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American Socialist Pedagogy and Experimentation in the Progressive Era: The Socialist Sunday School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Kenneth Teitelbaum  and
William J. Reese
Kenneth Teitelbaum
Affiliation:
College of Education, Michigan State University
William J. Reese
Affiliation:
School of Education, Indiana University at Bloomington
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Extract

Described by one unsympathetic observer in Buffalo as “Schools of Nonsense” and by one ardent participant in Milwaukee as “rebel factories,” the movement to establish Socialist Sunday schools (S.S.S.) in the United States during the early twentieth century is perhaps one of the best kept secrets of American socialist and educational historiography. This essay attempts to rectify that situation by analyzing an educational movement that falls outside of the traditional and progressive educational camps of the early 1900s. During these years numerous working-class radicals provided their children with a formal, weekend education that lacked the strong capitalistic biases dominant in the public schools.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , Winter 1983 , pp. 429 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Although commonly referred to as “Sunday schools,” few of these Socialist schools had any religious character at all.Google Scholar Besides the passing reference to these schools in a few historical studies of Socialism, such as Kipnis, Ira, The American Socialist Movement 1897–1920 (New York, 1952), pp. 256–257 and 260, the best (though still limited) recent attention given to the Socialist Sunday schools is contained in an unpublished work. See Peterson, Patti M., “The Young Socialist Movement in America From 1905 to 1940: A Study of the Young People's Socialist League,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1974, pp. 23–29.Google Scholar In a more extensive study, one of the authors of this essay will provide a full discussion of the development and historical context of the S.S.S. movement, including a more detailed look at particular schools in New York City, Rochester, New York, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition, the educational philosophy, curriculum and pedagogy of the schools and of other more informal attempts to teach children the tenets of Socialism will be scrutinized more closely. See Teitelbaum, Kenneth, “Schooling for ‘Good Rebels’: Socialist Education for Children in the United States, 1900–1920,” forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation University of Wisconsin-Madison.Google Scholar

2. Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks ed. and trans. by Hoare, Quintin and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell (New York, 1971). See also Boggs, Carl, Gramsci's Marxism (London, 1976); and Martin Carnoy's brief treatment of Gramsci's ideas in his “Education, Economy and the State,” in Apple, Michael W., ed., Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education (Boston, 1982), pp. 79–126.Google Scholar

3. Eden, and Paul, Cedar, Proletcult (Proletarian Culture) (London, 1921), p. 81.Google Scholar

4. For example, see the selections in Stave, Bruce M., ed., Socialism and the Cities (Port Washington, 1975); and Green, James R., Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest 1895–1943 (Baton Rogue, 1978).Google Scholar

5. Basic introductions to the Socialist movement during the Progressive era include the following: Quint, Howard H., The Forging of American Socialism (Indianapolis, 1953); Bell, Daniel, Marxian Socialism in the United States (Princeton, 1967); Shannon, David A., The Socialist Party of America (Chicago, 1955); Weinstein, James, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925 (New York, 1969); and Ira Kipnis, American Socialist Movement. Google Scholar

6. Weinstein, , Decline of Socialism, p. 42; and Green, James R., “The ‘Salesmen-Soldiers’ of the ‘Appeal’ Army: A Profile of Rank-and-File Socialist Agitators,” in Socialism and the Cities, ed., Stave, , pp. 13–40. The original essay on “Jimmy Higgins” was written at the turn of the century by Ben Hanford, the Party's 1904 Vice-Presidential candidate, and reprinted in countless socialist newspapers and journals in subsequent years. The fictional character was lauded as the backbone of the Socialist movement—“What did he do? Everything.”—and was presumably intended to be genderless. The Worker (1 May 1903).Google Scholar

7. Wood-Simons, May, “Vocational Education,” Progressive Journal of Education, (November 1908)I: 7.Google Scholar

8. The history of education during the Progressive era is described in Tyack, David B., The One Best System (Cambridge, 1974); Callahan, Raymond E., Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago, 1962); and Spring, Joel H., Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston, 1972).Google Scholar

9. Socialists won school board seats in many places throughout the country, such as Syracuse, New York; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Butte, Montana.Google Scholar In 1911, the Woman's National Committee of the Socialist Party established a National Socialist Teachers Bureau. Its purpose was to help place Socialist teachers in locations where there were Socialist or “sympathetic” school boards. See also Reese, William J., Case Studies in the Schools of Selected Cities: Final Report to the National Institute of Education (Washington, D.C., 1981).Google Scholar

10. For an analysis of the views held by Socialist leaders toward formal educational practices, see Tein, Joseleyne Slade, “The Educational Theories of American Socialist 1900–1920,” Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1972. In part, she discusses their views of the work of Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and Francisco Ferrer.Google Scholar Other examples of formal schooling practices by American Socialists during the 1900–1920 period include the Rand School of Social Science in New York City; the People's College in Fort Scott, Kansas; the Finnish Work People's College of Smithville, Minnesota; and countless summer schools, study classes, and the like.Google Scholar

11. For a provocative discussion of English radicalism and education, see Johnson, Richard, “Really ‘useful knowledge’: radical education and working-class culture, 1790–1848,” in Clarke, John, Critcher, Chas and Johnson, Richard, eds., Working Class Culture: Studies in history and theory (London, 1979), pp. 75–102.Google Scholar

12. Laqueur, Thomas Walter, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and English Working Class Culture (New Haven, 1976).Google Scholar

13. On the history of the Protestant Sunday School on both sides of the Atlantic, see Rice, Edwin Wilbur, The Sunday School Movement and the American Sunday-School Union (Philadelphia, 1917); Lynn, Robert W. and Wright, Elliot, The Big Little School: Sunday Child of American Protestantism (New York, 1971); Cremin, Lawrence, American Education: The National Experience (New York, 1980); and Laqueur, , Religion and Respectability. Google Scholar

14. Reid, F., “Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain 1892–1939,” International Review of Social History 11 (1966): 29. See also Simon, Brian, Education and the Labour Movement 1870–1920 (London, 1974), pp. 48–52. Socialist Sunday schools in New Zealand are briefly discussed in Openshaw, Roger, “Lilliput Under Siege: New Zealand Society and Its Schools During the ‘Red Scare,’ 1919–1922,” History of Education Quarterly 20 (Winter 1980): 403–424.Google Scholar

15. Marxian Socialism was first introduced in the United States by the German immigrants of the 1850s. Communist Clubs and sections of the International Working Men's Association were formed before 1870. A Working Men's Party was established in 1876, changing its name in the following year to the Socialist Labor Party. In 1898, dissidents within this party and other socialists formed the Social Democratic Party, which became the Socialist Party in 1901. Kipnis, Ira, The American Socialist Movement.Google Scholar

16. Young Socialists' Magazine, 12 (December 1918): 2.Google Scholar

17. For an in-depth discussion of the Ferrer Modern School movement in the United States, see Avrich, Paul, The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States (Princeton, 1980); Veysey, Laurence, The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Counter-Cultures in America (New York, 1973), Ch. 2; and Tager, Florence M., “A Radical Approach to Education: Anarchist Schooling—The Modern School of New York and Stelton,” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1979. Veysey claims that “the Ferrer movement tried to link cultural and educational radicalism with a spirit of class consciousness. For a long time it ran the only progressive school in America which deliberately sought a working-class clientele.” (p. 78) This essay serves as a corrective to this view. Whatever the Socialist Sunday schools may have lacked in cultural and educational radicalism compared to the Ferrer schools, they generously compensated for in the militancy of their working-class consciousness.Google Scholar

18. Avrich, Paul, The Modern School Movement, pp. 226–227; New York Call (28 September 1919); and Little Socialist Magazine For Boys and Girls, 3 (September 1910): 13. Such occasional collaboration should not obscure the very real and often strongly expressed differences between the radical camps.Google Scholar

19. Kropotkin, Peter, An Appeal to the Young (Chicago, n.d.). His influence on American radicals at the turn of the century is discussed in Avrich, Paul, “Kropotkin in America,” International Review of Social History, 25 (1980): 1–34.Google Scholar

20. For example, Pratelle, Aristides, “Resuming Ferrer's Work!” International Socialist Review 14 (October 1913): 218–220.Google Scholar

21. Circle, Workmen's, Forty Years Workmen's Circle (New York, 1940), pp. 19 and 35. See also Hurwitz, Maximilian, The Workmen's Circle: Its History, Ideals, Organizations and Institutions (New York, 1936), pp. 154–177.Google Scholar

22. For example, Bertha H. Mailly, Secretary of the Party's New York State Committee of Socialist Schools and associated with the Rand School of Social Science, recommended Dewey's School and Society to teachers of the Socialist Sunday schools. Also, a series of books authored by Katherine E. Dopp was utilized in many of the schools. Dopp had been a student of Dewey's at the University of Chicago. Her work and its use in the Socialist schools is discussed in Teitelbaum, Kenneth, “Schooling for ‘Good Rebels’”.Google Scholar For a recent analysis of a somewhat different kind of “selective borrowing” from middle class culture by members of the working class, see Willis, Paul E., Profane Culture (London, 1976).Google Scholar

23. Kipnis, Ira, The American Socialist Movement, p. 256. See also Hughan, Jessie Wallace, American Socialism of the Present Day (New York, 1911), p. 205.Google Scholar

24. Although Dewey was associated with Socialism during his lifetime, e.g. see the brief discussion in Curti, Merle, The Social Ideas of American Educators (Paterson, 1959), pp. 503–512, we are not aware of him ever including an overtly Socialist perspective in his educational writings.Google Scholar

25. Peterson, Patti M., “The Young Socialist Movement in America,” p. 288. Peterson seems to base this conclusion solely on the fact that the Party helped to found the Little Socialist Magazine For Boys and Girls in 1909. Actually, once the magazine had gotten started, the Party gave it very little support.Google Scholar

26. For instance, delegates to the Ohio Socialist Party State Convention in 1912 passed a resolution that approved and encouraged “the organization of Young People's Socialist Leagues and Socialist Sunday schools.” New York Call, (3 May 1912). And at the 1916 State Convention at Racine, Wisconsin, a strong statement of support for the newly organized schools in Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine was passed (“Help build up the Socialist Sunday school movement,”), along with the recommendation that the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party employ a competent person to write simple lessons, playlets, songs, etc. for the schools' use. Wisconsin Comrade, 3 (June 1916): 3.Google Scholar

27. Peterson, Patti M., “The Young Socialist Movement in America,” p. 19. In The American Socialist Movement, Ira Kipnis remarks that the “Socialist Party gave far more attention to winning the support of Protestant ministers, than it gave either to youth or women,” (p. 266) although it should be noted that Kipnis' study basically ends with the events of 1912. In early 1918, a S.S.S. participant in Buffalo summed up the exasperation of many of his fellow teachers: “The men and women of the Socialist Party seem to be about as much interested in the Socialist Sunday schools as they are in the price of champagne.” “Kid Comrade Column,” New Age (19 March 1918). Eugene Debs, the most prominent American Socialist of the early 1900s, seems to have taken no clear-cut public stand on the matter of the schools. See Debs, Eugene to Shedd, Kendrick, n.d., “Correspondence Folder,” Kendrick P. Shedd Papers, located at the University of Rochester, Rush Rhees Library, Rare Books Department (Special Collections), Rochester, New York. Henceforth this collection will be referred to simply as the Shedd Papers.Google Scholar

28. “Constructive” Socialism specifically refers to the ideas of those more moderate American Socialists who stressed a piecemeal, gradualist approach rather than a more revolutionary perspective based on more radical, immediate political and economic demands. Thus, for example, in his eighty-page pamphlet, The Constructive Program of Socialism (Milwaukee, 1908), p. 36, Carl D. Thompson argued that the public schools were an application of the principles of Socialism because they were “publicly owned and publicly managed serving all the people, giving equal opportunity to all.” In The American Socialist Movement, Ira Kipnis describes Thompson, at one time a Socialist member of the Wisconsin State Legislature, and other “constructivists” as Right-Wing Socialists. (pp. 209 and 217). Critics at the time often referred to them as “slowcialists” or “sewer socialists” because of the attention they gave to the issue of the ownership of municipal utilities.Google Scholar

29. Quoted in the Party Builder (31 May 1913). See also “Work Through the Public Schools is Best,” Party Builder (26 July 1913).Google Scholar

30. Diary entry (13 April 1915), “Experiences in Milwaukee Folder”, the Shedd Papers. On Milwaukee Socialism, see Reese, William J., “‘Partisans of the Proletariat’: The Socialist Working Class and the Milwaukee Schools, 1890–1920,” History of Education Quarterly 21 (Spring 1981): 3–50.Google Scholar

31. Diary entry (13 April 1915), “Experiences in Milwaukee Folder”, the Shedd Papers. Shedd sarcastically noted that such a view was simply “wonderful logic.” Google Scholar

32. Quoted in Spargo, John and Arner, George Louis, Elements of Socialism (New York, 1912), p. 301.Google Scholar

33. Eden, and Paul, Cedar, Proletcult, p. 84.Google Scholar

34. Berenberg, David P., “Socialist Education,” Socialist World (15 August 1920). At the time, Berenberg was a lecturer at the Rand School of Social Science. One of the courses that he taught was on education. “A lecture and discussion course, dealing with the conduct of Socialist schools and study groups for children and young people, reviewing past successes and failures, and applying pedalogical principles to the planning of courses, selection of teachers, and methods of teaching.” Rand School of Social Science Bulletin, 1920–21 , p. 26.Google Scholar

35. “Start Socialist Sunday School,” National Socialist (27 April 1912); and “Our Various ‘Homes’,” in “Miscellaneous Folder,” the Shedd Papers.Google Scholar

36. Young Socialists' Magazine, 5 (December 1912): 12; and International Socialist Review, 12 (May 1912):794. In Philadelphia's case, the Workmen's Circle branch also installed a piano for the school's use.Google Scholar

37. Letter from Willemse, P., New York Call (11 May 1912).Google Scholar

38. Letter from “A Reader of the Kid Comrade Column,” New Age (16 March 1919).Google Scholar

39. Young Socialists' Magazine, 6 (December 1913): 14; International Socialist Review, 12 (May 1912); 794; Young Socialists' Magazine, 12 (December 1918): 2; and New York Call (8 January 1918).Google Scholar

40. “Baltimore S.S.S. Discontinued,” Young Socialists' Magazine, 13 (March 1919): 18.Google Scholar

41. It is somewhat curious that the National Office of the Party compiled another songbook for use in the Sunday schools. We know of at least three songbooks that were already being utilized (before 1918): Moyer, Harvey P., ed., Songs of Socialism (Chicago, 1905); Kerr, Charles H., ed., Socialist Songs With Music (Chicago, 1908); and Shedd, Kendrick P., ed., Some Songs for Socialist Singers (Rochester, 1913). This may be indicative of our general sense that members of the party were not fully aware of the schools' activities. The absence of a successful national coordinating effort may have been partly to blame.Google Scholar

42. Quoted in the Rand School's American Labor Year Book 1916 (New York, 1916), p. 153.Google Scholar

43. We refer to all of these schools as “Socialist Sunday schools” but several of them were actually known by other names. For example, the early Cincinnati school was called The Arm and Torch League. (The emblem of the Party was an arm holding a torch.) A school in Cleveland was referred to as the English Sunday School and one in Los Angeles was named the Children's Socialist Lyceum. The schools in Buffalo were named Schools of Social Science and the Syracuse school preferred the title of Social Science School. One short-lived school in New York City referred to itself as the Social School for Children and the Pasadena school reported its name as “The Boys and Girls of the Red Flag.” No doubt local factors at particular times sometimes encouraged the use of different names. However, as far as we can tell, they were all, in essence, “Socialist Sunday schools.” Google Scholar

44. On balance this is probably a conservative estimate of the number of Socialist Sunday schools in existence during the 1900–1920 period. In some locations anarchistic Ferrer schools might have been reported as though they were Socialist schools. This would tend to exaggerate the number of schools which were truly affiliated with the Socialist Party. (This is not the case for the Stelton school, however. The most famous Ferrer Modern School was established there in 1915 and lasted until 1953, but a S.S.S. also existed at the Stelton Fellowship Farm for a short period of time beginning in 1916. New York Call (25 June 1916).) Of course, there were more than a few such schools being run by the Socialist foreign language federations (e.g., Jewish, Finnish, Lettish, Bohemian). We have little information about them and have not attempted to group them with the schools that appear to be solely English-speaking. Also, other English-speaking schools no doubt lasted a very short time or failed to receive much publicity or attention outside of their local communities. Mention of such schools probably escaped our research efforts. We are also aware of the fact that in New York City, for instance, the ten schools in existence in the fall of 1915 were not all among the twelve schools in the fall of 1911. Although some schools remained stable for five or more years, many others came and went within a few years time span. Thus, there were more than twelve different schools begun (and ended) in New York City during this twenty-year period.Google Scholar

45. Mailly, Bertha H., “The Socialist Schools of Greater New York,” Little Socialist Magazine For Boys and Girls 4 (May 1911): 6. Of course, some S.S.S. participants welcomed the autonomy that this lack of coordination brought with it.Google Scholar

46. Within a few years, the Chicago, Boston, and Omaha (and New York City) schools were being “roasted” in the non-Socialist press. For example, see the account by a one-time prominent Socialist turned rabid anti-Socialist, Martha Moore Avery, in her “Socialist Sunday Schools,” National Civic Federation Review, 3 (May 1908): 11.Google Scholar

47. Little Socialist Magazine For Boys and Girls, 3 (January 1910): 13; Young Socialists' Magazine, 4 (August 1911): 11; Young Socialists' Magazine, 5 (December 1912): 12; Wisconsin Comrade, 2 (July 1915): 3; and Wisconsin Comrade, 2 (January 1916): 3.Google Scholar

48. Sussman, Esther, “Hartford S.S.S.,” Young Socialists' Magazine 4 (September 1911): 15; and New York Call (30 October 1919).Google Scholar

49. “History of the Rochester Socialist Sunday School,” in “Miscellaneous Folder,” the Shedd Papers.Google Scholar

50. New York Call (15 June 1908), (21 May 1911) and (28 November 1918); Mailly, Bertha H., “The Socialist Schools of Greater New York”; Little Socialist Magazine For Boys and Girls, 4 (May 1911): 6; and Young Socialists' Magazine, 5 (December 1912): 12.Google Scholar

51. Other schools utilized such titles as Director, Organizer, or Principal to describe someone in a position similar to that of the Superintendent of the Pittsburgh S.S.S. Google Scholar

52. Weber, Martin, “The Pittsburgh Socialist Sunday School,” Young Socialists' Magazine, 12 (June 1918): 11; Smith, Rasa A., “The Children's Socialist Lyceum, Los Angeles, California,” Young Socialists' Magazine, 12 (October 1918): 17; and Young Socialists' Magazine, 13 (April 1919): 18.Google Scholar

53. Young Socialists' Magazine, 12 (July 1918): 16; and letter from Shedd, Kendrick, American Socialist (27 March 1915).Google Scholar

54. Shedd, Kendrick P., “Socialist Sunday Schools: Chapter II,” New York Call (14 April 1912).Google Scholar

55. Ibid.Google Scholar

56. Shedd, , “Socialist Sunday Schools: Chapter II.” Socialist men were involved in S.S.S. work, but not in equal proportion to women. Clearly, Socialist women activists were generally encouraged and sought to become involved in certain areas more than others. Like their non-Socialist counterparts, youth work was considered by national and local party leaders to be one “legitimate” field in which Socialist women could directly aid the movement. A number of Socialist women (and men) did actively seek to combat the party's sexism and to give feminist concerns a more prominent place within the movement. See Buhle, Mari Jo, Women and American Socialism, 1870–1920 (Urbana, 1981).Google Scholar

57. “Kid Comrade Column,” New Age (16 March 1918); and Wilt, Frank, “The Cleveland Socialist Sunday Schools,” Young Socialists' Magazine, 12 (Marach 1918): 16.Google Scholar

58. Letter from Shedd, Kendrick, American Socialist (27 March 1915).Google Scholar

59. Shedd, Kendrick P., “Foreward” Some Songs for Socialist Singers.Google Scholar

60. Shedd, , “Socialist Sunday Schools: Chapter II.” Google Scholar

61. “Bring Back My Money” appeared in Moyer, Harvey P., ed., Songs of Socialism.Google Scholar

62. A script of this play and a few others (e.g. “Mister Greed,” “Mister Profits,” and Upton Sinclair's “The Second Story Man”) are contained in a collection of Milwaukee Socialist Sunday School dramatic scripts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library. They were donated to the library by Zeidler, Frank P., Socialist mayor of Milwaukee from 1948–1960. “The Strike of Santa Claus” was also published in Young Socialists' Magazine, 12 (February 1918): 11–12.Google Scholar

63. “A Panic in West Hoboken,” Little Socialist Magazine For Boys and Girls, 3 (May 1910): 13.Google Scholar

64. From “Miscellaneous Folder,” the Shedd Papers.Google Scholar

65. From “S.S.S. Scrapbook #3,” the Shedd Papers. Twenty-seven of twenty-nine pupils taking the test passed, with a score of “55” considered to be a passing grade. One girl who took the test received a grade of “98” and gave these answers to the questions about labor unions: “a) A body of laborers or workers who unite and make certain plans. These plans are brought to the bosses who must agree to them or not the workers refuse to work for them (sic). This union protects them when they refuse to work and helps them if the bosses do not agree to the plans; b) They exist because of the unfair conditions the bosses would have the people work by.” Google Scholar

66. Copies of these lessons are contained in the Shedd Papers. Their availability to be purchased at cost by other S.S.S. teachers was announced from time to time in various Socialist publications. At least one other school used them and found them to be “invaluable.” Letter from Edward Perkins Clarke of Hartford, Connecticut, n.d., “S.S.S. Scrapbook #3,” the Shedd Papers. (This letter was probably written in 1914.) Google Scholar

67. Young Socialists' Magazine, 13 (January 1919): 2.Google Scholar

68. Weber, , “The Pittsburgh Socialist Sunday School”: 11.Google Scholar

69. For example, letters from Mrs. Rachel Adler of Deerfield Beach, Florida (September 15, 1980), Mrs. Nora Linn of Bronx, New York (October 6, 1980), and Mr. Carl Winter of New York, New York (October 22, 1980); telephone conversations with Mrs. Bertha Tischler of Rochester, New York (July 16, 1980 and July 16, 1981) and Mr. Alex Paalu of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (October 11, 1980); interviews with Mrs. George Haberkorn in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (May 14, 1981), Mrs. Jennie Yavner Goldman in Putnam Valley, New York (July 4, 1981), and Mr. Joseph Friebert and Mr. Edward Friebert, Jr. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (October 2, 1981); and correspondence from Bertha Vossler of Rochester, New York (November 12, 1969), contained in the “Correspondence Folder,” the Shedd Papers.Google Scholar

70. This was not the first attempt to form a national S.S.S. organization. Shedd, in Rochester, tried to establish one in 1914–1915. T.J. Mead of Washington D.C. also made a similar attempt. International Socialist Review, 15 (March 1915): 573; and International Socialist Review, 17 (October 1916): 249. Also, in 1916, Bertha Vossler, Secretary of the Rochester S.S.S., suggested that the People's College at Fort Scott, Kansas was making some effort to be a centralized headquarters of S.S.S. materials. Letter to Gladys Dobson of Jamestown, New York (February 19, 1916), “S.S.S. Scrapbook #4,” the Shedd Papers. As far as we know, these efforts did not produce significant results.Google Scholar

71. Reported in the Young Socialists' Magazine , 13 (June 1919): 11. The schools were referred to in this report as Socialist Schools of Science.Google Scholar

72. Kruse, William F., “How to Organize, Maintain and Conduct the ‘S.S.S.’,” n.d., in Socialist Party of America Papers, Microfilm Edition (Glen Rock, 1975), Reel 137, located at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.Google Scholar

73. Murray, Robert K., Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (New York, 1955).Google Scholar

74. Shannon, David A., The Socialist Party of America, p. 163; and Draper, Theodore, The Roots of American Communism (New York, 1957), p. 451.Google Scholar

75. The Young People's Socialist League continued to exist as a Socialist organization, however. It rebounded in the late 1920s and reached the peak of its activity during the Depression years. See Peterson, Patti M., “The Young Socialist Movement in America,” Ch. 4–6.Google Scholar

76. The Brownsville school, located in a strong Jewish Socialist community in Brooklyn, and two Milwaukee schools in a city with a Socialist mayor, continued in operation during the early 1920s. There is also some evidence of schools in Detroit and Pittsburgh in the mid-1920s.Google Scholar In 1920, the Rand School of Social Science reported that it had been commissioned by the Socialist Party to prepare a textbook for the Sunday schools. It also offered courses on Education “which should be welcomed by those who are interested in the work of the Socialist Sunday Schools.” Rand School of Social Science Bulletin, 1920–1921, pp. 2 and 5. We are not aware of any such textbook having been completed, however.Google Scholar

77. For more on this “revival,” see Teitelbaum, Kenneth, “Schooling for ‘Good Rebels’.” Google Scholar

78. Quoted in Howe, Irving, World of Our Fathers (New York, 1976), p. 311.Google Scholar