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The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry 

Ellen Durrigan Santora 
University of Alabama 

For women, Ibe years following World War I were indeed 
changing times. New challenges and opportunities came wilb 
successive waves of immigration, industrialization, urbanization, 
and democratization. For some women, Ibe times furobbed with the 
pain of social and economic injustice; for others, it pulsated with the 
possibilities alIorded by increased opportunities for higher education 
and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Between 1900 
and 1920, the percentage of women working outside the home had 
increased from 18.8 to 24 percent. I During Ibe same period, college 
educated, middle and upper class women began to move into the 
public sphere proclaiming Ibeir mission as social workers and social 
reconstructionists. 

In 1921, at the initiative of the President and Board of 
Trustees of Bryn Mawr College, Ibe Bryn Mawr Summer School for 
Women Workers in Induslly began its first session. The school 
offered young working women an education "in order that they may 
widen their influence in the industrial world, help in the coming 
social reconstruction and increase the happiness and usefulness of 
their own lives.'" During the seventeen years of its residency at Bryn 
Mawr, the school represented, in every aspect of its program, a 
meeting of laboring and privileged classes. 

Just as its cross-class coalition defined the administration 
of the school, so too did cultural diversity characterize the school's 
working class students. Women workers came from the Northeast, 
the Far West and the South, from the North Central States, the 
Mountain States, and the Appalachian region. They represented a 
cross section of both old and new immigrants -- Rnssians, 
Scandinavians, Italians, Lithuanians, Poles, Austrians, Rumanians, 
Czechs, Slovaks, and Eastern European Jews in addition to Scots, 
Irish, and English.' African-American women were admitted for the 
first time in 1926.' There were both union members and those who 
were not.' Representing more than forty-eight different trades, some 
were employed as waitresses and laundresses, while others worked 
for railroads, munitions factories, garment makers, and the tobacco 
induslly; half worked in Ibe needle and textile trades ' A few came 
with a high school education; others had not attended school past the 
eighth grade. A handful were married, most were single.' In addition 
to diversity in hometowns, ethnicity, and work situations, students 
also represented a spectrum of political persuasions ranging from 
communism and leftist-oriented labor activism to conservative, 
family-oriented, Christian evangelism' As a result, for many the 
Summer School was a time for counecting their own experiences 
and perspectives with those of others. 

As a middle class white teacher, my interest in the Summer 
School for Women Workers came from my own experience in 
teaching racially and ethnically diverse students and my special 
concern for the way in which traditional teaching seemed to exclude 
female students from full participation in both history-social science 
classes and society as a whole. When I first viewed The Women of 
Summer, a documentary about the school, as a female history 
teacher I was drawn to the cultural diversity within this community, 

53 

Ibe sense of empowerment felt by its abnnnae, and especially to its 
shared understandings and habits of critical inquiry' Could it 
provide historical clues to Ibe preparation of cultnrally diverse 
students for increased participation in Ibe political, social, and 
economic communities in which Ibey lived and worked? Could it 
bear lessons Ibat would increase female participation in. discipline 
too often dominated by male students? What constituted Ibe 
seemingly instinctive ability of Ibe school's director, Jane 
Worfuington Smith, and her stalI to promote cross-cultural 
communication as a melbod of democratic empowerment? What 
resources were used to bridge barriers of class, ethnicity, and 
political persuasion, and in so doing create a sense of empowerment, 
unity and cross-cultural solidarity?" 

Background 
The first two decades of the twentieth cen~ were times 

of great change. The rapid industrialization and mbanization of 
American society created tensions over extremes of wealth and 
poverty, a gendered division and hierarchy of waged labor, race and 
ethnicity and a resulting exclusivity of rights and power both in an 
out of the workplace. As historical forces, these thornes laid the 
foundations for the Summer School for Women "Workers. During 
this period of great economic expansion, the DllInbor of gainfully 
employed American women doubled reaching a.pproximately ten 
million by 1918-" By 1920, 17.2 percent ofElUopean American 
women were employed. Most worked to sustain themselves and 
their farnilies." Married African-American women were eight times 
more likely to work than married white women. 1:> 

By 1900, 75 percent of the nearly 1.25 million female 
factory workers were foreign born or the daught ers of foreign born 
parents.14 ln part because lhey were willing to work for lower wages 
than white workers, these immigrants and !heir off-spring 
encountered widespread prejudice extending beyond the workplace 
into most other areas of their lives. Employers capitalized on this, 
fragmenting workers' solidarity and decreasing t:he strength of their 
unionsY 

Labor activism for women industrial , ... orkers lagged well 
behind that of men. As of 1900, only 2.2 peroent of all union 
memberships were women." The American Federation of Labor 
locals, handicapped by their vision of a "f:un.ily wage" and their 
conviction that a woman's place was in the home, were not 
amenable to accepting female memberships." In 1903, the 
Women's Trade Union Leagne (WTUL) was ",sttbllshed by middle 
and upper class, educated women to aid in the formation of unions 
that would be responsive to the needs of women, particularly 
immigrant women.18 With the support of the WlUL, between 1909 
and 1915 women garment workers of the Dortheast and midwest 
burst forth with an unprecedented labor nrilitmcy ignited by Ib, 
walkout offrorn 20,000 to 30,000 young s~,ist makers, most 0: 

them Russian Jewish and Italian women pro"",ting low wages anc 
sweatshop conditions." 








































