The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women workers opened in 1921, a
time when the political climate was favorable to women's rights
and workers' education. As the first of four resident workers'
colleges for women in the 1920s and 30s, it was founded as a
result of the pressure from the National Women's Trade Union
League (NWTUL) for women's colleges to get involved in educating
working women (Hollis, 1994). The Summer School was unique in
the labor education movement in that it was exclusively for
women workers, a collaborative effort by and for women, and held
at an elite women's college. At Bryn Mawr, the women's social
justice movement joined ranks with the labor education movement
in creating a program to benefit women workers and indirectly,
the labor movement (Heller, 1984). The program was the result of
the efforts of M. Carey Thomas, the President of Bryn Mawr
College for 35 years and Hilda Worthington Smith, Dean of
Undergraduates. The school adopted a Deweyan philosophy of
progressive education, leftis