American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson
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as happy ones for the family. Though conditions were initially quite rustic, eventually the campus included a stone cottage for the Mustes, volleyball and tennis courts, and a swimming pool, ‘‘nestled in surrounding greenery’’ and overlooking ‘‘the wooded hills and valleys’’ of nearby estates. Other faculty and staff, along with their children, also lived on the campus, which had a communal atmosphere in which residents took their meals together and often worked cooperatively to improve the campus. The Muste children thrived in the idealistic, community-centered culture of the school. One of their fondest memories was of being asked to act in plays written by students and faculty. As Nancy recalled of one Saturday night, the Muste family ‘‘was up on the stage, huddled around some mechanical parts, while we sang a song about [how] ‘the Anarchist family threw the bomb-bomb-bomb.’ ’’95
Anne also apparently enjoyed ‘‘the settled life at the school.’’96 She was, however, often sick; sometime in the late 1930s, a doctor would diagnose her with a serious heart condition that resulted from having rheumatic fever when she was a child.97 Perhaps the combination of having poor health and the sole responsibility for household chores and raising the children explains why contemporaries described her as shy and retiring. Yet her reserve may also have reflected disinterest in the political and ideological concerns that consumed her husband. While other movement wives occasionally make an appearance in the historical record from this period, Anne appears only once—in a letter from her resigning as head of Brookwood’s kitchen committee because of the constant squabbling between ‘‘the girls.’’98
Under Muste’s leadership, Brookwood Labor College quickly outgrew its pacifist roots and became a central institution of the progressive wing of the labor movement. At this point, Muste remained a committed pacifist, viewing ‘‘modern’’ educational methods as reflective of the ideals of nonviolence.99 Yet he also recognized that workers came from a variety of ideological and political perspectives and would not abide preaching. Thus, he supported the decision to discard the Christian pacifist ethos of Brookwood School and to place it under the control of unionists, a move that pushed pacifists to the margins.100
Muste and the other unionists who founded Brookwood worked hard to make it ‘‘labor’s own school,’’ thus differentiating it from workers’ educational initiatives sponsored by private colleges and state universities.101 The college’s board of directors was dominated by trade unionists, all with long, distinguished careers, including Maurer, Fitzpatrick, Brophy, Rose Schneiderman of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), Abraham Lefkowitz of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Jay G. Brown of the Farmer-Labor Party, Phil E. Ziegler of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, and Fannia Cohn of the ILGWU.102 It only hired faculty members who had a record of service to the labor movement and ran a closed shop in which faculty had to be members of the AFT; in fact, Muste served as one of the international’s vice presidents through much of the 1920s. The college only admitted students who had recommendations from their unions and reached out to unionists who could not stay for long-term study by establishing an extension program and by offering short courses where unionists could gather to explore problems in their union or in the labor movement as a whole. In 1925, Brookwood expanded its extension program by offering correspondence courses through the pages of Labor Age.
Brookwood also sought to be wholly financed by unions. These efforts paid off: within Brookwood’s first year alone, Muste boasted of having thirty endorsements from unions. The college never became financially independent, however; although a number of unions established scholarships, he was forced to turn to old sources of support, like Elizabeth Glendower Evans and Anna N. Davis, as well as to the newly formed American Fund for Public Service (also known as the Garland Fund), from which he managed to obtain a long-term grant. Muste made it clear, however, that these donations came with ‘‘no strings attached.’’103
Muste’s desire to obtain labor’s support partly explains his more moderate tone and cultivation of the AFL leadership during Brookwood’s early years, though he was also genuinely eager to find common ground between ‘‘lefts and rights’’ in the movement. In his correspondence and interactions with the AFL leadership, ‘‘Brother Muste’’ explicated Brookwood’s pragmatic approach to education and its hostility to sectarianism, and reassured them that the college’s goal was simply to make more ‘‘effective’’ trade unionists. He also made it the college’s policy not to take official positions on questions facing the labor movement or to publicly align with any given party. In 1924, he even offered the AFL official representation on Brookwood’s board of directors, though he was relieved when the federation declined the offer.104 His efforts paid off. By 1924, the AFL had endorsed the movement and became formally affiliated with the WEB, and articles on workers’ education, including some by Brookwood faculty and staff, began to appear regularly in its organ, the American Federationist.105
Muste’s publications during this period espoused loyalty to the AFL, while drawing attention to trends that presaged a more progressive federation. Thus he responded with cautious optimism when, in 1924, the AFL departed from its tradition of nonpartisanship and supported third-party candidate Robert La Follette’s bid for the presidency and replaced Gompers with William Green, who many hoped would be a progressive because of his background in an industrial union.106 In essence, Muste tried to chart a middle course. He continued to call for a more militant and internationally minded American labor movement, while criticizing ‘‘lefts’’ for ‘‘crabbing about trade union leadership’’ and for pursuing a ‘‘destructive’’ policy of dual unionism.107 To some, recalling his recent stint as head of a renegade union, his reformist posture appeared disingenuous, but Muste saw it as a realistic assessment of the state of American labor in the early 1920s. In this way, he reflected the spirit of reconciliation that animated the progressive wing of the labor movement more broadly during the postwar years. Labor Age, for example, rarely explicitly criticized the AFL, instead posing questions for discussion and printing articles that represented a variety of perspectives.108
It took Muste two years before he found a stable faculty who shared his teaching philosophy. In early 1922, he hired Josephine ‘‘Polly’’ Colby, who had served as a vice president and full-time national organizer for the AFT, to teach English and public speaking.109 The other two core members of the faculty were David Saposs and Arthur Calhoun. Saposs was from a working-class, immigrant background and had worked his way through graduate school under the tutelage of John Commons at the University of Wisconsin. By the time he was hired at Brookwood to teach courses on trade union organization and administration, he had extensive experience as a labor researcher and economist and had published widely. Arthur Calhoun, a sociologist by training, taught courses in economics, social problems, and social psychology. Clint Golden took Brookwood’s message into the field, finding students, obtaining scholarships, initiating extension classes, and helping Brookwood alumni secure funding for educational initiatives within their unions and their communities. A burly and charismatic man, Golden was tremendously important in expanding Brookwood’s connections far beyond the progressive wing of the labor movement.110
Muste’s commitment to a pragmatic approach to labor education shaped the curriculum. Courses focused on the ‘‘actual living problems’’ that confronted workers and the labor movement; education should begin with the ‘‘experiences’’ of trade unionists and ‘‘the problems that arise in connection with them,’’ Muste explained.111 Faculty preferred free and open discussions rather than lecture, which was seen as passive and authoritative, or debate, which was seen as narrowly confining discussion between two simplified poles. Faculty also presented their subject material as objectively as possible, and then allowed the students to come to their own conclusions, using the research and rhetorical skills they had learned.112
Muste’s personality encouraged this thoughtful engagement with different sides of an issue. Len De Caux, who attended the college in the mid-1920s (and who would later serve as the Communist editor of the CIO News), recalled that Muste ‘‘always looked for the center with his ‘On the one hand . . . But on the other hand . . .’.’’ ‘‘To us young Brookwooders, A. J. was