Bridging Differences in Culture and Class: 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."