columbia University, 1962.

Jencks, ChristOpher, Inequality: A Rea66e63ment 06 the Efifiect 06 Family
and Schooting in Amenica. New York: Basic Books, 1972.

Johnson, Oakley C. Robemt Oven in the United Stateb. New York:
Humanities Press, 1970.

Kipnis, Ira. The Amenican SociatiAtiMovement. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1952.

Kreuter, Kent and Gretchen. An Amenican.UiAAenten. The Lifie 06 Atgie
Mantin Simone t870-1950. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1969.

Lasch, ChristOpher. The Agony 06 the Amenican Lefit. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1969.

Maclure, William. Education and Refiolzm at New Hazunony; Conneapondence
06 Wittiam Mactune and Manic DuctOA Fnetageot. Edited by Arthur
E. Bestor, Jr. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1948.

Martineau, Harriet. Society in Amenica. Vol. 2. New York: Saunders
and Otley, 1837.

Mills, C. Wright. The Manxittt. Great Britain: Penguin Books, 1962.

Nee, Victor. The Cuttunat.Revotution at Peking Univenbity. New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1969.

Nordhoff, Charles. The CommuniAtic SocietieA 06 the United Statea.
New York: Schocken Books, 1965.

Noyes, John Humphrey. Hibtony 06 Amenican Sociatiama with a new
introduction by Mark Holloway. New York: Dover Publications, 1966.

Parrington, Vernon Louis. Amenican Dneama. New York: Russell and
Russell, Inc., 1964.

190

Parton, Mary Field, ed. Autobiogaaphy 06 Mothea.JoneA. Chicago:
Charles Kerr and Co., 1972.

Quint, Howard H. The Foaging 06 Amenican Sociatitm. Indianapolis:
Bobbs—Merrill Co., Inc., 1953.

Rideout, Walter B. The Radicat Nouet in the United Statea 1900-1954.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1956.

Rippa, S. Alexander. Education in a Fhee Society. New York: David
McKay Co., Inc., 1967.

Rippa, S. Alexander, ed. Educational IdeaA in.Ameaica: A Documentaay
HiAtoay. New York: David McKay Co., 1969.

Rudolph, Frederick. The Amenican Cottege and Univeaoity. New York:
Vintage Books, 1962.

Shannon, David A. The Sociaiiot Paaty 06 Amenica. New York: Macmillan
Co., 1955.

Slesinger, Zalmen. Education and the CtaAA Sthuggte. New York:
Covici Friede, 1937.

Stetler, Henry Gruber. The.SociatiAtiMovement in Reading, Pennoytuania,
7896-1936. Storrs, Connecticut, 1943.

Tawney, Richard H. The Radica£.Thadition. London: George Allen and
Unwin, Ltd., 1964.

Weinstein, James. The Pectine 06 Sociaiitm, 7972-1925. New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1967.

WinthrOp, John. Lifie and Letteab 06 John Winthaop by Robert C. Winthrop.
Vol. 2. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1869.

Yorburg, Betty. Utopia and Reatity, A Cottectiue Poataait 06 Amenican
Sociaiittb. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.

II. ARTICLES

Sadler, Elizabeth. "One Book's Influence." Nev Engtand Quaateaty 17
(December 1944):530-55.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ACTIVITY OF LOCAL SOCIALIST ADMINISTRA-

TIONS WHILE THE SOCIALIST PARTY IS A MINORITY PARTY

PREAMBLE FOR MUNICIPAL PROGRAM

Socialist representatives in municipal administrations should
always bear clearly in mind the scientific basis of the Socialist
Municipal Program. Under capitalism the municipalization of public
enterprises has been compelled in the interest of the business man.

The graft of a few has come to interfere with the graft of the remainder
of the business world, on account of the development of machinery vital
to municipal life. There has followed as a result of this what might
be called municipal capitalism, which would operate these publicly

owned industries for the purpose of reducing the taxes of present
property holders.

It must be borne in mind that Socialism will Operate these en-
terprises in one of the three following ways:

First. All service absolutely free of cost to the public, paid for
out of the general fund. Instance, the roads and streets, police ser-
vice, and the free water supply of New Orleans.

Second. Service at cost of production. Instance, the usual
theory of water supply, and of the United States Postoffice.

Third. Service furnished at a profit to the municipality, the
profits to be used for the benefit of the whole community. Instance,
the taking of water works profits for the perfection of fire department
and extension of parks, bath and play-ground systems.

All other measures are to be considered in the light of their
bearing upon the working class as such. Those which will prepare the
working people for their part in the class struggle by increase of
intelligence, strengthening of their bodies, securing independence or
certainty of livelihood for them, are to be considered as so many weapons
making for their victory. On the other hand, the taking away from the
capitalist class of exclusive privileges, making the courts free to
all and securing, as far as possible, the limitation of those powers
financial, legal, social and political which have accumulated in the
hands of the capitalist class will tend, of course, to make the victory
of the working class more easy at every step.

PUBLIC EDUCATION
1. Changes in Instruction
1. Sufficient kindergartens for all children of proper age.
2. Manual training (not trade schools) in all grades.
3. General introduction of idea of development and freedom in

education with close connection with things, according to principles
of modern pedagogy.

192

193

4. Teaching of economics and history with evolution of industry
as base.

5. Establishment of vacation schools.
6. Adequate night schools for adults.

7. Instruction of children as to child labor legislation and rights
of children before the law.

II. Changes Affecting Teaching Force

1. Adequate number of teachers (small classes in all schools).

2. Normal school training required as minimum qualification for
teaching.

3. Right of trial for teachers before dismissal.

4. Pensions for teachers when superannuated or disabled.

III. Care of Children

1. Uniform free text-books for all schools, public and private,
on demand.

2. Free meals and clothing.

3. Free medical service, inspection for eyes, ears, mental fac-
ulties (for educational purposes), and for contagion.

IV. Equipment

1. Adequate buildings, numerous, not too large.

2. Ample play-grounds, with physical instructor in charge.

3. Museums, art galleries, libraries, etc., enlarged and accessi-
ble to all children through frequent visits accompanied by teachers. 5.

4. Baths and gymnasiums in each school.

5. All school buildings open evenings, Sundays and holidays
for public assemblages.

 

APPENDIX B
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AT THE CONGRESS OF THE

AMERICAN SOCIALIST PARTY, 1912

The subject of vocational education and guidance has aroused great
interest among American Socialists. It will be seen that the reports
of the committees make definite recommendations for industrial education,
but that the discussion brings out decided opposition to vocational
training as at present existing, on the ground that it serves merely
to make boys and girls "more efficient servants to a master class."

We take the following from the report on vocational education:

The demand for quick profits, on the one hand, and the necessity
for maximum family earnings on the other, have between them done much
to destroy the apprenticeship possibilities of modern industry.

The result has been that more than half of the young peeple who
leave the schools at about the age of fourteen drift into occupations
which have absolutely no future for them except to continue to work
as men and women at wages that can be earned by boys and girls.

Without prejudice to the education of those who are to become
professional or agricultural or commericial workers, the schools
should fit those whose occupations will be found in the industries.
Without loss of those elements in our culture that is the rightful
heritage of every boy and girl, each child should have the same opportunity
to become an efficient worker as is now given to the four percent who
become professional workers.

It therefore devolves upon the public school to modify and to extend
its program to include training for vocational efficiency. It is only
the public school that can protect the interests of the children of the
public as well as advance those interests.

In this connection attention should be called to a system of part-
time schools which is being tried experimentally at many points. . .
These experiments should be watched with interest, as they must be very
instructive as to methods of conducting industrial education; but they
are not likely to be entirely satisfactory, since under some of the
arrangements the employer determines what boys are or are not to have
an opportunity to learn the trade, while under all the plans the employer
is in a position to direct the work of the school too much. The employers
must not be allowed to control the schools for their advantage any more
than a trade-union may be allowed to restrict opportunities of workers
to its advantage.

The public schools that have introduced industrial courses with a
view to giving industrial education independent of commercial shops
are likely to be handicapped at first and for some time to come, by
the lack of suitable equipment and by the impossibility of obtaining
suitable teachers in sufficient numbers. But eventually this type of

194

195

school will probably be the most satisfactory. A temporary device that
will have to serve for many years is the continuation school, whether
day or evening. . . .

Evening schools should be avoided for young people, as far as
possible. The amount of work required of them in shops and opportunity
to attend school without detriment to their health and physical
development.

The following discussion illustrated the point of view of those
Socialists who are opposed to the present system of trade education.

Delegate Slobodin (New York): There is one point on which we are
all clear in regard to this question of vocational training, and that
is that as Socialists we are opposed to the present system of trade
education. The industrial education which the Socialist desires is
different from the industrial education which the capitalists desire.
There is often confusion between training for a trade and scientific
industrial training. How can a Socialist at this time stand for training
for a trade merely?

You see those who advocate the education of the boy or girl for
a mere trade are not advocating what we are striving for. Your boy or
girl should be trained in mechanics; the knowledge of general mechanics
and the use of tools. The young man or young woman who possesses a
knowledge of mechanics and knows how to use tools, can go into trades,
and can acquire a new trade very easily, and can adapt themselves to
almost any trade within certain limits.

That is the first thing, then: broad industrial training, and not
merely training for one trade. '

The second important point is control of the voCational and industrial
schools by the working-class, not by the public, as our reporters want
to say. . . .

Delegate Cliffors (Ohio): I desire to speak in opposition to this
entire report. I do not agree with the comrades here that this Convention
should go on record simply as demanding industrial education for our
boys and girls. I do not wish as a member of the Socialist Party, to
go on record through our Convention as favoring the training of our boys
and girls merely for the purpose of making them more efficient servants
to a master class.

I want them to have the highest industrial education. But it is
practically useless for us even to demand that until we get control of
our public school system. When we have done that we can put into operation
any policy that we see fit, but in the meantime all of this matter should
be simmered down to the one main demand; for the industrial education
of the boys and girls of the working-class, and let it go at that.

As a consequence of these and other similar criticisms, the above
report was not adopted, but was referred to a new standing committee
for report at the next convention (1916).

 

"Ilfllllllllllllllllls