Abstract
As labor educators, it can be argued that it is our job to “make rebels.” But rebels cannot be made with tools alone; they also need ideas. This is why Tobias Higbie’s new book Labor’s Mind: A History of Working-Class Intellectual Life is an important read for labor educators. As Communist Party leader William Z. Foster commented, “A fundamental part of the general revolutionary program is to make rebels; to develop men and women who have definitely broken with capitalism and who are looking forward to the establishment of a Workers’ Society” (p. 91). While we have certainly fallen short of Foster’s grand vision of a “Workers’ Society,” those of us in the field of labor education know all too well the powerful sensation you get when your students leave your classroom asking for more knowledge. There is, quite simply, nothing better.
Labor’s Mind tells the stories of how workers in the United States sought out and craved knowledge, along the way establishing institutions that would help impart that knowledge. Higbie’s book is “a social history of reading, writing, and teaching” that “make[s] democratic intellectual life possible, and why those conditions have been so difficult to obtain” (p. 5). By focusing on this history of education between the turn of the twentieth century until World War II, Higbie shows us how working-class men and women educated themselves despite only limited access to the formal education that we take for granted today. As late as the early 1940s, “only 14 percent of the working-age population had completed four years of high school,” while “60 percent of Americans age twenty-five years or older had an eighth-grade education or less” (p. 5). This was certainly the case for my paternal grandparents who were the first children born to Polish immigrants in rural Massachusetts. My grandmother left school after eighth grade to help raise siblings and went to work in the office of a nearby button factory.
Yet, this lack of access is not equivalent to a disinterest in knowledge. The working class sought knowledge through a variety of means. As Higbie notes, “. . . the paradox of working-class ‘self-education’ lay in the fact that it was a deeply social process” (p. 38). Workers like Rose Pesotta left Russia in search of liberation and participated in the educational programs of her union, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU). Eventually she found her way to the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women in Industry (one of the predecessors of our own United Association for Labor Education [UALE] women’s summer schools) and then the Brookwood Labor College (p. 35). Her education led to victory as she ran for the vice-presidency of the ILGWU.
Ed Falkowski, a Pennsylvania mine worker, spent all of his spare time reading and studying the dictionary. His passion for knowledge led to the founding of a chapter of the Young People’s Socialist League and his own personal writing being published in magazines. Small printing presses, primarily based in Chicago, published books specifically for the working classes such as the Little Blue Books. The Little Blue Books were pocket-size, paper-covered books that cost five cents and covered a wide range of topics from popular literature to science and religion to politics. Jack Conroy, a friend of Falkowski, recalled, “The Blue Books were my university curriculum when I worked at the Collieries . . .” (p. 31).
In addition to self-education through reading and writing, Higbie’s research highlights the importance of soap box lectures and study groups. While the beauty of a soap box speech is its mobility, cities and towns often had meeting spaces such as Bughouse Square in Washington Park on the near northside of Chicago. Located at the steps of the Newberry Library, speakers would often use the library’s resources to help craft their message. As Slim Brundage, the founder of the College of the Complexes, noted in 1967, “We went and stood on the street corner and listened, you know, to somebody, and got up and said our own piece. Well, where are the kids now? To college! College wasn’t available to us” (p. 50).
Higbie’s thoroughly researched book demonstrates the commitment many workers had to education. It is easy to get caught up in teaching the core skills classes like grievance handling, labor law, and collective bargaining. These are often our bread and butter. But Higbie’s book is an important reminder that we should also be teaching the big ideas and making the effort to bring literature, art, and political theory into the curriculum as well.
Higbie’s book is a gem and should be a required reading for any labor educator.