"'Partisans of the Proletariat': The Socialist Working Class and the Milwaukee Schools, 1890-1920"

Abstract

“Socialists are not non-partisan. They are partisans of the proletariat.” — Victor Berger, 1911 The contours of urban school reform in the Progressive era have now assumed a familiar form. While the most influential interpretations of the past decade differ somewhat in intent and emphasis, they all emphasize the essential elitism, conservatism, and importance of various school reforms enacted in the early twentieth century. This is true of scholars with a wide range of political interests and ideological concerns. This essay, which is a social analysis of organized labor, socialism, and the Milwaukee schools during the Progressive era, examines the political fortunes of one of the most successful labor movements in American history. Besides constituting a compelling story in its own right, Milwaukee Socialism highlights well the process of Progressive era educational reform; indeed, it reveals the complex historical interactions that produced the distinctive reform coalitions of the age. A study of Milwaukee's socialist labor movement demonstrates how particular working people influenced school reform in a time of rapid social change, and it also demonstrates how they in turn were shaped by the reform groups that helped inaugurate many of the period's innovative educational programs.