Perth Amboy evening news., 1922-07-03

| dS lie has SOAAApN
school, if not before. having &C
CURED only the barest smattering OF
an education and, until cently
little chance of acquiring n more
The new workers colleges are
specially designed to meet the neeos
of this average citizen and worker
The classes are usually held on Two
evenings a week and on Saturdays
and Sundays in the most convent
ent place which happens to be aVali-
able. Some are housed IN hleh
school buildings, some in puonc
halls and others in local trade
union headquarters. The workman
pledges himself to attend classes
thirty-six weeks a year during a
period of three years.
Special text books have been writ
ten for his benefit by experts. They
present lucidly and elementarily the
background OF each subject IN the
simplest language. They are manu-
featured and sold cheaply so that
they are withiE the reach or any
worker. Amons the subjects teealed
are literature, science. sociology, MS
tory, politics. labor and finance. The
am is not TO chance a mans Voca-
ton or to help him Increase his
earning capaci y, but simply TO pro-
vide him with a general educational
background which will enable him
to use i~ntelliSantly the vote Whlcn
he enjoys.
Perhaps the greatest cause of
modern industrial unrest" declares
Spencer Miller, Jr., secretary-treas-
urer of the Workers Educational
Bureau of America. lies in the fact
that in the highly specialized indus
try a workers does not get any crea-
| ttx,n- r. 4iCfa otinn ritf nf htc uvnyk A
man may be trained to fasten on the
same bolt to the same piece of ma
chinery as soon as the law permits
| him to leave school, and he may
stay at that monotonous work i<r
thirty years.
"As a result he has no sense of
| his relation to the industry of which
he is a part and no sense of the in
dustry's relation to society. He
stores up resentment, naturally. be-
cause he has no creative outlet
whatever. He does not share in the
| adventure and enterprise of the or
sanitation for which he works. This
suppression of his creative impulse
has been responsible for the psy-
Ghosts the laborer has developed. 1t
is manifested throughout the indus
trial world in dissatisfaction and
discomfort.
THE work of the bureau and of
the workers universities is to pro-
vide these men with the cultural
background which will enable them
to use their creative energies. The
modern industrial world suffers
from an incubus of the old feudal
system, perhaps not so much in
America as in Great Britain. but
even TO a great extent here. Over
there there is no free land, indus
try is highly centralized and the
workers are struggling under an in
heritance of old Injustice.
Under the feudal system and the
early trade systems a man was ap-
prenticed to a certain work at an
early age and he was kept at it
throughout his life. In former times
this man could find a certain crea-
tive satisfaction in his work be-
cause he had the entire making of
ii. But with the development of in
dustry, specialization came about
men were trained to do only n in
finitesimal part in the creation of a
finished product from a factory.
They had no education and no train
ing to make them use their leisure
in creative pursuits. They knew
nothing about what was going on
in the outside world.
so 1t came about that when they
were granted political privileges
they were not equipped 70 use them
intelligently. That is usually the
case: the form is usually achieved
before the substance. We had the
form of democracy, but we had no
real democracy, because workers
were not equal to the bourgeois and
higher bourgeoisie in the funda-
mentals of education.
What is actually working out
with the workers colleges is that
among the 80. 000, 900 workers in the
western world there is now a vast
number of them who are taking
courses which give them a sound
knowledge of the fundamentals of
history. sociology. finance, industry,
politics, labor, literature n art.
The colleges are not vocational;
they have nothing to do with quick
means to monetary success or higher
wages. They are cultural, solely and
simply. They are founded on a be-
lief that the workers car and will
! enjoy a higher an dbetter life and
that tie whole of society will profit
| by It If creative outlet is given to
! thu. MN who workA with hiA hAndA