The so-called strike of the Wisconsin Student Workers’ Union has much of instruction for those who have been watching the trend of University development during the past few years and are inclined critically to examine the effect upon the student of modern educational methods.
The strike occurred in an institution that is recognized as the leader in progressive education; that has given extraordinary liberties to the student body; that is probably working more directly for the material interests of the people than is any other American university; and it occurred in a State that is convinced of the expediency of generously maintaining an institution of higher education, and is levying taxes therefore which during ten years have increased more than threefold.
Largely under the initiative of the University, but with faith, often fully justified, in the practical value of the instruction therein given, the State has adopted many of the principles enunciated in the class room, and has accepted as advisors, or taken over and appointed on its commissions, practically every professor and instructor whose counsel might be of direct service in its legislative and executive efforts, or of indirect service to the people at large. The professional staff of the University, and the legislative and executive staff of the State, have thus organized what might be called a beneficent interlocking directorate, which is expressed more or less truthfully in the local aphorism: “The State University is destined to produce a University State.”
During the past decade, influenced by and participating in the political and social changes that have made Wisconsin conspicuous, and encouraged by the large enrollment in the so-called social and political sciences—anenrollment of nearly two thousand students, containing a generous representation from the congested districts of American cities, from the oppressed people of Europe and from formative governments generally—the University has added to its staff of professors and instructors, until these departments are not surpassed in attractiveness by any institution in America or indeed in Europe.
There is, then, among the student body a liberal admixture of those whose social and political convictions, so far as they are definitely formed, are not in entire accord with prevailing conventions. Some of the more restless have organized a Socialists Club, and affiliations have been established with Socialist organizations at Milwaukee and elsewhere, and speakers of advanced anarchistic views, such as Emma Goldman, on coming to Madison, draw large and not entirely unsympathetic student audiences.
Within the University, and justified under the plea for a more perfect democracy, the presence of strong class distinction and party feeling often introduces an earnestness and bitterness into student gatherings which is much more intense than in our older institutions of the east. Moreover, the discussion of party differences is not confined to the campus. The contestants, even though students, are accustomed to air their views in the public press; and the state legislature—in which there is a liberal admixture of representatives of all political parties—is occasionally called upon to adjust real or imaginary student wrongs.
To the Wisconsin student there is no mystery about the making or unmaking of law; to him the capitol is a place of recreation, and the legislators, many of them alumni, are his companions. The freshman comes under the control of a student legislative body that defines his privileges and attempts to control his liberties. This elective body not only assumes jurisdiction over the student as an individual, but, like an interstate commerce commission,it regulates the activities of various student organizations, particularly those alleged to have aristocratic tendencies. It fixes penalties for the infraction of student laws, authorizes arrests, and sees that culprits are brought before the Student Court, where they are tried and sentenced. This student legislative body, through its representation on student publications, and in other ways, is an active agency in making and molding student opinion, and the faculty has already recognized its jurisdiction. The Regents have agreed not to alter or abridge the control of Student Self-Government, except through process of conference. The student body has thus assumed, in certain respects at least, the same attitude toward the administration of the University that the University is accused of having assumed toward the administration of the State; or, to paraphrase the aphorism already given, “The University Student is destined to produce a Student University.”
The student labor trouble, therefore, is not to be looked upon as the result of a justifiable grievance between a handful of waiters, and the Steward in control of the University Commons. The relations between the student workers and the Steward had been cordial, and the reduction in the number of student employees was an economic necessity, and ordinarily would have excited no particular opposition. But under the peculiar conditions existing at Madison, where there are students who do not believe in the present order of things, where it is thought, by not a few, that legislation by labor will bring better social conditions, where machinery for organized resistance is fabricated as a pastime, where the tactics of “collective bargaining” are thoroughly understood, and where there are impulsive students anxious to assume leadership, the temptation to translate static into kinetic energy became irresistible.
It seems that about one hundred and thirty students had been given positions in the University as waiters,kitchen helpers, etc., receiving in compensation a substantial meal for each hour or fraction thereof of service. There was no dispute concerning the amount of service or the value of the compensation. The students admitted that the work was light, the board excellent; and the positions were considered the most desirable of their kind in the city. The body waited upon some two hundred and fifty men students, and upon nearly three hundred women students. (Thirteen women student waiters and helpers, employed in one of the dormitories, did not join the Union, and took no active part in the agitation.)
The completion of a new central kitchen had led to economies, and a few weeks before the end of the semester—it was thought in ample time for the young men to find employment elsewhere—preliminary announcement was made that the staff of student employees would be reduced, and twenty students out of a total of one hundred and thirty were individually so informed. Since it was perfectly obvious that their services were in fact not needed, the waiters received the announcement in good spirit and without serious question.
It was at this point, however, that certain other students, who were not employed by the University, but were generally interested in organized agitation, called a mass meeting of the student workers both of the University and of the city, and through the vigorous application of well-known forensic excitants, brought about a condition of hysteria, which affected a large proportion of the student employees, although the general student body remained immune.
The waiters and helpers found themselves organizing a Union, subscribing to extravagant declarations, and electing as their officers representatives from the most violent of the agitators. It was alleged that the organization had more than four hundred members. The president of the Union, a student in Law, was not a University worker. The secretary was the president of the local Socialist Club,and originally registered at the University as from New York City.
The leaders of the “strike” (a strike was only threatened) took the position that they would protect the student waiters, that the number of waiters should not be reduced, that economies, if necessary, should be effected in some other way, and that dire consequences would result if the plans of the University administration were carried into effect. In any event, nothing should be done until the organization was duly recognized by the University authorities, until proposed changes in the method of conducting the business of the Commons had been submitted to the Student Union for its approval, and until it was agreed that all present and future grievances and difficulties should be submitted to a board of arbitration satisfactory to the Union.
At Madison it is customary to adjust differences through conferences, or a series of conferences, but here was a case that affected the business management of the University, and where delay would involve loss to the State. The situation was also extremely amusing, because of the fact that the longer a settlement could be deferred, the longer the student waiters would continue to be fed at the expense of the University. It resembled some of the difficulties our government experienced in the neighborhood of the Rio Grande.
As a coercive measure, the leaders submitted a document to the effect that if the original plans of the administration were not altered there would be a sympathetic “walkout” on the part of a hundred or more boarders.
Startling articles appeared in the press, syndicalism and sabotage were academically discussed, and there were threats that unless “justice” were shown the students, every dining room in Madison would be closed.
As time went on, the general disturbance had its effect upon the regular kitchen staff of the University, composed of paid employees, who saw, or thought they saw, in therising power of the student body, their own impending extinction. At this time, a strike or walkout on the part of the regular paid force would have been serious: for the University was practically under contract to house and feed approximately three hundred women students, enrolled residents of the dormitories.
Hearings were held before the Regents, but all efforts on the part of the management to change the attitude of the leaders were futile, and the appetites of the aggrieved seemed to increase with the vigor of the agitation.
At a critical moment the cooks sent in their ultimatum, calling the Steward to declare allegiance either to the insurgents or to the regulars; or in default of such declaration, operations in the kitchen would abruptly terminate. This announcement was decisive: for
We may live without friends; we may live without books;But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
We may live without friends; we may live without books;But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
We may live without friends; we may live without books;But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
The administration ordered the doors of the dining halls closed, locked, and guarded; service within the women’s dormitories was conducted as is customary in convents, and the debarred student waiters, boarders, and guests gathered without on the campus, dumfounded that a public institution should close its doors to the populace. It certainly looked like a “lockout,” and it was alleged that the plant was being operated by “scabs.”
All the stage machinery that accompanies a real strike and lockout was brought into requisition—circulars were issued appealing for the sympathy of the public, and implying that poor students had been discharged for no other reason than that they had belonged to the “Union,” and stating that girls working their way through college had been dismissed because they had expressed sympathy. Mass meetings were called, speakers were imported, inflammatory addresses were delivered, additional resolutions adopted, and appeals made to the Federation ofLabor, to the State Industrial Commission, and to the Governor.
But in due time the members of the Student Workers’ Union found that their services were not indispensable, that State institutions do not invariably yield to the pressure of organized resistance, and as chastened individuals they applied for such positions as remained vacant, and went back to work.
The recital of these occurrences as a trivial circumstance has no place in a publication of this kind, but the significance, so far as it may throw light upon the general path of university development, and may help to determine the kind of mind and men that universities are producing or may produce, justifies serious contemplation.
It is generally admitted that universities are destined to become something different from what they now are. University men have a duty to perform, not only in watching the trend of this inevitable drift, and determining its probable course, but they are in a measure responsible for the course.
Not all institutions move with the same rapidity. Some possess a power that takes them away from their companions and into new territory. The records of their movements and the attendant results are generally looked upon as public property. It thus becomes possible for the conservative university, or the university that is not inclined, or does not have the means, to go into expensive experimentation, to learn much through the inexpensive process of observation.
What have we to learn from the conditions and occurrences above outlined?
Are we really getting all of the good things out of our institutions of higher culture that we think we are getting?
When the citizens of a commonwealth tax themselves in order to give university instruction to their children, does it necessarily follow that the university life will developthe highest citizenship? Does it develop a feeling of pride in the State and of loyalty to it? Is the position of the State as an instrument of modern civilization strengthened or weakened thereby?
Does university training tend to produce an accelerated or a deferred maturity of the judicial sense—the power to distinguish between what is reasonable and what is unreasonable, what is genuine and what is false; and to distinguish promptly between the man that is frankly striving for principle, and the one who is falsely striving for position?
If any considerable number of college graduates should be of the opinion that the State, in addition to providing some twenty-five years of free instruction, should also provide free board, is it not obvious that difficulties akin to those that surround the issue of fiat money would quickly arise on the issue of fiat food?
If graduates on becoming citizens believe that they are entitled to anything and everything that can be extracted from the State, and if their lives are to be spent under this obsession, ought not the community to prepare itself for a long series of constitutional amendments?
Is a university graduate sufficiently prepared to meet the strife of adult life if he leaves his institution wise with facts, emotional to the spell of the professional agitator, and innocent of the craft of the publicity agent?
Our institutions may teach what is right, but what is being done to develop the moral fibre and personal independence that will put the right into operation? What forces are at work to encourage open and vigorous opposition to social doctrines that are generally considered damaging to the State?
Does free and excessive opportunity engender a feeling of gratitude on the part of the recipient, or are such feelings inconsistent with modern conventions?
When the lust for individual gain and personal possession on the part of the few, is legitimatized at the expenseof many, are the results more reprehensible when the process has been conducted by the aristocratic adult, than when conducted by the proletariat youth?
When students have listened to and communed with the most eminent instructors in social and political science that the State can furnish, why should they believe that labor, when organized, has inherent rights that labor individualized does not possess?
Are the cardinal principles of our form of constitutional government being upheld when it becomes necessary for the individual to declare allegiance to some party or organization before he can enjoy the ordinary privileges of citizenship?
Why should a body of university students—men that have enjoyed the privileges of education—take the position that unless the prerogative of the few is promptly recognized and implicitly followed, the innocent will be harassed, and the entire community made to suffer?
Is it not possible that in our effort strictly to maintain the principles of academic freedom, we are giving instruction with such impartial neutrality that those who have worthy views conclude that their convictions are subject to question, and those who have ulterior motives are encouraged to believe themselves justified?
What the State really needs at the present time is some agency that will develop the powers of discrimination, that will enable its citizens to arrive at conclusions independent of plausible presentations.