ADVENTURE IN 
 :iNG- CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 BEING THE STORY OF THE 
 BIKERS' EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 1903-1915 
 
 ALBERT MANSB RIDGE, HON. M.A. (OxoN.) 
 
 i'OUNDEB AND (iEMiBAL 8ECBEIABT, 1903-1915 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOUBTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 AN ADVENTUEE IN 
 WOEKING- CLASS EDUCATION
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 After a Drawing by WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN, December 1918.
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN 
 WORKING - CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT MANSBRIDGE, HON. M.A. (OxoN.) 
 
 FOUNDEB AKD GENEBA.L SECBETABT, 1903-1915 
 
 With 13 Illustrations 
 
 LONGMANS, GKEEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 1920
 
 5( 
 
 TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OP THOSE GALLANT SOULS 
 
 WHO SHARED THE ADVENTURE OF 
 
 THE W.E.A. 
 
 AND DIED FIGHTING FOR 
 
 THEIR COUNTRY IN THE 
 
 GREAT WAR, 1914-1918.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 AT a moment when the education of adults is attracting 
 renewed attention as a direct result of increasing determina- 
 tion on the part of men and women to realise a larger ideal 
 of citizenship, it is fitting that the adventurous story of the 
 W.E.A. should be told. The telling of the story may 
 help to develop, as well as to secure the preservation of, the 
 characteristic spirit of a movement which has come to be 
 regarded as one of the most forceful of our time. 
 
 It is probable that this could be done by a sympathetic and 
 close observer of the movement, better than by one who was, for 
 twelve years, immersed in the details of its daily work. The 
 encouragement, however, of many friends, and particularly 
 of one who is at this moment endeavouring to strengthen the 
 material resources of the movement, has emboldened me to 
 undertake the difficult task. I can only hope that the advan- 
 tages I possess of a unique and peculiar knowledge of its early 
 days, an anxious solicitude for its welfare, and a boundless 
 enthusiasm for the cause which it serves, will enable me to 
 convey to my readers some idea of the spirit of self-sacrifice 
 and fellowship which has characterised the movement from 
 the beginning. 
 
 At the outset I had to determine whether my story should 
 be personal or detached. My inclination being towards the 
 latter method I have adopted it on the whole, but there are 
 times when personal reminiscence, of necessity, prevails and 
 breaks the even line of the story.
 
 vi PKEFACE 
 
 It only remains for me to express my gratitude to those 
 numerous fellow workers in the cause who made the story 
 possible, and especially to Mr. T. W. Price (Assistant Secretary 
 of the W.E.A.), Mr Huws Davies, and Miss D. L. Adler, who 
 more than anyone else have helped me to tell it ; also to Miss 
 Leila Thomas, a Tutor in the W.E.A. of New South Wales, who 
 helped me to prepare the book for publication. 
 
 ALBERT MANSBRIDGE. 
 
 April 1920.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAQB 
 
 PREFACE . . . . . . , . v 
 
 PROLOGUE. THE SPIRIT or ADVENTURE. . . xiii 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. ADULT EDUCATIONAL EFFORT IN THE NINETEENTH 
 
 CENTURY . >. i ,. 1 
 
 II. THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE . . , 9 
 
 III. EARLY DAYS . . 16 
 
 IV. WORK IN TOWN AND COUNTRY .... 23 
 V. RESPONSIBILITY AND GOVERNMENT .... 29 
 
 VI. UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASSES .... 36 
 
 VII. IN THE OVERSEAS DOMINIONS. .... 46 
 
 VIII. THE W.E.A. SPIRIT ...... 54 
 
 IX. THE WAR AND AFTER . 61 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 I. STATISTICS OF W.E.A. DEVELOPMENT ... 67 
 II. THE FIRST YEAR'S WORK OF THE ROCHDALE BRANCH 69 
 
 III. NOTE ON THE WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR ADULT 
 
 EDUCATION . . . . . . .72 
 
 IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY 72
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE AUTHOR Frontispiece 
 
 After a Drawing by William Eothenstein, December 1918 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT MEMBERS (AUGUST 1907) OF 
 THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE PIONEER 
 BRANCH OF THE ASSOCIATION FOUNDED AT 
 BEADING IN 1904 facing p. 15 
 
 THE PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION . ,,17 
 
 SOME DELEGATES PRESENT AT THE THIRD ANNUAL 
 MEETING HELD AT BIRMINGHAM, OCTOBER 
 1905 ,,23 
 
 SOME DELEGATES PRESENT AT THE FIFTH ANNUAL 
 MEETING HELD AT BIRMINGHAM, OCTOBER 
 1907 ,,26 
 
 THE OFFICIALS OF THE ASSOCIATION AT TOYNBEE 
 
 HALL, JANUARY 1909 ,,32 
 
 JOINT COMMITTEE ON OXFORD AND WORKING-CLASS 
 
 EDUCATION, DECEMBER 26, 1907 . ,,35 
 
 THE PIONEER UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASS AT 
 
 EOCHDALE, 1907. ..... ,,41 
 
 Tutor : R. H. Tawney, Balliol College, Oxford. 
 Subject : Industrial History. 
 
 THE PIONEER TUTOR IN AUSTRALIA, MEREDITH 
 ATKINSON, AND THE PIONEER SECRETARY IN 
 AUSTRALIA, DAVID STEWART . . . \ 46 
 
 MRS. ALBERT MANSBRIDGE .... ,,51 
 
 After a Drawing by William Roihenstein, December 1917 
 
 ix a 2
 
 x ILLUSTKATIONS 
 
 UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASS AT TORONTO, 1919. facing p. 53 
 Tutor: W. L. Grant, Principal of Upper Canada 
 
 College. 
 Subject : Political History. 
 
 A DISCUSSION WITH THE LATE CANON SCOTT 
 HOLLAND IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN AT 
 BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD ... ,,60
 
 The two streams of labour and scholarship unite to make a 
 great and powerful river of education, which must by an unerring 
 law draw to itself most, if not all, the runnels and rivulets of 
 thought making their way to the open sea of a free people. 
 
 That is, at once, the condition and meaning of the Workers' 
 Educational Association. 
 
 It conforms to the very ideal of democracy, which preconditions 
 the gathering up of the true influence of every man, woman, and 
 child for translation into terms of the common life. 
 
 The Workers' Educational Association has developed because 
 it has drawn together men and women, not infrequently passionate 
 in their divergencies of experience and belief, and has constructed 
 for them a University, intangible and widely diffused indeed, 
 wherein they may, unhindered and in fellowship, advance know- 
 ledge, increase wisdom, and reveal truth. 
 
 As an organisation for education it stands unique, because it 
 has united for the purposes of their mutual development Labour 
 and Scholarship in and through their respective associations of 
 Trade Unions and Universities, and because of this unity, so 
 secured, the power of the spirit of wisdom has been increased in 
 the affairs of men, and the building of 'Jerusalem in England's 
 green and pleasant land ' has become at least a nearer prospect.
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE IN EDUCATION 
 
 IP the story of any movement which is in itself true be 
 rightly told, the spirit which ' by reason of its pureness ' goes 
 through the whole range of its activities will be perceived 
 with increasing certainty, as the days of its life pass under 
 review. 
 
 For this reason certain of my critics have urged that this 
 portion of the book is unnecessary, whilst others have asserted 
 that it is at one and the same time both prologue and epilogue, 
 and obviously not one of them has felt that it is an adequate 
 expression of the forceful, deliberate, untiring spirit which gave 
 life to the Workers' Educational Association, and point to its 
 adventure. 
 
 After much thought, however, I have decided to leave it 
 where it is, recommending my readers to pass over it and 
 return to it at will, or to commence at Chapter I and not to 
 turn in their steps, for the adventure is still in the making 
 and there is no time to lose. 
 
 At a time when there is no adventure in education the 
 years are indeed lean, for it is as essential to strive to open 
 up new fields for educational activity as it is to seek 
 undiscovered lands or to search out the secrets of ancient 
 peoples. 
 
 Some day the story of educational adventures will be 
 written ; they are numerous and full of romance. By their 
 means all the activities of humanity have been penetrated, the 
 mysteries of the child mind explored, and those influences
 
 xiv PKOLOGUE 
 
 searched out on which man depends for his development. 
 The names of the adventurers are numerous ; from Tubal Cain 
 to Plato they illumine the records of all times ; all nations 
 claim their own ; every great period of a nation's life reveals 
 their influence. At worst they are never entirely without 
 followers ; at best multitudes flock with them to the regions 
 which they have opened out, or sail with them over the seas 
 which they have charted. Yet they must be ' the first that 
 ever burst into that silent sea,' the first to press forward to 
 the fertile valleys dreamed of beyond the forbidding hills. 
 They must go out of the comfortable courts of the educa- 
 tional system of their tune and, regardless of the con- 
 temptuous smiles of their fellows, seek out, uncompanioned 
 and alone, with no possibility of return, the method by which 
 to serve, and the spirit with which to inspire, the new time. 
 They cross their rubicon, their boats are burned, and there 
 are no bridges to help them. 
 
 Of the many who have lost themselves in the lands or seas 
 of their endeavour there are no records, but their adventures 
 were the condition of their lives. Had they stayed, hesitating, 
 ensconced behind the boundaries of their own knowledge, 
 they would have died hi life. ' And some there be which have 
 no memorial. But these were merciful men.' In the affairs 
 of life no man has really lived until he has for a reasonable 
 purpose risked the loss of all that he desires. 
 
 It is, however, not always necessary that an educational 
 adventure should be made into an unexplored region, or 
 beyond the bounds of ascertained or recorded truth. It may 
 be sufficient simply to clear a passage through the accumulation 
 of the years ; in other words, such an adventure may be an 
 attempt to rediscover and reveal vital knowledge and principles 
 which have been obscured either during the preoccupation of 
 other days, or because a forgetful people has turned in other 
 directions. Once truth is uncovered it is magnetic and does its 
 own work. If a fundamental process of education is revealed, 
 men will flock to take advantage of it, provided that they are 
 not hindered by economic or physical barriers, and, even then, 
 the stronger souls among them will win through. 
 
 I have as yet attempted no definition of terms, nor do I 
 intend to do so, for the results of any such attempt would be
 
 PEOLOGUE xv 
 
 to defeat my purpose. To define education would be to define 
 life. To define truth would be to reveal the origin and 
 source of life. Nevertheless, all through the adventure of 
 which the story is to be told, education has been regarded as 
 the process of development of body, mind, and spirit, something 
 more than leading out and infinitely more than putting in 
 a combination of the two by which the educated being becomes 
 daily purer in body, mind, and spirit, able to reach out to 
 the work which God intended that he should do. The most 
 educated man is he who most completely fulfils his allotted 
 task in spirit and in act, whether it be the digging of a trench 
 or the writing of a poem. In that nation which would most 
 fully correspond to its destiny, every unit would be sought out 
 through the wisdom of the whole, and developed for the tasks 
 necessary for the life of the whole. 
 
 Education has never been confused, in this particular 
 adventure at least, with the acquisition of the means of getting 
 on in life. Indeed, to have introduced that idea would have 
 been to have obscured truth, and to have repelled generous 
 souls whose thought of themselves was ever and ever will 
 be less insistent than their thought of the community in 
 which they live. On the other hand, the idea held has never 
 been exclusive. The application of the powers of a man to 
 the processes embodied in technical achievement is essentially 
 a part of the whole course of development, and, unless misused, 
 can serve in not a few types of persons the highest purpose of 
 their lives. 
 
 Education and knowledge must not be confused. Know- 
 ledge is the instrument in the hands of a man, and if he be 
 educated, and therefore reaching out to the higher things, 
 his knowledge will be used for purposes ministering to the 
 common good. If he be not educated, merely drifting down 
 the streams of opportunity, or aiming at lesser or unhealthy 
 things, then his knowledge will be used for false purposes. 
 The educated man can do no harm to the community. The 
 band of the educated work their way to ' Zion with their 
 faces thitherwards.' The field of education is a common 
 upon which all men can meet and exercise rights, no matter 
 what their differences may be in the ordinary activities of 
 life. They may differ in politics, even in religion, but, if
 
 xvi PEOLOGUE 
 
 they be one in their determination to reach out to the things 
 which are eternal, then they may unite to promote the great 
 democratic adventure which needs the best thought and action 
 of every individual. 
 
 The equipment of those who would adventure is a belief 
 in the power of everyone to perform his or her true service. 
 The community is like a living mosaic. It has a pattern, 
 and the impulse and motion of men is towards their rightful 
 place in it. Ignorance, disease, and sin, the trinity of anti- 
 social forces, have distorted the pattern, but there is no rest 
 for the hindered man. All men and women, except when under 
 the influence of a dominating force, such as gambling, drink 
 or the like, are willing and ready to respond to an educational 
 message ; they all want to think of, to look at, to experience 
 the things which are worth while. This conscious or un- 
 conscious pursuit of the best is the condition of ordinary 
 human nature. Obscured by lesser affairs, hindered by lesser 
 men, people may forget the objective for a time, but if it 
 be only revealed to them they will rise and pursue it. 
 
 Every living person is potentially a student, although not 
 necessarily in the technical sense of the word. There are few 
 men and women, tired though they may be in the industrial 
 work of the world, whose faces will not light up at the sight 
 of a beautiful picture if only there be someone to help them 
 see its message ; not all are intended to force their way up 
 the heights of knowledge, but everyone has the capacity 
 for wonder and pure enjoyment, and it is one of the tragedies 
 of our present way of life that this capacity gets worn away. 
 It is the task of the educational adventurer to reawaken 
 or even to recreate this sense of beauty without which life 
 is always drab. Humanity is like a great army, its com- 
 ponent parts allotted to different tasks, some to learn, 
 some to encourage those who learn, but all to wonder at and 
 enjoy the beauties of the world. If it be not the purpose 
 or business of every man to study in the literal sense of the 
 word, yet it is certain that, out of every average group of 
 people, there will be a proportion of students who must 
 study if the society in which they live is to do its perfect 
 work. 
 
 This universality of desire may be revealed under any
 
 PEOLOGUB xvii 
 
 condition of society at any time, but its effective expression, 
 so far as the individual is concerned, is largely though not 
 completely dependent upon economic and social conditions. 
 The spirit is a continual victor over the flesh, and some- 
 how or other enforces its will. Even overworked men will 
 turn to close study if they have the desire within them, 
 and find rest and peace in doing so, unless their powers have 
 been unduly strained. There is no greater sin than to cause 
 a man to be overstrained so that his mind and spirit hang 
 limp ; it is better to torture his body, for then, as with the 
 martyrs, his mind and spirit might still remain free. A 
 society in which all or even a large proportion of the people 
 were so maltreated would be a veritable hell on earth. It 
 would destroy itself. Fortunately in the England of our 
 time the conditions of Labour are steadily improving, and 
 the number of those who are overstrained is diminishing 
 every year. 
 
 Appeals to reach out to education for the purpose of getting 
 on in life have little power except when addressed to people 
 who are obviously in the mood for them, such as young men 
 and women planning their economic lives and therefore pre- 
 conditioned to hear them. But the general appeal to which 
 men and women of all ages respond in their degree must be a 
 spiritual one for education is ultimately of the spirit and is 
 perceived by the spirit only. 
 
 A universal appeal must be made in terms familiar to 
 the listeners. It must harmonise with their experience, and 
 the action foreshadowed must be in line with their habits. 
 The most wonderful and most complete system of education, 
 perfect in method and content, were it not understood by 
 the individuals whom it was meant to serve, would evoke 
 no response. That indeed has been the tragedy of much 
 of English organised education in later years. It is only 
 here and there that humanistic studies, contemplation of 
 the mind, spirit, and actions of man, awakened a response, 
 because these studies were dealt with in terms which were 
 remote from the vocabulary of the people. Thus the only 
 education in England which has attracted any section of 
 people deliberately and persistently to institutions has been 
 technical education. That was why there grew up in England
 
 xviii PEOLOGUE 
 
 many schemes, nearly all based upon ' bread and butter ' 
 studies, and all the while those who had conceived higher 
 ideas either individually or in association reached out this 
 way, that way, often unaided, for the education they desired. 
 Those educationalists who desired to help them seldom knew 
 how to do it. They offered their own unfamiliar methods 
 and used their own misunderstood language. 
 
 It became a commonplace in Victorian England to assert 
 that working men and women did not care for education. 
 The educational schemes which were devised on their behalf 
 but not in co-operation with them tended to be utilised by 
 others. As we shall see, Mechanics' Institutes rose and fell. 
 University Extension, to its lasting concern, only here and 
 there reached those who laboured with their hands. Evening 
 Schools promoted by the School Boards of the time never 
 attracted more than a few of the older men and women. 
 Everything pointed to the fact that educational supply, even 
 if devised by excellent and devoted people, was almost entirely 
 useless unless there was co-operation with those who were 
 to be attracted to use it. In the development of working- 
 class education the scholar and administrator must sit side 
 by side with the adult student, at the same table, in perfect 
 freedom. The initiative must lie with the students. They 
 must say how, why, what, or when they wish to study. It 
 is the business of their colleagues the scholars and adminis- 
 trators to help them to obtain the satisfaction of their desires. 
 This means that scholar, administrator, and working man 
 must act together, and fortunately there are, and have always 
 been in England, many organisations of labour and scholar- 
 ship in a mood to do so in their corporate capacity. 
 
 The idea of a gospel of education to working men is an 
 old one, and happily ever since 1840 it has been preached by 
 themselves. The ideas of the Co-operative Movement have 
 been shot through and through with educational desire. The 
 great trade unions have been preoccupied with questions 
 of wages and hours, but they have never turned a completely 
 deaf ear to the educational appeal, neither have they failed 
 to initiate educational effort. As for the educational bodies, 
 the Universities have one and all associated themselves with 
 the Extension Movement which originated at Cambridge
 
 PEOLOGUE xix 
 
 in 1872, with the desire of taking to the people the finest 
 results of scholarship, and of inviting them to share in its 
 dissemination and its progress. The University Bodies 
 responsible for this work were in a position to ally themselves 
 with the organisations of Labour, and in a temper to do so 
 gladly. Therefore it seemed that to create an organisation 
 would be easy. Obviously, there would be no great difficulty 
 either in finding working men or women keen to study, or in 
 finding very many more who would be willing to be keen. 
 That indeed followed from the great principle of universality 
 of desire which has been already put forward. The forbidding 
 ideas connected with the words school and education would 
 have to be removed, and the shyness of people who have 
 little knowledge, or who think themselves not clever, 
 overcome. 
 
 The educational system of this country has always tended 
 to set a premium upon cleverness. That premium must be 
 removed and set rather upon devotion than upon achievement. 
 There can be indeed no perfect group for the study of any- 
 thing unless it includes different types of men, some slow, 
 some quick, some superficial, some deep, because each man 
 gains in the attempt to explain himself to the others, and 
 shows himself in a new light. A class consisting entirely 
 of clever men would fail to achieve its object, just as much 
 as would a class consisting entirely of stupid men. 
 
 In spite of all these considerations the adventurers did 
 not seek to mark out wholly fresh fields for themselves. They 
 determined to use existing facilities to the full, and to do 
 no work which they could induce anyone else to undertake. 
 No successful effort was to be duplicated ; rather should 
 working people be urged to take advantage of the facili- 
 ties which were offered by the Universities, the Education 
 Authorities, and by voluntary bodies. 
 
 These were some of the ideas dominating the founders 
 of the W.E.A. movement. Since they were not education- 
 alists in the scholastic sense of the word, their ideas were 
 untested and unconfirmed by experience ; how they were 
 worked out and realised, discarded in part or as a whole, will 
 be seen as the story is told. The adventure was launched 
 with high hopes, and with the determination that labour
 
 xx PEOLOGUE 
 
 and scholarship should no longer be divorced, for labour 
 was in no mood to be blind, and scholarship yearned to be 
 in contact with the fundamental facts of life, and to draw 
 for its inspiration and glory on all the worthy activities 
 of men.
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN 
 WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 ADULT EDUCATIONAL EFFORT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 ECONOMIC conditions in England during the nineteenth century, 
 much as they militated against the full development of the 
 people, were still not strong enough to repress entirely the 
 desire for knowledge. Throughout the century this spirit 
 continually reasserted itself and found expression in the 
 creation of educational opportunities which had no con- 
 nection at all with a desire for success in life or for technical 
 achievement. 
 
 All the educational experiments of the century at the height 
 of their success made it quite clear that the mere acquisition 
 of knowledge was not their goal. Knowledge was only an 
 instrument towards the development of a larger and fuller life. 
 This was expressed, although in different ways, by Adult Schools, 
 Mechanics' Institutes, People's Colleges, Mutual Improvement 
 Societies, Co-operative Societies, and Trade Unions, as, each 
 in their time and place, they strove to develop the education 
 of the people. It is impossible, for our purpose, to examine 
 in any detail the stories of these various movements, but it 
 seems advisable, and even necessary, to trace the main line of 
 work which led directly to the formation of the Workers' 
 Educational Association in 1903. 
 
 The popular educational movement of the early nineteenth 
 century resulted in the formation of Mechanics' Institutes and 
 Societies for Mutual Improvement or Instruction in a large
 
 2 AN ADVENTURE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 number of English towns and villages. In the early years this 
 was accompanied by all the characteristics of a revival. So far 
 as can be traced there has never since been such a general move- 
 ment on the part of the people towards education. A writer 
 in the Edinburgh Review, October 1824, alludes to the great 
 disposition among the working classes to learn, and the absolute 
 certainty a lecturer might feel of an attendance. 
 
 Macvey Napier, writing in 1824 from London to J. R. 
 MacCulloch, the Edinburgh economist, said 
 
 The populace are seeking excitement in the formation of 
 Mechanics' Institutions and in the purchase of cheap periodical 
 publications. The number of these in circulation here is quite 
 incalculable. The Mechanics' Magazine sells about 16,000 copies 
 a week, The Chemists' 6,000, and so on. I was the other night at 
 the Mechanics' Institute there with Brougham. There were about 
 800 persons present, and 1 never saw a more orderly and attentive 
 audience. There are about 1,500 workmen subscribers at the 
 rate of a guinea a year each. The applications for admittance are 
 necessarily numerous, and it is estimated that in two or three years 
 there will be six institutions four hi London and two in the Borough 
 all as large as the present one. 
 
 The course of the movement, as is so often the case, followed 
 the line of a curve, and by 1852 it had degenerated from an 
 intellectual point of view. Some of the institutes, however, 
 paved the way for great foundations, such as the Municipal 
 School of Technology at Manchester and the Midland Institute 
 at Birmingham. A few of these, as at Bradford, Crewe, and 
 Swindon, have been kept alive by the persistence of some strong 
 and permanent economic factor, such as direct connection with 
 a railway centre as at Swindon, or the possession of well-situated 
 land as at Bradford ; but the majority passed away, their build- 
 ings and libraries remaining as a bequest to other, sometimes 
 non-educational, bodies. No reliable estimate has ever been made 
 of the influence of these institutes upon popular thought ; but 
 it may be noted that events of epoch-making importance took 
 place during the years of their power the passing of the Reform 
 Bill, the rise of the Chartists, the founding of the modern 
 co-operative movement, and the beginning of the development 
 of the trade unions. 
 
 The strange and rapid passing of the movement was probably
 
 ADULT EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTUEY ,8 
 
 due in part to the overwhelmingly philanthropic nature 
 of the inspiring and creative force which made it possible. 
 The extravagant emphasis laid upon this by Mr. Hudson, 1 the 
 historian of the movement, sounds unfamiliar and repellent 
 to the sensitive ears of a democratic age. 
 
 The unexampled efforts now making in every part of the kingdom 
 for the intellectual and physical improvement of the lower classes 
 of the community distinguish the present as the age of philanthropy 
 and good-will to all men. The middle classes vie with the rich in 
 promoting the great and good work of education. The brightest 
 minds in literature and science direct their talents to its develop- 
 ment ; preparing the ignorant by addresses, by lectures, and by 
 their writings, to receive and understand the great and interest- 
 ing truths which the Creator unfolds before them. The beloved 
 Sovereign of these realms lends her fair and royal name in behalf 
 of Bazaars, to increase the stores of Institution Libraries. The 
 lawned Divine and the ermined Duke feel a pleasure hi presiding 
 over the festivals of the artizan and the day labourer. The press 
 is prolific with carefully collated proofs of the connection between 
 offences and ignorance, as they appear in the calendar of crime ; 
 civic magistrates begin to hold it a duty to take part in all meetings 
 which have for their object the dissemination of useful knowledge 
 amongst the multitude ; the agriculturist is alive to the importance 
 of the allotment system, and institutes Farmers' Clubs ; while the 
 manufacturer finds it profitable to form schools and factory libraries, 
 to rear amateur bands of musicians amongst his workmen, to en- 
 courage frugality by savings banks, benefit societies, sick clubs, 
 clothes clubs, burial associations, and by occasional tea meetings, 
 at which he and his family partake, to destroy that barrier between 
 men which pride and wealth sometimes ungraciously erects. 
 
 This note of patronage cannot be discerned in the movement 
 which originated in the middle of the century. The People's 
 College, founded at Sheffield in 1842, the precursor of Working- 
 Ivlen's Colleges, was a fine instance of self-help. This remarkable 
 institution, founded by a nonconformist minister of Sheffield, 
 was carried on by the students for a period of thirty years, 
 during which time they refused to receive financial help from 
 anyone not connected with the College. They felt that economic 
 independence, accompanied by self-government, would result 
 
 1 The History of Adult Education, J. W. Hudson, Ph.D., 1851. Longmans.
 
 4 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOBKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 in a keener appreciation of education than, as they expressed 
 it. dependence ' on eleemosynary funds, and on a government 
 in which they had neither interest nor control. . . . The 
 education to be valued must cost some reasonable acknow- 
 ledgment.' This attitude necessitated somewhat Spartan 
 methods of study. A picture of the early class-room is 
 happily preserved for us. 
 
 The class-room of the People's College at Sheffield was a ghostly, 
 whitewashed, unplastered garret, not fitted up with the necessities, 
 much less the conveniences, of study. In this place the morning 
 classes hi winter were especially uninviting, and it required con- 
 siderable devotion to study to travel through snow at 6.30 in the 
 morning before breakfast to find a room probably without a fire, 
 or one but newly lighted by the monitor student to whose lot it 
 had fallen to perform that and kindred duties. 1 
 
 The curriculum was broad and liberal ; Latin, Greek, Logic, 
 and Civil Knowledge were studied in classes at 6.80 in the 
 morning. The level of educational achievement was high. 
 ' It Was a remarkable thing to hear young Working men reading 
 and translating with facility the modern languages, or demon- 
 strating difficult problems in Euclid.' 2 The influence of this 
 College upon local government Was described by Mr. James 
 Wilson, an early student, afterwards proprietor of The Indian 
 Daily News, in the following words : 
 
 Locally, the College has furnished members of the Town Council, 
 invaded the Aldermanic Chairs and the Magisterial Benches, and 
 given to the City not the least able of its Mayors.' 3 
 
 The College closed in 1879, the year of the founding of Firth 
 College, afterwards the nucleus of the University of Sheffield. 
 The gospel of the early co-operators was entirely one of 
 self-help. They set out to redeem Society, financed by the 
 scanty pence of a group of ill-paid workers in Eochdale. Th^y 
 determined to support education by devoting to it a percentage 
 of the surplus they gained by supplying one another with 
 goods. This action was the source of a stream of co-operative 
 
 1 Mr. Thomas Rowbotham, Sheffield Telegraph, September 30, 1859. 
 
 2 The Story of the People's College, Sheffield. G. C. Moore Smith, 1912. 
 Printed by J. W. Northend, 8 Norfolk Road, Sheffield. 
 
 3 Sheffield Telegraph, December 1, 1898.
 
 ADULT EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTUKY 5 
 
 educational effort which broadened as the century advanced, 
 and which gave inspiration and example to other educational 
 movements, notably, as we shall see later, to that of Univer- 
 sity Extension. 
 
 It was in connection with the problem of the Co-operative 
 Movement that Frederick Denison Maurice, one of the Christian 
 Socialists who later took part in it, devised the scheme of the 
 Working-Men's College in direct imitation of the People's 
 College at Sheffield. He discovered in the latter a principle 
 which experience has since proved to be fundamental. The 
 education of working people can never develop unless there 
 is frank and free intercourse on a basis of equality between 
 teachers and taught. ' The working men themselves found 
 it out,' he said. ' We heard in 1853 that the people at Sheffield 
 had founded a People's College. The news seemed to us to 
 mark a new era in education.' 
 
 The London College was started in Eed Lion Square, where 
 the Workers' Educational Association had its offices for so 
 many years. There great teachers Tom Hughes, Lowes 
 Dickinson, Euskin, and Kingsley ' united with their pupils 
 for higher things. For this College did not aim at lifting the 
 working man into the middle classes. To those who founded 
 the College, every man, rich or poor, ignorant or educated, 
 was a spiritual being.' Fellowship was the keynote of it all. 
 ' A College means a fellowship ' was the continual insistence 
 of the founder. ' The barrier of class was entirely broken 
 down.' The College passed from Eed Lion Square to Great 
 Ormond Street, and thence to a spacious building in Crowndale 
 Eoad, where it is still at work, and where what is called ' the 
 College Spirit ' reveals itself in all the common life of the place. 
 
 Maurice was obviously not content with founding one 
 Institution when he had discovered a principle, and for many 
 years he passed up and down England urging others to follow 
 the example of himself and his colleagues. He succeeded in 
 a number of places, but only the College at Leicester remains 
 in its original form ; and that has come more closely into con- 
 nection with the ordinary educational machinery of Leicester 
 than its founders contemplated. 
 
 Some of the Colleges were absorbed by greater institutions. 
 The classes of the Manchester Working-Men's College ' were
 
 6 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 merged into the evening classes of Owen's College, and, indeed, 
 it was this fact which was the cause of the early success of 
 those classes.' Owen's College later became the University 
 of Manchester. In this way, at least one College has had a 
 part if only a small part in the development of a modern 
 University. 
 
 Throughout the period of the operation of People's Colleges, 
 the Co-operative Movement had been steadily developing its 
 work, and became, in the seventies, a platform for the operation 
 of University Extension, which had been called into being by 
 the energy of Professor Stuart, in connection with the University 
 of Cambridge. It was at Rochdale, where the co-operators 
 had asked him to lecture, that the plan originated of having 
 a class in connection with University Extension lectures. 
 Professor Stuart has told the story in his own words : 
 
 One day I was in a hurry to get away as soon as the lecture was 
 over, and I asked the hall-keeper to allow my diagrams to remain 
 hanging until my return next week. When I came back he said 
 to me, ' It was one of the best things you ever did leaving up these 
 diagrams. We had a meeting of our members last week, and a 
 number of them who were attending your lectures were discussing 
 these diagrams, and they have a number of questions they want 
 to ask you, and they are coming to-night a little before the lecture 
 begins.' About twenty or thirty intelligent artizans met me about 
 half an hour before the lecture began, and I found it so useful a 
 half-hour that during the remainder of the course I always had such 
 a meeting. 
 
 It has been commonly supposed that the justification of 
 University Extension work is to be found in its success in 
 attracting working men and women ; this is far from being 
 the case. It was established by the University of Cambridge 
 partly on the initiative of the North of England Council for 
 Promoting the Higher Education of Women, and it is essentially 
 a movement for extending the knowledge and culture to be 
 found hi the Universities to the whole of the people. On 
 the other hand, it is certain that if it had not been for the 
 sense of a mission to working people, who were for the greater 
 part cut off from opportunities of acquiring knowledge, many 
 of its greatest enthusiasts might never have taken part in the 
 work. The attractive nature of the lecture courses drew, in
 
 ADULT. EDUCATION IN NINETEENTH CENTUEY 7 
 
 many cases, large numbers of working people ; but on the whole, 
 their participation tended to decline even in those places 
 where the movement was at the outset most active. This was 
 largely because they took little or no part in the management, 
 which, centrally, was carried out exclusively by the Universities, 
 and locally, by committees on which working people exercised 
 little or no influence. There can, however, be no question 
 that the effect of the University Extension Movement upon 
 popular thought has been considerable. It is impossible to 
 read without being deeply stirred of the revival in educa- 
 tion brought about in the eighties by the Cambridge Uni- 
 versity Extension Movement among the miners of North 
 Durham ; and although the great Coal Strike cut short its 
 actual career, yet its spirit lives on, and is traceable in 
 the homes and in the institutions of the district to this day. 
 
 In addition to the University Extension and the Co- 
 operative Movements, there existed at the end of the century 
 the Adult School Movement, which originated as far back as the 
 eighteenth century in the desire of the members of the Society 
 of Friends to open up knowledge, particularly of the Scriptures, 
 to working men and women. After a long period of compara- 
 tive quiescence, this movement developed through the establish- 
 ment of numerous schools, particularly in the Midland districts 
 of England. These schools have a definitely religious basis, 
 dealing primarily with the life and teaching of Jesus, but they 
 also deal in various ways, by lecture and discussion, with the 
 subjects of ordinary humane education. 
 
 Any observer of English life would have discovered in 
 addition numerous societies, particularly in connection with 
 places of worship, directly concerned with the cause of educa 
 tion, although there was a considerable decline in the number 
 of Mutual Improvement Societies, which were common in the 
 eighties and early nineties. 
 
 The first residential College for working men was founded 
 in 1899, through the initiative of an American, Mr. Walter 
 Vrooman. 
 
 We shall take men [he said] at Ruskin College, who have been 
 merely condemning our social institutions, and will teach them in- 
 stead to transform them, so that in place of talking against the 
 world, they will begin methodically and scientifically to possess
 
 8 AN ADVENTURE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 the world, to refashion it and to co-operate with the power behind 
 evolution in making it the joyous abode of, if not a perfected 
 humanity, at least a humanity earnestly striving towards perfection. 
 
 There was thus an abundance of force and organisation 
 upon which a new movement, which would embody the lessons 
 taught by experiments in the nineteenth century, could be 
 successfully created. Wherever work had been carried out 
 in a right way people flocked to it, despite the hindrances of 
 economic difficulties which we noted at the outset, just be- 
 cause the desire on the part of the individual for wisdom and 
 knowledge is so uniform as to constitute a law of life. 
 
 England, all through the nineteenth century, was making 
 step after step in the direction of political and social democracy, 
 and anyone who considered the future with any degree of care 
 must have been forced to the conclusion that the supreme 
 need of the country was that the education of the people should 
 at least keep abreast of the opportunities which they were 
 acquiring for participation in government.
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE 
 
 THE friendship which existed between University men and 
 Co-operators was always most marked. During the closing 
 years of the nineteenth century numerous attempts were made 
 to bring about joint action for the development of education in 
 citizenship. These attempts were largely due to the influence 
 of Arnold Toynbee expressing itself through such men as Dr. 
 Sadler (then Director of Special Enquiries and Eeports, at the 
 Board of Education) on the one hand, and Eobert Halstead 
 (Secretary of the Co-operative Productive Federation, an erst- 
 while weaver of Hebden Bridge) on the other. Mr. Hudson 
 Shaw, the most prominent of University Extension lecturers, 
 so far as working men and women were concerned, deemed it 
 almost a sine qua non to have the assistance of the local Co- 
 operative Societies in industrial centres, if his work was to 
 succeed. There was a properly organised group of Co-operative 
 students, generally in charge of Eobert Halstead, at all Oxford 
 University Extension Summer Meetings. 
 
 This was the state of affairs when I began to devote myself 
 to the educational affairs of the Co-operative Movement, after 
 being concerned with University Extension as a student in 
 the early nineties and having been brought up from a child in 
 a Co-operative and Trade Union atmosphere. The events 
 which led directly to the formation of the W.E.A. and those 
 which immediately followed it are so largely personal that I 
 must throw myself upon the reader's indulgence in recording 
 these as well as some later happenings as my own recollections. 
 The use of the personal pronoun can only be justified by its 
 indication of a particular human personality which is enabled 
 to express itself by the labour and affection of a number of 
 
 9
 
 10 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 men and women. Some of these may have thought more, 
 and indeed achieved more, than the one who is privileged 
 to speak so that others may hear, or to organise so that an 
 adventure may succeed. 
 
 In 1897 I entered the service of the Co-operative Wholesale 
 Society, after a varied career in which commerce and education 
 were strangely mixed. My experience in both these directions 
 proved to be of use. After a short time I was appointed to 
 teach the History and Principles of Co-operation to such of 
 my fellow employees as would listen after an arduous and long 
 day's work. In the meantime, both by occasional contributions 
 to the Co-operative News and by speeches in numerous con- 
 ferences, I sought to bring about an actual working alliance 
 between the Universities and the people. 
 
 It seemed to me in those days that the teaching of Economics 
 and Industrial History and Citizenship could be carried on so 
 much better in co-operation with the University Extension 
 Movement as to justify my claim that Co-operators should cease 
 trying to do it in isolation, and should rather concentrate on 
 the teaching of Co-operative Principles and Technique, in itself 
 an enormous task, necessitating a college for the purpose. I 
 advocated this so whole-heartedly at the Conference held with 
 Co-operators during the Oxford University Extension Summer 
 Meeting of 1899 as almost to wreck, for the time being, the 
 cause I had at heart. As the result of a speech made at the 
 Peterboro' Co-operative Congress in 1898, 1 was invited to read 
 a paper at the Conference on ' Co-operation and Education 
 in Citizenship.' The comments of the Co-operative Press of 
 the tune were caustic in the extreme. ' The writer of the 
 paper had aimed at the moon and hit a haystack.' It hardly 
 seemed as if I had managed to do even that. In spite, however, 
 of the opposition I had raised, a scheme was approved on the 
 same day whereby, under certain conditions, Co-operative 
 teachers would be recognised by the Oxford University Ex- 
 tension Delegacy. It proved to be largely ineffective, but it 
 is evidence of the drawing together of the two movements. 
 
 My later experience has led me to believe that the 
 Co-operative and other movements will succeed best in 
 educational work if they make themselves responsible for the 
 satisfaction of any demand which they stimulate among their
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTUEE 11 
 
 own members. They may not be so well fitted to assume this 
 responsibility as Universities or Local Education Authorities 
 would be, but their students will with them do their work 
 under familiar conditions in an atmosphere congenial to them, 
 and hi the spirit of their own fellowship. Thus I would now 
 urge Co-operators to develop among themselves any and every 
 line of study which appeals to them, but I would also urge them 
 to encourage their students to attend, at least for a time, those 
 Classes, Summer Meetings, or Colleges which are provided for 
 the people generally, and to take their part in supporting 
 popular educational movements for the good of all. By this 
 method the knowledge possessed by the students will be 
 increased and their views broadened, whilst at the same time 
 knowledge of Co-operation and an appreciation of its spirit 
 will become more widely diffused. 
 
 It was not until Christmas 1902 that I again began to plan 
 an educational alliance. In the meantime I had been teaching 
 in the Higher Commercial Schools of the London Board, on 
 five evenings a week during the winter. This in addition to 
 a full working day at the Co-operative Wholesale Society left 
 me little or no leisure. But I had never forgotten the invitation 
 given to me to write an article for the University Extension 
 Journal on the lines of my Conference paper. At the first 
 opportunity ' Democracy and Education ' was prepared and 
 published in the January 1903 number of the Journal. At the 
 time of writing I had little or no idea of organising a movement, 
 but it soon became clear that I should either have to do it 
 myself, or induce someone else to do so. The Editor of the 
 Journal, Dr. Holland Eose, was instant in his encouragement 
 and printed two further articles, also one in commendation 
 by Eobert Halstead. In the course of these articles the plan 
 of action revealed itself as a working alliance between Co- 
 operation, Trade Unionism, and University Extension. A 
 triple cord is not easily broken. 
 
 A small group of working men gathered round me, including 
 some who had formed a ' Christian Economic Society,' which 
 met at my house. With this help at hand, together with the 
 encouragement of Dr. Holland Eose, my wife and I decided 
 to take action by becoming the first two members of ' An 
 Association to Promote the Higher Education of Working Men,'
 
 12 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 and at that symbolical meeting by democratic vote I Was 
 appointed Hon. Secretary (pro tern.). 
 
 The first organising pamphlet of the Association was a 
 reprint of the articles from the University Extension Journal, 
 to which the following was a preface Written by Dr. Holland 
 Eose : 
 
 ' Co-operation creates a new person, a new character, and a new 
 policy ; and the new knowledge required is as extensive and various 
 as that which has perfected the science of antagonism which we 
 call " civilisation." ' Such are the words written in 1891 by that 
 veteran Co-operator, George Jacob Holyoake. They are as true 
 to-day as they were twelve years ago ; and, perhaps, the need for 
 calling them to mind is as great now as then. The fathers of Co- 
 operation valued the movement as affording a training for character ; 
 and the Trade Union leaders in many cases have taken up a similar 
 standpoint. 
 
 Mr. Mansbridge, hi writing these articles for the University 
 Extension Journal, has been actuated by the same spirit, namely, 
 to quicken the educational zeal of those who are associated with 
 these two great working-class movements. Having himself bene- 
 fited by courses of study in connection with University Extension 
 lectures, he believes that such lectures may be made far more widely 
 helpful to Trade Unionists and Co-operators than they have been 
 in the past. As one who is connected with the University Extension 
 Journal, 1 know that his articles have aroused great interest ; and, 
 on behalf of the Editorial Committee and of my brother lecturers, 
 I would assure those to whom Mr. Mansbridge especially appeals 
 that we are most anxious to make our movement as helpful as 
 possible to them. The spirit that animated Charles Kingsley and 
 Arnold Toynbee has never been more active at our ancient 
 Universities than it is to-day ; and the tune seems ripe for an 
 educational advance on the lines here suggested. 
 
 On July 14, 1908, the Provisional Committee, consisting 
 entirely of Co-operators and Trade Unionists, met in Toynbee 
 Hall for the first time. There were present, Mr. A. H. Thomas 
 (Brushmaker) in the chair, Mr. George Alcock (Trustee National 
 Union of Eailwaymen), Mr. W, E. Salter (Engineer), Mr. L. Idle 
 (Co-operative Employee), Mr. J. W. Cole (Co-operative Em- 
 ployee), and myself as Hon. Secretary. The first organisation to 
 enter into affiliation with the provisional body was the Co-opera- 
 tive Society at Annfield Plain, Co. Durham. On Saturday, 25th
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE 18 
 
 August, in the Examination Schools at Oxford, the Association 
 received public recognition from the representatives of nearly 
 all the Universities and a large number of labour organisations. 
 Dr. Percival, then Bishop of Hereford, was in the chair, and 
 his place was taken afterwards by Dean Kitchin, of Durham, 
 both of whom possessed the confidence of the working people 
 in a remarkable degree. Robert Halstead read a paper, in 
 the course of Which he said 
 
 No one really interested in the subject will be satisfied with 
 what has been done, or with the present pace of progress of higher 
 education among working men. It seems to some of us that the 
 prospects are not so promising now as they were some years ago. 
 Doubtless there were many reasons for this. University Extension 
 itself has become so successful in relation to other classes of society, 
 that its working-class aspect has now receded into the background. 
 Then, working-class organisations framed for other purposes are 
 now so large, and their officials so pre-occupied, that such a special 
 subject as the higher education of their members inevitably finds 
 a secondary place in their attention. Any individual efforts that 
 may be made to promote the cause, though they should be en- 
 couraged to the end of time, are obviously fragmentary, and in 
 addition to being exacting as to time, energy, and means, are too 
 much at the mercy of personal contingencies to be adequate to 
 what is required. 
 
 The promoters of this Conference, in the light of these con- 
 siderations, believe that if the higher education of working men has 
 to make desired progress, it will have to consolidate itself into a 
 special movement, adopt a special organisation, frame special objects 
 of propaganda, and appoint a properly equipped staff to carry out 
 its purpose. 
 
 It was left to me to introduce the proposed constitution of 
 the Association, and I commenced by emphasising 'the absolute 
 necessity for the successful working of a strong and powerfully 
 organised Association, so constructed as to be in distinct and 
 immediate relationship, equally with the Universities as with 
 Working Class Movements.' 
 
 The discussion was well maintained, and both labour leaders 
 and University teachers participated in it. Many critical 
 things were said, yet there was complete unanimity as to 
 procedure, and the note struck throughout was one of eager 
 desire for education.
 
 14 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 A strong committee was appointed to develop the work, 
 the members of which were : George Alcock (Trustee National 
 Union of Kail Way men), Professor S. J. Chapman (University 
 of Manchester), Alderman George Dew, L.C.C. (Amalgamated 
 Society of Carpenters and Joiners), Robert Halstead (Secretary 
 to the Co-operative Productive Federation, Ltd.), the Eev. 
 T. J. Lawrence, LL.D. (late Fellow of Downing College), Albert 
 Mansbridge (Battersea and Wandsworth Co-operative Society, 
 Ltd.), the Rev. W. Hudson Shaw, M.A. (late Fellow of Balliol 
 College), whilst two representatives each were authorised from 
 the Co-operative Union, Ltd., and the Trade Union Congress, 
 and one representative each from every University Extension 
 Authority and the Association of Directors of Education. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Ball were the hosts on that occasion. 
 They Welcomed the delegates to St. John's College and provided 
 hospitality for them there. Thus the foundation of Sir Thomas 
 White at Oxford takes precedence as the first college to give 
 shelter to the new Democratic Movement. It is fitting that 
 the name of Sidney Ball should be so intimately associated with 
 the beginnings of the W.E.A. in Oxford, for he never failed 
 throughout a long University career to welcome and to assist 
 those who had progressive causes at heart. He held out both 
 hands to help young enthusiasts on their perilous ways. He 
 added his ripe wisdom to their energy, and so things happened 
 as they should, and adventures were sped on to their goal. 
 
 There Were many difficulties and disappointments in the 
 days which followed the Conference, but the dominant fact 
 stood out clearly : Labour had made a definite mcrve on her 
 own account to reach out for the best education the country 
 could offer or develop, and she had made the move deliberately 
 in alliance with Scholarship. Nothing could alter that. It 
 mattered little, therefore, that some of those who might have 
 been expected to help viewed the new movement with suspicion, 
 condemning it for overlapping and consequently for being not 
 merely unnecessary, but actually a cumberer of the ground ; 
 or that others said that it could not exist effectively unless it 
 secured a great deal of financial aid. It is true that the income 
 of the Association during the first three years of its life did 
 not amount to 500, but that was not an unmixed evil. As a 
 matter of fact, a little more opposition in those days would
 
 THE BEGINNING OP THE ADVENTUEE 15 
 
 have been helpful. There was practically none of that kind 
 of active criticism which strengthens and nerves a young 
 movement, and keeps an old one healthy and vigorous. 
 
 In October 1904 the first Branch was formed at Beading, 
 and largely through its operation the Association discovered 
 both its possibilities and limitations ; although it was left to 
 the branch at Kochdale, formed a few months later, to reveal 
 the work in its many-sided richness.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EARLY DAYS 
 
 THE work which followed the Conference was exciting and 
 interesting as it has seldom been since, in spite of the ex- 
 pansion of the Association and the multitude of its adherents. 
 It was a great privilege to see the rapid working of the 
 magnetic power of the new idea. Eepresentative workers, 
 such as D. J. Shackleton, then President of the Trades Union 
 Congress, and representative University lecturers such as 
 Hudson Shaw, declared their unqualified adherence to its 
 principles. Financial support was accorded by working-class 
 societies of all kinds and degrees. The Co-operative Union, 
 the Working Men's Club and Institute Union, and the 
 Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress 
 entered into an association, which has never been broken, 
 but, on the contrary, has increased in power every year. They 
 did not merely express a sentiment, nor did they content 
 themselves with an annual grant ; they sent their best men 
 to co-operate in the work of the Association, and these have 
 been and still are amongst the most ardent advocates of 
 the movement. 
 
 By the beginning of 1906, branches had been formed in 
 eight towns, four in the South of England, one in the Midlands, 
 and three in the North. District Committees were at work 
 covering the North- Western and South- Western areas. Great 
 meetings had been held, including that which formed the first 
 branch at Eeading and that which formed the first district at 
 Manchester. 
 
 The first great National Conference of the Association, on 
 a specifically educational problem, was held at Oxford on 
 August 12, 1905. The Dean of Christ Church presided over 
 
 16
 
 WILLIAM TEMPLE, 
 President of the Association.

 
 EAELY DAYS 17 
 
 an assembly of nearly a thousand persons, comprising delegates 
 from all parts. After a long discussion it was resolved to ask 
 the Board of Education to ascertain from the ' local Education 
 Authorities how far and under what conditions employer and 
 employed, in their respective areas, would welcome legisla- 
 tion having for its ultimate object compulsory attendance 
 at Evening Schools.' The consequent deputation, led by 
 Mr. Will Crooks, was received by Sir Wm. Anson and Sir 
 Eobert Morant on November 22, 1905. It is believed to 
 be the first deputation composed entirely of working-class 
 representatives which has formally visited the Board of 
 Education. Although no immediate action resulted, the 
 Board referred the whole question to its Consultative Com- 
 mittee, which published a Eeport in 1909, 1 and so the foun- 
 dation was laid for the consideration of the subject which 
 led to the Day Continuation Schools of Mr. Fisher's 1918 
 Bill. 2 
 
 It was to this Conference on Evening Schools that Mr. 
 William Temple came quite by chance. As a result he be- 
 came a member, and a few years later was elected to be the 
 first President. In himself he has gathered up and expressed in 
 a marvellous manner the mind and spirit of the movement. 
 
 The first four branches Eeading, founded October 1904, 
 Derby, January 1905, Eochdale, March 1905, and Ilford, 
 March 1905 are all steadily at work still, testifying to the 
 permanence of the branch method. The North- Western 
 Committee, appointed on October 8, 1904, has developed into 
 the North- Western and the Yorkshire Districts of the Asso- 
 ciation. The South- Western Committee, appointed August 6, 
 
 1904, has merged into the Western and South- Western Dis- 
 tricts. The Midland District was formed on October 14, 
 
 1905. It was at that meeting that the intense fervour and 
 zeal for true education as a means of development reached 
 that high plane which has been constantly observed, or rather 
 experienced, at so many Association meetings since. The 
 
 1 Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on the 
 Attendance, compulsory or otherwise, at Continuation Schools. 2 vols. 1909. 
 Cd. 4757, 4758. 3s. 
 
 2 See Chapter IX for other forces affecting the 1918 Bill of the Board 
 of Education.
 
 18 AN ADVENTURE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 meeting was arranged in co-operation with the Birmingham 
 District of the Co-operative Union, the Midland Co-operative 
 Educational Committees Association, and the Birmingham 
 Trades Council, whose chairman at that time, W. J. Morgan, 
 J.P., proved a most efficient secretary to the whole Conference. 
 It was addressed by Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Charles Gore, and 
 Richard Bell, then M.P. for Derby ; six hundred delegates 
 and four hundred visitors were present. At the small but 
 representative Annual Meeting held on the morning before, 
 the cumbrous name of the Association was changed. 1 
 
 Working women objected to the exclusive term ' working 
 men.' It was always effective to explain that the term 
 ' working men ' was equivalent to the ' brethren ' of the 
 preacher, but unfortunately it was not always possible to do 
 so. Others felt also that there was an exclusiveness about 
 the term ' working men,' although no satisfactory definition 
 of that term has ever been given. However, the Annual 
 Meeting, by happy inspiration, developed the term Workers' 
 Educational Association, and the Association has ever since 
 been known by the fortunate combination of the initial letters, 
 W.E.A. In connection with this meeting two branches were 
 formed, one on the previous evening at Handsworth, and the 
 Birmingham Branch. At Handsworth two antagonists in 
 connection with local education, divided by the religious 
 difficulty in the schools, joined hands and went out to convert 
 to educational enthusiasm the local branch of the Amalga- 
 mated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. 
 
 The tale of conferences and meetings at that time is so long 
 that I will forbear lest I weary the reader before the list is 
 complete. It is necessary, however, to record the formation 
 of the first branch, at Reading. At the end of the first six 
 months of its work it had risen to a membership of 238 and 
 had 16 affiliated societies. So rapidly did the idea bear fruit 
 there that although the inaugural conference was only held 
 on October 1, the weekly programme of the branch, which 
 
 1 Some of the delegates to the above meeting are shown in the photograph 
 facing page 25 ; in order to appreciate the further growth of the movement 
 readers should compare the photograph facing page 29, which contains 
 some of the delegates to the Annual Meeting of 1908 held at Birmingham 
 three years later.
 
 EAELY DAYS 19 
 
 has never since ceased during the winter months, was opened 
 on November 80 with an address on the aims of the 
 Association by the Principal of University College, Beading. 
 The most notable feature concerning the formation of this 
 branch was the development of the constitution and rules, 
 embodying the principles and many of the details which have 
 been present in all branch constitutions since, whether 
 established in England or in the Overseas Dominions. The 
 essential feature is the right of representation, upon the 
 governing body of the Association, of every society affiliated 
 to it. The inaugural conference itself was notable, and the 
 report of it was adopted as a pamphlet of the Association. It 
 was addressed by Eichard Honter (now Director of Education 
 in Sierra Leone), Principal Childs, and the present Lord Chief 
 Justice, and it resolved itself into animated discussion, 
 participated in for the most part by local Labour leaders. 
 
 It will be obvious from what has been said that goodwill 
 and desire for the success of the new movement animated 
 most of those persons who came into contact with its influence. 
 Indeed, it is almost safe to say that it had become a replica in 
 miniature of English life. The Second Annual Eeport analyses 
 the individual members as authors, churchmen, co-operators, 
 educationalists, headmasters, journalists, lawyers, noncon- 
 formists, scholars, statesmen, trade unionists, and adds, ' The 
 last two members to join were a shop assistant and a labourer.' 
 All the public utterances of the time make it clear that the 
 first condition of the power and life of the Association was 
 that at least three-quarters of its members should be actual 
 labouring men and women. Had it been otherwise, the 
 scholars of the time Would have regarded it as an unnecessary 
 body ; but they realised that the W.E.A. did itself naturally 
 represent the fundamental life of working people, who made 
 it abundantly clear in conferences and elsewhere that, in the 
 Words of a leading article in the Manchester Guardian, they 
 desired ' a liberal as against a merely bread-and-butter 
 education.' 
 
 There is neither need nor space to call to mind the varied 
 forms of educational activity undertaken by the rising move- 
 ment. Then, as now, almost every form of reasonable 
 educational activity found its place, but the Association was
 
 20 AN ADVENTURE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 still Waiting for the time when it could satisfy the test of keen 
 educationalists like Canon Barnett and Dr. R. D. Roberts, by 
 securing from the vast mass of working men and women real 
 students prepared to study thoroughly and continuously, in such 
 time as they could secure from daily work, the subjects in which 
 they were interested. Many working men Were indeed already 
 doing so. The head of an Oxford College tells how he had found 
 in Durham a working man who had been studying the philosophy 
 of the Schoolmen for twenty years, and had never met any- 
 one else who had studied it, until by chance he himself had 
 happened to pass that way. Anyone who knows working-class 
 life knows what persistency is put by many isolated scholars 
 into subject after subject, as it passes from the stage of a hobby 
 into the very condition of life. The Association hoped to 
 discover these scholars and bring them into contact with 
 one another, in order that isolation might be replaced by 
 companionship in study. 
 
 It must not be understood that the Association was in a 
 hurry to produce visible results. On the contrary, it knew 
 that its work would have to grow steadily, and, if it did devise 
 anything which would add to the educational experience of 
 the country, it would reveal itself in its own place and in its 
 own time. There were occasions during the first two years 
 when some of us thought that we were perhaps too general 
 in our aspirations, and that the same accusation of vagueness 
 could be brought against us which might be brought against 
 any ' association for making people good.' Certainly many 
 who thought that we could not develop did praise us 
 unstintedly. The most penetrating critic of the early days 
 was Canon Barnett, who was of opinion that if we constructed 
 the Association it would be as a locomotive engine without 
 rails to run on. His metaphor of metals was indeed an 
 appropriate one when finance is considered, but our enthusiasm 
 was great in those days, and our answer was that if we could 
 contribute human energy we could go on a long way without 
 any money at all. It is clear that Canon Barnett, if he had 
 not convinced himself that our enthusiasm was sufficiently 
 strong and sane, at least hoped that it would prove to be so. 
 He decided to use all his influence and weight to further the 
 development of the work, and although the kindly critic
 
 EAELY DAYS 21 
 
 remained a critic still, he was to the end of his life the ready 
 helper, the wise counsellor, the firm friend, and not least among 
 those who sought to direct financial aid to the undertaking. 
 
 As I look back over the record of those years, I cannot 
 help feeling how generous and how unceasing were the 
 activities of the members of the committee, of the local 
 secretaries, of scholars and public men, for all the mass of 
 work had to be carried on without a regular central office, 
 without any permanent official, and with funds strikingly 
 inadequate. During the second year, the income of the 
 Association from subscriptions and donations did not amount 
 to 100, and a principle was therefore abundantly justified, 
 which it is well to recognise in the starting of all new voluntary 
 educational efforts. Such efforts are not worth undertaking 
 unless they can be maintained for the first year on a pound or 
 two. In other words, the most powerful influence should be 
 exercised by those who are willing to labour without reward 
 through unpromising days for the sake of an idea which they 
 believe to be sound. Moreover, all movements ought to be 
 small and poor at the commencement ; they should grow from 
 the seed upwards. There is no more difficult thing than to 
 keep a right spirit within a well-endowed or rich movement. 
 This is particularly the case where there is a great deal of 
 money in the early years. 
 
 The very mention of finance calls up one of the most 
 inspiring incidents of the whole period. I was working in the 
 office of my employers when there burst into it (for ' burst ' 
 is the only word) a tall, venerable person, who proved to be 
 Dr. J. B. Paton of Nottingham. ' Can you tell me how to 
 find Mr. Mansbridge ?' he asked. ' I am told he has to do with 
 the Woolwich Co-operative Society.' When I told him that 
 my name was Mansbridge, he at once expressed delight at 
 the recent formation of the W.E.A. It seemed to him to 
 embody many of his own ideals, for which he had been labouring 
 as ten men through long years. He prophesied its power, 
 he blessed it with double blessings. Just at the time it was 
 struggling on it had no money, but the Doctor on that very 
 day said he had money placed in his hands to use, and he 
 would put 50 at our disposal. I remember we purchased a 
 typewriter and a copying machine badly needed and were
 
 22 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 thus enabled to employ in the evenings our first typist. Dr. 
 Paton encouraged and helped us from that time onward until 
 his death in January 1911. 
 
 There was, also, evidence of opposition which was restricted 
 to a few persons who declared that the Association was a 
 device to side-track the attention of working men and women 
 from their legitimate movement. It never rose to any great 
 proportions and, generally, those who, from misinformation, 
 had adopted this attitude gave it up when they came into 
 contact with the Association. There are notable instances 
 of this. Such opposition has never wholly ceased, but it has 
 always proved to the advantage of the Association to have 
 critics, even when those critics meant to do it harm. It may 
 easily have been that without critics the Association would 
 have slipped unconsciously into undemocratic or careless 
 methods. Looking back over the newspaper correspondence 
 of the time, which was frequently a severe tax on me, I 
 can now say that I am glad that we had this opposition, 
 because it always kept us on the alert. Moreover, it directly 
 brought into our service and friendship one who started out 
 as a determined enemy. He had been sadly misinformed. 
 A few years later he qualified as a doctor, and, humanly 
 speaking, was the means of restoring me to health and 
 strength after the severe attack of cerebro-spinal meningitis 
 in 1914 which caused my resignation from active service in 
 the W.E.A., and rendered me useless, in many respects, 
 throughout the years of the war.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WORK IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 
 THE burden of every address or lecture given by the W.E.A. 
 missionary was this : ' Discover your own needs, organise 
 in your own way, study as you wish to study. There are no 
 two towns or villages alike.' If the work was to be started in 
 a town the first thing arranged was a town meeting. Usually 
 the Mayor was asked to preside, and the Town Hall was 
 generally the venue. After a definition of the W.E.A., a 
 resolution authorising a provisional committee, to consist of 
 one representative from every organisation agreeing to take 
 part, would be moved by a workman and seconded by an 
 educationalist ; this was usually carried by a large majority. 
 
 Only on occasions when the few though active opponents 
 of the Association could arrange an opposition based on class 
 conscious grounds was there any cause for anxiety. The 
 only time when the resolution was defeated was at Poplar in 
 1910 ; before the conference the local Labour bodies had been 
 canvassed ; their delegates came instructed to vote against 
 the resolution. There was a hammer-and-tongs discussion ; 
 a clear moral victory was won, but the vote did not harmonise. 
 Much useful work has been done in Poplar since, and the 
 leading opponents have in various places paid tribute to our 
 work. On another occasion at Watford, although the resolu- 
 tion was carried, the opposition was such as to wear down 
 enthusiasm, and the effort proved abortive. 
 
 These setbacks Were useful, for, as has been noted, a move- 
 ment which does not have to fight its way tends to lose its 
 vigour. Moreover, opponents who become friends as the result 
 of conviction are the most reliable of supporters. Strangely 
 enough, the policy of beginning work with large and successful 
 
 23
 
 24 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 town meetings often proved dangerous, because people expected 
 the consequent work immediately to be on the same scale. The 
 best branches so often grew out of small apparently unsuccessful 
 beginnings, that in later years meetings of a few keen repre- 
 sentative men and women were preferred to the larger ones. 
 
 Almost every kind of educational method was adopted. 
 A Midland town organised an Annual Art Exhibition, chiefly 
 to satisfy the desires of a group of members who spent their 
 Saturday afternoons in sketching. The Saturday rambles 
 of a Wiltshire branch have become famous in the land. A 
 western town, acting in co-operation with Adult Schools, 
 arranged over a thousand lectures, mostly in courses of from 
 three to six, for Trade Unions, Adult Schools, Co-operative 
 Guilds, etc., in the district. A northern town developed to 
 an amazing extent the formation of classes through its affiliated 
 bodies. On one occasion its representatives went to a Carters' 
 and Lorrymen's Trade Union, urging them to say what they 
 wanted to study. Perplexity reigned until one said, ' We're 
 always behind the horse. We don't know much about him. 
 Let us have a class on the horse.' As a result a hundred and 
 twenty carters attended a class for two successive winters. 
 It is said that the horses in that town had a much better time 
 ever after. Yet another branch determined to increase the 
 attendance at evening schools, and did so by a hundred per 
 cent, in one year. As an example of the way in which local 
 work may be carried out, a report of the first year's work at 
 Eochdale, which was responsible for the carters' class, is printed 
 as an appendix. The town of Eochdale deserves Well of any 
 movement with which it has been connected. 
 
 Sometimes a class would be formed apart from a branch, 
 and it is my firm conviction that a class can be made out of 
 any audience ; this is the result of experience. On an October 
 evening I was in Canning Town addressing a Temperance 
 Society made up for the most part of casual labourers, who 
 were at the docks in winter and on the road in summer. At 
 the conclusion of my remarks a man rose and said, ' Can't we 
 have a class, Guv'ner? ' ' Yes, if you really want it,' was the 
 reply. The result was that a class in Industrial History ran 
 successfully through the winter. One of the men, full of 
 enthusiasm, said, ' Can't our wives have a chance ? ' That
 
 WOKK IN TOWN AND COUNTEY 25 
 
 request also was met, and many women attended an after- 
 noon class on ' How to Bead Books.' 
 
 The keenness among women is if anything greater than that 
 among men. I was once at a meeting in the East End of London, 
 and as I spoke of the splendour of education to the very poor 
 women there, mostly charwomen of advanced years, I saw 
 some of the faces glow. It appeared afterwards that they had 
 been members of a class, recognised for grant purposes by the 
 Board of Education, and had studied history for four years. The 
 teacher, who had distinguished herself in the Modern History 
 Tripos, came from a Cambridge Women's College. Some of 
 the women when they joined knew no history at all, but that 
 was an excellent reason for becoming class members. On one 
 occasion at Jarrow a conference of women met to hear about 
 and to consider education. Before the end of the afternoon 
 more than twenty of them, including a teacher, had enrolled 
 themselves in a class which was to meet on the following Monday ; 
 no one had any idea that a class would be arranged when they 
 entered the room. Every W.E.A. organiser could multiply 
 such instances. They Were possible because of the ready 
 desire for knowledge and the generous attitude of those men 
 and women, especially of the latter, who had been fortunate 
 enough to receive an advanced education. 
 
 The work in London was greatly stimulated by the West- 
 minster lectures. These attracted on June Saturday afternoons 
 in three consecutive years many thousands of working men 
 and women. The lecturer on each occasion was Professor 
 Masterman. The first course was given in Westminster Abbey 
 on ' The Story of the Abbey in Belationship to the History of 
 the English People ' ; the second and third were given in the 
 Boyal Gallery of the House of Lords on ' Parliament and the 
 People ' and ' The House of Commons.' There were three 
 times as many applications for tickets as could be satisfied ; 
 each ticket-holder had to pledge himself or herself to attend 
 on every occasion. The ticket-holders were so eager that they 
 formed a long queue waiting for the doors to be opened. The 
 lectures were followed by discussion. 1 On one occasion there 
 
 1 Amongst those who took the chair were Mr. Balf our, Mr. J. W. Lowther, 
 the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir William Anson,Mr. G. N. Barnes, Mr. 
 Will Crooks, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, Viscount Harcourt, and Lord Haldane.
 
 '26 AN ADVENTUKB IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 was a suffragette demonstration, and sixteen protesters were 
 removed ; the only reason why I have ventured to record the 
 fact here is because they came back to subscribe to the collection 
 which was being made for the purpose of providing scholarships 
 at the Cambridge Summer School of that year. 
 
 The extension of the W.E.A. in rural districts would have 
 proved to be a much more difficult matter if University edu- 
 cation had not spread to women in the last century. There 
 were many highly educated women who were not professionally 
 engaged, but who longed to do some useful work, and conse- 
 quently the educational movement came to them as a bene- 
 diction. These women threw themselves heart and soul into 
 the rural movement ; in some instances they did their work 
 so well that hardly an eligible person stood aloof. Classes 
 were organised, lectures arranged, and plays produced. Village 
 classes were always astonishing, both as regards the numbers 
 who attended them and the persistence of the students. In 
 most of the villages the average attendance was about thirty. 
 
 The most notable village branches before the war were those 
 round about Swindon, with Woodboro' as centre. These were 
 inspired by students from the Swindon classes and assisted 
 by some of the staff at Marlborough College. Whilst the war 
 was in progress the Kent villages round about Ashford did 
 notable work, largely due to the influence of an old member 
 of Balliol College, and to the devotion of a local schoolmaster. 
 The Buxton Memorial lectures were most successful in Mid- 
 Sussex, whilst the classes in the mining villages of North 
 Staffordshire under the North Staffordshire Miners' Movement 
 are in many ways unique in educational experience. An 
 anonymous writer in the Round Table (1914) imagines Erasmus 
 coming to England to meet his fellow scholars and going, not 
 to Oxford or to Cambridge, but to North Staffordshire. 
 
 In the later afternoon, when the factories close down, Erasmus 
 is fetched by a workman student, and carried out first by train and 
 then in an antediluvian carriage (specially provided for this occasion) 
 to an inaccessible village on the top of a hill. There in the school- 
 room he finds an eager audience gathered together from this 
 and the neighbouring villages. They have come to hear about 
 the French Revolution, to be thrilled with the story of a great 
 national drama. Erasmus, inured to lucubrations about scientific
 
 WOEK IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 27 
 
 methods and documentary authorities, had almost forgotten that 
 history is first and foremost a story. This evening reminded him. 
 He saw the Bastille fall under his eyes, and felt the news of its 
 capture reverberating through France. He lived for an hour in 
 1789, as the story rolled out from the lips of a trained public speaker. 
 The miners and the field labourers and the village shopkeepers 
 and the old village schoolmaster in the chair were in France too ; 
 question after question poured in till the primitive conveyance 
 stood once more at the door. And so back to the wayside station 
 and in the slow train to Stoke, with high converse on the way, of 
 which Erasmus will bear an undying memory back to Holland. 
 
 Among the many and varied experiences which fall to the 
 town-bred W.E.A. organiser, village meetings are the most 
 stimulating, perhaps because everything is novel and fresh. 
 He must, of course, let the meeting choose its own way. I shall 
 never forget a group of agricultural labourers and their wives, 
 crowded into a small schoolroom, heated by an ancient stove, 
 and seated in desks made for infants. They listened to an 
 address on education for the better part of an hour ; then they 
 were asked what they wished to study. After a long period of 
 intense silence and inaction, punctuated by the earnest appeals 
 of the lecturer, who adopted all the arts he could think of, four 
 hands were held up. They were obviously magnificent hands 
 for heavy manual work. The lecturer paused triumphantly, 
 and said encouragingly, ' Well ? ' The answer was ' Shorthand.' 
 Such an answer as that might well have brought the proceedings 
 to an untimely close, but somehow or other, perhaps owing to 
 a hint from an understanding person, perhaps through a know- 
 ledge of the workings of the rural mind, which is not given to 
 revealing its secrets or desires in public, I divined that they 
 wished to study history. Ever since they have been studying 
 history and kindred subjects in that village in classes for men 
 and women. There are few in the village who have kept aloof. 
 
 There have been one or two attempts at village settlements, 
 but so far none have proved to be permanent. The war, which 
 destroyed so much, will, it is hoped, have inspired such con- 
 structive and devoted work as will recreate village life, and 
 enable it to minister to the fundamental needs of our country. 1 
 
 1 The work of Women's Institutes and of the Y.M.C.A. promise much in 
 this connection.
 
 28 AN ADVENTUEB IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 The experience of the W.E.A. has proved conclusively that 
 persistent study appeals to the rural labourer. At the same 
 time no facilities will tempt him, if they are imposed by others, 
 or suggested in a philanthropic spirit. He lives in a world of 
 his own which has its own effective methods and ways of 
 thinking. It is only by the extension of the same methods 
 and ways that he will enter the fields of knowledge. Wisdom 
 is the accompaniment of simple lives rightly lived. The force 
 which is often generated in villages is the force which creates 
 scholars and men of genius, and England dare not fail to foster 
 and strengthen this force.
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 THE responsibility for the detailed work of the movement 
 originally rested for the greater part upon the workers at the 
 centre ; but the gradual increase of power in the district offices 
 made it possible in 1915 to take this over to such an extent as 
 to remove the burden almost entirely from the Central Office, 
 and to realise the intention of the pioneers of the movement, 
 which was to allow each part of the country to develop on its 
 own lines, and in its own way, within the natural limits of the 
 work of the whole Association. It will be noted that branches 
 were allowed autonomy from the beginning. In this absence 
 of centralisation lies one of the reasons for the success of the 
 Association as an organisation. 
 
 For the first three years my private residence first at Batter- 
 sea, then at Ilford, served as the office of the Association, and 
 the hours of work were early in the morning or late in the 
 evening. There are many who remember with wonder and 
 amusement the strenuous efforts of an enthusiastic and growing 
 staff to do their work in two small rooms at 24 Buckingham 
 Street from 1906-9, in two slightly larger rooms at 18 Adam 
 Street from 1 909-1 1 , and ultimately in two rooms and an apology 
 for one at 14 Red Lion Square from 1911-15. It has often 
 been said that movements with good intentions are shameless 
 in the manner in which they overwork their employees. The 
 W.E.A. in the first twelve years of its life was the worst of 
 offenders ; but everyone in the office caught the spirit of the 
 movement ; every success achieved was regarded in the light 
 of a personal victory. If an unexpected cheque came, enabling 
 new work to be carried out, the typewriting machines hummed 
 with triumph, whereas before such an arrival they contented 
 
 29
 
 80 AN ADVBNTUEE IN WOBKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 themselves with tapping out confidence. Any and every 
 visitor was a new promise of power, and not a few have told 
 us how cheered they were to find themselves greeted with 
 both welcome and hospitality by an obviously busy staff. It 
 would, of course, never have been possible for an Association 
 with no funds and no financial backing to meet its liabilities, 
 unless every member of the staff had worked and economised 
 to the utmost. 
 
 The District Offices have had even greater difficulties than 
 the Central Office. The secretaries have been expected to 
 combine all r61es in their own persons speakers, teachers, 
 organisers, and financiers, and withal to keep fresh and cheerful 
 so as to be ever ready to inspire others, and all on an income 
 hopelessly inadequate. The story of the rise of the Association 
 in late years is largely that of their own successful efforts. 
 It is their work which made necessary the reconstruction of 
 the Constitution in 1915, and the responsibility for the future 
 development of the Association, as we have seen, now rests 
 largely upon their shoulders. 
 
 It is obvious that a Constitution devised by and for the 
 W.E.A. at any particular time would hinder rather than pro- 
 mote the work, unless it were regarded as a basis of action, 
 or, in other words, as a starting-point for future progress. 
 This does not at all weaken the effect of the Constitution, 
 because whatever progressive action is taken must be taken 
 in harmony with it. Koughly speaking, this is the view which 
 has been taken of its Constitution by W.E.A. members. There 
 have been, during the first twelve years of its life, very few, 
 if any, appeals to constitutional authority, but, on the other 
 hand, it has been found necessary on two occasions to re- 
 construct the Constitution in order to bring it into harmony 
 with the growth of the Association ; but there have never been 
 alterations in the principles by which it is governed. These 
 principles have always ensured that the action taken and the 
 opinions expressed shall be entirely unsectarian, and without 
 party bias in politics. Moreover, the clear principle of demo- 
 cratic government has always been expressed in the sense 
 that every member, no matter how far removed from the 
 centre, shall have the right to express, through the channels 
 provided, his considered opinion upon any matter of education.
 
 KESPONSIBILITY AND GOVEENMENT 81 
 
 The only condition of membership is a desire to promote the 
 education of the people. 
 
 The first Constitution, which was authorised at the Oxford 
 Conference, was quite simple, and expressed the objects of the 
 W.E.A. as follows : 
 
 To promote the Higher Education of Working Men primarily 
 by the Extension of University Teaching, also (a) by the assistance 
 of all working-class efforts of a specifically educational character, 
 (6) by the development of an efficient School Continuation System. 
 
 This made it clear that the immediate objective of the 
 Association was the adult, it being held that, if he were 
 interested in education, he would then take the necessary 
 steps to secure reforms in the educational system of the 
 country, particularly with regard to his own children. The 
 general attitude of the Association became symbolised in the 
 term ' Highway.' The old idea of the ladder of education 
 was too restricted and ineffective. The term ' Highway ' 
 was first used at the North of England Educational Conference 
 held at Sheffield in 1907. At least, I am unable to discover 
 the use of the word in this connection before that. It was 
 developed in a paper read by me from which I venture to 
 quote : 
 
 It has been customary in England to visualise the method of 
 approach to the University constructed for the children of the poor 
 as an ' Educational Ladder,' but the citizen condemns such narrow 
 possibilities. He does not altogether approve the ' Educational 
 Corridor ' suggested by the President of the National Union of 
 Teachers, but he is working to construct a free and open highway 
 upon which the only tolls are to be mental equipment and high 
 character. He desires to clear away the remnants of the barriers 
 of creed and sex which at one time entirely obstructed the way to 
 the Universities. 
 
 He knows that the invitation to the Modern University is 
 addressed to the whole world of students, therefore his great high- 
 way is to be in its earlier stages as broad as the area of the Primary 
 Schools, narrowing naturally at that point where the Secondary 
 School overlaps the Primary School, and narrowing yet again at 
 that later point where the Universities begin to draw students from 
 the Secondary Schools. Education to him, as to Mr. Haldane, will 
 never be right in England until Primary, Secondary, and University
 
 82 AN ADVENTURE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 Education are united by the stream of students upon such a high- 
 way. His imagination is stimulated by the recognition of the fact 
 that the Universities are the only educational institutions in England 
 which make it possible for students from all sections of society to 
 pursue their studies, side by side, unconscious of irrelevant dis- 
 tinctions. He believes that in the light of a unified educational 
 interest the diverse sections of society will cease to construct or 
 to maintain Primary and Secondary Schools in accordance with 
 ' class conscious principles.' 
 
 The term ' Highway ' was hailed at the time as new in its 
 application to the educational system of the country. Since 
 that date it has passed into general use, and has been adopted 
 by successive Ministers of Education. The magazine of the 
 Association, which was published shortly afterwards, received 
 the same appropriate name. 
 
 Provision was made in the first Constitution for an 
 Executive Committee and for local Committees, but the 
 local Committee clause was merely adopted in principle. An 
 Advisory Council was also allowed for and consisted, as laid 
 down, of representative educational experts. In the rush and 
 stress of work, however, it became largely inoperative and was 
 never actually convened. 
 
 The rise of the branches and districts made it necessary 
 to revise the Constitution at the Annual Meeting of October 
 1906. The Objects and Methods were defined more clearly as 
 follows : 
 
 Object. Its object shall be to promote the Higher Education of 
 Working Men and Women. 
 
 Methods. It shall, in its capacity as a co-ordinating Federation 
 of Working-Class and Educational Interests, endeavour to fulfil 
 its Qbject in the following principal ways : 
 
 (a) By arousing the interest of the workers in Higher Education, 
 
 and by directing their attention to the facilities already 
 
 existing. 
 (&) By inquiring into the needs and feelings of the workers in 
 
 regard to Education, and by representing them to the Board 
 
 of Education, Universities, Local Education Authorities, 
 
 and Educational Institutions, 
 (c) By providing, either in conjunction with the aforementioned 
 
 bodies or otherwise, facilities for studies of interest to the 
 
 workers which may have hitherto been overlooked.
 
 THE OFFICIALS OF THE ASSOCIATION AT TOYNBEE HALL, JANUARY, 1909. 
 
 L. V. GILL, 
 Sorth-Western Secretary. 
 
 ALBERT MANSBRTOGE, 
 General Secretary. 
 
 T. EDMUND HARVEY, 
 Hon. Treasurer. 
 
 WILLIAM TEMPLE. 
 President. 
 
 T. W. PRICE, 
 Midland Secretary. 
 
 P. W. CUTHBERTSON, 
 Editor of the ' Highway.'
 
 KESPONSIBILITY AND GOVEBNMENT 38 
 
 (d) By publishing, or arranging for the publication, of such 
 reports, pamphlets, books and magazines as it deems 
 necessary. 
 
 Full provision was made for the operation of the various 
 authorities of the Association, i.e. central, district, and local 
 branches. The powers of voting and of representation at the 
 Annual General Meeting were denned in detail, and it was 
 indicated that an official organ of the Association should 
 be published at the first opportunity. The principle of 
 government in the Association may be described briefly as 
 local and district autonomy, with, however, the reservations 
 necessary to preserve the unity of the whole movement. 
 There were minor alterations at subsequent Annual Meet- 
 ings until, in 1915, it seemed that the firm planting of the 
 Association in several of the districts, and the consequent 
 growth of active life, had given rise to a situation which 
 demanded an Executive Committee largely based on district 
 representation. 
 
 The Central Executive Committee was, as a matter of 
 fact, composed largely of the representatives of affiliated 
 bodies, and of those who had guided the centre in its difficult 
 work of planting and developing districts and branches, often 
 at great sacrifice to the peculiar work of the central body. Be 
 that as it may, there was a reasonable and right demand for 
 larger and more effective representation from the districts on 
 the governing body of the Association, i.e., the Council to which 
 all affiliated bodies had the right to send one, and the districts 
 to send two, representatives. This Council appointed the 
 Executive Committee which was responsible to it. The final 
 decisions of the Association could only be taken at the Annual 
 General Meeting, at which all members, societies, branches, 
 and districts had rights of representation. The Constitution 
 approved in 1915 was designed to remove these difficulties ; 
 it provided for a Central Council which represented in little 
 the whole Association. 
 
 The Annual Meeting was hopelessly congested, and at any 
 meeting proceedings might be rendered impossible by the 
 amount of business to be dealt with. It had clearly passed 
 beyond its first usefulness, and its functions were transferred 
 to the meetings of the Council, which were to be held at least
 
 34 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 twice in the year. Thus the Council superseded the Annual 
 Meeting in the ultimate government of the Association. 
 
 Although individual members could join the central body 
 it was always intended that ultimately they would only be 
 able to join branches. This intention was not realised in 1915, 
 but the principle was set in motion by restricting individual 
 membership to branches and districts. The national body thus 
 became a federation of affiliated bodies and the representatives 
 of the districts. Every branch, of course, has the right 
 of representation on the District Council. Simple as these 
 arrangements may appear to be, they yet have tended to save 
 a good deal of confusion in the Association, for it was recorded 
 that one person had actually received invitations to subscribe 
 to a branch, district, and to the Central Association, and, 
 moreover, had received invitations to attend three Annual 
 Meetings in the year. This, at least, could only now happen 
 twice over, i.e., in the case of the district and the branch. 
 Doubtless this anomaly will also be remedied at a later stage 
 in the history of the Association. 
 
 The event to which most enthusiasts in the work of the 
 Association looked forward was the foregathering at Annual 
 Meetings, henceforward to be Conventions with no direct 
 governing power ; in some respects, they were held in higher 
 estimation than the more lengthy educational gatherings at 
 the Summer Schools. An Annual Meeting was a time of real 
 inspiration, of the meeting of old friends, of the development 
 of fresh resources in the locality, and of bringing the movement 
 generally into the public eye throughout the country. There 
 were associated with these Annual Meetings demonstrations 
 which, on every occasion, were astonishing in their power.' 
 The greatest of the series was held at Sheffield in 1909. The 
 Sheffield people felt anxious concerning the attendance, and 
 were inclined to take a moderate-sized hall in the city ; we 
 told them to take the biggest hall, and, moreover, to provide 
 for an overflow meeting. The Wesleyan Central Hall was 
 therefore taken, and on the platform were representatives of 
 eighty societies of Sheffield, and the great hall, holding three 
 thousand persons, was crammed half an hour before the 
 meeting. The overflow hall was filled and many people were 
 turned away. If a meeting on the education of the people be
 
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 EESPONSIBILITY AND GOVEKNMENT 85 
 
 properly organised, there will never be any lack of attendance. 
 There was a striking platform : the Archbishop of York, Mr. 
 Arthur Henderson, M.P., and Miss Margaret McMillan all 
 spoke. The atmosphere was electric. Ferrer had just been 
 shot at Barcelona, and the fact that he had been an 
 educationalist inspired the vast audience with the greatest 
 sympathy. Such was the beauty of the educational message, 
 and the high level at which it was delivered at this and 
 subsequent meetings, that they were regarded by many as 
 gatherings of spiritual significance. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the most striking event of any of the 
 Annual Meetings was the occasion upon which Dr. Gore, then 
 Bishop of Birmingham, after waiting a whole evening through 
 a drawn-out programme at Beading, found himself standing 
 up to speak just ten minutes before ten o'clock, when the 
 meeting was to be closed. He had had no intention of speaking 
 for more than ten minutes, but he delivered his message in such 
 powerful terms that when he had ended the vast audience rose 
 to its feet and clamoured for him to go on. 
 
 All this passion for justice will accomplish nothing, believe me, 
 [said the Bishop], unless you get knowledge. You may become 
 strong and clamorous, you may win a victory, you may effect a 
 revolution, but you will be trodden down again under the feet of 
 knowledge unless you get it for yourselves ; even if you win that 
 victory, you will be trodden down again under the feet of know- 
 ledge if you leave knowledge in the hands of privilege, because 
 knowledge will always win over ignorance.
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASSES 
 
 MANY people regard the W.E.A. and the University Tutorial 
 Class Movement as one and the same thing. They treat the 
 terms as interchangeable, probably because the system of 
 University Tutorial Classes has been the most prominent 
 constructive work of the Association ; and that is the feature 
 which has earned the commendation of educational experts 
 wherever they are found. The rest of its work, even though 
 it may have been more important, has been intangible and 
 elusive. It may be of great moment to the nation to set 
 people's minds in the direction of things that are pure and 
 true, but such work cannot be estimated, statisticised, visited, 
 seen. 
 
 There were not wanting those who, in the early years of 
 the W.E.A., said that its success would depend upon its ability 
 to create serious students. Among those especially experienced 
 in the problems of adult education, the names of Canon Barnett 
 and Dr. Koberts stand out prominently. The former, ever 
 since the foundation of Toynbee Hall, had striven with all his 
 might to bring the University to the workers. The latter, as 
 secretary to the Syndicate for Local Lectures at Cambridge, 
 and latterly as Eegistrar of the University of London Extension 
 Board, had perhaps given more attention than anyone else to 
 the question of the recognition by Universities of extra-mural 
 studies. It was the united stimulus of these two men that 
 caused the formation of a class in Battersea, of which Professor 
 Patrick Geddes was appointed tutor ; but. serious though the 
 intention of this class was, it was not a University Tutorial 
 Glass, and did not become one for some two or three years. 
 
 The formation of the first class in 1906 was due to a very 
 
 36
 
 UNIVEESITY TUTOE1AL CLASSES 87 
 
 wise use of University Extension at Eochdale, where the 
 W.E.A. branch, under the name of the Rochdale Education 
 Guild, had become powerful owing to the truly wonderful work 
 of L. V. Gill, F. Greenwood, and A. Carter, the three secretaries 
 of the branch. Working men and women began to attend 
 lectures in large numbers, and because they reached out for 
 something more, a new problem arose. After long reflection 
 I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to 
 ask Eochdale to get thirty students to pledge themselves to 
 make every attendance for two years and to write regular 
 essays. If they would do this we could get the best tutor in 
 England. Our part of the bargain was certainly a large one, 
 but we meant it, and it represented our enthusiasm at the time. 
 As the result of a letter I addressed to them the Eochdale 
 students pledged themselves for two years, and E. H. 
 Tawney, a Balliol scholar, agreed to teach the class for 
 the time being under the auspices of the Oxford University 
 Extension Delegacy. Mr. Tawney Was at that time Lecturer 
 in Economics at Glasgow ; he Was quite prepared to under- 
 take arduous work for the W.E.A. at any cost. In this 
 way a pioneer experiment Was initiated, of far-reaching 
 consequence for the education of the workers. 
 
 Fortunately, at the Oxford Summer Meeting of that year, 
 the members of a keen University Extension centre at Longton, 
 prominent among them being Mr. E. S. Cartwright, decided to 
 attempt to duplicate the Eochdale experiment in Longton. 
 They secured the requisite number of students under the same 
 conditions, and Mr. Tawney found it possible to undertake 
 that class also. The Eochdale members had chosen Saturday 
 afternoon ; Longton chose Friday evening. Thus it came about 
 that the first University Tutorial Class ever held in England 
 was held at Longton, although Eochdale was properly the 
 pioneer class. 
 
 It should be stated that the University Extension Delegacy 
 were enabled to undertake this experiment owing to a grant 
 made by New College, Oxford. When the question of making 
 the grant was under consideration the College invited our 
 Midland Secretary, Mr. Sharkey, a working brushmaker, and 
 myself to dine with the Warden and Fellows informally, in 
 order to discuss the matter. From that evening New College
 
 38 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 has never looked back in its support of University Tutorial 
 Classes. It has been generous, even in difficult years. It 
 was on that evening also that Professor Zimmern, sometime 
 Honorary Treasurer of the W.E.A., first came into contact 
 with the work. 
 
 The public expression of the scheme for establishing classes 
 was effectively made by a conference held during the Summer 
 Meeting in August. The subject suggested for discussion was, 
 ' What Oxford can do for Working People.' A resolution was 
 carefully prepared beforehand, asking the Vice-Chancellor to 
 appoint seven members of the University to meet seven 
 representatives of Labour nominated by the W.E.A. to inquire 
 into, and report upon, the whole matter. Some four hundred 
 delegates attended from all over England and Wales, the 
 Board of Education being represented by Sir Eobert Morant 
 and Dr. H. F. Heath. Dr. Gore, late Bishop of Oxford, 
 presided, and the subject was introduced by Mr. Walter Nield, 
 of the North- Western Co-operative Educational Committees' 
 Association, and by Mr. Sidney Ball, Fellow of St. John's College. 
 Among the invited speakers was Mr. J. M. Mactavish, the 
 present General Secretary of the W.E.A. , at that time a 
 shipwright in Portsmouth Dockyard. The Conference was 
 full of excitement, and there Was a small but compact body 
 of persons Who had evidently come to delay progress ; they 
 were prepared with strong arguments, but it seemed that Mr. 
 Mactavish's speech was stronger. There were no mild and 
 pleasant things said about either Oxford or working people ; 
 both, it was agreed, had fallen short. Here was the opportunity 
 to unite for the future in the development of learning which 
 should be broadly based upon the facts of experience, as well 
 as upon the theories developed by scholars. After various 
 outbursts of excitement the Conference closed. The resolution 
 was carried with only four votes against it. 
 
 The movement for uniting Universities with the people had 
 taken a distinct step forward. The press was full of it on the 
 Monday, and very shortly afterwards the Committee appointed 
 settled down to the work of producing its report. Composed 
 as it was of such vastly different elements, the simple fact 
 that the Committee had a common objective unified their 
 considerations more than is usual with Committees drawn from
 
 UNIVEESITY TUTOKIAL CLASSES 39 
 
 dissimilar types of persons, and the Eeport, 1 ' Oxford and 
 Working-class Education,' stands as a monument to their 
 labours. That Eeport not only laid down clearly the lines 
 upon which the new movement must be developed, but 
 induced, throughout the whole of the English-speaking world, 
 at least a new attitude towards Universities. Its popularity 
 was proved by its circulation, a second edition being rapidly 
 demanded. In the United States the press comments ran 
 somewhat in this way : ' We started by accusing Oxford ; we 
 finish by excusing ourselves.' 
 
 Before the Eeport was finished arrangements had been 
 made for six other classes. The Oxford Colleges rallied to the 
 work, and useful contributions were made by several of them, 
 notably by All Souls, New College, and Magdalen. The 
 publication of the Eeport drew in all the other Universities 
 and University Colleges, and, before long, there was not a 
 University nor a University College in England and Wales 
 which had not established classes. More than that, they 
 actually met in a Central Committee which still exists under 
 the name Central Joint Advisory Committee for Tutorial 
 Classes, 2 and is unique in that it is the first Committee upon 
 which there were representatives of every University and 
 University College in England and Wales. It was an historic 
 
 1 Oxford and Working-class Education. A Report of a Joint Committee 
 of University and Working-class Representatives on the Relation of the Uni- 
 versity to the Higher Education of Workpeople. Clarendon Press, 1909. Is. 
 (Out of print.) 
 
 1 This Committee, over which Sir Henry Miers, Vice-Chancellor of the 
 University of Manchester, has presided from the outset, defines its work in 
 the following way : 
 
 As a matter of ordinary procedure it soon became evident that the 
 common problems of University Tutorial Classes could best be solved by a 
 Committee upon which each University and University College had repre- 
 sentatives together with the Workers' Educational Association. Such a 
 Committee was accordingly constructed by general consent, and in order to 
 emphasise its advisory nature it was called the Central Joint Advisory Com- 
 mittee on Tutorial Classes. Its functions clearly revealed themselves as a 
 method of approach to the Board of Education, the Gilchrist Educational 
 Trust, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees, and other possible sources of 
 revenue. In future it will continue the work of combining the experience 
 of Universities in regard to Tutorial Classes, and will continue to approach, 
 when authorised to do so, bodies which affect more than one University. At 
 the same time it does not, and cannot in any sense, limit the right of any 
 University to take whatever steps it pleases in its own interests, nor can its 
 decisions bind the action of any Joint Committee. It will maintain its power
 
 40 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 occasion when they all met under one roof for the first time, and 
 symbolical of their unity of purpose in regard to this matter. 
 
 The remarkable progress of the classes up to the time of the 
 war, and throughout its course, can best be realised by a con- 
 sideration of the statistics (see Appendix I). Let it be said at 
 once that students as a rule keep their pledges, that the first 
 Eochdale Class continued for four, and the Longton class for 
 eight years : indeed, the latter is in effect still at work, although 
 the personnel has changed. The quality of the work done 
 revealed itself rapidly as good. The judgment of Mr. A. L. 
 Smith, the Master of Balliol, was much quoted at the time. 
 He declared that 25 per cent, of the essays written were as good 
 as the work done by men who obtain First-Class Honours 
 in the Final Schools of Modern History at Oxford. He was 
 astonished, not so much at the ' quality of the work as at the 
 quantity of the quality.' This high standard was the direct 
 result of keenness in unifying the practical experience of the 
 students' lives with the knowledge gained in the class. 
 
 Obviously, the men and women who would undertake 
 such a course were thoughtful people to begin with. Many of 
 them had read a good deal, if discursively. 1 Their technical 
 equipment was not great at the outset, but that rapidly righted 
 itself ; such minor matters as spelling and punctuation soon 
 ceased to trouble them unduly. The principles upon which 
 the classes were founded, in themselves secured good results. 
 No one was encouraged to join a class who did not really wish 
 
 by its efficiency in helping to maintain all the details of the work at the highest 
 possible level, and in the making of representations on behalf of the movement 
 in any way which would lead to its strengthening. It can, of course, and must 
 be, purely a body dealing with the supply of Tutorial Classes. The demand 
 for Tutorial Classes is best met by the organisation of the Workers' Educational 
 Association. 
 
 1 The problem of securing a reasonable supply of the more expensive 
 books of reference for the use of students has been largely solved by the estab- 
 lishment of the Central Library for Students, 20 Tavistock Square, London, 
 W.C. During the year ending February 28, 1920, this Library made 15,000 
 issues for periods varying up to six months each. The Library is supported 
 by voluntary contributions, and has been generously aided by the Carnegie 
 United Kingdom Trustees, also later by the Cassel Trustees. The Adult 
 Education Committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction recommend that 
 it be financed in part by the State in order that it may the more adequately 
 fulfil its purpose. This recommendation was unanimously endorsed by 
 Librarians in conference at Southport, September 1919, who further called 
 upon existing Libraries to support it also.
 
 UNIVEESITY TUTOEIAL CLASSES 41 
 
 to study the proposed subject ; the class was also allowed to 
 select its tutor and to formulate its syllabus. The adoption 
 of these two methods caused some to be scornful who had 
 underestimated the psychological importance of this concession 
 to the initiative of students of mature years. 
 
 The tutor must of course in the first place have been 
 approved by the University Joint Committee established 
 in connection with each University, but a really good 
 tutor would never stand in danger of not being accepted 
 by a class. Moreover, the syllabus would also have to be 
 approved. There is a vital impulse in a class which starts the 
 study of a subject at the point which it desires, although, 
 naturally, this must be a suitable point. It is always best in 
 dealing with the education of people of any type to start from 
 the known in the investigation of the unknown. There is 
 much artificiality in teaching which deals with remote matters. 
 Perhaps, however, the principle which gave most life and vigour 
 to the classes was that each student was held to be a teacher 
 and each teacher held to be a student. A tutorial class, it 
 was said, consisted of thirty-one teachers and thirty-one 
 students. ' The lecture is one but the discussion is one 
 thousand ' runs the old Persian proverb. The power of the 
 operation of this principle and the rapid development of the 
 subject as a result must be seen to be appreciated. The joy 
 in work which it produces makes tired men fresh. Otherwise, 
 how could men working seventy hours a week come to the 
 classes and write their essays regularly, as so many have done ? 
 
 This freshness and joy in work was one of the main notes 
 in the Eeport on the Classes published by the Board of 
 Education, and drawn up by Mr. J. W. Headlam and Professor 
 L. T. Hobhouse. They record there the case of a student 
 who, hampered by conditions at home, rose in the night, 
 wrote his essay for two hours, and then turned to sleep again. 
 The recognised period of a class meeting is two hours, on 
 twenty-four occasions during each of three consecutive years. 
 No really good class ever keeps to the two hours. They break 
 up, as a rule, only when compelled by necessity. There are 
 limits to the time during which buildings with caretakers may 
 be left open, but there always remains the street. A class in 
 Philosophy at Birmingham habitually continued its sessions
 
 42 AN ADVENTUEE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 on the sidewalk, until an energetic policeman threatened to 
 charge the tutor with causing an obstruction. On one occasion 
 an Economics class, after a pavement session, accompanied 
 the tutor to the railway station ; and the argument not being 
 finished, some of the students entered the train with him and 
 went as far as they dared. The early tutors became the friends 
 of the students, visited them in their houses, joined them on 
 all possible occasions, and, in fact, acted towards them in 
 much the same way as a tutor at Oxford towards his pupils, 
 subject, of course, to the limitations imposed by working hours, 
 and allowing for the more intimate friendship which is possible 
 between tutor and W.E.A. students of the same age. 
 
 As a rule the subjects studied are economic ; and a large 
 number of classes take industrial history. After a little while 
 students become keenly interested in literature and philosophy. 
 The preponderance of Economics studied has been deplored 
 by those who only know the Economics of the Universities. 
 In any case the actual subject of study is not of so much concern 
 as the spirit in which it is studied. In a tutorial class there 
 is little or no danger of narrow treatment. In any case the 
 range of subjects is limited to those which do not demand a 
 long period of school education ; for instance, mathematics 
 and languages are beyond this range, and the same may be said 
 generally of pure and applied science, although some of the 
 most successful classes have been held in biology. The Prime 
 Minister's Committee on the Teaching of Science reports on 
 a class at Halifax, and in doing so quotes the testimony of the 
 tutor : 1 
 
 The success of Science classes for adult students depends in a 
 special degree on the character of the teaching and the personality 
 of the teacher. It is more difficult to secure the right sort of teach- 
 ing for adult students in Science than in such a subject as Economics. 
 The teaching of Science to adults may fail either because it is too 
 elementary and does not deal with scientific matters of general 
 interest it is unreasonable to expect grown-up people to be pro- 
 foundly interested in the text-book accounts of the properties of 
 oxygen and hydrogen or because it is too technical and specialised. 
 
 1 Natural Science in Education. The Report of the Committee on the Position 
 of Natural Science in the Educational System of Great Britain. 1918. His 
 Majesty's Stationery Office. Is. 6d.
 
 UNIVEESITY TUTOEIAL CLASSES 48 
 
 It is not easy to get a teacher who will be successful in avoiding 
 both these pitfalls. On the other hand, it is a profound mistake 
 to suppose that working men are naturally lacking in interest in 
 scientific matters. They are fully alive to reaUy good teaching of 
 Science by a teacher who knows how to bring out their powers of 
 reflection and judgment. If they cannot get this kind of intellec- 
 tual stimulus in Science, they can as a rule get it in such a subject 
 as Economics, simply because they are themselves more or less 
 acquainted with the facts upon which the problems of Economics 
 are based. 
 
 It is difficult and perhaps unprofitable to try to trace an 
 effect such as the good and thoughtful work of the classes would 
 undoubtedly produce. It is a matter for speculation whether 
 or not the public mind would have been very different during 
 the great war if there had been no tutorial classes. Certain 
 it is that some 5,000 active working men and women had 
 received systematic and careful education in History and 
 Economics over a period of no less than three years. Many 
 trade union officials have as a result found that their work was 
 more powerful, and that they themselves were better informed 
 and equipped to deal with the problems which have arisen 
 in their meetings with the representatives of the employers. 
 There is abundant detailed evidence to this effect. 
 
 A new attitude was developed towards the Universities, 
 and towards learning in general, which rapidly took the place 
 of past misunderstandings, suspicion or indifference. Not 
 that there was necessarily approval of the actions of Universities, 
 or acquiescence in the fact that Oxford and Cambridge had 
 conformed to an aristocratic system, but there was a belief 
 in their possibilities and a trust in their integrity of purpose. 
 The absence from them of the mind and spirit of Labour was 
 held to be a hampering condition that was now gradually being 
 rectified. As for the University professors themselves, they 
 found a new joy in studying with these keen students, especially 
 when they came up to the Universities for Summer Schools. 
 The following is an instance of the new spirit : On an August 
 morning in 1909, the Professor of English Law at Oxford had 
 lectured on the Workmen's Compensation Act to a group of 
 railwaymen, weavers, and miners gathered together in Balliol 
 College ; after he had finished it fell to his share, in accordance
 
 44 AN ADVENTURE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 with the invariable custom in these classes, to listen to the 
 discussion and to answer questions for a space of time at least 
 equal to that which he himself had occupied. Almost at once 
 a railwayman, who had suffered the loss of a limb, rose and 
 discussed from the point of view of the injured workman the 
 effect of the Act, so far as he in his own person was concerned. 
 In this way it is possible by co-operation between teacher and 
 taught to envisage a subject both from the theoretical and 
 the practical point of view. 
 
 When the great war came, it was thought that the tutorial 
 classes might pass out of existence, but the enthusiasm which 
 developed them had spread to so large a circle that, even in 
 the winter of 1916-1917, when the work was at its lowest ebb, 
 nearly a hundred classes were meeting. 
 
 Apart from the Universities themselves, the greatest force 
 in securing their permanence was the Board of Education, which 
 consistently supported the classes, having assured itself by 
 all known tests that the work was sound and good. When the 
 Rochdale Class was started, it was only possible to earn five 
 shillings per student for each twenty-hours' attendance. By 
 an alteration of the Eegulations secured in the second year 
 this sum was increased to eight and sixpence. A few years 
 later a block grant of 30 per class for each of the three 
 years was given under Regulations which were developed 
 by the classes rather than imposed upon them ; in 1918 this 
 was increased to 45. Sympathetic, skilled inspectors were ap- 
 pointed in the persons of Mr. A. E. Zimmern and Mr. J. Dover 
 Wilson. On the resignation of the former, Mr. Joseph Owen 
 was appointed, notable as the only working-man student who 
 had proceeded to Oxford in connection with the University 
 Extension Movement. The influence of each of these inspec- 
 tors is strongly felt in the W.E.A., for they have under- 
 stood its meaning from the first, and have spared no pains in 
 developing it. 
 
 The problem of the^classes is still largely financial. It is 
 clear that every considerable town in England not only could 
 start a class but needs one. Moreover, the supply of tutors cut 
 off by the war will be augmented by women graduates who 
 have already proved their power in dealing with this type of 
 class. Accordingly, where hundreds of pounds have been
 
 UNIVEESITY TUTOEIAL CLASSES 45 
 
 spent in the past, the developments of the future will need 
 thousands. The Government, as has been implied, has always 
 been impressed by the value of the classes, and it is expected 
 that in the reconstruction proposals, provision for their finance 
 will be included in such a manner as not merely to increase 
 the supply of tutors but also to enable them to be paid better. 1 
 Of course, there is great danger in the fact that the experi- 
 ment of the early years may be overlaid as different people 
 come into it, but if each tutor really seeks to understand the 
 spirit of the movement of the W.E.A. he cannot go far wrong, 
 especially remembering that adult working men and women 
 are forceful people and, whilst working splendidly with a class 
 which enables them to develop, will naturally turn from one 
 which does not meet their needs. 
 
 1 Proposals to this end are contained in The Final Report of the Ministry 
 of Reconstruction Committee on Adult Education. Cd. 321. la. 9d. net.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 IT was an adventure within an adventure which established 
 the movement in the Overseas Dominions, and particularly in 
 Australia and New Zealand. 
 
 The idea of adult education as the development of the being 
 and powers of man, in and through the fusion of labour and 
 scholarship, came as a recreating force to these powerful though 
 young communities. They indeed generated it themselves. 
 Their experience had convinced them that education, if not an 
 end in itself, is a permanent factor in all healthy individual 
 and social life, and is a deeper thing than training for livelihood 
 or even for direct social and political purpose. 
 
 Accordingly their attitude to those who came to tell them 
 of the alliance which existed between the organisations of 
 labour and of scholarship in England was one of confident 
 welcome. 
 
 This attitude was after all merely another instance of the 
 readiness with which in educational matters both Universities 
 and Departments of Public Instruction habitually receive 
 with open mind the ideas stirring not only in the New World 
 but in the Old. It is strikingly exemplified for our purpose in 
 the proceedings which culminated in the passing of the University 
 Amendment Act, New South Wales, 1913. That Act contained 
 a clause making provision for the establishment of ' Evening 
 Tutorial Classes ' for working people. The speech of the 
 Minister (Mr. Carmichael) clearly reveals the origin of the idea : 
 
 It is made incumbent on the University that it should carry out 
 Evening Tutorial Classes in certain subjects for the benefit of labour- 
 ing men. I know that in regard to the University of London such 
 classes have been taken advantage of by different members of 
 
 46
 
 IN THE OVERSEAS DOMINIONS 47 
 
 society, such as men on the lower rung of commerce, and more 
 especially by leaders of Trade Unions, and Trade Organisations. 
 I can see no better answer to those who constantly say that the 
 leaders of Trade Unions and Trade Organisations are uneducated 
 and unable to grapple with the big problems in which they have 
 shown themselves interested, than to say we will give these men the 
 opportunity to attend University Tutorial Classes so as to get into 
 touch with those higher studies which cannot but be of advantage 
 to them. 
 
 At the same time, owing to the enthusiastic advocacy of 
 David Stewart, a delegate of the Amalgamated Carpenters' 
 and Joiners' Society, the Sydney Trades and Labour Council 
 unanimously passed a resolution authorising steps to be taken 
 to form a Workers' Educational Association. 
 
 Whilst this was happening in Sydney, a Congress of Uni- 
 versities of the Empire was arranged in London, and both the 
 Universities of Sydney and Melbourne requested that University 
 Tutorial Classes should be one of the questions considered. 
 One of the representatives of the University of Melbourne, 
 Dr. J. W. Barrett, was so inspired by all that was said and done 
 there, that he made it possible for the University of Melbourne 
 to ask me to go to Australia in order to explain, propagate, and 
 establish the movement. There were three things in English 
 life which Dr. Barrett said impressed him more than all else 
 the ' Round Table,' the Garden City Movement, and the 
 Workers' Educational Association. The invitation was after- 
 wards participated in by the other Universities of the Common- 
 wealth at Sydney, Adelaide, Hobart, Brisbane, and Perth. 
 
 I was enabled to accept the invitation without difficulty, 
 because the long strain of ten years' work had rendered a 
 change necessary, and, by the kind offices of some influential 
 friends and workers in the movement, a donation was made to 
 the Association to cover the extra expenditure which my 
 absence would involve. Thus it was that, sped on our way 
 by the enthusiastic good wishes of many W.E.A. friends, my 
 wife and I set sail for Australia on June 6, 1913, to carry out 
 what now seems to us one of the most effective pieces of work 
 in our lives. 
 
 It was a great adventure ; not well prepared for, as it seems 
 now, but we had been able to meet some representative
 
 48 AN ADVENTURE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 Australians in London who had carefully explained to us the 
 prevalent conditions there. So far as introductions were 
 concerned we lacked nothing, whether of an official or private 
 nature, but, with the exception of arrangements which had 
 been made in Sydney and in Melbourne, it was left to us to 
 make our own way after our arrival. We had been warned 
 that Australia would not listen to an educational message 
 couched in spiritual terms, that all she was concerned with 
 was ' getting on ' and making more money. This, however, 
 only made the prospect of our work more pleasing to us, for we 
 were full of the W.E.A. belief that every human soul, under 
 normal circumstances, will listen to the larger educational 
 message. In the result it became quite clear, as we have already 
 said, that Australia did want to hear all that we could tell her 
 about education for the development of life, and was eager 
 to translate it into practice. 
 
 I can only call to mind one exception to this general eager- 
 ness, an exception due to my own excess of enthusiasm. Our 
 boat had hardly docked at Fremantle when I was addressing 
 the Triennial Labour Conference of Western Australia, as the 
 bearer of fraternal greetings from a large number of the most 
 important Trade Unions in England. The Conference was 
 glad to receive the greetings, but I discovered afterwards that 
 I was regarded as another globe-trotter with a ' gold brick for 
 sale.' Not much harm was done, however, because there were 
 at the Conference old Tutorial Class students from England, 
 notably Mr. and Mrs. Foxcroft from Blackburn. They set 
 to work steadily with Professor Shann, who had known the 
 W.E.A. in England, and on our return, both at the Trades 
 Hall and at the University, we were accorded a real welcome. 
 At the same time it seemed obvious that the Goldfields were 
 not anxious for us to visit them, and, on our arrival at Kal- 
 goorlie, we found that no meeting had been arranged for us. 
 However, in the two days at our disposal we held a number 
 of informal meetings, and my wife aroused so much enthu- 
 siasm amongst the women that they came in great groups 
 to see her off, almost covering her with flowers. 
 
 In every Australian city which we visited we received 
 cordial welcome from all sorts of people. We met the Premier 
 and the Leader of the Opposition of every State, and were
 
 IN THE OVEESEAS DOMINIONS 49 
 
 shown all that we could possibly find time to see, not only of 
 institutions but of scenery. But of course our two particular 
 resorts were the Trades Hall and the University, each of 
 which was lavish in welcome and hospitality. Perhaps our 
 greatest pleasure lay in visiting the schools and colleges, and 
 in talking to the children and undergraduates. They always 
 welcomed us very heartily and, when our visit was held to be 
 the occasion of a half-holiday, the cheers exceeded any other 
 cheers that Have ever been accorded to remarks of mine. In 
 almost every place we met old W.E.A. people from England, 
 and the joy of that was inexpressible. There were enough of 
 them in Melbourne to join in making a presentation of books, 
 and of an Australian token to my wife and myself. There is 
 no space, nor indeed is my purpose here, to speak of the 
 many interesting aspects and problems of Australian life. 
 That must find a place elsewhere. 
 
 At Melbourne, Dr. Leach and Dr. Barrett had arranged a 
 full programme for us. It was there that it became clear to 
 us that our mission was bound to be successful, so lively was 
 the interest evinced, and so strongly expressed was the 
 determination to organise and to develop the extra-mural 
 work of the University ; it is the second oldest University in 
 Australia, founded in 1854 by the enthusiasm of Hugh 
 Childers at the age of twenty- three. 
 
 I was privileged to take some part in making sugges- 
 tions for the reorganisation of the University 'in regard to its 
 extra-mural work. The W.E.A. of Victoria was established 
 and Tutorial Classes were formed. One class of particular 
 interest consisted almost entirely of secretaries of State Trade 
 Unions. 
 
 But it was at Sydney, in connection with the oldest 
 Australian University, that we were able to carry out our 
 most complete piece of work, since before we left for Canada 
 we were authorised to cable to Professor Zimmern asking 
 him to approach Mr. Meredith Atkinson, 1 at that time teaching 
 under the Tutorial Classes Joint Committee of the University 
 
 3 In 1918 Mr. Atkinson, after four years' untiring work in Sydney, was 
 appointed Professor of Economics in the University of Melbourne and Director 
 of University Tutorial Classes in Victoria. Mr. G. V. Portus, M.A., the first 
 Rhodes Scholar from Sydney, was appointed his successor, with Mr. F. A. 
 Bland, M.A., as Assistant Director.
 
 50 AN ADVENTURE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 of Durham, with the definite offer of the post of Director of 
 Tutorial Classes in New South Wales. 
 
 Early in 1914 this pioneer tutor landed in Sydney and 
 assumed the chief responsibility for the development of the 
 W.E.A., not only in New South Wales but in all Australia. 
 
 This could not have happened had it not been for the 
 enthusiasm of the Government, especially of the Minister for 
 Education (Mr. Carmichael), and the Permanent Secretary 
 (Mr. Peter Board), resulting in an initial grant to the University 
 of 1,000, since increased to 5,000 per annum. We organised 
 an enthusiastic Tutorial Class hi Sydney which determined to 
 meet throughout the summer months under the temporary 
 guidance of E. F. Irvine, Professor of Economics in the 
 University. 
 
 Before we left Sydney for the last time the New South 
 Wales W.E.A. drafted a Constitution embodying the essential 
 characteristics of the English movement, which was approved 
 at a representative gathering in the Trades Hall, over which 
 I was asked to preside. The event is memorable for me, since 
 it was, strangely enough, the first occasion upon which I had 
 taken the chair at a W.E.A. meeting of any kind or degree. 
 
 We had only ten days in Brisbane, but again our mission 
 won complete approval. It was there that the first Tutorial 
 Class student to sign the pledge of attendance for three years 
 was Mrs. Emma Miller, aged 73, well known throughout 
 Australia for her energetic advocacy of progressive measures ; 
 she has since passed away. The W.E.A. as we organised it 
 declined somewhat, but not before its power and value were 
 demonstrated, leading to the foundation by the Government 
 of the first W.E.A. Institute or College in Australia. It is 
 near the industrial part of the city and comprises rooms for 
 classes as well as an adequate library ; it was opened on October 
 14, 1916, by the Minister for Education (Mr. Hardacre). 
 The Government grant to the University of 1,300 a year has 
 enabled it to appoint two tutors, one in Economics and one in 
 Industrial History. 
 
 In Adelaide we were delighted to find that, owing to the 
 Oxford Eeport on Working-Class Education, introduced there 
 by Mr. Temple a few years before, such keenness had been 
 generated amongst the Labour people of the State who were
 
 
 MRS. ALBERT MANSBRIDGE. 
 Alter a Drawing by WILLIAM EOTHEXSTEIN, December 1917.
 
 IN THE OVEKSEAS DOMINIONS 51 
 
 then in power, and who had already appointed a Koyal 
 Commission on Education, that they looked at the University 
 with entirely new and sympathetic eyes, and as a direct result 
 the Government made a grant of 100,000. Although in 
 Adelaide the reception of our message was in many ways 
 more cordial than elsewhere, events have moved more slowly 
 there, but happily a Director of Tutorial Classes has now been 
 appointed in the person of Herbert Heaton, an old W.E.A. 
 member, whom we first met at a Summer School Meeting for 
 which he held a Co-operative scholarship. He was inspired 
 by the Summer School to strive for University education ; he 
 distinguished himself at Leeds, and was appointed to teach 
 Tutorial Classes under Birmingham University before he went 
 out to Hobart for the same purpose. 
 
 When we reached Hobart it was clear to us that a new 
 University movement was in being, as the result of the 
 enthusiasm of graduates who, at that time, were holding 
 influential positions in the State. We spent only four days 
 there, but our efforts were so well seconded by the Trades 
 Council, the aforesaid graduates, and the Premier, Mr. Solomon, 
 who recommended Parliament to grant 500 for a tutor, that 
 we completed our task. 
 
 The record of this adventure could easily degenerate into 
 a mere catalogue so many things happened, so many things 
 were done. During our five months' stay in Australia we 
 had only two days of complete rest. They were happily spent 
 in the Blue Mountains with the relatives of Captain A. E. 
 Bland, one of the most devoted of W.E.A. tutors, who gave 
 his life for his country on the Somme in the advance of July 1, 
 1916. 
 
 There was no time to go into the back blocks, much less 
 to the borders of the ' Land of the Never Never.' We saw 
 no great sheep runs and had no chance of meeting the 
 shearers, although, as far as possible, we tried to ascertain 
 something of the condition of their lives and work, by discussion 
 with their representatives in the cities. We did, however, 
 visit, in addition to the capital cities, the towns of Wollongong, 
 Broken Hill, and Newcastle in New South Wales; Ballarat, 
 Bendigo, Castlemaine, and Geelong in Victoria ; and Kalgoorlie, 
 Albany, and Boulder City in Western Australia. In each
 
 52 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 place we addressed meetings, and in several of them we were 
 accorded a mayoral reception. In most of these towns Tutorial 
 Classes are now at work. 
 
 My wife spoke on thirty separate occasions, and I gave in 
 all a hundred and eight lectures and addresses. In this way 
 we were able to present the W.E.A. ideals and method to all 
 types of Australian people. The great difficulty was in turning 
 from one type of mind to another, even though we had a 
 fundamental message. For example, it was not easy to leave 
 the railway arches after talking to the Labour extremists and 
 to visit directly the Sydney Club afterwards ; nor was it easy 
 to turn from a meeting of the Employers' Federation, as in 
 Melbourne, and proceed as rapidly as possible to a meeting 
 in the Trades Hall. The real difficulty, however, lay in the 
 fact that we not only had to talk but to organise, and that, 
 as it turned out, was too heavy a tax upon our strength. Still, 
 we did our best, and can look back happily to the beginning 
 of what is now an all- Australian movement. 
 
 There are University Tutorial Classes in every State. * 
 The various Governments contribute over 10,000 per annum 
 between them, and a recent estimate places the student 
 members of the W.E.A. at three thousand. A Federal 
 Council has been formed which publishes an Australian 
 ' Highway/ arranges for the publication of books, and intends 
 to make plans for bringing tutors and lecturers out from 
 England. Already England has profited greatly by the visits of 
 men and women tutors from both Australia and New Zealand. 
 
 The lengthening out of the work in Australia made it 
 impossible for us to attempt serious work in New Zealand, 
 but we visited Auckland and had talks with some W.E.A 
 enthusiasts there. Thus a little was done towards preparing 
 the way for the mission of Meredith Atkinson and David 
 Stewart in the following year. This visit was so successful 
 that the four University cities of New Zealand are each the 
 
 1 In New South Wales alone there were thirty-seven full Tutorial Classes in 
 existence during the year ending December 31, 1919. Eleven of these were 
 held in Sydney and twenty-six were scattered throughout the State. Eighty 
 organisations were affiliated to the W.E.A., including thirty-eight Trade Unions, 
 the University (which subscribed 150), and the Department of Public In- 
 struction. Four State Conferences had been held on problems of Education, 
 Trade Unionism, and Co-operation.
 
 IN THE OVEESEAS DOMINIONS 53 
 
 centre of independent associations, 1 which out of their own 
 resources are bringing forth new proof that the fundamental 
 ideas of the Association are true in all places and for all time. 
 For it does not seem an exaggeration to say that in the short 
 space of six years, of which five were disturbed by war, both 
 Australia and New Zealand have developed a force which is 
 of vital and immediate importance. 
 
 The Universities, which in spite of their excellent work were 
 tending to become remote from the common life, are now 
 better understood by the people. In some parts of Australia 
 and New Zealand they have, as a result, gained new power 
 and struck their roots deeper. Not only working men and 
 women but the rising race of scholars, encouraged by those 
 who have borne the burden and heat of the day, are finding 
 in the University Tutorial Class system a means whereby they 
 may learn things new and old, and as a result may help to 
 build life under the Southern Cross on the large and splendid 
 lines which are expected of them by the whole world. 2 
 
 1 On December 31, 1918, there were four independent W.E.A.'s in Now 
 Zealand with, a Dominion Council for them all ; 138 bodies were affiliated, of 
 which 106 were Trade Unions. The University contributes 100 in respect 
 of each of the four colleges. The number of full Tutorial Classes was twenty- 
 seven. The University allocated 775 to Joint Committees for their work. 
 A direct State grant of 500 per annum to each college has since been pro- 
 mised. Canterbury W.E.A. reports the formation of a Lucerne-growing 
 Association, due to a W.E.A. Conference, which takes pride in having 
 practically founded a new industry in Canterbury. 
 
 2 On our journey through Canada we established classes at Montreal and 
 Toronto, but merely to serve as object lessons. Both war and illness prevented 
 our acceptance of the proposals made to us to return and establish the move- 
 ment, but it is now developing well, and it is a pleasure to be able to include 
 the photograph of a flourishing class at Toronto. 
 
 In South Africa there are W.E.A.'s at Durban (carrying on work also 
 in six outlying villages) and Johannesburg. Proposals were also made to 
 us to visit the Dominion, but no opportunity has yet arisen. The work in 
 Durban was stimulated by the report of Mr. Narbeth (Principal of the Technical 
 College) on the W.E.A. at home (' Some Notes on Technical Education,' a 
 report presented to the Council of the Durban Technical Institute, 1915), 
 and in Johannesburg by Mr. E. J. Hall on his arrival from New Zealand.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 THE W.E.A. SPIRIT 
 
 THE power of the movement lay in the fact that it inspired 
 its members, and those with whom it came into contact, to 
 give of their highest and best, because to do so was the way of 
 life. As we have seen over and over again, the objects to which 
 knowledge and training were to be applied were never thought 
 about. Education was recognised as a force enabling man to 
 develop to the furthest limits of his powers. All the time the 
 Association was confident that every true cause, particularly 
 that of justice for the labourer, would benefit in proportion 
 to the increase in the number of those who had made them- 
 selves into finer and purer men. 
 
 It was because of this conception that men, who were 
 flatly opposed to one another in the affairs of life, found a 
 unity altogether delightful hi the W.E.A. gathering, class or 
 ramble. There was no test, implicit or otherwise, for admission, 
 all that was asked being a willingness on the part of all to hear 
 and to consider, with real respect, the arguments and facts 
 brought forth to commend a case, even though it might appear 
 to them to be wrong or defective. Tolerance only comes into 
 existence when a man knows he is right and is determined to 
 hold his ground, and is of a mind to rejoice in the fellowship of 
 those who would like to see him move on or off. 
 
 In actual practice there is little clashing in a group of 
 students, for the class is not intended for the passing of 
 resolutions, but is rather a means whereby all relevant facts 
 and arguments may be looked at and turned over. The 
 opportunity, indeed the necessity, for action comes in some 
 other place, when the class is over. Co-workers in a class 
 may be furious antagonists in the forum, but the association 
 
 54
 
 THE W.E.A. SPIRIT 55 
 
 makes possible enduring friendship arising out of mutual 
 respect, and a perception that all sorts of ideas and types are 
 necessary to make a world. The vital principle on which the 
 movement depends is the full and free expression of the minds 
 of working men and women, based on their own experience. 
 
 The genesis of the Association was due to the lamentable 
 situation which had arisen in English life owing to the neglect 
 of education for the people. In this matter the ordinary 
 working man was disinherited ; but because there are so 
 many working men and women it was easy to secure their 
 full representation without making a class appeal. There 
 never was a single occasion upon which the ideals expressed 
 were not in harmony with the spirit of labour. The scholars 
 and others who joined the movement were as men watching 
 all the time how they could assist and forward the wishes of 
 the majority. Not that they for one moment abrogated their 
 rights in a democratic body, but always there was the manifest 
 desire to perceive and understand the spirit and needs of those 
 engaged in manual toil. Yet because scholarship is a vital 
 force the fusion of it with the experience of life and labour 
 produced a greater wisdom than could have been the case if 
 scholars had been absent or quiescent. That is indeed the 
 whole case for the Association. 
 
 It is impossible to express in words the spirit of a movement, 
 it is almost always undesirable to try, but there are times 
 when the risk must be run, because it is wise to recall the 
 fundamental principles of its existence. In any case some 
 definition is inevitable if others, especially friends hi distant 
 countries, are to be given any aid in their attempt to understand 
 the reason and method of it all. The glow, and even glory, 
 that hung over the early meetings has vanished and cannot 
 be recaptured, but their memories abide in the minds of many 
 now scattered afar, and a brief record of some of them may 
 happily recall them, and at the same time give at least an 
 idea to those who come later. 
 
 After the Tutorial Classes Conference in Oxford a crowd of 
 members packed themselves into the large room of a Boarding 
 House. They covered the floor and sat on the window ledges. 
 Their discussion ceased long after midnight. It was the 
 complete expression of a Democratic Association ; England
 
 56 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 was there in miniature. It just happened so : there was no 
 arrangement. Working men and women occupied the chairs 
 and most of the floor, but a 
 
 ' chiel amang them takin* notes ' 
 
 observed also a Banker, a Permanent Secretary of a Government 
 Department, Fellows of both Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, 
 a future Peer, a Bishop, a Training College Tutor, and School- 
 masters and Mistresses from Secondary and Elementary 
 Schools. 
 
 That was the kind of gathering which the Association 
 promoted in greater or less degree wherever it worked. No 
 one who took part in them will ever forget the joyous times 
 at Park Hall, the Co-operative Holiday Association Centre 
 at Hayfield, where business was done and fun almost ran 
 riot, in gatherings made up of those who never met on ordinary 
 days in conventional English life. But on no occasion was 
 the magnetic power of the idea of education, as expressed by 
 the W.E.A., more clearly revealed than at the gathering which 
 was held in April 1913 in the Maurice Hall of the Working 
 Men's College. There, speaker after speaker paid eloquent 
 testimony, based on their own peculiar experiences, to the 
 spiritual unity of the movement. 1 
 
 Here, my Lord Chancellor [quoted Sir Charles Lucas], we do 
 ' As adversaries do in law strive mightily but eat and drink as 
 friends.' 
 
 While Mr. J. E. Clynes, full of anxiety concerning the whole 
 problem of popular education, said 
 
 We are faced with this fact : that some six million working-class 
 children are in our primary schools : that about half a million of 
 those children leave the primary schools every year, and that only 
 a comparatively small number of the half-million can find their 
 way to secondary schools or to evening schools. . . . The hundreds 
 of thousands of working-class children who go from the school to 
 
 i i List of those who spoke : 
 
 Sir Robert Morant, sometime Secretary of the Board of Education ; Mrs. 
 Eleanor Barton, President of the W 7 omen's Co-operative Guild ; Viscount 
 Haldane, Lord High Chancellor ; Mr. George Goodenough, miner ; the Master 
 of Balliol ; Bishop Gore ; Mr. George Alcock, Trustee of the N.U.R. ; Mr. 
 W. A. Appleton, Trade Union Official ; Mr. J. R. Clynes, Labour politician ; 
 and Sir Charles Lucas, Principal of the Working Men's College.
 
 THE W.E.A. SP1EIT 57 
 
 the mill and the factory and the workshop must be catered for if 
 we are to furnish to ourselves a self-respecting, educated nation. 
 A nation is not educated because we have places like Oxford and 
 Cambridge, for only a small minority of the more fortunate of the 
 men and women of the country can find their way there. Imagine 
 what it would be if we could so instil the spirit of education into the 
 masses of our people as to cause a good portion of 120,000 men to 
 take a journey from Sunderland to the Crystal Palace in the interests 
 and in the name of the great cause of education ! How can we take 
 the tiniest step towards that great hope and ideal ? I can only 
 think of one way, and it is that our Ministers of State who have the 
 handling, not only of the subject-matter but of the money that 
 matters . . . should import into this educational work when speak- 
 ing to the people upon the platform of the country, if not all, then 
 some part of that magnificent spirit and soul of education mani- 
 fested ... by the founder of the movement. That I am certain 
 would go a long way. Meanwhile, the Workers' Educational 
 Association provides facilities for thousands of workers, men and 
 women alike, who would lack any fitting educational opportunity 
 in the absence of an organisation like this. 
 
 The spirit of the movement caused men from overseas to 
 marvel. For themselves they found welcome, and they never 
 ceased to wonder at an inclusiveness they had never witnessed 
 elsewhere. They came from France, Denmark, Germany, 
 Japan, the United States, Chili, and Belgium. It is interesting 
 to remember that some of those who came from Germany 
 longed with a passionate intensity to translate its spirit into 
 their own land, but their efforts were fruitless. A class was 
 actually formed at Cologne, but both University and Social 
 Democratic Party condemned it. Anton Sandhagen, a scholar 
 of Jena, wrote on the fly-leaf of a treatise on the Education 
 of Working People in England : 
 
 To the inspirator of the W.E.A., which spirit to translate to the 
 German people is part of the object of this book. November 9, 1911. 
 
 Following in his steps, Dr. Wernher Picht came and 
 companied with the members of tbe W.E.A. for some time on 
 every possible occasion. He wrote of it : 
 
 With the members of the Association one gains a striking 
 experience : the Movement has become such an ingredient of their 
 life, that one cannot meet with them without the W.E.A. passing
 
 58 AN ADVENTUKE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 before one's eyes. They look upon themselves as members of a 
 brotherhood which is fighting the most important fight that has 
 to be waged to-day ; the fight for the spiritual life of the masses. 
 All are friends for the sake of the common cause. 
 
 The W.E.A. [he exclaimed] is to be understood as a spiritual 
 Movement, since only a spiritual Movement can solve the problem 
 of the education of the working man, which means bringing the 
 working man to education just as much as bringing education to 
 the working man. 
 
 He took as an example of this spiritual power the Annual 
 Meeting at Manchester in 1911, when three thousand men 
 and women gathered together, and in the presence of the 
 representatives of a hundred and twenty organisations of 
 Labour, and of leaders in all departments of the life of the city 
 and the towns around, evinced such enthusiasm for education 
 as to give the meeting all the qualities of a spiritual revival. 
 
 In the first years of the Movement, Camille Eiboud 
 investigated it as a subject for his doctorate thesis at Paris, 
 and he has remained a convinced friend and supporter of the 
 movement ever since. He wrote of it in restrained and judicial 
 language : 
 
 The ideas of the W.E.A. on the education of the workers resemble 
 those of the Christian Socialists. It maintains that they, like 
 others, have a right to something more than ' bread and butter ' 
 technical education. They should be prepared not only for a trade 
 but for life life, not livelihood merely. What they need first of 
 all is that education in citizenship, without which the political 
 and economic power which they wield is only a danger, both for 
 society and for themselves. But it is quite clear that this education 
 cannot be imposed upon them, before giving them the means of 
 education, you must give them the desire for it. An educational 
 propaganda must be carried on that will reach the whole of the 
 working classes, and it is for this work that the W.E.A. recruits 
 and bands together men and women of good will of every rank of 
 society, of every party and of every creed. 
 
 The W.E.A. consists, as we have said, of individual members 
 and of affiliated societies. Through these societies it is a vast 
 federation of working-class bodies and can therefore claim truly 
 to represent working-class opinion, for its democratic character 
 cannot be disputed. On the other hand, its individual members are 
 largely highly educated men and women of University training.
 
 THE W.E.A. SPIEIT 59 
 
 Each of these elements has part in the direction of the Association 
 and sends delegates to the Council and the Executive Committee, 
 and through these representatives is achieved the meeting and 
 co-operation of those who are to teach with those who are to be 
 taught. 
 
 It is perhaps too soon (1910) to form an opinion as to the in- 
 fluence of the tutorial classes, but the Rochdale class, which was 
 the earliest, may perhaps give some indications. Most of the 
 students are ' advanced ' : almost all hold Radical views and many 
 are Socialists it would be surprising if it were otherwise. There 
 has been no change in their political convictions : one would have 
 expected none, and conversions, had there been any, would have 
 been of little interest. But those who were Socialists seemed to 
 know better why they were so, and similarly with those who were 
 not. All those with whom I was able to talk expressed regret for 
 the too cut-and-dried opinions and the too little informed talk which 
 they had formerly permitted themselves. They have gained some 
 exact knowledge, have learnt the importance of some great facts, 
 have been accustomed to discuss theoretic questions and to realise, 
 as one of them said, ' that there are two sides to every question 
 even Tariff Reform.' 
 
 Visitors from the Dominions were frequent during the 
 summer months when the students foregathered at Oxford 
 and Cambridge, and one of them, Professor Kylie, who has 
 since laid down his life in the war, wrote in the University 
 Magazine, published at Montreal, that 
 
 One of the most inspiring things in the modern educational 
 world is a summer session such as the Association holds at Oxford. 
 The whole proceeding, like so much that is best in England, is 
 marked by a simplicity and good feeling, and a complete absence 
 of anything resembling condescension or servility. To anyone 
 who has seen groups of working men and women reading in a college 
 garden or has heard their songs across the quadrangle, it is obvious 
 that the Association has found the deep harmonies in the national 
 life, and that by housing and assisting them the colleges, founded 
 for national objects out of the nation's wealth, are discharging a 
 real obligation. 
 
 Indeed, during these summer gatherings many people come 
 in to swell the number of workers in the movement. The 
 ' W.E.A. Spirit/ as it was called, manifested itself there and 
 proved extraordinarily magnetic. It was during a summer
 
 60 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOKKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 meeting that Sir William Anson, then Warden of All Souls, 
 became a supporter of the movement. Throughout the 
 remainder of his life he gave generous support to the work in 
 both word and deed, and was a source of great strength in all 
 the negotiations with the University of Oxford. Those who 
 knew him only as the dignified constitutional lawyer, or as 
 Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, would 
 have been interested to see the emphatic way in which, after 
 an enthusiastic meeting, he kept time in singing ' Auld Lang 
 Syne ' in a circle of energetic working men and women, joined 
 hand to hand. 
 
 On another occasion the concourse of students attended 
 at the Sheldonian and cheered a tutor friend, acting as Dean 
 of his College so mightily, that from sheer surprise he stumbled 
 over his Latin introduction of students to the Vice-Chancellor ; 
 and no cheers of undergraduates could possibly have been 
 more spontaneous and sudden than those to which over a 
 hundred working men gave vent when Canon Barnett received 
 the degree of D.C.L. He valued those cheers, and he had 
 earned them thoroughly. 
 
 It was at times embarrassing when, as was their custom, 
 the students attended Church in a body ; for some, unable to 
 restrain their manifest approval, expressed it in sounds un- 
 familiar in St. Mary's ; on the other hand, disapproval, when 
 they felt it, reduced them to silence if only for the time being. 
 There have, perhaps, never been keener discussions than those 
 on deep and grave subjects which followed the preaching 
 of sermons in the University Church. Immediately on the 
 conclusion of the service, a great part of the congregation 
 moved to the hall of Balliol College, which was always at the 
 disposal of the students, and there discussed with fixity of 
 purpose and unity of spirit, even if with a marked divergence 
 of opinion, on more than one occasion until the hour of 
 midnight. There are many, however, who would look back 
 to the quieter occasions at Cambridge as more in harmony 
 with then: mood than the more forceful and passionate 
 gatherings at the sister University. The lecture-room in the 
 great court of Trinity, which it is customary for the College to 
 allot to the W.E.A. each summer, is almost a Mecca in the life 
 of many working men and women to-day.
 
 CHAPTEK IX 
 
 THE WAR AND AFTER 
 
 IN August 1914 the Association was in flood-tide. The previous 
 winter session had closed with 3,234 students in Tutorial Classes. 
 The confidence of Labour was expressed by the affiliation 
 of Trade Union bodies, while no University or University 
 College in England and Wales stood apart from its work. 
 
 At the very moment when the fatal news of the outbreak 
 of war became public property, the Summer Schools at Oxford, 
 Cambridge, and Bangor were in full session. The Government 
 took immediate toll of tutors, calling them to London for the 
 purpose of reporting on, and devising schemes to meet the 
 economic necessities of the crisis. Both tutors and students 
 were called to the colours, but many continued to the end of 
 the brief sessions, esteeming this their immediate duty. 
 
 Over 200 Tutorial Classes were planned for the winter of 
 1914-15, but in the event only 152 met, and these were in 
 many cases able to complete their courses without financial 
 disaster by reason of the generous attitude which persisted 
 throughout the period of the war of the Board of Education. 
 
 In common with many other National bodies the Associa- 
 tion suspended the Annual Meetings which had been arranged 
 to take place during October in Birmingham. 
 
 The movement suffered from the shock in its very 
 foundations, but no sooner had tutors, students, and organisers 
 left their work to share in the compelling task than their 
 places were filled by those whose occupation, age, or sex kept 
 them in the familiar though troubled ways. Thus the 
 structure was maintained intact, giving both opportunity 
 and shelter to those who were in a position to deal with the 
 new problems as they arose. 
 
 61
 
 62 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 The material resources of the movement were, as they had 
 always been, just sufficient to meet the daily needs. Thus it 
 was unable to make large and direct contributions of effort 
 to the development of educational work, whether of an 
 instructional or recreative kind, in the army itself ; moreover, 
 as is well known, the Y.M.C.A., which possessed a vast 
 equipment and a traditional facility for raising money, readily 
 seized the educational opportunity which was opened out. 
 But the home task largely fell to the Association (not forgetting 
 other well-established bodies), and it provided independently 
 or in combination with Universities innumerable opportunities 
 in all parts of England and Wales for the study of European 
 History and the problems suggested by the war. Several of 
 its prominent workers united to produce a volume of essays 
 on ' The War and Democracy,' x which achieved a large 
 circulation and wielded a widespread influence both at home 
 and in the Dominions. 
 
 In this and other ways the Association bore its part in 
 satisfying the hunger for knowledge which was stimulated, to 
 so remarkable a degree, by the strange and terrible happenings 
 of the time. Before many months of 1915 had passed" it had 
 adapted itself to the new conditions, and, as we have already 
 seen, in the October of that year it revised its Constitution 
 and entered upon a new period. 
 
 The official ' Eoll of Honour ' drew out steadily in those 
 days. Now a tutor, then a student, but always it was one 
 who, humanly speaking, could ill be spared from the greater 
 war with ignorance and disease. 
 
 Long before the war my wife had established a Comradeship 
 fund. This now became a War Time institution, and was 
 administered by Mrs. Furniss, who in common with devoted 
 colleagues made herself responsible for keeping in touch with 
 the men at the Front. My own last act as secretary was to 
 plan and compose a Christmas message, which proved in the 
 event to have strengthened the bonds between the movement 
 at home and the members abroad. 
 
 Gradually stories began to filter home of students striving 
 to carry on their work by organising classes behind the lines. 
 The weariness of long waiting in the trenches was, so we heard, 
 
 1 The War and Democracy. Macmillan. 2s. 6d.
 
 THE WAR AND AFTER 68 
 
 alleviated at times by debate and discussion on the old lines, 
 and steadily the demand for books such as scholars love began 
 to make itself felt. 
 
 Then later the Y.M.C.A. and the Army Education services 
 commenced their extensive work, and it was generally 
 admitted that the method and principles of the W.E.A. largely 
 influenced the details of their schemes and made success 
 possible. The British, Australian, and New Zealand armies 
 early called into consultation those who had gained experience 
 in the W.E.A. For my part I count my experience in help- 
 ing to train Education Officers for the Australian Army at 
 Cambridge, and for the British Army at Oxford, in 1918 and 
 1919, as among the most fortunate and interesting of my life. 
 At the least it gave me opportunity to put into practice my 
 theories concerning the education of adults, instead of merely 
 urging others to do so. In such work I found some com- 
 pensation for the gap in my life occasioned by the loss of 
 my office. 
 
 As the struggle wore on public opinion on educational 
 matters increased in force. The plight of the child worker 
 called forth not merely sympathy but indignation. Early in 
 1915 the Association, after having published a striking pamphlet 
 on the Employment of School Children, was gradually forced 
 to translate the ideal of the ' Highway ' into terms of possible 
 legislation. With the advent of Mr. H. A. L. Fisher to the 
 Board came the prospect of a new Act. In common with 
 other bodies the W.E.A. prepared a programme dealing with 
 education from the Primary School to the University. This, 
 coupled with the determined propaganda which had always 
 been a characteristic of the movement, helped not merely to 
 clear the way for the passage of the Bill, but brought it much 
 nearer than any previous Bill to the working class ideal. 
 
 At the moment England has gone as far as it is likely to go 
 in general educational reform, but even so the Fisher Act is 
 still largely inoperative, and public opinion, leading to public 
 sacrifice, must be persistently and clearly expressed, if the 
 system of Day Continuation Schools, for which provision was 
 made, is to become effective. The W.E.A. can render incalcul- 
 able service to the community if it concentrates upon this work 
 without impairing the clear expression of its forward ideas.
 
 64 AN ADVBNTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 At the present time problems relative to Oxford and Cambridge 
 as well as to Free Places and Scholarships in Secondary Schools 
 are under the consideration, the former of a Koyal Commission 
 and the latter of a Departmental Committee. The W.E.A. 
 must prepare deliberate and well-considered evidence to present 
 to both bodies, for the construction of the ' Highway ' will 
 either be speeded or retarded as the result of their reports. 
 
 In the early days of its work the Association deliberately 
 undertook the more difficult task of creating a desire for edu- 
 cation in the certainty, that once people were interested they 
 would strive to bring about reform in the national system 
 through the various bodies to which they belonged. It is 
 always difficult for a purely educational body to voice reform 
 as well as to create students. Yet the logic of events has forced 
 both tasks upon the Association. The original task is, however, 
 fundamental, for the inherent power of the ' Programme ' 
 existed solely in the fact that it had been drafted for the greater 
 part by men and women who had subjected themselves to the 
 severe discipline of Tutorial Class study. Directly the W.E.A. 
 fails to arouse an enthusiastic desire for study amongst working 
 men and women of varying capacity, as well as to construct 
 facilities for such study, its influence will fall to the level of 
 the numerical total of its adherents. 
 
 The tone and temper of the movement should be of such 
 a nature as to repel any approaches which are made by those 
 who would ask of it aid for any other purpose than education 
 in the most fundamental sense of the term. 
 
 In an Association constructed as this has been, there is an 
 ever-present need for that loyalty which is in itself the essential 
 condition of unity. It is indeed all the more insistent because 
 the Association is open to all, and each component part is allowed 
 to express its own will and to act in its own way so far as purely 
 educational matters are concerned. 
 
 There may be at any time an influx of those who wish to 
 see the W.E.A. used for immediate economic, social or even 
 political purposes, or who believe in it as a ' Class ' instead of 
 as a democratic institution. Such may display no intentional 
 disloyalty, but their inclinations may cause a drift in a branch 
 or a district or in the National Body towards the rocks, or at 
 least towards perilous and unhappy seas. The Association,
 
 THE WAE AND AFTEE 65 
 
 if it would avoid these dangers, must be powerful and confident 
 in its insistence on its own inclusive gospel of education, against 
 which no man, unless unduly prejudiced, can hold out for long. 
 There is no other way to maintain its integrity. The words 
 of Constitutions, of Standing Orders, of Kesolutions, of Mani- 
 festoes can be altered in value even when not capable of varying 
 interpretations by unduly emphasising any one of the things 
 they allow or indeed encourage. The future of the W.E.A. 
 depends upon its devotion to the idea of education as a force 
 set in motion by all for the good of all, in which all may partici- 
 pate. Its own peculiar task is to see that the translation of 
 the ideal into the common life is made by working men and 
 women, who compose by far the greater part of the nation, 
 not indeed acting alone, but rather in co-operation with all 
 those others, especially scholars, who are engaged in occupations 
 necessary to the welfare of man. 
 
 On no account, no matter how great the temptation, even 
 though life itself seems to be at stake, should it bow the knee 
 in the house of those who promise support and power, undreamed 
 of, if it will chant their songs and utter their dogmas. 
 
 The texture of life is shot with gain and loss, with joy and 
 sorrow. It is beyond human powers to estimate the pro- 
 portions, but in the stormy times ahead the life of the W.E.A. 
 will gain immeasurably if, whether in seeming defeat or over- 
 whelming victory, it keeps to the course leading straight to 
 the highest ideal of an educated people ; the course perceived 
 and followed unswervingly in the old days when it was yet 
 sustained by those to whom this book is dedicated, who lie 
 
 In some corner of a foreign field 
 That is for ever England. 
 
 After sixteen years the future still promises adventure 
 throughout the whole world. Because man desires education 
 and lives by it, the adventure must be pursued, sustained by 
 the strong bodies, enlightened minds, and pure spirits of men. 
 Adult education is a secular gospel. In itself it does not 
 transcend human limitations, but by its insistence on the 
 development of the legitimate faculties of man, a development 
 secured by concentration on things that are in themselves pure 
 and true, it draws men to the boundaries of human power,
 
 66 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEK1NG-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 until they face the Unknown. The insistence upon this gospel 
 in human life was never more necessary than now. After much 
 endurance and patience on the part of labour a shorter working 
 day is about to be secured ; therein lies new opportunity. It 
 may well be that the right use of sufficient leisure will enable 
 men and women to realise once again their personalities by the 
 exercise of their inborn gifts. Hitherto economic need and 
 bad organisation have forced men away from the work they are 
 fitted to do. In the future it may not be so. In the hours not 
 spent in the mine or in the factory the workman will follow 
 his own bent, read his books or even write them, exercise 
 himself in music and song, and discover the secrets of life.
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 STATISTICS OF W.E.A. DEVELOPMENT IN THE BRITISH ISLES 
 
 Year. 
 
 Branches. 
 
 Affiliated Bodies. 
 
 Individual Members. 
 
 1904 
 
 
 12 
 
 135 
 
 1905 
 
 8 
 
 100 
 
 1,000 
 
 1906 
 
 13 
 
 283 
 
 2,612 
 
 1907 
 
 47 
 
 622 
 
 4,343 
 
 1908 
 
 50 
 
 925 
 
 5,257 
 
 1909 
 
 54 
 
 1,124 
 
 5,484 
 
 1910 
 
 71 
 
 1,389 
 
 5,801 
 
 1911 
 
 86 
 
 1,541 
 
 5,345 
 
 1912 
 
 110 
 
 1,879 
 
 7,011 
 
 1913 1 
 
 158 
 
 2,164 
 
 8,723 
 
 1914 2 
 
 179 
 
 2,555 
 
 11,430 
 
 1915 3 
 
 173 
 
 2,409 
 
 11,083 
 
 1916 
 
 170 
 
 2,150 
 
 10,667 
 
 1917 
 
 191 
 
 2,336 
 
 10,750 
 
 1918 
 
 209 
 
 2,709 
 
 14,697 
 
 1919 
 
 219 
 
 2,526 
 
 17,136 
 
 1 In 1913 the W.E.A. was establsihed in the six States of the Australian 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 * In 1914 the W.E.A. was established in New Zealand and work was com- 
 menced in Canada. 
 
 3 In 1915 the W.E.A. was established in South Africa. 
 
 67
 
 68 AN ADVENTURE IN WORKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE AFFILIATED BODIES IN 1914 AND 1919 
 
 Year. 
 
 Trade 
 Unions, 
 Councils, 
 and 
 Branches. 
 
 Co-opera- 
 tive Com- 
 mittees. 
 
 Univer- 
 sity 
 Bodies. 
 
 Adnlt 
 Schools 
 and 
 Classes. 
 
 Local 
 Educa- 
 tion Au- 
 thorities. 
 
 Working 
 Men's 
 Clubs. 
 
 General. 
 
 1915 
 
 953 
 
 388 
 
 15 
 
 341 
 
 16 
 
 175 
 
 667 
 
 1919 
 
 1,075 
 
 384 
 
 8 
 
 199 
 
 35 
 
 100 
 
 677 
 
 UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL CLASS STATISTICS 
 IN ENGLAND AND WALES 
 
 Year. 
 
 Classes. 
 
 Students. 
 
 1908-9 
 
 8 
 
 237 
 
 1909-10 
 
 39 
 
 1,117 
 
 1910-11 
 
 72 
 
 1,829 
 
 1911-12 
 
 102 
 
 2,485 
 
 1912-13 
 
 117 
 
 3,176 
 
 1913-14 
 
 145 
 
 3,234 
 
 1914-15 
 
 152 
 
 3,110 
 
 1915-16 
 
 121 
 
 2,414 
 
 1916-17 
 
 99 
 
 1,996 
 
 1917-18 
 
 121 
 
 2,860 
 
 1918-19 
 
 152 
 
 3,799 
 
 1919-20 
 
 230 
 

 
 APPENDIX II 69 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OP VOLUNTARY EDUCATIONAL EFFORT : 
 BEING A RECORD OF THE FIRST YEAR'S WORK OF THE ROCH- 
 DALE EDUCATIONAL GUILD, A BRANCH OF THE WORKERS' 
 EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 ORIGINATED by the University Extension Committee, the Guild 
 naturally felt that the first plank in its platform must be the con- 
 tinuance and furthering of Extension Work. But the scope of 
 the Guild's activities rapidly developed to a degree scarcely even 
 contemplated by its promoters. 
 
 University Extension Lectures. The University Extension work 
 itself fully realised the hopes with which the Guild was set on foot. 
 Of the 500 or so in average attendance throughout the session, a 
 very large proportion were working people. Quite 200 stayed behind 
 after each formal lecture to ask questions of the lecturer, and to 
 join in discussing points raised during the evening. The lectures 
 were fortnightly and consisted of two courses of six each ; one on 
 ' Six Selected Plays of Shakespeare,' by Mr. J. C. Powys, M.A., 
 and one on ' The Life and Teaching of John Euskin,' by the Kev. 
 W. Hudson Shaw, M.A. 
 
 A working man, in proposing a vote of thanks to Mr. Powys 
 at the close of the last lecture, declared ' The world is bigger for 
 us than it was before.' Mr. Hudson Shaw considers the gathering 
 together of such an audience ' nothing less than a miracle,' and 
 says he has been waiting for that kind of audience for twenty years. 
 It is hoped that the University Extension Lectures will maintain 
 their position in the town as the chief voluntary effort towards 
 the education of workpeople, and that an increasing number of 
 literary and discussion classes will arrange their syllabuses to 
 harmonise with the Extension subjects. The importance of this 
 is manifest. 
 
 Shakespeare and RusJcin Classes. For the closer study of 
 Shakespeare and Ruskin classes were held fortnightly, alternately 
 with the lectures, and were attended by between twenty and thirty 
 earnest students. The Chairman of the Education Committee has 
 publicly described this as ' a high form of educational work.' 
 
 These classes were arranged by the Education Committee as 
 Evening Classes earning grant from the Board of Education, the 
 attendance at the lectures also counting as attendances at the
 
 70 AN ADVENTUEE IN WOEKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 class. This was the third session in which this arrangement was 
 made, in imitation of the plan first adopted at Littleborough, near 
 Rochdale, some years ago at the instance of Mr. E. E. Carter, a 
 brother of the Hon. Treasurer of the Guild. 
 
 Other Classes. On the Guild's suggestion the Education Com- 
 mittee also conducted other classes, viz., in Elementary and Ad- 
 vanced English, and two classes each in Citizenship and Economics, 
 all attended by satisfactory numbers of students. 
 
 A new departure for Rochdale was the organising, again on 
 the Guild's recommendation, of special classes in Elementary 
 Subjects (Composition, Arithmetic, etc.) for adults only, in which 
 men, meeting in different rooms and at different times from the 
 mere juvenile students, might endeavour to acquire the rudiments 
 of knowledge. One of these adult classes, held on two afternoons 
 per week, was for policemen and postmen, and had an average 
 attendance of nearly thirty. 
 
 Six lectures on ' The Care of the Horse ' were provided, on 
 the suggestion of the Carters' and Lorrymen's Union (conveyed 
 through the Guild), by the Education Committee. They were 
 attended by audiences averaging considerably over a hundred, and 
 almost entirely made up of working carters. 
 
 Members of all these classes have enthusiastically testified to 
 the benefit they have received from them, and expressed their 
 hope that the work will be resumed next session. 
 
 Reading Circles. Under the influence of the Guild, Reading 
 Circles have been held in various parts of the town on ' Ruskin,' 
 ' Shakespeare,' and ' The Elements of Politics.' 
 
 Pioneer Lectures on English History. Members of the Guild 
 have voluntarily drawn up and delivered, in three outlying districts, 
 a course of Six Lectures on English History. These were in re- 
 sponse to a desire expressed by some who felt themselves unable to 
 appreciate thoroughly, without a grounding in English History, 
 the Extension Lectures. A similar course will pave the way for 
 next winter's lectures. 
 
 Saturday Evening Lectures. Five Saturday Evening Lantern 
 Lectures on Natural History Subjects have been voluntarily given 
 by local gentlemen. The success achieved in this series encourages 
 the Guild to continue this effort to provide cheap popular Saturday 
 evening fixtures at once entertaining and instructive. 
 
 Art Gallery and Museum Work. This, the first public work 
 of the Guild, was commenced early last summer. Members of the 
 Field Naturalists' Society collected all through the summer specimens 
 of the flora of the district, which were carefully labelled, classified, 
 and displayed in the Public Museum. Four ' Botanical Talks'
 
 APPENDIX II 71 
 
 based on these specimens were given on Saturday evenings. Later 
 on four ' Geological Talks ' were given on Tuesday evenings to 
 explain the fine collection in the museum. The Head Master of 
 the School of Art has also delivered three ' Talks ' on the pictures 
 in the Art Gallery. 
 
 All these ' Talks ' were attended by large and appreciative 
 audiences, mainly composed of working men. 
 
 Similar work is already in hand for the coming summer, when 
 the following programme will be carried out : 
 
 May 26. ' Ferns and their Allies ' . . . Mr. A. Brierley. 
 
 June 16. ' Extinct Plants and their Modern 
 
 Allies' Mr. W. A. Parker, F.G.S. 
 
 June 23. ' Moorland Plants ' ... Mr. H. Rae. 
 
 July 14. ' Old-fashioned Garden Flowers ' . Mr. F. Sharp. 
 
 July 28. 'The Hades Hill Barrow' . . Mr. W. H. Sutcliffe, F.G.S. 
 
 Aug. 2. ' Weeds and their Ways '. . . Mr. E. Stenhouse, B.Sc. 
 
 Sept. 1. ' Fruits and Seed Dispersion ' . . Mr. H. Boothman. 
 
 A Town's Educational Calendar. During last summer a Manu- 
 script Diary was kept at the Free Library, where secretaries and 
 organisers entered their winter fixtures as they were arranged. 
 From this a Town's Educational Calendar was compiled and printed, 
 and circulated among Guild members and others. This will be 
 repeated on a larger scale for next winter. 
 
 Educational Excursions. Two parties numbering respectively 
 55 and 137 visited matinee performances of Shakespeare's 
 ' Tempest ' and ' Cymbeline ' in Manchester. A party of 24 visited 
 the Art Museum and University Settlement in Ancoats, Manchester 
 
 Scholarships. The Workers' Educational Association and 
 Cambridge University having offered a Scholarship tenable at the 
 Cambridge Summer Meeting in August 1906, the Guild has added 
 a sum sufficient to cover all expenses and loss of wages. Mr. Gordon 
 Harvey, M.P., has provided a second Scholarship on similar terms, 
 so that at least two students will be enabled to attend the Summer 
 Meeting without incurring any monetary loss whatever. 
 
 Summer Reading Circles. Beading and Discussion Classes are 
 meeting this summer in preparation for next winter's Extension 
 Lectures on ' Shakespeare's Historical Plays ' and ' Political and 
 Social Problems.' Over fifty students have joined each of these 
 classes. They are free of cost and open to all. 
 
 Free Lectures to Women. A course of three Afternoon Lectures 
 to Women on ' The Care of the Home and of Children ' will be given 
 this summer in two districts of the town, by ladies competent to 
 deal with the subject. 
 
 Other Work. Locally and further afield the Guild has been
 
 72 AN ADVENTUBE IN WOBKING-CLASS EDUCATION 
 
 able to do other useful work. It was a conference arranged by 
 the Guild which led to the formation of a branch of the Workers' 
 Educational Association at Littleborough. Other branches have 
 acknowledged the example and encouragement afforded by the 
 work done at Rochdale. In the town itself it has supplied speakers 
 and essayists for various societies. It is coming to be recog- 
 nised as a sort of educational ' Clearing House ' for the district. 
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 The World Association for Adult Education, founded in 1918 
 as the direct result of representations made by dwellers overseas, 
 aims at bringing into co-operation, for mutual strengthening and 
 the interchange of information, all the diverse movements and 
 institutions for Adult Education throughout the world. It also 
 places itself unreservedly at the service of countries which are 
 desirous of developing such work. It publishes Quarterly Bulletins 
 which are sent to members, who pay a minimum annual subscription 
 of 6s. or the equivalent, and to supporting bodies which pay a 
 minimum of 2 2s. or the equivalent. On December 21, 1919, 
 its membership was scattered throughout twenty-six countries. 
 Chairman : ALBERT MANSBRIDGE. Hon. Treasurer : Colonel Lord 
 GORELL, C.B.E., M.C., Director of Education in the British Army. 
 The Central Bureau of Information is at present at 13 John Street, 
 Adelphi, W.C. 2, to which all communications should be addressed. 
 
 APPENDIX IV 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Oxford and Working Class Education : A Report of a Joint Committee of 
 University and Working-class Representatives on the Relation of the 
 University to the Higher Education of Working People.' Clarendon 
 Press, 1909. Is. net. (Out of print.) 
 
 University Tutorial Classes : A Study in the Development of Higher Educa- 
 tion among Working Men and Women.' By ALBERT MANSBRIDGE. 1913. 
 Longmans, Green & Co. 2s. Qd. net. 
 
 An Experiment in Democratic Education.' By R. H. TAWNEY. The 
 Political Quarterly, May 1914. Oxford Unive rsity Press.
 
 APPENDIX IV 78 
 
 'Education and the Working Class.' The Bound Table. March 1914. 
 
 Macmillan. 
 ' The Universities and Labour.' By ALBERT MANSBREDGE: The Atlantic 
 
 Monthly. Boston. August 1919. 
 
 ' Education and the Working Classes.' By ALBERT MANSBRIDGE. The Con- 
 temporary Review. June 1919. 
 ' Reports of the Committee on Adult Education appointed by the Ministry 
 
 of Reconstruction.' 
 First Interim Report : ' Industrial and Social Conditions in Relation 
 
 to Adult Education.' 1918. (Cd. 9107.) 3d. 
 Second Interim Report: 'Education in the Army.' 1919. (Cd. 9226.) 
 
 2d. 
 Third Interim Report : ' Libraries and Museums.' 1919. (Cd. 9237.) 
 
 3d. 
 
 Final Report. 1919. (Cd. 321.) Is. Qd. 
 
 ' Special Report of H.M. Inspector, Mr. J. W. Headlam, and Professor L. T. 
 Hobhouse on certain Tutorial Classes in connection with the Workers' 
 Educational Association.' Reprinted in ' University Tutorial Classes.' 
 ' Regulations of the Board of Education.' (Cd. 9152.) 
 ' Reports of the Workers' Educational Associations of England, Australia 
 
 and New Zealand.' 
 
 ' Reports of the Central Joint Advisory Committee on Tutorial Classes.' 
 ' Reports of Tutorial Class Committees at various Universities.' 
 ' Ideen englischer Volkserziehung und Versuche zu Ihrer Verwicklichung.' Von 
 
 ANTON SANDHAGEN. Jena. 1911. 
 ' Toynbee Hall and the Settlement Movement.' By WERNER PICHT. Bell. 
 
 2s. Qd. 
 
 4 L'Education civique des ouvriers en Angleterre.' La Workers' Educa- 
 tional Association et la Re"forme d'Oxford. Par C. RisotrD. Paris, 1910. 
 
 Printed by SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE <& Co. LTD. 
 Colchester, London <& Eton, England