Founding and Early Figures
Whether or not she was aware of the irony in recounting this tale—benefiting from the very systems of labor she sought to dismantle while ruminating on the plight of the working class white woman—Thomas was able to apply the College’s extensive resources toward the philanthropic endeavor, again working to manifest her vision as reality. One may argue that this was the origin of the Summer School, imagined as an idyllic attempt to unify women regardless of class, but still ignorant to the issues of its unrealized homogeneity and exclusionary nature. At this point, Thomas’s plans toward worker’s education were not necessarily viewed by her or her contemporaries as aligned with the labor movement, instead reflecting a hope for a sense of unity among educated and uneducated white women.In December 1919, my cousin [...] and I spent eleven days in the upper part of the Sahara Desert with our own caravan of Arabs, camels, mules, and tents. [...] The Arabs would unpack our camp chairs and we would sit for hours watching the sun set and the moon rise while the tents were pitched[.] One afternoon at sunset I was sitting on my golden hilltop, [...] realizing that American women would soon be politically free and wondering what would be the next great social advance, when suddenly, as in a vision, I seemed to see [...] that the coming of equal opportunity for the manual workers of the world might be hastened by utilizing before it had time it grow less, the deep sex sympathy that women now feel for one another. The peculiar kind of sympathy that binds women together seems to come only to those who have not been free. [...] Then with a glow of delight a radiant as the desert sunset [...] I realized that the first steps on the path to the sunlight might well be taken by college women who, themselves, just emerging from the wilderness, know best of all women living under fortunate conditions what it means to be denied access to things of the intellect and spirit.¹
Of course one must not forget that Thomas’s endeavors were not formed in a vacuum; her development of the idea of the United States’ first residential labor school on a college campus was supplemented by tours of labor schools in England, including Ruskin College at Oxford, a university she took much inspiration from in the development of the Bryn Mawr College as a whole. In returning to the United States, Thomas arranged a meeting with leaders in the American labor movement to discuss the best means of founding the Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, but also tapped the Dean of Students, Hilda “Jane” Worthington Smith to attend.
Smith would become an essential element of the Summer School’s operation over the course of the coming decades. After her graduation from Bryn Mawr College with a masters degree in Ethics and Psychology in 1911, Smith worked on philanthropic endeavors in New York, before returning to the town of Bryn Mawr to develop a community center that serviced underprivileged groups in the town such as Black families and the growing immigrant communities. A following in the footsteps of activists such as Jane Addams, Smith’s work was already devoted to helping those in need and acted beyond the reach of traditional philanthropy prior to her work at the Summer School. Smith’s work ranged everywhere from organizing childcare for working parents, providing meals to those who could not afford them, devoting time to orphanages, and acting as a hospital nurse during the 1918 influenza outbreak.
During her tenure as Dean. alongside making sure the day to day functions of the College ran smoothly, Smith worked to formally institutionalize the informal evening classes that were provided to Black and immigrant housekeepers, gardeners, and cooks. No longer were the classes decentralized discussions led by students in secret, but instead now featured lectures from professors and a curriculum that was tailored to the needs and interests of the campus workers. In her 1978 autobiography, Smith is loathe to take credit for these early days of workers' education, but it was an important stepping stone to the formation of the School and a realizations of the barriers to a college education. Maybe it is here that one can find the origin of the Summer School, where campus resources were utilized to help underprivileged communities learn while traditional classes were not in session. However, these evening classes did not lift the burden of long hours worked during the day, and many were closed out of attending these classes by other obligations.
The first meeting of labor leaders with Thomas and Smith led to extremely productive conversations on the needs of workers, and what one would want out of the Summer School. The education envisioned in that meeting expanded beyond merely courses on Economics, but instead included a broad range of topics that could enrich the lives of those who attended the School, providing classes in Literature, Public Speaking, Music, and giving time for recreation in nearly any form students could imagine. Labor leaders from prominent trade unions and the National Women’s Trade Union League voiced their concerns and needs to the academics that hoped to run the program, ensuring that the School would have no agenda pushed, and that financial sponsors of the program would have no say in the agenda of classes. Maybe it’s here that the Summer School truly found its origin, as an institution that listened to the needs of the workers it hoped to educate, and as an institution that was willing to develop and evolve based on the shifting requests of those who need it the most. As the Constitution of the School was written, it was codified with the thought in mind that no static program could properly suit the needs of women in industry; only a program that listened to its attendees could create the program that would best serve its students.
Regardless, it is in these early months of the School’s founding that its true nature began to take form, drawing from many sources and voices growing stronger and better with every contribution.
¹ Smith, Women Workers at the Bryn Mawr Summer School, "Introduction".