Socialist Sunday School
[1] The institution was popularized by Mary Gray in 1892, a member of the Social Democratic Federation, who ran a soup kitchen for the children of the dock strike.
In their early days they encountered opposition from local authorities and politicians, who argued that Socialist Sunday Schools subverted the minds of young people with political and anti-religious doctrines and teachings.
They worked in close harmony with the Labour Movement and were concerned with the spiritual and social needs of the human race with regard to daily life and conduct.
A massive demonstration in Trafalgar Square ensued, addressed by Margaret McMillan who, with her sister, was a Christian socialist who campaigned for better education and healthcare for poor children.
In the September 1910 edition the editor wrote that the true socialist, whatever his religious denomination, sought fellowship, a kingdom of love and happiness, not hell.
The Socialist Sunday Schools were organised with this theory at its heart and although there was no formal set of rules to be followed, there were the guidelines of morality, brotherly love, and social obligation.
Some 30 students participated at the time of the school's launch, which was lauded in the daily New Yorker Volkszeitung as an institution of great benefit to the entire German working-class neighborhood on Manhattan's East Side.
The female members of Branch 14 were instrumental in the financial support of the school, which over the next two years conducted a series of concerts, performances, and fundraising social events.
[6]: 39 With the memory of the Haymarket Affair still fresh, these Sunday Schools were characterized by police official Michael J. Schaack as "the most conspicuous feature of the propaganda of the Internationale in Chicago today" and condemned for their "sowing in the minds of innocent children the seeds of atheism, discontent, and lawlessness.
"[8] One Chicago SSS, the North Side Sunday School, met each week for one hour of instruction by a member of the local Turn Verein, during which the ills of the capitalist system and the proposed alternative of socialism were expounded.
[9] An 1888 front-page story in the Chicago Tribune editorialized that under the slogan "no religion and no church" children were being subjected to "an inculcation of socialistic views at an age particularly impressionable.
"[9] An annual summer picnic and outing was held by the school in conjunction with the Turn Verein, attended by several hundred children ranging in age from 3 to 16.
[9] Socialist Sunday Schools also seem to have existed in a few other major metropolitan areas, including a SSS started in Philadelphia in the fall of 1888, with six teachers and about 150 pupils present for the launch.
[6]: 39 The Modern Schools were intended to be both instruments for self-development and social change and taught the values of cooperation, sympathy for the downtrodden, collective solidarity, anti-militarism, anti-capitalism, and opposition to the power of the centralized state.
[6]: 43 The Workmen's Circle established an educational bureau of its own in 1908 and sponsored programs for both adults and children, including some specifically designated as "Socialist Sunday Schools".
