| NDN | Photo Gallery | Documents | Classroom | Search |
Student Activism in the 1930s
U. of Wyoming and George Washington Univ. I don't know why I should have become a radical. Certainly there was nothing in my early environment to make me turn naturally to radicalism. I never knew any radicals in the small Wyoming town where I grew up. We were very far away from anything that really happened. My parents were essentially conservative, but professed a variety of pink tea liberalism often found among college professors and they occasionally commented sympathetically on Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party. I was just brought up on America's brand of mass education. As a child I was a strict conformist, even making myself pretty miserable over it sometimes. I certainly did not show much promise of being a radical, although I did have a few early rebellions against the existing order of my own life. I had a grandfather who was quite interested in social problems. Just a farmer in backwoods Missouri, but he wrote papers expounding his views, some of them quite advanced. However, I never knew him at all. The rest of my people were farmers down until the last generation when they moved into the cities and became professional people, mostly teachers. My first introduction to radical thought came at that period of my adolescence when everything seemed very interesting, exciting, adventurous and romantic. I was very hungry for everything new and acquired extremely wild and radical ideas about anything and everything. Later I met a few radicals and I began to think more carefully about these various new ideas. My socialism at first was merely ethical. Later as I learned more about economics and sociology, my belief was based on a firmer foundation. My friends were radicals and just over a year ago I joined the L.I.D. Without rationalizing too much, it was partly because I agreed with its aims, partly because I knew my family wouldn't like it. However, I was sincere enough to do most of the dirty and hard work of organizing a radical organization on a campus where there has previously been none at all. And there isn't any glory to that. I left home after my second year in college and worked during the summer as secretary to Nellie Seeds at her camp for radical children in up state New York. Following this I had nothing to do with the radical movement for about five months as I was working as a stenographer in Washington, D.C. and finding my first year away from home naturally somewhat bitter and disillusioning. Coming into contact with a very real world in making my own living I began to feel very deeply about the injustices of the world. I saw many things happen to people I never saw in my sheltered, protected former existence. At first I would get very much upset about it, but soon decided it might be better to try to do something rather that expending emotion on it all. I was not a very good stenographer not did I have much faith in my ability to get another job should I lose the one I had. I was therefore forced to accept many humiliations and degradations, but I had to keep my job. Most of the girls did not get the $80 a month I did while stenographers in the government receive something like $1400 to $1300 a year. Besides the difference in pay we had much longer hours, often stayed overtime, had no sick leave and were docked for every hour of work we missed. Considering the high rents and process suited to government paychecks, we spend most of our salaries on room and board. In February I decided to go to school again as I felt fairly secure in my job. At first I was allowed to leave work at 5 to go to my classes. Some of the girls getting a lower wage who were working until after six asked for a raise and I encouraged them in this, insisting their salaries were too damn slim. Immediately, instead of there being an increase in wages, I was told I had no business asking anyone in the office their wages or telling my own. One man in the office decided I was a communist and kept objecting to the work I did, said he hated Communists. They would not let me go at five and sometimes I missed class altogether. I had my school bills to pay and was, not eating enough to order to pay installments to classes{?]. I couldn't even attend part of the time. I was yelled at all day and being threatened with the loss of my job if I did not conform to a greater extent. This on top of some my former bitter experiences in the office made me wonder, "By God, who wouldn't be a radical." I belonged to the L.I.D. at George Washington and was head of our committee and later head of the strike in all the schools in the District and the U. of Maryland. I spent all my time outside of work hours on the strike and lived, breathed and fought for it intensely. It was fairly successful. Subsequently, I was told I should look for another job, but I told them I would like to stay on until June 15, which I did. Their objection was that they wouldn't have Communist girls in the office, and girls who did such "damn fool things." My interest in the radical and labor movement was intensified by personal experience, work in the L.I.D. and Socialist Party for which I helped with the organizing of Y.P.S.L, just before coming to the summer school, and by a desire to do something really worthwhile in doing something for humanity instead of fooling one's life away being rather innocuous and of no purpose. Being very much fed up with being a stenographer and not finding pounding a typewriter particularly stimulating to an inert mind I have decided to learn to be something besides a stenographer. Vaguely, I learn I am interested in economic and social problems and I have like immensely working and organizing in the Student L.I.D. My purpose in coming to the summer school was to come into closer contact with the labor and radical movement, and hoping it might be of help to me in deciding what it is exactly that I want to do besides being a stupid boresome stenographer. And this is all leaving out a few embarrassing things and some of the exciting things. Home | Historical Essay | Documents | Credits |
| NDN | Photo Gallery | Documents | Classroom | Search |