Brookwood Labor College

Brookwood Labor College (1921 to 1937) was a labor college located at 109 Cedar Road in Katonah, New York, United States. Founded as Brookwood School in 1919 and established as a college in 1921, it was the first residential labor college in the country. Its founding and longest serving president was A. J. Muste. The school was supported by affiliate unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) until 1928. The Brookwood faculty's emphasis on trade union militancy and on advocacy of socialism was opposed by the AFL's Executive Council, which pressured the AFL's unions to withdraw support for the school. Brookwood was later riven by internal dissent over whether it should support militant unionism or remain strictly an educational organization. Suffering from financial difficulties, Brookwood closed in 1937. It is considered one of the most influential labor colleges in American history and was known as "labor's Harvard." Its best known alumnus was Walter Reuther.

Between 1914 and 1921, a number of adult education and training organizations were founded to serve the American labor movement. Adult education was considered by these organizations and individuals to be the key to promoting class consciousness and teaching the skills needed to challenge the power of employers. Among the many different types of organizations created were labor colleges—experimental institutions of higher education designed to meet the needs of the labor movement as well as the educational needs of labor's often uneducated adult members. Students were urged to participate in the daily management of the school. With financial assistance and organizational support from Robert W. Dunn, John Nevin Sayre, and Norman Thomas, Brookwood School opened in the fall of 1919.

By 1921, the Brookwood School was facing major obstacles. The cost of running the school was mounting, and the Finckes realized that Brookwood needed to expand significantly in order to meet the needs of the working class. M. Tuscan Bennett and his wife, Josephine, joined the school in February 1921, and were close friends of the Finckes. After extensive discussion with the Bennetts, the Finckes decided to turn Brookwood School over to a group of trade union activists. The negotiations for the transfer of the estate occurred during a March 31 to April 1, 1921, conference at Brookwood. and the donors included Jane Addams, Stuart Chase, John R. Commons, Herbert Croly, John Dewey, and Freda Kirchwey. a majority of whom were officials of American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions. Faculty, student, and alumni representatives comprised the rest of the board. Unions providing scholarships for students were also eligible for seats on the board. Early board members included John Brophy, president of United Mine Workers of America District 2; John Fitzpatrick, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor; Rose Schneiderman, president of the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America; Cara Cook, Brookwood faculty member and librarian; Gustav Geiges, president of the American Federation of Full Fashioned Hosiery Workers;

Tuscan Bennett served as the school's executive secretary for the first three years of its operation, and Golden served for many years as its business manager. An advisory board was also established.

Brookwood's founders believed that worker education would play a key role in helping bring about social change in a nonviolent way. The founders believed in four tenets: "First, that a new social order is needed and is coming—in fact, that it is already on the way. Second, that education will not only hasten its coming, but will reduce to a minimum and perhaps do away entirely with a resort to violent methods. Third, that the workers are the ones who will usher in this new order. Fourth, that there is immediate need for a workers' college with a broad curriculum, located amid healthy country surroundings, where the students can completely apply themselves to the task at hand." Nearly all of Brookwood's founders were pacifists, and all of them sought an end to violence and war. They also believed in a strong and powerful labor movement. The existing labor movement, as epitomized by the dominant American Federation of Labor, was too unwilling, they felt, to challenge employers, too wedded to the existing political and economic system, and too focused on organizing only the most highly skilled workers into craft unions. Instead, Brookwood's leaders emphasized the mass unionization of workers into industrial unions (workers organized not by job type, but by industry), the unionization of semi skilled workers and unskilled workers, and the merger of craft unions merge into industrial unions. They believed in a new social order based on the equality of workers and an elimination of discrimination based on race, gender, or nationality. Brookwood's leaders and faculty were almost all left wing in their politics. But what this meant is unclear. Labor historian Philip S. Foner argued that Brookwood's political leanings were radically left wing, Many of the college's leaders and faculty also assumed that Brookwood graduates would seek employment in the labor movement after graduation, and work to change the conservative policies of AFL president Samuel Gompers.

Samuel Gompers died on December 13, 1924, and William Green was elected president of the AFL as his successor. Green and the AFL Executive Council were convinced that if the labor movement were to succeed, it had to market itself as a supporter of the capitalist system and partner with business. Every element of progressivism had to be eliminated from the labor movement in order to make this strategy work. It also meant that all progressive criticism of the AFL had to be silenced. Brookwood's success proved threatening to the AFL, however. On May 1, 1926, Muste announced that Brookwood would embark on a major fund raising campaign to allow the school to expand its enrollment to 100 students per class. Brookwood proved controversial in 1926 in another way, too. John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, had largely eliminated opposition to his leadership of the union, and was no longer fighting hard against coal mine owners. Union contracts were being broken, membership was in steep decline, and income was falling very sharply. In June, John Brophy, the mineworker and Brookwood director, forged an alliance with communists in and out of the Mine Workers to defeat Lewis in the upcoming union election. Lewis turned the union's allegedly neutral journal against Brophy, used union dues to pay low level officials to campaign against Brophy, and red baited Brophy (who was not a communist himself) mercilessly. Lewis easily defeated Brophy by a vote of 195,000 to 85,000 in December 1926. Several Brookwood faculty and students assisted Brophy in his unsuccessful campaign against Lewis. These developments alarmed Green. Throughout 1926, he made a number of inquiries into the political beliefs of the Brookwood faculty and the content of Brookwood courses. Muste unwittingly provided Green with additional anti Brookwood ammunition in April 1928 when he published an article in the left wing journal Labor Age. In the piece, Muste said working class people were "mentally sick, twisted, tied up." Workers needed to be "psychoanalyzed to have their thoughts and feelings laid bare before their own eyes. They know too many things that are not so, they are living a dream world, not a real world, in a world of fears, illusions, fairies, and bogey men". and no full version has ever been released. Brookwood and the AFL agreed to a truce in the war of words in mid November. The purpose of the truce was to give the school time to respond to the charges contained in the AFL report. As part of the informal agreement, Muste agreed not to press to overturn the Executive Council's resolution on the floor of the upcoming AFL convention. In return, the AFL Executive Council agreed not to publish a supplementary report that contained additional charges against the school. The AFL convention opened on November 19, 1928. James B. Rankin, president of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, tried to undermine the Woll report by declaring Brookwood convicted by "uncertain evidence" and "without a trial or official charges". the delegates to the AFL convention approved Woll's unreleased report and the Executive Council's October 29 resolution. The AFL convention's action was also denounced by many. John Dewey and author and workers' education expert Marius Hansome defended Brookwood publicly after the convention. In February 1929, 35 Brookwood alumni—including several international union vice presidents, labor journal editors, the heads of labor colleges, and state federation officials—wrote a letter to William Green protesting the AFL's action. But neither Green nor the AFL Executivge Council were moved. To them, the issue was not about academic freedom but the right of the AFL to maintain control over its own policies. Brookwood, with AFL member support, had challenged those policies, and it was the AFL's right to force the withdrawal of that support. Three months later, at its April 1929 convention, the WEB adopted two new constitutional amendments aimed at Brookwood. The first limited membership only to those organizations directly affiliated with the AFL and its member unions. The second amendment made it a goal of the WEB to partner on worker education solely with established colleges and universities.

In the wake of the AFL attack on Brookwood, the college's director, A. J. Muste, began pushing for the abandonment of Brookwood's strictly educational mission in favor of training strike organizers. Board member Fannia Cohn and faculty member David J. Saposs, who both disliked Muste's new political views, fought to preserve Brookwood as a non political school.

Muste began leading Brookwood into controversy quietly enough. On February 23, 1929, he endorsed a proposal by the Pittsburgh Labor College which called for a "militant" trade union labor party. But Muste moved beyond endorsement, and quickly tried to implement the proposal. On March 2, Muste outlined a plan of action at a meeting of the League for Industrial Democracy. He proposed establishing a network of communications among progressive leaders, organizations, and other groups within the American Federation of Labor, with the goal of creating a "militant though informal" national movement. The key to this network was the WEB, he said. However, Muste said, any new organization must denounce communism. Muste's plans for a "militant though informal" network took concrete form on May 26, 1929, when 151 union members, labor leaders, and socialists meeting in New York City agreed to form the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA). At the meeting were several Brookwood directors and faculty, including Budenz, Golden, Hartman, A. J. Kennedy, Lefkowitz, Maurer, and Muste. The CPLA's founders agreed to use the journal Labor Age to advocate for industrial unionism, labor militancy, the five day work week, and a program of social insurance. The CPLA also advocated a planned economy and government ownership of national resources,

Despite this action, many of Brookwood's board members did not support Muste or the CPLA, and a majority of the faculty opposed the board's action and what the CPLA was trying to do. Muste's political drift leftward encouraged some Brookwood faculty to take even more radical stands. Veteran faculty member Arthur Calhoun, who had long held communist views, now began advocating that Brookwood formally adopt a communist philosophy to the exclusion of all other views. Deeply alarmed, the rest of the Brookwood faculty unanimously asked the Brookwood board of directors not to rehire Calhoun when his contract expired in early June 1929. Calhoun (who had asked to be released from tenure in 1927 to pursue other jobs) denied he was a member of the Communist Party. But when asked if his communist views would allow him to would continue serving on the Brookwood faculty while also seeking to destroy the institution, Calhoun answered they would.

In October 1929, Brookwood college opened with just six full time faculty but a full class of 37 students. The faculty included Muste (teaching foreign labor history, public speaking, and history), Josephine Colby (teaching English and parliamentary law), David J. Saposs (teaching American labor history), Helen G. Norton (teaching journalism), and Mark Starr (teaching economics). Instructors were added as needed for correspondence courses, and celebrated author Sinclair Lewis agreed to lecture during the term. The college also began expanding that year, offering its first extension programs. Tom Tippett was hired to direct the extension effort. When these students graduated in May 1931, Brookwood celebrated not only its tenth anniversary but also its 200th graduate. But there were signs that not all was well at Brookwood. Expansion was coming as the Great Depression deepened. In addition, racial tension now erupted at the school. In 1932, Mark Starr lead a Brookwood Players theater group on a trip through the South. The Jim Crow laws of the Southern states which the troupe visited required the troupe's lone black student to stay in racially segregated, substandard housing; eat in the blacks only section of restaurants (or use a separate restaurant entirely); use racially segregated toilet facilities, and more. Starr did not challenge these laws. Muste was spending more and more time on CPLA business and far less effort on raising money for the college. He also diverted college resources to CPLA activities. In 1932, he instructed Tippett to write a play dramatizing the plight of Southern textile workers, who were facing strikebreakers, employer sponsored violence, and attacks by the National Guard. This play, Mill Shadows, was taken at Brookwood expense on a nine day, 800 mile (1287 km) tour of the South. The money raised did not return to Brookwood, but rather was donated to striking textile workers in the South Carolina Piedmont. John Dewey, Sinclair Lewis, and 80 others printed a public letter in the left wing magazine The Nation in late November, pleading for money.

Muste's evolving political views and the increasing amount of time he spent on CPLA activities created much dissent within the Brookwood faculty. Muste's pacifist views were also changing, and he now advocated a qualified approval of labor union violence. In May 1932, Muste proposed that Brookwood become a "training base" for "CPLA fighters". Many Brookwood faculty feared that Muste's evolving political views were heading toward Trotskyism (a theory of Marxism advocated by Leon Trotsky), and that he would drag the CPLA and Brookwood into the communist political camp with him. The political crisis at Brookwood culminated in March 1933. The board of directors called a meeting at which Phil Ziegler presided. It began about March 2 and lasted three or four days. The board quickly cleared away its business: Maurer was reelected president, and Fannia Cohn was elected vice president. Muste refused, and both he and Tippett resigned on March 5, 1933. Muste's resignation nearly crippled Brookwood. Six administrators and 19 of the school's current class of 28 students walked out as well. This constituted most of the administrative staff, and nearly all the student body. Among the students who walked out were all three of the school's African American students. They were angry at Starr's role in the opposing Muste, and upset at losing Muste (who adamantly opposed racial discrimination). On June 5, 1933, the Brookwood board of directors appointed Tucker P. Smith the new director of Brookwood Labor College. Smith said he would refocus Brookwood on education, with a particular emphasis on semi skilled and unskilled workers and the unemployed. He also said Brookwood would return to a full educational program, which would involve not only resident training but also field activities, Chautauquas, summer institutes, and publications. Twenty nine students graduated in April 1934. Brookwood enrolled a class of 32 for the 1934–1935 school year. James Maurer was reelected as president that year, and three individuals were hired as new faculty: Roy Reuther in extension studies; Lawrence Rogin in journalism and as editor of the Brookwood Review; and Ethel Lurie as librarian and tutor. Enrollment dropped sharply in the school's last two years. Just 20 students enrolled for the 1935 1936 term, including two refugees from Nazi Germany. Despite the lower enrollment, the school added two new faculty, Dr. Lazare Teper and John Martindale. It also hired special instructors to teach a wide variety of courses. These included Luigi Antonini, Osmond Fraenkel, Jack Lever, and Frank Palmer. Enrollment did not improve the following year. Brookwood enrolled just 19 students in the 1936 1937 term, which ended prematurely in March 1937. In the later 1930s, Joel I. Seidman became director of Brookwood Labor College. On November 21, 1937, the Brookwood Labor College board of directors voted to suspend classes and close the college. Historians offer a wide range of reasons for Brookwood's demise as well. Many cite Brookwood's financial problems, with some specifically linking them to the Great Depression Some attribute it to both. The internal political tensions within Brookwood are also cited as a primary cause. Educational historian Joseph Kett cites declining enrollment as the primary cause of the college's closure, although the reason for the decline is not stated, In August 1942, Stanroy Estates sold the campus to the Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission for $34,000. and transformed it into a rest home for Norwegian merchant sailors whose ships were being repaired in New York City. Brookwood began teaching drama in 1923. Hazel MacKaye was the first director. MacKaye left in 1926 to run a similar program for the United Mine Workers, and was replaced by Jasper Deeter, a director who had worked with Nobel Prize winning playwright Eugene O'Neill. Deeter directed several plays for The Workers' Theater after its formation in 1925, and often had Brookwood players appear in Workers' Theater productions. Among the more celebrated plays produced by Brookwood Labor College were Peggy, Starvation Army, Miner, and Sit Down (which portrayed the Flint Sit Down Strike of 1936 1937). Some 2,800 people saw Mill Shadows when it toured Hartford, Connecticut; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New Brunswick, New Jersey; Baltimore, Maryland; and Washington, D. C., in 1932. Ray saw a performance of Sit Down and enjoyed it. Songwriter Earl Robinson was hired as composer. Ray and Robinson secured contracts which paid them $120 a month for eight months. Working only two hours a day, Ray crafted a troupe from the students at the college, and used improvisation techniques he'd learned at the Theatre of Action to help craft plays. The goal was to take the troupe on the road, performing at various union conventions and functions. But with Brookwood failing financially, they were released from their contracts after just three months. Even during Brookwood's waning days, the labor program remained strong. In 1936, there were three full companies of Brookwood Players on tour, which produced plays in 100 cities in 23 states.