The Modern School Movement The Modern School Movement Anarchism and Education in the United States Paul Avrich Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey COPYRIGHT (C) 1980 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, GUILDFORD, SURREY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CLOTHBOUND EDITIONS OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS BOOKS ARE PRINTED ON ACID-FREE PAPER, AND BINDING MATERIALS ARE CHOSEN FOR STRENGTH AND DURABILITY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Avrich, Paul. The modern school movement. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Education—United States—Philosophy—History— 20th century. 2. Education—United States—Experimental methods—History—20th century. 3. Ferrer Guardia, Francisco, 1859-1909. 4. Educators—United States— Political activity—History—20th century. 5. Anarchism and anarchists—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. LA216.A78 370'.973 79-3188 ISBN 0-691-04669-7 ISBN 0-691-10094-1 pbk. IN MEMORY OF AGNES INGLIS 1870-1952 Contents Illustrations ix Preface xi PART I: NEW YORK 1 1. TheMartyrdomofFerrer 3 Francisco Ferrer y Guardia · Freedom in Education · The Escuela Moderna of Barcelona · Propaganda by the Deed · The Tragic Week 2. The Francisco Ferrer Association 34 Launching an Organization · The Modern School Movement · Earlier Experimental Schools · The First Modern Schools 3. The Ferrer School of New York 69 St. Mark's Place · East Twelfth Street · Will Durant · East 107th Street · Will and Ariel · Cora Bennett Stephenson 4. RebelsandArtists 111 The Academy Humane · Personalities · Hippolyte and Sadakichi · Radical Centers · Art and Anarchy · The Free Theatre · Robert Henri · The Modernists · The Modern School Magazine 5. Three Anarchists 165 Leonard Abbott · Harry Kelly · Joseph Cohen 6. Lexington Avenue 183 The Unemployed · Ludlow · Dynamite · The Hutchinsons · Aftermath PART II: STELTON 217 7. The Early Years 219 Pioneers · Stony Ford · The Stelton School · Joseph Ishill · The Dicks · Time of Troubles 8. Elizabeth and Alexis Ferm 256 Aunty Ferm · Uncle Ferm · The Children's Playhouse · Stelton · Departure 9. Mohegan 289 A New Colony · The Mohegan School · George Seldes and Rudolf Rocker · Thoreauvian Anarchists · Breakup 10. The Declining Years 312 The Dicks · The Ferms · The Movement · Abbott, Kelly, and Cohen viii CONTENTS 11. Conclusion 350 Notes 355 Bibliography 403 Index 429 Illustrations (following page 240) 1. Leonard Abbott around 1905, photograph by W. M. van der Weyde (courtesy of William Morris Abbott) 2. Joseph Cohen around 1950 (International Institute of Social History) 3. Workshop at Camp Germinal, Pennsylvania, around 1926 (courtesy of Esther Melman Seltzer, in picture near window at left) 4. Cora Bennett Stephenson with children of New York Modern School, 63 East 107th Street, Fall 1913 (The Modern School, Au­ tumn 1913) 5. William Thurston Brown (International Institute of Social History) 6. Harry Kelly, New Rochelle, New York, 1945 (courtesy of Hilda Adel) 7. The Detroit Modern School, 1914, teacher Yetta Bienenfeld; note portrait of Ferrer (Labadie Collection) 8. Will Durant and pupils of the New York Modern School, 104 East Twelfth Street, 1912 (The Modern School, February 1912) 9. Announcement of reading by Sadakichi Hartmann at Ferrer Center, November 14, 1915, caricature by Lillian Bonham Hartmann (courtesy of Jacques Rudome) 10. Cover by Man Ray for Mother Earth, September 1914 (Tam- iment Library) 11. Cover by Adolf Wolff for Mother Earth, July 1914, showing his urn for the Lexington Avenue victims (Tamiment Library) 12. Picnic at Leonard Abbott's cottage, Westfield, New Jersey, July 4, 1914, on day of Lexington Avenue explosion (Cohen Pa­ pers) 13. Dormitory and Living House, Stelton, 1915 (courtesy of Eva Brandes) 14. Little Isadora Duncans, Stelton, 1915 (courtesy of Pauline Turkel) X ILLUSTRATIONS 15. Joseph Ishill at his printing press, Berkeley Heights, New Jersey (Ishill Papers, University of Florida, Gainesville) 16. Cover design by Rockwell Kent, 1917; became emblem of Modern School Association of North America (Modern School Col­ lection) 17. Stelton children's theater (Modern School Collection) 18. Edgar Tafel leading the Stelton children's orchestra, early 1920s (Modern School Collection) 19. Staff meeting at Stelton (Cohen Papers) 20. Elizabeth Ferm in the 1930s (Modern School Collection) 21. Alexis Ferm, Fairhope, Alabama, 1958 (Modern School Col­ lection) 22. Hippolyte Havel at Stelton, 1935 (courtesy of Guy Liberti) 23. Sadakichi Hartmann in California, 1940 (courtesy of Marion Bell) The initial letters in this volume are reproduced from the decora­ tive alphabet designed by Rockwell Kent for The Modern School magazine. Preface BETWEEN 1910 and 1960 a remarkable educational experi­ ment took place in the United States under the aegis of the anarchist movement. For half a century anarchists from New York to Los Angeles carried on a venture in learning that was unique in American history. Inspired by the execution of Fran­ cisco Ferrer, the Spanish educator and martyr, more than twenty schools were established in different parts of the country where children might study in an atmosphere of freedom and self- reliance, in contrast to the formality and discipline of the tradi­ tional classroom. These Modern Schools, as they were called, dif­ fered from other educational experiments of the same period in being schools for children of workers and directed by the workers themselves. Their founders, moreover, were anarchists, whose prophets were Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Tolstoy as well as Rous­ seau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel, and who sought to abolish all forms of authority, political and economic as well as educational, and to usher in a new society based on the voluntary cooperation of free individuals. To prepare men and women for this new society, the anarchists pinned their hopes on education. No other movement assigned education a more prominent place in its writings and activities. It is surprising, therefore, that the Modern Schools have never re­ ceived a comprehensive historical treatment. Apart from a hand­ ful of works on specific aspects of the subject, notably The Com­ munal Experience by Laurence Veysey and The Modern School of Stelton by Joseph Cohen and Alexis Ferm, the Ferrer movement has remained an uncharted region of American history, another reminder of how many gaps there are in our knowledge of even the recent past. In view of these circumstances, I began, in the early 1970s, to examine the available source materials in an effort to unravel the entire story. The present volume is the result. Its purpose is to narrate the history of the Modern School movement, to analyze its successes and failures, and to assess its place in American life. It was a rich and diverse movement, involving experiments in art and communal living as well as in education, and I hope that the xii PREFACE reader will tolerate the complexity of the narrative as inherent in the subject itself. Among the participants were many famous figures in the radical and artistic world, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, Margaret Sanger and Carlo Tresca, Robert Henri and George Bellows, Man Ray and Rockwell Kent. Their object, during an era of war, social ferment, and gov­ ernment repression, was to create not only a new type of school but also a new culture, a new life, a new world. In attempting to bring together in a single volume the evidence bearing on events at once so complex and controversial, I have preferred to err on the side of explicitness and completeness, rather than to run the risk of leaving serious gaps or of inviting the suspicion of partiality in the selection of material. Besides, the more I studied the documents the more I realized that an un­ derstanding of the issues demanded the kind of treatment that only a detailed exposition and analysis could provide. For similar reasons, I have adhered as closely as possible to the primary sources, quoting extensively from the statements of the partici­ pants, both published and unpublished. As in my previous volume on anarchism in the United States, An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre (Princeton, 1978), my approach has been largely biographical, focusing on individual men and women in actual situations. I have tried, moreover, to convey not only what they said and did but also what they meant and felt, though the theoretical prem­ ises on which they acted are not neglected. As Leonard Abbott, one of the central figures in my narrative, observed, "Nothing in the world is more fundamental and more fascinating than the questions: Why are we as we are? Why do we act as we do? What is it that we really desire? Why is one man a conservative and another a radical? Why is one man religious and another a freethinker? And so on."1 Such are the questions this book will try to answer with regard to the Modern School movement. After half a dozen years spent working on this book, I am pleased to acknowledge the help and generosity of those who made its completion possible. Above all, it has been my good for­ tune to have enjoyed the friendship of many of the surviving participants—students, teachers, colonists—without whose coop­ eration I could not have embarked upon a study that depended so heavily upon personal testimony. Though their names are too numerous to be listed here, most are acknowledged in the foot- PREFACE xiii notes. Some, however, have gone to special lengths in supplying me with materials and information, and I owe them particular thanks: William Morris Abbott, Suzanne Hotkine Avins, Sally Axelrod, Eva Bein, Abe Bluestein, Eva Brandes, Jo Ann Wheeler Burbank, James Dick, Jr., Nellie Dick, Gussie Denenberg, Emma Cohen Gilbert, Maurice Hollod, Anatole Freeman Ishill, Moritz Jagendorf, Dora Keyser, Manuel Komroff, David Lawson, Ben Lieberman, Rose Lowensohn, Crystal Ishill Mendelsohn, Charles Robert Plunkett, Mary Schwartz Rappaport, Jack Rudome, Magda Boris Schoenwetter, and Ray Miller Shedlovsky.