JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Katherine Pollack's 1932 Why Bother About the Government, the third installment of the Leftist Brookwood1 Labor College pamphlet series, is a bit of a Socratic polemic about the problems and advantages of government, owners of the means of production, workers, and labor organizers...coming down firmly in the square of very-pro forces of organized labor.
Offhand I am not finding anything about Katherine (Heilprin) Pollack2, though there is quite a bit about Brookwood (see below for an intro) and its captain, A.J. Muste.
Also I can't find much about the cartoonist whose work attracted me to this pamphlet to begin with, Herbert Heasley, though his work has a certain 1930's feel to it. I've included his three drawings, below.
Notes:
1. "Brookwood Labor College was a labor college located at 109 Cedar Road in Katonah, New York, United States. Founded as Brookwood School in 1919 and established as a college in 1921, it was the first residential labor college in the country. Its founding and longest-serving president was A. J. Muste. The school was supported by affiliate unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) until 1928. The Brookwood faculty's emphasis on trade union militancy and on advocacy of socialism was opposed by the AFL's Executive Council, which pressured the AFL's unions to withdraw support for the school. Brookwood was later riven by internal dissent over whether it should support militant unionism or remain strictly an educational organization.
Suffering from financial difficulties, Brookwood closed in 1937. It is considered one of the most influential labor colleges in American history and was known as "labor's Harvard."[2] Its best known alumnus was Walter Reuther.”--Wikipedia
2. "Katherine Pollak was born September 1, 1905, the daughter of Francis D.
Pollak and Inez Cohen. She attended and taught at the Ethical Culture
School in New York City, studied economics at Vassar College (A.B., 1926)
and did graduate work at Columbia University. She married John Chester
Ellickson, agricultural economist, in 1933, but continued to use her maiden
name until 1938.
Her years in workers' education included tutoring, teaching and writing for
the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers (1927-49), Brookwood
Labor College (1929-32), including field work in Southern textile mill towns
and West Virginia coal camps, and the FERA Southern teachers' training
school in 1934.
As assistant to the director at the CIO national office (1935-37), she dealt
with many organizational problems while conducting research and writing,
and her papers include original notes and minutes of the earliest CIO
meetings.
At the CIO national office, as Associate Director of Research from 1942-1955,
she was secretary of the Social Security Committee; organized meetings of
national union Social Security directors to discuss collective bargaining and
legislative problems; served as liaison between the research directors of the
national unions and government research agencies, especially the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, and represented the CIO on government advisory
committees on Social Security, manpower, farm labor and women and
children. She also worked and wrote in related areas like legislation, postwar
planning and the guaranteed annual wage." From the Walter Reuter papers description: https://reuther.wayne.edu/files/LP000321.pdf
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