American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson
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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