Читать книгу American Gandhi - Leilah Danielson - Страница 13

CHAPTER 4

Muste, Workers’ Education, and Labor’s Culture War in the 1920s

The most ominous fact confronting us is that the labor movement in this country does not have a policy, a voice, an ideal of its own.

—A. J. Muste, 1930

AS BROOKWOOD GREW, so did Muste’s stature in the labor movement. By mid-decade, he was firmly established as a central figure within labor’s progressive wing. Among a myriad of other honors and activities, he was called in to advise and mediate strikes, particularly those involving textile workers; invited to speak on workers’ education and other topics to unions and central labor bodies throughout the country; elected a vice president of the AFT and as vice president of the National Association for Child Development; served as a member of the Central Trades and Labor Council of Greater New York and as a member of the executive board of the Workers’ Education Bureau; and served on the editorial board of Labor Age.¹ He also published widely, with articles appearing in Labor Age, the Survey, the Nation, the World Tomorrow, the New Leader, the International Trade Union Review, the American Federationist, and the Modern Quarterly, among other publications.

During this period, Muste’s primary allegiance was to the labor movement, and his pragmatic approach makes it difficult to discern the dedicated Christian pacifist of the war years. Still, he remained committed to nonviolence and civil liberties; he served on the executive committee of the national FOR, chairing that committee from 1926 through 1929, and continued to serve on the national committee of the ACLU.² His political agenda in the 1920s can also be interpreted as an expression of his pacifism, as he focused on promoting mutual understanding between radicals and conservatives in the labor movement and engendering a pragmatic spirit; labor must approach its problems ‘‘calmly, objectively, ready to cast aside old ideas and methods and to adopt new ones if necessary, willing to experiment,’’ Muste frequently asserted.³ His refusal to engage in ad hominem attacks offers further evidence of his pacifism, and it served to attract those who were eager to transcend the increasingly divided political culture of the labor movement and the left in the 1920s.

Descriptions of Muste from this period describe him as ‘‘happy’’ and even-tempered, a ‘‘square shooter’’ whose modest, unassuming manner endeared him to the hardscrabble workers who attended Brookwood. At the same time, he was clearly a force to be reckoned with; as a militant in the labor movement, and as an independent on the left, sometimes he was ‘‘shot at from both sides. From the hierarchy of the American Federation of Labor. From the Hell-for-leather Communists. And just when the air is thick with critical bullets, you will find A. J. grinning a most winning grin and shooting right back, straight and hard.’’⁴ This characterization of Muste as someone who exuded ‘‘moral authority’’ and equanimity, while also being shrewd and strategic, echoes descriptions of him as a minister and as a leader of the ATWA. As we shall see, they would be repeated again and again in his long career; as David McReynolds would recall of his mentor, he was both a saint and as ‘‘sly as a fox.’’⁵

Though Muste worked hard throughout the 1920s to reconcile right and left elements within the labor movement, by the end of the decade he found himself attacked as a ‘‘labor fakir’’ by the Communists and red-baited by the AFL.⁶ On one level, the conflict between Muste and the AFL was about competing visions of unionism—a struggle between those advocating industrial unionism, militancy, and political engagement and those advocating labor-management cooperation, voluntarism, and nonpartisanship, or between what we might call progressive and conservative unionism. But on a deeper level the conflict was cultural and generational. Muste and other labor progressives had adopted a modern worldview that frowned upon dogmatism and orthodoxy of any kind and viewed adaptation and flexibility as virtues in a rapidly changing world. Their supporters were a new generation of working-class youth who were more self-confident, modern in their outlook, and more invested in the United States than their immigrant parents. Union leaders, on the other hand ‘‘were ideological prisoners of the past.’’⁷

BY mid-decade, Muste had become more confident and assertive. He continued to espouse loyalty to the AFL, but he lost the deferential tone of the early 1920s and spoke as an authority. His publications generally sounded two interrelated themes. First, he believed that the ideological splits in the labor movement had to be healed, and he offered insights into the causes and consequences of these divisions, and suggestions for their remedy.⁸ Second, he called for the modernization of the labor movement; it had to ‘‘adapt’’ to the realities of the new capitalism or die. This latter project was intimately related to the former for it entailed incorporating the younger and more militant members of the labor movement and recognizing that modern developments had rendered older methods of trade union organization archaic.

In an influential series of articles on ‘‘dissenters’’ in the labor movement, for example, Muste assumed the role of an impartial observer, noting that unions often responded in a ‘‘primitive’’ manner to outbreaks of dissent and radicalism rather than ‘‘scientifically’’ and ‘‘impersonally’’ inquiring into their origins. Drawing upon the fields of sociology and social psychology, he pointed out that all organizations had some level of internal strife, and that such strife sometimes indicated that a movement was a ‘‘living’’ one. Unions were particularly prone to internal strife because of their dual role as both ‘‘army and town meeting.’’ On one level, the union assumes the character of an army, with the right to conscript and the right to tax, and during strikes, its struggle was replete with ‘‘generals,’’ battles, spies, and enemies. At the same time, however, the union was a democratic institution, with the membership enjoying the democratic right to elect its leaders. This tension between the union’s ‘‘two and incompatible functions’’ was further complicated by the union’s contradictory position of, on the one hand, having a vested interest in society through its role as a collective bargaining agent and, on the other, its opposition to the present order.⁹

While some internal dissension was inevitable, Muste maintained that certain conditions gave rise to the ‘‘serious problem’’ of factionalism—such as an economic depression, an industry undergoing transition, or lack of union control over an industry. Thus, when a union faced discord, the correct response was to inquire into industrial conditions rather than try to quash oppositionists; an economic depression, for example, was often a sign ‘‘that the time has come when the union must work out a new program of action, that the conventional tactics will no longer do.’’¹⁰ The real question was not, then, what was wrong with the ‘‘lefts’’ or ‘‘rights’’ but rather ‘‘what measures the union must take to adapt itself to those changes.’’ ‘‘Oppositions do not make crises,’’ Muste concluded, ‘‘they are created by them.’’¹¹

In these articles and others, Muste suggested that one reason why unions were unable to intelligently and calmly deal with problems such as internal strife was that organizers often had little training or experience for their roles, and he suggested that unions adopt fairly uniform criteria in selecting their organizers, much like modern businesses did. Organizers should, first of all, possess certain personal qualities such as energy, public speaking ability, a fighting spirit, good judgment, a thick skin, and charisma—‘‘He must have the quality variously described as magnetism, personality, ‘sex appeal,’ which enables him to approach people and to hold them.’’ And yet, Muste cautioned, unions did not want ‘‘salesmen,’’ but rather committed and experienced trade unionists; it was essential that organizers have an intimate knowledge of their craft, their union, and their industry; an ability to keep records; and some knowledge of psychology, since ‘‘an organizer needs to know himself and to know others.’’ These qualities could be cultivated through organizational experience, consultation with others in the movement, and, more to the point, courses in workers’ education.¹²

Another reason for the sorry state of the labor movement was that it had failed to utilize young people. It was natural that older people feared the young; ‘‘young people are inexperienced, often hasty, unorthodox, critical, rebellious, great nuisances. The good God or Nature . . . has fixed that. It’s no good whining about. We have simply to accept the situation and deal with it.’’ Moreover, ‘‘any organization is in constant need of new blood, if it is not to stagnate and die’’; young people often had that ‘‘spark’’ of ‘‘idealism’’ that kept movements alive. At the same time, he offered advice to young unionists about how to deal with a labor movement dominated by conservatives, advice that reflected his own journey from revolutionary idealist to labor pragmatist. His maxims are worth quoting at length; not only do they reveal his approach to the problems of labor conservatism and worker dormancy, they illustrate the good humor and evenhandedness for which he was well known:

Don’t be somebody who is going to do something TO the labor movement. Be somebody who is going to be and do something IN the labor movement. . . . Don’t get the Messiah or the Moses-lead-the-movement-out-of-the-wilderness complex. . . . Don’t be in a hurry. . . . Some things have to grow; they can’t be made. . . . Don’t be a cry baby. . . . A cry baby is anyone who always finds someone else to blame except himself. . . . Don’t be a nut. A nut is someone who is so obsessed with his own idea that he doesn’t see it in relation to other ideas nor in its effect on the people he is dealing with. . . . Don’t play for the limelight all the time. There are still somethings [sic] that can’t be done effectively in the limelight, such as making love or bringing up babies. . . . Don’t be afraid of being called names [such as ‘‘Bolshevik’’]. . . . Don’t become a cynic. Don’t grow up; don’t get old; don’t settle down; don’t lose your nerve, your gayety, your willingness to take a risk.¹³

Yet underneath Muste’s moderate tone was a growing sense of urgency and frustration with the official labor movement. By mid-decade, it was clear to him and other progressives that their hopes in Green had been misplaced, as the AFL ‘‘shifted from militancy to respectability.’’ At its 1926 convention, rather than endorse industrial organization as the answer to Fordism, the federation proposed union-management cooperation through schemes like tying wage increases to high productivity. It also withdrew from its move into electoral politics, retreating into its traditional stance of nonpartisanship and voluntarism. Meanwhile, the labor movement was weak and in disarray. The United States was the only industrialized country without a political party that provided adequate representation for organized workers, as well as the only one in which company unions, injunctions, the industrial spy system, and the yellow-dog contract were used without impunity against workers.¹⁴

These developments distressed labor progressives like Muste, as well as the liberal left more broadly, and they grew more vocal in their criticism of the AFL leadership.¹⁵ A case in point is Muste’s comments on the infamous ‘‘Mitten-Mahon agreement’’ in which the Street Railway Employees’ Union agreed not to intrude upon certain company unions. Though Muste stated at the outset that he sought to approach the question in ‘‘a spirit of inquiry,’’ he pointedly compared the agreement to the process by which Benito Mussolini had gained control of unions and workers in fascist Italy. He also began touching upon wider themes, linking labor’s fate with struggles against imperialism and racism at home. His response to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, in which he compared the two Italian anarchists to Christ, further revealed a latent ardor and millennial urgency.¹⁶

Starting in mid-1928, Muste began to take his first tentative steps toward reviving the spirit of ‘‘militant progressivism’’ that had characterized the labor movement during the war years. In an article for V. F. Calverton’s Modern Quarterly, he groped toward the formulation of a ‘‘progressive-realist’’ position (also known as the ‘‘practical idealist’’ position) that would stand somewhere between a complacent labor movement and an ultra-revolutionary left wing. In contrast to the Communists, who had ‘‘irritated’’ laborites and progressives ‘‘beyond words’’ by their use of ‘‘verbal mud-slinging’’ and by seeking to capture movements, progressive realists would exhibit ‘‘realism and flexibility’’ in the struggle for a socialist society; they would recognize that the revolution was not around the corner, at least not in the United States, and would be willing to cooperate with both liberals and the official labor movement. In essence, Muste’s vision was a mix of social democracy and revolutionary socialism; he placed primary emphasis on industrial organization over parliamentary politics, embraced coalitions and the possibility of gradualism, while at the same time conceding that conditions might arise in which a more Leninist approach might become necessary—in a counterrevolutionary context, for example, ‘‘a compact, centralized, and vigorous party is absolutely indispensable for leadership of the workers.’’¹⁷

As this reference suggests, Lenin’s ideas had begun to influence Muste’s thought. Lenin, he reminded readers of Labor Age, was a labor strategist and tactician, who offered insights of the ‘‘greatest value to all active labor people quite regardless of their political or economic views.’’ Moreover, despite his criticism of Lenin’s disciples in the American Communist Party (discussed in more detail below), he was deeply impressed by their revolutionary dedication, which he saw as a model for other socialists to emulate. He reconciled this move to the left with his pragmatism by insisting that Leninist theory was not infallible and by drawing attention to Lenin’s own admonition that revolutionaries must be flexible and adapt their methods to changing conditions.¹⁸

As Muste compared the activities of the revolutionary left to the politics of mainline Protestantism, the latter increasingly came up short. Where the churches were ‘‘identified with the status quo,’’ ‘‘the Left had the vision, the dream, of a classless and warless world’’ that motivated the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ. As he later recalled of this period in his life, ‘‘This was a strong factor in making me feel that [the revolutionary left], in a sense, was the true church. Here was the fellowship drawn together and drawn forward by the Judeo-Christian prophetic vision of ‘a new earth in which righteousness dwelleth.’ ’’ Leftists were, moreover, ‘‘truly religious’’ insofar as they ‘‘were virtually completely committed, they were betting their lives on the cause they embraced.’’¹⁹

Muste was also growing disenchanted with organized pacifism. In 1928, he published an article in the World Tomorrow taking pacifists to task for their efforts to dissuade workers from using violence in their struggles against capitalism. Rather than criticize workers, pacifists should denounce capitalism and call on the ruling class to renounce its power and privilege. They should, moreover, disassociate as much as possible from the economic system and identify with workers and their cause. Only then would they be in a moral position to counsel nonviolence. Muste was not prepared to dismiss pacifism entirely, but he insisted that ‘‘in a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist; in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifist is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’’ In 1929, he made a similar argument when he addressed the annual meeting of the FOR.²⁰ The organization’s refusal to unequivocally support labor’s right to strike at the meeting further alienated him from pacifism and religious liberalism, though he continued to think of himself as a Christian and retained alliances with more radical members of the FOR and left-leaning Protestants for several more years, occasionally attending FOR meetings and continuing to serve as a contributing editor to the World Tomorrow.²¹

AS Muste assumed a more forceful presence on the labor left, so too did Brookwood. The college’s extension program expanded, and its faculty, staff, and alumni were intimately involved in other workers’ education initiatives like the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, the Southern Summer School for Women Workers, Highlander Folk School, Commonwealth College, Seattle Labor College, Baltimore Labor College, Denver Labor College, Philadelphia Labor College, and Pittsburgh Labor College; indeed, the syllabi, curriculum, and pedagogy of these educational initiatives were largely based on Brookwood’s example.²² The college’s influence also grew as alumni assumed central roles in their unions as organizers, editors, and officials. Among others, the machinist Charles L. Reed became vice president of the Massachusetts Federation of Labor; Bonchi Friedman continued to organize for the ACW; Alfred Hoffman served as an organizer for the American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (AFFFHW) and the UTW; and Rose Pesotta began her rise within the ranks of the ILGWU.

Meanwhile, the college continued to hold its popular labor institutes in which representatives from various industries met to discuss problems facing their unions. Starting in 1926, it also began to host conferences on more expansive and controversial subjects. In 1927, it held a symposium on ‘‘Negroes in Industry’’ that included presentations by black workers and intellectuals—such as Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Abram L. Harris, A. Philip Randolph, and Frank Crosswaith—that explored such topics as the history of race and trade unionism, conflicts between black workers and the black bourgeoisie, and the rise of black nationalism. ‘‘Negroes are organizable,’’ the Brookwood Review editorialized in its review of the symposium.²³ Two months later, Brookwood began a series of institutes on the topic of women and the labor movement; the first one focused on the plight of unorganized female workers.²⁴ Soon thereafter, Brookwood hosted a two-day youth conference that involved representatives from twenty-two unions, rank-and-file members, and AFL officials on the question of how to organize young workers.²⁵

The gist of these 1927 conferences was that these workers were not ‘‘problems’’ or obstacles to trade unionism, but rather had their own, distinct experiences that needed to be understood and adapted to if unionism was to flourish.²⁶ These relatively progressive views on the black working class and women workers existed in tension with deeply held racial and gender ideologies. At the same time that Brookwood decried the existence of racial prejudice, the Brookwood Players performed a play that had coal miners dressed up like ‘‘horrifying African cannibals.’’ Moreover, as sympathetic as they could be toward the challenges facing black workers, Brookwood faculty, students, and alumni were often reluctant to confront racism because they feared it would weaken the labor movement as a whole.²⁷ Similarly, despite challenging the myth that women just worked for ‘‘pin money,’’ the structure of Brookwood depended upon the unpaid labor of faculty wives, such as Anne Muste, even as they had little formal say in the school’s governance. More broadly, progressive unionists shared with their conservative brethren a construction of the worker as a white male and conflated organization with the attainment of full manhood.²⁸

As the college became an intellectual center for labor progressives, it also became directly involved in a series of strikes that occurred over the course of 1926 to 1928. Brookwood’s policy had always been to release students for participation in strikes by their unions, but now the college organized as an institution to assist striking workers. This change reflected the growing conviction of Muste that education must ‘‘be applied in action,’’ not only in the classroom.²⁹ Thus Brookwood provided crucial financing and publicity for strikes by New York’s garment and fur workers, miners in Pennsylvania and Colorado, midwestern hosiery workers, and especially textile workers. The Passaic strike of 1926 was like a miniature revival of the Lawrence strike of 1919, as liberals supported the rights of the strikers to free assembly and free speech. Muste and other Brookwooders helped organize the ‘‘Conference on Relief for the Passaic Strikers’’ to raise money and relief, while the Brookwood Players performed Shades of Passaic to a packed audience of strikers.³⁰

At Brookwood’s second annual summer textile institute, held in 1928, Muste urged the UTW executive board to step up their efforts to organize the South. Alfred Hoffman spearheaded the organizing drive in the Piedmont region, along with the help of other Brookwood students.³¹ Meanwhile, closer to home, in Paterson, New Jersey, the Associated Silk Workers, an independent union, called a strike on October 10, 1928, for the forty-four-hour work week, a uniform piecework scale, and union recognition. As the strike dragged on for several months, Brookwood organized relief for the striking workers, while Muste organized merger negotiations between the independent union and the UTW. The decision to have Muste serve as impartial arbitrator ‘‘was the unanimous choice of both sides,’’ President McMahon of the UTW commented.³²

Brookwood formalized its move ‘‘into the field’’ in 1928 with the formation of an extension department. Under the direction of Tom Tippett, a former miner, the college provided not only classes and lectures to workers throughout the United States, but also participated in organization campaigns and strikes. Brookwood considered these activities ‘‘not as interruptions of school work but as genuine education, and students and teachers alike bring wiser judgment and a keener sense of reality to their classes in consequence.’’³³

As Brookwood assumed a more substantial presence in the labor movement, the AFL moved to quash any evidence of independence or dissent within the movement. Even though the college worked hard to avoid public criticism of the federation, the very nature of workers’ education—as conceived of by labor progressives—conflicted with an official labor movement seeking loyalty and control. On the one hand, Muste and other advocates of workers’ education stated their allegiance to the labor movement and their conviction that education would make the movement stronger. At the same time, they were adamant that they would teach their students how to think, not what to think.³⁴ What this meant was that a variety of ideological and political perspectives found expression in workers’ education initiatives, including those that were in opposition to the official policies of the AFL. A memorial service Brookwood held for Gompers offers a case in point, as it included speeches by students who favored the nonpartisan policy of the AFL as well as by devoted Leninists. The affair prompted William Green’s secretary, Florence Thorne, to write to Muste: while she appreciated ‘‘your difficulties in meeting the various tendencies of your Brookwood group,’’ she wondered if the college might refrain from publicizing such events. ‘‘This would . . . help to keep the ideals and policies of Brookwood more in line with our American labor movement.’’ In his response, Muste admitted to the ‘‘unfortunate’’ juxtaposition of Gompers and Lenin, but reminded Thorne that the college’s policy was ‘‘to allow of a certain freedom of discussion [in the college newspaper] which it might be difficult to maintain in the publication of the trade union.’’³⁵

The divergences between a labor movement seeking ideological conformity and an educational movement committed to free discussion came to a head over the course of 1926 to 1928 and ultimately became the seedbed for the emergence of the ‘‘Musteite’’ movement at the end of the decade. In 1926, several of Brookwood’s students and instructors joined John Brophy’s ‘‘Save-the-Union Movement’’ to wrest control of the UMWA from the autocratic leadership of John L. Lewis. When the insurgent miners organized an anti-Lewis gathering in April 1928, Muste refused to exercise ideological control over students and alumni who attended the conference.³⁶ The incident tied Brookwood to oppositionists and empowered conservatives in their efforts to seize control over workers’ education. As Irving Bernstein has commented, to openly defy John L. Lewis made a break ‘‘inevitable.’’³⁷

Another incident occurred in 1926, this one involving workers’ education, that foreshadowed a split between Brookwood and the AFL. Unfortunately for progressives who had placed so much hope in workers’ education, Matthew Woll, one of the AFL’s most conservative vice presidents, had joined the executive council of the WEB as one of the AFL’s three representatives. In 1926, the adult education movement, which had emerged concomitantly with the workers’ education movement, made overtures to the WEB, offering it a grant of $25,000 from the Carnegie Corporation. Conservatives like Woll favored acceptance of the grant, while progressives viewed it as an effort to co-opt their movement. At a meeting of the WEB in April of 1926, progressives sought to clearly differentiate adult education and workers’ education. As James Maurer stated, the former was ‘‘designed, for the most part, either to give a bit of culture to the student, or else to lift him out of his present job into a higher one.’’ Workers’ education, by contrast, had a class perspective and agenda of educating the worker into the labor movement and of service to the working class. With twenty-one other progressives, Muste voted against accepting the funds, while a majority of forty-six voted in favor of acceptance, so long as the funds were given unconditionally.³⁸

Yet the AFL of the mid-1920s simply would not tolerate dissent; Spencer Miller Jr., secretary of the WEB, was so offended by the sentiment against adult education that he questioned the right of Brookwood to remain affiliated with the WEB.³⁹ Meanwhile, the AFL moved to tighten their control over the bureau. In 1927, at the AFL’s annual convention in Los Angeles, the federation recommended that the WEB limit the membership of the executive committee to national AFL representatives, a move that would have essentially stripped the executive board of any representation from those most directly involved in workers’ education. Muste went on public record in opposition to this ‘‘wrong step in workers’ education,’’ pointing out the need to have labor educators involved in executive decision making, and questioning the ability of teachers to maintain academic freedom when their institutions were solely under the control of personnel with no connection to workers’ education.⁴⁰

Early in 1928, Brookwood began to anticipate an attack by the AFL. ‘‘Subordination, coordination, or independence—these are the terms which describe our choices,’’ labor educators concluded at their annual conference at Brookwood in February of that year.⁴¹ A few months later, Muste published an article in Labor Age responding to rumors that the AFL officialdom viewed labor education as ‘‘unpatriotic and un-American, atheistic and radical (Bolshevik).’’ In it, he questioned the worth of a labor movement that was unwilling to allow its rank and file to ‘‘examine their own opinions’’ in order ‘‘to develop critical, fearless, open, independent minds!’’ ‘‘Have we now a labor dogma, a labor creed, a labor orthodoxy, to which all must conform? Which must be taught . . . as a given system of doctrine is imparted in a sectarian theological seminary?’’ Such thinking was based on the assumption ‘‘that there is danger in a critical discussion of labor policies,’’ but, in fact, the real danger was in preventing free discussion in the first place.⁴²

As the debate over workers’ education played out, several disgruntled Brookwood students sought to exploit the controversy over the UMWA in order to undermine the school. Passionate debate had been a central feature of Brookwood student life from the school’s inception, but these disagreements were generally expressed and resolved within the culture of ecumenism and academic freedom that Brookwood sought to foster. In 1927–28, however, the school had admitted several students from conservative backgrounds who deeply resented the radicalism of some of their peers, a resentment that was heavily tinged with anti-Semitism and misogyny. One of them was a miner who opposed Brophy’s ‘‘Save-the-Union Movement.’’ In 1928, he published an account of the fractious UMWA conference that exposed the Brookwood students who attended the conference and accused them of being Communists. The other conservative students rose to his defense and persuaded their internationals, the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, the International Association of Machinists, and the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades to withdraw their funding for Brookwood.⁴³

For the first time in Brookwood’s history, Muste was unable to reconcile the student body; the second-year class voted to bar the offending student from their final seminar on the grounds that he could not be trusted, while the handful of conservative students left the school and refused to attend graduation ceremonies. It was ‘‘painful and distressing’’ to graduate students ‘‘out of accord with [what] Brookwood is trying to do,’’ Muste stated at the graduation ceremony, yet he stood firm ‘‘on the fundamental things that Brookwood stands for and is trying to do’’ and accepted ‘‘the challenge of those who do not believe in those things.’’ Those ‘‘things’’ were a militant labor movement committed to energetically and courageously organizing the unorganized, raising the political and economic consciousness of American workers, freedom in workers’ education, and anti-imperialism. If the American labor movement considered this treasonous, ‘‘then let them make the most of it.’’ To be seen as ‘‘unpatriotic, irreligious, and red’’ was to be ‘‘in good company’’; Jesus and the Founding Fathers had been viewed similarly by their contemporaries. It would be ‘‘a pleasant death to die’’ in the service of militant unionism, he opined in what can only be viewed as a sermon.⁴⁴

In spite of his firm tone, one senses Muste’s foreboding as he clarified his position. ‘‘One might hope that if we are to fight each other, it might be with a little more mercy and decency and fair play than ordinarily characterizes conflicts in the labor movement.’’⁴⁵ Yet the fight was not to be merciful. On August 7, 1928, the executive council of the AFL, unexpectedly and without warning, announced that it was advising all of its affiliated unions to withdraw their support from Brookwood Labor College. Though this did not emerge until later, its decision was based upon a secret report by Matthew Woll, which had been instigated by the complaints of the same conservative students who had red-baited Brookwood a few months earlier. The report was not released to the public nor was the source of the evidence against the college revealed, but it persuaded Green and the executive council that it was a ‘‘propagandistic and communistic’’ institution that promulgated dual unionism, sexual immorality, and antireligious views. The charge of dual unionism was particularly ironic: when Muste learned of the announcement, he was in the middle of leading negotiation efforts to bring Paterson’s Associated Silk Workers into the UTW.⁴⁶

Muste returned immediately to Brookwood and rallied its supporters. The next day, the college’s board of directors issued a statement calling the charges ‘‘without foundation’’ and voicing particular concern over the process through which the college had been censured, which violated the ‘‘fundamental labor principles of fair play, collective bargaining, and conference about grievances.’’ The board requested a copy of the charges against the college, the evidence upon which they were based, and a hearing to respond to them.⁴⁷

The case quickly became a cause célèbre among progressive unionists, liberals, and educators. Letters of support poured in to Muste, while telegrams of protest flooded the AFL executive office. John Brophy wrote to Muste that ‘‘what has been meted out to Brookwood . . . is exactly what the Executive Committee of the UMWA meted out to me. All opposition, no matter of what character, they labeled communistic and expulsions followed.’’ Fannia Cohn protested to Green that Brookwood deserved a hearing because of its affiliation with the WEB, the ‘‘the educational arm’’ of the AFL, because its faculty were members of the AFT, and because its board of directors were all loyal members of the AFL with long records of service and strong anti-Communist credentials. She called it ‘‘unintelligible’’ that only four disgruntled students had been consulted, while the 125 other Brookwood students and graduates who had ‘‘a favorable opinion . . . are not questioned or given an opportunity to discuss frankly the charges made.’’⁴⁸ Alumni like Charles Reed, Mary Goff, and William Ross similarly wrote to defend Brookwood’s educational methods, explaining how the college taught them ‘‘how to read, how to write, and how to talk . . . to examine each situation and all situations in the light of Facts; and to face those facts regardless of the consequences.’’⁴⁹

Finally, on October 30, the AFL executive council met to consider the question of whether or not Brookwood should be granted a hearing. Woll won the day with the dubious argument that Brookwood should not enjoy a hearing because Communists had ‘‘freely’’ condemned the AFL without giving its internationals a chance for a hearing. The way the AFL handled the entire case was disingenuous; Green even reported to the New York Times that Brookwood had not asked to present its side of the case to the executive council.⁵⁰

The controversy reveals the precarious position of progressives within the labor movement in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the tensions inherent to the workers’ education project. Left-leaning unionists like Muste had retreated from their revolutionary stance of the war years and pursued rapprochement with the conservative wing of the labor movement. They rarely criticized the federation’s policies openly and instead sought to gradually impress upon the labor movement the need to modernize its methods and framework to meet the challenges of a new era of industrial capitalism. Within the workers’ education movement, they allowed for the expression of a range of opinions and emphasized the importance of taking a more experimental and scientific approach to labor’s problems, while also holding that the working class must be unified and American society collectivized. Their philosophical approach was a complex one; it drew, on the one hand, from liberal theories of individual freedom and, on the other, from notions of solidarity and collective purpose that animated the labor movement and other cooperative projects. Muste’s notion of the labor movement as a combination of army and town meeting was to the point; the poles of authoritarianism and democracy were inevitable by-products of unionism, but they could also be the source of creativity and growth if handled in a spirit of flexibility and adaptability, recognizing that the labor movement was a ‘‘living movement.’’ Hence he and other progressive unionists believed that they should have ‘‘the right of criticism’’ while also being considered loyal members of the AFL.⁵¹

It is revealing that progressives viewed the question of workers’ education as one of academic freedom, while the AFL insisted that it had to do ‘‘with the fundamentals of trade unionism,’’ as Matthew Woll put it.⁵² Underlying this misunderstanding were two very different visions of the role of the labor movement in American society. AFL conservatives had disavowed the ‘‘oft-expounded theory that differences between capital and labor’’ were irreconcilable, while progressives sought to fundamentally restructure American society. Their contrasting views of the role of education in the labor movement reflected this basic disagreement; the AFL viewed education as a ‘‘safeguard against revolutionary doctrines,’’ as William Green put it bluntly, and thus ascribed to a narrow curriculum and authoritarian methods.⁵³ Progressives, by contrast, sought ‘‘new educational forms and methods’’ in order ‘‘to change behavior fundamentally to revamp cultural values, and to bring about a new society.’’⁵⁴

Further complicating this disagreement were the culture wars of the 1920s. Green, Woll, and others in the AFL hierarchy were cultural conservatives who were deeply offended by the cultural politics of modernism. Hence their criticism of Brookwood was not just that it allowed for the expression of views contrary to the official line of the AFL, but also that it freely discussed evolution, questioned religious dogmas, and subjected sex and gender norms to scrutiny. Reflecting this perspective, the American Federationist published an editorial in October 1928 stating that workers needed two kinds of education, cultural education and trade union education. The former could be handled by the adult education movement through university extension programs, while the latter should be strictly controlled by unions, with the implication that this focus on trade union issues meant that academic freedom was inapplicable.⁵⁵ Such a formula was, of course, anathema to the socialist moderns who had spearheaded the workers’ education movement. As they commented in Labor Age, dogmatism and orthodoxy ‘‘cannot be the marks of a living movement.’’ Moreover, there was a vital need for workers to create their own institutions and build a ‘‘labor culture’’ to compete with the antilabor culture of the dominant society.⁵⁶

These cultural and philosophical issues played themselves out as efforts now focused on appealing the AFL’s decision at the federation’s annual convention scheduled to take place a month later in New Orleans. Internationals and labor leaders close to Brookwood continued to rally to the college’s defense, while also experiencing some trepidation about directly confronting the powerful and increasingly intolerant executive council. The AFT, Muste’s own union, offers a case in point; its leadership offered some of the most strident condemnation of the AFL’s action, but refused to introduce a resolution at the New Orleans convention calling on the AFL to reconsider its decision.⁵⁷

Leading the charge was Muste’s former professor at Columbia University John Dewey, who had been an enthusiastic backer of Brookwood and labor education more broadly. On the eve of the New Orleans convention, Muste organized a public meeting at the New York Society for Ethical Culture that featured Dewey as well as other venerable supporters of Brookwood, including Harry F. Ward of Union Theological Seminary, John A. Fitch of the New York School of Social Work, and Henry Linville of the AFT. The pragmatic worldview was fully in evidence. Fitch called on the AFL to learn to accept ‘‘new truths,’’ and to reconsider its action with a more ‘‘scientific attitude.’’ Dewey spoke on the difference between training and education, the latter of which was ‘‘the awakening and movement of the mind.’’⁵⁸

Despite widespread liberal sentiment for an appeal, at the convention, the executive council made sure that the issue was kept off of the floor. Finally, on the last day of the weeklong convention, the president of the Street Railway Employees’ Union—signatory of the notorious Mitten-Mahon agreement that Muste had dared to publicly criticize—called out, ‘‘Let us hear what is the matter with Brookwood.’’ Conservatives dominated the floor; whenever a supporter of Brookwood rose to speak, he or she was ruled out of order. Woll gave a long speech denouncing Muste as a Communist, while Green produced a letter from Brookwood faculty member Arthur Calhoun to the Daily Worker endorsing William Z. Foster for president. ‘‘Do you want to send members of the A.F. of L. to a school that employs an avowed Communist to teach these trade unionists economics?’’ he challenged the delegates.⁵⁹

In short, conservatives outmaneuvered and intimidated progressives, with even the UTW, the ILGWU, and the AFT ultimately backing down in fear of a public confrontation with the powerful leaders of the federation.⁶⁰ As John Dewey commented, the executive council took steps ‘‘which made contrary action possible only if the delegates were ready to declare war on the official management of the Federation. Under the circumstances, it is almost surprising that as many as one-fourth of the delegates were not in favor of confirmation.’’ It was, he concluded, a ‘‘scholastic lynching.’’⁶¹

Dewey’s support certainly raised Brookwood’s prestige among liberals, but it also helped to unleash the latent anti-intellectualism of the AFL. At the convention, Woll called Dewey a ‘‘propagandist’’ for Communism,’’ and demanded that the AFL’s Education Committee expunge the reference to Dewey in its annual report. Afterward, he gloried in the pages of the International Labor News Service that Brookwood had been ‘‘socked in the jaw, in the solar plexus, in the small of the back, in both jaws.’’⁶² Others apparently shared his view of the controversy as a reflection of the differences between intellectuals and the ‘‘laboring man.’’ After the convention, Muste received a letter from a minor labor official who suggested that perhaps Brookwood faculty could not understand the perspectives of AFL officialdom, who had been compelled to work ‘‘at the age of 10 or 11 eleven years . . . suffering all the tortures of hell . . . until relief came through organization.’’ Muste, who rarely made reference to his working-class background, wrote back angrily, ‘‘It happens that it was exactly at the age of eleven when I went to work for the first time myself in a furniture factory.’’ He further pointed out that his father, ‘‘at the age of 72, still works in a furniture factory every day of his life.’’⁶³

Once again in AFL history, anti-intellectualism functioned as a convenient way to silence and marginalize left criticism and opposition. Yet the break between the AFL and a vibrant workers’ education movement was not inevitable. Although the AFL had long distrusted Brookwood, the two institutions had enjoyed a working relationship through the WEB and through international unions that had chosen to affiliate with the college. Brookwood faculty had long expressed their loyalty to the federation and carefully avoided public criticism; even as Muste grew more assertive over the course of the 1920s, his publications evinced a conciliatory spirit. It was only starting in 1926, at precisely the moment when the AFL turned decisively conservative, that conflict became unavoidable. Not coincidentally, 1926 was also the moment when Brookwood was on the verge of moving beyond the ‘‘experimental stage’’ to achieving a level of permanency, as evidenced by Muste’s plans to turn the college into a university. The AFL, in other words, attacked ‘‘while the school was still vulnerable’’ and before it could serve as the center of an alternative vision of unionism.⁶⁴

AT precisely the same time Brookwood was attacked by the right, it was attacked by the left. The Brookwood faculty and board of directors were not Communists, but their commitment to the free exchange of ideas meant that they refused to discriminate against Communists, which, as we have seen, much chagrined the AFL. Communist theories were freely discussed at Brookwood, and the college worked with Communists in educational programs and strikes. Early in the school’s history, moreover, the Communist Party had shown a level of toleration and even respect for Brookwood, allowing its members to attend the college and inviting Brookwood faculty to lecture at the Workers’ School. Such interactions were not without their tensions; like other progressives, Brookwood faculty were often ‘‘embarrassed and irritated’’ by their collaborations with Communists who, as Muste put it, ‘‘talked a language’’ foreign to progressives, as well as ‘‘the great masses of American workers,’’ and insisted upon ‘‘ ‘capturing’ movements and organizations, which thereupon turned out to be mere shells in their hands.’’⁶⁵

Yet in 1928, the situation ‘‘definitely and radically changed.’’ Reflecting its shift to the ‘‘Third Period,’’ the Communist Party departed from its history of toleration for Brookwood and began to publicly attack and vilify the college in the left-wing press, at party gatherings, at educational meetings, and instructed its members not to attend the college. How the Communist Party responded to the AFL’s attack on Brookwood offers a case in point; rather than defend the college, the Daily Worker stated that Brookwood had ‘‘consistently functioned as a cloak for the destructive policy of the reactionary labor fakers . . . everybody who has eyes can see that its whole content is the preaching of class collaboration in a ‘refined’ form.’’⁶⁶

Even more galling, from Muste’s perspective, was how the Communists’ policy reversal affected efforts to strengthen and radicalize the UTW. For years, in pursuance of their policy of boring from within, the Communists had worked with other progressive elements to obtain unification between the Associated Silk Workers and the UTW. The process, for which Muste had served as arbiter, was a difficult one in which progressives had to coax and plead with conservatives in the UTW. Finally, when an agreement was hammered out and placed before the membership for a vote, Muste wrote incredulously, ‘‘those who had started this movement, nursed it along, toiled for it, turned square around and let it be known that . . . they would not support it’’ because the Communist Party had decided to change its tactics from ‘‘boring from within’’ to dual unionism. While he was willing to concede that consistency was ‘‘the vice of little minds,’’ it was also ‘‘childish’’ to make ‘‘frivolous changes of front,’’ particularly when there was such a desperate urge to organize industrial workers. Repeating a frequent theme, he bemoaned that in the United States, the official labor movement was so conservative, while the left wing, which had ‘‘courage, amazing vitality,’’ exhibited such ‘‘childishness, lack of realism, cheap bickering, mere fury that creates endless turmoil.’’ In between these two extremes were ‘‘many afflicted with the malady of defeatism’’ yet who still dreamed of ‘‘a world freed from exploitation and in the control of the workers.’’ Who would be ‘‘willing to act’’ to reignite this dormant idealism, Muste wondered?⁶⁷

Muste was thus in a bind when the AFL attacked Brookwood as a ‘‘communistic’’ institution. On the one hand, he had consistently opposed sectarianism and had tried to maintain comradely relations with Communists. On the other hand, he viewed Communist tactics as destructive of trade unionism and unrealistic in the context of the late 1920s. Moreover, reflecting his laborist agenda, he was far more interested in having good relations with the labor movement than with a small radical sect.⁶⁸

Over the course of December 1928 and January 1929, Brookwood clarified its policy of nonexclusion, while at the same time stating its refusal to become a Communist-controlled institution. Ironically, the college would find itself unable to maintain this policy. Even though the Communist Party prohibited members from attending Brookwood, a handful of them were accepted as students over the course of the next several years. Muste and other Brookwood faculty soon discovered that these students were not attending the college in good faith, but were rather bent upon ‘‘disrupting and destroying the school.’’ As they explained, these students ‘‘openly expressed hostility’’ toward Brookwood, left in the middle of the term under party orders, flaunted school discipline, and worked with the party to deprive Brookwood of financial contributions. Moreover, Communists who had graduated from the college ‘‘openly repudiated Brookwood and attempted to work against it.’’ Asserting that ‘‘no school is under any obligation’’ to accept students committed to its destruction, Brookwood banned Communists from attendance so long as the party’s policy was one of attacking elements it considered reformist, though it continued to invite Communist speakers to lecture at the college.⁶⁹