It is for members of educational committees in the unions; it is for members of legislative committees. What they say they want are the facts. They are not thinking of philosophies; they are thinking of very practical everyday questions that concern them in their shops in relation to their employers, in relation to community responsibilities, in relation to their Government. They want to understand something about the laws, social-security laws, unemployment compensation. They want to know how health and safety legislation works in their own factories. Sometimes they want to know such very simple things as how to make out a card catalog and keep a good file. Sometimes they do not have those elementary tools for efficient organization in their own groups or for cooperation with other groups.

We are asking that this service be set up in the Labor Department because we believe that is the department which has the facts and the resources for this type of educational service. We have tried to safeguard several things in suggesting this bill to our sponsors in Congress. The first is local initiative. We are firm believers in that. We have definitely said the Federal Government should not control teaching; that the teachers would be chosen by the institutions.. We hope that there would be cooperative relationships between the institution and local labor groups and other groups of wage and salary earners in arriving at the type of instruction which they thought was needed.

Requests might not be just for a class or a teacher. The need might be for a week-end conference bringing in employers and other management people, labor leaders, Government officials to thrash out one special phase of the problem in that particular community.

The request might be for library services in cooperation with the public libraries; collections of books and pamphlets placed where workers can use them in their own meeting places, whenever they are free to read.

Perhaps there are certain types of research projects for which workers are asking help, and in which our universities could help through their research divisions.

We picture this service as cutting across the universities and tapping the resources of various departments. Not only economists will be needed, and teachers trained in labor law, but also English teachers, people concerned with getting materials; people concerned with arranging conferences; the very simplest kind of technical services in setting up educational programs.

We believe also that the State boards suggested are very much needed to act as clearing houses.

We have in this country, unfortunately, a labor movement that is split up. Fortunately, on this particular bill labor is united. Every branch of the organized labor movement is behind this legislation, which in itself is an unusual fact at this period.

But we feel State boards are needed to coordinate requests, to avoid duplication, and also to make a thorough study of the budget submitted by the interested institutions in cooperation with the groups of workers who are asking for these services.

On those boards we are suggesting that labor and educational representatives have an equal voice.

The question has been raised about management representatives on these boards. I would like to refer you to the statement by Prof. Edwin E. Witte of the University of Wisconsin, an economist. I hope this will be put into the record, Mr. Chairman. Professor Witte points out:

It is a great mistake for management to insist upon representation on governing or even advisory boards concerned with labor education. University workers' education is an educational service for unions and union members. For management to insist that it be accorded a voice in the control will expose it to the charge that it seeks to control the unions and their activities. This will look like an attempt to revive the company-dominated union. There is not anything about workers' education that needs to be kept from management, but it is no more appropriate that management should have a voice in the control of workers' education than that labor should share in the control of institutes and classes for foremen, personnel managers, and business executives.

We hope that management and labor will have a chance to participate in these joint labor-management institutes which are written. in as part of the scope of the program.

There are other phases, however, where labor has a special interest in community programs, in responsibilities of union members as citizens, in special techniques of shop-steward work, the sort of thing which workers could well discuss by themselves. Then, when they have filled in the gaps and have established a foundation of information, of fact-finding, using all the resources we can put at their disposal, then labor can well sit down with management and discuss some of their genuinely common problems.

So we are asking that educators from the universities and colleges, together with interested labor people, get together on these boards, thus establishing them as State clearinghouses.

I have said this plan was not dreamed up in Washington. It comes with great insistence from workers all over the country. It is interesting to know that the funds for our national committee, for our office, have come in small amounts from workers' groups all over the United States, 5- and 10-dollar checks, with very urgent letters saying: "Please do something about this; we need your help; we need to get the facts so that we, too, can function as citizens, as responsible members of our labor organizations, and so that we can work with other groups in the community."

This is not a separatist movement. It is a movement to inform a large group of our population, the wage and salary earners, so that they can pull their fair share of the load, with other groups in the community.

Mr. McCOWEN. Without objection, your entire statement will be included in the record at this point.

(The statement is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF HILDA W. SMITH, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR THE EXTENSION OF LABOR EDUCATION

Mr. McCowen and members of this House committee, it is with a deep feeling of the significance of this occasion that I come here today to present our reasons for supporting the labor extension bill. As chairman of the National Committee for the Extension of Labor Education, I speak for this sponsoring group. It is composed of 66 men and women, from all branches of the American labor movement, from interested colleges and universities, and from organizations devoted to the development of workers' education in the United States. This list, including the affiliation of every member, is attached to my testimony.

These 66 people, however, are only a cross section of large groups of American workers, teachers, and community leaders who agree that such a labor extension service is needed. They believe that if the wage and salary earners of this country inform themselves regarding industrial relations and the laws affecting their industries and their own lives, they will pull their share of the load with other groups in providing an intelligent, informed leadership in our American life.

For the sake of the record you might like to know something of my own background. My family lived in New Jersey and New York. After completing undergraduate and a year of graduate work at Bryn Mawr College, I studied at Columbia and the New York School of Social Work, where I became familiar with the problems of industrial workers in a large city. For 3 years I directed one of the pioneer community centers in the town of Bryn Mawr, and then went back to the college as dean.

During that period, in 1921, the college initiated a plan for a summer school for women workers in industry, the first of its kind in the United States. I was asked to become director of this new school, which brought 100 women workers in industry from all parts of the United States for a brief 8 weeks in the summer. During this period I also served as chairman of the board of a new coordinating agency, the Affiliated Schools for Workers, for 13 years. Then I came to Washington to start work in the Federal Relief Administration, in charge of a worker's education project for unemployed teachers. Through its 10 years of operation this project, known as the workers' service program, employed 2,000 unemployed teachers in 35 States. At the end of this period I was asked to take charge of the Project Service Section of the Federal Public Housing Administration, working with managers and groups of tenants in the war housing projects on many phases of community programs. These served to keep the war workers at work in the industries, to make life more livable in the war housing communities. I resigned from the Housing Administration in order to work with this national committee in its effort to take the next steps in the development of a labor extension program through a proposal for Federal and State aid.

The hunger that the workers have for knowledge

My interest, therefore, in this proposal dates back for 28 years to the opening of the pioneer school for workers at Bryn Mawr College. In the teaching and administration of this school, the first of its kind on a college campus, the faculty were immediately startled and challenged by the eager interest in education of these workers: garment workers, textile workers, electrical workers, and many others.

Often there were as many as 25 different trades in this group and 15 national backgrounds. The majority of the group had had only sixth grade education or less. Most of them had been at work for 8 or 10 years following their brief elementary schooling. Those 8 weeks on the campus of Bryn Mawr were obviously the fulfillment of all their eager hope for further education. Never had a more serious group of students attended Bryn Mawr. They wanted to study for long hours, with no time out for recreation. They wanted to learn, not only for the sake of new and coveted knowledge, but also, most insistently, to take back to other workers what they had learned, in order that they, too, might indirectly benefit from the Bryn Mawr classes.

One laundry worker, in discussing her course with me, said, "Those laundry workers at home will expect me to help them when I get back. They think I am going to hang up the sun for them, fix the moon, and arrange all the stars." It is fair to say that the group of teachers from colleges and universities who for the first time met a class of adult industrial workers had to put forth their finest efforts, use their greatest teaching skill, in meeting the eager questions of the workers and helping them to use the new tools of education, facts, and reason.

The unique value of this school consisted only in part of this appreciation of a chance to learn, previously denied these workers. What distinguished them so sharply from the average group of students was their awareness that as citizens they had had little understanding of the laws under which they lived and worked, and little knowledge as to where they could go to find the facts they needed. On the other hand, unlike the average college student, they had had years of practical experience in their shops, earning their own living, usually supporting other people.

Pride in their working skills

These factory workers often felt a deep pride in the companies for which they worked, and in their own industrial processes. I remember that one textile worker sent home to her company in the South for one of the little knot-tying machines which she strapped on her hand and operated with her thumb. She had walked up and down those looms for 9 years, tying knots with one motion of her thumb. She displayed this process with great pride to the whole school. As a producer, she had a legitimate pride in her part in production, and the other workers appreciated this to the full. But what they all felt they wanted was an opportunity to analyze and study the facts related to their own experience, in a noncontroversial atmosphere, where they had confidence in their teachers. In realizing the serious attitude of these industrial workers, I realized, too, what it would mean if not only 100 women from the factories could benefit by such a course, but the large numbers of industrial workers throughout the country could, in addition to attending such a school, receive such help in their local communities. It was evident that this group of worker-students at Bryn Mawr was not unique. They only reflected what other men and women in industry were thinking about their need for education. It was at this same period that the unions also were pioneering, with the development of their own classes. It was evident even then that some plan to use the resources of the larger community to aid wage earners in their desire for education was long overdue.

During all these years, from 1921 on, it was part of my work to travel into every section of the country, to meet with trade union leaders, college and university teachers and students, community leaders and State and Federal officials. What workers want to learn

Sometimes meetings went on till 1 o'clock in the morning in union halls, where earnest educational committees from local unions tried to analyze just what type of program would be of most benefit to their members; what information they needed to solve knotty questions of industrial relations, of law enforcement, of community responsibility, and from what source the facts bearing on these questions could be obtained.

Everywhere the story was the same. The men and women from the labor movement, industrial clubs, from church groups, Negro groups, housing projects were well aware that they needed to know a lot of things.

Many of them had stopped school after the sixth grade, in some places even earlier.

If they had had some high-school training, they still had little knowledge of the problems of their own industries, of their labor organizations, and what they should do to prepare themselves for responsible citizenship in economic life.

While their hands had been well trained in the skills of their own trades, through vocational classes, there had been no similar effort to satisfy their eager minds. As one worker put it, "I want to know what is happening, why it is happening, and what I can do about it."

In meetings of employers' organizations and civic bodies there was often a general condemnation of labor's methods in conducting negotiations of a union contract; labor representatives, earnest but without sufficient training, trying to discuss the terms of a contract with experts in the law and in industrial relations. Community leaders had often tried to get the help of the local labor movement in appointing representatives from the unions to some civic board or committee. The usual response from a worried labor leader who was trying to do his part was, "We haven't anyone we can spare who knows enough to serve on that committee."

Government representatives from State departments concerned with enforcement of State laws seldom found a group of factory workers familiar with those laws. These workers, if well informed, might have cooperated with the employer to bring about better enforcement.

Farmers have the facts; labor wants them, too

Some of these educational needs are very simple but they often determine whether industrial relations are smooth or rough.

Simple techniques of office methods, conducting meetings in an orderly way, filing reports with Government departments, filling out blanks for income tax or selective service were often bewildering matters to men and women who had never had much experience in doing these things.

Much time is wasted, and still is; many hours of absenteeism during the war occurred because the workers concerned did not know the elementary facts about the laws under which they were working and were unfamiliar with the processes of finding out the facts.

A vast amount of information based on research has been gathered over the years for farmers-nothing comparable for wage and salary earners.

The resources of our institutions of learning had seldom been used to help our industrial population to secure the facts that they were eager to find. There were some notable exceptions.

A few private institutions, like Amherst College in Massachusetts, with its extension classes for workers, had experimented in this field.

Wisconsin University in 1927 opened a resident summer school for workers, the first State university to establish such a school with funds from the State. But on the whole, the doors of our universities were closed to men and women from the labor movement. The very word "labor" seemed to alarm educational leaders, suggesting a radical and dangerous movement whereby college campuses. would soon be swarming with "agitators," academic standards would totter,. buildings would be defaced, and dangerous and subversive ideas injected into college classrooms.

Teaching related to workers' experience

This typical fear and suspicion on the part of the public, including academic groups, has arisen partly because in many communities industrial workers are isolated, practically cut off from the normal activities of other groups in the community. Factories and workers' homes are often in one section of the town. Workers have often felt that they were not welcome in other groups, and have tended to stay away from the activities of such groups.

There has been almost a complete lack of public interest in the type of education which adult industrial workers think they need to supplement the excellent · training in skills which they now can secure. Often there has been open hostility to the idea of classes in the field of collective bargaining, arbitration, or even current events, if such an activity were requested by a group of workers from a trade-union.

It is obvious that the subject matter of such classes is exactly the same that one finds in any public reference library, in every newspaper, and radio program, and in every college economics class. The only difference in a workers' class is that the approach is in simple terms, and the discussion starts with the experience of the members of the group and is constantly related to that experience. The foundation of facts is the same, and the attempt to develop a scientific approach and independent judgment based on the facts is the same as in other places where good teaching is a requirement. Anyone who knows workers' classes knows also that it is this factual basis which workers want. They resent any attempt at propaganda, whether it comes from the teacher or from other workers. As one worker put it, "I have learned in these classes to make up my own mind. No one can get up now and tell me what to think. I have learned to think for myself."

The great scope of the need

In this whole discussion I should like to point out the large numbers of workers represented in these requests. It is not unusual to have a local union of 10,000 members. If even 10 percent of this local union wanted to take advantage of these proposed labor extension services, there would be 1,000 people for whom instructors would be needed, if only for one night a week. And it is safe to say that a much larger percent in many local unions would use some type of labor extension service, if not in classes, then in library services, conferences, institutes, and information centers.

In the absence of any organized effort to fill this great gap, the labor movement has tried to do the job of educating and informing its own members. Within the last 10 years, especially, there has been a rapid growth of union educational programs, many of them inadequate, but with educational leaders sincerely trying to meet the needs of their members, and to help them secure the facts bearing on their own situations.

As I have watched the development of these union educational programs, I am always amazed by their accomplishments and the response of union members, when I know how short the educational funds are in most unions, and how the overworked educational directors with their small staffs struggle to keep up with local requests for materials, classes, and consultant services.