FANNIA MARY COHN: AN
EDUCATIONAL LEADER IN LABOR AND WORKERS' EDUCATION, HER LIFE AND TIMES
Huey B.
Long and Constance Lawry
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This research was
supported by the Oklahoma Research Center for Continuing Professional & Higher
Education, College of Education, University of Oklahoma.
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Workers' education in the United States has a rich,
tumultuous and only partially reported history. Its heritage as an organized
and institutionalized activity can be traced to evening schools for apprentices
in colonial America and to the Mechanics Institutes of the early national period.
Yet, the most enduring references to workers' education are located in the
period from about 1890 to 1925 when workers in the garment union industries
supplied leadership in labor activism. Therefore, it is not surprising that the
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) produced one of the early
leaders in workers' education: Fannia Mary Cohn. This paper is designed to
place Miss Cohn's contributions within the historical context, provide a brief
biographical sketch, conduct an analysis of her life and activities, identify
her educational contributions, and draw conclusions.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Fannia Mary Cohn entered the United States in a
stressful period. In many ways the nation was in the throes of change almost as
wrenching as the change occurring in her native Russia. In contrast to the
pogroms conducted against the Jews in Russia, the people of the United States
were involved in a kind of ideological, philosophical, and economic class
warfare. Weapons included ballots, books, and bullets. When Cohn was five years
old the United States entered the last decade of the 19th century, years that
Henry Commager (1970) described as ". . . the watershed of American history"
(p. 42). Trauma associated with the changes continued as the "old"
immigration from northern and western Europe shifted to the "new" (p.
46), including immigrants from the Volga and Tartar steppes who concentrated in
the industrial cities (Nevins, & Commager, 1956) and changed the labor movement.
A new
middle class also adopted new perspectives of life. Truth was relative rather
than absolute, instrumental rather than abstract, and only partially revealed.
Yet, they continued to think in terms of normal and abnormal:
Rationality and peace, decent living conditions and
equal opportunity, they considered "natural"; passion and violence,
slums and deprivation, were "unnatura1." Knowledge, they were
convinced, was power, specifically the power to guide men into the future.
(Weibe, 1967, p. 154)
The progressive new middle class championed education
as a solution to many, if not most, of the problems of present and future.
While the emphasis was frequently on public education, education for adults and
education provided by nonschool agencies, organizations, and institutions
received prominent attention. Simon Patten urged social workers to educate the
poor. In turn, social worker Peter Roberts encouraged trade unions to educate
the immigrants. Lester Ward expected the State to educate everyone. An
uncritical faith in "education" almost matched the new middle-class
devotion to "science" with which it was closely identified. Extraordinary
expectations for an alert and informed citizenry were invested in education's
promise.
Labor was not excluded from the prevailing interest
in the efficacy of education, and the garment workers demonstrated an
inordinate enthusiasm for the idea. Stolberg (1944) says:
The influence of organized labor and particularly the
ILGWU, on adult education-university extension, evening classes in the public
schools, courses offered by private institutions such as the YMCA--is
comparable only to the influence of pre-Civil war labor in bringing about free
compulsory education in their country. (p. 283)
There are many reasons for the garment workers'
leadership in workers' education. About 5% of the new immigrants of the latter
19th century were individuals with' an intense urge for self-improvement.
Furthermore, the garment workers were often "organized by intellectuals or
semi-intellectuals who were exponents of some ideology or social faith" (Stolberg,
1944, p. 283). The unionization of the garment workers was not just an economic
undertaking; it was also a romantic movement-based as are all romantic
movements--on a panacea for social progress.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
The fate of Fannia Mary Cohn and the history of the National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL) are closely related. The NWTUL was founded in the United States in 1903 by a group of "leisure-class and working-class women brought together by a shared concern for the plight of women workers" (Jacoby, 1984, p. 5). Begun with a three-part mission of unionization, legislation, and education, the NWTUL's dominant focus was education by 1913.
In 1914 the league opened a national Training School
for Women Organizers, one of the earlier workers' education programs
established in the United States. Located in Chicago, the school's year-long
curriculum was to be a blend of academic work (labor history, industrial
relations, labor legislation, theory and practice of trade agreements, English,
public speaking, and parliamentary procedures) and field work, which would be
divided between organizing and administrative activities (Jacoby, 1984). Cohn,
then president of Local 41 of the Kimono, Wrappers, and Housedress Workers' Union
in New York, was one of its first three students.
Cohn's involvement with the NWTUL is typical of her
lifelong relations with the labor movement. She had not been selected by the
New York league of the NWTUL, which resented her appointment as a student without
their approval. Similarly, her relations with the Chicago-based organizers of
the school seems to have been strained. Of the three students admitted to the
first year's program, Fannia Mary received conspicuously brief mention in NWTUL
documents. Jacoby (1984) hints at two problems that may have affected Cohn's
relationship with the NWTUL leaders: she was a socialist and a ". . .
slightly irritable woman" (p. 9) who may have been more aloof, more
independent, and less grateful to the NWTUL for the opportunity than NWTUL leaders
expected.
By 1914 Cohn was already active in the ILGWU. In 1909
she was elected to the executive board of her newly organized local union, and she
chaired the board from 1913 to 1914. She had begun work in 1905 as a sleeve
maker in a garment factory, not out of economic necessity, but because, as she
wrote in 1951, "I realized then that if I wanted to really understand the
mind, the aspirations of the workers, I should experience the life of a worker
in a shop" (as quoted by Wong, 1980, p. 154).
Born in Kletzk, Minsk, Russia, the fourth of five
children of middle-class Jewish parents, Cohn's early life was confined to the
land to which Catherine the Great had restricted Russia's Jews in 1791. Cohn's father
managed a family-owned flour mill, and, as was the case with most Jewish
families, the Cohns held education in high esteem. However, unlike most, the
Cohns extended the privilege of education to their daughters. Stolberg (1944)
describes Fannia Mary's education as "a good private education" (p.
288). Her private education was probably due to her mother's diligence; Cohn
later reflected that "I was brought up by my mother on books" (Cohen,
1975, p. 9).
At the age of 16, Cohn joined the Socialist
Revolutionary Party, a radical organization dedicated to transforming Russian
society. However, as the Russian government stepped up its policy of
restrictions and overt persecution of Jews, more and more Russian Jews sought
refuge in radical organizations or in emigration from their native land. Over
family objections, with steamship tickets from American cousins, she and her brother
set sail for New York in 1904. Even so, Cohn later recalled: "One thing I
promised my family was that I would continue my studies in the 'New World' as
my mother wanted her children to be no less than professors" (Cohen, 1975,
p. 9).
Cohn's assimilation into American life was assisted
by the family members who welcomed her and her brother. She worked for a short
time on Ellis Island as the representative of the American Jewish Women's
Committee, assisting other immigrants on their arrival in this country. She resigned
from this position because "it was too much of a charitable nature" (Cohen,
1975, p. 17). She rejected an offer of a partnership in the wholesale druggist
supply house which her brother and brother-in-law owned in order to prepare for
the Regents examinations to enter a college of pharmacy. However, in the midst
of her studies she abruptly decided to go to work in the labor movement. She
later conceded that "My family suggested that I complete my studies and
then join the labor movement, but I rejected this as I did not want to come
into it from 'without' but from 'within'" (Cohen, 1975, p. 17).
Fannia Mary's practical side was matched with an
idealistic view. In commenting upon attracting working women to union
membership she said, "I do not see how we can get girls to sacrifice
themselves unless we discuss something besides trade matters. . . . There must
be something more than the economic questions, there must be idealism"
(Kessler-Harris, 1985, p. 119). She also reflected an idealistic view of social
motherhood. She said "a woman is the mother; whether she has children or
not her mission is to work for the good of the [human] race" (Payne, 1988,
p. 124).
While in Chicago she was instrumental in organizing
local unions. In August 1915 she led the workers in the first successful strike
of Chicago's dress and white goods. When she returned to New York, her
reputation as a successful union organizer had preceded her. She became the
first woman elected to a vice presidency of the ILGWU, and she was the first
female vice president of a major international union (Foner, 1980). Despite the
fact that a large majority of the garment workers were women, a woman had not
previously been elected to high union office, and the union leadership was not
committed to organizing women, since their employment in the work force was
considered temporary until they married and had children. Cohn was to spend her
first years of national union leadership as an energetic and effective
organizer of women's locals. However, as the ILGWU moved to establish its own
Education Department, she was later able to merge her activism in the labor
movement with her long-time commitments to education and to the transformation
of society.
The originator of the Education Department of the
ILGWU was Juliet Stuart Poyntz, a former history teacher at Barnard who became
educational director of Local 25 in 1915. Poyntz is described by Stolberg
(1944) as having a gifted and striking personality, "a woman with a rare
combination of charm and force. She was by nature a zealot who later became a
revolutionary extremist" (p. 286), and mysteriously disappeared from the ILGWU's
leadership. Stolberg credits Poyntz with initiating many of the educational
activities that Cohn later directed.
During the crucial years of the establishment and
early, vigorous activity of the ILGWU's Education Department, Fannia Cohn was
its foremost and most consistent leader. As Wong (1984) writes, "Until the
late 1940s the ILGWU was more than the leader of the workers' education
movement in the garment industry; it was the movement" (p. 40). With the establishment
of the ILGWU's Education Committee in 1916 under Juliet Poyntz, and its
continuation after 1918 under Fannia Cohn, the ILGWU was committed to providing
for both the economic and "spiritual" needs of its members through a
general and wide-ranging education, involving individual self-improvement,
social and intellectual respectability, and recreation. Wong reports:
Cohn, in particular, believed that workers should not
be deprived of the joys of a liberal education because of their age, their lack
of formal schooling, or their class. Adult workers, as much as the sons and
daughters of the upper class, deserved exposure to art, literature, music,
drama, philosophy, and history. (p. 44)
However, in designing programs, both leaders "recognized that these women workers wanted their union to be more than a rallying point in the battle for economic justice; they wanted it to be a community in which they could learn, meet friends, and have fun" (Wong, 1984, p. 44). This recognition led to the establishment of a series of Unity Centers, organized first by Poyntz and continued by Cohn. Cohen (1975) reports that during this time the New York City Board of Education directed that only courses conducted in English would be permitted in public school buildings, and Cohn attempted to intercede on behalf of the garment workers. Even though many needle trades workers spoke only Yiddish, she was unsuccessful in convincing the Board to allow the Yiddish classes. By the end of 1918, there were five Unity Centers in New York City as well as a Workers' University for more advanced students that counted the eminent Charles Beard on its faculty.
In an effort to interest members by combining
educational activities with leisure-time pursuits, Cohn took advantage of the
Jewish immigrants' fondness for the theatre by initiating
lectures on the trends of modem drama and a course
which combined attending selected English and Yiddish plays with classroom
analysis. The ILGWU obtained these theatre tickets at discounted prices. This marked
the Education Department's adoption of a long-standing East Side custom whereby
guilds, clubs, and labor organizations purchased theatre tickets at reduced
rates for their members. (Cohen, 1975, p. 134)
The ILGWU's Education Department worked primarily through
the union locals, and Cohn traveled extensively up and down the East Coast as
well as to such points in the Midwest as Chicago and Cincinnati to help the locals
organize their own Unity Centers, workers' universities, and other educational
programs. Local programs were dependent on local money; the union-wide
Education Department had only modest sums at its disposal-$5,000 was
appropriated for it at its founding in 1916, with its appropriation growing to
$15,000 in 1920 and $17,000 in 1922.
Educational activities by Local 25 in 1919 illustrate
how the idea had progressed from 1915. The local had 30,000 members, of which
10,000 were involved in classes and 7,000 in concerts and plays during the
year. Unfortunately, the local, known as "the girls' local"
(Kessler-Harris, 1985, p. 126) became a focal point in the struggle between men
and women and radicals and was split into three locals in 1920.
In December 1920, Cohn convened a meeting in New York City to formulate plans for a national Workers' Education Bureau (WEB), in an attempt to expand workers' education throughout the entire labor movement. The Workers' Education Bureau
would serve as a clearing house for information and
publicity as well as a registration bureau for labor teachers and schools which
required their services. The WEB would also formulate educational standards for
labor schools and evaluate textbooks and other classroom materials. (Cohen,
1975, p. 141)
A. Epstein, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
secretary-treasurer of the Bureau said of the organizing efforts:
We are meeting to organize a permanent bureau.
Attempts are being .made with more or less success by American workers in
different parts of the country to create new educational agencies aiming to
satisfy their own particular needs. The Workers' Educational Bureau is planned
to coordinate such attempts and to stimulate additional experience in workers'
education. (New York Times, 1921, April 3, p. 21:3)
The
WEB was supported initially with contributions from Cohn's family and later
with contributions from her friend, Evelyn Preston. She labored tirelessly to
convince Samuel Gompers that the American' Federation of Labor (AFL) should
subsidize the Workers' Education Bureau, obtaining a formal, cooperative
relationship between the AFL and the WEB in 1922; an acknowledgement that the
AFL formed "an integral and organic part of the WEB in 1923; and finally,
a recommendation from the AFL in 1924 that its unions affiliate with the WEB on
a per capita basis of one-half cent per annum" (Cohen, 1975, p. 143). Cohn
served the WEB in a variety of capacities, including that of vice president.
Cohn was also instrumental
in founding Brookwood Labor College in 1921, the first residential college for
workers in the United States. Both the AFL and the ILGWU had passed convention
resolutions urging the creation of a national university for the entire labor
movement, modeled on Ruskin College in England.
Cohn and other labor leaders steadfastly maintained that only the trade unions could be entrusted with closely coordinating workers' education with the labor movement's interest. They argued that middle and upper class control of the institutions of higher education allowed them to preserve their social status. (Cohen, 1975, p. 142)
As a vice president of the General Executive Board
for the ILGWU, Cohn battled opposition to the union's educational programs from
her fellow vice presidents and others within the union. In describing Cohn's
battles on behalf of the Education Department, Cohen (1975) notes "The
vice presidents duly agreed on the abstract importance of labor education while
they reiterated that students did not appear to be more active or intelligent
unionists" (p. 146). Low attendance figures at the union's educational
programs were an early reality which Cohn spent a great deal of time trying to
remedy. Even as she sought to make the curriculum more relevant to prospective
students, she acknowledged that, "the mass of workers simply could not be
attracted to the study of serous subjects" (p. 144). She defended workers'
education by arguing that even if it "trained only a small minority to
lead their fellows to a, ‘. . . land of industrial democracy. . . it will have
fulfilled its highest duty’" (p. 144). Had Cohn not occupied a seat on the
General Executive Board, it is not clear that she would have been successful in
obtaining the appropriations she did for the Education Department in the face of
the opposition at the vice presidential level. Cohn's battles were further
complicated by general labor attitudes toward organizing women and the
leadership of women in the labor movement. Rather than fight the union
leadership from an external position she chose to work within. As a result she
was often isolated from the more radical female leaders and ultimately lost
power within the union.
Fannia Cohn's life was her work, and increasingly her work was her life. On a holiday in Europe to improve her health in 1922, she took time to stop in Paris to visit the garment trades' offices and discuss workers' education among other labor-related activities. She concluded her trip by meeting the president of the ILGWU in London and addressing several mass meetings of the needle trades' workers (Cohen, 1975). This particular trip, however, was to become a source of embarrassment. According to Kessler-Harris (1985) the June 11, 1923 minutes of the General Education Board meeting note that Cohn made the trip to Europe at the advice of her physician and that the financial loss, which she bore herself,
made it impossible for her to straighten out her financial situation and that she asked, therefore, to be reimbursed four weeks' pay. It was decided to grant this request and in the future on occasions of that kind, requests are to be made prior to the taking of vacations. (p. 137)
It is also likely that at the time of her trip Cohn
increasingly was being besieged by the male leadership who questioned her
loyalty to the union.
Cohn returned revitalized and continued to develop
new programs for the union. She arranged for the New York garment workers to
attend classes at the New School for Social Research at reduced rates. She also
enlarged the education program to include lectures during the first hour of all
the locals' business meetings, instructing the captive audience in English or
Yiddish in subjects which ranged from labor and economics to industrial hygiene.
She organized a new program for the wives of members and included a Women's
Auxiliary Institute at Brookwood Labor College during the summer to analyze the
problems of both working women and the wives of workers. She began work on
behalf of Pioneer Youth of America, which sponsored a summer camp staffed by
men and women sympathetic to labor, to instruct workers' children in a social
philosophy consistent with the trade union movement. At the ILGWU's 1924
convention, she was able to report that 216,903 union members had been involved
in education activities between 1922 and 1924 (Cohen, 1975).
Despite the fact that the union's educational
programs were relatively healthy, the union's internal battles with Communists
and Communist sympathizers, who threatened the control of its leadership, were
costly. By 1924 there was no money for what some viewed as the unnecessary
luxury of an Education Department, and Cohn carried on with only one assistant.
Cohen (1975) quotes Gus Tyler:
Fannia Cohn carried the educational department on her
own back for many, many years. To the extent the union continued its
involvement with educational work it was because Fannia insisted. . .. She was
indulged even when the union didn't have any money. Of course, indulging Fannia
was very cheap. She wore the same dress for thirty years. She didn't eat. She
had no worldly needs whatsoever. My guess is that her relatives kept her alive
for those years--not the union. . .. She carried it through the bad years of the
twenties-the union was small and, at one point, they turned off the elevator because
the union couldn't pay its electric bills. (p. 174)
In 1925, with almost no funding, Cohn continued to build the educational programs of the union:
She formulated an extensive new program, based on her
vision of the ILGWU as a total community. She decided that education should not
be confined to the classroom. Instead, the department should satisfy the
members' and their families' intellectual, economic and recreational needs. On
Saturday afternoons members (as well as their families and friends), now had
the opportunity to attend special lectures and guided tours at the Museum of
Natural History. . .. She also introduced the practice of exhibiting paintings
by members and their children. . . in order to bring art into the workers'
daily lives. Finally, she became an associate of the Monumit School, resident
school for workers' children in Pauling, New York. (Cohen, 1975, p. 183)
She revamped the curriculum for the fall 1925
education season, scheduling classes in economics, economic geography, economic
history, history of the labor movement, labor problems, social history, social psychology,
and literature. In the midst of this activity, the ILGWU held its annual
convention in December 1925, and Fannia Cohn was defeated in her bid for
re-election as a vice president and member of the union's General Executive
Board. While her conflicts with the other vice presidents could not have
helped, most observers have blamed her defeat on her exclusive focus on the
educational activities of the union and her isolation from the other work of
the union. Cohn herself blamed her defeat in part on her refusal to take sides
in the battles during the 1920s when Communists sought control of the ILGWU
(Wong, 1980). Others identify her defeat with the debate over women's role in
labor (Kessler-Harris, 1985; Lorwin, 1933).
A twilight period for the workers' education movement
followed until both the ILGWU and its Education Department were revived during
the New Deal when ILGWU President David Dubinsky appointed Mark Starr as
director. The scope of Cohn's position as executive secretary was then severely
restricted. Workers' education gave way to labor education and
"What is good for the union is good for the
members" replaced Cohn's and Poyntz's intricate cataloging of unionists'
intellectual and emotional needs. More important, the link between workers' education
and progressive social action was broken. Labor education in the ILGWU was
designed to serve the union, not the world. . . . The new members were to be
taught about unionism not so they could be forged into a fighting force for a
new and better world, but so they would loyally follow their leaders. (Wong,
1984, p. 55)
After 1935 the ILGWU's Education Department sponsored
recreational and cultural events, but its systematic study classes dwindled to
a new member course designed to create union loyalty and an officer
qualifications course designed to introduce candidates for paid office to union
structure.
The treatment of Cohn was viewed by many as a public
humiliation. Rose Pesotta, herself an eventual vice president of the union,
but, unlike Cohn, a rebel, wrote to David Dubinsky in outrage:
Fannia Cohn's service to our organization is only
recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such
unselfish efforts on the part of one person, for the cause of workers'
education. But most of the credit is now the heritage of a director who has
entered the field after the thorns were weeded out, the marshes dried and all
other obstacles removed. She remains a tragic figure amidst her own fellow
workers, whom she helped to gain prestige with the outside educational world.
Were she a man, it would have been entirely different. (Pesotta, n.d.)
Cohn continued as a relatively powerless executive
secretary of the Education Department (by the 1950s her sole responsibility was
the book division) until the union forced her hand by staging a retirement
luncheon for her in August 1962. She died of a stroke four months later (Wong,
1980).
A parallel development to the rise of workers'
education provided directly by the labor unions was education for workers
provided by other agencies in society--e.g., the Young Women's Christian
Association and colleges and universities. Fannia Cohn was one of those asked
by Bryn Mawr College President M. Carey Thomas to meet in 1921 to design a
curriculum for the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. The Bryn Mawr
program began that year with Hilda Worthington Smith, the College's dean of
undergraduates, serving as director. Cohn pleaded the excuse of other
obligations. Cohen (1975), however, believes that Cohn's refusal was in part
due to her repeatedly stated belief that trade unions, not the universities,
must control workers' education. Yet, the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women
Workers shared many of Fannia Cohn's ambitions. Its purpose, according to
Heller (1984), was "to offer young women in industry opportunities to
study liberal subjects and train themselves in clear thinking" (p. 115).
It is significant that Cohn's narrow focus, and her distrust of the
middle-class and upper-class women who ran the National Women's Trade Union
League (NWTUL) which supported the Bryn Mawr Summer School, did not permit her
to work cooperatively in the development of what became a model program of its
kind. She continued to believe, "workers' education would succeed only
when provided by trade unionists for trade unionists. . . . However, despite
Cohn's reservations, the ILGWU's educational department provided scholarships
to . . . both the Bryn Mawr and Barnard summer schools" (Wong, 1984, pp.
48-49).
From 1916 until at least 1935, Fannia Mary Cohn
almost single-handedly kept alive the education movement in the ILGWU, offering
programs which served the individual's development as well as the union's
purposes at a time when the United States was attempting to assimilate large
numbers of immigrants into its society. While educational programs for adults
were being offered by other agencies as well, the unions served as an opportune
entry point into American society for immigrant workers.
ANALYSIS
A number of events conspired to influence Fannia Mary
Cohn's life in the United States: her experience with the oppression of the
State and her fellowship with other Jewish immigrants in one of New York City's
urban ethnic ghettoes. She quickly became involved in the women's garment industry
that the Russian Jews had made their own (Higham, 1975).
Radicalized by her Russian experience, it was not
difficult for Cohn to reject middle-class opportunities offered to her by her
relatives. Her initial experiences on Ellis Island interacted with her activist
and educational orientation to provide a foundation for her eventual role in
the ILGWU.
Her acceptance of the value of workers' education was
not unusual nor singularly significant. Reformers of the period directly
contended with the philosophy of William Graham Sumner and Herbert Spencer,
based on social evolution that favored survival of the fittest. Even though
Spencerian ideas frequently were used to justify corporate excesses, reformers
found an equally persuasive spokesman in Lester Ward. Commager (1970) quotes
Franklin Giddings-a- Spencerian--who described Ward's work as follows:
. . . there runs one dominating and organizing
thought. Human society as we who live now know it, is not the passive product
of unconscious forces. It lies within the domain of cosmic law, but so does the
mind of man; and this mind of man has knowingly, artfully, adapted and
readapted its social environment, and with reflective intelligence has begun to
shape it [society] into an instrument wherewith to fulfill man's will. (p. 210)
Fannia Mary was already convinced of the value of
education which she preferred over charitable activities. Yet, she reflected
the radical's view of education and resisted efforts that would have integrated
workers' education with mainstream educational institutions. She subscribed to
the British radical's view of social class and seems to have had little
interest in any educational activity that challenged the concept. Perhaps that
attitude was instrumental in her apparent rejection of the Bryn Mawr Summer School
for Women Workers and her devotion to Brookwood College.
A description of the Bryn Mawr School appearing in
the New York Times (1921, June 5) is hardly consistent with the life
style of a woman who had "no worldly needs whatsoever." The Times reported:
Denby Hall, one of the
most beautiful of the dormitories on the famous Bryn Mawr campus will be used
for the seamstresses, flower makers, and telephone operators who are to take
the courses and it is said that those alumnae of the college who serve as
tutors to the new girls will live there too during the summer, more for the
purpose of seeing to it that the working girls get all the traditional
sociability and fun out of their stay than to act as chaperones or teachers,
for there will be summer parties and dances on the electric-lighted roof,
tennis, basketball, field hockey, cross country walks, evening entertainments, lectures
and motion pictures and mid-week and week-end trips. (Sec. VI, p. 5:1)
Considering the plans for a "late breakfast
hour" and efforts to relieve the young women workers of household duties,
the Bryn Mawr Summer School is in stark contrast to the description of
Brookwood College. For example, a statement by the cooperative labor committee
that established Brookwood emphasized "no individual would be exclusively
assigned to manual work" and, by inference, no one would be excused from
manual work at the college. Faculty and students would routinely perform the
jobs that call for manual labor from "cooking to wood-cutting and from
farming to dishwashing." The statement further noted that the "the
importance and dignity of handwork and headwork are both fully recognized"
(New York Times, 1921, June 16, p. 8:1).
Fannia Mary Cohn was undoubtedly a headstrong, highly
committed leader who was shaped by Russian and American experiences. She was
also trapped by the complicated political forces arising from the activities of
Communists, traditional labor leaders, and the emerging female labor problems.
She found herself forced into a position that required her to choose between
the radical activities of Local 25, later Local 22, known as "the girls'
union" and the male dominated leadership. Those who rebelled, like Rose
Pesotta, found themselves without support and those who conformed, like Cohn,
were without power. Efforts to remove Cohn as a vice president seem to have
begun as early as 1922 (Kessler-Harris, 1985). Her life sensitized her to the
role and importance of education for workers and, as a result, she presided
over one of the first, if not the very first, education departments of an
international labor union in the United States. She was also convinced of the
need for workers' education to be by and for workers. She seems to have
distrusted the reformers of the day who did not have a life history that
included a worker's experience. Her contributions to workers' education are
both noteworthy and controversial.
EDUCATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS
While Fannia Mary's educational contributions may not
have been original, they should be considered significant. She seems to have developed
a view of education for workers that was broader than the social worker
orientation that was prevalent at the time. While she did not reject the
settlements, she was attracted to a liberal education concept that included
drama, theatre, and music. She demonstrated an uncanny ability to creatively
extend programs and activities originally created by others. For example, the
Unity Centers were organized by Juliet Poyntz, as was the ILGWU's Education
Committee in 1916. In some ways Poyntz may be described as the
"brains" of the garment workers' educational program, but if so,
Fannia was its soul. The importance of her contributions reside in the
cumulative aspects of her involvement in a variety of activities when workers'
education was in a fermenting stage.
Some of her experiences that merit recognition are:
1. Her participation in the Women's Trade Union League's first residential workers' education program is indicative of both her recognized potential and her commitment to education for workers.
2. She was not reluctant to use her elected position in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union to promote the education of workers, including women workers who generally had been neglected by union leaders. She not only worked in New York City where her own local was situated, but extended her efforts to other East Coast cities and Midwest centers such as Chicago and Cincinnati.
3. She focused her activism and educational efforts on
the Education Department of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union,
which was only one of three union "educational experiments" in
existence before 1918 (New York Times, 1921, April 4, p. 3:5). It is
apparent that Fannia Mary was the spiritual leader of this effort.
4.
She recognized the value of a liberal education for workers and developed a
curriculum accordingly.
5. She committed her personal resources to workers' education when her union resources were nearly nonexistent.
6. Representing one of three educational "experiments" in existence before 1918, she stimulated the creation of the Workers' Education Bureau which held its first conference in New York City in April 1921 (New York Times, 1921, April 3, p. 21:3).
7. She supported Brookwood College as the first residential college for workers in the United States.
8.
She is recognized for her public relations or "propaganda" on behalf
of workers' education. She not only carried out a voluminous correspondence,
but she also authored a number of papers and journal articles.
CONCLUSIONS
In a sense Fannia Mary Cohn was a tragic figure. She
was forced by circumstances to leave her native Russia against the wishes of
her parents. She arrived in America as it was in the process of profound
change. The nation's changing ethnic composition, attitudes concerning women's
roles, and political and economic ideas exerted extreme stress upon the
country's social fabric.
Upon arrival in the United States she chose to throw
her lot in with her fellow Jewish immigrants in the garment industry. Her
leadership qualities soon led to her election as the president of Local 41 of
the Kimono, Wrappers, and Housedress Workers' Union of New York. The same
qualities were revealed time and again during her life as she became the first
woman elected to a vice presidency in the ILGWU. Yet, she was a victim of her
own constituency as she was isolated from both the male and female power
brokers. After serving as a vice president for several years, she was defeated
in her bid for re-election in December of 1925. Many factors probably
contributed to her defeat, but her single-minded dedication to workers'
education as she perceived it should be was possibly an important element. Her
defeat in 1925 was followed by a continuing decline in the activism of the
Education Department as workers' education gave way to labor education.
Cohn's uncompromising, demanding, self-centered, and
domineering personality combined with her romantic and idealistic views of
education presented her with many interpersonal and political problems that
possibly interfered with her influence in some instances. For example, even
though it is likely that she shared many of the aspirations identified for Bryn
Mawr's Summer School for Women Workers, she rejected the opportunity to
influence the curriculum because of her radical philosophy. And even though she
encouraged the activism of Local 25 members, she could not continue her support
because of internal union politics. However, the same qualities, commitment,
dedication, and assurance of the value of workers' education, which were a
source of weakness, were also a fountainhead of strength.
REFERENCES
Aims of workers' college. (1921, June 16). New York
Times, p. 8:1.
Bryn Mawr's new step: Summer school of women industrial
workers attracts wide attention. (1921, June 5). New York Times, VI, p.
5:1.
Cohen, R. C. M. (1975). Fannia
Cohn and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California.
Commager, H. (1970). The American mind. New York:
Bantam Books. (Original work published in Yale edition 1950)
Foner, P. S. (1980). Women and the American labor movement: From World War I to the present. New York: The Free Press.
Heller, R. (1984). Blue collars and blue stockings: The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, 1921-1938. In J. L. Kornbluh & M. Frederickson (Eds.), Sisterhood and solidarity: Workers' education for women, 1914-1984 (pp. 107-145). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Higham. J. (1975). Send these to me: Jews and other immigrants in urban America. New York: Atheneum.
Jacoby, R. M. (1984). The Women's Trade Union League Training School for Women Organizers, 1914-1926. In J. L. Kornbluh & M. Frederickson (Eds.), Sisterhood and solidarity: Workers' education for women, 1914-1984 (pp. 3-35). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Kessler-Harris, A. (1985). Problems of coalition building: Women and trade unions in the 1920s. In R. Milkman (Ed.), Women work and protest (pp. 110-138). Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Labor educators organize bureau. (1921, April 4). New York Times, p. 3:5.
Lorwin, L. (1933). The American Federation of Labor: History policies and prospects. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Nevins, A., & Commager, H. (1956). The pocket history of the United States. New York: Pocket Books.
Payne, E. (1988). Reform, labor and feminism: Margaret Dreir Robbins and the Women's Trade Union League. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Pesotta, R. to D. Dubinsky. (n.d.). Letter from David Dubinsky Collection, Box 134, File 2, ILGWU Archives. Quoted in R. Milkman (Ed.), Women, work and protest: A century of U.S. women's labor history (p. 137). Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Plans to educate workers: Temporary national bureau opens campaign at school house. (1921, April 3). New York Times, p. 21:3.
Stolberg, B. (1944). Tailor's progress: The story of a famous union and the men who made it. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran and Co.
Wiebe, R. (1967). The search for order: 1877-1920. New York: Hill & Wanj.
Wong, S. S. (1980). Fannia Mary Cohn. In B. Sicherman, C. Green, I. Kantrov, & H. Walker (Eds.), Notable American women: The modem period: A biographical dictionary (pp. 154-155). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.
Wong, S. S. (1984). From soul to strawberries: The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and workers' education, 1914-1950. In J. L. Kornbluh & M. Frederickson (Eds.), Sisterhood and solidarity: Workers' education for women, 1914-1984 (pp. 37-74). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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