The Classics in the Slums

"Proletarian novelist Ethel Carnie warned that the pursuit of literature and art would simply 'chloroform' the workers, who should focus instead 'on the narrow, rigid, and distinctly not impartial facts deduced from the experience of our own exploited class.' But WEA students found these assaults offensively condescending. 'Will Miss Carnie be good enough to show where the chloroforming process comes in?' shot back garment worker Lavena Saltonstall. 'Greek art will never keep the workers from claiming their world; in fact, it will help them to realise what a stunted life they have hitherto led. Nothing that is beautiful will harm the workers,' who were perfectly able 'to hear a lecture on industrial history, or economics, or Robert Browning, and remain quite sane. As a Socialist, as a trade unionist, as a suffragist . . . I resent Miss Carnie's suggestion that the WEA educational policy can ever make me forget the painful history of Labour, or chloroform my senses to the miseries that I see around me.' And (Miss Saltonstall wound up) if anyone thinks 'that a working man or woman is liable to be side-tracked or made neutral or impartial because they look at all sides of a question in order to understand it fully, then they are libelling the intelligence of the working classes.' "