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Workingmen and Free Schools in the Nineteenth Century: A Comment on the Labor-Education Thesis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Extract
There was for many years a well-established generalization in American historical scholarship which assumed a direct relationship between the demands of workingmen for free public schools and the establishment of free public schools in certain eastern states in the early nineteenth century. Within the last decade the labor-education thesis has undergone some modification, so that more recent statements allow room for the role of the upper middle class in the building of free schools. Evidently what had been a relatively well-accepted thesis underwent extensive revision within a decade.
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- Copyright © 1971 History of Education Quarterly
References
Notes
1. Hofstadter, Richard, Miller, William, and Aaron, Daniel, The American Republic to 1865 (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1959), 1:455; Austin, Ailene, The Labor Story (New York: Coward McCann, 1949), p. 244; Hicks, John D. and Mowry, George, A Short History of American Democracy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1956), p. 256; Wood Gavian, Ruth and Hamm, William A., United States History (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1960), p. 312; Bamford Parkes, Henry, The United States of America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 231; Faulkner, Harold U., Kepner, Tyler, and Merrill, Edward H., History of the American Way (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), p. 528; Beard, Mary R., Short History of the American Labor Movement (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), pp. 39–40; Perkins, Dexter and Glyndon, G. Deusen, Van, The United States of America: A History (New York: Macmillan Co., 1962), 1:355; Connors, John D., Crusade for Public Schools, reprint from the American Teacher Magazine, Official Publication of the American Federation of Teachers and Affiliate of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., rev. ed., (December 1960), n.p.; United States Department of Labor, Growth of Labor Law in the United States (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1962), p. 46. The shift toward a modified version of the labor-education thesis may be found in a number of recent texts. Generally speaking the more up-to-date textbooks offer the middle class a role by pointing to the fear many middle class reformers had of an illiterate rabble. Harry Williams, T., Current, Richard N., and Friedel, Frank, A History of the United States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 439; Eliot Morison, Samuel, Steele Commager, Henry, and Leuchtenberg, William E., The Growth of the American Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 1:459, 490–91. This volume cites education reformers, like Robert Dale Owen, as foreign radicals, implying that Owen was an outsider not in tune with the “Moderate” demands of the Workingmen's Parties (pp. 490–91); Thomas, A. Bailey views free public schools as “the insurance premium that the wealthy were willing to pay for stability and democracy” (Thomas, A. Bailey, The American Pageant [Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1966], p. 334). A recent study which will have a significant impact on the labor-education thesis is Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 20–21, 39, 40, 46–49, 80–84, 216–18. Although not specifically directed at public school reform Stephan Thernstrom's history of Newburyport, Massachusetts, has some important ramifications for the history of American education: Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 50–51, 76–77, 123.Google Scholar
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17. Tracy Carlton, Frank, “Ephemeral Labor Movements,” Popular Science Monthly 85 (November 1914): 487–503; Tracy Carlton, Frank, Organized Labor in American History (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1920), p. 70.Google Scholar
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19. Carlton, , Organized Labor in American History pp. 1–10.Google Scholar
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22. The Constitution and By-Laws of the United Trade Society of Journeymen Tailors, in the City of New York, 1833. The Tamiment Institute Library in New York City has a copy of the Constitution.Google Scholar
23. Curoe, Philip R. V., Educational Attitudes and Policies of Organized Labor in the United States (New York: Teachers College Press, 1926), p. 189.Google Scholar
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25. Curoe, Educational Attitudes and Policies of Organized Labor, pp. 61–62. Norman Ware in his study of this organization, felt that it was a reform-dominated group without workingmen in attendance (Norman Ware, The Industrial Worker 1840–1860 [1924; reprint ed., Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1959], p. 209). Ware took his evidence from the New York Daily Tribune whose writer reported “that a great deal of dissatisfaction was expressed by the members at the lack of interest among workers” (New York Daily Tribune, June 3, 1850).Google Scholar
26. Curoe, Educational Attitudes and Policies of Organized Labor, pp. 22–23.Google Scholar
27. Curoe, Educational Attitudes and Policies of Organized Labor, p. 4.Google Scholar
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29. Ibid., p. 29.Google Scholar
30. An example of the stretching which Curoe engaged in was his presenting the phalanx as a workingmen's organization with an interest in education. Curoe, Educational Attitudes and Policies of Organized Labor, p. 57. The phalanx movement was interested in self-education rather than public schools.Google Scholar
31. Commons, John R. and Sumner, Helen, Documentary History of American Industrial Society (New York: Russell and Russell, 1958), 5:27–28; this support was repeated in Commons, John R., History of Labour in the United States (New York: Macmillan Co., 1918), 1:223–24.Google Scholar
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35. Freeman Butts, R. and Cremin, Lawrence A., A History of Education in American Culture (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1953), pp. 151–52.Google Scholar
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37. Cremin, Lawrence A., The American Common School: An Historic Conception (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1951), p. 44.Google Scholar
38. Welter, Rush, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), chaps. 3, 4.Google Scholar
39. Ibid., pp. 45, 49.Google Scholar
40. Ibid., p. 53.Google Scholar
41. There was a significant difference between Welter's view of Jacksonian society and that of Joseph Dorfman who assaulted the clear-cut class concept approach (Dorfman, Joseph, “The Jackson Wage-Earner Thesis,” American Historical Review 54 (January 1949): 305.Google Scholar
42. Welter, , Popular Education and Democratic Thought p. 9.Google Scholar
43. Ibid., p. 85. Welter cited Seward's concern with schools as an example of how the conservative looked to free schools to save the republic (pp. 82–85). See also, Grier Sellers, Charles, “Andrew Jackson Versus the Historians,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (March 1958): 615–34.Google Scholar
44. Crandall, W. L. to Beekman, James W., June 13, 1850, Beekman MSS, New York Historical Society, box 25, folder 4.Google Scholar
45. A State Convention of the Friends of Free Schools was called for in April of 1850 (New York Daily Tribune, April 23, 1850). The convention call was made by professional educators. Men like William Phelps, the principal of the State Normal School at Albany, played prominent roles at the convention (New York Daily Tribune, July 12, 13, 1850). The repeal movement was strong in upstate rural areas (Randall, S. S. to Beekman, James W., October 21, 1850, Beekman MSS, New York Historical Society, box 25, folder 4; New York Daily Tribune, August 1, 1850).Google Scholar
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