Baldwin School - Prism Yearbook (Bryn Mawr, PA)

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sincerity, wrote about a luncheon which she had attended at one of the estates near here, “When we arrived at the house, a butler dressed in white opened the door and showed us to the garden. On the lawn in front of the house were tables and on them all kinds of fruit and most expensive dishes; waiters waited on every table Sitting by the table one could see nature’s beauty—meadows with tall grass, flowers of all kinds, and in the far distance a ridge of hills and forests; the trees along the hills, well-grown, wealthy in leaf, and touched by the rays of the setting sun, gave strong, luminous colors. Perceiving all this beauty, I thought with horror of the people who must dwell in the cities in small rooms and congregate on the steps or sidewalks, where children have not a place even to stand. I thought of our neighbor who could not find any work for eighteen weeks; of his little girl who had to stay home from school for not having shoes to wear; of Mrs. Simon, who lives on the fourth floor and has no water, for the plumbing is so poor. Thinking about all these things, I felt so depressed that when I heard the music which was also on the program, I heard cries of thousands of people deprived of all that makes life worth while living.” Their minds are constantly searching for the remedies that will free human life from this tragedy, and the best of them, not content with cease- less group activity, challenge the depths of individual hearts. I recall especially one paper with its awkward foreign turn of phrase: “Who are you, you who advocate tolerance without knowing what it means to be tolerant, you who advocate freedom and are the first to enslave everyone about you? All, all of us are a part of this whirlpool where we are dragged down and where we drag others down. In our moments of unselfishness have we ever stopped to count toward how many we are unselfish? Take the mother for instance, who loves her child but would sacrifice every other child of other mothers for the benefit of hers. A father would make millions of others slaves in order that he may give his children comfort. A sister would lose part of her life if she heard that her brother was betrayed, yet she would not be very scrupulous in bringing lovers to her feet, and sending them off with an “I don’t love you” after she had encouraged them In all our splendor of beautiful words we forget to see that we are in this very tumult and we are the ones who create it Not until we free ourselves from the selfishness within ourselves can we be human beings ” Sometimes with quick sympathy, they throw out encouragement to a younger, less experienced girl, challenging her to her best, as when a Roumanian wrote: 12

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jFurtfjer Cjjougljts on ttnoUmtg People One of the great disadvantages of a private school is that we are shut off from close intercourse with people of a different class from ourselves, with fundamentally different conceptions of life, with rich gifts for us out of their battle for a living or their love of beauty inherited from the Old World, with lives tragic from meeting the desperate problems which tear our civilization, with needs which it is our responsibility to meet. The challenge of the editorial of the last issue of The Milestone has made me want more than ever to share with you, if I can, some glimpses of this other side of life which came to me at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. I often found that these girls straight from the factory had a passion for making the world a more beautiful place and a vision of how it might be done that stripped away all the complacency of one who had had every opportunity. I think of a Russian Jew who came to this country when she was ten, who had gone to a private school in Russia where a funny little old man had taught her the alphabet, who went three years to school here in America and who then—thirteen years old—went into the factory. “I loved school, especially reading,” she said, “but I was the oldest, and I had to help support the family.” She has read most of the important contemporary writers, and she questioned me profoundly about meanings in such masterpieces as Dante’s Divine Comedy. With a will to beauty and utter selflessness, she has dedicated herself as a volunteer to organize her comrades; it is so that she has come to feel that, as she says it, “we cannot live to ourselves alone.” Many of the workers have learned this lesson in a bitter school. A Swede, because she had kept an expense account for years and knew how much money a week a girl needs in order to live respectably, testified before the minimum wage board of her state, lost her job because of this and could not get another in her home town because the Chamber of Commerce had “blacklisted” her for her testimony. A skilled telephone operator, who helped to make possible the present reasonable hours, who is therefore blacklisted all over the country and able to work at her trade with the telephone company, only if she were to change her name, nevertheless feels that the only thing that matters is to work for the good of all her comrades. A hatmaker from New York is a veritable Hamlet in her struggle to harmonize with her conscience the terrible facts she has to face. Again and again they expressed their sadness at the contrasts in life; again and again I wondered why they were not more bitter. One of them, a foreigner of rare gentleness and 11

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“One of the most beautiful souls stood still, aghast and ashamed because she could not play the music she felt. “Poor, wonderful, beautiful soul, I love you. What else matters? You, who are as beautiful the music played, live a life as clean and pure as the feelings that are produced by this music. Why, oh why stand with bowed head before that of which you are a part? Let not discontent whisper in your ear and tempt you, but be yourself, for you are life, you are music, you are beauty.” Or, like the same Roumanian, they plead for beauty. “The violin was playing and some with bowed heads were praying. “For universal unity of mind and heart “Where words and action would be more than a mere blot on mankind’s history. “The blot of blood and rage, passion for individual conquest has existed long enough. “Let us have the turn of music. “For such moments, I believe, “Link hearts and minds of men “And liberate their souls from long, long sleep.” Or they are like the restless young person who could not study in peace at the school until she had done something to rectify unfortunate conditions among the servants; who this past winter has been earning her living and at the same time has managed to take courses in Physics, Ameri- can History and French, and has finally won her way to a school where she is training to become a teacher of workers’ classes. Many, many of them are just girls longing, as you do, for the color and thrills, for dancing, basketball, swimming, days of freedom outdoors, and often contributing from their savings to a camp where they and their fellow-workers can go for week-ends or their short vacations. To know them is to realize the burning problems of our twentieth century life; but it is also to feel the lift of their passionate longing for beauty, their indomitable faith in the dawn of the brotherhood of man, their will to bring it about by understanding themselves and the needs of others around them. One longs as never before, to put no obstacle in their way by failure to comprehend them; and above all to be sure that one uses one’s owi multitudinous opportunities as fully, as courageously and as generously as they use their few, and to join them, wherever one is, in making the life of the world an expression of justice and beauty. Helen Drusilla Lockwood 13