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                          Transcriber’s Note:

This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.

Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are
referenced.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

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                              THE GOSLINGS

                        BOOKS BY UPTON SINCLAIR
                     (Now in Print and Obtainable)

      THE GOSLINGS: 1924
      HELL: 1923
      THE GOOSE-STEP: 1923
      THEY CALL ME CARPENTER: 1922
      THE BOOK OF LIFE: 1922
      100%: 1920
      THE BRASS CHECK: 1920
      JIMMIE HIGGINS: 1919
      THE PROFITS OF RELIGION: 1919
      KING COAL: 1917
      THE CRY FOR JUSTICE: 1915
      DAMAGED GOODS: 1913
      SYLVIA’S MARRIAGE: 1913
      THE FASTING CURE: 1911
      SAMUEL THE SEEKER: 1909
      THE METROPOLIS: 1907
      THE JUNGLE: 1906
      MANASSAS: 1904
      THE JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING: 1903
      PRINCE HAGEN: 1902

[Illustration]

                              The Goslings
                    A Study of the American Schools

                                   BY
                             UPTON SINCLAIR

                               AUTHOR OF
  “THE GOOSE-STEP,” “THE BRASS CHECK,” “THE PROFITS OF RELIGION,” ETC.








[Illustration]








                             UPTON SINCLAIR
                          PASADENA, CALIFORNIA

                            COPYRIGHT, 1924
                                   BY
                             UPTON SINCLAIR

                                  ---

                         _All rights reserved._

                                  ---

 First edition, January, 1924, 5,000 copies, clothbound, 5,000 copies,
                              paperbound.




                                CONTENTS

      CHAPTER                                                PAGE

                   INTRODUCTORY                              ix-x

                I. Land of Orange-Groves and Jails              1
               II. The Adventure of the University Club         8
              III. In Which I Get Arrested                     13
               IV. The Empire of the Black Hand                19
                V. The Schools of the “Times”                  22
               VI. The Teachers’ Soviets                       26
              VII. A Prayer for Freedom                        32
             VIII. The Price of Independence                   36
               IX. The Regime of Reciprocity                   40
                X. The Spy System                              44
               XI. Lies for Children                           50
              XII. The Schools of Mammon                       54
             XIII. The Tammany Tiger                           59
              XIV. God and Mammon                              62
               XV. Honest Graft                                66
              XVI. A Letter to Woodrow Wilson                  72
             XVII. An Arrangement of Little Bits               77
            XVIII. The Luskers                                 81
              XIX. To Henrietta Rodman                         87
               XX. Melodrama in Chicago                        94
              XXI. Continuous Performance                      98
             XXII. The Incorporate Tax-Dodging Creatures      102
            XXIII. The Superintendent of Trombones            109
             XXIV. The City of French Restaurants             113
              XXV. The University Gang                        119
             XXVI. The Ward Leader                            125
            XXVII. The Romeo and Juliet Stunt                 130
           XXVIII. The Inventor of Five Sciences              135
             XXIX. The Land of Lumber                         140
              XXX. The Anaconda’s Lair                        146
             XXXI. The Little Anacondas                       151
            XXXII. Colorado Culture                           154
           XXXIII. The Domain of King Coal                    159
            XXXIV. The Homestead of the Free                  164
             XXXV. Is a Teacher a Citizen?                    167
            XXXVI. Introducing Comrade Thompson               173
           XXXVII. Millers and Militarism                     179
          XXXVIII. Newberry Pie                               184
            XXXIX. Beets and Celery                           186
               XL. Boston in Bondage                          191
              XLI. The Open Shop for Culture                  195
             XLII. Corrupt and Contented                      203
            XLIII. The Scenes of My Childhood                 209
             XLIV. The Brewer’s Daughter-in-Law               212
              XLV. An Autocracy of Politicians                216
             XLVI. The Calibre of Congressmen                 221
            XLVII. The Local Machines                         224
           XLVIII. The Steam Roller                           228
             XLIX. The Dispensers of Prominence               234
                L. A Plot Against Democracy                   240
               LI. The Plot Fails                             244
              LII. Mormon Magic                               249
             LIII. The Funeral of Democracy                   253
              LIV. The Fruits of the Sowing                   258
               LV. Teachers to the Rear                       263
              LVI. Bread and Circuses                         269
             LVII. Schools for Strike-Breakers                275
            LVIII. The National Spies’ Association            279
              LIX. Babbitts and Bolsheviks                    284
               LX. The Schools of Socony                      290
              LXI. The Riot Department                        296
             LXII. The Blindfold School of Patriotism         301
            LXIII. Professor Facing Both-Ways                 307
             LXIV. Poison Pictures                            312
              LXV. The Book Business                          315
             LXVI. Ten Per Cent Commissions                   320
            LXVII. The Superintendent-Makers                  324
           LXVIII. The Church Conspiracy                      330
             LXIX. Catholicism and the Schools                334
              LXX. The Practical Church Administrator         341
             LXXI. Faith and Modern Thought                   344
            LXXII. The Schools of Steel                       349
           LXXIII. The Schools of Oil                         353
            LXXIV. The Country Geese                          357
             LXXV. The Schools of Snobbery                    362
            LXXVI. A School Survey                            369
           LXXVII. The Educational Mills                      377
          LXXVIII. Descensus Averno                           381
            LXXIX. The Teacher’s Job                          385
             LXXX. Teachers’ Terror                           389
            LXXXI. The School Serfs                           395
           LXXXII. The Teachers’ Union                        402
          LXXXIII. The Teachers’ Magna Charta                 406
           LXXXIV. Workers’ Education                         410
            LXXXV. The Goose-step March                       417
           LXXXVI. The Goose-step Advance                     423
          LXXXVII. The Goose-step Double-quick                428
         LXXXVIII. The Goose-step Review                      432
           LXXXIX. The Call to Action                         440




                              INTRODUCTORY


Life has given you one of its precious treasures, a child; a body to
nurture, a character to train, a mind with endless possibilities of
growth, a soul with hidden stores of tenderness and beauty—all these are
Nature’s gifts. Modern science has shown that within the child’s soul
lies magically locked up all the past of our race; also, it is evident
that within it lies all the future of our race. What our children are
now being made is what America will be.

You send these little ones to school. Twenty-three millions of them
troop off every week-day morning, with their shining faces newly washed,
their clothing cleaned and mended. You bear them, you rear them, with
infinite pains and devotion you prepare them, and feed them into the
gigantic educational machine.

You do not know much about this machine. You have turned it over to
others to run. Every year you pay to maintain it a billion dollars of
wealth which you have produced by real and earnest toil. You take it for
granted that this billion dollars is competently used; that those who
run the machine are giving your twenty-three million children the best
education that forty-three dollars and forty-seven cents per child will
buy.

The purpose of this book is to show you how the “invisible government”
of Big Business which controls the rest of America has taken over the
charge of your children. In the course of a public debate with the
writer, in the Civic Club in New York City, May, 1922, Dr. Tildsley,
district superintendent of the public school system of that city, made
the statement: “I do not know any school system in the United States
which is run for the benefit of the children. They are all run for the
benefit of the gang.” This statement, made upon high authority, is the
thesis of “The Goslings.” Come with me and let me show you what is this
“gang” which runs the school system of the United States; how they got
their power, what use they make of it, and what this means to the bodies
and minds of your twenty-three million little ones.

To assist the reader in finding his way through a big book, I give
traveling directions:

Pages 1 to 22 take you behind the scenes of that “invisible government”
which is now ruling America, including its schools. Pages 22 to 59 show
in detail what this “invisible government” is doing to the schools of
one large American city—Los Angeles. Pages 59 to 93 study the schools of
New York, and 94 to 109 those of Chicago. Pages 109 to 224 deal with
school conditions in a score of other large cities. I realize that this
is a large number; but then, many people are interested in these cities.
You will find both melodrama and humor in the stories; and if there is
too much, you can skip!

Beginning at page 224 is a study of the state and national machines of
the school world; and whatever else you miss, do not miss the National
Education Association, and how it was stolen from the teachers of
America—there is no drama on Broadway to equal that for thrills. From
275 to 329 you will find a score of powerful Big Business organizations
which have assumed to take control of our schools. From 330 to 349 comes
the Catholic Church in relation to the schools—this in addition to
details given in a number of cities. From 349 to 417 you will find a
general survey of the school situation from the point of view of both
pupils and teachers. The concluding chapters discuss “The Goose-step”
and its critics, and developments in the college world since its
publication.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              THE GOSLINGS

                   _A Study of the American Schools_

                                -------




                               CHAPTER I
                    LAND OF ORANGE-GROVES AND JAILS


I begin this study of the American school system with Southern
California, because that is the part of the country in which I live, and
which therefore I know best. It is a representative part, being the
newest and most recently mixed. We have all the races, white and black
and yellow and red; but the great bulk of the population is of native
stock, farmers from the Middle West who have sold or rented their
homesteads and moved to this “roof-garden of the world.” It is our
fashion to hold reunions and picnics for the old home folks, and there
are few states that cannot gather thousands of representatives.

We have the most wonderful climate in the world, and soil which is
fertile under irrigation. Our leading occupation is selling this soil
and climate to new arrivals from the East. We are eager traders, and
everything we have is for sale; you can buy the average house in
Southern California for two hundred dollars more than the owner paid for
it, and I know people who have sold their homes and moved several times
in one year. Also, we have struck oil, and this sudden wealth has fanned
our collective greed. We boast ourselves “the white spot on the
industrial map.” Hard times do not touch us, we build literally whole
streets of new houses every week, and labor agitators are banished from
our midst.

The intellectual tone of the community is set by a great newspaper, the
Los Angeles “Times,” created by an unscrupulous accumulator of money.
The “Times” has now grown enormously wealthy, but it still carries on in
its founder’s spirit of hatred and calumny. It boasts of being the
largest newspaper in the world—meaning that it prints the most
advertisements. You pay ten cents for the Sunday edition, and have two
or three pages of Associated Press dispatches with the life censored out
of them; after that, you grope your way through a wilderness of
commercialism. I stop and wonder, how can I give the reader an idea of
the intellectual garbage upon which our Southern California population
is fed. I pick up this morning’s paper, and find a cartoon on the front
page, our daily hymn of hate against Soviet Russia; the cartoon is
labeled in large letters: “Out of the Fryingpansky into the Fireovitch.”
As the naturalist Agassiz could construct a whole animal from a piece of
fossil bone, so you may comprehend a culture from that piece of wit.

We have several hundred churches of all sects, and our “Times” prints
pages of church news and sermons, and double-leaded two-column
editorials invoking the aid of Jehovah in all emergencies. But the real
spirit of the staff breaks out on the other pages; when it is necessary
to represent Los Angeles in a cartoon, their symbol is a sly young
prostitute with sparkling black eyes and naked limbs. Once upon a time
such pictures were purchased surreptitiously and handed round by naughty
little boys; but now they are delivered every morning by carrier to
everybody’s home. One of the features of our life is “bathing beauties”;
young ladies in thin tights parading the boardwalks of the beaches,
winning prizes from chambers of commerce and lending gayety to Sunday
supplements. Any new stunt is worth a fortune to one of these ladies;
one day a lady has gilded her legs, and the next day a lady has
butterflies painted on her back, and next—most elegant of all—a lady
appears with a bathing-suit and a monocle.

The men, thus summoned, come in droves. Competition is keen, and the
ladies are strenuous in defense of their meal-tickets, and when one
trespasses upon another’s rights, we have a thrilling murder story. Our
lady murderesses are a leading feature of Southern California life;
sometimes they shoot, and sometimes they poison, and sometimes they go
to the nearest five- and ten-cent store and buy a hammer, and beat out
the other lady’s brains. Then they are sent to jail, which is a career
of glory, with photographs and interviews in every edition of the
newspapers, and a sensational trial with full details of their many
lovers and their quarrels. Autobiographies written in prison are
featured in Sunday supplements and advertised on billboards; and finally
comes the climax—a magical jail delivery. We know, of course, that
nowhere in America can the jails hold the rich, but out here in Southern
California the rich don’t even wait to be pardoned by presidents and
governors—they tip their jailers twenty-five hundred dollars and walk
right out. “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage!”

Fifteen years ago the writer had haunting his mind what he thought was
to be a great blank verse tragedy. The scene of one act was to be laid
several hundred years in the future, and the crowning achievement of
that time was an invention whereby music could be made audible to people
all over the world. The scene was to show a great musician, whose
inspiration was being thus conveyed to humanity. And now we have this
invention—somewhat ahead of time! Our radio in Southern California is
presided over by the “Times,” and the invisible government decides what
is safe for our hungry masses to hear.

Our plutocracy has just built for itself a new hotel, a sultan’s dream
of luxury, costing several million dollars. The opening of this hotel
became the great historical event of Southern California; there were
several pages about it in the newspapers, and it was announced that a
certain prominent person, would convey his inspiration to the multitude
over the “Times” radio. In a hundred thousand homes the hungry “fans”
put on their ear-caps and awaited the sublime moment; and meanwhile in
the Hotel Biltmore a great part of the guests got royally drunk. The
orator had his share, and his inspiration over the radio took the form
of obscenities and cursing; the horrified “fans” heard his friends
trying to stop him, begging him to come and have one more drink; but he
told them they were a set of blankety blank blank fools, and that he
knew what he was going to say, and it was nobody’s blankety blank blank
business. This continued until suddenly the radio was shut off, and the
fans were left to silence and speculation!

Also, we have Hollywood; Hollywood, the world’s greatest honey-pot, with
its thousands of beautiful golden bees swarming noisily; Hollywood,
where youth and gayety grow rotten before they grow ripe. If you say
that Hollywood is not America, I answer that you have only to wait.
Hollywood is _young_ America.

Of course our hundreds of churches are not entirely inactive. We have
revivalists, who furiously denounce the sins of Hollywood, using the
most up-to-date slang; and groups of men and women, instead of going to
the movies, gather in Bible classes and learn the history of the
Hittites and the succession of the kings of the Jebusites. You can hear
sermons over the radio—that is, if you have a high-priced set, and can
tune out the jazz orchestras. The cheaper sets hear everything at once,
and you can dance to the sermons or pray to the jazz, as you prefer.

Who runs this new empire of the Southwest? It is run by a secret
society, which I have named the Black Hand; consisting of a dozen or so
of big bankers and business men, hard-fisted, cunning and unscrupulous
profiteers of the pioneer type, a scant generation removed from the bad
man with a gun on each hip. They are the inner council and directing
circle of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association; with a
propaganda department formerly known as the Commercial Federation of
California, and now camouflaged as the Better America Federation.
Concerning this latter organization, you will find much information in
“The Goose Step,” pages 129-132. It occupies the entire floor of a large
building, and has raised a fund of a hundred and sixty thousand dollars
a year for five years for its campaign of terrorism. Like all criminals,
it operates under many aliases: the American Protective League, the
Association for Betterment of the Public Service, the Associated
Patriotic Societies, the Taxpayers’ Association, the People’s Economy
League, the Tax Investigating and Economy League, the Americanization
Committee, the Committee of One Thousand, the Committee of Ten Thousand,
the Parent-Teachers’ Associations, the Board of Education, the District
Attorney’s Office, and the Police Department of the City of Los Angeles.

Ours is an “open shop” city; that is, the business men and merchants are
forbidden to employ union workers, and if they disregard this rule they
are blacklisted, their credit is cut off, and they are driven into
bankruptcy. When a new man comes into town and sets up in business he is
politely interviewed and invited to join the gang; at the same time he
is given his orders, and if he disobeys, he moves on to some other part
of the world, or down into the ranks of the wage-slaves. So perfect is
the system of the Black Hand, so all-seeing is its spy service, that the
Young Women’s Christian Association could not prepare and mail out a
circular letter asking for funds without every merchant in the city
having on his desk by the same mail a letter from the Better America
Federation president, warning him that the Young Women’s Christian
Association is supporting the eight-hour day for women, the minimum wage
law for women, and other immoral propositions.

We have a “criminal syndicalism law” in California; the public is told
by the Black Hand and its newspapers that this law is to punish men who
advocate the overthrow of government by force and violence. Under this
law eighty men are now coughing out their lungs in the jute mill at San
Quentin prison, under sentence of from two to twenty-eight years. As I
write, one of these men collapses under the strain and refuses to work
longer in the jute mill, and seventy others are being tortured in
“solitary” because they “strike” in sympathy with this comrade. No one
of these men has ever had proven against him, or even charged against
him, any act of force or violence or any destruction of property. They
were convicted because the Black Hand of California pays three hundred
and fifty dollars a month to several hired witnesses, who travel about
from place to place testifying before juries that ten years ago, when
they belonged to the I. W. W., they, the witnesses, personally burned
down barns. Because of this testimony men who have recently joined the
organization, and have never burned down barns nor advocated burning
down barns, are sentenced to the jute mill.

The public does not know, and has no means of guessing that the law on
the statute books against “criminal syndicalism” has been modified by
the police who enforce it to read “suspicion of criminal syndicalism.”
That means that any man may be arrested at any time that any police
official does not happen to like the way he has his hair cut, or the red
flower in his button-hole. Crime and suspicion of crime are the same
thing in our legal procedure, because men once thrown into jail are held
there “incommunicado” without warrant or charge; they are not permitted
to see attorneys, and their friends cannot find out what has become of
them. They are starved and beaten and tortured in jail; so there is no
longer any difference between innocence and guilt. The eighty convicted
in the state’s prison suffer less than the many hundreds of unconvicted
in jails and police stations all over the state.

What this means is that the Black Hand is trying to smash industrial
unionism. They have got the old-line unions cowed; they have purchased
or frightened most of the leaders, and driven them out of politics, and
are no longer afraid of them. But now comes the new movement, the mass
union, the portent of the New Day. They are fighting this as furiously
as the Spanish Inquisition ever fought against heresy; but to their
bewilderment and dismay they are repeating the age-old experience of the
torturer and the despot—the blood of the martyrs is becoming the seed of
the church!

There came a great strike at the harbor. “San Pedro” is a part of our
city, where the ships come in laden with lumber and pipe and cement for
the endless new streets of homes. Our army of real estate speculators
and contractors and bankers are reaping their golden harvest, while
several thousand longshoremen slave, literally fourteen and sixteen
hours a day of back-breaking toil, handling these heavy materials. They
clamor at the docks, bidding against one another, fighting and trampling
one another for a chance of life. And here is a ring of grafting
employment agencies, secretly maintained by the Shipyard Owners’
Association, draining the last drops of energy from these wretched
wage-slaves. The old-line respectable unions are out of business, and
everything is serene for the masters; but suddenly comes a
flare-up—three thousand men on strike, and one or two hundred I. W. W.
organizers spreading the flames of revolt—and just when we thought we
had sent the last of them to San Quentin for twenty-eight years!

The strike tied up the harbor and tied it tight. For more than two weeks
not a ship was unloaded, and all the building operations of all the
speculators came to an end. One day the “Times” would deny that there
was any strike, and next day it would declare that the strike had been
broken the day before, the next day it would declare that the strike
would be broken the day after next. And in the inner circle of the
torturers and despots, such confusion and such fury as you will hardly
be able to imagine.

You have taken up this book, expecting to read about the American school
system; and now you are being told about a strike! It happened that this
strike came just as I was settling down to write “The Goslings.” I got
arrested; and this experience plows a furrow through one’s mind. Now I
sit at home and think about the schools, and naturally, I see them in
relation to this series of events—they become one more device of the
strikebreakers.

I ponder the problem, how to start this book. I want to show you the
invisible government which runs your schools, for its own profit, and
your loss. This power is the same power which runs your politics and
industry; here in Los Angeles, the very men who smashed the union of the
shipyard workers also smashed the councils of the school teachers.
Indeed, as chance willed it, the two jobs came together and became one
job; so that every lie told against the strikers was a lie against the
teachers, and every dollar wrested from the shipyard workers was
balanced by a dollar stolen from the schools.

I ask myself, therefore: How can I do better, at the beginning of this
book, than to tell you what I saw at the harbor? This strike was a
blazing searchlight, thrown into the very vitals of our invisible
government; if you will follow it, you will see the whole system, and
understand every detail of its mechanism. So I ask you to set aside for
the moment all questions of labor unions, criminal syndicalism, anything
of that sort; come with me as a plain American, believing in the
Constitution, believing in the people, and their right to run their own
affairs. Follow the story of this labor struggle—and before you get to
the end of it you will magically find yourself reading about the
schools, and learning who has taken them away from you, and why they
have done it, and what it means to you and your children.




                               CHAPTER II
                  THE ADVENTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY CLUB


The first step in this narrative is to explain how it happened that the
writer of this book, a muck-raker and enemy of society, was in the
office of Mr. Irwin Hays Rice, president of the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association of Los Angeles, and chief of the Black Hand,
at the very moment when Mr. Rice was conspiring with his fellow chiefs
for the smashing of the harbor strike. This story is amusing in itself,
and not altogether alien to education.

In April, 1923, I received a letter from the secretary of the University
Club of Pasadena, my home city, asking if I would consent to lecture
before the club on the subject of “The Goose-step.” I replied that I was
busy, and made it a rule to decline invitations to lecture. Then came a
telephone call from a member of the club, begging me to reconsider my
decision; here were a group of men, influential in the community, some
of whom had read “The Goose-step” and thought they could answer me, and
wanted a chance to try. It would be an adventure for them, and might
teach me something. To oblige a friend, I accepted, and the lecture was
announced at a dinner of the club, and the announcement was published in
the local newspapers—upon the club’s initiative, please note.

At once the Black Hand got busy; and a week or two later a gentleman
called at my home, obviously embarrassed and pink in the face,
explaining that he was the president of the University Club of Pasadena.
The executive committee had held a meeting the previous evening and
decided that in view of certain objections, I should be respectfully
requested to consent to have the lecture called off. Knowing my
community, I was sympathetic towards the blushing respectable
gentleman—an ex-naval officer who would have faced the guns of a foreign
foe, but dared not face a new idea. I answered that I would be content
to have the lecture forgotten.

But an hour or two later a newspaper reporter called me up, asking if I
had heard that the action of the University Club had been taken at the
instance of William J. Burns, head of the Burns Detective Agency and
chief of the United States Secret Service. Naturally, I was interested
in that news; as a matter of tactics, when I find a man like Burns after
me, I go to meet him head on. I at once telegraphed, asking Mr. Burns if
it was true that he had called me “a dangerous enemy of the United
States government.” The result was a tangle of falsehoods, and if I
proceed to untangle them, do not think that I am rambling. Before we get
through with this book we shall discover that the big private detective
agencies are an important part of the educational system of the United
States, and so what we learn about Mr. Burns and his methods will be to
the point.

The great detective telegraphed me from San Francisco that my name had
not been the subject of discussion at any time during his visit to Los
Angeles. I was not satisfied with that, and telegraphed again, saying
that I wanted to know if he had mentioned me at any time in Southern
California, and if he had done so, would he say openly and for
publication what he had said against me. In the meantime there had been
published a United Press dispatch from San Francisco, quoting Mr. Burns
as saying that if he had mentioned me, it had been “as a private
individual and not as a government official.” Therefore I pointed out to
Mr. Burns that he could not say anything about me as a private citizen;
whatever he said would be assumed by everyone to be based upon
information he had got as head of the United States Secret Service. This
brought a second telegram from Mr. Burns, as follows:

  Replying to your second wire, I made no statements concerning you as a
  private citizen or government official at Pasadena or elsewhere, nor
  have I ever undermined the character of you or any other person. I
  want to also deny that I ever made any statement to the United Press
  as stated in your telegram, and for your further information let me
  assure you whenever I express myself concerning you or anyone else I
  will not hesitate to admit it.

That seemed explicit, and I was prepared to accept it. But you note that
it left the United Press in a bad light; and representatives of the
United Press took the matter up, and wired their head office in San
Francisco, receiving the information that the interview with Mr. Burns
had been given to Frank Clarvoe, one of their most trusted and
experienced men. Mr. Clarvoe had been with Mr. Burns in his hotel room
when the telegram from me arrived, and Mr. Burns had allowed Mr. Clarvoe
to make a copy of this telegram, and had dictated a reply, slowly and
distinctly, so that Mr. Clarvoe could write it down. The manager of the
United Press added that this was evidently one of those frequent cases
where parties talk and afterwards wish to deny it.

In the meantime I had been interviewing the executive committee of the
University Club of Pasadena, holding over the heads of these gentlemen
the threat of a slander suit, and thereby inducing each of them in turn
to state upon exactly what basis he had repeated the statements about
Mr. Burns and myself. So the report was definitely traced to Mr. Irwin
Hays Rice, president of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of
Los Angeles, and one of the chiefs of the Black Hand. Mr. Rice, in a
conversation over the telephone, had stated to the secretary of the club
that Mr. Burns had described me as “a parlor pink and a dangerous enemy
of the United States government.”

So now I had a clean-cut issue of veracity between Mr. Rice and Mr.
Burns, and it seemed worth a trip to Los Angeles to find out which was
the liar. I went in on a Monday morning, and fate was unkind to Mr.
Rice—he had been out of town over the week-end, and had not read
anything about the controversy, nor had anyone in the University Club
taken the trouble to call him up and warn him. I took the precaution to
bring my brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough, as witness to the interview,
and Mr. Rice received us in his private office. I explained my point of
view: he and I were antagonists on opposite sides of the class struggle;
I had my opinion of him, and freely granted him the right to have his
opinion of me. The only thing I took exception to was the fact that in
discussing me he had made use of the name of Mr. Burns.

Mr. Rice is one of these two-fisted men of action, quite different from
the president of a University Club. His answer was prompt and explicit:
“Anything that I say once I’ll say twice. It is a fact that at a recent
gathering, in the presence of myself and several business men of this
city, Mr. William J. Burns stated that you were ‘a parlor pink and a
dangerous enemy of the United States government.’”

“I thank you, Mr. Rice,” I replied. “Now I am wondering what you will
have to say to this telegram”; and I put into his hands the telegram
from Mr. Burns, declaring: “I made no statements concerning you as a
private citizen or government official at Pasadena or elsewhere, nor
have I ever undermined the character of you or any other person.” “What
have you to say to that, Mr. Rice?” I asked, and Mr. Rice replied:
“Well, I will say that I am surprised.” It was unnecessary for him to
say that—his face showed it!

Mr. Rice refused to name the other men who had been present at the
interview, but he remarked that the gathering was of such a nature that
it was manifest to everyone that Mr. Burns was there as a private
citizen, and not as chief of the United States Secret Service. Do you
think I would be reckless if I should guess that it was a gathering of
the chiefs of the Black Hand, and that Mr. Burns was there in his other
capacity, as head of the William J. Burns agency of espionage and
strike-breaking?

That the William J. Burns agency is thus employed regularly by the Black
Hand of Southern California is something which I have known for several
years. Turn to Chapter LXVI of “The Brass Check,” and you will find
there the story of how Sydney Flowers, returned soldier and editor of
the “Dugout,” was smashed by the Black Hand in Los Angeles, because he
refused to permit his paper to be used as a strike-breaking agency. I
did what I could to aid Flowers and save him from the penitentiary, and
as a result the Black Hand attempted a “frame-up” against myself.
Wishing to know just who was responsible for this, I thought I would
employ the most famous and most reputable detective agency in the United
States. With my attorney, Mr. John Beardsley, I called at the office of
this agency and interviewed the manager. As chance willed it, the
district manager, the high-up person who travels about the country
overseeing the affairs of the agency for Mr. Burns, was also present at
the interview.

I explained the case, confidentially of course, stating that I had
suspicions that the trail might lead to the office of the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association and its Los Angeles “Times,” and that I
wished the agency not to take the case unless they would be in position
to follow a trail to such a quarter. The two managers requested a little
time to think the matter over, and that afternoon they gave us their
decision: the William J. Burns Detective Agency, because of the
embarrassing possibility explained by me, could not undertake to
investigate this “frame-up.” Then I went to another detective agency in
the city, and when I told the manager about this incident he laughed
heartily and told me that the Burns Agency did all the secret work for
the “M. and M.” Incidentally, this man told me that he himself could not
take the case, because his business would be ruined if he did; nor would
I find any other detective agency in the city which would take the case.
And in this he was correct.

To complete the story of the Burns Detective Agency, I will also mention
that just prior to America’s entry into the World War this agency was
conducting a spy service in the United States for the German government.
Shortly before the sinking of the Lusitania, the Burns’ agency had men
stationed in American munition plants and was secretly selling
information to German government agents, who were gathering knowledge of
munition shipments for the purpose of torpedoing munition-laden vessels.
The head of Burns’ New York office, Gaston B. Means, admitted under oath
that he delivered reports in a secret place to an unknown man to whom he
was directed by the German government spy, Paul Koenig. The Burns agency
perpetrated against the United States government a gigantic frame-up
designed to supply von Bernstorff with perjured evidence for diplomatic
use against the United States government. Tug boat captains were hired
by a nest of German military spies under the direction of Burns’ New
York agent, Gaston B. Means, the captains being induced to swear to
false affidavits to indicate that they were carrying supplies to British
vessels outside New York harbor in violation of the laws of neutrality.
In this frame-up the Burns agency was caught red-handed, but was given
immunity from prosecution because its clients could better be caught by
holding this club over Burns’ head. Recently, when the Workers’ Party
called a mass meeting in our national capital, at which Robert Minor was
announced to tell this story, the use of the hall was mysteriously
withdrawn, and Mr. William J. Burns, in his capacity as chief of the
United States Secret Service, raided the offices of the sponsors of the
meeting and arrested a dozen men.




                              CHAPTER III
                        IN WHICH I GET ARRESTED


The purpose of the previous chapter was to explain to you the series of
events whereby it came about that Upton Sinclair, muckraker and enemy of
society, was in the office of the president of the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association of Los Angeles, at ten o’clock on the morning
of Monday, May 7th, 1923.

My brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough, and myself had come without
appointment; at the same time two gentlemen came in who had an
appointment—so a polite clerk explained. I had not presented my card,
and no one there knew either Kimbrough or myself; we were invited to sit
down, and did so, while the other gentlemen were escorted into the inner
office. We made no effort to listen to what went on, but we had to hear
it, because the door of the inner office was left ajar, and the talk was
carried on in tones which caused the clerks in the outer office to drop
their work and look at one another and grin.

“Who is that?” asked the young lady stenographer.

“That’s Mr. Hammond,” was the answer of the chief clerk. “He owns a
couple of hundred thousand acres of timber land, and he’s got about
twenty ships tied up at the harbor.”

“Oh,” said the young lady stenographer, “then he’s got a right to pound
on the table.”

He exercised his right, and pounded, and cursed so freely that the young
lady was moved to get up and close the office door; but still we heard
the uproar. The substance of it was that the San Pedro strike, which had
been on for about two weeks, must be smashed without another day’s
delay. Mr. Rice argued and expostulated; they were doing their best.
Finally he promised there would be “a meeting” that afternoon, and
arrangements would be made. That you may understand clearly, I explain
that Mr. Andrew B. Hammond, president of the Hammond Lumber Company, is
one of the big “open shop” despots of San Francisco, a bigger man even
than Mr. Rice; and he had come down on the night train to lay down the
law to the timid crowd at Los Angeles and insist that his ships be
moved. Wishing to make sure there was no mistake in identity, I engaged
the head clerk in conversation, asking him how long he thought “those
irate ship-owners” would stay in there. He rose to the bait and
discussed the “irate ship-owners,” assuring me that they would not need
to stay much longer; the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association was
not going to have any trouble in opening up the harbor. Subsequently, as
part of the preparing of this manuscript, I wrote to Mr. Hammond, asking
if he cared to deny that he was in Mr. Rice’s office at the hour
specified. He did not reply.

Come now to San Pedro, where three thousand men are fighting to get
their babies a chance to grow up into full-sized human beings. They have
won their strike, they have won it strictly under the law; they have
kept order rigidly—having even smashed the boot-leggers, to the great
dismay of the police! Here again I do not have to ask you to take my
word for it: Police Captain Plummer, in command at the harbor, stated to
my brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of several
witnesses, that he had no fault to find with the I. W. W., they were
fine fellows, and had kept order through the strike. Also he stated in
the presence of witnesses: “I smashed that strike.” Before an
investigating committee of the clergymen of Los Angeles he stated: “Yes,
I said that, and I’ll say it again.” Officer Wyckoff—who arrested
us—stated to Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of two ladies, whose
signed statements I have, that “Black Jack” Jerome, the strike-breaker,
had brought in hundreds of gunmen, heavily armed; Captain Plummer had
disarmed them, but someone saw to it that they received another supply
of arms.

Mr. Hammond and his Shipyard Owners’ Association and his horde of gunmen
having failed to provoke violence, or to move the ships, Mr. Rice must
act; and how is he to act? For ten or twenty years he and his Black Hand
have been preparing for precisely such an emergency; they have been
buying both political machines, and controlling the nominations of all
candidates, so that now they have their own governor, their own
legislators, their own mayor, their own city council, their own chief of
police, and their own judges. They control the governmental machine from
top to bottom; and they give the orders, let this strike be smashed.

The man who put through the job is Asa Keyes, then deputy district
attorney, since promoted to be district attorney as reward for his
efficiency. “The mayor is not handling this situation,” said Chief of
Police Oaks to me. “The man we’re getting our orders from is Asa Keyes,
and if you want to speak at the harbor, see him.” Keyes is the man who
has been enforcing the “suspicion of criminal syndicalism” law; he pays
an army of secret agents and provocateurs, and a year or two ago he
stated to two different informants of mine: “I have spent between four
and five thousand dollars, trying to ‘get’ Kate Crane Gartz and Upton
Sinclair. If ever I become chief, I will spend ten times that amount to
‘get’ them.”

Mr. Rice, Mr. Keyes, Chief Oaks, and Captain Plummer attended the
“meeting” which Mr. Rice promised to Mr. Hammond. “I have attended
several conferences of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association,”
said the naive Captain Plummer to Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of
witnesses. “Mr. Rice was present and Mr. Marco Hellman, and others.”
Marco Hellman, the biggest banker of Los Angeles, we shall hear of again
before long.

In the early days of the strike a Presbyterian clergyman and Harvard
graduate was arrested while addressing the strikers, the charge being
“blocking traffic.” Police Magistrate Sheldon, in sentencing him to
jail, said: “Why don’t you hire a hall, or speak upon private property?
Then you will not be molested.” The strikers thought this was good
advice; they found a piece of vacant land, whose lessor was willing for
it to be used for mass meetings, and on this land, known as “Liberty
Hill,” the strikers held numerous meetings. At one of these meetings a
group of them raised the flags of fifteen nations, with the American
flag at the top, and the flag of Russia included. There were Russians
among the strikers, and presumably they thought their country had a
right to be represented.

This incident took place five days after the meeting between Messrs.
Rice and Hammond, and it afforded the pretext for which the police were
waiting. “You’ve lost your constitutional rights now!” shouted Captain
Plummer, and he arrested twenty-eight men for the crime of raising the
red flag. Again and again, in negotiations with the police officials,
and with Mayor George E. Cryer, we were told that this act of raising
the red flag afforded complete justification for the abrogation of all
civil liberties at the harbor. It seems therefore worth noting what
happened some three weeks later, when these men were arraigned in court
upon the charge. Police Magistrate Crawford declared that in his opinion
everyone who displayed a red flag should be sent to prison, but
unfortunately the Supreme Court of California had declared the red flag
ordinance of the city of Los Angeles unconstitutional!

In the three days that followed, the police arrested a total of six
hundred men; they arrested hundreds for attempting to speak on Liberty
Hill; they arrested hundreds for singing and cheering on the street. Any
slightest sign of sympathy with the strike or with other arrested men
was enough to cause a man to be tapped on the shoulder by the police and
told to report at the police station. Crowds of men were surrounded on
the street, loaded into trucks, carted off to the police station, and
packed away in cells. George Chalmers Richmond, Episcopal clergyman from
Philadelphia, was arrested when walking along the street, having in mind
the criminal intention of addressing the strikers when he reached the
place of meeting. A restaurant proprietor was dragged out from behind
his counter and thrown into jail, upon the charge of helping to prolong
the strike—that is, he had fed the strikers and their children. In
describing these incidents, the Los Angeles “Times” stated that the
police announced their intention “to arrest all idle men at the harbor.”

The city of Los Angeles boasts of being the fastest growing city in the
world, but its jails have not grown at all in the last thirty years. To
describe them as death-traps would not be using reckless language, but
merely quoting from reports of one public body after another which has
investigated and denounced them. The jails were already crowded; and
here were six hundred more men suddenly thrust into them! Some of the
“tanks,” built to hold twenty or thirty men, were required to hold a
hundred, and it was literally impossible for all the men to sit down at
once. All the jails were swarming with vermin, there was no bedding
obtainable, and the food was atrocious. These things not being enough,
wanton cruelty and torture was added. In one of the “tanks,” because the
men persisted in singing, the jailers sealed up all the ventilation and
turned on the steam heat for two hours. Ninety-five men were in this
hole, and many of them swooned. Other men were chained up by the thighs,
so that they could not quite sit down. We have the affidavits of several
men to the fact that Chief of Police Oaks personally reviled the
prisoners, calling them liars and degenerates; and when one of the men
spoke up and said this was not true, Oaks called him out from the
“tank,” and in the presence of many witnesses struck him in the face and
knocked him down again and again, pounding him until the chief was
exhausted.

Such was the situation on May 15th. The “Times” for that morning
announced that the city council had appropriated money to build a
stockade, in which to hold the strike prisoners, and all the remaining
strikers at the harbor were to be thrown into this pen. I was about to
begin the writing of this book, but I found it impossible to keep my
peace of mind in a “bull-pen” civilization, and decided to do what I
could to remind the authorities of Southern California that there is
still supposed to be a Constitution in this country.

With seven friends I went to interview the mayor that afternoon. The
interview lasted an hour, and developed curious notions upon the part of
the chief executive of a large city concerning the meaning of civil
rights. According to Mayor Cryer, all the arrests which had been made
night after night on Liberty Hill, and the complete abrogation of the
rights of freedom of speech and of assemblage, were justified by the
fact that somebody unknown had violated the unconstitutional ordinance
of the city of Los Angeles against the displaying of a red flag. The
wholesale arrests of hundreds of men upon the street day after day were
justified by the fact that on one occasion some rowdy unknown had
shouted: “Here comes Captain Plummer, that fat prostitute.” I said: “Mr.
Mayor, according to your way of reasoning, if some one were to upset a
peanut stand on Broadway and steal the peanuts, you would feel justified
in arresting everybody in sight and closing the thoroughfare to traffic
for a month.”

Our mayor is a politician, and cautious. He would not say that it was
the duty of the police to smash the harbor strike, neither would he say
that a group of American citizens had the right to proceed to Liberty
Hill and there read the Constitution of their country and explain to all
who might care to hear them the meaning of the Bill of Rights. His
proposition was that we should go to the harbor and ask permission of
Captain Plummer, and if Plummer refused, the mayor would “review” his
decision. To this we answered that the essence of the situation was
time; the strikers were being robbed of their rights every hour, and
civil liberties were not subject to review by either a police captain or
a mayor. The upshot of the hour’s argument was that Mayor Cryer made the
specific promise that he would telephone to Captain Plummer and instruct
him that we were to be “protected in our constitutional rights, and not
molested so long as we did not incite to violence.” Let it be added that
at his next interview the mayor denied that he had made this promise.

Now, I shall not take up space in detailing what happened to our little
group. Suffice it to say, we repaired to the harbor, a dozen ladies and
gentlemen, with two lawyers; and in an interview with Chief of Police
Oaks we were informed that if we attempted to read the Constitution of
the United States on Liberty Hill we would be arrested and jailed
without bail. Four of us, Prince Hopkins, Hugh Hardyman, Hunter
Kimbrough, and the writer, did attempt to read the Constitution. I
personally read Article One of the first amendment, and was then placed
under arrest. Kimbrough started to read the Declaration of Independence.
Hopkins remarked, “We have not come here to incite to violence.”
Hardyman remarked, “This is a most delightful climate.” For these words
they were arrested—all four of us for “suspicion of criminal
syndicalism.”[A] We were held “incommunicado” for eighteen hours, and an
effort was then made to rush us into court a few minutes before closing
time, and have us committed and spirited away again, so that we could be
given the “third degree”; but this plot was balked, owing to the fact
that a confidant of Chief Oaks betrayed it to my wife, and our lawyers
got to the court and demanded and obtained bail. A week later we went
again to the harbor and held our mass meeting, and said to ten or
fifteen thousand people everything that we had to say. Next day the
police turned loose all but twenty-eight of the six hundred men they had
arrested; and some three weeks later a police judge threw out the case
against us four. So ended our little adventure in “criminal
syndicalism.”

-----

Footnote A:

  Extract from a letter written by a student of Washington University,
  St. Louis, now visiting in Santa Monica, California: “The St. Louis
  papers had only short accounts, which said that Upton Sinclair and
  several other I. W. W. had been arrested on a charge of Syndicalism.
  And my friends out here tell me that a raid was made when Upton
  Sinclair, after having submitted a most innocuous abstract of his
  speech to the authorities, exhorted a strikers’ meeting to break
  loose, smash all windows in sight, and dump the street-cars off the
  tracks. He also attacked the integrity and honor of the chief of
  police.”

-----




                               CHAPTER IV
                      THE EMPIRE OF THE BLACK HAND


Let us now survey the situation in Southern California as I settle down
to the writing of this book. The storm has blown over for the moment.
Twenty-eight of the strikers—the best of their leaders—have been shipped
off to the jute mill for from two to twenty-eight years. The others are
back in the slave-market, bidding against one another for the lives of
themselves and their families. Those who were active in the strike are
black-listed; even though they own homes at the harbor, they cannot find
employment, but must sell out and move on. And meantime, the men who
robbed them are enjoying the “swag.” Mr. Andrew B. Hammond has gone back
to San Francisco, to the comforts of the Bohemian Club, and the Pacific
Union Club, and the Commercial Club, and the San Francisco Golf Club;
while Mr. I. H. Rice continues to run the political and business affairs
of Los Angeles.

Some lovers of fair play have organized a branch of the American Civil
Liberties Union, to teach the people of this community the elementary
idea that the Constitution applies to the poor as well as to the rich.
True to our program of the open forum, we call upon Mr. Rice and
courteously invite him to set forth his ideas of constitutional rights
to one of our audiences. Mr. Rice declines the invitation, and so does
Mr. Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation, and so
does Mr. Marco Hellman, the banker, and So does Captain John D.
Fredericks, congressman-elect of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’
Association and the Chamber of Commerce—it is reported that they put up
twelve thousand dollars additional salary for him, because so important
a man could not afford to go to Congress otherwise!

Among the “tips” which came to me in the course of the struggle was one
to the effect that Captain Plummer and Chief Oaks were each presented
with a gold watch as a tribute of gratitude from the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association. At a hearing before the Ministerial Union I
had opportunity to ask Captain Plummer about this matter; he admitted
with evident embarrassment that he had got a gold watch. I asked him if
it was engraved in acknowledgment of his services to the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association; his answer was that it was engraved “From
the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association for services to the
community.” He added, somewhat naively, that he could not imagine how I
had got that information. “No one but Mr. Rice and the jeweler were
supposed to know about that watch!”

With six hundred men packed into the filthy jails of Los Angeles, some
of them with faces bloody from the fists of Chief Oaks, the chief
himself went off to the convention of chiefs of police at Buffalo. He
went in glory, taking the policemen’s and firemen’s band of sixty
pieces; the expenses of this tour being in part paid by the protected
under-world, and in part loaned by Marco Hellman, banker and chief of
the Black Hand. Mr. Hellman went to the station to see the party off,
and on their return he went again to welcome them. Day by day we
followed in our newspapers the progress of this tour; they had royal
receptions in our biggest cities—and also in Lebanon, Missouri, the
village which contributed our great chief of police to the world. The
local newspaper mentioned that Mount Vernon was the birthplace of George
Washington, and Springfield, Illinois, was the birthplace of Abraham
Lincoln!

In the meantime, our Civil Liberties Union was collecting affidavits of
men who had been beaten and starved and tortured in jail. We presented
these affidavits to the mayor, and the mayor referred us to the city
council; we presented them to the city council, and the city council
referred us to the police commission; we presented them to the police
commission, and the police commission referred them to the committee of
the whole. As I said at one of our mass meetings: “It is called the
committee of the hole because it hides and nobody can find it.” We were
told that the charges would be considered when Chief Oaks came back; the
chief came back, and went before the City Club, and in a burst of glory
stated that if anyone had charges against any police official he would
personally take them before the grand jury. Whereupon we made
application to him to present to the grand jury the charge that Chief
Oaks had beaten prisoners in jail—and he did not keep his promise. We
had brought the charges before the Ministerial Union of the city, and
the ministers appointed a committee to investigate; this committee met,
and heard many witnesses, but took no action, and has never met
again.[B]

-----

Footnote B:

  While the rest of this book is being written, Chief Oaks becomes
  involved in a factional dispute in the Police Department, and his
  enemies publish affidavits by the police officials of a neighboring
  town, to the effect that Oaks was arrested a few days ago, while
  parked in a lonely road with a young woman and a half-gallon jug of
  whiskey. So Oaks is no longer chief, but plain lieutenant of police,
  and is telling his friends that he intends to have the inscription cut
  from his gold watch and to sell it.

-----

The ministers were prejudiced against us, because of something they had
read in the “Times”; a statement that the United States Department of
Justice had investigated the American Civil Liberties Union and
ascertained it to be “the defense branch of the I. W. W.”: this on the
authority of “Agent Townsend of the Department of Justice.” We went to
call on the head of the Department of Justice in Los Angeles, and
learned that there was no “Agent Townsend,” nor had the Department
obtained any such information concerning the American Civil Liberties
Union. We then called upon the managing editor of the “Times” and
presented this information. He promised to look further into the matter;
and next morning he published another statement, reiterating the charge,
this time giving a formal signed statement by “Agent Townsend of the
Department of Justice.” The matter was put before the Department of
Justice at Washington, which replied in writing that there was no such
person as “Agent Townsend of the Department of Justice.” A copy of this
was mailed to the “Times,” with an offer to submit the original. But the
“Times” made no reply, and published no retraction. I go into these
minute details, because later on I shall assert that the “Times”
deliberately lied about the school teachers of Los Angeles; and I wish
you to understand that I mean exactly what I say.

The theme of this book is the schools—public schools and private
schools, primary and grammar and high schools; and now I have to carry
out my promise, to show you that this same Black Hand of Southern
California controls our board of education, putting its own
representatives thereon; that it controls our school funds, wasting them
in graft; that it controls our teachers, browbeating them and
underpaying them and denying them their rights as citizens; that it
controls our children, drilling them, suppressing them, putting poison
thoughts into their minds—so that they shall come out perfect little
bigots, prepared to hate and if necessary to tar and feather and lynch
those people who try to apply real Americanism to America, and to
protect the rights of the poor as well as of the rich. In other words,
what the Black Hand wants, and what it has made for itself, is schools
which will turn out a generation of children who will stand for all the
infamies I have just narrated, and will regard them as right and
necessary and patriotic actions, and the men who perpetrate them as
courageous public officials and high-minded patriots.




                               CHAPTER V
                       THE SCHOOLS OF THE “TIMES”


Naturally, we have to begin with the “Times”; and at the very outset, to
show you what the “Times” wants from our schools, I narrate the
experience of Mr. M. C. Bettinger, until recently a member of the board
of education, and for thirty-eight years connected with the educational
system of Los Angeles. In the year 1906 Mr. Bettinger happened to be in
the office of Superintendent Foshay, when that gentleman was packing up
his belongings and preparing to retire from his job. He took out of his
desk a bale of papers two inches thick, fastened with a rubber-band.
“Thank God,” he said, “at least I don’t have to pay any more tribute to
the ‘Times.’ These are receipts for money which I’ve had to pay to that
paper upon one pretext or another for the past eleven years!”

Or consider the experience of Dr. E. C. Moore, who succeeded Mr. Foshay
as superintendent. In the year 1907 the National Education Association
held its convention in Los Angeles, and in the guide-book prepared for
it was an article by General Otis, publisher of the “Times,” denouncing
union labor. Dr. Moore had the courage to cut out these passages, and
for this General Otis set out to “get” him, and in due course did so.

Dr. Moore’s blunder was that at Christmas time he sent out an order to
the principals of schools to be guarded in their proceedings so as not
to give offense to any class of people. This was a routine notice, its
significance being that Jewish children should not be compelled to take
part in religious ceremonials obnoxious to their faith. But Otis saw in
it his opportunity; Superintendent Moore was attacking the Christian
religion and undermining the basis of all morality! Should such a man
remain superintendent of the educational system of a Christian
community? The “Times” printed literally pages of attacks upon this
basis, interviews with clergymen and parents, and reports of sermons
denouncing Dr. Moore, who was thus forced to move on to Yale University.

Next came John H. Francis, and he had a wonderful idea. He was going to
have junior high schools all over the city, and the youngsters were to
have stenography and typewriting and bookkeeping and manual
training—perfect little clerks and shop foremen turned out in two or
three years! Francis was a man with a passion for education, a wonderful
platform orator; he got his junior high schools, and the fame of them
spread all over the United States. But they cost a pile of money, and
they didn’t perform the wonders which the business men had hoped for;
instead, they got the youngsters interested in music and art and
dramatics and debating—and got them organized, so that you couldn’t take
these things away from them without a riot! So the Black Hand lost all
their enthusiasm for Superintendent Francis, and they tried on him their
favorite device of the detective agency and the woman scandal. Recall my
statement that the big private detective agencies form an important part
of the educational system of the United States!

The president of the board, who was elected to oust Superintendent
Francis, was Judge Walter Bordwell, before whom Clarence Darrow was
tried. Bordwell was a flabby and repulsive looking man, with the manners
of an Irish section-boss; he was a relative of Chandler, and a pet of
the “Times.” In 1918, shortly after ousting Francis, Bordwell became the
“Times’” candidate for governor; and, as part of his campaign, an
assistant superintendent of schools sent a letter to teachers asking
them to vote for the Judge. The name of this assistant is Mrs. Susan
Dorsey, and I ask you to remember her, because a little later we shall
find her rewarded for her fidelity by being made superintendent of
schools; we shall find the teachers of Los Angeles presuming to go into
politics in the interest of the schools—and Mrs. Dorsey insisting that
politics must be rigidly excluded from the system!

Along with Judge Bordwell was elected Mr. Washburn, ex-banker, whose one
idea of school administration was to keep down the taxes; Mrs. Waters,
the widow of a bank president; and Colonel Andrew Copp, an officer in
the state militia. Mr. Bettinger, at that time assistant superintendent,
tells me anecdotes which show the attitude of these people toward
education. “We don’t want you to come here with opinions,” said Mrs.
Waters; “we want you to obey orders.” And in almost the same words
Colonel Copp addressed a delegation of teachers who came to him to
complain of inability to get supplies. “Don’t come here with your views
of things,” stormed the Colonel; “what we want you to do is to do what
you’re told.”

In the course of discussion before a board Committee, Mr. Bettinger made
so bold as to give his definition of education: “to aid in the
unfoldment of a human mind.” Colonel Copp was so furious that he was
hardly able to keep still until Mr. Bettinger finished. “Education?” he
cried. “I’ll tell you what education is! Education is getting a lot of
young people into a room, teaching them a lesson out of a book, hearing
them recite it, putting down a mark in figures, and at the end of the
year that’s their record. That’s what education is, and we are going to
have that and nothing else in Los Angeles.”

Judge Bordwell had gone to New York to put the problem of the Los
Angeles schools before the great mogul of plutocratic education,
President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia. He came back with Albert
Shiels, a product of Butler’s educational enameling machine, who was to
make a survey. Shiels was an accountant, not an educator; also, under
the charter of the city, he was ineligible for superintendent, not
having lived a year in the state. But a little thing like a charter
provision would not be allowed to block the will of Judge Bordwell. Dr.
Shiels was made superintendent and started publishing anti-Bolshevik
propaganda in the teachers’ paper, and circularizing the teachers with
such literature. He published in President Butler’s “Educational Review”
an article assailing the Soviet government, which article contained no
less than one hundred and twenty-four misstatements of fact. Challenged
to debate this issue, Dr. Shiels wrote to me: “I believe it is contrary
to good public policy to place Bolshevism and its practices on a par
with debatable questions.”

But Dr. Shiels soon became disgusted with the crudity of his political
masters, and went back to New York to take up a pleasanter job for
Nicholas Miraculous. The new president of the school board, a banker and
perfect plutocrat by the name of Lynn Helm, selected an assistant
superintendent, formerly a teacher of Latin and Greek, as the new boss
of the schools. He stated as his reason that he knew she was “safe”; and
time has proven that he was a good judge of employes. Mrs. Susan M.
Dorsey rules the system as I write, and you will have a chance to watch
her in action. For the moment it may suffice to record that for thirty
years she has been a member of the Baptist Temple, Reverend J. Whitcomb
Brougher, pastor. When “Billy” Sunday came to Los Angeles, some people
found fault with him, and Rev. Brougher rushed to his defense,
describing Sunday’s critics in the following highly educational
language:

  The dirty, low-down, contemptible, weazen-brained, impure-hearted,
  shrivelled-souled, gossiping devils do not deserve to be noticed....
  Scandal-mongers, gossip-lovers, reputation-destroyers, hypocritical,
  black-hearted, green-eyed slanderers.... Corrupt, devil-possessed,
  vile debauchés.... Immoral, sin-loving, vice-practicing, underhanded
  sneaks.... Carrion-loving buzzards and foul-smelling skunks.

If anyone wishes to take charge of one hundred and seventy-six thousand
school children under the Black Hand, he may learn from this how to
train himself; for better remembering, I have put the directions into a
poem:

                         Five days in the week
                         Teach Latin and Greek;
                         On Sundays, an hour,
                         Go listen to Brougher;
                         And seven days weekly
                         Obey Mammon meekly.




                               CHAPTER VI
                         THE TEACHERS’ SOVIETS


It is the thesis of the business men who run our educational system that
the schools are factories, and the children raw material, to be turned
out thoroughly standardized, of the same size and shape, like biscuits
or sausages. To these business men the teachers are servants, or
“hands,” whose duty is the same as in any other factory—to obey orders,
and mind their own business, and be respectful to their superiors.
Whenever by any chance teachers dare to have ideas of their own, or
especially to ask for higher wages, these teachers are treated precisely
as we have seen labor unions treated by the Black Hand of Southern
California.

In 1916 and 1917, something happened which shook the teachers of Los
Angeles into action; their wages were suddenly cut to about forty per
cent of what they had been before. Or, to put it in the more common
formula, the cost of everything the teachers had to buy with their money
increased a hundred and thirty per cent; and meantime their wages
remained as in 1914. They were unable to live, and fifty-six per cent of
them were forced to do additional outside work. So the teachers’
associations began a salary campaign, which for the first time brought
them out of the classrooms and into contact with the real life of Los
Angeles. The campaign lasted intermittently for four or five years, and
the outcome of it was tragedy for the teachers and comedy for the
reader.

One of the purposes for which Mrs. Dorsey had been made superintendent
was to hold the salaries down; and in her effort to break the resistance
of the teachers, she served notice upon them that they must sign their
contracts for the next year before the end of the old term—and this
although legally they had until twenty days after the end of the term.
She would be very sorry not to see their faces next year, she told them,
and smiled amiably. When some said that they did not want to return, her
smile was still amiable. “You’ll be back,” she said. “Teachers have gone
out before this and tried to do something else.”

The president of the City Teachers’ Club made herself obnoxious by
calling a meeting of the teachers for four o’clock one afternoon—that is
to say, after the closing hour of the schools. Mrs. Dorsey, desiring to
forestall her, closed the schools at half past one that afternoon.
Hitherto Mrs. Dorsey had maintained that the schools must never be
closed for special occasions; but now she closed them, and called the
teachers together at half past one to listen to an address of her own.
Some teachers thought it was her idea that they should be tired out and
go home before their own meeting at four o’clock!

But the dissatisfaction of the teachers did not abate. A hundred of the
best had left, and three hundred more were refusing to renew their
contracts for the coming year; so the business men realized that some
concession had to be made. Manifestly, it would not do to let it come as
a result of teacher agitation; it must be due to the loving concern of
business men. Mr. Sylvester Weaver, head of the “education committee” of
the Chamber of Commerce, was called in, and he organized a committee of
leading citizens, including Harry Haldeman, president of the Better
America Federation. Somebody had “put over” on the teachers a publicity
agent, a gentleman with a big cigar in his mouth and a gold watch-chain
across his waistcoat. He now advised the teachers to drop their
agitation and allow the business men to handle it; let the grand
committee retire and do some grand thinking. So for five weeks the
teachers preserved an awed silence.

They wanted a flat raise of a thousand dollars a year, and they proved
that this amount was not enough to raise the lowest salary to ante-war
standards. The committee, when it finally emerged from its thinking-bee,
endorsed this demand; but at once the business men set up a howl—and so
Mr. Weaver wrote to the board of education that he regarded the thousand
dollars increase for teachers as a great and noble ideal to be worked
for—in the course of time! The committee went before the board of
supervisors, which said that it would be impossible for the teachers to
have that much money; the committee went before the board of education,
which said there was no use asking what the supervisors refused. The
discontent of the teachers burst into flame again; the committee retired
and did more thinking; and finally it was announced that the taxpayers
of Los Angeles intended to perform an act of unprecedented generosity
toward the teachers—every single one was to have a raise of three
hundred dollars a year!

This amount made the average salary just one-half what it was before the
war; and in a month or two rents went up and absorbed most of this. One
landlord said to a teacher friend of mine: “You’ve just got a raise, and
I’m going to have my share!” Recently the Chamber of Commerce of
Hollywood invited the hungry teachers to a banquet, and informed them
that for the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year they
should learn to live on respect. On the place-cards of the hungry
teachers they printed “A Tribute”:

          _To the Teachers of Tomorrow’s Manhood and Womanhood_:

  To you, who bless mankind by the devotion of your lives to a noble
  vocation, we declare our gratitude! In your charge we have placed the
  responsibility of tomorrow, and your performance of that sacred duty
  makes us all your debtors. Your calling is the highest in the social
  order; your reward is the most valued of possessions—respect.

The advantage of this salary campaign to the teachers was not the money,
but the education they got. For the first time a few of them began to
think about their board of education, and who was on it, and why. Some
even took up the suggestion that the teachers’ organizations should
affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. What indignation this
excited in our “open-shop” city should hardly need telling; the Better
America Federation set forth its ideas in a two-column advertisement in
the newspapers of San José:

  Teachers must keep aloof alike from politics and industrial
  discussions. Teachers are beginning to be regarded as wards of the
  State. Teachers, like soldiers, owe their first and only allegiance to
  the State.

The faculty at Jefferson High School decided that they would like to
hear both sides on this problem of affiliation with labor, so they made
up a questionnaire, and sent it, first, to fifty teachers’ organizations
which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor; second, to
fifty which were not affiliated; and third, to all those which had been
affiliated and had withdrawn. This would seem calculated to bring out
all sides in the discussion; but the board of education issued a
peremptory order that the procedure should cease. I have a written
report of this incident from the teacher who interviewed Mr. Helm, the
banker president of the board. Here is one paragraph:

  Mr. Helm spoke very decidedly against the committee’s right to
  continue its investigation, stating that its plans were “propaganda of
  the worst sort.” He said the board had told the teachers what they
  (the teachers) were to do, and that was the end of it. He declared
  there was but _one_ side of the question of injecting _anything_ to do
  with “labor” into any teachers’ organization. He said it was
  impertinence to ask the board what it thought about such a matter,
  because it had put itself on record in no uncertain terms. He said the
  board reflected the “will of the people” in this regard. When
  questioned as to who “the people” are, he replied, such concerns as
  the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association and the Chamber of
  Commerce, “which are responsible for the upbuilding of the city.” He
  said when it was suggested to have “that man Stillman” (president of
  the American Federation of Teachers) to speak before the teachers at
  institute, these representative business men of Los Angeles asked,
  “You’re not going to permit that, are you?” And he told them, “No,
  indeed!” He remarked that the board expects the teachers to see to it
  that “labor” does not get any recognition in the teaching profession.

Some of the teachers now decided there ought to be a different sort of
people on the school board, and they called in a group of liberal
citizens to their help. A committee met, and a representative ticket was
nominated, and a house-to-house campaign was carried on. The Black Hand
opposed it, but not very ardently—a circumstance which would have
awakened the suspicion of the teachers, if they had not been so new to
public life. The entire “teachers’ ticket,” as it was called, was
elected in the spring of 1921; and to the consternation of the poor
teachers, two of the members resigned, and three others went over to the
Black Hand, and so the board was deadlocked three to three, and nothing
could be done. The board spent the rest of its term arguing over the
choosing of a seventh member. The three liberal members had one
candidate, Dr. Oxnam, a public-minded clergyman; while the three Black
Hand members brought in a new candidate every week, until they had
suggested most of the Tories in Southern California. Their favorite
candidate was a brother-in-law of Harry Chandler of the “Times”; and
after him they had three ex-presidents of the Chamber of Commerce!

One of the guiding thoughts of the liberal campaign had been that
teachers know something about teaching. They now prepared a timid
proposal for a “Teachers’ Advisory Council,” to consult with the
superintendent and the assistants as to the welfare of the children and
the schools. Such councils exist in many cities in America, and the
teachers of Los Angeles thought their plan would be welcomed by their
new “liberal” board of education. So little did they understand the
methods of the Black Hand! One morning the “Times” came out with a
frightful story, all the way across several columns; there was an
underground conspiracy among the teachers of Los Angeles to establish a
“teachers’ soviet”! A group of blood-thirsty “Reds” were scheming to
take control of the schools from the duly elected board of education,
and have the taxpayers’ money spent and administered by labor unions!

One of the teachers who was active in this movement, and who in a long
editorial was branded as a dangerous “radical,” was Miss Wilhelmina Van
de Goorberg. This, as you will note, is a terrifying foreign-sounding
name; but it wasn’t foreign enough for the “Times,” which made it Von
instead of Van. This lady’s parents came from Holland when she was a
child, and the “Times” staff know her very well; but they changed her
from innocent Dutch into devilish Prussian!

The Black Hand was sending Colonel Andrew Copp, whose ideas on education
we have learned, to denounce the “teachers’ soviets” before the City
Club and the Woman’s City Club. The Chamber of Commerce resolved to make
an “impartial investigation” of the question, and appointed a committee,
and a teacher was invited to appear before it to defend the new idea.
Two teachers went, and found Colonel Copp on hand. The teachers were
permitted to speak briefly, and then they were questioned, in tones that
might have been used to naughty pupils. “Suppose the board of education
refuses to carry out the orders of your teachers’ councils, what are you
going to do then?”—and so on. Colonel Copp spoke at length, making a
series of false statements; after which he packed up his papers and
marched out, refusing to answer a single question. The chairman declared
the meeting adjourned, without permitting the teachers even to deny the
falsehoods!

This was a regular habit of Colonel Copp, it appears; a group of high
school teachers interviewed him after one of his addresses, and pointed
out to him a number of flat misstatements he had made. He said he would
“investigate”; but a day or two later he repeated the misstatements, and
refused to correct them. When a teacher asked him how he could do such a
thing, he turned his back upon her.

For months the “Times” continued its denunciations of the “teachers’
soviets”; and, of course, they succeeded in crushing the hydra-headed
monster. There come a hundred thousand new people into this community
every year, and these people know nothing about local matters except
what they read in the “Times.” When the “Times” tells them day after day
that there is a band of secret conspirators, in sympathy with Moscow,
trying to undermine the school system and destroy the morals of the
children, they really believe it, and go to the polls and make their
little “x” marks on the ballot, according to the pattern set before them
in the “Times”! And so it is that four thousand highly trained experts
are denied all opportunity to have effective say concerning the
education of the children.




                              CHAPTER VII
                          A PRAYER FOR FREEDOM


There is an election of the school board in Los Angeles every two years.
The Black Hand laid their plans to elect a complete board in the spring
of 1923; they went at the job in grim earnest, sparing neither trouble
nor expense, and the story of what they did reads like a chapter from a
muckraking novel.

The ruling group held a series of meetings: Harry Chandler of the
“Times”; “Eddie” Dickson of the “Express,” evening newspaper of the
Black Hand; Captain Fredericks, congressman-elect of the Black Hand;
Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation; E. P. Clark,
proprietor of one of our biggest hotels, and principal financial backer
of the Better America Federation—these and half a dozen others
constituted themselves “the Committee of One Thousand” for the purpose
of electing a “citizens’ ticket” of seven members for the school board.
A little later they decided to expand into “the Committee of Ten
Thousand”—this in spite of the fact that at no one of their meetings
were they able to collect more than thirty-seven people!

Their ticket comprised an assortment of hard-boiled reactionaries. At
the top of the list stood Jerry Muma, their most active representative
on the previous board. Mr. Muma runs a big insurance business; and just
as the campaign was getting under way there was made public the
affidavit of a prominent architect in the city, to the effect that Mr.
F. O. Bristol, agent for Muma and likewise a candidate for the school
board, had come to the architect soliciting insurance, and pointing out
that Jerry Muma, as head of the building committee of the school board,
controlled much valuable business of an architectural nature. “Mr. Muma
believes in reciprocity,” said Mr. Bristol, significantly. This
affidavit caused the Black Hand to take Jerry Muma from the head of its
ticket; but they left Mr. Bristol!

Also they left on their ticket Mr. Frederick Feitshans, president of the
Los Angeles Desk Company, in spite of the fact that this gentleman
admitted to a committee of the teachers that he was at present selling
many thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture to the schools of Los
Angeles, and that while under the law he could not sell it to the
schools after he became a member of the board, there was nothing to
prevent his selling it to an agent, and this agent selling it to the
schools. As reward for Mr. Feitshans’ refinement of sensibility, the
gang members of the old board did their best to jam through a contract
with the Los Angeles Desk Company for seventeen thousand dollars’ worth
of furniture before the new board came in!

Also, there was Mrs. Lucia Macbeth, wife of the vice-president and
general manager of our biggest cement company—and this with fourteen
million dollars’ worth of new buildings to be handled by the new board!
A terrible discovery concerning Mrs. Macbeth came out during the
campaign: she smoked cigarettes! She admitted this to a committee of
clergymen who visited her, but promised that if she were elected to the
board she would give up smoking; and naturally the church people of Los
Angeles could not lose such an opportunity to bring a lost sheep into
the fold.

Also, there was Mr. Odell, a lawyer, one of the members of the old
board, who had voted “right,” and who, as a Mason, brought many votes; a
retired hay and grain merchant, who stated naively to the committee of
teachers that he was tired of playing golf and wanted something to do;
the wife of a real estate and insurance man; and another lawyer, who
represented the bond house of Mr. Babcock, the gentleman who was
selected by Captain Fredericks as campaign manager to put this
reactionary school ticket into office. Mr. Babcock’s firm got the
handling of several millions of the school bonds; and this firm sends
out literature, signed by Mr. Babcock, attacking government ownership,
and advising the public to put its money into private enterprises. So
you see how Big Business and the schools tie up! On this board almost
every kind of interest which preys on the school system was boldly
represented; and to elect it every power the Black Hand could wield,
both inside and outside the system, was wielded, and every slander that
could be whispered concerning the opposition was spread upon the front
page of the “Times.”

“No politics in the schools!” runs the formula; which means, quite
simply, that no one must oppose the Black Hand. The rumor was spread
that the “teachers’ board” was pledged to oust Mrs. Dorsey; and so for
every teacher the issue was one of “loyalty to the chief.” Many were
intimidated—I know one teacher who was told by her principal that if she
gave out literature for the “teachers’ ticket” she would be summoned
before the grand jury! Others were bought with promises of promotion—the
system is honeycombed with intrigue of that sort. The principals’ clubs
went boldly into politics, cheered on by the “Times” and the “Express.”
One school director, a pet of Mrs. Dorsey, used the school time and the
school’s long distance telephone for a whole day calling the Masons in
the school system to a meeting at which they were told how to vote.

I have before me a letter from a school principal telling me how a
certain political woman came to him, offering him, in exchange for his
support in the gang, a written promise of a high school principalship.
This offer was turned down and the principal wrote his wife, who owns a
dairy: “Keep the cows. We may need them.”

In apologizing for telling so much about the harbor strike, I promised
to prove that the same men who smashed this strike were running the
school system of Los Angeles, and smashing the teachers. Now comes the
proof. As it happened, the campaign for the election of the school board
was going on all through the harbor strike and the formation of our
Civil Liberties Union; and among the few who came forward to stand for
this union was the Reverend G. Bromley Oxnam, pastor of the Church of
All Nations, and candidate for the school board on the “teachers’
ticket.” At our first mass meeting of protest, held in Los Angeles three
days after the release of Hopkins, Hardyman, Kimbrough and myself, Mr.
Oxnam was asked to lead the singing of “America” and to open the
proceedings with a prayer. This he did; and so all the fury of the enemy
was turned upon him. The kept preachers of the Black Hand denounced him
from their pulpits, and also before the Ministerial Union, and before
the City Club. Nothing more was needed to defeat a candidate for the
school board than to associate him with Upton Sinclair, notorious
Socialist and muckraker. Day after day the “Times” pounded upon this
theme, both in editorials and in news. The Better America Federation
circulated alleged stenographic transcripts of speeches by Mr. Oxnam,
which “transcripts” were made up in their own offices, and were the
opposite of Mr. Oxnam’s beliefs.

Understand, Mr. Oxnam was not the head of this ticket; he was only one
of seven. But from the day he stood upon the Civil Liberties platform,
the ticket became the “Oxnam ticket,” and his candidacy was an effort of
Upton Sinclair and the “soviets” to take possession of the schools. All
the minor organizations of the Black Hand, the business clubs, the
women’s organizations, the little educational bosses—all these adopted
resolutions denouncing the conspiracy to turn the schools of the city
over to the “Reds.” There is very good reason to believe that the
praying of a prayer for the Constitution of the United States not merely
cost Mr. Oxnam his election to the school board, but cost his associates
their election as well. So, at the risk of making my story too long, I
print the prayer that Mr. Oxnam prayed, and that a stenographer took
down for his protection:

  Our Father, we lift our voices to Thee in Thanksgiving. We are
  thankful that Thou hast created us thinking beings. We are thankful
  that we are not mere automatons, but that Thou hast given to us
  freedom of choice, and that in large measure our own destiny and that
  of our brothers lies in our own hands. We pray Thee, that just as Thou
  hast granted to us the right to think and to speak, so too we may
  grant to our citizens the right to think and to speak, to the end that
  that glorious day may come at last when all men share the abundant
  life Jesus of Nazareth died to bring to men.

  Give to us, we pray, the spirit of tolerance. May we be willing to
  listen to our brother with whom we disagree. But O God, as we pray for
  tolerance, we pray too that we may be men of conviction. Give to us an
  open mind, but give us also the strength to stand for our convictions
  even if it take a Calvary Cross to win them. May we never bow the knee
  before insolent might. Help us to be tender and just, loving and
  righteous, never turning aside from the needy. Give to us that virtue
  that was Christ’s—forgiveness. May we even love those who despitefully
  use us. Keep before us ever the example of the One who was despised
  and rejected of men, yet who could pray forgiveness for those who
  crucified him.

  We thank Thee for America, her traditions, her history, her place in
  the world. We thank Thee for our forefathers who won for us the
  liberties we so easily inherit. Give to us their spirit. Fire us with
  the desire to bring to men the ideals for which they died. Give us
  Life, give us Liberty, give us Happiness. Give us the strength to
  stand for Life, and Liberty, and Happiness. We thank Thee for the
  Constitution of our Republic. We thank Thee that the people united to
  establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, and promote the
  general welfare. May we stand worthy of them today. Give to us the
  courage today to stand as Americans insisting upon the maintenance of
  those principles upon which our Republic was founded.

  In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.




                              CHAPTER VIII
                       THE PRICE OF INDEPENDENCE


There has existed for the past twenty years inside the school system a
secret oath-bound society of the school men known as the “Owls,” whose
members pledged themselves to consider first the interests of this
group. They served the Southern Pacific Railroad in the old days when
this machine ran the state; they now serve the Santa Fé Railroad and the
Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce
and the Better America Federation, and the other organizations of the
Black Hand. For twenty years the system had one man, an assistant
superintendent named Lickley, who declined to join this society. He had
also refused to make the various anti-social pledges which the Better
America Federation has required of every candidate for the school board
and of every school official. In the 1921 election Mrs. Dorsey pleaded
with Dr. Lickley, advising him “as a mother” not to support the
“teachers’ ticket.” He supported it; and so in the interests of
“harmony” it was necessary that he be driven out of the system. The
intrigue against him came to a head during the election campaign, and
became an issue in this campaign.

In telling the story, I have to devote two paragraphs to some Los
Angeles school principals. I apologize for taking up your time with
people you never heard of before, and will never want to hear of again.
But you will find, as we go on, that the school system of America is one
system; when you read about school principals in Los Angeles, you will
be learning about school principals in every other big American city.
Also, I would suggest that if men are important enough to be put in
charge of your children, they ought to be important enough for you to
know about.

In the course of Dr. Lickley’s duties it became necessary for him to
consider charges against a principal by the name of Doyle. Seven
witnesses made affidavit that this principal had kept liquor in the
school building, contrary to law; that he had offered them this liquor,
and that his habits were generally known to the students, and were a
cause of demoralization in the school. It was testified that this liquor
had been brought to Doyle by Italian boys, whose parents were making it,
and that these boys had thus obtained immunity from school duties and
from punishment. It was also testified that he had knocked down David
Rutberg, a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy, by striking him in the eye. It
was further charged that Doyle, while principal of an evening school,
took other teachers away from their classes and spent the time with them
gambling in the basement. For this and other reasons Dr. Lickley
recommended Doyle for dismissal. We may complete this part of the story
by stating that Mrs. Dorsey and her school board have blocked every
effort for a hearing of these charges. Doyle is still in the system, and
the board has jumped him over two entire divisions, and elected him
principal of one of the biggest schools in the city. When this caused a
scandal, the men who had made the charges against Doyle were summoned to
the superintendent’s office, and efforts were made to browbeat them into
withdrawing their sworn statements.

Immediately after Dr. Lickley’s action in the Doyle case, charges of
insubordination and disloyalty to the system were preferred against Dr.
Lickley by Doyle and others. I will list these others: first, a man
named Lacy, whom Dr. Lickley had dropped from the principalship of a
school upon the charge that he had come to school in a state of
intoxication, that he was unable to perform his duties, and that he had
misappropriated the funds of the Schoolmasters’ Club. Next, one
Cronkite, who, according to Dr. Lickley, was demoted from the position
of supervisor, because of “incompetence, laziness and objectionable
conduct to other members of the department.” Next, a principal named
McKnight, who, according to Dr. Lickley, left the principalship of one
school because of “serious and reprehensible misconduct.” Next, one
Dunlap, who was charged by Dr. Lickley with having stolen public
property; also with having carried on a private business as insurance
agent in school and in the board of education offices, urging the
employes under his supervision “to buy insurance, oil stocks,
automobiles, real estate, etc.” Another man, I am told, had been
disciplined by his Masonic brothers for taking a woman upstate with him.
Another was turned out of a night school because the young women
teachers would not stand his conduct toward them; he was put in charge
of the jail night school—it being apparently assumed that such pupils
would not be troubled by his morals. During the campaign the men under
charges were in conference with Mrs. Dorsey, enjoying her confidence and
carrying out her plans. I want to make clear my own position as regards
the matter: I do not say that these charges are true; I say that they
have been published by responsible persons, and that neither Mrs. Dorsey
nor her school board have cared enough about the good name of the
schools to answer the charges or bring the men to trial.

Mr. Herbert Clark, recently promoted by Mrs. Dorsey, came to Mr.
Bettinger with a proposition: they had “got the goods” on Lickley; they
wanted to take him out and put in one of their own gang; they would let
him stay as an assistant, but with minor duties; and if Mr. Bettinger
would consent to this program, they would make him the next
superintendent of schools in Los Angeles. Mr. Bettinger refused, and
then the gang took the charges before the Municipal League, which asked
to have them in writing, and to have them sworn to; but instead of doing
this, the gang induced a poor old lady to bring the charges before the
county board of education, asking that Dr. Lickley’s license as a
teacher be revoked. The old lady had understood that the charges would
be secret—but whiff! they were spread out in the “Times”!

This county board was a gang affair—two of them members of the “Owls,”
one of them the brother of an old Southern Pacific Railroad henchman,
who ran the recent Water Power campaign for the Black Hand. A third
member was the father of Lacy, one of Dr. Lickley’s accusers! In the
course of the election campaign, this accuser went to a meeting of the
Los Angeles City Teachers’ Club, and started to speak. His right to
speak was challenged, because he was not a member; whereupon he paid his
fee, received his membership card, and made his speech. It proved to be
a series of false statements concerning Dr. Oxnam—that Oxnam had been in
jail recently, and that he had been barred from speaking in the city of
Long Beach. Some of the teachers objected, and succeeded in silencing
Lacy, until Oxnam could appear to answer the charges. Oxnam wrote,
demanding that Lacy produce his evidence, and challenging Lacy to appear
at the next meeting of the teachers. Lacy declined to appear, whereupon
the Teachers’ Club expelled him.

There were two sets of charges against Dr. Lickley, one set of which
they published, and the other of which they whispered. They had been
shadowing him with detectives for years; they had followed him on train
journeys and steamer trips, and wherever he drove in his automobile.
Sometimes there were as many as four people devoting their attention to
him; one of these men got drunk and admitted that he was shadowing Dr.
Lickley for the gang. They were trying to get what they call a “woman
story” on him; as we go from city to city you will find this such a
common device of the Black Hand that you will learn to take it for
granted.

The Lickley stories served their purpose—of helping to beat the
“teachers’ ticket.” The candidates of the gang were elected without
exception, and Dr. Oxnam came out next to the bottom of the poll. The
charges against Dr. Lickley were dismissed, on motion of the attorney
for the opposition; whereupon Superintendent Dorsey informed Dr. Lickley
that if he still stayed in the system she would put him in a solitary
room in the Grand Avenue School, with curtailed duties, without a
stenographer, and without even a telephone. It happens that Dr. Lickley
is a lawyer, and can earn far more at his profession than he was getting
in the school system. He had before him a long and nasty fight, with the
cards stacked against him. He tendered his resignation, which the new
board accepted.

Some maintain that he should have stayed and fought it out. Suffice it
to say that one of the factors upon which the Black Hand counts, when it
puts its scandal bureau to work, is the probability that men of
refinement will choose to go their own way as private citizens, in
preference to having slanders about them published in the newspapers. If
you take that to mean that Dr. Lickley was guilty and ran away, all I
can answer is what Mr. Bettinger tells me; that he rented a room in the
upper part of his home to a typist, who, hearing him speak of Dr.
Lickley, remarked: “Why, I typed all the reports of the people who
investigated his life; he didn’t do anything wrong.”




                               CHAPTER IX
                       THE REGIME OF RECIPROCITY


We now have the Black Hand in undisputed control of the school system of
Los Angeles; their seven dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries meet, frequently
in secret session, and carry out the will of their masters. Let us see
what this means for the schools, the teachers, the children, and the
public.

First of all, graft: it means that the handling of twelve million
dollars a year is in the hands of people who have no conception of any
other ideal in life but that of money-making. They would, of course,
deny this indignantly; while denying it, they will be teaching the
children in the economics classes that pecuniary self-seeking is the
only principle upon which a civilization can be built. They will be
glorifying greed by high-sounding phrases, such as “individualism,”
“_laissez-faire_,” “freedom of contract”; they will be ridiculing any
other ideal as “utopian,” the product of “theorists” and “dreamers.”

Here are more than nine hundred school buildings, and the system has
never had a real building expert. The best architects in the city do not
trouble to bid upon school buildings; they know that these contracts go
to those who, in the phrase of Jerry Muma, “believe in reciprocity.” The
whole business system of the schools is antiquated and tied up in red
tape, all of which is sacred because it represents somebody’s privilege.
The 1921 board ordered a business survey of the schools, employing the
financial expert of the State Board of Control; a minute and detailed
report on the school system was made—and was turned down and suppressed
by the gang.

Quite recently Mr. F. W. Hansen, purchasing agent for the schools,
resigned his position, stating that the system was “an institutional
mad-house”; all his efforts to save money for the taxpayer had been
thwarted by the business manager. Mr. Hansen had wished to go out and
develop additional sources of supply, as the purchasing agent of any
commercial organization would do. He went directly to the manufacturers
of ink-wells and saved from thirty to forty per cent. He cut the price
of waste-baskets from $9.60 to $6.85 a dozen; and so on through a long
list of savings.

But you see, if you go directly to the manufacturers, you cut off the
profits of jobbers and wholesalers, and these are prominent members of
the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, who “believe in
reciprocity” and “the encouragement of home industry.” When you buy from
novelty houses for $38.00 calendars which the local dealers are selling
for $100, you are causing unemployment for a bookkeeper in Los Angeles,
who keeps track of this transaction for the local business men. Still
worse heresy, when you go to San Francisco and buy reed for $1.50 which
costs $3.53 in Los Angeles, you are boosting the most bitter rival of
our City of the Black Angels. When you buy lubricating oil for
twenty-seven and a half cents a gallon, which meets the test better than
that which the city has been getting for fifty-four cents a gallon, you
have some oil men on your neck. Mr. Hansen had a long fight with his
superiors before he was even permitted to sign his own letters asking
for prices in transactions such as this.

Mr. Hansen insisted upon getting competitive bids for the supplying of
colored crayons. The business manager told him to “lay off this”; the
city had been using Prang’s crayons, and there was none so good. The bid
on Prang’s water colors had been forty dollars; when the competition
started it came down to twenty-five; there were other brands offered for
eighteen, and the art supervisor of the schools made tests, and could
find no difference in quality between them. The old board split on this
issue—the members of the “teachers’ ticket” stood out, trying to save
the taxpayers $1,204.07 on this single purchase. The new board is now
in, the city is paying the higher prices, and somebody is getting the
“rake-off.”

And yet, in spite of this orgy of spending, the teachers cannot get
supplies. I have before me the Los Angeles “School Journal” for October
24, 1921, giving a report of a committee of teachers which had been
appointed to investigate the question of school supplies. Here are six
pages of closely printed details, covering every sort of school
material. Some forty or fifty teachers testify. No one knows when
supplies ordered will be received, the time is usually from six months
to a year. Tissue paper was “called for repeatedly for two years. First
amount received one year ago.” Desks ordered in the spring of 1918 had
not been received two and a half years later. Half a class in
agriculture was idle, because garden tools were missing eleven months
after ordering. Text-books in English for the teacher’s desk received
“sometimes six months later, sometimes a year.” Again, “I have been
asking for bookkeeping desks for five years.”

I talked with the head of a department, who had kept a careful record,
and had never got supplies in less than six months, and sometimes had
waited two years and a half. There were some repairs to be done to
laboratory tables, and application for this work was made in the spring,
so that it could be done during the summer vacation. In the fall, after
school had started, along came the carpenters and the painters to do
this work. Said this teacher: “The city was paying me fifteen dollars a
day to teach two hundred pupils, and then it paid another fifteen
dollars a day to workmen to keep me from teaching the pupils.”

All this is petty graft; and the thing that really counts is Big
Business, which is not considered graft. This board has the placing of
magnificent new high schools which the city is building for the children
of the rich, and which determine the population and price of real estate
for whole districts. It goes without saying that these schools are put
where the active speculators want them; three such schools are now going
up in districts where there is practically no population at present.
Meanwhile the old, unsanitary fire-traps in the slums are left
overcrowded and without repairs. They have passed a regulation
districting the city, and compelling the children to attend school in
their own district. The children of the poor may not travel and attend
the schools of the rich! This year there are no schools at all for many
of the children of the poor, and sixty thousand of them are on part
time.

The reason for this is the ceaseless campaign of Big Business to starve
the schools. In the columns of the “Times” you will read that the
“Times” is a friend of the schools; but the teachers noted that this did
not keep the “Times” from backing the treacherous program of the
“Taxpayers’ Protective Association,” which lobbied through the state
legislature the notorious Bill 1013, which forbade any community to
increase its tax rate more than five per cent over that of the year
before. The lobbyists of the association solemnly assured the teachers’
representatives at the state capital that this bill would not in any way
affect the schools, and so they let it get by. Then, to their
consternation, the teachers discovered that it would completely
hamstring the schools! The tax rate of the previous year had been
unusually low, because there had been a surplus; now, under this new
law, most of the schools would have to close down.

The teachers got busy and circulated petitions, and defeated this law by
referendum. Then the Taxpayers’ Protective Association tried to throw
out the referendum, and the teachers had to pay an attorney a thousand
dollars of their own money to argue the case before the Supreme Court.
You will not be surprised to hear that the principal backer of this
Taxpayers’ Protective Association is Mr. E. P. Clark, principal backer
of the Better America Federation; in other words, the association is
simply one of the aliases of the Black Hand!

And now this Black Hand has elected its own governor of the state, on a
program of “economy,” which means the starving of every form of public
welfare activity. The school appropriations have been cut to such an
extent that the teachers’ colleges are crippled and the whole system is
in despair. You see, what money California has to spare just now must go
into a new state penitentiary here in the South; the Black Hand is
planning more campaigns against “suspicion of criminal syndicalism.” A
couple of months ago, while I sat in my cell at the Wilmington
police-station, my fellow prisoner, Hugh Hardyman, quoted a remark: “I
would rather be in jail laying the foundations of liberty than at
liberty laying the foundations of jails.” In California you take your
choice between these two.




                               CHAPTER X
                             THE SPY SYSTEM


It goes without saying that in such a school system promotion goes by
favoritism. The system of examining and grading teachers at the present
time is a farce. These examinations are partly written, partly oral, and
partly references; the references are submitted as confidential, and one
of the assistant superintendents marks them, without any assistance. So
far as the oral examinations are concerned, it is purely a question of
getting before an examiner who is your friend. Mrs. Dorsey, the
superintendent, will say: “Send So-and-so to my committee”; and it will
be done.

Mr. Bettinger, while assistant superintendent, discovered that the
deputy superintendent was giving the clerk a list of names of those who
were to be passed as favored by people of influence. He tells me how
later on Jerry Muma, at that time “boss” of the board, came to him with
a friend whose daughter desired to take the examination for high school
teacher. Mr. Bettinger explained the routine; the examination must be
taken in such and such a way, etc. But Mr. Muma was not satisfied. He
said that he had heard these matters could be arranged more
expeditiously. Finding that Mr. Bettinger did not take the hint, he
said: “Wait a minute,” and went out. He was gone five minutes, and came
back, saying: “It will be all right; Mr. Shafer (an assistant) will have
this young woman come before him.” Mr. Muma, you remember, is the dealer
in life insurance who “believes in reciprocity.”

Mrs. Dorsey is a very devout church member, and the churches are strong
in her support; so when a woman teacher came to her, complaining of
having been seduced by the principal of her school, Mrs. Dorsey was
greatly incensed. When the teacher’s story was substantiated by the wife
of the principal, Mrs. Dorsey—so I am informed by Dr. Lickley—summoned
the man to her office and demanded his resignation. But she had been led
in her excitement to overlook the realities of politics in her school
system. This principal had a powerful friend, an ex-judge who was high
in the councils of the Black Hand. He called on Mrs. Dorsey and
presumably explained to her the concrete facts about the administration
of schools. Anyhow, the matter was suddenly dropped; and Mrs. Dorsey has
just been presented with a reappointment for four years, with a salary
raise from eight thousand to ten thousand a year.

The thing for which I indict this elderly lady superintendent is her
pitiable subservience to the power of wealth, and the glorifying of
commercialism in her school system. She has made the schools a
“boosting” agency for reaction; it would be no exaggeration to say that
she has handed them over to the bankers to be used as a collection
agency to get the children’s money. One teacher tells me how her
principal came back in great excitement from a meeting of principals
summoned by Mrs. Dorsey, at which the details of a “thrift campaign” had
been explained. All the children must start savings banks at once; the
Chamber of Commerce was furnishing the banks, also posters, which must
be put up in every schoolroom. Some time later the principal came into a
room much disturbed; there was no poster up in that room, and what was
the matter? The teacher explained that the wind had blown it down; it
had been up for two months. The principal fussed about, and would not
leave until it had been tacked up again.

The children were hounded to start their bank accounts; some were taken
out and paraded around the block, with banners reporting the percentages
of bank accounts in each class. The teachers also were hounded; you were
a failure if your children did not reach a certain percentage. A man
from the bankers’ association came around to make a speech: “The
principal is going to give you a bank; the superintendent expects that
every one of you will have a dollar saved up.” And every month there was
a bulletin from Mrs. Dorsey. Meantime the bankers’ association, in the
literature it sent out, was explaining that it was spending more than
one dollar per child upon this school campaign, but it would pay well,
because the children would get the bank habit.

Mrs. Dorsey has a formula of subservience which she is accustomed to
repeat to her teachers and subordinates: “We must please the business
men, otherwise they will not vote the bonds to keep our schools going.”
That she has grounds for her fears was shown by the statement of Mr.
Edwards, self-appointed financial boss of the school board. The teachers
and the public were demanding a fifteen-million-dollar bond issue for
new schools; but when the proposition came before the board, it had been
changed to nine millions, and Mr. Edwards’ explanation was simple: the
heads of the Chamber of Commerce had drawn a line through the fifteen
and made it nine! “That’s what we’ll vote just now,” they said; and as a
result of those strokes of the pencil, sixty thousand children are now
condemned to part-time instruction!

If you think this a matter of small importance, let me tell you of one
teacher who had a class of incorrigible children. Out of nineteen boys,
seventeen confessed to her that they had burglarized houses or stores.
The ages of these boys were from thirteen to sixteen, and in the
majority of cases their mothers had been compelled by poverty to go to
work outside the home. The boys would take the money they stole and go
to beach resorts, and spend it all in one night. These boys had had
three years of half-day school sessions, and told the teacher that they
had started their careers of crime while turned out on the streets
instead of being in school.

As I finish this book, Mrs. Dorsey issues a bulletin, informing all
teachers that the schools are to celebrate a “Chamber of Commerce Week.”
It is solemnly ordered that “children of the first five grades write to
their father or guardian a letter on some phase of the work of the local
Chamber of Commerce, or on the benefits to the city of the activities of
that organization”; and teachers of all other grades shall “use the
functions, activities, or achievements of the local Chamber of Commerce
as suggestions for themes and orations. Pamphlets dealing with the
activities of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce will be placed in the
mail-boxes. The co-operation of principals and teachers is urged.”

I have before me a copy of the pamphlet in question. The Chamber of
Commerce, which cut the school appropriation from fifteen million to
nine million dollars, and put sixty thousand children on part time, now
has the effrontery to state to all school teachers and pupils: “The Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce has worked for every bond issue asked for by
the Board of Education, until now the city has more than 900 public
school buildings for its 176,000 children.” Upon learning of this
“Chamber of Commerce Week,” the American Civil Liberties Union hastened
to apply to the board for a “Civil Liberties Week,” and in a written
statement afforded the board many reasons for making the children
acquainted with the importance of protecting civil liberties. It goes
without saying that the Board of Education of the Black Hand made haste
to vote down this riotous proposition; and likewise another for a “union
labor week.”

Of course there has been, and is, a campaign of terrorism to drive out
the few rebel teachers from the system. One high school principal was
told by Judge Bordwell that he would be promoted if he would remove
several teachers accused of liberal ideas. When the principal said they
were good teachers, the Judge said: “Can’t you get something on their
morals?”

That the Black Hand directs spying by the school children on their
teachers is something you do not have to take my word for; you may take
the word of Mr. Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America
Federation. Speaking at a banquet given by his supporters in the
Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles, Mr. Haldeman said in substance:
investigators have been placed in various schools and colleges in this
state and throughout the United States, whose business it is to take
note of the utterances of teachers, professors, or students, and report
to the headquarters of the Federation. If any utterances are reported
which are not to the liking of the Federation, means will be taken to
have the teachers or professors discharged. So far as the students are
concerned, they will be shown the error of their ways. If they prove
obstinate and fail to take heed, steps are to be taken to prevent their
getting employment. And if you should find any of these statements
incredible, let me add that Mr. Haldeman made the same speech in many
other places; he made it at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, and
you will find in “The Goose-Step” what the San Francisco “Call”
published about it.

They control the board, the superintendents, the teachers, and the
pupils; they even control the parents. For twenty years Los Angeles has
had an excellent group of organizations called Parent-Teachers’
Associations; the parents come to the school buildings for meetings with
the teachers, to discuss the welfare of the schools. But this machinery
has gone the way of everything else—it has been taken over by the Black
Hand. I talked with a lady who was president of one of these branches,
and saw the whole intrigue from the inside. There are prominent women,
paid agents of the Better America Federation; while others are paid by
the “Times” in the coin of prominence and applause. If you support the
politics of the “Times,” you become “the distinguished Mrs. So-and-So”;
your picture is printed, your speeches are quoted, and your honors are
recited at length.

These agents of the Black Hand have their plans always laid in advance;
they are aggressive, they pretend to know the laws and by-laws, and
brush the ordinary parents out of the way. At one of the general
meetings of the association they rushed through an endorsement of
military training in the schools. There were only thirty or forty people
present; no one had any warning of the program, nor any opportunity to
discuss this important question; yet next morning this action was
announced in the “Times” as representing the sentiments of thirty-one
thousand parents! One lady, objecting to this procedure, brought up a
discussion of the matter at her branch; she proposed that they should
have speakers to present both sides of the question. Her principal was
“furious” that she should have brought such a proposition up in his
school.

In order to prevent the parents from having an effective voice, they
have amended the constitution to read that there shall be “no
interference with the administrative functions of the board of
education”; so now, if there is anything they want to hush up, they
simply call it “an administrative function of the board of education”!
In order to keep the teachers from having any voice, they frequently
call the business meetings at hours when the teachers are busy in
classroom. One teacher who has spent something like thirty years in the
system, tells me that he has never yet been able to attend a business
meeting of the association in his school. The representatives of the
school at these meetings are the principals and their office staff. The
teachers pay one-third of the dues, they furnish the bulk of the program
work—but they have nothing to say about policy.

“Politics” is strictly barred; but, as everywhere else throughout the
system, this rule works only one way. The associations are forbidden to
endorse any candidates; but during the recent election the “Times”
announced that they had endorsed the candidates of the Black Hand—and
when the “Times” says a thing, that thing might as well be true, because
ninety-nine per cent of the public believes it. On another occasion
these political women rushed through an endorsement of some of their
judges, and Mrs. E. J. Quale, the press chairman, handed in her
resignation in protest. The executive board accepted her resignation,
but kept the fact out of the records and out of the newspapers—thus
concealing Mrs. Quale’s protest from the membership.

“No politics in the P. T. A.” It was not “politics” when Harry Atwood,
author of “Back to the Republic,” came to talk about the Constitution,
and devoted nine-tenths of his time to attacking the initiative and
referendum. The “politics” began when some one ventured to ask for a
speaker who was known to favor the initiative. There is an executive
committee for the purpose of controlling speakers, and no one could be
permitted to speak unless his name had been approved by this committee.

The biggest issue in the state just now is that of public or private
control of water power; the whole future depends upon this, and to keep
the public in darkness concerning it is the one big purpose of the Black
Hand, to which all other purposes are subordinated. So in this water
power fight the control of the Parent-Teachers’ Association has been
most clearly revealed. In the last election campaign the proposal to
issue bonds for public development of water power was beaten by the
corporations; subsequent investigation by the state legislature revealed
the fact that the Southern California Edison Company, a private water
power corporation, had contributed $107,605 to carry this campaign. They
had paid $26,000 salary to a campaign manager, who had formed the
“Women’s Committee of the Los Angeles Taxpayers Association.” He had a
professional publicity agent, a woman, and “three or four other ladies
who went around making speeches.” There was one item of $4,019 for
“special literature,” signed with the name of the “Women’s Tax and Bond
Study Club”—and this, according to the admission of the campaign
manager, was for circulation among the Parent-Teachers’ Associations.
During the campaign, the speakers for public ownership were barred; but
now, by order of the superintendent, the Edison Company is taking its
propaganda directly into the schools!




                               CHAPTER XI
                           LIES FOR CHILDREN


Needless to say, those who run this school machine for the Black Hand
are vigilant to keep modern ideas from the children. They excluded the
“Nation” and the “New Republic” from the high school libraries shortly
after the war; and they have recently refused to rescind this action.
There was a debate on the subject before the Friday Morning Club, a
ladies’ organization, and Mrs. Chester C. Ashley, ex-member of the board
of education, waved before the eyes of the horrified ladies the current
issue of the “Nation,” June 6, 1923: let them inspect the cover and see
what poison was prepared for the minds of their children:

                      UPTON SINCLAIR DEFENDS THE LAW

      HIS LETTER TO THE LAW-BREAKING CHIEF OF POLICE OF LOS ANGELES

The Better America Federation picked out as its text-book of patriotism
for the schools a work called “Vanishing Landmarks” by Leslie Shaw,
ex-secretary of the treasury, a comical old Tory who glorifies the
Constitution as a bulwark of special privilege. “Only Socialists, near
Socialists, and Bolsheviki clamor for democracy,” declares Mr. Shaw; and
he says it is wise for representatives of capital to be permitted to
organize, and the only danger begins when federations of unions are
formed. Incidentally he denounces, as part of the revolutionary program,
the woman’s suffrage amendment! The Better America Federation spent
twenty thousand dollars to put a copy of this book into the hands of
every school teacher; they wanted it adopted as a text-book in all
elementary schools—and this in a state where the women have had the
ballot for twelve years! As one teacher remarked to me, the slogan,
“Votes for Women,” is to be changed to “Lies for Children”!

For the Pilgrim Tri-Centennial the Better America Federation prepared a
beautiful text-book for the schools, full of reactionary propaganda;
this they gave away, and they had a list of eloquent orators, also to be
given away. Then they produced a text-book “Back to the Republic,” by
Harry Atwood, denouncing the initiative and referendum as treason to our
forefathers. The publishers announce this as “The Outstanding Book of
the Age,” and it was distributed to every teacher. Let me quote you a
few of its theses: “Promiscuity, or free-love, is to the domestic world
what democracy is to government.... What gluttony is to the individual,
democracy is to government.... What drunkenness is to the individual,
democracy is to government.... What discord is to music, democracy is to
government.... What insanity is to thought, democracy is to government,”
etc., etc. And understand, this in a _text-book_! Teachers were expected
to compel little children to learn this by heart, and to recite it!

Next came “The Citadel of Freedom,” by Randolph Leigh, a product of
Nicholas Murray Butler’s educational machine. It was written as a
Columbia doctor’s thesis, and is a panegyric of the Constitution, in
which every reactionary influence in our history is glorified, and every
popular influence sneered at. I have read the galley proofs of this
book, as submitted to the school board of Los Angeles, and they bear at
the top the tell-tale label, “TIMES.” Mr. Leigh appeared personally
before the board of education, offering to put a copy of this book into
the hands of every student orator. He was backed by a committee,
including Chandler of the “Times” and Haldeman of the Better America
Federation, who offered a prize of fifteen hundred dollars, or “a de
luxe summer tour of the Mediterranean country,” for the best oration by
any high school student using this book and its references as source
material. A liberal representative on the school board objected, saying
that the students should have an opportunity to hear both sides. Mr.
Leigh said that he had done all the research work. The board member
answered: “Our students are trained to do their own research work.” And
Mrs. Dorsey sat there and did not say one word in defense of her school
system!

Reactionary teachers are appointed for the express purpose of repressing
originality and independence in the students. What are their standards
and ideals was charmingly revealed by one of them who was discussing a
certain pupil with a friend of mine. This pupil was a “leader,” said the
teacher; “I know she’s a good leader—you give her something to do and
she’ll do it beautifully.” The consequences of such training are seen in
the so-called “Ephebian Society,” an organization formed to interest the
high school alumni in public service. The choicest of the high school
graduates are picked out each year, and this is a great honor—while you
are graduating. After that you discover it to be a farce; because the
members of the society meet and the authorities in control forbid them
to take up any vital subject whatever. The Ephebians meet in the rooms
of the board of education, and are permitted to spend their time raising
money for the Travelers’ Aid Society, or superintending the Newsboys’
Christmas Dinner! I talked with this year’s president of the society,
Lee Payne; they will never get him again, he said.

This same young man told me of his experiences when he was selected to
deliver the valedictory of his class. He asked to have a liberal teacher
as his guide, but was compelled to have a reactionary teacher. She
assigned to him a commonplace theme, and he rejected it, and wrote on
the subject of “Labor’s Right to a Share in Industry.” When he brought
in his address, the teacher refused to let him deliver it; it was “too
Bolsheviki,” she said, and told him that when he went into a garden he
must see the beautiful red roses, and not the thorns. She practically
rewrote the address for the student, and he took it off and wrote it
again. The controversy continued up to a day or two before commencement,
when the boy finally had to deliver an address which did not represent
his own convictions.

I have mentioned favoritism among the principals and teachers; needless
to say, also, that children who come from poor homes, and especially the
children of foreigners, are slighted. A boy came to see me, Clarence
Alpert by name, a sensitive lad, conscientious and idealistic; with
tears in his eyes he told me how he had been turned out of Lincoln High
School by the principal, Miss Andrus. I was familiar with the name of
this lady. In an address to the school assembly she had referred to
“that notorious disloyalist and traitor, Upton Sinclair.” I wrote a
letter to the lady in which I mentioned my support of the war—you may
find it in “The Brass Check,” pages 205-7. I served notice upon her that
she would make a retraction of her statements or face a libel suit, and
she preferred the former alternative.

The boy whom she had now expelled had refused to salute the flag. He was
a Socialist, and believed that the flag stood for capitalism. Miss
Andrus sent for him, and stormed at him; he was a Russian Jew, and she
knew his kind from her experience at Hull House. They were dirty, rotten
scoundrels; they were people with no ideals and no country; they were
cheap material, who could not be made into good citizens and were not
entitled to an education. Miss Andrus tried her best to get young Alpert
to name some of the teachers who had encouraged him in his ideas; the
boy was threatened with immediate dismissal if he refused to name them,
but in spite of the fact that he had “no ideals,” he stood firm! Finally
he was given three days in which to make up his mind and salute the
flag.

Then—so the boy explained to me—one of his teachers labored with him,
explaining to him that he was under a misapprehension about the flag. To
be sure it was used by capitalism at the present time, but that was only
because it had been stolen; in reality the flag stood for the highest
ideals ever conceived by mankind, and it was our business to preserve it
for those ideals, and to take it away from the exploiters and rascals.
Alpert agreed to that, and went back to Miss Andrus and told her that he
had realized his mistake, and that he was now ready to salute the flag
as she required. But she declared that he was a hypocrite and a coward,
and should not stay in the school. I went to a friend of mine, a wealthy
man who happens to be a liberal. He called up a member of the school
board, who went to see Miss Andrus; so in two or three days the boy was
restored to school, from which he has since been graduated.

The schools are starting in this fall with what they call “codified
patriotism”; a whole outfit of flummery contrived by the American Legion
and the professional hundred percenters. The flag must be exactly at the
top of the staff, and you must raise it briskly, and lower it slowly and
reverently; you must raise your hat with your right hand, and women must
put their right hand over the heart. The legislature has passed a bill,
requiring that American history shall be taught “from the American
viewpoint”; no longer is it to be taught from the viewpoint of truth!
The children are to learn that Alexander Hamilton was a good American,
but the soft pedal will be put on Thomas Jefferson. They will not be
taught that the Mexican War was a disgraceful foray of greed, and that
Abraham Lincoln denounced it in Congress. Instead, they will be taught
all about the “Red” menace—with the columns of the “Times” for source
material. At last commencement time at least six addresses by students,
dealing with this subject, were featured by the “Times” in its radio
service, which is devoutly followed by hundreds of thousands of
wage-slaves in our community. All these addresses, of course, had been
carefully censored; one or two of them were “repeated by request,” and
the announcement was made that you could have a printed copy of them by
application to the “Times.”




                              CHAPTER XII
                         THE SCHOOLS OF MAMMON


What becomes of the children under this regime of the Black Hand? I have
talked with scores of teachers, and their testimony is unanimous, that
the children’s minds are on anything in the world but study. I choose
the great “L. A. High,” because that is where the children of the rich
attend. One parent, a woman of refinement and sense, has tried to keep
the tastes of her daughter simple and wholesome, but she tells me it is
impossible, because home influence counts for nothing against the
overwhelming collective power of the mass. The child comes home thrilled
with excitement, telling of what the other girls have; and she must have
what they have, or her happiness is ruined. It is all money; their ideal
is the spending of money, their standard is what things cost. I know a
lad, who tells me gravely that a fellow can’t have anything to do with
girls these days; they have no interest in you but for the money you
spend on them, and unless you are rich you cannot “go the pace.” About
this school you will see the automobiles parked for blocks; and, of
course, the youngsters who drive these cars are the social leaders, they
run the school affairs, and they get the girls.

The schools are given up to athletic excitements and “assemblies”; “Aud
Calls,” the students term them—that is, calls to the auditorium. They
come to practice cheering; they follow the cheer leader, who tells them:
“That wasn’t loud enough. Now give one for the team.” The young people
come out from these affairs trembling with excitement, and they have no
mind for their studies the rest of that day. Out in the halls are
students waving balloons which they have bought in the bookstore; on
athletic occasions, you see, it looks so lovely if everybody in the
bleachers is waving toy balloons with the school colors. They will just
get settled in class with their toy balloons, when there comes a call
for “fire drill.” Or if such diversions are lacking, the pretty young
things take out their vanity boxes and proceed to powder their noses and
smear red paint on their lips, while the poor unhappy teachers are
trying to put something into their silly heads. I have walked through
the corridors of a high school and counted a dozen of the young things
performing these toilet operations while chatting with their beaux.

How can the teachers combat such forces? There is only one way, and that
is by making the studies interesting, by taking up live topics, which
awaken the initiative of the students, and reveal to them the delights
of thinking. Several teachers have tried to do this, and the stories of
what happened to them are amusing; but unfortunately I cannot tell the
stories, because each would identify a teacher, and no teacher dares
take that risk! I can tell about a girl who wanted to write a thesis on
“The Social Motive in American Literature.” Here was a real subject—but
the principal of the school forbade it.

Also I can tell how, during the war, seven high schools took part in a
debate: “Resolved, that the nations of the world should adopt the
program of the League to Enforce Peace.” You can look back now and see
that it was our going into the war blindfolded, our utter failure to
know anything about the issues of the peace, that made the great tragedy
of Europe. Do not get this League to Enforce Peace confused with
pacifist organizations like the Peoples’ Council; this was a perfectly
respectable organization, with ex-President Taft as president! But Mr.
Jack Bean, a member of the school board, rushed to the “Times” with the
charge that the high schools of Los Angeles were carrying on propaganda
for immediate peace! The “Times” took it up, and for three days
published scare articles accusing two students, Lee Payne and Mildred
Ogden, of being pro-German. Young Payne assures me that their only
mention of Germany in the entire debate was to quote President Taft’s
statement that if the program of the League to Enforce Peace had been in
action in 1914, Germany would not have dared to begin the war. But the
solemn asses on the board passed a resolution, solemnly forbidding the
debating of peace; and the “Times” solemnly printed their resolution
under the caption: “Win the War!”

How far the Black Hand is willing to go in this program of cutting out
the brains of the school children you may judge by the fact that in 1921
Assemblyman Greene introduced, and the Better America Federation tried
to jam through the state legislature, an act providing for the expulsion
from the schools of “any teacher who shall disparage to a pupil in the
school where said teacher is employed, any provision of the Constitution
of the United States of America, or who shall orally make to such pupil
any argument or give to such pupil any written or printed argument in
favor of making any change in any provision of said Constitution.” And
this, you understand, in face of the fact that the Constitution itself
provides for its amendment, and has been quite legally and
constitutionally amended no less than nineteen times in our history!
Think of a school teacher being forbidden by law to discuss with a pupil
the desirability of an amendment prohibiting child labor!

A still more curious incident occurs while I am finishing this book.
There is in Los Angeles an organization called the Young Workers’
League, an educational society of the Communists; they held a debate on
the subject of Communism versus Capitalism, and not being able to get
anybody to defend capitalism, they appointed their own speakers, who
naturally didn’t do it very ardently. Three lads, one of them a high
school student, the other two just graduated, attended the meeting and
found themselves dissatisfied with this defense; they rose up and said
they could do better, and the result was the planning of a debate. The
Young Workers’ League hired a hall, and the three students spent a good
part of their summer vacation preparing for the contest. Two or three
days before it came off, the Young Workers’ League distributed
announcement cards in the high schools, erroneously referring to the
students as “three representatives of a high school debating society.”
Immediately thereafter the one high school student was informed by
Principal Dunn of the Polytechnic High School that he must not take part
in the affair. Mr. Dunn did not take this action on his own initiative,
he explained, but under instructions from Mrs. Dorsey, who had
investigated the matter.

On the afternoon of the day set for the debate, the secretary of the
Young Workers’ League appealed to me. Being interested in the cause of
free speech, I went to see Mr. Robert Odell, attorney and president of
the school board. After hearing my account of the matter, Mr. Odell said
that the only objection he could think of was that the debate might not
be fair, the audience might be packed against the students. My answer
was that I would agree to act as chairman, and see that there was no
interruption of the speakers. Mr. Odell agreed to ask Mrs. Dorsey to see
me immediately.

It was then four o’clock in the afternoon, and I called on the
superintendent, and listened while she explained to me at great length
that the schools could not under any circumstances permit students to
represent them in public debates unless the students had been selected
by the schools. In reply I assured Mrs. Dorsey that I agreed with her
absolutely; but if that was all the school authorities wanted, why not
require the high school student to state to the audience that he spoke
as an individual, and without authorization from his school? I offered
as chairman of the debate to make this announcement with the utmost
explicitness.

I pointed out to Mrs. Dorsey the singular position in which her schools
would be placed by the preventing of this discussion. A large audience
would be sent from the hall convinced that the authorities were afraid
to let their students face the arguments of the Communists. The students
would have to meet Communists in political life, so why not let them
practice while in school? Mrs. Dorsey gave me her answer, and I
understood it to be that if I would make the announcement as promised,
the school authorities would not concern themselves with the debate in
any way. I then got the three students together and gave them this
information. They reported themselves as anxious to debate, and greatly
disappointed at the outcome; but they were not willing even to come upon
the platform without first having talked again with their school and
college superiors. They would not go into details; but evidently
something had been said to them which had taught them caution. Said one
of them, significantly: “You know, Mr. Sinclair, the schools can get
along without us very easily if they want to.”

Then I tried to arrange for the affair to come off two weeks later, and
wrote to the school authorities. What happened between the authorities
and the students I do not know; one of the latter, in a letter to me,
apologized because he could not “go to the heart of it.” He added: “This
much I can tell you—that the determining factor in this case is the
Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association.” That the lads were wise in
keeping out of the debate was shown by the fact that I received from
Mrs. Dorsey a special delivery letter, repudiating the understanding of
the matter which I had got from her. Said Mrs. Dorsey: “You pressed for
assurance that the boys would not be punished by school authorities if
they took part in the debate. This assurance I declined to give, stating
again that the schools were not a party to the debate and must not,
therefore, be involved in any program of arrangements therewith.” So
there you have the lady!

At the hour that I was chasing about Los Angeles, interviewing school
authorities and trying to save this debate, two enormous bruisers were
pummeling each other into insensibility at the Polo Grounds in New York
City. One was the champion bruiser of North America, and the other was
the champion bruiser of South America, and the two Americas held their
breath, awaiting the outcome. That was entirely respectable; that did
not threaten the capitalist system, so no one stopped the pummeling, and
no one stopped the school children of Los Angeles from reading the
newspaper bulletins about the great event. But here were three serious
students who were not interested in bruisers; three self-supporting boys
had put in all their spare time during vacation, preparing to defend the
faith of the schools; and the school superintendent of the Merchants’
and Manufacturers’ Association steps in and frightens these boys into
silence, and disappoints an audience of a thousand working people who
have assembled for an intellectual treat. Such is “culture” under the
Black Hand!




                              CHAPTER XIII
                           THE TAMMANY TIGER


You shake your head and say: “I had no idea of such things; yes,
Southern California must be very bad indeed!” But I beg you not to fool
yourself in that way. Southern California is exactly the same as the
rest of industrial America. In the course of this book we shall visit
the Bay Cities of California, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley; also
Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, in the far Northwest. We
shall visit a number of cities scattered across the continent—Spokane,
Butte, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit; on
the Atlantic coast we shall visit New York, Boston, Worcester,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington. We shall have glimpses of many
towns, and of the rural schools in many states; also we shall not
overlook the private schools and the big “prep” schools, where our
youthful aristocracy is made ready for the gladiatorial combats and the
social intrigues of college.

In all these regions we shall find the plutocracy in control of business
and politics; and we shall find the very same interests, and as a rule
the very same individuals, in control of the schools. Whether or not
they use the methods of the Black Hand depends purely and simply upon
one question—to what extent the subject classes are attempting to
protest. If the subject classes make no protest, there is no violence by
the master class. If the subject classes attempt to protest, then there
is whatever amount of violence is necessary to hold them down.

I begin with New York City, because that is the headquarters of our
financial, and therefore of our intellectual life. It is from New York
that we are controlled, both in body and in mind, whether we have any
idea of it or not. As it happens, I know New York and its schools at
first hand, having spent my boyhood and youth in the city.

The Black Hand of the metropolis is known as Tammany Hall; and under its
shadow I went to school, and also to college—a free, public college,
full of Tammany professors. In my home the father of the family was
drinking himself to death; it was Tammany saloon-keepers who sold him
the liquor, it was Tammany politicians and a Tammany police force which
guarded these saloons while they defied a dozen different laws. In that
city hundreds of thousands of children were wondering, just as I
wondered, why all powers of the state were used for their destruction,
instead of for their aid. With the dope-rings and the bootleggers
flourishing as they are today, there must be ten times as many children
asking this question; and with exceptions so few as to be hardly worth
mentioning, all the power of the schools and the colleges, as well as of
the pulpit and the press, is devoted to keeping these children from
finding out. They kept me from finding out until I had entirely come out
from under both the physical and the intellectual control of the Black
Hand of New York.

Tammany Hall is an old-style pirate crew, wearing modern clothing and
operating systematically at looting the richest of all modern cities.
Its symbol is the Tiger. In the days of my boyhood people still
remembered Tammany as it was run by Tweed, who carried off a great part
of its cash and sold a great part of its belongings. In my day the chief
was a grown-up gangster and bruiser by the name of Richard Croker, who
stated to a committee of the state legislature, “I am working for my
pocket all the time.” His method was to make systematic collections from
the brothels and gambling-dives and saloons; also, of course, from the
contractors who wanted to charge half a dozen prices for the paving of
streets and the removing of the garbage, and other jobs for which a city
has to pay.

Even in my day the Tammany chieftains, like other successful bandits,
were beginning to grope their way toward respectability. Every bandit in
America wishes to become respectable—the test of respectability being
that you get a hundred times as much loot. The financiers of Wall
Street—the banks and insurance companies and the New York Central
Railroad, which were organized as the Republican party and controlled
“upstate”—used to fight the Tammany machine year after year, and be
beaten, for the simple reason that Tammany controlled the polling places
in the East Side slums, and distributed free coal to the poor in winter
and free ice in summer, and therefore could count upon loyal “repeaters”
and ballot-box staffers at election time. During my youth, the
financiers, finding that they could not oust the Tiger, came to terms
with it; such men as Whitney and Ryan, the backers of Tammany, were
making so many tens of millions out of traction steals that they left
the police graft as small change to their political subordinates.

I had an opportunity to observe this transformation at first-hand, for
the reason that part of the profits were at my disposal. A friend of my
boyhood was founder and president of a big financial concern, which
wanted to come into New York. He went to the chiefs of Tammany, and took
one of them for his New York manager, and distributed generous blocks of
stock to Croker and his henchmen. At once his concern became the
official house for that class of business, and the word went out that
every politician and every city employe must patronize it. I remember as
a lad sitting at luncheon with this friend, hearing him denounce the
evil-minded men who criticized our business leaders, the master minds of
our country; then presently the conversation changed, and this friend
told me how he had just obtained the nomination of one of his managers
as state treasurer, and how much he was paying to the campaign fund of
the Democratic party, expecting to get it back many times over in the
form of business with the state.

Today the chiefs of Tammany Hall are great financiers, and the efforts
of the Republican party to win elections in New York City are largely
formal. How completely the two parties are one, you realize the instant
there is prospect of a Socialist candidate being elected. Immediately
the leaders of the two old parties get together and agree upon a ticket,
and their watchers at the polls unite to slug the “Reds” and stuff the
ballot boxes. Afterwards, when the Socialists collect evidence of these
crimes, the Democratic officials of the city and the Republican
officials of the state unite in doing nothing about it. And so the Black
Hand rules New York.




                              CHAPTER XIV
                             GOD AND MAMMON


The education of a million children, and the control of twenty-five
thousand teachers in the metropolis, is entrusted to a school board of
seven people. The president of this board is a leading real estate
operator; the retired president, still a member of the board, is a
manufacturer of chemicals, who profiteered extensively during the World
War; the next member is a manufacturer of cigars; the next is a leading
real estate operator; the next is the private physician to the mayor of
the city; the next is a woman of wealth and leisure, who represents the
Tammany machine; the last is a lawyer. As always, you will note that
there is not one educator on the board. There are few who know anything
about education; but all know about business—especially those kinds of
business which are transacted with school boards.

What are those kinds of business? To be able to pick the location of
handsome new schools is worth a fortune to real estate interests; and
that this is regularly done in New York is not my charge, but that of
the comptroller of the city. To be able to determine the placing of
contracts for school buildings and supplies is worth a fortune to any
member of a political machine; and I talked with a former clerk of the
school board, who told me he had seen so much graft that he had run away
from the sight. I do not mean that this Tammany school board personally
carries off the money, as it did in the days of Tweed; the method now is
“honest graft”—that is, the placing of school contracts with companies
in which your wife’s relatives and the members of your gang are
interested. The amount to be expended in New York amounts to a hundred
million dollars a year, and Tammany gets it all. At least four of the
members of the board are “dummies,” having no function save to vote as
the machine directs. All of them are Democrats, and the majority are
Catholics; that is to say, the educating of a million American children
is in the hands of people who teach that public education is a crime
against God.

So it comes about that the principal indictment of this Tammany regime
is not the money it spends, but the money it withholds. New York is the
wealthiest city in the world; the masters of the city have money for
palatial town houses, for country estates many square miles in extent,
with homes as big as summer hotels; they have money for private yachts
as big as ocean liners, and for luxurious motor cars by the tens of
thousands; but they have no money to provide a decent education for the
children of the poor. While their own children go to elegant private
schools, the children of the poor are herded into dark, insanitary
fire-traps, some of them seventy-five years of age; and even of these
there is an insufficiency! Ever since my boyhood the refusal of New York
City to accommodate the children who clamor for an education has been
the blackest crime of the Tammany ruffians. At present one-third of the
children are on “part time”; that is, they are turned out of school
after two or three hours, to make room for another relay. The rest of
the day they pick up the vices of the streets; and if they are made into
young criminals, the city is ready and able to build whatever jails may
be necessary.

Two years ago a committee of women representing a score of civic
organizations—the Women’s Municipal League, the Women’s Department of
the National Civic Federation, the Civitas Club of Brooklyn, the Women’s
City Club, the League of Catholic Women, etc.—made a careful study of
forty of the school buildings of New York City; they reported that
twenty out of these forty were fire-traps, old wooden buildings with
narrow stairways and no fire escapes. Sanitation was reported “bad” and
“wretched” in twenty-one of these schools, and “fair” in eleven more.
Twenty-one out of thirty-six were in need of repairs, twenty-seven had
only dark basement playgrounds, and so on. I quote a few phrases, just
to give you the flavor of these reports:

  Boys’ toilets terrible; no basins and towels.... Toilets old and in
  bad condition; foul air unavoidable.... Plumbing too old to operate,
  inadequate and unsanitary; few basins and no towels.... Garbage dump
  nearby, inexcusable menace to health and comfort of the children....
  Twelve toilets for twelve hundred boys, old, bad conditions, bad odor.
  No repairs in years, furniture and woodwork almost falling to
  pieces.... Fearfully dilapidated; paint and repairs needed on walls;
  stairs worn down to danger point.... Buildings so old as to be beyond
  repair, should be abandoned.... Insufficient lighting and ventilation;
  two rooms with only one window, eight rooms with only two windows....
  Fire escapes incomplete and badly constructed.... Wooden buildings, no
  fire escapes reported.

These reports were given wide publicity; the ladies waited six months,
over the summer vacation, and then came back to see what had been done.
Out of twenty-three buildings reported dangerous as to fire conditions,
twenty remained unchanged. Only two out of twenty-two schools had made
any improvement as to provisions for the comfort of the teachers. As
regards sanitation, fourteen had been improved, twenty-three had not
been changed; and so on. How much the public authorities were concerned
about such matters was shown by the experience of the Teachers’ Union,
which prepared for an exhibit of the Public Health Association a series
of posters and charts showing the physical condition of the schools.
“Over nine hundred thousand children suffer from lack of a good
ventilation system,” declared one of these posters. “No soap, no water,
no towels,” declared another; and so on. Privately the nurses of the
Health Department at this show all admitted that the posters represented
the truth; but for three days the man who was then commissioner of
health and the man who is now commissioner of health sought desperately
to compel the Teachers’ Union to remove these posters; failing in this,
the publicity agencies of the show cut out all the press notices of the
teachers’ exhibits.

What this means to the teachers was set forth to me by the victims. One
was teaching a class of children on a dark stone staircase. Another was
teaching in a room on a level with the elevated railroad, with trains
coming and going on four tracks; she would have to stand in the middle
of the room and shout in order to be heard by all the pupils; and this
in a new school, just built! An inspector of some sort came along and
entered on his report, “room noisy”; the teacher was denied promotion,
for some reason which could not be explained, and it was over a year
before she could get the matter straightened out—the words “room noisy”
had been taken to mean that she did not maintain discipline!

Another woman was teaching physical culture in a dark basement, with
water always on the floor. She had seven classes every day, with fifty
children in each class; and the gas lights were so feeble that she could
not see the children she was supposed to be teaching. She said to one
boy: “Stand with your feet together.” He answered: “There’s a puddle of
water under me.” And when the physical culture classes got through with
this hole, it became a play-ground for the other children!

I am reluctant to introduce into this book any statements which may add
to the income of the Grand Imperial Kleagles of the Ku Klux Klan;
nevertheless, it is impossible to discuss school conditions in such
cities as New York, Boston, St. Louis and San Francisco without
mentioning the fact that we have in our country some ten or fifteen
million people, held by fear of eternal torment in subjection to a
priestly system, which repudiates democracy, repudiates freedom of
opinion and of teaching, repudiates everything we know as Americanism.
The Catholic church denies the power of the state over marriage and
divorce, and above all things else, it denies the right of the state to
educate the child. I am going to prove that in detail before I finish;
for the present I merely point out that in city after city we shall
encounter this influence.

The Catholics, you see, have their system of parochial schools, in which
the children are taught the priestly view of life. The church is
enormously wealthy, and some of these schools are, as buildings, very
fine. Manifestly, the priestly admonition to the faithful, to send their
children to church schools, will be much more effective if the public
schools are old and filthy and insanitary; and more especially if they
are fire-traps! Tammany Hall is a semi-religious institution, maintained
by the votes of Irish and Italian and Polish Catholics. Practically the
entire list of public officials are Catholics—and this includes the
majority of the public school board and of the superintending force. So,
to the natural greed of the plutocracy is added the power of priestly
intrigue. Mr. Stewart Browne, president of the Real Estate Board of New
York, attends every hearing of the Board of Estimate, and of other
public bodies having anything to do with appropriations for the schools.
His one function is to prevent appropriations; and with the secret help
of the Catholic prelates, he succeeds. Thus we observe, in full
operation in our modern age, the ancient alliance between the secular
arm and the spiritual; we see God and Mammon united to rivet the chains
of wage-slavery upon the poor.




                               CHAPTER XV
                              HONEST GRAFT


On the top of my desk as I work is a five-foot shelf of big envelopes,
containing data on the school systems of various cities. I take one
envelope, and sort out its contents, marking the material with the
letters, G, F, P, and R. That is to say, Graft, Favoritism, Propaganda
and Repression—the four products of education by Big Business. Under the
letter F in New York City I find the grievances of scores of teachers
with whom I talked. Their story was all the same: the system is brutal,
the system is rigid, the system is honeycombed with politics and
dishonesty.

It fell to my lot while in the city last year to take part in a public
debate with some of the school officials at the Civic Club. To my
statement that Tammany was running the schools, Examiner Smith rejoined
that all promotions in the system depended upon civil service
examinations—he knew, because he did the examining. But when he was
pinned down, he admitted that the twenty-six district superintendents,
the eight associate superintendents, and the thirty high school
principals were all excluded from the civil service list; and here, of
course, are the prizes for which everyone is striving. At that very
moment the schools were in an uproar because of the appointment to a
superintendent’s position of Mrs. Grace Forsythe, a Catholic lady who
had not even high school qualifications; also of Margaret McCooey,
sister of one of the Tammany bosses. Milo MacDonald, a Catholic, had
been appointed principal of a high school from the rank of ordinary
teacher; Henrietta Rodman told me of another teacher, a Catholic, who
took the examination for elementary principalship and failed, and was
appointed to a high school principalship. Other cases have happened
since.

These are a few out of scores of cases that were detailed to me. I was
told of a Catholic who took an examination, and then was permitted to
withdraw his papers and write up a new set at home. It is a matter of
record that Mr. Somers, member of the board of education—a
super-patriot, who called the Teachers’ Union treasonable—let off a
clerk of the school board who had been proven guilty of misappropriating
funds; also another who was charged with letting people get copies of
examination papers in advance, and of selling information to candidates.
Both these people, Catholics, got off with a fine of a few days’ pay,
and both are still in the system.

A form of “honest graft” which has been widely developed under this
Tammany regime is the writing of text-books by school officials. Many of
the text-books in use in the public schools of New York bear the names
of people in the system; in many cases they were written by teachers,
but officials have put their names upon them, and get the greater part
of the profits. The principals recommend these books for use, and the
board of superintendents adopts them. Former Superintendent Maxwell had
a large income from books published by the American Book Company which
he himself had not written; and a number of the district superintendents
get their share. The New York “Globe,” discussing the case of Maxwell,
showed how in his position he had the power to increase the sales of his
own books; and this same power is possessed by all the gang. I was told
of one head of a department with a book to sell, who got himself
transferred three times to different parts of the city—starting in the
High School of Commerce in Manhattan, from there to the Commercial High
School of Brooklyn, and then to Long Island—and in each place he took
with him his commercial arithmetic. The teachers did not want it, but in
every school the other texts were thrown out and the new one introduced.
All over New York—and all over America, as we shall find—there are
school basements and cupboards filled with discarded text-books, or new
text-books which are so bad that the teachers will not use them.

Needless to say, many of the Tammany superintendents and principals are
ignorant men, utterly unfitted for scholastic duties. I look back on my
own days in the College of the City of New York, and recall the comical
old boys whom the Tammany machine appointed to teach me literature and
philosophy and Latin, and other high-brow subjects. Therefore, I was not
surprised to be told of a superintendent who talks about “algebray,” and
who says: “As I was a-saying,” etc. The French teachers find amusement
in the efforts of superintendents to pretend that they know French. I
talked with a charming lady of Spanish birth, who attempted to get by
one of these examiners, but he reported her French as “very bad”; she
“ran all her words together.” Anyone who has listened to a Frenchman
talk will appreciate the humor of this comment; one might say that the
first qualification for speaking good French is to run your words
together to the utmost possible extent. This lady went to see Professor
Cohn, head of the department of French of Columbia University, and one
of our leading French scholars. He reported that she spoke French “like
a native,” and took occasion to add that he knew the examiner in
question, and knew him to be ignorant of French.

This lady got her appointment; but presently she discovered that the
head of her French department didn’t know any French; necessarily, her
pupils discovered it also; and that made her unpopular with her
superior. She was refused promotion upon the ground that she was “a
non-conformist.” She told me of her adventures in trying to get
something explicit from the examiners; she called several times upon
Examiner Smith, the same gentleman who debated with me at the Civic
Club. Mr. Smith was in a hurry to catch a train, and asked the lady to
tell him her story while he was washing his hands in a lavatory. She was
so fastidious as to think that was not quite a courteous examination!

I talked with a young man, who had been for many years in the system,
and with whom they had not been able to find fault; his ratings had been
“double A” from the beginning of his career. But what chance had the
system to hold an energetic man, who saw all promotion depending upon
favoritism and graft, and saw himself condemned to a subordinate
position, taking orders from pompous ignoramuses? The desirable
positions in the system are few—the Board of Estimate sees to that!—and
the struggle for them is tense, and the way of promotion is the way of
intrigue. Here were people giving courses to teachers, instructing them
how to pass examinations for promotion—and then these same people
conducting the examinations! Here were examiners with agents out touting
for them! (You see, they teach what is called “salesmanship” in the New
York schools; and evidently, they practice what they teach!) My young
friend went out into the business world, and is making a good living. He
explained the difference this made in his life; when he met business
men, he was an equal among equals, but as a teacher he had had to
tremble before a board of examiners who could not have passed one of
their own examinations.

“I do not know of a school system in the United States which is run for
the benefit of the pupils; they are all run for the benefit of the
gang”; thus District Superintendent Tildsley, debating with me before
the Civic Club. Dr. Tildsley added that by “the gang” he meant the
superintendents, the principals and the teachers. It was kind of him to
add the teachers, but some of them in the audience did not appreciate
his compliment. There is quite a group in the New York schools who are
really concerned for the children, and feel no sense of solidarity with
the bigoted autocracy which at present holds the power.

“It is the duty of a teacher who knows of anything wrong in the school
system to complain to her superiors about it,” said the pious Dr.
Tildsley; and there came a chorus from all over the room: “Yes, and lose
her job!” Dr. Tildsley was pained by the suggestion that a teacher might
encounter trouble as result of just complaints, made at the proper time
and in the proper manner. As it happened, however, I had spent that
morning in the home of Mr. James F. Berry, a teacher of mathematics at
DeWitt Clinton High School, who had been for twenty-three years in the
system, and took seriously the idea that a teacher has responsibility
for teaching conditions. Mr. Berry made complaint against the grossest
kind of evils in the school—cruelty to pupils, dishonesty, and acts of
injustice by those in authority. As a result, his career in the system
was one long misery. He was denied promotion to which he was justly
entitled; and he put in my hands a little diary, in which he had kept
the record of two decades of struggle for his rights. I glance through
it and find entries such as this:

  Mr. Tildsley exemplified today his arbitrary and disagreeable way of
  dealing with those under him, by making a perfectly groundless
  accusation against me. It was easy to disprove, and then he virtually
  apologized, though with no sign of regretting his accusation. I have
  observed this practice of sweeping statements by him, and if they are
  not promptly disproved one feels that he takes them for granted as
  true and admitted, and such an impression does not make for good-will.

I shall before long show you how at this same DeWitt Clinton High School
there has been established with official sanction an elaborate system of
espionage; a teacher drawing full salary devotes the greater part of his
time to training pupils to spy upon other teachers, and when these
pupils bring reports of unorthodox ideas and utterances, the pupils are
praised for a meritorious service. But in the case of Mr. Berry I find
that the disposition to report genuine evils is described by Dr.
Tildsley as “a tendency to tale-bearing which lessens efficiency!”

Why Dr. Tildsley did not like the “tale-bearing” of Mr. Berry is easy to
understand. In 1914 Dr. Tildsley was principal of the DeWitt Clinton
High School, and when he was moved on to a higher position, two of his
favorite teachers in the school, who were in line for principalships,
and who have since been made principals, took five hundred and
twenty-five dollars out of the “general organization fund” of the
school—that is, money contributed by the students for student
activities—and used it to purchase a silver service which was presented
to Dr. Tildsley. The source of this money was kept a secret, but Mr.
Berry learned about it, and wrote to the president of the board of
education, pointing out that this was a clear violation of the law, as
well as a great injustice to the pupils, most of whom were poor and many
self-supporting. Had not one teacher been turned out of the system for
accepting a box of candy from her pupils? A scandal was threatened, but
it was hushed up, the newspapers co-operating by not publishing a line.
Dr. Tildsley returned the silver service, which was sold, I am informed,
to George Sylvester Viereck. For nine years Mr. Berry has been
persecuted because of this affair; while Dr. Tildsley was promoted to be
deputy boss of the gang!

They have a method of punishing teachers which they learned from the
police department in New York. Every now and then some policeman takes
it upon himself to enforce a law which his superiors are using as a
means of extortion; they will shift this policeman to the Bronx, and a
month later they will send him to Brooklyn, and a month later to Staten
Island, and so on—the poor wretch spends the greater part of his life on
street cars, getting to his job and back. In the case of a teacher they
wait just long enough for her to get settled in a new home, and then
they move her again. It is something understood by all teachers that
anyone who opposes the principal will find herself “transferred,” or
lowered in ratings, or will have hard classes, or longer hours with no
more pay. Said one to me: “Any teacher who brings charges against a
principal is ruined. It matters nothing what the charges are: stealing
school funds, or beating the pupils, or offensive advances of a sexual
nature. All that happens is the principal denies the charges, and the
matter is dropped; a teacher’s testimony counts for no more than the
testimony of a Negro in the South.”

New York is not an “open shop” city, and so the teachers have a union.
Its leaders suffer discrimination when it comes to promotion, but that
does not break the union down. As part of the campaign against it, the
authorities maintain a “yellow” union; that is, an organization which is
supposed to represent the teachers, but can be controlled by the gang.
The name of this is the “Teachers’ Council.” It purports to be a
representative body, but the teachers do not vote directly, they vote
for delegates from all organizations recognized by the board of
education; and the insiders will belong to as many as ten or a dozen
organizations, and will have a vote in each. The machine has its
henchmen in all the key positions, and the surest way to promotion in
the system lies in the rendering of this kind of Judas service. This
“Teachers’ Council” is accustomed to attack the reputations of union
teachers, and never give them opportunity to reply; the slander,
whatever it is, will be quoted in the “Times” as representing the
opinion of “twenty-five thousand organized teachers.” We are in New York
now, not in Los Angeles, but you note that we still have our “Times,”
and it is exactly the same kind of “Times”—it will publish any falsehood
about an independent man or woman, and will give the victim no chance to
answer.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                       A LETTER TO WOODROW WILSON


Needless to say, the first duty of this Tammany school board is to
enforce loyalty to the plutocracy; and, needless to say, this
constitutes “patriotism” and “religion.” Mr. Aaron Dotey, Chief Spy of
the DeWitt Clinton High School, brought in a report last year, charging
a school teacher with having said that “patriotism is a murderer’s
occupation and a traitor’s cloak.” It did not occur to Mr. Dotey that
this might not be the teacher’s fault. The Chief Spy should have
mentioned that a hundred and fifty years or so ago a leading Englishman
of letters, a prize old Tory, made the statement that “patriotism is the
last refuge of a scoundrel.”

The hounding of the teachers by the scoundrels began at the very
outbreak of the war. First, there was the “mayor’s pledge,” which they
all were required to swear; this not being enough, there was another
pledge contrived by the board of education. All the teachers were loyal,
but not all of them were willing to swear away their right to think.
There were eighty-seven conscientious objectors to the “loyalty
pledges.” A number of these subsequently served in the army and made
distinguished records; but intention to enlist did not save them from
persecution at the outbreak of the war, nor did their war-records save
them from persecution after they came back.

In the fall of 1917 there occurred an outbreak at the DeWitt Clinton
High School. Dr. Tildsley arbitrarily lengthened the school day, when
already the teachers and pupils were overworked. A deputation of pupils
waited upon the board of education, to protest against the proposed
measure, and were received by John Whalen, board member and prominent
Tammany chieftain, who settled the matter as follows: “I want it clearly
understood that neither the pupils nor the teachers will be allowed to
run the schools. And I want you to understand that if you pupils don’t
go back and behave yourselves I’ll close down all the schools. Do you
understand?” The pupils went back and reported, and there was the
beginning of a strike; also there was a meeting of the teachers of
DeWitt Clinton, attended by more than a hundred, who adopted the
following so-called “Whalen Resolution”:

  First:—That it is the sense of this meeting that John Whalen’s
  assertion is contrary to the modern spirit of true democracy.

  Second:—That remarks of this type and threats to close the high
  schools are detrimental to good discipline and good teaching.

  Third:—It is the sense of this meeting that the autocratic assertion
  of John Whalen is subversive of the proper spirit underlying our
  educational institutions.

  Fourth:—Be it finally resolved:

  That the best interests of school administration demand the cordial
  recognition of the classroom teacher as a most vital influence in the
  educational system.

This, of course, was a direct challenge to the power of the gang; a
revolt which must be put down at all hazards. Superintendent Tildsley
came up to ascertain the names of the ring-leaders, and especially of
the one who had drafted those incendiary words. The spy department was
ready with the information; the criminal was Samuel Schmalhausen, a
Jewish Socialist, twenty-nine years of age. It was resolved to drive
Schmalhausen out of the system, and with him two other Socialist
teachers, Mufson and Schneer. The spy department undertook to get
something on these teachers without delay; and we are now going to hear
a little story, which shows in detail exactly how a school spy
department works.

In a day or two word was brought to Dr. Paul, principal of the school,
that Mr. Schmalhausen had assigned to his pupils a theme for a
composition, as follows: “Write an open letter to Woodrow Wilson,
commenting frankly, within the limits of your knowledge, upon his
conduct of the war against the German government.” Almost certainly some
East Side Jewish boy would make that an occasion for disrespectful
expressions; so Dr. Paul sent the head of his English department, Miss
Garrigues, to Mr. Schmalhausen’s room. This lady rushed up in breathless
haste and caught the pupils in the act of turning in their themes; she
took possession of them, without giving Mr. Schmalhausen a chance to see
them, and delivered them to Dr. Paul, who went over them. Among
seventy-six themes he discovered one that justified his hopes—a bitter,
sneering letter, written by a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy.

Dr. Paul, being skilled in intrigue, saw how this thesis would “go” in
the capitalist press; his venom bubbled over and he exclaimed: “Now I’ve
got him!” At least, Miss Garrigues on the witness stand testified that
he said that. Dr. Paul denied it with asperity, and when asked to
explain how Miss Garrigues could have thought she heard it, he described
her as “an emotionally energized lady on occasions.” Poor Miss
Garrigues—she was new to public life, and did not realize that the first
essential to success is to be a fluent and tactful liar.

Dr. Tildsley came, and he also recognized the opportunity. He summoned
Schmalhausen, and first pinned him down to the fact that he had written
the “Whalen resolution”; then he set for this sensitive minded and
idealistic young teacher an extremely cunning trap. You understand, Mr.
Schmalhausen had not yet seen the criminal theme; and Dr. Tildsley did
not let him see it now. He read him the first page of it—the first page
being mild, and all the outrageous statements being found in the latter
pages! So Dr. Tildsley trapped Mr. Schmalhausen into saying that he
would merely make some minor corrections of expression in the theme; at
least, Dr. Tildsley testified that that is what the young teacher
said—Mr. Schmalhausen denied it. Later on Dr. Tildsley, consulting the
rest of the gang, realized that his case did not look quite right, so he
went back to the school, and read the entire composition to Mr.
Schmalhausen, asking what would have been his action as a teacher in
such a situation. Mr. Schmalhausen undertook to mark the theme as he
would have marked it in the due course of his class work. His comments,
written along the margin of the theme, were as follows:

  Exaggerated, excessive emotionalism.... _Is there any sanity in this
  assertion?_... Do you take these remarks seriously?... For a
  thoughtful student this statement sounds irrational.... Recall
  President Wilson’s differentiation between the German Government and
  the German people.... Not accurately presented.... Foolish attitude
  historically.... Do you believe in its sincerity? (peace offer made by
  Germany).... Sorry to find this unintelligent comment in your work....
  Why did you write this?

Mr. Schmalhausen was suspended from his duties without pay, and in due
course was haled before a committee of the board of education. It is
interesting to note that the chairman of this committee was none other
than John Whalen, Tammany chieftain, who had started all the trouble by
threatening to close all the schools! I have before me the testimony at
the hearing, as published in pamphlet form by the Teachers’ Union. John
Dewey describes it as the most comic document of the age, so it will pay
us to read a few passages: first, the testimony of Miss Garrigues, as to
why she considered Mr. Schmalhausen’s theme “an unwise assignment.” Do
not fail to note from this passage the high standards of English
expression which prevail in the English department of New York’s biggest
high school:

  Q. May I ask why you considered it an unwise assignment? A. I think
  the reason was that it was a little bit, in the nature of the wording,
  inclined to lead boys who were either pacific, I think is the real
  trouble, or were unpatriotic—this boy unquestionably was unpatriotic,
  I think—to express themselves very freely, which I do not know whether
  it is very wise for boys of that age to do.

Also you will wish to hear Superintendent Tildsley upon this same grave
question. Dr. Tildsley was very sure that Schmalhausen had made a
mistake in assigning such a theme. He explained in detail why the boys
of the DeWitt Clinton High School were unfit persons to address
imaginary letters to Woodrow Wilson. He said:

  They are very much interested in the social life and the political
  life of this city; they are exceedingly fond of discussion and they
  have developed a rather high degree of critical ability and critical
  tendency, and the only thing that they like more than anything else I
  should say, is a discussion on social, political and economical
  topics; they are more interested in that than they are in being good
  or even than they are in athletics.

That students should be more interested in “a discussion on social,
political and economical topics” than they are in athletics, would be
recognized by any superintendent of schools in America as a state of
affairs full of menace to our institutions, and under no circumstances
to be tolerated. Cross-questioned further, Dr. Tildsley stated that he
would not think it right to let boys in the DeWitt Clinton High School
write on the negative of this topic: “We seek no selfish ends in this
world.” He would not consider it proper to let them write on the
negative of the topic: “Conscription is justifiable under a democracy.”
He would not think it was proper to permit them to write an essay on the
subject: “Revenue by bond issue or taxation.” After Dr. Tildsley had
made these emphatic statements, the cross-questioner sprang on him the
painful tidings that all three of these themes had been in the
examination papers of the DeWitt Clinton High School of the previous
week—officially adopted with the approval of his friend and admirer, the
“emotionally energized” Miss Garrigues of the English department!

Mr. Schmalhausen was on the stand for a couple of hours; and as you read
the testimony you recognize a man of culture and fine sensibility, a
teacher profoundly conscientious, with deep respect for the
personalities of his students. He told how he would have dealt with that
theme if it had come up in his class; he would have questioned the pupil
and showed him his ignorance, and tried to make him realize that his
ideas were wrong. Asked if he disagreed with the opinions expressed in
the theme, Mr. Schmalhausen replied:

  Oh, absolutely, from head to foot. The subject matter is offensive
  from every point of view. Part of it is irrational. Part of it is
  crude and violent, the whole thing is a wrong frame of mind, and in my
  discussion with Dr. Tildsley, with which I took up a lot of time, I
  tried to explain clearly what influences in that boy’s social and
  economical and home environment were responsible for some of his
  sentiments. So far as I was concerned there was no implication at all
  at any time that I ever accepted the thought of that letter.

Nevertheless, Mr. Schmalhausen was driven from the school system of New
York, and with him Mr. Mufson and Mr. Schneer. The offense of Mr.
Schneer was that he had given to some of his pupils a list of books,
with comments on their contents in the somewhat flowery style of a young
man who takes great literature with sudden and intense seriousness.
There were two hundred books listed, and a committee of the
Schoolmasters’ Association undertook to mark ten of them which were
especially offensive. One was Eltzbacher’s “Anarchism”—which turned out
upon investigation to be a work opposing Anarchism, written by a
non-Anarchist; poor Mr. Schneer had been trying to save his East Side
Jewish boys from the snares of the extremists! Another was Romain
Rolland’s “Jean Christophe,” one of the greatest novels and noblest
works of culture of our time. A third was listed as “Sinclair’s ‘The
Divine Fire.’” No one could guess why the committee should have objected
to this eminently respectable novel; it occurs to me that Mr. Schneer’s
failure to give the first names of his authors may have betrayed the
schoolmasters into thinking that he had endorsed a book by my wicked
self! I occasionally get letters intended for May Sinclair; so let me
state that the author of “The Divine Fire” lives in England, and is not
related to me, nor in any way to blame for my evil actions and
writings—except that she occasionally writes me letters approving them!




                              CHAPTER XVII
                     AN ARRANGEMENT OF LITTLE BITS


The expulsion of these three teachers was, of course, a personal triumph
for Mr. Aaron Dotey, Chief Spy of the DeWitt Clinton High School. The
activities of the “Dotey Squad,” as the spies and informers are termed,
were now extended to cover the entire system. The Chief Spy compiled a
card index, with detailed information about suspected teachers. I have
talked with some who have been privileged to inspect this catalogue, and
have seen on Mr. Dotey’s desk a dossier of clippings and reports a foot
high, relating to one group of rebel teachers in the system!

Mr. Dotey’s training for this work had been thorough; first, he was a
sheriff; then, becoming a teacher, he was put in charge of the “corridor
squad,” which has to do with discipline. He struck one pupil in the jaw
and knocked him down for talking in line; he was accustomed to summon
unruly pupils to his room and administer the “third degree,” calling
them foul names, shouting and storming at them in a voice which could be
heard all over the building, and which became a scandal throughout the
system. One of the crimes of Mr. Schmalhausen was that he had proposed a
program of student self-government, thus eliminating Mr. Dotey. To
complete the picture of this furious old bigot, I mention that he was
“converted” by his Catholic wife, which fact now puts him in line for a
big promotion.

The next teacher to fall a victim was Mr. Benjamin Glassberg, of the
Commercial High School of Brooklyn, who was notified that he was
suspended without pay. Mr. Glassberg’s hard luck was that a boy in his
class had asked him “whether or not Lenin and Trotsky were, in his
opinion, German agents or German spies.” I quote the exact words of Mr.
Glassberg’s answer, as sworn to by thirty-five boys in the class; eight
of these boys testified, and then the board got tired of hearing them,
and the testimony of the other twenty-seven was entered by
stipulation—that is, both sides agreed upon a statement of what the
twenty-seven would testify in substance. Mr. Glassberg’s reply was that:
“he did not think so, as Lenin and Trotsky had been busy circulating
propaganda literature against the war among the Germans, thereby
undermining their morale, and weakening their power in the war.”

Here was another Socialist teacher whom it was desired to “get,” and
this was the chance to “get” him. There were forty-three boys in the
class, and more than thirty were Jewish. The principal summoned before
him, one at a time, two Jewish boys and ten Gentile boys, and questioned
them as to what had happened in the class, trying to get them to say the
worst possible things against Mr. Glassberg. A stenographer was present
and took down what the boys said; then, according to the testimony of
one of the boys, a most eager opponent of Mr. Glassberg, the principal
“made an arrangement of little bits” of what the boys had said, and made
it into a statement. The boys were summoned several times—for a period
of eight weeks this coaching and rehashing of the charges went on, and
meantime Mr. Glassberg was suspended without pay, and could not get the
copy of the charges to which he was legally entitled! It finally became
necessary for his lawyers to apply to the Supreme Court for a writ of
mandamus, compelling the service of the charges upon Mr. Glassberg!

The statement, when finally prepared, was an obvious perversion of
everything which even the most hostile of the boys alleged. This was,
let remind you, a time when the principal news out of Soviet Russia was
“the nationalization of women”; and here was a teacher, questioned by
his students, and telling them the plain and obvious truth. Let me quote
a little more of the testimony—and please note that I am quoting from
the _stipulated_ testimony of thirty-five members of the class:

  Another boy in the class made a statement, though apparently rising to
  ask a question, to the effect that it must be that Lenin and Trotsky’s
  government was stronger with the people than the Kerensky government
  for the reason that it held on longer than the Kerensky government,
  and it could hardly be that the Bolsheviki were such thieves and
  cut-throats as represented if their government lasted so long. This
  boy’s statement Mr. Glassberg did not discuss at any length, because
  it was made at the end of the period, but did indicate in what he said
  that since the Lenin-Trotsky government had lasted longer than the
  Kerensky regime, this indicated that it must have considerable
  strength with the people. Another boy asked if information about the
  Bolsheviki was being withheld and Mr. Glassberg said that he was
  inclined to think so, and read certain questions which Senator Johnson
  had read in the Senate some time previous asking information about
  Russian conditions, and also referred to the fact that Colonel Robins
  of the Red Cross had been requested upon his return to this country by
  the State department, not to discuss the Russian situation, and also
  referred to a speech made by Major Thatcher of the Red Cross at a
  banquet in Boston at which he had defended the Bolsheviki from the
  attacks made upon them by some previous speakers.

Colonel Raymond Robins took the witness stand, and testified that upon
his return from Russia he had been requested by the State Department not
to discuss the Russian situation. Major Thatcher also took the stand,
and testified to the truth of what Mr. Glassberg had said about him. It
is interesting to note that the principal of the school informed some of
the boys who were to testify at the hearing that Major Thatcher, an army
officer of the highest standing, was “a criminal.” Also, a number of the
boys told how the principal had attempted to intimidate them before they
went upon the witness stand. To quote one case: “Do you know, boys, that
Mr. Glassberg was charged with conduct unbecoming a teacher; therefore
it means that you boys who are going to testify for Mr. Glassberg are
UN-AMERICAN.” The boy’s reply was: “Mr. Raynor, do you know that when we
are going to testify for Mr. Glassberg, we are going to tell what we
heard in our class, and no more. We are going to tell the truth.”

Mr. Glassberg’s record as a teacher was produced before the board. His
ratings during his entire five years had been the highest possible, this
applying both to discipline and to teaching. Nevertheless, he was driven
from the schools; and soon afterwards went Benjamin Harrow, whose crime
was that he advised his students to read a magazine article by Thorstein
Veblen. Also, according to the official statement of Superintendent
Tildsley, “his favorite reading is said to be the ‘Nation,’ the ‘New
Republic’ and the ‘Dial.’ He occupied a front seat at each session of
the Glassberg trial, and seemed to approve sentiments expressed in favor
of the Bolshevists.” In this same official document is given an idea of
the cultural level of the district superintendent in charge of all the
high schools of New York City; says Dr. Tildsley: “Mr. Harrow
recommended his pupils to read an article in the ‘Dial’ of February 22,
1919, by Thornstein Veller!” Mr. Harrow did not wait to be tried before
John Whalen and the rest of the thugs. He handed in his resignation,
with a blistering letter to Dr. Tildsley, asserting:

  You are using the school as a medium for conducting a campaign of
  propaganda in favor of the most reactionary tendencies of our day....
  In short, you have made the schools an unhappy place for any sensitive
  American who refuses to accept your own individual conception of what
  constitutes Americanism, who prefers rather to accept what the
  founders of this republic conceived to be the true American ideals.

Also, while dealing with teacher casualties, I must pay honor to Dr.
Arthur M. Wolfson, who was principal of the High School of Commerce, and
resigned as protest against this White Terror. Dr. Wolfson knew that he
was dealing with boys who came from Socialist homes, and he had
conceived it his duty as an educator to take a stand of neutrality in
the issues of the class struggle. He would teach his students the ideal
of freedom of discussion, and a hearing for both sides. For many years
he followed that program, and as a result there was in his school an
atmosphere of tolerance and fellowship unknown in other New York high
schools.

But it had been the custom when election time came round for the history
and civics department to take a straw ballot for the presidency; and
this time the dreadful discovery was made that three hundred and
fifty-four out of the two thousand students had voted for Debs! It was
proposed to tell this news in the school weekly, but the superintendent
in charge ordered this paper suppressed, and rebuked Dr. Wolfson for
taking the straw vote. Dr. Wolfson pointed out that the “Literary
Digest” was doing the same thing. Also, if the students were for Debs,
would it do any good to suppress the fact? Would it not be best to face
the fact and deal with it? A little later Dr. Wolfson got his orders
about Russia; no longer was there to be free discussion; he was to teach
one view and only one view—that is, the official propaganda of the young
secretaries of our State Department who, with their aristocratic Russian
wives, were conducting a private war against the Russian people without
authorization from Congress.

Later, Dr. Wolfson was ordered to enforce a rule forbidding the New York
“Call” to be carried in class-rooms or study-halls. So he wrote a
dignified letter to the board of superintendents, explaining: “Frankly,
during the last two or three years I have not felt free to follow the
intellectual habits of a lifetime.” Superintendent Ettinger came back
with a letter to the New York “Times,” declaring:

  I am very frank to confess that I dissent most heartily from the basic
  thesis set up by Principal Wolfson that it is the function of our
  schools to allow students and teachers to express their belief freely,
  to meet argument with argument, and not either overtly or covertly to
  suppress opinions which are held in honesty and in good faith.

It is not often that the gang is so frank as that, so we owe thanks to
Superintendent Ettinger. Wishing to give him all the fame to which he is
entitled, I mention that to a reporter of the New York “Call” he
declared that he would bar H. G. Wells from the school forums of New
York for having said that Lenin was a great man!




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                              THE LUSKERS


This campaign to make the schools safe for the plutocracy culminated in
the passage of the so-called “Lusk laws” at Albany. Senator Lusk was a
Republican machine politician, who accepted 137 pieces of silverware,
worth a couple of thousand dollars, from New York police detectives, for
whom he had got a salary raise. This did not put the Senator out of
business, nor did it interfere with his laws, which disgraced the
statute books of the state for four years. One of the laws was for the
purpose of suppressing the Rand School of Social Science. They had
already attempted this by a raid on the school and they now attempted it
by a law requiring all schools to apply for a license. The Rand School
refused to apply, and a long-drawn-out and expensive legal conflict
followed.[C]

-----

Footnote C:

  In “The Goose-step” it is stated that when the “Luskers” raided the
  Rand School they “threw the typewriters and the teachers down the
  stairs.” I am informed that this is an error; the throwing in question
  occurred at the office of the New York “Call,” the Russian People’s
  House, and other places. I talked the other day with a magazine writer
  who was present at the raid on the Russian People’s House, when a New
  York police detective ordered an inoffensive elderly Russian teacher
  to take off his eye-glasses, and then hit the man in the forehead with
  the butt of his revolver and crushed his skull. The offense of this
  elderly Russian was teaching algebra to other Russians.

-----

Another of the Lusk laws provided for the expulsion of any teacher who
“advocates a form of government other than the government of the United
States or of this state.” Please note that this law did not forbid
merely the advocacy of violent change, but also of peaceful change.
Interesting light was thrown on this during the debate at the Civic
Club, previously referred to in these chapters. Mr. Harry Weinberger
asked of Dr. Tildsley the question: “Did you ever, in your entire
experience in the school system, hear a teacher, either in school or out
of school, advocate the overthrow of the government by violence?” Dr.
Tildsley answered, “No.” The next question was: “Then what is the need
of the law?” Dr. Tildsley did not answer that; he could not very well
explain that the purpose of the law was to make it possible for
inquisitors, appointed by the state and by the school board, to summon
teachers without warning to a secret inquisition, to browbeat them and
try to trap them into dangerous admissions, then to give secretly to the
capitalist press false and garbled statements, to be spread broadcast
over the country, and then to refuse to the teachers any record of the
proceedings, or any protection against such outrages.

The Teachers’ Union issued resolutions denouncing this legislation, and
the bigotry and dishonesty displayed in its enforcement. Abraham
Lefkowitz, an active member of the Union, was summoned before Dr.
Tildsley and Superintendent Ettinger, to be questioned as to his
authorship of these resolutions. Superintendent Ettinger had issued an
official syllabus on the war, setting forth to all school teachers what
they were to teach. It was a compendium of what we now know to be the
knaveries of Allied propaganda, and included endorsement of universal
military training. In the course of the questioning of Lefkowitz, Dr.
Tildsley and Dr. Ettinger got into a wrangle as to whether universal
military service and universal military training were the same thing.
All this was taken down by a stenographer, and subsequently Mr.
Lefkowitz demanded a copy of the record; when he got it, he found that
it had been doctored, omitting a great number of the “raw” statements
made by Ettinger, which the superintendent realized would not look well
in print.

There was an open forum being conducted at the Commercial High School,
under the direction of the Rev. John Haynes Holmes. The authorities now
required that this open forum should submit a week in advance the names
of all proposed speakers. They barred Frank Tannenbaum, an East Side boy
who had gone to jail in 1913 as a result of a demonstration of the
unemployed, and who subsequently, as a student at Columbia University,
had made himself an authority on prison reform. They barred Lincoln
Steffens for the offense of having been President Wilson’s personal
investigator in Russia. Finally, some one asked Dr. Holmes a question
about Lenin, and he replied that he regarded Lenin as a great statesman.
For this they barred Dr. Holmes. Then came the Rev. Howard Melish,
prominent clergyman of Brooklyn, who praised Dr. Holmes and condemned
the board of education. After that the board issued a pledge, which must
be signed by all speakers. Among those who refused to sign it was Rabbi
Stephen S. Wise; and so the board closed the forum. As one of the
teachers said to me, “What they want people to lecture about is
Moonlight in Venice.”

This kind of thing had been going on in the New York school system for
five years when I visited the city in the spring of 1922. At this time
the state commissioner of education, in pursuance of the Lusk laws, had
appointed an “advisory council” to investigate suspected teachers and
deny them licenses. One of the members of this council was Archibald
Stevenson, fanatical attorney for the Luskers. Another was Conde B.
Pallen, editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia, and snooper-in-chief for
the National Civic Federation. Another was Finley J. Shepard, husband of
Helen Gould; you may read about this gentleman’s activities on behalf of
the plutocracy in two chapters of “The Goose-step,” entitled “The Helen
Ghouls” and “The Shepard’s Crook.” Another member was Hugh Frayne,
Catholic labor leader, who has climbed to power upon the faces of the
deluded wage-workers of New York.

The council was holding sessions at the Bar Association. I went up
there, hoping to attend and to tell you about it; but I could not even
learn in what room the sessions were being held. All I got to see was a
row of suspected teachers, humbly waiting their turn to be browbeaten.
And each morning I would read in the newspapers a relay of information,
supplied by the Chief Spy. One teacher had said that he “wouldn’t
believe atrocity stories unless they were given out by the government.”
Another teacher had said that “the Russians were happier now than they
had been under the Czar”; another that “Colonel Robins had not been
given a hearing”; another that “New York couldn’t be worse run if the
Germans were here”; another that “If we go to war I’ll run away and
spend a year in the North Woods.” Even school teachers sometimes joke,
you know, and I have already mentioned the fact that these teachers did
not run away. Mr. Garibaldi Lapolla served as an artillery officer in
France; and now he was one of those sitting on the bench, humbly waiting
his turn to be browbeaten! Chief Spy Dotey admitted that he had given
information against Mr. Lapolla to the Lusk committee!

Also, the Chief Spy issued a report full of charges against teachers.
The Teachers’ Council, the “yellow union” maintained by the gang,
enthusiastically adopted this report, and called for the barring of
various persons from the school forums—the black-list including the
names of Jane Addams and Lillian Wald! The State Department of Education
addressed to principals of public schools a letter instructing them to
prepare reports as to the loyalty of every teacher in the system. The
principals were to list the names of teachers, and indicate those “for
whose morality and loyalty as a citizen” they could vouch, and those
“concerning whose morality or loyalty to the government of the United
States or to the state of New York” they had reason to doubt. Weirdly
enough, those about whom the principal knew nothing, were lumped in with
the latter group. Every teacher was guilty until he was proved innocent!

And with these things going on every day—with school principals carrying
step-ladders and peering over transoms to discover what their teachers
were doing—Superintendent Tildsley had the nerve to stand up before an
audience at the Civic Club and say in my hearing that there was no
oppression of teachers for their opinions, and that no teacher in the
system had anything to lose by being a Socialist! As evidence of the
fact, he stated that he had a very good friend, a teacher of English in
one of the high schools, who was a member of the Socialist party, and
had even been a candidate for office on the Socialist ticket. This lady
had never suffered any handicap from her political opinions and
activities; Dr. Tildsley went on to say how he had been in her class not
long ago, and had heard her explain to her pupils the meaning of the
French Revolution, and he would not want the French Revolution explained
to his own children any more fairly and intelligently than this teacher
had done it.

When my turn came to answer, I said: “Dr. Tildsley does not name the
teacher of English who has not suffered from being a Socialist. It
happens that I know who she is, because I had dinner at her home
yesterday evening, and she told me how Dr. Tildsley had come into her
room and had complimented her upon the way she had explained the French
Revolution to her students. New York is not the only city in which a
teacher is fortunate in belonging to one of the old families, and being
able to know the district superintendent as a social equal. But Jessie
Wallace Hughan is the last woman in New York who would wish to take
advantage of that social prestige. She is a woman with real convictions,
and I am sure she will not mind my repeating what she said to me only
yesterday evening—that since she has run for office on the Socialist
ticket some teacher friends have been in such a state of fear that they
are hardly willing to be seen speaking with her in public. And twelve
years ago, when Miss Hughan was a student at Columbia, she was told by
Professor Seligman, in charge of her work, that she could never have a
career as a teacher, because she had joined the Socialist party. All the
recommendations he gave her were for statistical and research work,
never for college work!”[D]

-----

Footnote D:

  Upon submitting proofs of the above to Miss Hughan, I received from
  her a statement as to her present position. Because she modified the
  pledge which she signed for the “Luskers,” reserving her rights to
  freedom of conscience and political action, she was denied a
  certificate of loyalty by this committee, and although the Lusk laws
  are now repealed, Miss Hughan has for six years been denied the rank
  and salary to which she is entitled under the school regulations. She
  writes: “My present and past principals have urged my appointment. I
  have letters from the officials responsible, making it clear that my
  radical beliefs were the sole ground for my non-appointment during the
  six years. They still refuse, however, to replace my name on the
  eligible lists; and I am now fulfilling the duties of head of
  department in the Textile High School, without enjoying the rank and
  additional five hundred dollars salary that should belong to the
  position.”

-----

I had something even more definite than that, in answer to Dr.
Tildsley’s statement that it does a teacher no harm to be known as a
Socialist. It happened that I had been in the New York Public Library,
collecting evidence from the files of the “Times,” and I had copied in
my note-book an account from that newspaper (April 27, 1919) of a
meeting of the Public Education Association addressed by Superintendent
Tildsley. According to his friends of the “Times,” this great authority
was reported as saying “that in his opinion there was no place for the
Marxian Socialist in the New York school system, that there were quite a
number of such Socialists in the system at present, that they should be
dismissed”—and so on, a long summary of the speech, the substance being
that such teachers should be excluded from the system in future.

This citation made Dr. Tildsley uncomfortable for a few minutes, but it
did not do him any serious harm, for the simple reason that there were
only a couple of hundred people present at this debate, and the news of
his humiliation went no further. There were a number of reporters
present, and next day the “Tribune” quoted Dr. Tildsley’s remarks at
length (May 26, 1922), but did not mention the name of Upton Sinclair.
Several other newspapers reported the debate, but only one of them, the
“Herald,” mentioned my name. The “Herald” did it in the following
fashion: “Among the other speakers were ... Upton Sinclair.” A newspaper
man who was present told me that I might take this as a compliment; it
meant that the reporters and editors having to do with the matter had
read the “Brass Check”!




                              CHAPTER XIX
                          TO HENRIETTA RODMAN


In city after city I found school conditions like these, and in every
case I found a little group of men and women opposing them, facing every
handicap and humiliation. In two cities the soul and inspiration of this
protest was a woman: Margaret Haley in Chicago, and Henrietta Rodman in
New York. Henrietta took me in charge, and like Virgil with Dante, led
me through the seven hells. She would gather a flock of teachers, and
sit by while they told me their troubles in chorus. I counted upon
Henrietta to read and revise this manuscript; but last spring she died,
and all I can do is to tell about her, and pass on her brave and loving
spirit to the future.

Henrietta Rodman came of an old New York family, dating back some two
hundred years. Her great-grandfather, Colonel Robert Blackwood, was a
member of the First Continental Congress, and would have signed the
Declaration of Independence if his death had not intervened. I think it
would not be an exaggeration to say that this fighting Colonial ancestor
kept Henrietta in the school system in New York. Many and many a time he
put on his ruffles and his cocked hat, and drew his rusty old sword and
stormed into the presence of boards of education and superintendents, or
into the columns of capitalist newspapers—to prove that his
great-grand-daughter was not a Bolshevik nor an alien enemy! Under the
shadow of his revolutionary banner Henrietta fought for true
Americanism, with the fangs of the Tammany tiger in her flesh.

She was twenty-three years in the school system, yet she never lost her
courage, her idealism, or her sense of humor. She was always full of
energy, always pleading for the schools; to her pupils she was
warm-hearted and loving, interested in new ideas, eager for new
adventures. Her father had said to her: “Find the fundamental issue of
your day, and concentrate on that.” The great-grandfather had chosen the
issue of American independence; the father had chosen the issue of
chattel-slavery; and Henrietta chose the issue of wage-slavery.

She had been teaching Latin at Wadleigh High School, and found that
ninety-four per cent of the pupils were being forced out because they
could not pass the examinations. She proceeded to teach them so that
they could pass; but it was against the rule to teach that way, and the
principal sent for her and scolded her. She persisted in passing her
pupils, and so the city superintendent sent for her; a teacher had no
right to criticize her superiors, he declared, and flew into a passion.
Suddenly a light leaped into Henrietta’s eyes, and the sword of the old
revolutionary colonel swished over the superintendent’s head. “If you
storm at me like a primitive man I’ll shriek like a primitive woman!” So
at once the superintendent calmed down!

They wanted to give her some real trouble, so they put her in charge of
a hundred defective girls. At that time no one knew anything about
psychological tests, or what to do with mentally defective children in
the schools. Henrietta worked out a course of study by easily graded
stages, which the most feeble-minded of them could follow. The principal
of the school took this and published it as his own, and so stated
before the board of superintendents. Some of these pupils were homeless
and sick, and Henrietta got the class to adopt them; that was an
unprecedented thing, altogether against the rules, and Henrietta was
stormed at some more. They sent her to the Julia Richman High School,
one of those terrible old barns that was built apparently before the use
of paint was discovered. It was supposed to be one of the most
democratic schools in New York City. “But,” said Henrietta, “we can’t
call the teachers together, we can’t pass a motion, we can’t send a
statement to the press or make an application to the school board,
without first having the sanction of the school principal!”

There came the George Eliot incident, whereby the spotlight of publicity
was turned upon this liberal teacher. She was teaching English, and some
girl asked if it was true that George Eliot had lived with a man to whom
she was not married. What was Henrietta to do? Should she tell the girl
to hush, that was a naughty question? Or should she lie? She explained
that George Henry Lewes had had an insane wife, and under the English
law could not get a divorce; so he and George Eliot had lived as husband
and wife, and had been so accepted by all their friends for the rest of
their lifetime. One of the children took this home to her father, and
the father took it to the priest, and the priest took it to the pulpit,
and the New York “Times” took it to the whole city. There was a terrible
uproar—it is so that reputations are made in the radical movement. We
have to do something queer or unusual, something supposed to be
shocking; and we must manage to be right while we are doing it!

Next came the uproar over married teachers. The board passed a rule that
women teachers who got married should automatically lose their jobs; so
the women took to concealing their marriages. But now and then one could
no longer be concealed, and there would be a case of what Henrietta
called “mother-baiting.” The board of education caught one woman about
to become a mother, and Henrietta wrote a satirical letter to the
newspapers. For this she was suspended for eight months without pay. As
she said: “They fined me eighteen hundred dollars, and then they adopted
my idea. They have always adopted my ideas, and have always fined me for
making them adopt them.”

Henrietta, like myself, supported the war. She was head of a “team” that
sold fifteen thousand dollars worth of Liberty bonds; but that did not
save her from being “investigated” by military intelligence agents. They
got hold of her pupils while she was away; the agents were suspicious,
because she had been teaching from Frederic C. Howe’s book, “European
Cities at Work.” They discovered that what she had been teaching from
the book was city planning. But it was an offense at that time to let
children know that the Germans planned their cities well!

Henrietta was summoned by Superintendent Tildsley. She had been making a
disturbance because the spy department was having the pupils write
essays on Bolshevism as a means of finding out what the children were
being taught at home. Henrietta brought along a stenographer to take
down the interview—so little trust did she have in Dr. Tildsley; but
they would not let the stenographer take notes. They summoned her again
before the board. She had written a letter to the Brooklyn “Eagle,” and
the “Eagle” had not published it, but had turned it over to the board.
They had an assistant district attorney present to try to twist her
statements; they had no evidence, but they tried to get some out of her,
luring her into testifying against herself. They furnished a
stenographer for this meeting, and when she got the stenographer’s
transcript it had been “doctored.” In American political life today you
must realize that you are dealing, quite literally, with criminals in
office, and there is no limit to what they will do to you.

At this time Henrietta was organizing the high school teachers, and the
principal forbade them to meet unless he was present; so it was that the
principals took to carrying step-ladders and peering over the transoms,
to see if the teachers were violating orders. Said Henrietta: “One might
think, if we are fit to teach the children in the schools, we are fit to
meet and discuss our own problems and ideas. But, no! Here are a million
children and twenty-five thousand teachers, and all the thinking for the
whole system is to be done by twenty-two men. If anybody else presumes
to think, that is impertinence.”

She explained the situation to me; teachers as a rule are people of
quiet tastes, not good fighters, and the community knows nothing about
how they are treated. For example, during the war-time, New York City
agreed to cancel all its contracts for the purchase of school supplies,
because prices had gone up, and it would not be fair to make the
contractors fulfil the old contracts. But no one thought about the
contracts with the teachers, and what was fair to them. The teachers
suffered in silence, or retired to some other occupation, giving place
to less competent people. And who gave a thought to the children, who
were now to be taught by the incompetent?

It happened once that Henrietta met Mrs. Tildsley at a reception, and
there was a discussion. “If you don’t like the way the schools are run,
why do you stay?” asked the superintendent’s wife; to which Henrietta
answered: “I stay because I am not willing to leave the children to Dr.
Tildsley.” To me she said: “I have enlisted as if for a war. I am
furiously patriotic; I believe in the future of America with all my
heart and soul, and I am going to make freedom a reality here. I am
going to stick to the death.” She did this.

We were sitting on the little roof-garden of the Civic Club one spring
evening, and there were six or eight teachers in the group. I could not
see their faces in the darkness, but I could hear their eager voices,
their murmurs of assent to Henrietta’s statements. With a pencil and pad
I noted down in the dark one after another of her sentences: “Tight
mindedness and fear are the occupational diseases of teaching.... In the
business world there is no such thing as unquestioned obedience; that
belongs only in teaching.... There is more kowtowing in our schools than
anywhere else in the world.”

She told me how she had been assigned to teach “Americanization”
classes. There was a class of union painters, foreigners who had asked
for help; naturally, they wanted a union teacher, and they chose
Henrietta. But the superintendent in charge said that she was a
dangerous radical, and they could not have her! Here was a school system
with twenty-two per cent of its children, more than two hundred
thousand, according to official statistics, coming to school suffering
from malnutrition. According to the director of physical training, more
than half the children who come to the high schools have physical
defects. And if you try to do anything whatever about these conditions,
if you have any sense of public responsibility for the poverty, the
exploitation and neglect of children—why then, you are a Bolshevik and a
social outcast!

A young teacher spoke up, a girl who had just begun work. The principal
had given her mimeographed directions as to how to teach. There was a
book containing all the problems, and day by day she read from these
sheets; she was merely a phonograph. They would hold a stop-watch on her
pupils to see the number of words per minute they could read, and they
would rate her according to that. They figured what they called the
“pupil load” of a teacher. Every teacher had to carry a “pupil load” of
710; that was the minimum, and they never let you get below it. There
was supposed also to be a maximum, but they never minded driving you
above it; they would report the extra pupils as “visitors.” Another
teacher spoke up; she was teaching typewriting, and they had gone
through the books and cut out a sentence of Emerson’s attributing to
society some responsibility for criminals. That was radicalism!

Henrietta is gone; but her soul lives, and likewise the teachers’ union
she helped to found. This book goes out as a call to the teachers and
friends of teachers, not merely in New York, but all over America, to
come to the aid of the children, to save the young and groping minds of
the new generation from the bigotry and squalid ignorance which afflicts
our adults. I quote you a letter written last year by a high school boy
of Brooklyn, and sent to me by a teacher in that school. The teacher
does not say how he answered this letter; read it and see if you would
know how to answer, if such a letter came to you:

                                     Brooklyn, N. Y., Aug. 31, 1922.

  Dear Mr. ——:

  I have never had the pleasure of being in one of your classes, but it
  will not deter me from writing to you. Somehow I believe that you are
  one who may be able to help us where I and my friend have pondered
  many, many hours and still could not achieve solution.

  We are young—youths just upon the threshold of learning the way of our
  feet in the world of men. And when the week’s work is done and we have
  a day or two or three all to ourselves, what are we to do?

  Bear with me a moment. All about us yawns the pit of mediocrity. With
  few exceptions, the men and women and the sweet boys and girls I meet
  jade on me. It is appalling—their unlovely spirit—mediocrity. They are
  without greatness, without camaraderie, never do much of anything that
  is virile and stinging and resentful, nor ever feel the prod and urge
  of life to will over its boundaries and be devilish and daring. I can
  see through them and beyond them, and all there is to see is their
  frailty, their meagerness, their sordidness and pitifulness. They are
  miserable little egotisms, like all the other little humans,
  fluttering their May-fly dance of an hour. As far as we are concerned
  in the matter they can go hang. We laugh at the ridiculous effrontery
  of their efforts to crystallize us in the particular mold of their
  two-by-two, cut-and-dried, conventional world.

  Don’t you see? Beyond all of us and the spirit of us that is a-bubble
  whispers Romance, Adventure. We have read the books and are aflame
  with purple hints of a world beyond our world. When the week-ends roll
  around, we want to do novel and stirring things, we want to realize
  ourselves, to chance and boast and dare, to put laughter in our
  throats, and quicken the throb of our blood. Heavens! We have
  considered and counseled a myriad times, and the only conclusion we
  reached was that we were as abysmally ignorant of life as we were or
  thought we were profoundly wise.

  We have no morality in the matter. We will be grateful for anything,
  providing it is provocative of the thrills and novelty we seek. And
  please do not consider any such insipidity as taking a hike to the
  country or a trip to Bear Mt. They are commonplaces, don’t you see?
  For instance, a séance with a medium would have been a glorious
  suggestion—or something more unusual. But this is only a sample of the
  many possible things that would lend color and individuality to our
  days.

  So we who are merely young, appeal to you, a little naively perhaps,
  but with stern sincerity, in the hope that you who have passed through
  our stage of evolution may sympathize with us and may be able to help
  us in the way that we wish to be helped.

To me this letter is like a flashlight thrown suddenly upon the minds of
the young people. Our whole problem of education is summed up in it; and
I ask again: Would you know what to answer. I, for my part, would tell
these lads to find one of the big strikes which are always going on, say
in the clothing trades of New York, and attempt to read the Constitution
and so come into contact with the realities of the class struggle. But,
of course, a teacher who gave that advice would cease to be a teacher.
Those who hold their jobs and get their promotions in the system are
those who follow the mimeographed formulas, and see that the pupils read
the required number of words per minute. The result is a newspaper item
from the New York “Times” of May 26, 1922; I quote the first paragraph:

  Two school girls were found yesterday afternoon, clasped in each
  other’s arms, lying on the floor of a kitchen of an apartment in the
  tenement house at 75 Van Alst Avenue, Long Island City. The room was
  filled with gas and the discovery was made just in time to save them
  from death by asphyxiation. The girls were Dora Boylan, 15 years old,
  daughter of a widow who occupied the apartment, and who at the time
  was at work in a factory near by, and Agnes Dougherty, also 15, of 28
  Hunterspoint Avenue, Long Island City. They had made up their minds to
  die rather than go to school.




                               CHAPTER XX
                          MELODRAMA IN CHICAGO


Let us take next the school system of Chicago. Here is a city of three
million people, with representatives of most of the races and nations
and tribes of the world; a great port, a great railroad center, a meat
packing and manufacturing and banking center. The owners of these
industries contribute the necessary cash, and finance alternately two
rival political machines; candidates are chosen who are satisfactory to
the “invisible government,” and with the help of four or five great
capitalist newspapers the candidates are elected. The purpose for which
they are elected is to protect Big Business while it plunders the city;
incidentally, and on the side, the political officials plunder all they
can.

The city being a strong union center, the school teachers are organized.
The grade teachers form the Chicago Teachers’ Federation, and the
business representative of this federation is Margaret Haley; one of
those terrible people known as a “walking delegate”—that is, she goes
about among the masters of the city, asserting rights for those who are
not supposed to have rights. She is hated and slandered, but continues
to clamor for the teachers. For a generation the school board and
politicians in chorus with the capitalist newspapers have insisted that
the teachers could not be paid a living wage, the city was too poor.
Nearly twenty-five years ago Margaret Haley took up the question of
tax-dodging by the great corporations, and I shall tell later on how she
made five of these corporations pay taxes on their franchise valuations.

The business representative of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation lives
always in the midst of some tumultuous political issue. She was in the
midst of one when I arrived in Chicago, in May, 1922, the city being in
the throes of a school graft scandal. The attorney for the school board
had just been indicted by the grand jury, and the president of the board
and many other members were soon to be indicted. Millions had been
wasted—nobody could guess how much. At the same time the governor of the
state was being tried for appropriating thirty thousand dollars of the
state’s money; the jury acquitted him—and then some members of the jury
got jobs from the governor, and were tried in their turn. The day of my
arrival it was discovered that the chief clerk of the city jail had
stolen thirty-six hundred dollars of the money taken from the prisoners.
The Chicago “Tribune” published an editorial headed: “Is $10 Safe
Anywhere?”

The answer to this question is No; and if you ask the reason, it is the
Chicago “Tribune.” Turn to page 270 of “The Brass Check,” and read the
story of how the “Tribune” robbed the school children of enormous sums.
This paper, and also the “Daily News,” have their buildings on school
land; and they got leases at absurdly low rentals, the leases extending
for ninety-nine years, with no provision for revaluation during the
entire period. In order to put this job over, the “Tribune” had got its
own attorney appointed on the school board!

The affair created a tremendous scandal, and during the administration
of Mayor Dunne there were some school board members not under Big
Business control, and these attempted to have the leases declared
invalid; whereupon the “Tribune” and the “News” started a crusade of
slander against the school board and against Mayor Dunne, who appointed
the school board. The “Tribune” calls itself “The World’s Greatest
Newspaper,” and is undoubtedly the most powerful newspaper in the Middle
West. The “Daily News” is the most powerful evening paper; and the two
of them, according to William Marion Reedy, “rallied to their support
all the corrupt and vicious element of the Chicago slums, likewise the
forces that could be controlled by the street railways and other public
service corporations.” They elected a mayor who was their tool, and he,
in defiance of law, turned some school board members out of office, and
the courts upheld the leases! Here, you see, are two bands of
highwaymen, operating under the cloak of “patriotism” and “hundred per
cent Americanism,” and robbing the school children of Chicago of sums
beyond estimate. Every politician and office-holder in the city knows
that, and follows this high example; and so it comes about that $10 is
not safe anywhere in Chicago.

The first place to which I went was Margaret Haley’s office. She gave me
a chair, and started to tell me the news, but the telephone rang; it
rang every few minutes during our chat, and I listened, and little by
little this scene became unreal—it wasn’t a business woman’s office in
Chicago, it was an act from one of those old-fashioned “muck-raking”
plays which used to be written by Charles Klein and George Broadhurst
and others, twenty years or so ago. You couldn’t produce such plays in
America today, you would be sent to jail for “suspicion of criminal
syndicalism.” In these plays the hero, an upright young politician, or
maybe a newspaper man, would be hunting a band of grafters, and tied up
in a tangle of plots and counter-plots. You would see him in his office,
with breathless messengers running in; or at the telephone in swift
conversations, giving orders and thwarting the moves of his enemies.

I had my note-book and pencil ready, and it occurred to me that you
might be interested to hear two or three minutes of the conversation
which goes on in the office of the business representative of the
Chicago Teachers’ Federation, in these days of “normalcy” and “hundred
per cent Americanism” triumphant. So I wrote a little scene from a play,
a regular thrilling melodrama, with plots and counterplots, betrayals
and raids and sudden surprises, grafters getting away with their loot
and grand juries’ representatives bursting in upon them—all the stock
stage material. But alas, when I brought it to Margaret Haley to read, I
discovered that she had no idea she was dramatic, and didn’t like it;
also, the particular bit of melodrama to which I had been witness had
never been brought home to her, and her connection with it could not be
revealed without pointing to certain very precious sources of
information. And so my stage scene had to be “cut,” and you will have to
learn about Chicago school graft from plain narrative prose.

The public schools of Chicago still have some land which the grafters
have not stolen. There is a tract of one square mile on the outskirts of
the city, and in 1921 a bill was introduced in the state legislature to
authorize the school board to sell it to the grafters. The Teachers’
Federation protested, and received in reply a letter from Mr. Bither,
attorney for the school board, saying that the expenses of holding this
land for the schools were such that if the teachers insisted upon its
being held they must be prepared to have their salaries cut five hundred
thousand dollars! The business representative of the teachers
investigated and ascertained that the cost of holding this land was
literally and absolutely nothing; if any money had been paid it had been
paid illegally. So Mr. Bither’s proposition came to this: the teachers
must stand by and let the grafters rob the schools, or else the teachers
themselves would be robbed!

Instead of bowing to this threat, the teachers appealed to the public;
they demonstrated that the figures presented to the mayor by Mr. Bither,
showing the money spent for running the schools and for teachers’
salaries, had been juggled. Mr. Bither had overstated the amount paid
for teachers’ salaries by $868,000 and understated the amount paid for
administrative salaries by $314,000. When he had wanted a big
appropriation from the legislature, he had presented to this legislature
tables showing that the teachers’ salaries were very low; but when he
had wanted to keep the teachers from getting this money, he had
presented to the mayor tables showing that their salaries were higher.

All this, of course, led the teachers to go thoroughly into the
expenditure of school funds. Reports began to come to the federation
from one source after another. The legislature had appropriated thirteen
million dollars, for the schools, and the school board was spending it
in a hurry, so that the business men would get it instead of the
teachers. School principals were called on the telephone and compelled
to order quantities of stuff—office furniture, chairs, desks, moving
pictures, telephones, pianos, rugs, phonographs. A pamphlet issued by
the Chicago Teachers’ Federation showed that the rate of increase of
appropriations for “incidentals” in 1921 was ten times the rate of
increase of the total appropriations for teachers’ salaries in 1921.

Then came the news of strange goings on among the “engineers,” the
school custodians. It was charged that the vice-president of the school
board had got increases in salaries for the engineers and they had
generously paid to him the three months’ back pay included in the
measure. The engineers came to the Masonic Temple to pay this
money—between $75,000 and $125,000. Every man presented the exact
amount, and they checked him up carefully. And later on they had a
banquet, and presented with fulsome speeches a magnificent silver
service. An amusing feature of this story is that the chief of police of
Chicago furnished two “front-office men” to sit and guard the sums of
money which the engineers brought in. You have to take every precaution,
in a city where $10 is not safe anywhere!




                              CHAPTER XXI
                         CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE


I went away from Chicago in May; and coming back in June, on my way
home, I discovered that this Chicago melodrama is a continuous
performance. A new act was on, and the business representative of the
Chicago Teachers’ Federation Was in the midst of another whirlwind. The
city was on the point of getting a new president of the school board,
and he was worse than the old one, if such a thing were possible. He was
a physician, Dr. John Dill Robertson, formerly head of the Bennett
Medical College, which had been exposed in the “Journal of the American
Medical Association,” February 7th, 1914. Margaret Haley had had the
article reproduced photographically, with its headlines: “High School
Credentials for Sale. Illustration of Irregular Methods by which
Commercially Conducted Medical Colleges Admit Students Contrary to Law.”
The article told how a student had applied to Dr. Robertson’s college,
presenting credits for a year and a half of high school work, and the
registrar of the college got him a certificate supposed to represent a
full four years’ high-school course. They got this signed by a county
school superintendent in Wisconsin, after the applicant had passed an
examination for which the registrar furnished him both the questions and
the answers! A copy of this article was mailed to every member of the
city council of Chicago—but Dr. Robertson was confirmed by this body
just the same!

Meantime the graft revelations continued. I have before me a pamphlet by
Judge McKinley, chief justice of the criminal court of Cook County,
detailing the devices by which the fake purchasing companies made their
millions out of the schools. There are pages of details about such
concerns, their imaginary offices, their contracts for every kind of
material which could be used in a big city school system. There was a
deal for a hundred thousand tons of coal, without any competitive
bidding; another deal of $244,000 for “surplus Shipping Board
boilers”—these being boilers offered for sale by the Shipping Board and
purchased by a dummy concern, whose head was a former school board
member. This man, Fitzgerald, had “never had a bank account until this
sale took place”; and the boilers were bought on the recommendation of
Davis, the president of the school board, described as “a nice little
fellow who did what he was told.” Says Judge McKinley:

  There was “the phonograph deal” of the Hiawatha Company, headed by
  State Commerce Commissioner P. H. Moynihan; “the six skinny cows” sent
  to the parental school, as milk producers for the three hundred little
  truants confined there; the stationery and school supply contracts
  between the board and Davis’ nephews; the tearing out of expensive
  plumbing in school buildings to “make work” for Metzger’s “steam
  heating and ventilating company”; the sale of coal in certain
  districts to the schools by certain firms who made contributions of 50
  cents a ton to board officials; the “sale” of buildings on school
  property by Bither, the attorney for that board, and the “splitting”
  of the rents collected from tenants who continued to live in them for
  two years after they had sold them as additions to the Forrestville
  and Wendell Phillips schools.

You will wish to know the outcome of this particular act of the
continuous Chicago melodrama. William A. Bither, attorney for the school
board, and Edwin S. Davis, president of the board, were tried for
conspiracy and acquitted, together with thirteen others, including the
boss of the gang. Some witnesses had disappeared; others had “forgotten”
what they had sworn to before the grand jury; but most significant of
all, this clever board had taken the precaution not to pass rules
governing its own procedure—and the court instructed the jury that in
the absence of rules, the business manager’s rules held good! It was not
a crime for board members to sell to their own friends and relatives,
nor to sell to companies in which they, the board members, owned stock!
It was not a crime to buy supplies without bids! It was not a crime to
make bad bargains in purchasing! To have these things proven in court
cost the people of Chicago some two hundred thousand dollars—in addition
to the millions already wasted.

Chicago got a new mayor, who, by political subtlety too intricate to
detail, got rid of the old school board, and of Dr. Robertson as
president. The last word of the great medical educator was a letter to
the new board, explaining the wonderful legacy he was leaving them, in
the form of a commission to study the school housing question; and so,
when I came back to Chicago in December, 1923, to read the proofs of
this book, I found yet another act of the melodrama on, and the business
representative of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation in the midst of
another whirlwind! This commission and its Big Business masters had set
out to foist upon the people of Chicago the wonderful new “platoon
system” of schools, as it is now working full blast in Detroit, the very
latest wrinkle in Ford factory standardization applied to the minds of
children.

Needless to say, in a city where $10 is not safe anywhere, the schools
are hideously overcrowded. There is a new building program, amounting to
thirty million dollars, and this hurts the plutocracy even to think
about. So one day, after a school board session, the kept press of
Chicago exploded all over the front page with the news that the school
board had discussed a wonderful plan to save all that money, and put
half a million children on half time, and hire eleven thousand new
teachers, and get double service out of the schools by running them nine
hours a day, six days a week, twelve months a year on the “platoon
system” as it exists in Detroit.

The first thing to be got clear about this newspaper story is that it
was a simultaneous lie. The school board had not considered any such
plan, either at its regular meeting or at any committee meeting. The
Chicago Teachers’ Federation keeps a court stenographer at every session
and has a complete transcript of every word that is spoken—this just
because of the newspapers’ habit of shameless lying. But for some reason
not easy to guess, the board members failed to make a formal repudiation
of this published false news; the papers went on day after day outlining
what the board was about to do; and so it was plain that some power
behind the scenes was setting out to force the hand of a new and
supposed-to-be-liberal school board.

The Chicago teachers decided to find out for themselves about this new
Detroit system and how it is working. They sent a committee of nine
class-room teachers, who did not wait the convenience of
superintendents, but went right into class-rooms at the opening hour,
and spent several days wandering about in the great assembling plants
for goslings. They found Detroit teachers in secret revolt against the
new system—and incidentally much puzzled to learn that it was being
boosted in Chicago as a saver of money and building space. The members
of the school board in Detroit had been having rows, and calling one
another impolite names because of the costliness of the system; and as
for space, one Chicago teacher asked: “Why aren’t you using the platoon
system in this school?” The answer was: “We haven’t room enough!”

If it is not money and not building space, what is it? To quote the
report of the Chicago teachers: “All special work is outlined,
standardized, and supervised from some central authority, so that
children derive no benefit from the originality and experience of the
individual teacher, or from her knowledge of their particular needs. The
teachers know the names of but few children in each group, because of
the large numbers with which they deal.” Again: “If fatigue and
inability to give attention are features of modern life, the children
are certainly experiencing life.”

So it appears that this Detroit system is a contrivance to suppress
every trace of individuality in school teachers, and make every one of
them a phonograph, repeating formulas set before her in print; to
prescribe not merely her words but her states of mind, and the
“attitudes to be acquired” by her pupils. One teacher read me the
specifications, and said: “It’s enough to raise the hair on your head.”

What is the “central authority” which now shapes the minds of all the
children of all the wage-slaves of our great metropolis of automobiles?
We shall inquire before long, and find that it is the same interlocking
directorate we know so well. And here is their master achievement; how
well they know it, how proud they are of it, you may learn from their
official statement, written by the man who has the job in charge—Mr.
Charles L. Spain, deputy superintendent of schools of Detroit. Says this
great educator: “During the war the public schools came to be recognized
as a powerful agency through which to spread propaganda. It is certain
that society will expect more from the schools in this respect than in
the past.” And he goes on to explain that the “platoon system” gets the
children all ready, and every child in the building can be reached every
day! When this new scheme has been set up in all our schools, big and
little—and it won’t take them but a few years—it will be possible for
Judge Gary or Mr. Morgan to press a button at nine o’clock in the
morning, and by twelve o’clock noon every child of our twenty-three
million will be ready to go out and kill the “Reds.”




                              CHAPTER XXII
                 THE INCORPORATE TAX-DODGING CREATURES


It is important to note that a great part of the opposition to graft and
propaganda and repression in the Chicago schools has come from classroom
teachers. That is the real significance of a struggle which has been
going on for many years, over the question of the teachers organizing
and being affiliated with labor unions. Eight years ago Big Business put
in as president of the school board a gentleman named Jacob Loeb, who
proceeded to enforce a resolution forbidding teachers to belong to
unions. Sixty-eight teachers were dismissed, of whom thirty-eight were
officers or active members of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation. So this
federation was forced to withdraw from affiliation with labor, and is
still withdrawn.

Mr. Loeb was so satisfactory to the plutocracy that first a Democratic
and then a Republican administration appointed him. A Hebrew workers’
union was induced to support Mr. Loeb’s candidacy by the statement that
the Catholic Federation was opposed to it; but at this time Roger
Sullivan, the Democratic Catholic boss, was secretly supporting the
reappointment of Loeb by Mayor Thompson, the Republican boss! Mayor
Thompson afterwards stated that Mr. Loeb cried in his office and begged
for the reappointment. Anyhow, the Chicago teachers fought the “Loeb
rule,” as it was called, and the unions backed them. So the Loeb rule
has fallen into disuse, and Chicago is one city in which the teachers
run their own affairs.

But, of course, the teachers are powerless to clean out the school
system; it would be Bolshevism and Sovietism if they were to try. The
teachers are mere employes, and the principals and superintendents are
their “superiors”—this in spite of the fact that to be a grade teacher
in Chicago you have to have educational qualifications, while the
friends of politicians find it easy to pass the examinations for
principalships.

In a city where $10 is not safe anywhere, most of the attention of the
teachers naturally has to be devoted to the getting of a living wage.
Throughout this book you will find stories of teachers in revolt over
this question, so let me say once for all that the rise in prices which
cut the salaries of teachers to less than half, was not confined to Los
Angeles and New York; it was a universal condition. The teachers in
Chicago showed that between 1897 and 1919, the increase in the cost of
living had been 349 per cent, so, in spite of the raises they had won,
their salaries had been cut squarely in half; they had lost a dollar a
day in buying power from their 1897 salaries!

Yet the grafters were fertile in devices to keep the teachers from
getting more money. Years ago, under the regime of Superintendent
Cooley, they established a fake salary schedule; that is, they had one
schedule on paper and another which they actually paid. They would grant
increases, and then take them back; they would adopt schedules, and then
suspend their operation; they would require examinations for admission
to the higher salaries, and then pass but very few, and burn the papers
in a great hurry. An investigation by the Teachers’ Federation showed
that only sixty-two out of a possible twenty-six hundred were getting
the maximum salary! They called this scheme the “merit system,” and it
is still in use in many of our schools—the Department of Superintendence
of the National Education Association being a clearing-house for such
bright ideas.

Understand, there was a thousand dollar maximum, and the teachers had
been trying for ten years to get it, in vain. And now somebody worked
out a new arrangement; they were to get a raise if they got five points
of credit in five outside courses of study. This was supposed to take
three years—and keep them waiting meantime! But Margaret Haley
discovered a loop-hole, an institute at which the teachers could take
five courses in one year. The board had intended to change that
regulation, but the teachers beat them to it; they rushed to the
institute and registered for five courses at once. The teachers regarded
this as a great lark; they swarmed into the place, and studied till late
every night. The authorities pretended to be out of application blanks;
but the Teachers’ Federation had some printed in a hurry!

Sixteen hundred teachers thus got in, and this broke the back of
Superintendent Cooley’s scheme. He had assured the big business men of
the city that he could hold down the salaries, but now he had a pain in
the head and stayed in Europe; when he came back, he was made president
of D. C. Heath & Co., one of the big school-book publishers. After that,
the Commercial Club of Chicago made him its “educational commissioner,”
and for five years paid him a salary to study the training of
wage-slaves in Europe, so that he might come back and take charge of the
“continuation schools” of the city. Make note, please that this
gentleman was a past president of the National Education Association; we
shall meet these “great educators” one by one in their home districts,
and observe just what their greatness consists in.

I have mentioned how Margaret Haley made the corporations pay their
school taxes. This happened in 1900—there was a shortage in the school
funds, and the board of education went so far as to take away from the
teachers money which had already been paid to them. The income of the
schools was supposed to be derived from taxes; and Margaret Haley
discovered that there were no assessments on franchise valuations being
levied against corporations in Chicago. They were not even filing
schedules, as under the law they were required to do. So the Chicago
Teachers’ Federation set to work to bring mandamus proceedings against
five public service corporations, and after three years of agitation and
legal controversy, these five corporations paid six hundred thousand
dollars in one year—of which nearly half went to the schools. Somebody
composed a poem on the subject:

/* Mandamus proceedings were brought by the teachers Against the
incorporate, tax-dodging creatures; “No, no,” said the ladies, “you
cannot flim-flam us, We’ll keep up the fighting though every man damn
us.” */

After that the big highwaymen resolved to put Margaret Haley out of
business. The Chicago “Tribune” came out with a story that she had
applied for a four thousand dollar pension, and it was then discovered
that she had for seven years been collecting two salaries, one from the
board of education and the other from the teachers. The “Tribune” had
told so many lies about the teachers that it thought nothing mattered.
But Margaret Haley brought a libel suit, and proved that she had had no
salary from the board of education and that her salary as business
representative of the Teachers’ Federation was precisely the same as she
would have got as a school teacher. The jury brought in a verdict in
Miss Haley’s favor, and she collected five hundred dollars from the
“Tribune,” and presented it to the Labor party!

By way of countering the Teachers’ Federation, the politicians of
Chicago have got up the usual fake organization. It is called the
“Teachers’ League,” and nobody can find out who belongs to it, or who
gives it the authority to speak for the teachers. But it speaks; and the
“Tribune” and other kept newspapers take up its voice and broadcast it.
This fake “League” is used for lobbying in the school board and the
state legislature, and more especially for the slandering of union
teachers. It appeals to every kind of ignorance and base prejudice;
charging that those who run the Teachers’ Federation are “Bolsheviks,”
and more terrible yet, that they are atheists! When the “Tribune” calls
you names like this you cannot punish it; Henry Ford found that out when
the “Tribune” called him an Anarchist! You know how much of an Anarchist
Henry Ford is, and so you can judge how much of a Bolshevik and atheist
the leaders of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation are! As I write this
book, a superintendent and two instructors at the Chicago Parental
School are suspended, as result of a coroner’s probe into the suicide of
a fifteen-year-old boy, who hanged himself to escape torture. And I
wonder, if I were to call the owners of the Chicago “Tribune” the
murderers of this boy, would anybody sue me for libel?

It is time we gave some attention to the fate of the children, in this
city where $10 is not safe anywhere. Let me take you to one Chicago
high school as portrayed to me two years ago. This school gets up
entertainments, which take the boys out of the class-rooms; pupils
often fail in their classes, because they have been playing in an
opera “to make money for the school.” Money is collected at such
entertainments—and replaces scholarship as an aim. The school takes
part in industrial exhibits; the boys work to prepare these exhibits,
and prizes are collected, and the money goes into the general fund.
When the state stops giving cash prizes, the school at once stops
competing. The school publishes a paper; it is a wretched paper, of
poor literary quality; the “boosters” have charge of it, and it makes
money “for the fund.” A certain teacher in the school has become an
artist, and has painted a beautiful picture; it is proposed to
purchase this picture for the school, and some of the school funds are
to be used for the purpose. The teachers and pupils have been working
under heavy pressure to earn this money, but they are not permitted to
have anything to say concerning the purpose for which the money shall
be expended.

The boys know of such conditions, and so do the teachers; the school is,
to use the phrase of one of them, “a hell of hate.” Poor and
foreign-born parents, coming to the school, are insulted and abused.
Teachers are scolded before their classes. The teachers take the matter
up in a faculty meeting, and the principal is interviewed by a committee
from the faculty, and hears a strenuous and detailed discussion of his
conduct. The teachers object among other things to having their
efficiency judged by their ability to sell tickets. The principal
promises to reform, but does not, and finally thirty teachers sign a
petition to the superintendent. Before delivering it, they have one more
conference with the principal, who admits his faults—and then sets out
to avenge himself, by demoting three of the teachers, and marking down
the rating of another from the highest to a very low grade. A woman
member of the committee is summoned to a “grilling”—in the course of
which she hears all the other members of the committee berated. A day or
two later there breaks out into all the newspapers of Chicago a scandal
story, and the principal gives an interview hinting that “there is one
example of radical teaching in the school.”

It appears that the Association of Commerce had asked that on Armistice
day all the pupils should face the East, and silence should be
maintained for one minute while everybody thought about the dead in
France. But two students refused to face the East, and so the newspapers
called them “Bolsheviks.” It was intended to implicate this brave woman
teacher—although the two boys were not her pupils, nor even in her
department. The boys were hauled up before the authorities, and
questioned as to their “Bolshevism.” They admitted that they did not
believe in war. As to facing the East, that was a Mohammedan custom, and
one of them was a Jew, and neither a Mohammedan!

I could tell you of another school in which the lunchroom, supposed to
be operated at cost, has been used for money-making. I could tell you of
cases of cruelty to pupils, and the abuse of parents. I could tell you
of one of Chicago’s few real educators, Principal McAndrew of the Hyde
Park High School, who was forced out because he refused to promote the
incompetent son of a school board official.

I have in my possession a statement signed by two Chicago high school
boys, reciting how, at the instance of their principal, Mr. Lewis A.
Bloch of the Marshall High School, they agreed to work for the board of
education. They went to the office of the board at 460 South State
Street, and Mr. Bachrach, in whose office they were put to work, agreed
to pay them three dollars a week to cover their car fare and lunch. On
the afternoon of the last day of the week Mr. Bachrach informed them
that “suddenly and unexpectedly the Chicago Board of Education’s
treasury had gone dry, and that the three dollars compensation could not
be given us.” These boys ask me to withhold their names. Another boy
states: “I have since found that this has been done time and again, and
also with the same excuse at hand.”

These Chicago schools are strenuous for the “Americanization” of the
foreigners—which means despising the foreign children and calling them
names. It meant in war-time the activities of spies—boys paid to report
what this teacher has said, and that. Also, it means the repression of
every kind of liberal activity. During the recent slaughter of the Jews
by the Poles, the Jewish people in Chicago were stirred up, and
organized a protest parade. Some Jewish children asked to be permitted
to attend this parade; they got up a petition, and their request was
denied. They argued that they had been allowed to attend all kinds of
bankers’ parades and Association of Commerce parades; why not an
anti-pogrom parade. The answer of their principal was that if they went
to the parade they would all be “fired.” Nevertheless, the Jewish
children went to the parade, and there were so many of them that they
were not “fired.”

The schools of Chicago are a happy hunting ground for every form of
reactionary propaganda. The War Department supplies “dope” for the high
school papers, and it is published. The boys hate this military
training, but they take it; as one boy explained to his teacher, “I’ve
been bullied for two years; now it’s my turn to bully somebody else.”
Many years ago Chicago had a great superintendent of schools, Mrs. Ella
Flagg Young, and she tried to keep this curse of militarism away from
the children. She introduced in courses for every grade a little time to
be given to the teaching of peace; but the president of the school
board, attorney for the packers who came to board meetings drunk, cut it
out.

The bankers come to set up their golden calf in the schools; also
the various commercial men who want to use the schools for
advertising—putting their “dope” into the writing books. For
example, the book-keeping classes copy pages of the transactions of
Marshall, Field & Co. A recent investigation in the technical
schools showed that employers were calling up for high school
students, and even specifying their church affiliations. Such
employers use the public schools to train their apprentices, and
then violate the constitutional rights of citizens. The Yellow
Taxi-cab Company sends to schools to ask if would-be drivers have
union relatives!

The big Babbitts of the Association of Commerce, desiring flocks of
little Babbits, arranged for organizing in the schools what they called
“Junior Associations of Commerce.” The boys must be called out of class
to listen to lectures by Mr. Sam Insull, monarch of all the gas tanks he
surveyed, who made a tour of the schools to tell how he succeeded by
never looking at the clock. Another business man told the kids that
labor “slacked” during the war; and as many of these Chicago kids came
from union homes, they resented it. When the grown-up Association of
Commerce failed to support appropriations for the schools, the kids at
one school got on their dignity and withdrew. Then the Chicago
Federation of Labor had a bright thought—why should there not be a
Junior Federation of Labor in the schools? Why should not labor leaders
come to tell the kids how they succeeded by solidarity? A movement for
this program was started, and the name Junior Associations of Commerce
was changed in a hurry to Civic Industrial Clubs! How badly some labor
representation is needed in Chicago schools you may judge from a story
told me by a parent, whose little boy asked his teacher, “What is the
militia for?” The answer was, “To put down labor strikes.”




                             CHAPTER XXIII
                    THE SUPERINTENDENT OF TROMBONES


We have now examined the public schools of three of our largest cities.
We are going to visit a number of other cities, and it will be
convenient to begin with San Francisco and cross the continent eastward.

San Francisco has a long and picturesque history of graft. Its Big
Business is in the hands of descendants of gamblers and hold-up men, who
have run its affairs in that spirit. Everything has been for sale,
including the leaders of the exploited working class. The old line union
leaders of San Francisco were, and to a great extent still are, agents
made use of by business men against their business rivals. Some twenty
years ago Eugene Schmitz, head of the musicians’ union, led the workers
into politics, and was triumphantly elected mayor of the city. Behind
the scenes as boss sat Abraham Ruef, a lawyer; and these two became
almost as important in the world of graft as the heads of traction,
water, gas, and electric light companies.

In 1906 came the earthquake and fire, and in the resulting confusion
fortunes were made. Everything had a tax on it—the privilege of building
a street-car line or the privilege of building a chimney on your home.
Every form of vice was included—you may judge the moral tone of this
community by the fact that one of the most prominent men in San
Francisco “society,” a regent of the University of California, was shown
to have invested trust funds in a “French restaurant” building, intended
to be used for his own profit as a house of assignation; and after this
exposure the gentleman stayed on as regent of the university!

One courageous newspaper editor, Fremont Older, and one public-spirited
rich man, Rudolph Spreckels, undertook the exposure and punishment of
these grafters. Francis J. Heney was put to work, and he made up his
mind that for the first time in American history the big insiders, and
not the little agents, were to pay the price. He went after Patrick
Calhoun, president of the street railways; and the result was the most
terrific civic convulsion in American history. Of course, all the
interlocking directorate rallied to Mr. Calhoun’s rescue; they were
equally guilty, and must stand or fall by their confederate. While
trying the case in court, Heney was shot in the head, but he recovered,
and the prosecution was continued; Mr. Calhoun was saved from the
penitentiary only by the purchase of the jury which was trying him.

In spite of all the efforts of Older and Heney, the outcome was that to
which we are accustomed; the little fellows were punished. Abe Ruef was
sent to the penitentiary, while Schmitz was let off by the Appelate
Court. Fremont Older, realizing that Ruef was merely a tool of the real
criminals, became sorry for him and tried to obtain his pardon. Nothing
was ever said about Ruef’s returning the plunder he had collected, and
he is now living in retirement upon this. Ex-Mayor Schmitz has recently
been re-elected one of the supervisors of the city. But he has now
learned his lesson, and takes the orders of Herbert Fleishhacker, the
banker who now runs both the city and state administrations. If you have
read “The Goose-step,” you have made the acquaintance of Herbert
Fleishhacker’s brother, Mortimer, who is the grand duke of the board of
regents of our state university, and owns the “hell fleet of the
Pacific,” the fishing vessels whose horrors are a legend of the San
Francisco waterfront. It is interesting to note that Mortimer
Fleishhacker has just appointed a new president of his university, an
astronomer named Campbell, whose son is in the bond department of
Herbert’s bank; and the new president has shown his loyalty to his
masters by declaring in a public address that “higher education is a
privilege and not a right.”

What has been the fate of the public schools of San Francisco you may
judge when I tell you that a trombone player in the Schmitz orchestra
was appointed superintendent of schools of the city, and held that high
position for eighteen years. Alfred Roncovieri was a union man,
representing what was supposed to be a union labor ticket; nevertheless,
the teachers of San Francisco were persecuted for belonging to the
American Federation of Teachers. They were ordered to withdraw, and some
two hundred out of two hundred and fifty did so. At the same time the
schools were open for the propaganda of the bankers and the militarists,
and the usual spy system was installed by the business interests.

Mr. Roncovieri was an Italian Catholic, and the censorship of text-books
was turned over to his Church; books on history, economics, biology and
science had to be submitted to Father Wood of St. Ignatius College, who,
with the help of a Paulist priest, decided whether they were suitable
for the children of San Francisco. They rejected one book, “Builders of
Democracy,” but through a mistake ninety copies of it got into the
library of one of the high schools; the city had paid for them, but the
Catholic censors ordered them out, and out they went.

Mr. Roncovieri conducted very pleasant “institutes” for the teachers,
and was profuse in flowery compliments, telling them that they were “the
finest teachers in the world.” (They had been appointed by the grafters,
and had tenure for life, and a majority of them were Catholics.) He
selected lists of speakers, and the Catholic brothers and fathers were
prominent thereon. He cultivated his reputation as “the best hand-shaker
in San Francisco”; also he saw to it that the incidental music at the
institutes was of the finest quality—as an expert trombone player, that
was in his line. How good care he took of the schools you may judge from
the fact that in one of the largest and most crowded high schools more
than one hundred windows were found to be broken and not repaired!

San Francisco kept on growing, and the schools kept on falling to
pieces, and public agitation grew louder and louder. Various public
bodies took the matter up, and finally a survey was ordered, and a
committee was appointed by the United States Commissioner of Education.
This committee visited 106 schools, and made 1818 visits to classes.
They issued an exhaustive report of 649 pages, which you can get from
the United States Bureau of Education. They criticized the schools of
San Francisco very sternly, and called for a complete reorganization,
amendments to the charter, new departments, and other radical changes.

Superintendent Roncovieri, needless to say, took offense at this report,
and before the Teachers’ Institute he delivered a violent attack upon
it. The report was defended by Mr. Addicott, of the Polytechnic High
School, and so resulted several years of controversy. Roncovieri’s
outpourings were featured in the San Francisco “Chronicle,” organ of
Mike de Young, whom Ambrose Bierce pictured hanging on all the gibbets
of the world. (See “The Brass Check.”) In the “Chronicle” of October 19,
1920, Superintendent Roncovieri described Mr. Addicott as “a clown,” “an
idiot,” and “a boob.” These highly educational statements were followed
by charges on the part of Mr. Gallagher, Catholic president of the board
of education, to the effect that there was gambling going on at
Polytechnic High School. Also it was charged that Mr. Addicott had
suspended some pupils—though nobody could explain how the principal of a
school was to keep the pupils from gambling if he were not allowed to
suspend any of them. It must be especially hard for a principal to keep
the pupils from gambling when the principal knows, and all the pupils
know, that the big business men of the city are doing little else.

Not long after that Mr. Addicott committed two major offenses; he gave
to the grand jury information concerning the wasting of school funds by
the grafters, and he said something in public to the effect that the
president of the school board had appeared at a school gathering under
the influence of liquor. So Mr. Addicott, after a farcical trial before
the Catholic board, was turned out of the school system, and the
non-Catholic population of San Francisco proceeded to organize the
Public Schools Defense Association. The students of the Polytechnic High
School declared a strike, and there was a campaign carried on by means
of mass meetings and leaflets, which made the public acquainted with
facts which the newspapers had for years refused to print. What these
facts were is the next subject for our attention.




                              CHAPTER XXIV
                     THE CITY OF FRENCH RESTAURANTS


Once more I am sorry to seem to play the game of the Grand Imperial
Kleagles; nevertheless, it must be stated that two forces have had
control of the San Francisco public schools for the past twenty years:
First, the big and little business grafters, and second, Archbishop
Hanna, who is pledged ex-officio to the undermining of the public school
system and the building up of the Catholic parochial schools. The
Catholic superintendent and the Catholic board had deliberately held
down the construction program of the public schools. The money intended
for these schools was stolen by the grafters, while building materials
were sold at bargain prices or stolen outright for the parochial
schools. The very furniture out of the public schools was taken—the
Catholic children were sitting on chairs taken from the public schools,
while the children in the public schools had to sit on soap-boxes. You
may find this incredible, but it is a matter of public record; it was
proven before the grand jury, and the documents are available for those
who care to consult them.

Needless to say, not many take that trouble; the newspapers of San
Francisco follow the rule of the capitalist press throughout the United
States—attacks on Catholic institutions are barred. Public speakers were
forbidden to hold meetings and to lecture on this question, by order of
the chief of police. Colonel J. Arthur Petersen asked in the office of
the superintendent of schools for certain records concerning school
affairs, and Mr. Roncovieri threatened to shoot him. Later on, a mob set
upon Colonel Petersen and tried to murder him in broad daylight on the
streets of the city.

The most curious story is that of the sale of school desks. By order of
the school director, Miss Jones, a Catholic, there were sold to the
parochial schools nearly three thousand school desks, at from fifteen to
fifty cents apiece. They were delivered by the city’s trucks to the
various parochial schools, and the Catholic fathers and sisters signed
receipts for them, and the city’s workmen, paid out of the city’s money,
installed the desks, and cleaned and varnished them, using the city’s
tools and materials. And three thousand children of the city were told
that there were no accommodations for them in the public schools, but
there was plenty of room in the church schools nearby!

I send the manuscript of this chapter to my friend, Fremont Older,
editor of the San Francisco “Call,” and he writes me that he has never
heard of these incidents. I take this as a curious illustration of the
power of the Catholic church over public opinion. The facts concerning
the theft of school furniture, books and building materials constituted
the principal issue in the school election of 1921. I have before me
seven pamphlets of the Public Schools Defense Association, in which the
facts are given in minute detail; especially Bulletin No. 2, dated
October 10, 1921, and Bulletin No. 3, dated October 20, 1921. The facts
were also published and republished in a paper called the “Crusader,”
especially the issues of June, September, and October, 1921. Mr. H. H.
Somers was an active worker in the association, and he has sent me
transcripts of the sales of school desks, which he personally rechecked
from the records of the board of education.

The president of this board came to the defense of the gang declaring
that the desks had been sold “to anyone who might want them.” But
practically nobody got them except the parochial schools, and nobody
knew anything about the sales but these same schools. The city charter
provides that all public property which is “usable” must be sold at
public auction, after being advertised for five days; a law which was
not once complied with over a period of five years. The president of the
board furthermore argued that the desks “were sold in small lots.”
Concerning that you may judge for yourself; I quote from the records:
Father W. H. O’Mahoney received two lots, a total of 235 desks, voucher
960, dated May 8, 1920, and voucher unnumbered, dated September 27,
1919. Father Peter C. Yorke received two lots a total of 200 desks,
vouchers 812, November 26, 1917, and 912, September 22, 1919. Father
Sullivan received 200 desks, voucher 610, September 8, 1916. Father
Doran received one lot of 375 desks, voucher 816, December 2, 1918. This
makes a total of 971 desks delivered in six lots. In addition to these,
more than 2,000 desks went in lots of from 20 to 60 per delivery.

So great was the public excitement over these matters that on September
15, 1921, a crowd of five hundred women stormed the city hall. A Mrs.
McCarthy declared that children at the Portola and Buena Vista public
schools, from which desks had been sold, were having to sit on
soap-boxes; another woman declared that her own child was sitting on a
soap-box. The newspapers reported the incident, but briefly, and without
mentioning the dread word Catholic. The grand jury took up all the
charges, and conducted very thorough investigations.[E]

-----

Footnote E:

  So many people have expressed incredulity concerning these matters
  that at the risk of repetition I quote one paragraph from the report
  of the school committee of the grand jury, the chairman of which was
  Mrs. Samuel Backus, wife of General Backus, former postmaster of San
  Francisco:

  “Mr. Conkling, store-keeper, testified that School Director Miss
  Sallie Jones condemned the furniture and sold the same to private
  parties and schools, and the same were at once put into service. Miss
  Sallie Jones testified that she had ordered the sale of old desks,
  etc., and that the same were sold at private sale, and at the same
  time the Department was buying new furniture for the schools, as she
  would not put old desks or chairs in new schools built by bond money.
  This is in strict contradiction of the Charter. First, the furniture
  was not useless, and second, it was not sold at public auction. Most
  of the sales were made at 25 and 50 cents per desk, and replaced by
  new ones costing from six to ten dollars.”

-----

Nor was it desks alone. Thousands of sacks of cement, intended for the
public schools, were stolen from the board of public works, and other
material, wood, steel, etc., was likewise delivered to the parochial
schools. Because of the overcrowding in the public schools, the city had
built over five hundred temporary shacks, costing one or two thousand
dollars each; and it was estimated that more than half this amount had
gone into graft. A school official in the course of his duties sent a
cement man to estimate on cement repair work; the price asked was two
hundred dollars; the official told him to add fifty dollars, “And you
know what it is for.” On another job the man estimated two hundred and
fifty dollars; he was told to add fifty dollars for the official; then
he was told to add ninety dollars to this. A former storekeeper of the
schools received fifty reams of paper, and was asked to sign for one
hundred; because he refused to do this he was discharged from his
position. It was shown that the city had furnished its Catholic board
president an automobile costing over five thousand dollars. Other
members of the board had had homes built at the expense of the city; the
material was taken from the board of public works, the employes of this
board helped to construct the buildings, and the time was charged to
“school repairs.”

Also this grand jury committee brought out the fact that the laws had
been repeatedly broken in the purchase of text-books for the San
Francisco schools. Books had been bought in large quantities in defiance
of state provisions, and at prices higher than those permitted. The
committee listed a total of 11,161 books which could not be used at all.
Among those who appeared before the grand jury was a Catholic member of
the school board, Miss Alice Rose Power, who admitted that she had
formerly owned five thousand shares of stock in a text-book company, and
had assigned half this stock to the head of the company and the other
half to her nephew. She still had a desk in the office of this company,
and at the same time, as a member of the school board, had authorized
purchases of text-books from this company.

I was told by teachers in San Francisco that there were store-rooms full
of unused books, which had been purchased at much higher than the
authorized prices; scarcely a teacher who did not report basements and
cupboards in his or her school, piled up with books which could not be
used. One teacher told me how, when it was known that this book graft
was being looked into, great quantities of books were shipped to another
school, and others were given to the pupils to be carried home. I
recalled the stories I heard nearly twenty years ago, when I was
investigating the glass factories in South Jersey; the state child labor
inspector would telephone to a certain factory that he was about to make
an inspection, and all the child workers would be gathered up and hidden
away in the big passage through which the fresh air was driven to the
blast furnaces!

Under the law, all these book companies could have been fined and made
to take back the books; also the bondsmen of the school board members
were liable for the amount of the graft. Some citizens hoped that this
money might be collected, but their hope was vain. The foreman of the
grand jury requested that while the investigation was under way, the
Public Schools Defense Association would hold no more public meetings
and give no more information to the press; the grand jury likewise gave
out nothing, and so gradually the excitement died down. Then, to the
dismay of the association, the grand jury adjourned without taking any
action; and the members of the association investigated, and discovered
that the foreman of the grand jury was a Catholic!

The book graft is an ancient and honored one in San Francisco history.
If you visit the University of California you will be shown with pride
the magnificent Bancroft library of old Spanish manuscripts. You are
told that this is a memorial to H. H. Bancroft, the historian of
California; and you get the impression that Mr. Bancroft donated it. As
a matter of fact, he sold it to the state for a quarter of a million
dollars; also, he sold his books to the schools—his great store-house of
culture, the “History of California” by Hubert Henry Bancroft, three
volumes at five dollars per volume. It was published by the author, and
wide-awake young agents explained to school boards and superintendents
that the great work was not yet complete; there was a shrewdly worded
clause in the contract, whereby the purchaser agreed to take the
succeeding volumes of the series.

The school authorities signed this contract by the thousands, and then
the Bancroft mills began to grind! “The History of California” extended
to thirty-three volumes, and then it was continued in the form of
histories of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Central America, Alaska;
it was like the magic salt-mill which made the sea salty! These volumes
would appear every six months or so; they would be delivered at the
schools, and the innocent teachers would take them in and put them on
the shelves. Nothing was said about payment, and so nobody worried about
it; until finally, after the series was completed, the bills were
delivered—and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth among school
boards of California. Many refused to pay, but Bancroft sued, and got
judgments amounting to over a million dollars. I am told that there are
schools way up in the hills which have a shelf of Bancroft’s history as
their sole instrument of general culture. After that the Bancroft
concern was a power in the school-book business of the state; it got the
agencies for many of the big book concerns, and carried the school
superintendents in its pocket.

Some time ago the people of California got tired of being robbed by book
companies, and put through a provision for the manufacture of elementary
school text-books by the state. All over the United States I found the
book men incensed concerning this California procedure. They would
present me with pocketfuls of literature, expensive pamphlets
demonstrating the futility and extravagance of the California text-book
program. I would listen politely, and accept the literature and ship it
home, where it still forms a pile upon my shelves; but I do not need to
go into it, because, having investigated the California situation, I
know how the political machine is occupied to sabotage the public
text-book scheme. The former state printer, Richardson, is now our
governor, put in office by the Black Hand to starve the schools and
build up the jails.

To return to San Francisco: there was an election campaign over the
issue of reorganizing the school system, and this became of necessity an
anti-Catholic campaign. The Catholics fought vigorously—some three
hundred nuns were marched to the polls to cast their votes for the
Catholic program, and the archbishop formally granted them absolution
for the crime of taking part in politics! Nevertheless, the awakened
people of San Francisco had their way. Mr. Addicott was reinstated, and
Superintendent Roncovieri and President Gallagher of the school board
retired.

San Francisco now has a new board of education. The president of this
board is a department-store proprietor and strong Chamber of Commerce
man, who admitted that he had completed his scanty education in a
parochial school. The grand duchess of the board is the mother-in-law of
Congressman Kahn, one of our most ardent militarists, and a close friend
of the archbishop’s. The rest of the board consists of the sister-in-law
of the mayor’s secretary; a prominent tobacco merchant; a prominent
lumber merchant; a labor official who is employed in a bank at a salary
of $150 a week, and who sends his children to the parochial schools; and
finally, Miss Alice Rose Power of the Catholic church.

This board has imported a new superintendent from New Orleans, and I
find a long article in the “Sierra Educational News,” state organ of the
school machine, telling what a great educator he is. We shall see in due
course how greatness is manufactured by these school machines, and for
what purpose it is used. We shall see Superintendent Gwinn working with
the gang when they stole the National Education Association away from
the teachers; also we shall see him drawing up the “patriotism program”
under which the N. E. A. turned its conscience over to the keeping of
the American Legion. It is worth noting that he retains from the days of
the trombones his deputy superintendent, who at the last election was
caught taking eight hundred dollars from the Power Trust, for propaganda
among the teachers against the public ownership bill.




                              CHAPTER XXV
                          THE UNIVERSITY GANG


We cross San Francisco Bay to Berkeley, and here is a city of sixty
thousand people, cut in half by a broad avenue; on the one side live
well-to-do commuters, retired army and navy officers, capitalists, and
university students and professors; on the other side live shipyard and
railroad workers, and servants of the rich. The city, both the rich part
and the poor, is completely dominated by a medieval fortress on a hill,
which I have called the University of the Black Hand, and which is
officially known as the University of California. It has eleven thousand
students, a completely intrenched bureaucracy, and a board of regents
made up of the worst plutocratic elements in the state. Desiring to show
how much he cares for “The Goose-step,” the newly elected governor of
the Black Hand has just added to the board the greatest enemy of the
public welfare in California, Harry Chandler, publisher and owner of the
Los Angeles “Times.”

In 1911 the workers of Berkeley took thought of their own interests, and
elected a Socialist clergyman as their mayor. This, of course, was
terrible to the plutocracy, and they waged incessant war upon the
Socialists, one of their principal agencies being the political science
department of their university. You understand that the purpose of
“political science” is to maintain the capitalist state; and what better
practice for the students than to hold down the working class of their
university town?

The head of this department was David P. Barrows, whom I have called the
Dean of Imperialism: one of these military figures who make our cause
easy by caricaturing his own. I have told the story of his career in
“The Goose-step”—how he went to Siberia and directed President Wilson’s
private war on the Russian people, and then came home and clamored for
the shooting of all the Bolsheviks in America. On the strength of this
program the Black Hand made him president of the university; a position
he has just quit, because the Black Hand discovered that it needs, not
merely a man who is “strong,” but one who is not stupid.

What do you do when you are Dean of Imperialism of a state university,
and are set to hold down the local populace? You build up a political
machine, precisely like Tammany Hall or any other machine. You pick a
university representative to become mayor of the town, and you pick
another university representative to run the school board. You have your
experts draw up the city charter and all the laws and ordinances, so as
to make it possible for you to have your way and for the people not to
have their way. You summon your fraternities and put them into politics
on the side of their fathers. You vote your students en masse in the
city, in spite of the fact that they are not legally entitled to vote
there. Your fraternity political leader gets five thousand dollars from
the Key Route (street railways), and when a student exposes this fact on
a public platform, you see this student mobbed and beaten. You collect
campaign funds from the public service corporations and big business
grafters in the usual political fashion, and pay them with the promise
that when there are strikes you will use the students of the university
to break the strikes; and whenever the occasion arises you carry out
this promise. You drive from your university every professor who dares
to lift his voice against the regime of the Black Hand. You kick out
unceremoniously a student who dares to publish a paper reciting the
facts about your activities. Such is “political science” in an American
state university; such are the lessons which the students of the Black
Hand learn in Berkeley, and go back to apply in their home cities and
towns.

You might have the idea that at least a university administration would
do something in the way of improving the schools of its city; but if so,
you would be as naive as the people of Berkeley have been. The
university-controlled system of Berkeley turns out precisely the same
products as the New York system dominated by “Democratic” Tammany Hall,
and the Chicago system dominated by the Thompson “Republican” machine,
and the San Francisco system dominated by Banker Fleishhacker and
Archbishop Hanna; those products being G, F, P, and R—Graft, Favoritism,
Propaganda and Repression.

In the year 1913, when the Socialists carried their second election and
got control of the schools, the school buildings were run down and
filthy, with no paint and with vile, unsanitary toilets. Large sums of
money had been voted, and nobody could find out where they went; the
accounts were purposely confused for the concealment of graft. The
school board was made up of political “dead beats” and grafters,
representing all the business interests, including prostitution and
booze. The teachers were browbeaten, the parents were insulted and
driven from the schools when they tried to find out what was going on.
The pupils were “fired” because of their own political activities, or
the activities of their parents in opposition to the gang.

The Socialists came into power, and their first demand was for the
building up of the school system. They called a bond election, and the
interests defeated this; subsequently the bond issue was carried, and
there was a possibility of several hundred thousand dollars being spent
without consideration for the grafters. This, of course, would never do;
so the political science department of the university was called on, and
it drew up a plan, which the city council put through, to appoint a
special committee to handle this money; a “committee of citizens”—that
is to say, the business grafters of Berkeley, in sufficient number to
outvote the Socialists!

Mrs. Elvina S. Beals was a Socialist member of this school board, and
also of the next school board, on which she constituted an unhappy
minority. She has told me the story of her experiences, and put the
documents into my hands. To become a Socialist school board member is
like stepping into a lion’s den; save that there is no wall against
which you can back up—the lions are on every side of you! There is
nothing you do or attempt to do for the schools in which you do not
encounter some business interest trying to make profit out of them.

If you tried to obtain a fair price for a building site, you made mortal
enemies of some fellow board member, whose relatives were expecting to
retire with a life competence from this particular deal. If you insisted
upon enforcing the law requiring bids for school furnishings, you made
enemies of those board members who had “friends” among the wholesalers.
If you tried to have the board furnish stationery to the high school
students at cost, the merchants of your city came in a body to make a
protest to the board—you were ruining their business. The secretary of
the Chamber of Commerce made an eloquent speech, asking who it was that
paid the taxes to support the schools, if not the business men. If you
tried to establish school cafeterias, so that poor children could get
wholesome food at cost, you were ruining the restaurant keepers and the
bakers. All these people would combine and form a little local Black
Hand; they would start a scandal bureau and fill the kept press with
misrepresentations; they would start a “recall” campaign against you,
and pour out floods of slander upon you, and make you spend a small
fortune to defend yourself.

And here is the most significant fact: at the very front of this
campaign of rascality and falsehood would be the university machine!
Here was a school board giving away old houses to real estate men
without bids; here was a coal man on the board giving furniture
contracts to a friend; and in every such issue the university vote would
be on the side of the grafters! The Socialists brought up the question
of fire insurance graft. It seemed that whenever the local insurance men
got hard up and needed cash, they went and insured a school; they had
even insured one building which didn’t exist!

They had been charging as high as four dollars per hundred; but now the
Socialists demanded bids, and forced the local agents down to a
dollar-sixty per hundred, and in one case as low as sixty cents per
hundred. The representative of a Pennsylvania company made this bid, and
the law required that the city should take the lowest bid. Mrs. Beals
urged that the law be obeyed; against her on the board was an official
of the Federal Coal Company, whose president and secretary were at that
time in San Quentin penitentiary, charged with defrauding the government
by short-weight—and getting fifteen hundred dollars a month salary from
the company while in jail! Also a prominent politician, who frequently
came to board meetings with so much liquor in him that you could smell
it across the table. Also a local political woman and finally the
university professor. Here was a plain issue of whether or not the
school board should obey the law; and the university professor of the
Black Hand voted to disobey the law. After a whole day’s fight, Mrs.
Beals forced a reconsideration on this matter; the professor stuck by
the gang, but the woman and the coal dealer changed, and so the city of
Berkeley was saved five thousand dollars.

Then came an old settler trying to sell some property to the board for
many times its value. There was mysterious pulling of wires, and it was
evident that the board was again going to disobey the law. So the
Socialists raked up a forgotten statute, to the effect that the board
could not buy land without the consent of the people. Under another
forgotten statute they called a town meeting, which was most
embarrassing to the grafters. The board dropped this proposition; also
they dropped Mrs. Beals from the sites committee of the board, and put
her on the supplies committee instead. Thus she saw another side of the
system; one of the agents who sold school supplies told her he was glad
there was now one school supplies committee in the state of California
which did not have its hands held out!

The board, following the lead of President Barrows at the university,
had made a ruling that the superintendent might dismiss teachers on
recommendation from the principal, and without the right to see the
board. But Mrs. Beals made it her business to see every teacher who was
let out, and also to see those who were newly engaged. Iron fire-escapes
were desperately needed, and with the help of the fire-chief Mrs. Beals
got them. Also she got kindergartens in every primary school. Giving her
entire time for the munificent salary of fifteen dollars a month, she
had saved the city of Berkeley a hundred thousand dollars. But now came
war and glory; the board members were called upon to sign a resolution
to the effect that they would perform any service that Woodrow Wilson
might request; and when Mrs. Beals very wisely hesitated at this, the
Associated Press flashed her over the United States as disloyal. So the
gang came in waving the stars and stripes, and everything is now back
where it was. You will find this happening in city after city—America
has been made safe for capitalism.

Berkeley now has as superintendent an amiable but feeble
lecturer-pedagogue, who told the California Teachers’ Association that
“the teachers and the public should get together in prayer-meeting”; he
went on to explain what he meant by the public, naming the Chamber of
Commerce, the Rotarians, the Kiwanis—and not a single labor body! The
overhead expenses of the schools have increased five times—but they have
put out all the Montessori work, because they cannot afford it! In
charge of the spending of the money is a board made up as follows: a
coal and wood dealer; a dry goods merchant of the Rotary Club and
Chamber of Commerce type; the wife of an attorney; a political woman
affiliated with the oil interests and the Barrows machine; and a
professor of the agricultural department of the university. How
aggressively the Black Hand is at work you may judge from the fact that
the children of Berkeley were required to answer a questionnaire,
disguised as a “social survey.” Among fifty questions were such as
these: “How does your father spend his spare time? What does he do
Sundays? What books does your mother read?” The child was assured that
all this would be “confidential”; but he was not permitted to take the
questions home to his parents!




                              CHAPTER XXVI
                            THE WARD LEADER


The trolley cars take us a few miles south to the city of Oakland, where
we find a still larger population of shipyard workers, longshoremen and
factory hands, having ideas of their own, and therefore having to be
taken in charge by the Black Hand. The situation in Oakland is of
especial importance, for the reason that the school superintendent of
the Black Hand in this city is one of the big chiefs of the National
Education Association. Fred M. Hunter was the 1921 president of the
Association, and at the convention where he was chosen the gang put
through a “reorganization,” whereby it was made forever certain that the
class-room teachers of America shall remain impotent in their own
organization, while their opinions are voiced for them and their money
is spent for them by the bosses of the educational Tammany Hall.

I wish you to understand that when I speak of the N. E. A. as an
educational Tammany Hall, I am not slinging language, but giving a
precise description of a sociological phenomenon. The N. E. A. is run by
a political gang, and the bosses in it are exactly the same kind of
people, functioning in exactly the same way as the ward leaders of
Tammany. Fred M. Hunter is one of these ward leaders, and he uses the
schools of Oakland, in no sense for the benefit of the city or its
people, but solely for the building up of the N. E. A. machine, and of
his power in this machine. As you read the story, therefore, bear this
wider aspect of the matter in mind. The city of Oakland, with its
quarter of a million people, mostly workers, contributes the sum of
eighteen thousand dollars a day for the education of its children, and
this sum is used by a school politician to reward his friends and punish
his enemies. Incidentally, of course, this ward leader sees to it that
our education, both local and national, remains plutocratic; just as the
ward leaders of Tammany see to it that the “traction crowd” and the
other big exploiters are protected.

The City of Oakland voted five million dollars for new schools, and Mr.
Hunter explained publicly his idea that the proper people to handle
these bonds were the business men; therefore he appointed a special
committee known as the “Bond Expenditure Committee.” This committee
proceeded to appoint a prominent politician as “land agent,” to handle
the buying of sites, at a salary of three hundred dollars a month. The
opposition members of the school board objected to this program, and
forced the resignation of the Bond Expenditure Committee; whereupon, Mr.
Hunter caused to be printed in the Oakland “Tribune,” kept newspaper of
the gang, an interview proclaiming to the citizens that the school
system was about to be disrupted.

You will appreciate the humor of this when you are told that during the
previous year the schools had had to be closed for two weeks because of
the wasting of school money; but at the same time the board had
increased Mr. Hunter’s salary to ten thousand dollars per year! (It has
since been raised to eleven, and is about to be raised again.) When the
school board, in the effort to keep the schools open, tried to take
control of the business department from Mr. Hunter, he caused the big
business men of Oakland to come before the board and protest; and one of
these men stated that he didn’t think it was so bad for the city to lose
two weeks of school—a small matter of a hundred and eighty thousand
dollars—as it would be to “injure the prestige of so big a man as Mr.
Hunter!”

Not merely must the money put up by the Oakland taxpayers be sacrificed
to Mr. Hunter’s “prestige,” but also the teaching in the Oakland schools
must be sacrificed to the same end. Mr. Hunter promotes teachers who
serve his political ambitions, and this without relation to their
ability. The convention at which the National Education Association was
“reorganized” was held in Salt Lake City in 1920; and Mr. Hunter’s
right-hand man in putting this through was J. Fred Anderson, president
of the Utah Educational Association. He delivered the votes of the Utah
teachers, and immediately was made principal of one of Oakland’s large
high schools, with salary and allowances amounting to $4,390 per year.

Also there is Miss Elizabeth Arlett, who, while supposed to be teaching
the school children of Oakland, was touring the United States, shortly
before the convention, in the interest of Mr. Hunter’s candidacy for the
presidency of the N. E. A. Miss Arlett was promoted to be principal of a
high school in Oakland, and I am told that many teachers in Oakland have
heard her boast that she can have anything she wants in the Oakland
school system.

On the other hand, there have been some teachers who have failed to
carry out Mr. Hunter’s will—just as there are some labor leaders who
will not sell out their union, but persist in representing the workers.
Mr. Hunter wished to put his own henchman in the position of president
of the Oakland Teachers’ Association. Here, please understand, were the
teachers of the city, supposed to be electing the head of their own
professional organization; but they were not permitted to cast their
ballot secretly, they had to vote in the presence of the principal, and
they got their orders for whom to vote. One young woman teacher failed
to vote according to orders, and she was so persecuted in her school
that she felt compelled to resign.

You might think that would have ended the matter, but if so, you don’t
know the methods of the gang. This teacher applied for a position as
secretary to a corporation, and was promised the position, but when she
went to begin her work she was told by the manager that Mr. Hunter had
reported her as having been “disloyal”; consequently this corporation
could not employ her. And if you think that an unusual kind of thing,
let me mention that only yesterday I was talking with a school teacher
in Los Angeles, who told me about a friend of hers who had fought the
gang, and then had left Los Angeles to seek a position elsewhere; for
years afterwards she lost every position she held, because the gang
ferreted her out and wrote letters about her to her new school
employers.

There has just been a new school election in Oakland. In preparation for
it, Mr. Hunter had got his henchmen in all the Babbitt societies of the
city—the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, the Lions, the Ad Clubs, the “High
Twelve,” the “Knights of the Round Table.” And a few days before the
election he took eight boys out of high school, without the permission
or knowledge of their parents, and set them to distributing election
cards in boats and trains. His ticket won; and so he now has everything
his own way.

The old board had persisted in keeping in office a “chief of
construction” who was finishing the new school buildings. This man had
required the contractors to live up to the specifications, and had
thereby incurred the furious enmity of the grafters—and also, of course,
of Mr. Hunter. The grafting contractors put up large sums of money to
pay for the election of the new board, and the first action of Mr.
Hunter when the new board came in was to recommend the discharge and
force the resignation of the too honest chief of construction. In
resigning, this official filed specific charges of fraud against the
contractors, and Mr. Hunter’s school board majority utterly ignored the
communication.

It was left to the Civic Club, an independent organization, to force an
investigation, which has shown substitution of inferior materials,
meaning tens of thousands of dollars stolen from the people of the city.
Some new buildings have been condemned as unsafe, and the work ordered
done over. And note, please, that Hunter is on the building committee,
and had full knowledge of what his gang was doing. The presidents of the
various women’s clubs of Oakland unite in a statement: “We are told of
fire hazards, faulty roof construction, and other grave dangers menacing
the lives of our children. And yet we are told that no crime has been
committed!” I entreat you to remember these things when, later on in
this book, you are reading about Hunter of Oakland, and his career of
glory at the annual conventions of the National Education Association.

You will not need to be told that a Black Hand such as this rules firmly
the thinking of the people of Oakland. How they do it was narrated at a
meeting of the Better America Federation at the Oakland Hotel, where Mr.
Levenson, manager of the biggest department-store, stated that the
police under his direction had undertaken to crush street speaking, and
had crushed it. Also the school department under Fred M. Hunter was put
to work, and the Honorable Leslie M. Shaw, author of “Vanishing
Landmarks,” was brought to Oakland, and all the teachers in the school
system were compelled by official order to listen while he denounced the
referendum and woman’s suffrage.

Then came Woodworth Clum, of the Better America Federation, to tell the
high school children that a proposition to amend the Constitution of the
United States is “akin to treason.” The Black Hand shipped up from Los
Angeles eleven thousand copies of Clum’s pamphlet, “America Is Calling,”
the substance being that America is calling her school children to mob
their fellow students with whose opinions they do not agree. The Black
Hand gave them a practical demonstration of this program by mobbing the
editor of the Oakland “Free Press,” who was too freely exposing graft.

It was proposed to distribute Mr. Clum’s pamphlet to every pupil in the
high schools, but the Central Labor Council made a protest to the state
board of education, and the state superintendent, acting by vote of the
board, forbade the distribution. Here comes an interesting test of the
Black Hand. The thing they are in business to protect is “law and
order”; their one purpose in getting the school children into their
military classes is that the children may learn discipline and
subordination to authority. Now the state superintendent of education is
the superior of the Oakland superintendent, and under the law it was his
right and his duty to forbid the distribution of propaganda in the
schools. In issuing his order to Hunter, he was acting by vote of the
state board; and what did Hunter do about it? Why, he went ahead and
distributed the pamphlets, and the Better America Federation proclaimed
him a hero throughout the state!

Every once in a while a hero like this arises: first Ole Hanson of
Seattle, then Cal Coolidge of Massachusetts, then President Atwood of
Clark University, who leaped into the limelight upon the face of Scott
Nearing. I invite you once more not to forget Fred M. Hunter, Oakland
superintendent of schools. There is a strong movement under way to
establish a new cabinet position, a secretary of education, and Hunter
has his eye on this goal, and is bending every effort toward it. How
beautifully he would fit in the cabinet of Cal Coolidge, strike-breaking
hero of Massachusetts! What a demonstration of national unity—from
Boston Bay to San Francisco Bay, one country, one flag, and one
goose-step! Black Hands across the continent!




                             CHAPTER XXVII
                       THE ROMEO AND JULIET STUNT


We move north to Portland, which is the harbor of the lumber country, a
relatively old city with an aristocracy of merchant princes, like
Baltimore or Boston. Ten years ago Oregon had a strong progressive
movement, it was the pioneer in direct legislation. Today the old guard
rules, and Portland is in the grip of a Black Hand which imports its
ideas direct from Los Angeles. Curiously enough, they had a strike of
the longshoremen and seamen, at the same time as Los Angeles; and here
also the I. W. W. attacked the very basis of American civic life by
closing up the boot-legging dives and dumping the liquor into the
gutters. The insurrection was put down by the same methods as in Los
Angeles—the throwing of hundreds of men into jail and holding them
incommunicado without warrant or charge.

A number of Portland’s old and ineffably haughty families got their
wealth by stealing the school lands which the government had given to
the people of the state; now other families are on the way to becoming
haughty upon the basis of real estate manipulations of the school board,
and the sale of school supplies at double prices. The boss of the Oregon
political machine is Mr. A. L. Mills, president of the First National
Bank; for the past ten years he has kept a political agent to run the
state legislature. The machine sent down to Los Angeles for copies of
Woodworth’s Clum’s pamphlet, “America Is Calling,” for distribution in
Oregon; and from these dragon’s teeth resulted a whole crop of
legislative vermin—a bill requiring every school teacher to take an oath
of loyalty, a bill forbidding aliens to teach in the schools; a bill
barring any teacher who “either publicly or privately engages in
destructive or undermining criticism of our government”; a bill
requiring “the teaching of the Constitution in all public and private
schools”—meaning, of course, the teaching of the Constitution as a
bulwark of special privilege.

As the directing staff of the public schools of Portland, Mr. Mills has
selected a group of educators about whom I have yet to hear anything
good. To call them uneducated educators would not tell you much; so come
with me and make the acquaintance of Mr. D. A. Grout, superintendent of
schools for a quarter of a million people. Mr. Grout is clammy and cold
in his personal dealings, but in literary composition and oratory he
expands and reveals himself. He takes a parental attitude towards his
teachers, gathering them in large assemblies to instruct and inspire
them. He composes verses, and has the teachers learn and recite these
verses before him. He tells them stories with moral lessons, and then
prints the stories in the official “School Bulletin.” One of these
stories had to do with the philosophy of an old Negro, who was
accustomed to say on all occasions: “Make the most of life today, ’caze
you don’t know what may come along tomorrow.” A group of teachers
declared to me that in telling the story Mr. Grout repeated this formula
eight times; but I suspect these teachers of inaccuracy—because, as Mr.
Grout publishes the story in the “School Bulletin,” September 6, 1919,
he repeats it only three times, and then varies it for another three
times as follows: “Make the most of life today, ’caze we _do know_ what
may come along tomorrow.”

Two or three years ago Mr. Grout went East to attend a convention of the
National Education Association. His expenses were paid by the city; he
has done considerable traveling at the city’s expense—$4,995.08 in the
past three years. Superintendents do this traveling upon the theory that
they will meet other great educators and bring home new ideas and
inspirations. “We do get so tired,” said one of Mr. Grout’s flock, in
telling me about it. “We do so crave a little bit of enthusiasm,
something to make us think it’s worth while to go on with the old, dead
routine!”

Portland’s great educator comes home from his six thousand mile trip,
and the twelve hundred teachers of the city are summoned to a general
assembly to receive the new ideas and inspiration. The proceedings are
opened with music; there is a supervisor of singing, who stands upon the
platform, with the bulk of the men teachers on the ground floor, and the
bulk of the women up in the gallery. The men are directed to sing: “Soft
o’er the fountain, ling’ring falls the Southern moon.” They do not sing
loud enough, and the music supervisor jumps up and shouts: “Sing until
you break the chandeliers.” After which it is the women’s turn; they
answer: “Nita! Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part.” The men sing
another verse, and the women answer—the sarcastic young lady teachers
who told me about this performance described it as “the Romeo and Juliet
stunt.” Next they sing, “In the gloaming, oh, my darling”—in the same
“Romeo and Juliet” fashion. I have before me the “School Bulletin” for
two successive years, which provides the texts of these
chandelier-breaking melodies; also, “Just a song at twilight, When the
lights are low,” and “Maxwelton’s braes are bonnie, Where early fa’s the
dew.”

Now Mr. Grout rises, and a hushed silence falls upon the twelve hundred
men and women teachers. The time for new ideas and inspirations has
come. Mr. Grout has brought a really new idea: poetry is to be taught to
the children, and he opens a normal school right there and then, to
teach the teachers how to teach it. His method is to repeat one line of
the poem, and then have the twelve hundred teachers recite this after
him; then he repeats another line of the poem, and the teachers recite
that; then he repeats the two lines together, and the teachers recite
the two; then he goes on to the next two lines, and so on, until all the
twelve hundred teachers are able to recite the entire poem correctly.
Such is the newest pedagogic discovery, for which the people of Portland
were paying a salary of six hundred and twenty-five dollars per month,
plus a car allowance of fifty dollars per month, plus a traveling
allowance of a hundred and thirty-eight dollars and sixty-one cents per
month.

It depends upon the poem, you may say. So I give you the poem which Mr.
Grout thus taught to the twelve hundred assembled teachers of Portland.
Lest you find it incredible, I specify that when the teachers recited it
to me, I also found it incredible; I made two or three of them recite it
in turn, so as to make sure they really knew it. Later on, I made them
send me a copy of the “School Bulletin,” in which the poem was printed
for the benefit of any of the twelve hundred who might have forgotten
it. Here it is, word for word, and punctuation mark for punctuation
mark:

/* “There was a crooked man Who walked a crooked mile; But I, when I go
walking, Don’t walk in crooked style. I keep my chin and stomach in And
hold my chest up higher, And step along so straight and strong, And
never, never tire.” */

You can imagine the silence which prevailed in the auditorium after this
course in poetry. Could it be that some faint uneasiness penetrated the
mind of the Portland superintendent of schools? Apparently it did, for
he now told the assembled twelve hundred teachers that he had a story to
teach them. There were some teachers who were dissatisfied with the
school system, and were accustomed more or less surreptitiously to
criticize it; for the benefit of such teachers Mr. Grout mentioned that
once upon a time he had owned a dog, and this dog had acquired the habit
of running out on the highway and barking at everybody and everything
that went by. Once a big automobile had come along, and the dog had
rushed out at that, and afterwards the dog had been buried at the foot
of a big tree, and had made excellent fertilizer for the tree. The fate
of this dog was one for all teachers to bear in mind and apply the moral
in their lives. After which the twelve hundred teachers joined in
singing: “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, Which I gaze
on so fondly today”; and the assembly was adjourned.

I was solemnly assured by five teachers at once, that at the assembly of
the following year Mr. Grout started out to ascertain if the teachers
still remembered the poem which he had taught them; but one of the board
members seated on the platform burst out laughing, and brought the
poetical proceedings to an end. The board member thought it was funny,
and maybe you think it is funny; but I don’t. I think it one more proof
of the deliberate conspiracy which the masters of our plutocratic empire
have hatched, to keep the American people at the mental age of eight.
The schools are now conducted upon the basis of keeping the pupils at
that age; and of course the safest way to do this is to keep the
teachers at the same age, and likewise the principals, and the
supervisors—and the superintendents.

But it may be that I do an injustice to the mentality of Portland’s
high-priced educators; it may be that they are not so naive as they
appear, and really know what they are doing to earn their keep. The
teachers have a pension fund, to which all have to belong. The amount of
the fund is over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and some
school officials are ex officio members of the board of directors of
this fund. The board loaned the sum of sixty-five hundred dollars to a
firm of lawyers, and there was a rumor that one school official had got
the use of this money. One of the teachers came upon a newspaper
clipping, telling how an official in the Philippines had been sent to
jail for taking money from a fund of whose board he was a member. This
clipping was mailed anonymously to the school official; and immediately
afterwards the firm of lawyers began to pay up that sixty-five hundred
dollars! At one time it was reported that the fund was on the rocks, and
the teachers were going to lose all their money. May be it really was in
danger; and again, may be somebody wanted to throw it into the hands of
a receiver, so that the politicians could get it. Big Business of course
wants the teachers to take out insurance with private companies; to this
end the Portland “Oregonian,” organ of the Black Hand, cited seventeen
cases of the bankruptcy of teachers’ pension funds!

One incident from the administration of the previous superintendent,
just to show you what happens to school teachers in the days of
“progressive” politics. The teachers’ organizations worked out plans for
certain changes in the school system, which changes were calculated to
cause inconvenience to the superintendent. The teachers went out on the
streets, they went to the restaurants at night, and to the market
places, and got the necessary thirty thousand signatures to petitions.
(This is the thing called “direct legislation,” you understand; this is
what the Honorable Leslie M. Shaw, and the Dishonorable Harry Atwood and
Woodworth Clum describe as “Treason to the Republic.”) The teachers
gathered in the superintendent’s office with their signatures; they took
them to the office of a lawyer who was a friend of the superintendent,
and locked them in his safe. After supper they found that the door of
the building had been unlocked, the office door had been unlocked, the
safe had been unlocked, and the petitions were gone! The politicians had
made off with the thirty thousand signatures, and no more was heard of
that treasonable referendum!




                             CHAPTER XXVIII
                     THE INVENTOR OF FIVE SCIENCES


The school situation in Portland assumes to some extent the aspect of a
sex-war; the women teachers do the work and the men bosses get the
salaries. After a long campaign the taxpayers voted money to raise the
teachers’ salaries, but some of the teachers got no increase, and others
got only fifty dollars a year, and others a hundred dollars a year,
while the principals got four hundred dollars! Even when the teachers
got the “increase,” they didn’t always get the money. Some of them told
me their misadventures, trying to get this money; but when I wrote out
the stories, they got scared—somebody might recognize them! So you don’t
get the stories, any more than the teachers got the salaries!

I am free to mention, however, that teachers’ salaries are delayed for
one week, and in the meantime the money lies in somebody’s bank. That
may seem a small matter, until you figure that the interest on two
million dollars for one week amounts to three thousand dollars a year—a
sum worth anybody’s taking!

The women teachers complain also of male parasites, who do little work,
but draw high salaries. Many of the supervisors draw an extra salary
from the state university, and seldom come to the schools; the teachers
until recently had to go to them and pay to be taught. There is a
drawing supervisor drawing pay in the state university; there is another
supervisor who is paid twenty-nine hundred dollars a year, who also
teaches in the state university, and whom you may see smoking every
afternoon in a hotel lobby. Teachers assure me that he has not visited
some schools in three years.

There is the usual graft in the purchase of supplies, and the usual
inability of the teachers to get supplies. When they make public
complaint about this, they read items in the “Oregonian” to the effect
that the reason there is no money for school supplies is that it all
goes for teachers’ salaries. Hardly ever is the problem of school funds
discussed, that this little sneer does not emerge. Some teachers became
indignant, and started to investigate the expenditure of school money;
the principal of their school became interested, and took the
investigation off their hands, and discovered so much that he was made
an assistant superintendent to keep him quiet; three other men were
promoted to be principals, as a result of this little affair! They have
taken out cooking, sewing, and manual training from the sixth grade in
the elementary schools; last year they threatened to take out more
subjects—because they are so poor. But they are not too poor to pay
eight hundred and thirteen dollars and sixty-one cents per month for the
teaching of poetry at the assemblies!

They have in Portland a system whereby the teachers are supposed to have
something to do with the selecting of text-books. There was a sort of
“book-election,” at which the teachers were to indicate their choice.
Swarms of book men descended upon the city, and were charming to the
teachers; then the ballot boxes were taken secretly to the court house,
where they were kept all night—open. Ginn & Company got four of the
principal books, and the agent laughed and said he hadn’t had to work
very hard.

Having heard about Portland’s banker-boss, Mr. Mills, you will not be
surprised to learn that the Portland schools are active in the interest
of commercialism. In the last few weeks the bankers have been giving
lectures every week; the Navy got its “day,” and then the “Oregonian”
with a spelling-bee! As a means of teaching Big Business in the schools,
they introduced what they called the “Business Science Normal”; there
were two meetings a week for three weeks, and each meeting was repeated
twice, so that all the teachers might attend. At the suggestion of the
superintendent, invitation cards were sent in bulk to the principals,
and by them distributed to the teachers; the schools were closed early,
so that every teacher might be on hand. In addition to lectures, there
were fifty-two printed articles about business, twelve issues of
“Business Philosophy,” the official organ of the “Business Science
Society,” and “a year’s council privilege with the educational director
of this society.” Here was a wizard without peer in all the realms of
Mammon—as you learned from a circular got out by the Portland Chamber of
Commerce, which described him as “known wherever the English language is
spoken as one of the world’s greatest business scientists. He is the
author of five sciences dealing with human relationships.” Did you ever
hear anything so wonderful? A man who created five new sciences, all out
of one head and in one lifetime! I wonder how many Newton created!

While I was in Portland this wide-awake Chamber of Commerce had taken up
propaganda for a “world’s fair” to celebrate the discovery of the
Northwest. Of course they thought first of the school children: Let the
children write compositions upon the desirability of this world’s fair!
The Chamber of Commerce would supply the arguments, and the children
would copy out maxims, and take them home to their parents, and so the
people would be induced to pay the cost of the fair out of public taxes!

Also, the city has a “Rose Festival” every year, the purpose being to
exhibit advertising “floats” of the various stores. The children are
supposedly not required to appear in this parade, but schools which
neglect their duty are considered disloyal. The children spend two or
three weeks being drilled, and of course lose that time from study. They
have to stand round in the streets all day; there are no toilets
available, and some of the children became seriously ill.

I talked with a group of high school teachers. At the Washington High
School they have a Junior Chamber of Commerce; one of the teachers asked
me to imagine a Junior Central Labor Council, but my imagination was not
equal to this flight. Some of the teachers had wanted to discuss a
teachers’ union, but the principal of the school forbade it. Finding it
impossible to keep the high school students from sometimes hearing of
modern ideas, the business men abolished outright the departments of
economics and sociology. The students signed a petition for the
restoration of these courses; a group of thirty of them went to
interview Superintendent Grout and take him this petition, and he
insulted them, informing them that the Portland schools were not being
run on petitions of the pupils. This school was forbidden to debate the
Plumb Plan, and also to debate Socialism. The teachers have been
forbidden to allow any discussion of the creation, of evolution, of the
Hebrews in history, and of the birth of Christ.

The Portland forbidders, resolving to make a clean sweep, also forbade
the “New Republic” and the “Survey.” A committee of teachers went to
protest in the matter of “The Survey,” and were told that this magazine
was “one-sided” in its treatment of capital; they were advised to
content themselves with such publications as the “Outlook,” the
“Independent,” and the “Literary Digest.” They pointed out that it might
be possible to regard these magazines as “one-sided” in their treatment
of labor, but no answer to this argument was returned. At the Washington
High School the students, with the help of the history department, gave
an entertainment for the benefit of the school library. They earned
three hundred dollars, but they were not permitted to select their own
books—the list had to be passed by the superintendent’s office. Also,
the pupils are forbidden to invite outside speakers. I assume that this
school is named after George Washington, so I recommend an inscription
to be carved across the front of the building—some words taken from the
letters of the Father of his Country, as follows:

  “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force! Like fire
  it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment
  should it be left to irresponsible action.”

That government is a fearful master has been thoroughly proven to the
teachers of Portland; the White Terror has raged in the schools, and has
taken all the ugly forms of spying and treachery and brutality. The
first teacher I talked with told me how she had seen a shadow on a
window curtain, and had discovered the superintendent listening outside
her class-room window. The second teacher I talked with had discovered
the second assistant superintendent hiding in a cloak-room watching the
teachers. Of course, all the agents of the Black Hand were training
their children to bring tales home from the school-room. The Portland
“Oregonian” exploded in a furious editorial, revealing that a teacher
had actually defended the “Survey”; another teacher had maintained that
the Socialists who had been elected to the Assembly in New York state
had a right to demand their seats. That Charles E. Hughes agreed with
this school teacher made no difference to the editor of the “Oregonian.”

During war-time, when everybody was selling Liberty bonds, a rumor
spread that the librarian of the public library refused to buy. She was
“grilled” by the city commission, and said: “I have been doing my work
as librarian and minding my own affairs. But if you question me, and
insist upon a reply, why then I inform you that I am a pacifist.” One
commissioner’s answer was: “Would you want a German to ravish you?” You
remember how they used to settle the anti-slavery question in the old
days: “Would you want a Negro to marry your sister?” Of course the
librarian went out, and her persecutor was elected to the school board.

This ultra-patriotic official was a wholesale druggist, and I had a
friend who, in the early days of the war, was talking with an employe in
this establishment, and was told that they had two clerks at work all
day marking up prices. The employe said this in all innocence; he was
proud of being part of such a busy and thriving institution! The
druggist-hero was a Four-Minute Man, whose especial enemy was German
literature and history; he did not rest until he had routed Goethe from
the Portland schools. This reminds me of our adventure here in Pasadena,
where our patriots discovered “The Psychology of the Unconscious,” by
Jung; this great authority happens to be a Swiss, but he has a German
name, and moreover, he was rumored “obscene,” so out he went from our
public library!

There are Catholics in Portland, and they work for their faith; they get
on the school board, and then there are anti-Catholic campaigns, and
they get off again. But one member, thus put off, laughed to a friend of
mine, saying that he didn’t mind, he had accomplished his purpose—he had
sold the Archbishop’s property to the city! Now Oregon has passed a bill
requiring all children to attend public schools; the Catholics are
testing this in the courts—and meantime three public school buildings
have been mysteriously burned down.

Not long ago there was a Catholic chairman of the school board, a
prominent judge and politician. The alarming discovery was made that
there was a teacher of manual training in one of the high schools who
was a Socialist and believer in evolution; he was brought to trial, and
Professor Rebec of the state university took the stand, and testified
that it was quite the common custom among scientific men to believe in
evolution. The chairman of the school board interrupted in rage! “That’s
an exploded standpoint, and we won’t have it here!” The trial lasted for
a week, and was a grand farce comedy. But, of course like all these
Black Hand trials, its end was predetermined, and the teacher was fired.

I asked a large group of teachers what had become of the youngsters,
under this regime of hundred per cent capitalism. Their testimony was
unanimous upon the point that the schools are retrograding and that the
children are not learning as they should. Home study has become a lost
art. In the first place, the children have no room to study at home; in
the second place, they go to the movies. Their parents permit them the
freedom of the streets at night; and what can a teacher do, when she
herself is condemned by official decree to be a mere phonograph? “It
wouldn’t be so bad,” said one teacher, “if the phonograph had
interesting records. But you can imagine what kind of lessons He picks
out!” She had used this word “He” several times in our talk, and finally
I asked, “Who is He?” There came a chorus from several at once: “When we
say He, we always mean Mr. Grout!” Since this was written, “He” has been
re-engaged for a term of three years.




                              CHAPTER XXIX
                           THE LAND OF LUMBER


We continue north to Seattle, another metropolis of fir and cedar. Here
organized labor has been active; the city came near having a Socialist
mayor, and the struggle of Big Business to keep its grip on the schools
has been intense. The state university, located in Seattle, is safe in
the hands of the gang, with a president by the name of Suzzallo, who
acquired his finish at Columbia University, and has made himself a
little miniature Nicholas Miraculous. Last spring he appeared before the
legislature, and explained why he was worth $18,000 a year to the state;
he had effected many economies—and when pressed to cite these, he stated
that he had kept the professors from getting salary increases, and had
reduced the standard salary for incoming instructors! The poor college
slaves are strictly forbidden to take part in politics—which means that
they dare not resent such incidents.

For twenty-one years the public schools of Seattle have been under the
control of a feudal lord of finance, by the melodramatic name of
Ebenezer Shorrock. He was born under the flag of Queen Victoria, and
acts as if he had been born under George III. A teacher asked for an
advance in salary, and gave the excuse that he was paying for a piano.
“A piano!” cried Banker Shorrock. “What business has a man in your
position buying a piano?” To another teacher he made the statement that
“No man who has any self-respect would work for the salary the teachers
are paid.” Yet, in all his twenty-one years he has never voted for an
increase to the teachers; and in June, 1922, he voted a decrease. In the
arguments over this action he used his inside knowledge as head of a
bank to attack his teacher slaves; he knew about their accounts, and
many of them had “saved money!” We are told that these bankers are the
proper persons to guard school finances; so let it be noted that Banker
Shorrock has so run the schools into debt to the banks that now they are
paying more than half a million dollars every year in interest.

On his board this mighty plutocrat has a surgeon to the rich, who was
asked by a labor leader to permit the “Nation,” the “New Republic,” and
the “Freeman” to be used in high school civics classes. “Well,” said Dr.
Sharples, “I cannot answer this question, as I am unacquainted with the
journals you mention.” This from a professional man, presuming to direct
education for a third of a million of people.

But even that is not the limit in Seattle; another board member up to
1923 was a Stone and Webster engineer, who murdered the English of
Banker Shorrock’s queen. Somebody said that a cut in wages would lower
the morale of the teaching force. “That moral stuff don’t go with me,”
declared Engineer Santmyer. “I know lots of them girls, and there ain’t
anything wrong with their morals.” It is interesting to note that this
engineer was also connected with the Pacific Coast Coal Company, from
which the school board purchased most of its coal.

Another board member who retired along with him was Mr. Taylor,
Northwestern representative of a big school-book publishing house. He
gave a written pledge that he would oppose any attempt to reduce the
teachers’ salaries; he signed this pledge on April 19, 1922, and on June
10, 1923, he seconded Banker Shorrock’s motion to make a heavy cut in
the teachers’ salaries. Mr. Santmyer also joined in this vote against
the teachers, and when his victims protested, he got cross, and
addressing a meeting of the school engineers, declared: “I just want one
more crack at them damned teachers.”

The friends of education in the state of Washington brought before the
voters in 1922 a “tax equalization” measure, whose purpose was to compel
the big corporations, and especially the lumber interests, to pay their
proper share of school taxes. Against this measure all the organizations
of the Black Hand lined up—the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the Central
Committee of the Republican Party, the reactionary governor, the Seattle
Board of Education, the kept newspapers, the state university, the
Weyerhaeuser lumber interests, the president of Whitman College—to which
the Weyerhaeusers had just contributed seventy-five thousand dollars—and
finally the state superintendent of education, Mrs. Josephine C.
Preston. Remember this lady, because when we come to study the National
Education Association, we shall find her as its president, occupying the
throne of power at the Salt Lake City convention of 1920, where the gang
turned out the teachers from control.

I have shown in Los Angeles, and will show in many other cities, how the
Black Hand bars “politics” from the schools. Here in Seattle the board
of education offered a classic demonstration of what this means. Some of
the teachers in the high schools presumed to have class discussions in
which both sides of the equalization amendment were heard. At five
o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, October 27, 1922, the school board
of Seattle passed a resolution absolutely forbidding teachers to engage
in any kind of political propaganda in the schools, or to post on the
bulletin boards any notices except those pertaining strictly to school
business. Eighteen hours later, at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning,
October 28, Dr. Sharples of the board, Mr. Santmyer of the board, and
also the secretary of the board, appeared before a meeting of school
janitors, engineers and custodians, in a school building, and there
spoke in opposition to the equalization amendment. The secretary of the
board traveled to other parts of the state to oppose this amendment, and
he spoke at meetings during business hours—that is, during the time he
was being paid by the people of Seattle to do his work as school board
secretary.

Another incident, to give you an idea what it means to be a teacher in
Seattle. Early in 1923 eight or ten high school teachers received notice
from the superintendent that their names were being withheld for
reappointment, until the board could complete an investigation
concerning a teachers’ meeting which had been held the previous summer,
at which a resolution had been adopted condemning the board for cutting
the teachers’ salaries. The teachers who received this written notice
tried to find out what it was all about, and they learned that the board
of education had in its possession an unsigned typewritten document,
purporting to be a resolution adopted by the teachers and transmitted to
the Central Labor Council.

But the teachers had held no such meeting and adopted no such
resolution; the secretary of the Central Labor Council declared that no
such communication had ever been received from the teachers; and when
the teachers tried to get a copy of the alleged resolution from the
board, they were told that all the copies had been “lost”! Under its own
regulations, the board was barred from considering documents with
typewritten signatures; nevertheless, they took two weeks to consider
this “lost” document, and finally gave the teachers their jobs—but
without apology for the false accusation!

We shall find it worthwhile to glance at school conditions throughout
this state. The Washington farmers and fruit ranchers, picked to the
bone by the railroads and the banks, have their Nonpartisan League and
their Farmer-Labor party, and are trying to get their schools. Mr. J. T.
Sullivan, a teacher at Klaber, with a twelve-year record, ventured to
run for county superintendent on the Farmer-Labor ticket. Reports were
circulated that the platform of this party consisted of three
planks—nationalization of all property, compulsory free love, and the
destruction of all churches. The county superintendent—that is, Mr.
Sullivan’s political opponent—declared that Mr. Sullivan would either
give up his political activities or have his teacher’s license revoked;
and Mrs. Josephine C. Preston, the state superintendent, refused him a
license to teach in another county, because he could not get the
endorsement of this same county superintendent!

Mr. William Bouck, master of the Washington Progressive Grange, a rebel
organization, gave me the names of two young women teachers in Lewis
County, who were asked if they were members of the Nonpartisan League,
and when they answered yes, they were told that they were “fired.” Mr.
Bouck’s own daughter applied for a position as teacher, and her
credentials were judged satisfactory, but her name was suspicious; she
was asked if she was any relative of William Bouck, and when she
answered that she was his daughter, the director replied: “Well, you can
go to hell!” Mr. Bouck added that there were grave-yards of radical
teachers all over his county; and one of the other men in the party
spoke up, saying that he had six personal friends who had lost their
teaching positions because of their political opinions.

Everywhere throughout the state the book agents are in active control,
working hand in glove with the politicians. I was shown one school
primer, for which the Washington schools were paying sixty cents, and
the same book was sold by the same company in Tennessee for twenty-two
cents. Many school districts in the state were close to bankruptcy,
because of the theft of their school lands by the big lumber companies;
in all these lumber districts the companies put their own men on the
school boards and run education. In the town of Centralia the boss of
the schools, as well as of the town, is F. B. Hubbard, a mill-man,
former president of the Employers’ Association, who incited the Legion
men to raid an I. W. W. hall and hang the inmates with ropes. The Legion
men had the ropes in their hands, and the door half battered down, when
the I. W. W.’s opened fire, and Hubbard’s own nephew was one of those
killed. The Associated Press sent out a dispatch stating that the I. W.
W.’s had opened fire in cold blood on the Armistice day parade of the
Legion, and it will take a generation to unteach this monstrous lie to
the American people. Thus the Great Madame conducts for her Big Business
masters the adult education classes of our schools!

Beginning our journey East, we find ourselves in Spokane, where we shall
not mind stopping, because the lumber barons and kings of silver and
lead have built themselves a sumptuous hotel; once within its portals,
we may think we are among the plutocracy of New York or Paris or London.
The first thing we do is to buy a paper from the news-stand, and learn
that the lumber barons and kings of silver and lead have been equally
lavish to their children, providing them with high-power motor cars,
which they are driving recklessly about the city to the great distress
of the police—who, of course, could not arrest the sons and daughters of
royalty. It appears that these youngsters, instead of studying their
high school lessons, have been studying the “movies”; they are going off
on joy-rides, spending the night at road-houses, and the judge of the
juvenile court has taken the matter up, and charges that school
probation officers, seeking information about these youthful escapades,
have been unable to get it from high school teachers, because the city
superintendent of schools has intimidated the teachers.

So we are not surprised to learn that the invisible government of
Spokane is the Employers’ Association, backed by the Washington Water
Power Corporation; and that the head of the city school board is a grain
speculator, prominent in anti-labor campaigns; also that they have their
full quota of text-book scandals, and a campaign to introduce the
teaching of the Bible in the schools—purely as literature, of course;
also, that they discovered a high school teacher to be a Unitarian and
believer in evolution, and he was reported to the superintendent as an
atheist; also, that the teachers at the high school do not dare attend a
lecture course given by the local Unitarian clergyman.

You might think you were in Portland, hearing a teacher remark:
“Whenever they want to reduce our salaries, they cast slurs at us in the
newspapers for weeks.” You might think you were in Los Angeles, when you
hear how the business organizers endeavored to set the school children
to writing essays on reactionary themes, and how a little group of
“kickers” in the city offered a prize for the best essay on Woodrow
Wilson’s “The New Freedom.” At this time Woodrow Wilson was robed in the
majesty of office, so the proposition put the school board in something
of a quandary. They turned the matter over to a committee, which
solemnly resolved: “‘The New Freedom’ is not a book by Woodrow Wilson,
but a series of extracts from campaign speeches, highly partisan in
character.” So the proposition was turned down!




                              CHAPTER XXX
                          THE ANACONDA’S LAIR


We continue our journey, and enter the domain of the copper kings. In
“The Goose-step” I have portrayed the state of Montana as entirely
swallowed by a monstrous reptile known as the Anaconda, and I have shown
what this reptile has done to the universities of the state. Let us now
have a glimpse of Butte, which is a mountain of copper with office
buildings and miners’ shacks on top. We shall find here a situation
resembling Berkeley; that is to say, the workers have been making
desperate efforts to control the education of their own children, but
without success. The copper interests, in their efforts to control
Montana, have stopped at no atrocity and no crime. They have broken
strikes with the utmost brutality, and when the people of Butte
succeeded in electing their own political administration, the Black Hand
used its control of the state machine to turn the city administration
out. In the same way, they have been willing to wreck the schools by
every device of slander and corruption. It is hard indeed to find honest
public officials in a community where the rewards of treason are so
high, and the penalties of public service so heavy. The result has been
that the schools of Butte have served as a football of rowdy gangs.

The early stages of Montana history consisted of civil and political war
between the Anaconda and its rival, F. Augustus Heinze. In those days
public officials and political parties commanded fancy prices; but these
good times came to an end in 1906, when the Anaconda bought out its
rival, and took control of a state as big as Germany—most of its
minerals, ninety per cent of its water power, and a hundred per cent of
its politics. Butte at that time had an honest school superintendent by
the name of Young; and because the Anaconda crowd could not use him,
they began war upon him; three years later they kicked him out, and he
died of a broken heart. They put in “the crookedest school man in the
Northwest”; a gentleman who had two interests which absorbed his
attention—breeding fancy dogs, and training brutal football players.
Montana football tactics became a scandal throughout the country; and
teaching standards fell so low that other cities refused to accept
credits from Butte.

In 1911 came a radical wave, and a Socialist clergyman, Lewis J. Duncan,
was swept into office as mayor. The first thing the Socialist
administration attempted was to clean up the redlight district, and this
brought them into conflict with two of the Anaconda’s political bullies
on the city’s detective force. The pair were put on trial, one for
blackmailing a prostitute, and the other for soliciting a bribe, and
were convicted. They swore vengeance, and immediately afterwards one of
the most efficient teachers in the Butte high school, who had been
active in war upon the grafters, was summoned before the school
superintendent and notified that she would not get her yearly
reappointment. (They keep their teachers in Butte upon a string, having
no tenure, and never knowing if they are to be re-engaged.)

This lady was told that her work was “not satisfactory,” but the
superintendent gave no specifications, and refused to discuss the fact
that the principal O.K.’d the teacher’s work. As a result of this
development, a teachers’ union was organized in Butte, and immediately
the three officers of the union were let out without cause. The fact
that the superintendent had given one of these teachers a fulsome
recommendation only one month previously did not count at all. The
president of this union, a Harvard post-graduate, was blacklisted, and
kept from any teaching position in Montana. In the meantime, Mayor
Duncan, who had been re-elected, was kicked out of office by the Black
Hand.

The Socialists had never been able to elect more than three of the seven
school board members. In the 1916 campaign the Anaconda crowd made the
open boast that they had controlled the schools for twenty-five years,
and would continue to control them. They elected their ticket, and
proceeded upon a campaign to “clean out the radicals,” dismissing
without charges twenty-four of the most efficient and intelligent
teachers. There was a roar of protest from the city; a prominent society
woman, friendly to the teachers, made the statement at a mass meeting
that it was the program to discharge every teacher who had attended the
study classes conducted by the Reverend Lewis J. Duncan for nine years
prior to his election as mayor. This lady’s husband happened to be
cashier of the First National Bank, and at the next meeting of the
directors of the bank this cashier lost his position. The school board
took to meeting in secret and refusing admission to the angry public.
Nevertheless, the people succeeded in having their way, to the extent
that the teachers were reinstated and the superintendent retired.

Then came the world war, and that made things easy for the grafters.
Since then there has been in Butte the same situation that we found in
San Francisco; the Catholic schools are flourishing, while the public
schools are deprived both of their money and their brains. A couple of
years ago, through misuse of funds, the school treasury was so low that
the schools were about to be closed two weeks in advance of the regular
time. As a consequence of the Anaconda’s control of the state
government, the mining companies pay taxes only on their net profits,
and when they close down, as they did for a whole year, there are no net
profits and no taxes. At the last moment the banks agreed to lend the
money to keep the schools going—Big Business could not quite afford to
have the news go out to the world that “the richest hill in the world”
was unable to afford schools! In connection with this problem of mining
company taxation in Montana, you may read in “The Goose-step” how
Professor Louis Levine was kicked out of the state university for
writing a treatise on this subject.

The working people of Butte are still struggling to have something to
say about their schools, but their struggles are now blind and helpless,
because the war has put the Socialist movement out of business, and
without the idealism and training of the Socialists the labor movement
falls prey to bribery and intrigue. There are now several so-called
“labor” representatives on the Butte school board; and having read the
story of a “labor” administration in San Francisco, you will be prepared
for what is happening here. The Anaconda has not the least objection to
its henchmen calling themselves “labor” men—provided only they will vote
for the Anaconda. Big Business today has its representatives in all
labor unions; and the Black Hand sees no harm in petty graft and a
flourishing redlight district, provided that taxes are kept down and
dividends not interfered with. On this “labor” board in Butte are a
couple of loud-mouthed demagogues, whose main concern is to get
patronage for relatives and friends. One of them has had his brother
made utility man for the board, and his sister a teacher in the high
school—somewhat to the concern of the city, because this lady is
decidedly unusual in her mind, and two other members of the family are
under restraint. Mr. O. G. Wood, until recently clerk of this board,
writes me:

  Professional etiquette forbids doctors and lawyers from buying space
  in the newspapers for advertising purposes, but they are not opposed
  to columns of fake write-up about the sacrifice they are making to
  serve the public while serving on the school board, in which to my
  certain knowledge they take no interest whatever except to get some
  relative elected to the position of janitor or utility man. The school
  board will wrangle for weeks over some janitor getting a job, and
  never pay the slightest attention to the great question of educating
  the child.... The Anaconda Copper Mining Company has been controlling
  the members of the school board for years, so as to divert the
  purchasing of supplies into their particular stores. This corporation
  has bribed members of the school board and has offered money to some
  of them to get them to resign, in order to have their men appointed by
  the county superintendent, who has the appointing of members to fill
  vacancies. My experience as an instructor in the public schools, and
  my two years in an executive position handling about a million a year,
  have led me to the conclusion that there is no public institution in
  the United States run with more waste and with less regard for the
  TRUTH than the public school system of the United States. The waste of
  money is appalling.

I close this story with an illustration of where the money goes. One of
the great mining kings of Montana is W. A. Clark, who bought himself
into the United States Senate, and was kicked out again because it was
proven that his agents had dropped thousand dollar bills over the
transoms of the hotel rooms of state legislators. Senator Clark had to
get this money back somehow, so he sold the city of Butte a site for the
high school, at a cost of seventy-five thousand dollars. But there is no
high school on this site, for the reason that the children would have to
go through the redlight district to reach the school, and one mother
publicly declared that she would burn this school down rather than have
the children attend it. After this you will be prepared to learn that
ex-Senator Clark’s newspaper, the Butte “Daily Miner,” forever proclaims
the sacredness of the schools.

One more illustration of the intense concern of the copper interests for
education. You will suspect me of making up this story, because it
sounds like a piece of symbolism—it might come straight from a play by
Ibsen or Charles Rann Kennedy. The Anaconda discovered a vein of copper
immediately underneath the Jefferson School, and has been occupied for
several years in undermining the school. Now the walls of the building
have begun to crack; but needless to say, the taxpayers are not getting
compensation for the ruin of a school building. Nothing has been done
about it, because this is an “East Side” school, where only the children
of miners attend. When the building collapses, the Anaconda will head
the relief list by a subscription of a hundred dollars.

Butte now has a new superintendent, who comes from Columbia University,
and writes me that he was appointed as an educator and not as a
politician. He tells me that neither he nor the school board would
attempt to control outside activities of teachers, and that they are
perfectly free to join a union if they wish. I trust they will not fail
to act upon this information; and I wish Superintendent Douglass good
luck in keeping out of Butte politics!




                              CHAPTER XXXI
                          THE LITTLE ANACONDAS


While we are in this mountain country, let us see what is going on
throughout the state. The financial agents of the Anaconda, known as the
Montana Bankers’ Association, passed a resolution to take charge of the
schools; and Mr. W. J. Hannah, who lives at Big Timber, and is a member
of the county high school board, also for a dozen years chairman of a
rural school board, wrote to their educational committee to ask what
they meant by this. In reply they informed him that they intended to
appoint teachers, select text-books, and deliver lectures, and thereby
inculcate respect for the money-changers of Montana.

Within two years after this action three presidents of banks in Mr.
Hannah’s county were appointed as members of the high school board. Says
Mr. Hannah: “Not a man among the three possesses any education whatever,
nor have they ever evinced any interest whatever in the work of the
public schools”—except, as he goes on to explain, to carry on propaganda
on behalf of bankers. The high school library has been kept without any
of the standard works on history, economics, sociology and ethics, which
have any tendency toward democracy in industry or even in politics. None
of these ignorant banker board members could possibly have found out for
themselves what books to exclude from the library; they must have got
from some central organization suggestions causing them to keep from the
shelves such historical writings as Draper, Lecky, Buckle and White.

They crowd the pupils with manual training, domestic science and
commercial courses; and discovering that basket-ball might be used to
divert the minds of the whole community from interest in politics and
social reform, they become ardent friends of school athletics. The
Nonpartisan League was trying to organize the farmers of Montana, and,
says Mr. Hannah: “It is only a year since a mob of high school students,
with the full knowledge and tacit approval of this board of banker
trustees, broke into a peaceful assemblage of farmers which was being
held in the county court house.” They tried to break up the meeting, but
did not succeed, and subsequent efforts to have them disciplined were
thwarted by these banker trustees. Mr. Hannah continues:

  What the bankers are now doing to our own high school in a limited
  way, they are also doing throughout the state in a much more general
  and effective way. Their educational program is in full operation. For
  two or more years they have demanded and secured prominent speaking
  places at every meeting of school men that is held in the state. Their
  voice is now heard wherever the subject of education is publicly
  discussed. Moreover, I read in the public press almost every day of
  addresses delivered by bankers to high school assemblies; and it is
  plain to see that it is merely a campaign of propaganda designed for
  the one purpose of misleading the children concerning the real nature
  of our banking system.

I have had occasion to argue with big business men concerning this
control of school funds by bankers; they never can see anything wrong
with it—who is there that should handle money, if not bankers? But I
come upon a little item in the “Inter-Mountain Educator,” official organ
of the Montana State Teachers’ Association, March, 1923:

  The Hardin State Bank at Hardin, Mont., has closed its doors. Eight
  school districts in the county have a total of $74,380.85 in the bank.
  The heaviest loser is Hardin No. 17 H, which has $23,222.63 in the
  closed bank, and, besides, has been compelled to cut to the quick to
  operate this year.

There are now hard times in Montana, and in his 1922 report the
superintendent of public instruction tells of the retrenchments and
sacrifices which have been necessary to keep the schools going. “In
hundreds of districts last year all expenses but teachers’ salaries were
eliminated, the parents even donating the fuel and hauling. The teachers
caught the spirit of sacrifice, and scores of them gave their services
from one to several weeks in order that the children would not be
deprived of any more school than necessary.” In this report appears a
photograph of a mother who drove a team twenty-three miles a day in
order to get her three children to school, and brought with her two
younger children whom she could not leave at home; she came forty miles
to a teachers’ meeting, so that she might get suggestions as to how to
help these children at home. The report tells also of an eighth grade
boy walking sixteen miles, and of five families who dug holes in a
hill-side near Broadus, and lived there during the school season in
order that their children might get instruction!

I am dealing in this book with Big Business; but you will understand
that in this lair of the gigantic Anaconda, there are many little snakes
hoping some day to become Anacondas, and diligently swallowing all they
can. In the report of this state superintendent I find several pages of
details about the plundering of the district schools by local business
men: every kind of graft you could imagine—sixty dollars a month for
transportation to bring the child of one trustee a mile and a half to
school; a thirty-dollar pearl necklace for a teacher; trustees and
clerks paying themselves all kinds of money on school contracts in
violation of law; another trustee who hired his brother-in-law as
principal for two hundred dollars a month, his wife as teacher at a
hundred dollars a month, and his daughter at ninety-five—and the
following year raised the principal’s salary to three hundred dollars,
and the wife to a hundred and fifty!

Under such economic conditions it is inevitable that teachers should be
terrorized. Here, as in Washington, there are grave-yards of radical
teachers scattered everywhere. Certificates are continually refused to
teachers who refuse to “take policy,” and on the other hand the State
Normal College is freely distributing credits to teachers who carry on
propaganda for the Black Hand. The teachers have been completely
deprived of control of their own organization. At the Montana State
Teachers’ Association convention of 1922, the gang put through strong
resolutions against every kind of political liberalism, and the
superintendent of schools of Lewistown, who was chairman of the
Resolutions Committee, denounced the suggestion that there should be a
referendum to give the rank and file of the teachers the right to vote
on any question.

I have a letter from another Montana school official, who tells me of
four different cases in which he heard prominent educators and lecturers
admit the intolerable nature of present conditions in the state—but
always ending with the anxious statement: “Of course, you understand
that I am not a radical, and have no sympathy with radicalism!” At the
summer school of 1921, at Lewistown, Montana, a professor of economics,
being asked some questions about “The Brass Check,” took occasion to
tell the students of the vast wealth which Upton Sinclair had
accumulated out of his credulous followers! Just where this professor
got his information I do not know, but any time he wishes he can have
the fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of debts which I still have left
from selling “The Brass Check” below cost. This same professor discussed
a student at the Fergus County High School at Lewistown, who had come
with the financial help of the school, but had proved himself unworthy
and ungrateful—he had not changed any of the radical ideas which he had
brought from his Nonpartisan League home! I cite these anecdotes just to
show you the atmosphere which prevails in the class-rooms of the kept
educators of the Anaconda.




                             CHAPTER XXXII
                            COLORADO CULTURE


We move on to Colorado, where we have not only copper kings, but coal
and iron and oil and gold and silver kings—half a dozen dynasties
dividing an empire. It would take a large volume to tell the corruption
of government in the state of Colorado and the city of Denver; I have
given a sketch of it in “The Goose-step.” Suffice it here to say, there
is no “invisible government” in this community, the offices and
privileges are sold on a curb market. As for education, only taxpayers
have a right to vote for school bonds, the banks control the handling of
the money, and their politicians spend it.

For a generation the active institution in control was the First
National Bank, whose educational agent began his career in Denver as
“Fudge” Sommers, clerk of the police department. He specialized in the
stealing of school elections; he would have a “bunch of money” at each
election, and workers awaiting him with their hands out. As “de gang”
would say, “dere ain’t no easier money”; the school elections were
entirely unguarded—there was no registration, and the ballot-boxes would
be carried to the East Denver High School, and there fixed according to
orders. “Fudge” was a Democrat, but at times when his party became
progressive, he took his influence and his talents to the Republicans.
He grew respectable, and is now the Honorable Elmer S. Sommers, oil
magnate, good roads promoter, prominent in the Rotary Club, a society
man rich enough to have his own “hooch” parties.

Under such conditions the citizens are helpless. For the most part they
do not trouble to vote; now and then they protest, and are taught their
place. I talked with a member of a committee which entered objection to
the waste of school funds, and threatened to nominate a citizens’
ticket. The answer of the boss was: “You put up your board, and I’ll
take my bag of money, and we’ll see how far you get!”

Next to Mr. First National Bank Keeley, the most active agent of the
plutocracy in controlling the Denver schools was Mr. Great Western Sugar
Company Morey. Mr. Morey was the “Sugar Trust” in our national capital,
one of the most notorious of the war profiteers. He built himself a
magnificent palace in Denver, facing the lofty Mt. Evans, and with the
whole of Cheesman Park for a back-yard; then he died, and Denver has the
Morey Junior High School, just as other cities have Washington Schools
and Lincoln Schools and Jefferson Schools. We may assume that Mr. Morey
dwells happily in a celestial palace, because as a far-seeing business
man he provided for his spiritual welfare, being a pillar of the
exclusive St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral.

Once more the firm of God, Mammon and Company; and note how the schools
are taken in as junior partners. For twenty years Denver had a most
efficient school superintendent, a former president of the National
Education Association by the name of Gove. I call him efficient, meaning
that he served his masters, by keeping out of the system all
revolutionary and dangerous new ideas, such as kindergartens, manual
training and directed play. The progressive women’s clubs waged war upon
him, and at the end of the twenty years succeeded in getting rid of him.
And where do you think he went? Why, he became confidential lobbyist for
the Great Western Sugar Company in our national capital! A congressional
investigating committee raided some offices and got hold of the letters
of his employers, and it was disclosed that Gove had been “interviewing”
congressmen in their home districts; he had been instructed not to name
his employers, and not to itemize his expense accounts!

The president of the Denver school board is a young aristocrat by the
name of Hallett, whose qualification for spending the money of the
schools was described to me by one of his friends: “He never earned a
dollar in his life.” His father was a millionaire federal judge, whose
tyrannies and fearful temper made his name one of terror to labor unions
and would-be reformers in Colorado. Young Mr. Hallett also is a socially
prominent vestryman of the exclusive St. John’s Cathedral, and he helped
to import the very expensive Dean Brown from the effete East. Mr.
Hallett was in a delicate position—he was both vestryman of the
cathedral and president of the school board, and the cathedral owned
twenty-six lots which it wanted to sell to the city as a school site. It
must have been hard for Mr. Hallett to make up his mind where his duty
lay, but apparently he decided that all eternity meant more to him than
his term as president of the school board; his vestry sold the lots to
his school board for a hundred thousand dollars, which was two or three
times what they were worth.

In May, 1923, Mr. Hallett came up for re-election, together with Mr.
Taylor, seventy-four-year-old vestryman of the cathedral, who serves the
mining kings as an engineer; and Mr. Schenck, seventy-three years old, a
former store-keeper at coal-mines for Mr. Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel
and Iron Company. (The other board members are a lumber dealer,
sixty-seven years old, a nice old lady of seventy, and an able-bodied
contractor, active in politics.)

There was an opposition ticket put up by the liberals, and a second put
up by labor, and a third put up by the Denver “Post.” In order that you
may appreciate this story, I explain that the “Post” is a wealthy and
powerful newspaper, which began in the old “shirt-sleeve” days, when
newspapers in mining camps lived by blackmail. The “Post” has seen no
reason for mending either its morals or its manners; its two
proprietors, Tammen and Bonfils, are former gamblers and saloon keepers,
whom I have told about in “The Brass Check.” Tammen, a frank and
delightful personality, tells at Chamber of Commerce meetings how he
would toss a dollar in the air, and if it stuck to the ceiling it
belonged to the boss, and if it came down again it belonged to him. The
Chamber of Commerce whoops with delight at this anecdote.

The “Post” now broke loose against President Lucius Hallett and his
board. For a month or two the murders, highway robberies and sexual
scandals of Colorado were shoved off the front page, and the red
head-lines of the paper were given up to the crimes of the school board.
The “Post” charged that the board members had permitted corrupt deals
with members of the Real Estate Exchange and the Chamber of Commerce,
and that the taxpayers had been robbed of great sums through shady land
purchases. It went into details concerning the “favoritism” of the
school authorities for the American Book Company. It showed also how the
school board was favoring the children of the rich, and published
pictures of the luxurious high schools in the rich neighborhoods and the
overcrowded old fire-traps in the slum districts. It charged that the
school board was maintaining the worst political machine in Denver’s
history; the teachers were in fear for their jobs, the principals were
political henchmen, and propaganda literature for the school board was
distributed among the children to be taken to their homes. A Denver
edition of “The Goslings” in serial form!

Why this sudden concern of the “Post” for the welfare of the schools? I
do not know that. But I know that President Hallett published the
statement that the cause of the attack was the school board’s refusal to
make a contract with a coal company owned by the “Post.” I know also
that the “Post” did not deny this charge of Mr. Hallett’s, or refer to
it. An intimate friend of Mr. Tammen’s has asked me to meet him when
next I am in Denver; then I shall ask him about it, and I have no doubt
he will live up to his reputation as a “good sport.” Every now and then
the “Post” has entered into campaigns against the stealing of city
franchises, and when Tammen’s friends have asked him why so much fuss,
he has answered with his cheerful laugh, “Because we didn’t get in on
the graft.”

Election day came and passed, and Mr. Hallett and his friends were
declared re-elected. The grand jury took up the charges of the “Post”
concerning real estate graft, and it was shown that one prominent
“realtor,” or a dummy of his firm, had bought a parcel of land for
several thousand dollars, and a few days later sold it to the school
board for so many more thousands that it was considered dishonest even
in Denver. Another “realtor,” recently a member of the city council, had
bought land and sold it to the board for twice the price—and had charged
a commission at both ends besides. He had used dummies—an office-boy,
also his own son—and on this technicality the courts let him off. You
will form an idea of the state of Colorado culture when I tell you that
I consulted the Denver telephone directory, and found listed therein
approximately 450 of these “realtors”—and to balance this, book-stores
to the number of sixteen!

In the face of such obstacles, a few devoted souls labor to save the
children of the city. The schools have been shockingly overcrowded—with
classes in cook-rooms, in hallways, in basements, in rooms without light
or air. And, of course, the school board has made to the teachers the
usual explanations why the city could not pay them a living wage. The
high school teachers called a mass meeting, intending to affiliate with
labor; whereupon the school authorities rushed to head them off—by
bringing in a famous orator of the National Education Association, and
then by granting the raise in wages! When the president of the Denver
Labor College asked for the right to use school rooms for classes, the
board with seven representatives of business and not one of labor turned
him down in horror; if they allowed a working-class school, they would
have to allow a capitalist school! Let the labor college allow the board
to appoint the instructors, and then they might consider the matter.
“Won’t you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly!

For ten years the progressives have pleaded with the school board to
permit school buildings to be used by the citizens for public
meetings—but in vain. As I write, they are winning a long struggle to
have some attention paid to the health of the school children; the
“interests” denounce this as Bolshevism—though just why it is Bolshevism
to take care of the children’s bodies, when it is not Bolshevism to take
care of their minds, is not explained. There is one devoted friend of
the children in Denver, Judge Lindsey of the Juvenile Court; all over
the United States he has spoken to great gatherings in the schools—but
not in Denver! He tells me that he hopes to get back this fall; if so,
it will be the first time in ten years that he has spoken in a Denver
school! The officials have told him quite frankly that “business” would
not permit it.[F]

-----

Footnote F:

  In December, as I am reading the proofs of this book, Mrs. Lindsey
  writes me that he has not yet spoken, and she knows of no prospect.

-----

So we see the same thing that we saw in Los Angeles and Spokane—the
children, being deprived of the joys and excitements of the intellectual
life, follow the example of their elders and go “wild.” If I had the
power to gather all the parents of America for one hour, and make them
listen to whatever I chose, I think I should put them in the private
chambers of Judge Lindsey. I had the pleasure of spending several days
with him. I thought I knew something about what is going on among the
school children, but I was staggered when I heard Lindsey’s story. I am
going to tell it, but later on—for the reason that these conditions are
not peculiar to Denver, they are a problem of the entire country. After
we have satisfied ourselves what plutocratic education is, we shall want
to know what it has done to our children, and how our grand-children are
to be saved.




                             CHAPTER XXXIII
                        THE DOMAIN OF KING COAL


Back in the days of President Buchanan the American Congress set aside
large tracts of federal land, to be devoted forever after to the support
of schools; and these lands have ever since been the favorite pasturage
of Big Business. In state after state I found highly cultured members of
old ruling families interested in education—and living upon fortunes
made by the theft of school lands! In Maine and Wisconsin and Oregon
these lands were stolen for the timber; in Minnesota for the iron ore;
in Michigan for the copper; in Oklahoma and Texas for the oil; in
Indiana and Illinois and Colorado for the coal.

The story of the Colorado school lands is told in a little pamphlet,
“The Looters,” by George A. Connell, Cedaredge, Colorado. The sections
set aside were Numbers Sixteen and Thirty-six of all government
townships; and according to data available, the schools of Colorado own
about six billion tons of coal. Instead of working these mines for the
benefit of the schools, the state of Colorado turns the land over to the
coal companies for a royalty of ten cents per ton of coal mined! The
schools have to have coal themselves, and they purchase it from these
same coal companies. It costs the companies, to mine this coal and
deliver it to the schools, $5.80 per ton, while the price which the
schools pay for it is $10.50 per ton; the coal companies therefore make
$4.70 per ton, and this after paying the ten cents royalty to the
schools! In the year 1920 there were mined almost a million tons of coal
from the state school lands; the schools got for this a net profit of a
little over eighty-five thousand dollars, while the coal gang made a net
profit of nearly four and a half million dollars. In other words, the
coal companies made in one year from the coal more than the schools will
make in fifty years. Under the present method of doing business, the
schools and the people of Colorado will surrender to the coal
corporations for the coal taken from the school lands a total net profit
of twenty-seven billion dollars.

Let us follow this coal money. Under the law a part of it has been
turned into a “permanent school fund,” which now totals ten million
dollars. And where does this money go? Why, to the banks, of course; and
what do the banks pay for it? They pay three per cent interest; and at
the same time the various school districts are borrowing money, and have
to pay five and a half per cent on their bonds! The difference between
these two items means a quarter of a million dollars, which the schools
of Colorado are donating to the bankers every year! That pleases the
bankers, and they use their control over the educators of Colorado to
keep the people from knowing about the graft.

In September, 1920, there was a contest arranged between two district
schools, and an eighteen-dollar basketball was put up as a prize for the
school which could give the best answers to twenty-four questions. The
principals of both schools accepted the terms of the contest, and the
county superintendent agreed to assist. The questions were to be
published in the local newspaper, the Surface Creek “Champion”; the
editor said he would take them under advisement, but he never published
them. The Republican county committeeman was called in to the
“advisement”; the county superintendent, who was up for re-election, was
also called in, and this lady made a hurried trip to the two towns and
called off the contest. And would you like to know why? Well, one of the
twenty-four questions read this way: “How much of the permanent school
fund is loaned to the banks, and how much is on deposit?”

The county superintendent had sent this question to the state
superintendent, and a letter came back, signed by both the state
superintendent and the deputy: “I cannot answer this question. I could
not get any information along this line.” The question was presented to
various educators throughout the state, and they admitted that they did
not dare to touch it. The question was presented to the editor of the
“Rocky Mountain News,” the great organ of the plutocracy of Denver, and
the editor not only refused to print anything about it, but stated that
“any man that stirred up such things is a Bolsheviki and an undesirable
citizen.”

In 1914 there was a great strike of the Colorado coal miners, which led
to a civil war, not merely at the mines, but also in front of 26
Broadway, New York, the offices of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and
also at Tarrytown, where the Rockefellers, father and son, have their
palatial estates. This civil war was of concern to the Colorado schools,
because they paid all the cost of it; the coal company gang in the state
legislature put through a bill, taking five hundred thousand dollars
from the school funds of the state, to pay the cost of breaking a strike
for Mr. Rockefeller. The radicals carried on a campaign for a year or
two over this issue, and as a result of the publicity one-fifth of the
amount was paid back to the schools.

In the East Side High School of Denver there were two teachers who made
so bold as to talk about these matters, and also to concern themselves
with the civil rights of miners. Of the six demands of the strikers,
five were for the enforcement of the laws of the state; and a pupil in
one of the high school classes asked Miss Ellen A. Kennan whether this
was true. An embarrassing moment for a teacher—with sons and daughters
of coal operators in the class! Miss Kennan answered the question
truthfully, and forthwith the president of the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company, Mr. Rockefeller’s concern which was breaking the strike, came
to the school to demand an explanation!

Miss Kennan was one of the prize teachers of the Denver school system, a
Greek and Latin scholar and a prominent lecturer at women’s clubs; she
had been in the system for seventeen years. Her friend, Gertrude Nafe,
had been in for seven years, and during the strike had the difficult
experience of teaching the son of General Chase, the combination dentist
and militia officer who was setting aside the Constitution in the coal
country and supervising the Ludlow massacre. Miss Nafe also answered her
pupils’ questions truthfully, and so the general and his employers made
up their minds to get these two ladies out of the schools.

It took them four years to do it, and they had to increase the number of
school board members, packing it with their henchmen. Even so, it was
only the war that gave them their chance. They drew up an oath for the
teachers to take, pledging loyalty to the Constitution and the
government, and “to promote by precept and example obedience to laws and
constituted authorities.” Miss Kennan and Miss Nafe cheerfully signed
the first part of this pledge, but they found themselves in difficulties
when it came to the second part. How can one pledge obedience to laws
and constituted authorities, when constituted authorities are defying
the laws? Consider the 1914 strike, in which the miners had tried to
compel the constituted authorities to enforce the laws—and had failed!
The teachers had explained this to their pupils, and now could not
stultify themselves. Their friends begged them to sign, the pledge being
”nothing but a joke”—the teachers all so regarded it; but these two
ladies took the matter seriously, and struck out the word “obedience.”

So they were slated to be driven from the system. They demanded a
hearing before the board, and were permitted to make a brief statement
explaining their reverence for their revolutionary ancestors, who had
defied the constituted authorities when these authorities defied human
rights. The principal of the school asked to be heard, and said: “I have
never wavered in my faith in their value to the schools, in my faith in
their services to the coming citizens of this republic.” But the board
turned them out, and for the past five years the children of Denver have
been taught by some teachers who take their oath to be a joke.

Time passed, and there came another strike of the Colorado mine-slaves,
and another curious test of Colorado education. I have before me an
issue of a weekly paper published by the striking miners, the Walsenburg
“Independent,” January 3, 1922. It bears across the top in large letters
the caption, “This paper was censored by the Colorado Rangers.” Then
follows a news item to the effect that Professor S. M. Andrews, school
superintendent of Walsenburg, and also of Huerfano County, had addressed
a teachers’ meeting in Denver, and praised the rangers and their martial
law. That much I learn from the paper; then comes the statement: “Censor
cut out report of his speech as printed in the ‘Rocky Mountain News,’
December 30th.” Of course I might hunt up this issue of the “Rocky
Mountain News” and tell you what Professor Andrews said, but I don’t
think it worth the bother. The point is clear: a superintendent of
schools, supposedly a public official, drawing two salaries from a coal
mining community, goes up to the state capital, and before a convention
of teachers defends the state police in their abrogation of state and
federal constitutions during a strike; and the commanding officer of
these gunmen in uniform forbids the miners’ newspaper to communicate to
the miners what their own superintendent of schools has said about them
in their own state capital!




                             CHAPTER XXXIV
                       THE HOMESTEAD OF THE FREE


We continue East and cross “bleeding Kansas,” where John Brown fought,
and the old settlers came in their covered wagons, singing:

/* We cross the prairie as of old The Pilgrims crossed the sea, To make
the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free. */

Now in this homestead of the free the organizers of the Nonpartisan
League are beaten, tarred and feathered, jailed or deported, for trying
to address the farmers. Alexander Howat is thrown into jail for six
months for advising coal miners to strike, and William Allen White,
editor of the Emporia “Gazette,” is arrested for putting in his window a
card stating that he sympathizes with the strikers. The principal organ
of culture in the state is the Kansas City “Star,” founded by a brave
and sincere liberal, and now turned into an organ of screaming bigotry
and hate. Two years ago this paper flung wide the gates off the city to
its darlings, the American Legion, and the boys gathered by the tens of
thousands, and repaid their hosts by conducting a three days’ drunken
orgy, in the course of which they wrecked the lobby of the city’s
palatial hotel.

Kansas City is a packing-house and railroad center, and the head of its
Black Hand is W. T. Kemper, hard-fisted “open-shop” exponent and
manipulator of high finance. To run the board of education he has a
prominent real estate operator, Nichols, with four children, none in the
public schools; a lawyer, Nugent, a little brother to the rich; and
Pinkerton, president of the Gate City Bank. All these gentlemen call
themselves Democrats, I believe; but this makes no difference, because
Kansas City has what they call a bi-partisan school board—one-half its
members to the Democratic party, one-half to the Republicans, and none
to the people. This school board is absolutely autocratic, makes no
reports to anyone, and does not even have an auditor. Its function was
described by one of the teachers—“to buy all the holes in the ground
belonging to the bankers and put schools on them.” I regret that I
cannot give the figures as to what the bankers got, because the lady who
knows, and made the statement, is not willing to take the risk of
publicity.

As manager of their “open-shop” schools this board has engaged a
superintendent by the name of Cammack, at a salary of eight thousand a
year; an aged despot with a second-grade teacher’s certificate and a
very bad temper. When you hear the story of his handling of the teachers
you find it so familiar, that you wonder if you have not already read
this part of the book. I had the same sensation all the time I was
traveling over America; it was like those dreams you have, in which you
know you’ve dreamed all that before!

In Kansas City, as everywhere else, the teachers were unable to live
upon their wages; and here, as everywhere else, the business men had to
“jolly them along,” and persuade them that a great rich city could not
possibly afford to pay a living wage to the teachers of its children.
The women’s clubs took up the problem, and appointed a committee, which
voted that the question was “an intricate, vexatious and dangerous
one”—but it would never do to raise the tax assessment! Fifty-two
teachers had to go to work as telephone girls and in department stores
during the summer, to make up the deficit in their salaries; others were
working as waitresses in the railway hotels. They had borrowed money to
go to summer school, hoping thus to get promotion; now they were in debt
and could not make it up.

So the teachers took up the idea of affiliation with the American
Federation of Teachers; there was a mass meeting, and the president of a
“co-operative” organization of the teachers, supposed to be representing
their interests, got them started at singing, and after they had sung
for a while he let them hear some “hand-picked” speakers; then, just
when everybody was expecting to hear a speech on the subject they were
all interested in, an increase in wages, he had them sing one more
song—and then declared the meeting adjourned! For this service he was
awarded with a five thousand dollar position in the school system of
another city.

Kansas City has a kind of Margaret Haley of its own; she is Mrs. Sarah
Green, president of the Woman’s Trade Union League, and her organization
took up the fight for the teachers’ salaries. A mass-meeting was called,
and Mrs. Green called up the president of the board of education, and
asked permission to distribute announcements of the meeting to the
teachers in the schools; this permission was refused. Then Mrs. Green
asked the superintendent of schools for permission to hold the meeting
in a high school building; this permission also was refused. The meeting
was held outside, and a great many teachers got up the courage to
attend, and in the end they got about half the salary increase they
should have had. The cultured lady-teachers were shocked at the idea of
joining a trade union and identifying themselves with common working
girls. “But,” said Mrs. Green to me, “I know of girls who work in
factories in this city, and don’t even know how to read, who have more
courage than our teachers, and would not submit to the humiliations
which the teachers have to endure.” That is something for
school-teachers, and all other white-collared wage-slaves, to think
seriously about!

Mrs. Green has also made herself a great nuisance to the school
authorities by butting in on debates in the public schools. You see,
they cannot keep the students from wanting to discuss that livest of all
live issues in Kansas City, the open shop. Mr. Cammack and his
supervisors and principals naturally plan to have the opponents of union
labor win these debates; but the students persist in coming to Mrs.
Green, who takes them in off hours and provides them with the facts—with
the result that out of ninety-seven she had trained, only seven have
lost the debates! You can imagine what a terrible thing that is for the
morale of an open-shop city!

In the summer of 1922 there was an epidemic of trachoma in the Kansas
City schools. This is a dreadful eye-disease, which in its later stages
eats out the eye-balls. It is one of the most contagious of known
diseases, and so is a serious matter in schools. In one Kansas City
school a majority of the children were afflicted, but the board didn’t
want anything done about it, because it would interfere with the real
estate business; they would not let the doctors and nurses make the
facts known, so the parents had to take up the agitation. They went
before the school board and protested again and again, but could get
nothing done; the board sent nurses—to forbid the parents of infected
children to discuss the matter! One courageous teacher, Miss Letitia
Cotter, took up the agitation, at peril of her position, and carried it
to the labor unions and the parent-teacher associations. The
superintendent went off on his vacation, and left the assistant
superintendent, who told Miss Cotter that no more public money would be
spent on this matter—“the Red Cross already has spent six hundred
dollars on those dirty rats and wops!” So you see how they love the
people in these open-shop schools!




                              CHAPTER XXXV
                        IS A TEACHER A CITIZEN?


We continue East to St. Louis, another city where God and Mammon have
combined for the exploitation of the children. There is no city in which
the Catholics are stronger, nor any in which the two political parties
are more completely in the hands of the open-shoppers and labor
exploiters. Up to last year the two parties had a gentleman’s agreement
by which each party nominated for the school board only half as many
candidates as there were places to be filled. The result was no
competition for school board memberships on election day. The Democrats
inevitably elected their candidates and the Republicans theirs; and
since the nominating conventions were under the complete domination of
political bosses, these bosses in effect named the school board members.

Recently the people made an especial effort to eliminate one gang
member, by the name of Murphy. They kept him off the Democratic ticket,
whereupon the Republicans nominated him, both the gangs voted for him,
and he went in for another six years. These school board members are
uneducated men of the ward-leader, campaign-manager type; at least three
of them, I am assured, have never been through the grade schools. A
prominent citizen of St. Louis wrote me in 1922: “We have men on our
board of education who are ignorant and vicious and without character
whatsoever.” Another citizen of St. Louis writes in 1923:

  There is no such thing as an honest election in St. Louis. The ballots
  are changed by the political gangsters, who are the election officials
  at all the polls. I visited a large number of the polls at the last
  school election, and in some found only one individual sober; some
  were lying with head on the table, dead to the world, others maudlin.
  The large mass of the people are criminally negligent toward their
  civic duties—they do not vote, and this makes it all the easier for
  the ward-heelers. This is for your private information, for it would
  work me much harm here in my position if anything of this appeared
  over my signature.

The Catholics of St. Louis have a complete educational system of their
own, replacing the public school system. The German Catholics used to
send their children to the public schools, but now the archbishop says,
“You will be damned if your children attend the godless schools”; and
the Irish and Italians and Poles, who compose the new Catholic
population, bow to this threat. You might think the Catholics would at
least be willing to let the “godless schools” alone, but they are not;
on the contrary, seventy per cent of the teachers in the public school
system are Catholics, and a good part of the board has been for a long
time made up of Catholics. The purpose of this is the same as we have
seen in New York and San Francisco, and shall see in Boston and
Baltimore—to starve the public schools.

The extent to which this is done in St. Louis you will find difficult to
believe. The people want to have good schools, and go to the polls and
vote the money—and then the board of education refuses to spend the
money! Recently the people passed a bond issue of three million dollars
for new buildings; while I was in the city the board decided to spend
only one million and a half. The people have voted an education tax of
eight and one-half mills on the dollar, but the board again and again
has voted to spare the poor taxpayer and save his money. There were six
millions available for buildings, and no move had been made to spend
them. Ten grade schools and two senior high schools had been authorized
by the board the previous year, but they were not yet off the
drawing-boards; and meantime all the residence districts of St. Louis
are dotted with Catholic schools and high schools, and a new half
million dollar Catholic high school is near completion.

I talked with Dr. Henry L. Wolfner, who is one of the best known
oculists in the United States, and was until recently a member of the
school board. Dr. Wolfner told me that he did not know why the board was
unwilling to spend this money; he had tried his best to get it spent, he
said, and the result was a long intrigue to force him off the board.
When finally he resigned, the “Globe-Democrat,” organ of the gang,
declared that in a letter to the board he had given ill health as his
reason for resignation. This, Dr. Wolfner assured me, was an out and out
lie. He summed up the situation in the St. Louis schools in two
contrasting incidents: first, the courts had removed a board member
because it had been discovered that the board had purchased a building
site through his real estate firm; and second, the Catholic president of
the school board had withdrawn from the college library a set of
Havelock Ellis’ great work, “The Psychology of Sex.” These books had
been in the library for many years, and were made use of by juvenile
court workers, and teachers of incorrigible boys and defectives.

Dr. Wolfner told me of the efforts of the gang to get rid of one
competent educator after another. They had just forced out Dr. John W.
Withers, and also Dr. E. George Payne, director of the Teachers’
College. Dr. Withers wrote a letter to the papers three or four years
ago, in which he showed how political graft and favoritism made
impossible an honest administration of the schools. The superintendent
was continually besieged by demands from the gang for favors, the
appointment or promotion of this or that political favorite. The
Catholics, of course, are tirelessly working for promotions for their
crowd. “I wish I could bring myself to become a Catholic,” said a
teacher to a friend of mine; “I would get on three times as fast.”

Also, there has been a long struggle over the question of whether
graduates of the Catholic high schools should have the right to enter
Teachers’ College without passing an entrance examination. Since the
Catholic schools have very low standards, the educators of St. Louis
have fought this, and it was on this issue that Superintendent Withers
and Principal Payne of Teachers’ College were driven from St. Louis. The
Catholics brought suit in the courts, and won their case in St. Louis,
but lost it before the supreme court of the state. Now everybody in St.
Louis rests easy, in the assurance that standards are being maintained
for the teachers. But just recently the school board has thrown down the
bars, and parochial school graduates are accepted wholesale. This news
has been entirely suppressed by the St. Louis newspapers, so the public
of that city will get from this book their first information that their
school board has set aside the decision of their supreme court!

Also, of course, the book companies are on the job. Up to the year 1921
a member of the committee for the adoption of text-books was receiving a
salary from the American Book Company, for spending summers in
California and doing some nominal editorial work. Naturally this board
was friendly to American Book Company publications. The board meets in
secret, what it calls “executive meetings”; the members of the gang hold
a caucus in advance, and decide what they are going to do, and make
everything unanimous; so the public never finds out what is going on.
This regime of graft and favoritism extends all the way down; the
principals are petty tyrants, flattered and fawned upon; those teachers
who are weak and subservient, and do clerical work for their principals,
are the ones who get the marks. The St. Louis school system was worked
out by a real Prussian some thirty years ago; it is a military affair,
routine and red tape and formulas. Every year the teachers are
automatically dismissed, and must be reappointed—the ideal of the “open
shop” system.

Here, as usual, the teachers had to take up the fight for a living wage.
No attention was paid to them, so they proceeded to organize. Miss Rosa
Hesse was elected president of the teachers’ organization, and the
superintendent sent for her and demanded to know if they were going to
join the American Federation of Teachers; if so, every one of them would
be discharged. The organizer of the teachers’ federation was barred from
speaking to them. At the same time, the official representative of the
Chamber of Commerce was coming and soliciting them to join his
organization. It would be “advantageous,” he assured the teachers
significantly. This Chamber of Commerce was deeply interested in the
schools—it had been taking action to prevent the professors at the
Teachers’ College using a series of text-books, “Community and National
Life,” prepared by Professor Charles H. Judd, and published by the
United States government; the ground of the objection being that these
books intimated very mildly that labor unions had some advantage, in
that they developed a sense of self-respect among laborers!

If you have read “The Goose-step” you will recollect the question raised
by Professor H. L. Bolley of North Dakota: “Is a college professor a
citizen?” You will remember that we cited a number of cases proving that
he is not a citizen. We shall in this book consider the question: “Is a
school teacher a citizen?” In St. Louis she very certainly is not, as
the case of Miss Rosa Hesse proves. I had the pleasure of talking with
this lady, and if it would do her any good I would cheerfully bear
testimony that she is an American gentlewoman of the old school,
absolutely uncontaminated by any touch of “Red”—that is, unless
perchance the reading of “The Goose-step” has since affected her! At the
time I talked with her, she had no idea whatever of the social
significance of what had happened to her; she was simply bewildered by
her discovery that a school teacher is not permitted to demand a living
wage and to exercise her rights as a voter.

To begin with, Miss Hesse discovered that the meetings of the school
board were supposed to be public; so she got a group of teachers to
agree to attend them and see what was going on. But when it came to a
showdown not one of the teachers dared; Miss Hesse went in all by
herself, and gave me a comical account of the expression on the
superintendent’s face when he saw her in that holy of holies. As a
result of this presumption, her name was left off the list for
reappointment in the year 1921. The superintendent lied to her outright
about it, but one of the board members gave him away, and the protests
of the teachers forced a reconsideration at this time.

But shortly afterwards an election for the school board came up, and
Miss Hesse’s organization, the Grade Teachers’ Association, ventured to
approve certain candidates. I am told by a gentleman of St. Louis who
knows the situation intimately that in this political struggle the
teachers’ organization was being misled by the “gang”; and this, alas,
may be—I have seen labor unions thus used on many occasions. Anyhow, a
lady by the name of Mrs. Gellhorn, president of the Missouri League of
Women Voters, issued a call for a meeting of women. At this meeting the
choice of the Grade Teachers’ Association was condemned; and among those
endorsed was Mr. Christopher W. Johnson, millionaire basket
manufacturer, and a member of the board for twenty-four years.

Mr. Johnson was running for re-election to a public office, and Miss
Hesse, a citizen of St. Louis, was being asked for her vote; she thought
she had a right to be informed about the matter, and she said to Mrs.
Gellhorn, privately and politely: “Is it true, as has just been stated
at an open men’s meeting, that Mr. Johnson is the head of a sweat-shop,
and is connected with a real estate company doing business with the
board?” That was all of the conversation; and for it Miss Hesse, who was
head assistant of the Franz Sigel School, and had been a teacher in St.
Louis for thirty-one years, was driven from her position and from the
school system.

Mr. Johnson himself got hold of the story, and the matter was brought up
before the board. A motion was made for the expulsion of Miss Hesse, and
when the motion was about to die, Mr. Johnson himself seconded it. Miss
Hesse managed to get a public trial, and at this trial Mr. Johnson
served in the triple capacity of complainant, prosecutor and judge.
Three other members of the board gave testimony against the teacher, and
then voted as judges against her.

I am told by one who has investigated the matter that the charge
concerning Mr. Johnson’s connection with a real estate company was
false; but the charge had been made in a public meeting, and so Miss
Hesse thought she had a right to inquire about it. Whether Mr. Johnson’s
large box and basket factory is properly described as “a sweat-shop” I
can not say; if I should call it that, Mr. Johnson, who is a contentious
person, might put me on trial also. But I presume I may quote a
physician in St. Louis, Dr. H. W. Faber, who writes me that he had to
attend girls who worked in this basket factory, and had worn down the
skin of their fingers until the blood oozed out on the baskets. I
presume also it is permissible to say that one of the ladies who
testified to having heard Miss Hesse’s question about a “sweat-shop,”
belongs to a family which ran a sweat-shop in the Missouri penitentiary!

Miss Hesse’s expulsion made a great stir in the city; a petition was
circulated for her restoration, and twenty-five thousand people signed
it. The Central Trades and Labor Union appointed a committee to take up
the matter; but the board declared that it had no power to advise the
superintendent to reappoint a teacher. We may venture to guess that if
the board had made a polite recommendation, the superintendent would not
have ignored it. But they preferred to leave matters as they stood; and
the rule for teachers in St. Louis was stated to the newspapers by a
Jewish rabbi: “Do nothing, say nothing, be nothing!”




                             CHAPTER XXXVI
                      INTRODUCING COMRADE THOMPSON


We move north to Minneapolis, headquarters of the milling industry, and
financial center of a rich iron and lumber territory. Here we find the
beginnings of hope for America; organized labor has broken away from its
old leadership and gone vigorously into politics, while the farmers,
rejecting the propaganda of their exploiters, have struck hands with the
labor unions. The result has been the Farmer-Labor party, which has
elected both United States senators from Minnesota, and will probably
take over the state administration at the next election. It controls the
city council of Minneapolis, and is fighting to get the schools away
from the Black Hand.

The labor-smashing society of Minneapolis for twenty years has been the
Citizens’ Alliance, with a secret service department and a program of
terror. They have gone after the schools, as everything else; they have
had their friends on the board—contractors’ friends and real estate
friends, and open-shop friends. During the war the contractors put
forward their lawyer, the product of a military school, and the
secretary of the Citizens’ Alliance announced that this Mr. Purdy was to
run the school board. They borrowed the automobiles of the rich, and
elected him by the votes of the cooks and chambermaids and chauffeurs of
Minneapolis. As colleague on the board they gave him a Mr. Jepson,
president of an artificial limb company, who, needless to say, was
getting rich out of the war. While he was a member of the state senate,
he had written letters to his agents, ordering that all packages should
be shipped to him personally, because the express companies were so kind
as to handle his personal packages free. I had an amusing experience in
connection with this artificial limb gentleman. I sent the manuscript to
a certain high-up Minneapolis educator, who thinks I am too extreme in
my distrust of the plutocracy. He promised to correct my errors; and
concerning this Jepson story he wrote:

  This is a dim and mysterious tale. What frank does a state legislator
  have? A postage allowance perhaps, that all the boys use up in some
  way, whether for stamps or cigars. Or do you mean that the American
  Express Company carried his packages free because he was a legislator?
  I have never before heard this story, and I am not enough interested
  to look it up. But you had better get a more accurate version before
  you publish it. I know Jepson, and he does not strike me as just that
  kind of a scoundrel.

Well, I was more interested than my correspondent, and I looked it up. I
have before me a poster, measuring 25 inches by 39, with letters at the
top 1-5/8 inches in height:

/* DISHONEST IN BUSINESS IS THIS THE KIND OF STATE SENATOR WE WANT TO
REPRESENT THE 44TH DISTRICT? */

The rest of the poster is occupied by six facsimile letters, bearing the
signature of Lowell E. Jepson, president of the Winkley Artificial Limb
Company, Jepson Bros., Sole Owners. One letter reads as follows:

  Now until you receive full instructions, send everything by U. S.
  express to Hon. L. E. Jepson, 106 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis,
  Minn., but always in a box so that contents may not easily be seen,
  but never use a leg box in so doing. If you should have to send us a
  leg for changes you had better get a small soap or cracker box and
  bend it up and put it in that way.

Another letter explains that inasmuch as Mr. Jepson represents the city
of Minneapolis in the state senate, the railways give him free
transportation, and he will be very glad to visit his correspondent to
fit him with two artificial legs. Another letter laments the fact that
“The U. S. express has gone back on me, so I had to pay the 30 cents;
after this send by Gt. Northern and it will come all right to me all
right.” And still another letter is addressed to an agent who is trying
to sell an artificial leg to an old soldier. In order to get a cash
payment at once, the agent is instructed to make the old soldier think
that if he does not pay cash there will be a long delay. “Make them
think that if something is not paid, dozens will get ahead of them.”

This poster was used by Mr. Jepson’s political opponents in the effort
to keep him from being re-elected to the state senate. It is interesting
to hear that Mr. Jepson applied for an injunction, and the courts
suppressed the whole edition of these posters. Such a comfortable thing
it is to have your own courts!

Against conditions such as this the Socialists and labor men of
Minneapolis are carrying on a fight for the schools. Big Business owns
not merely the courts and the government, it owns the university, and
almost all the churches and newspapers. The labor people started a
newspaper of their own, but it seems to have gotten away from them, and
they have to go to the public with their bare voices. A Socialist school
board member told me that in the campaign of 1921, he spoke at a noon
meeting in front of some factory every day for two months, then at a
meeting in the afternoon, and six times every evening. He was a member
of the board while I was in Minneapolis, and took me into office and
showed me the insides.

Permit me to introduce you to Lynn Thompson, plain American carpenter,
organizer for the Trades and Labor Assembly of Minneapolis, and for
thirteen years an active Socialist soap-boxer. Recently it became his
duty to call a strike against the Wonderland Theatre; some judge issued
an injunction against the strike, and Comrade Thompson gave me the text
thereof, containing many paragraphs, and covering everything a human
being could do in connection with a theater and its proprietor. Said
Comrade Thompson: “I would violate that injunction if I were to wake up
in the middle of the night and dislike him.” Nevertheless, he posted the
theatre as unfair, and he and four other men were sentenced to pay two
hundred and fifty dollars each. Refusing to pay, they were sent to jail
on a six months’ sentence, and actually served sixtyfive days of it—a
period of great relief for the representatives of Big Business on the
school board!

We are told that we must elect business men to office, because they
alone know about business. Here in Minneapolis was a school board
composed of business men exclusively, and the schools were reported to
be three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt, and there was no
money for current expenses. The newly elected carpenter asked these
business men, and they didn’t know how matters stood; neither did the
board’s employes know. For years the board had been spending the money
of the schools on guess-work. They got their appropriations at one time
of the year, and figured their expenses at another time, and never could
tell how much they needed or how much they had. Professor Swenson, of
the state university, who happened to be on the school board, had to go
before the legislature and make a guess as to what amount of bond issue
was necessary to cover the deficit; he guessed half a million, and came
out pretty near right. To make perfect the humor of this situation, an
association of business men had got the legislature to pass a strenuous
law, providing jail sentences for public officials who allowed
overdrafts of public funds. They knew at the time that the board of
education was “in the hole,” as were several other departments; and they
made no provision to cover the deficits. They went ahead and passed a
law, which they knew must be broken every day, if the government were to
go on!

A carpenter is not supposed to know much about school-books, but Comrade
Thompson, with his colleague Mrs. Kinney, wife of a railroad conductor,
did what he could to find out. There had been no system in the
book-rooms, and it was often not possible for the principals to know
what books were stored in the schools; some of them followed the plan of
ordering new books every term, and burning the surplus stock of old
books. That was fine for the book companies, which naturally resented
Comrade Thompson’s “butting in.”

The American Book Company had been represented for a couple of decades
by a famous book man, an old soldier by the name of Major Clancy. I ask
you to make particular note of this old gentleman; we shall meet him in
several places, and in the end find him high up in the councils of the
National Education Association. Major Clancy has only one arm, and this
is a picturesque appurtenance of a military title—until you learn that
the other arm was lost in a threshing machine! Citizens who were
investigating school book graft in Minneapolis noticed that when they
brought an indictment against one of the board members, the first thing
he did was to make a beeline for Major Clancy, who got him a lawyer and
saw to the putting up of his bail bonds. It was discovered that another
member of the board, also a member of the normal school board, was
attorney for the American Book Company. Text-books had been published in
huge quantities, and had stayed on the shelves untouched, until the
board had resolved that they were out of date, whereupon the companies
had taken them back for a few cents a copy.

Naturally, Lynn Thompson was interested in building. The average cost of
school buildings in the United States is 37 cents a cubic foot. This
labor agitator and walking delegate, under bonds for violating a court
injunction, insisted upon the standardizing of all specifications, and
contracts were let in Minneapolis at a cost of 21.7 cents. Nor were
these cheap buildings—on the contrary, they were using brick that had
been adjudged too high in price for the schools in Des Moines. On that
same day the school board of Boston let a contract for a big building at
48.9 cents. It is worth noting that every step in this economy campaign
was fought by a big contractor who was on the school board.

There was a question of building three high schools, and three brick
concerns bid $33 per thousand; it was manifest that they were in
collusion. The price was eight dollars too high, and Thompson moved that
they should buy in the open market for $24.10 per thousand. Two weeks
later they got an offer at this price from one of the concerns which had
bid $33—the same concern and the same bricks! And then came the question
of sites. One man having a pull with the board asked $60,000 for a site;
Thompson decided that it was worth $28,000 and the board offered him
$40,000. He went to the courts, and the jury said $28,000, and the
Supreme Court sustained that valuation. “For these efforts,” said
Comrade Thompson, “I got some abuse—and sixty-five days in jail.” It is
interesting to note that this $28,000 site was a trackage site, and the
purchase was made necessary because a previous board had given away
trackage to an automobile company.

As a Socialist, of course, Comrade Thompson’s hobby is to have the
people do their own work, omitting the grafters. He would make a motion
that school buildings should be put up by the city; and he would get one
vote beside his own—that of the railroad conductor’s wife. The school
board had an electric repair shop, and this persisted in making bids on
repair jobs which beat all the contractors—to the contractors’ great
annoyance. There was one job on which the city’s men saved the city
three thousand dollars, or thirty-five per cent of the total cost. The
school board admitted that these workers were responsible and did
first-class work; nevertheless, the board passed a motion that the
repair shop should make no more bids.

On December 20, 1921, bids were opened for a large job, and it was found
that the Sterling Electrical Company had bid $22,688, while the school
shop bid $4,300 less. The board awarded the contract to the Sterlings,
by a vote of five to two—the two, needless to say, being Thompson and
Kinney. Thompson got a taxpayer to go before a court and ask an
injunction, and Mr. Purdy, representative of the Black Hand on the
school board, appeared for his colleagues, and admitted that the shop
had proved to be reliable and efficient, but argued that the interest of
the private contractors must be conserved! The court sustained the
majority of the board, and the city of Minneapolis lost $4,300 to the
grafters.[G] It is interesting to note that the judge who rendered the
decision is that same Judge Bardwell who kept Comrade Thompson and four
other labor men in jail for sixty-five days for violating one of his
injunctions!

-----

Footnote G:

  Guy Alexander vs. A. P. Ortquest, Nels Juel, Lowell Jepson, et al.;
  injunction denied Jan. 25, 1923.

-----




                             CHAPTER XXXVII
                         MILLERS AND MILITARISM


In order to make a consecutive story, I have shown what Big Business has
done in the way of Graft in Minneapolis. Let us now complete our view by
taking up Propaganda and Repression. During the war there was formed a
“Public Safety Committee,” a lynching society of the Black Hand. One of
the first objects of their attention was the school board—with Lynn
Thompson daring to defend a teacher who belonged to the I. W. W.! He was
a fine teacher, and there was no other charge against him—but he had to
go.

There was the usual fight over salary increase, and the teachers were
forming a union. The president of the Citizens’ Alliance, a former head
of a strike-breaking agency named Briggs, set out to “smooth them down,”
and gave a dinner to the teachers’ officers and leaders, about sixty of
them, at a “swell” club. There was an association of the teachers,
controlling their pension fund, and Mr. Briggs attended a meeting of
this, and pleaded with them “like a Methodist revivalist, with tears in
his eyes,” not to be so wicked as to join a union. He had several
teacher-lobbyists to help him in this campaign—and one of them got a
fine job in the state university as his reward. Another got up a
“Teachers’ League,” one of those “yellow” unions which the gang
controls. The teachers were asking five hundred dollars raise, and this
representative went before the board and said they would take three
hundred; after which he was made, an assistant principal, with a three
thousand dollar salary! It is interesting to note that when the Black
Hand was raising campaign funds to drive Comrade Thompson from the
school board, one of the charges named in their secret circulars was
that he had opposed promotion for this man!

The militarists are making a desperate struggle to keep their hold on
the schools in this city of the millers. I thought I was back home in
Los Angeles when I learned how at one of the general meetings of the
Parent-Teachers’ Association they sprang a proposition to endorse
military training for the children. There was no time for consideration
or debate; they shoved it through without most of the people realizing
what was happening; and next morning the kept newspapers triumphantly
announced this result as representing some tens of thousands of parents
and teachers!

Next came a proposition before the board to cut out night schools and
the Americanization program, on the ground that these cost too much
money. The Socialist carpenter moved that instead they should cut out
the military training; and he demanded a public hearing on the
proposition. The board set a time for the hearing, and then began it
earlier, hoping to rush it through before the opponents of militarism
got in. But that was easy for a soap-boxer who has learned to speak at
eight meetings in one day; he held all eight meetings right there before
the board, and kept things going until the regular time which had been
set for the discussion!

It proved to be a lively session. The Reverend Shutter, pastor of the
Church of the Redeemer—oh, magnificent irony!—wrote a letter in defense
of militarism, and pointed out how the army was needed for the putting
down of strikes. The congressman for the Black Hand liked this so well
that he put it into the Congressional Record, and it was sent out under
the frank of the government. The editor of the Minneapolis “Labor
Review” stated that he had heard the wife of a school board member,
taking part in a debate at a women’s club, state that “we need soldiers
to put the Socialists down.” This was practically the same thing as the
clergyman had said, but for some reason the militarists took offense,
and the editor was challenged to name the woman—which he did.

The climax came when a Congregational clergyman by the name of Stafford
spoke in opposition to military training. He was lieutenant and chaplain
in a medical regiment of the Officers’ Reserve Corps; so here was a
first-class scandal. The members of this corps held a meeting and
expelled him from their mess, and demanded that he surrender his
commission. The commanding officer of his regiment demanded that he
apologize and recant, and when he refused, preferred formal charges
against him for “conduct unbecoming an officer.” The army martinets set
up the contention that members of the Officers’ Reserve Corps and of the
Reserve Officers’ Training Corps are part of the army, and are under
military discipline at all times, and it is a breach of discipline for
any member of any unit to oppose military training. It is pleasant to be
able to record that the War Department refused to sustain this extreme
doctrine.

I have told in “The Goose-step” of the elaborate system of spying which
the Black Hand maintained at the University of Minnesota, located in
Minneapolis. They did the very same in the schools; they got out a
questionnaire on militarism, and when one teacher omitted to answer
about Socialism and labor unions, the fact was broadcasted in the kept
newspapers. They sent a spy to inspect the text-books—including
annotations written in the teachers’ own copies. One teacher told me of
this, and how her principal had refused explanation of the incident.
They tested students on Socialism, the I. W. W., etc., for the purpose
of spying on the parents of these children. One high school teacher
thought it proper that her pupils should know the meaning of such words
before they answered questions; she advised them to go to a Socialist
meeting and hear the Socialist arguments, and she was summoned by the
principal and told that she would be discharged if she repeated this
offense. Another teacher was censured for advising a student to read
“The Jungle.”

The spies were especially successful in the case of W. R. Ball,
“director of citizenship” in the Minneapolis schools. Mr. Ball had the
idea that democracy really means something, and should be applied in
every-day life; still worse, he belonged to the American Federation of
Teachers. The Citizens’ Alliance had a so-called “American Committee,”
and this committee employed two spies, bearing the hundred per cent
names of Olsen and Kunze, who collected a mass of gossip concerning Mr.
Ball’s utterances to his pupils. For example, he had referred his
advanced students to John Fiske’s “Critical Period of American History”;
in this work a chapter dealing with the period prior to the adoption of
the Constitution is entitled “Drifting Toward Anarchy.” So the spies
reported that Mr. Ball had advised his students to read a Socialist book
entitled “On the Road to Anarchy.” They also introduced a statement
charging disloyal teaching, signed by a well-known saloon keeper; and on
the witness stand before the board of education, this gentleman was
unable to remember anything in the statement, and finally admitted that
the paper had been handed to him to sign by Spy Olsen.

Twenty-four principals and teachers, co-workers with Mr. Ball, appeared
to testify to the value of his work, and a committee of professors of
the state university, including a dean of the Graduate School and head
of the history department, certified to the value of the pamphlets Mr.
Ball had got out for his students. But Mr. Ball, in his statement to the
board of education, confessed to holding such ideas as “that a large
number of workers under the present capitalistic system, were getting
wages too low to support their families with the necessities of life.”
Also: “We defined a radical as a man who went to the roots of things and
traced cause to effect, and was necessarily a deep thinker, and a friend
to justice and righteousness.” The Minneapolis board of education
considered that this was equivalent to a plea of guilty, and so they
drove Mr. Ball from the Minneapolis schools.

You will be amused also to hear the story of how the Black Hand of this
city put a detective agency upon the trail of Comrade Thompson, and what
they found. The report came in that he was a plumber, French descent,
member Holy Rosary Catholic Church, short, thick-set, dark complexion,
could neither read nor write the English language, and expressed himself
with great difficulty on the platform. Members of the Citizens’ Alliance
who had heard Lynn Thompson speaking at eight meetings per day, told the
detective agency that the details didn’t fit; they had been shadowing
the wrong Thompson!

It is sad to have to report that after six years of devoted service to
the city, Lynn Thompson and Mrs. T. F. Kinney were defeated for
re-election to the Minneapolis school board in 1923. The teachers
supported them solidly, and they were able to show the voters how they
had saved the city more than a million dollars. But the Black Hand was
out to put down Socialism, and they did it in the usual way—with their
money. The contractors raised a campaign fund; Mr. Purdy wrote to the
vice-president of the First National Bank, pointing out the perils of
radicalism and appealing for support. The club women turned out with
their automobiles—and the wives of workingmen did not turn out, and that
tells the story.

Out of ninety thousand votes the Big Business ticket won by four
thousand majority—and at the head of the board was the Citizens’
Alliance candidate, a man by the name of Gould. It has since been
revealed by a senatorial investigation that this man was holding a
clerical position in one of the departments at the state capital,
drawing a salary of four hundred dollars a month from the state, while
doing the work of the so-called “Sound Government League,” an
organization of the Black Hand formed for the purpose of evading the
corrupt practices law of the state. This league had spent half a million
dollars in order to re-elect the candidate of the Black Hand as governor
of Minnesota; and now its secret agent, Gould, is on the school board of
the city, doing everything in his power to overcome the accomplishments
of Lynn Thompson and Mrs. Kinney.

What does this mean for the teachers? I have before me a letter from a
Minneapolis teacher, who has ventured to speak out against school
autocracy. He explains that he has not been able to send me data,
because he has been loaded with a double amount of work, as punishment
for his opinions. I dare not tell you what this work is, because that
might lead to the teacher’s being recognized. He tells me of the
struggle of the teachers’ organizations, and the plan which they are now
agitating—to be permitted to experiment with a school without a
principal. He tells me also how the high schools are on a “six-hour day”
plan, against which the teachers are in opposition. Says my friend:

  One man, an athlete and debater at college said to me: “I think the
  plan is a failure.” “Will you say so when you are asked?” I inquired.
  “I think the administration will not look kindly on anyone who does,”
  he replied. “But do you, a man, mean to tell me that you will not say
  what you think?” His rejoinder was that he did not want to be thought
  a “knocker.” What can be expected when such things prevail? Before the
  war it was considered uneducation to make large classes: the big men
  now demand “economy,” and force election of administrators pledged to
  guarantee it. These administrators, instead of saying to the people:
  “We are doing a reactionary thing,” declare: “We are now, by new
  schemes of efficiency, getting one teacher to do the work of two; and
  the teachers like it—as witness So-and-so!”




                            CHAPTER XXXVIII
                              NEWBERRY PIE


Next we visit Detroit, headquarters of our automobile industry, where we
find the usual struggle to hold down union labor, and the usual school
board of business men and politicians, engaged in protecting the
interests of their crowd. I sat chatting with a group of newspaper
reporters, one of whom has been specializing in school affairs for many
years. “I suppose you have the regular school board graft,” I remarked;
and he hesitated: “No, I wouldn’t say there was much graft.” “Well,”
said I, “you have a committee which selects sites for the schools; do
you mean to say the members of this committee haven’t relatives and
friends among the big real estate speculators, who want the schools in
the neighborhood of their subdivisions?” The reporter looked at the rest
of the company and grinned. “Oh, the dirty son-of-a-gun, he’s right on
to the whole thing!”

He went on to explain—of course they had that, but nobody would call
that graft in Detroit. It was in the power of the school board to make
the city grow any way it desired; there were thousands of people forced
to live in the suburbs, because rents everywhere else were too high, and
in making up their minds which district to go to, the first thing they
thought of was the nearness of a school. Then I went on to ask about
text-books, and the first detail to come out was that the principal of
the Northern High School of Detroit had written a text-book on English
literature, and the superintendent had been unable to refuse it, because
the principal was so “well connected.” “Is it a good book?” I asked, and
an educator replied: “It is one of the rottenest in the world!”

Another friend tells me about some school board meetings which he
attended. There was a long and intricate discussion of the kind of pipe
which should be used for school buildings. One board member was keen for
iron pipe, another board member was keen for steel pipe. That bankers
and lawyers and dentists and club ladies should know so much about the
technicalities of building materials was puzzling to my friend. Some
kind of conclusion was arrived at, and then two weeks later he went
back, and attended another board meeting, and lo and behold, they were
threshing out the question all over again! Said my friend to a reporter:
“Aren’t there any other questions connected with Detroit education but
what kind of pipe they have in their buildings?” The answer was:
“Simpleton! One of these board members has a friend who would like to
sell iron pipe, and another of the members has a friend who would like
to sell steel pipe.”

The connections of Big Business with the schools are so intimate in
Detroit that they are almost humorous. We have seen the American Book
Company operating in Minneapolis, and we now find that in Detroit its
president, A. V. Barnes, is the brother-in-law of Truman H. Newberry,
ex-secretary of the navy and ex-senator from Michigan.[H] We shall,
before we finish, see the American Book Company engaged in corrupting
school officials and making away with school money in every section of
the United States. Now we discover that several hundred thousand dollars
of the money thus made away with was used by Newberry and his gang to
buy a seat in the United State Senate.

-----

Footnote H:

  In “The Goose-step” Mr. A. V. Barnes was erroneously stated to be the
  _father-in-law_ of Truman H. Newberry; and thereby hangs an amusing
  anecdote. The Detroit “Times” wished to reprint the chapter dealing
  with the University of Michigan, and in order to make sure of the
  facts they sent the book to Judge Murfin, regent of the university,
  and friend and attorney for the Barnes-Newberry family. Judge Murfin
  sent back his comments with the statement that “Mr. Barnes is _not_
  the father-in-law of Mr. Newberry.” Just that and nothing more; you
  see what a clever family lawyer the judge is! But someone on the
  “Times” was suspicious, and wrote again, saying that in order to be
  perfectly fair it would be necessary for Judge Murfin to state if
  there was any relationship at all between Barnes and Newberry, and if
  so, what the relationship was. By this means Judge Murfin was
  persuaded to admit that Barnes is Newberry’s brother-in-law!

-----

As a rule, when these high-up grafters purchase a political title they
wear it with honor and glory the rest of their days; but it happened in
this case that Newberry’s opponent was Henry Ford, who has money enough
to have some rights, even in America. When Mr. Ford visited my home two
or three years ago, he told me that he had some two hundred men at work
investigating these election frauds, and he did not mean to quit until
he had got Newberry out of the Senate. He kept his word; but all through
the struggle the defense of Newberry was the first task of the gang in
Michigan—and this including the school machine. Mrs. Otto Marckwardt, an
instructor of swimming in the Detroit schools, and wife of a professor
at the University of Michigan, was so indiscreet as to answer the
questions of a pupil about the Newberry affair, and for this she was
turned out of her position. How this could happen you will understand
when I explain that Mr. Frank Cody, superintendent of schools in
Detroit, has a brother, Fred Cody, who was Newberry’s most active
henchman, and was convicted of election frauds along with Newberry. The
cycle becomes comically complete when we learn that Fred Cody is agent
for the American Book Company, whose president is Newberry’s
brother-in-law!

So here is the perfection of plutocratic education. You may learn from
it what Big Business is going to do to all our children; in fact, you
have already learned it—turn back to Chapter XXI, and read about
Margaret Haley’s deputation of nine school teachers who came to Detroit
to study the “platoon system” as there applied. I am told by an educator
whom I trust that this system is fundamentally good; I am here
discussing only what is found in the great metropolis of automobiles,
the headquarters of all standardization. I remind you of its deputy
superintendent, in charge of this Fordization of infancy, who tells us
how “society” is certain to require more and more propaganda from the
schools, and this is the system which makes it possible. Ask yourself,
before it is too late, whether you are satisfied with your destiny, to
breed human units to be turned into factory operatives and cannon fodder
for the masters of the new American Empire.




                             CHAPTER XXXIX
                            BEETS AND CELERY


We go from city to city, and I wonder, will you grow tired of reading
the same things over and over? Perhaps we shall be wise to agree on a
few formulas, so that you may get a situation in a phrase. Let us agree
upon “salary campaign,” to mean that the teachers took up the fight to
get an increase in wages—and didn’t get very much. Also the phrase
“union smashing,” to mean that the teachers formed an organization, and
were forced to quit it or to quit the schools. Also the phrase “schools
overcrowded”—meaning that the children of the poor are jammed into old,
unsanitary buildings, while the city is erecting palatial high schools,
with all the luxuries for the children of the rich. Also let us recall
the familiar “Propaganda” and “Repression,” which tell us that business
men come to the schools to sing the praises of business, while teachers
are reprimanded for the slightest hint of a liberal idea. All these
things are a part of the school system in the metropolis of automobiles.
As one teacher phrased it to me: “We know that the old watchful eye is
on us!”

I have before me a copy of a publication called the “Industrial
Barometer,” Detroit, Michigan, September, 1923. It is the organ of the
Employers’ Association, and is full of bitter, sneering arguments
against labor unions and public ownership—proving that public ownership
of railroads leads inevitably and “by easy steps” to public ownership of
babies! A copy of this publication is sent free of charge to every
school teacher in Detroit, and when the teachers read it through they
find the menace which is meant for them: “The spread of radical and
iconoclastic theories in colleges calls for a closer inspection of
persons and things herein than heretofore.” (This of course is intended
as a lesson in economics, not in English!)

I got an interesting light on Detroit education from a group of
Socialist children. Needless to say, these children were not having a
happy time in the schools; they were forced to listen all day long to
attacks upon their faith—and this regardless of what might be the
supposed subject of instruction. One teacher discussed the wickedness of
teachers forming unions, and pictured their plight when ordered on
strike: “And we’d be clubbed over the head if we refused!” A teacher of
economics explained all poverty as due to the extravagance of the poor;
she talked for half an hour about a case she had known, a poor woman who
bought a mahogany furniture set costing six hundred dollars, and
including three plate glass mirrors! You understand, it is not permitted
the children of Detroit to argue with their educators; as one child said
to me: “We almost die with rage!”

Sometimes these children would be pained to note that teachers of a
liberal bent of mind would make some statement, and then be seized with
fear, and apologize and explain that they didn’t really mean it. One
teacher explained that she was using a very reactionary text-book,
because she had to. “And,” added the child, “that teacher is not
teaching any more.” The child understood exactly why, having often
observed the principal standing behind a half-opened door, listening to
what was going on in the class!

The Socialist children brought me their text-books, to show what they
had to endure. For example, that work on English literature written by
the principal of the Northern High School of Detroit, Edwin L. Miller.
This local celebrity tells the children of his city that George Bernard
Shaw “persistently obtrudes upon the public the absurd proposition that
all property should be held in common.” I hereby publicly offer to Mr.
Miller or his publishers, the Lippincotts, the entire income which I may
derive from this book if they will point out to me a single passage from
the writings of George Bernard Shaw in which this proposition is
advanced. Will Mr. Miller or his publishers let me hear from them? They
will not!

Also “The Elements of Political Economy,” by Professor J. Laurence
Laughlin, prize reactionary of the University of Standard Oil. This
eminent economist tells the school children of Detroit that “Socialistic
teaching strikes at the root of individuality and independent
character.” I have known some thousands of Socialists in my lifetime,
and I venture the estimate that nine out of ten of them possess more
individuality and independent character than a kept college professor of
the Rockefellers. This professor is so rabid in defense of his masters
that he even finds it necessary to underscore the phrases in his
text-books: “The great _difficulty with these schemes_,” etc. He reveals
himself so ignorant of Socialism that he cannot even spell correctly the
names of its leaders; he gives three names, Proudhon, Karl Marx, and
Lassalle, and misspells two of them!

Or consider this sentence: “If men constantly hear it said that they are
oppressed and down-trodden, deprived of their own, ground down by the
rich, and that the State will set all things right for them in due time,
what other effect can that teaching have on the character and energy of
the ignorant than the complete destruction of all self-help?” I take the
liberty of answering this rhetorical question: such teaching can have
the effect of making the ignorant realize that for the mass of the
proletariat under the capitalist system individual effort is a pitiful
delusion and snare, and that the one hope for the workers lies in
class-conscious collective action. And when the ignorant have learned
that lesson, they will be wiser than a professor who teaches economics
under a Rockefeller subsidy, and produces poison text-books to be
published by Mr. Barnes of the American Book Company, and sold to the
schools of Detroit by the convicted henchman of Mr. Barnes’
brother-in-law, and purchased for the city of Detroit by the brother of
this convicted henchman!

I got another interesting sidelight on the schools of this metropolis of
automobiles by talking with a group of citizens interested in the
prevention of child labor. Because the workers of Detroit are taught by
poison text-books to rely upon self-help instead of solidarity, they are
so poor that they are unable to keep their children in school. The big
business men of Detroit are charmed with this condition, not merely
because it enables them to avoid paying taxes to build new schools in
the slums, but also because it provides them with an abundant supply of
child labor for their industries. In the effort to abolish such labor,
the reformers of Michigan obtained passage of a law allowing
poverty-stricken parents a sum equal to what the children might earn if
they worked; also, they obtained a mother’s pension law, for the support
of those children whose fathers are killed in the automobile factories.
But what is the use of such excellent laws when there is no budget
provided to pay the money? In the county in which the state capital is
located some mothers are getting as little as fifty cents a week for the
support of their children!

A group of church workers, seeking to raise a fund to agitate against
these conditions, had the bright idea of getting “society ladies” to
assist them. The “society ladies” were to go about and collect
subscriptions from the manufacturers; but for the first time the ladies
found their charms entirely futile—they could not raise a penny! To
enforce these child labor laws would destroy the prosperity of Detroit,
said the great captains of industry. So every week the truant officers
and child labor officers bring children into the Recorder’s Court, and
the recorder investigates and learns that the reason the children are
out of school is because in school they would starve. The recorder has
to admit he does not know what to do with cases of this sort.

We shall in due course examine the enormous organization, including all
the big manufacturers of the country, which for thirty years has carried
on a nation-wide campaign to paralyze the schools in the interest of
child labor. While we are in Michigan, let us see what they have been
doing here. All over the state are vast fields of beets and celery, and
for the cultivation of these cheap labor is a necessity. A man applies
for a job, and only one question is asked him: “What is your gang?”—the
meaning of the question being: “How many child slaves have you got?”
Children as young as five years of age stagger about the fields,
carrying in each hand a beet which weighs as much as six pounds, and
with the clay on it as much as ten pounds. The National Child Labor
Committee, covering one-seventh of the beet-territory, counted
sixty-nine children under six years of age, working as high as fifteen
hours a day!

Of course, such babies, working such hours become ill, and are malformed
for life; yet before committees of the legislatures of forty-eight
states you will hear suave manufacturers explaining that child labor is
good for children—all the great presidents of America were raised on
farms! These suave gentlemen got through a law exempting the canning
industry from the child labor laws during the canning season; and then
the suave gentlemen devised a method, by the use of vats, to make the
canning season last the year round! This being a depressing subject, you
will be glad to end with a laugh; so I mention that one of these big
business gentlemen, a bitter and persistent enemy of the child labor
laws, is an active officer in the national organization of the Animal
Welfare League!




                               CHAPTER XL
                           BOSTON IN BONDAGE


Let us now move to the Atlantic seaboard, beginning with Boston, hub of
the universe and fountain-head of our culture. Boston once prided itself
upon the civic virtues and stern New England moralities; today it is a
graft-ridden city of slums, the cultured population having withdrawn to
the suburban towns, and the plutocracy to haughty isolation in the Back
Bay District, where “the Lowells speak only to Cabots and the Cabots
speak only to God.” The great bankers and corporation magnates employ
the corrupt city government in their factional fights—Lee, Higginson &
Company against Kidder, Peabody & Company; it is reported by those on
the inside that one mayor of the city made more than a million dollars
out of the “tips” he got from the latter firm. For a decade or two the
great part of Boston’s government has been for sale; the district
attorney was selling justice, or injustice, wholesale, and recently an
effort was made to convict him, but the gang proved too strong.

All that these haughty magnates, the Lee-Higginsons and Kidder-Peabodys
and Lowell-Cabot-Lodges ask of the schools is that taxes be kept down.
To this end they have entered into alliance with the Catholic
hierarchy—the old firm of God, Mammon & Company operating on the shores
of Boston Bay, as we have seen it on the shores of San Francisco Bay and
the Mississippi River. For some time the arrangement was that the school
board consisted of two Catholics, two Protestants, and a Jew; but when I
was in Boston last year the line-up was four Catholics out of five
members. As usual, the entire program of the Catholic element can be
summed up in one sentence, to starve the public schools so that the
parochial schools may thrive. The hierarchy never ceases to denounce
from its pulpits those Catholics who fail to send their children to the
church schools. They have advised Catholic women not to join the
National Education Association, because this organization has endorsed
the Shepard-Towner Bill, providing national subsidies for education. It
was offered to exclude the Catholic schools from federal inspection, but
that made no difference—the Catholic authorities do not want the public
schools improved, they do not want the competition of good schools.

They are tireless in their efforts to keep control. They have blocked
the movement for a “Greater Boston,” because this would bring in the
suburbs, which are Protestant. At a meeting at the Notre Dame Cathedral
one speaker after another stressed the importance of getting Catholic
teachers into the schools. “The Irish are always for the Irish,”
testifies ex-President Eliot of Harvard; and there have been some funny
illustrations in Boston education. Two or three years ago there was an
uproar in the city, it having been discovered that the schools were
using a work of anti-Irish propaganda, the Century Dictionary! Someone
had looked up the word “brutal,” and discovered that in illustrating its
use the dictionary employed a sentence from Emerson’s “English Traits,”
dealing with the great famine: “In Irish districts, men deteriorated in
size and shape, the nose sunk, the gums were exposed, with diminished
brain and brutal form.” So the school board solemnly resolved as
follows: “Ordered: That the use of the Century Dictionary in the Boston
Public Schools is hereby discontinued until such time as a
discriminating, unfair, and untrue reference to the Irish race is
eliminated.” And the Board of Superintendents ordered the passage
blacked out from all copies in the school libraries! I suggest to the
publishers of the Century Dictionary that when they are getting ready
their next edition for Boston, St. Louis, San Francisco, and other
Catholic cities, they look a little farther in Emerson’s “English
Traits,” and quote the following: “The English uncultured are a brutal
nation.... The brutality of the manners in the lower class appears in
the boxing, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, love of executions, and in the
readiness for a set-to in the streets, delightful to the English of all
classes.”

The Catholic censorship of Boston’s intellectual life extends even to
the public library, which was at one time a famous institution, but is
now useless to students, because it excludes whole groups of modern
books. There is a reading-room for children, and on the prominent
shelves of this room you find church propaganda for the young, thrilling
stories about popular and beautiful lady Catholic wives, and wicked
Protestant “vamps” who break up homes. The Italians cannot get the
Bible, but have to write down their names and stand in line and wait—and
even then they don’t get it. I was told by a teacher in the Brookline
schools that the public library there had refused to order Chafee’s
“Freedom of Speech,” the standard work on the subject, written by a
professor of the Harvard Law School. I was told by a teacher in a Boston
high school that she had been rebuked by her principal for using a
text-book in which it was stated, casually and without comment, that the
Irish immigrants had come to America on account of the potato famine.

I was told also of a high school department head who was called up on
the telephone by a Jesuit priest of Boston College, and ordered to
promote a certain Catholic to a higher grade. Considering this Catholic
incompetent, the department head declined, and was given two hours in
which to make her decision; when she still refused, scandals were spread
concerning her and she was summoned before the board. I cannot give the
details of this case, for the reason that the teacher who told me the
story was afraid to put it into writing, or even to revise my
manuscript. It is interesting to note that this priest is the person who
has been selected by the Catholic hierarchy to give the “improvement
lectures” for the teachers of the Boston schools; these lectures being
public school affairs, originally given by professors of Harvard. One
high school teacher told me that her pupils had been forbidden by the
priest to read Dumas!

Boston is one city in which they have teachers’ councils. “What freedom
we have is due to these councils,” said a group of teachers to me; and I
asked just what kind of freedom that meant. They might take up the
question, at what hour should the janitor clean a certain room. They
might take up the question, what credits should be allowed for certain
courses. “But you have nothing to do with hiring and firing?” I asked,
and there came a chorus: “Oh, no, no, no!” And, of course, they have
nothing to do with salaries; their salaries have been held down, and
when the women teachers agitated for increased pay, they were “put off.”
They called a meeting in Faneuil Hall, “the cradle of liberty,” to
discuss their problem; they invited the board members to attend, but not
a single one was interested enough to come. Some teachers belong to a
union, but they keep very quiet; they saw what happened to the
policemen’s union in Boston. It is interesting to note that at the time
of the Boston police strike the teachers of English and history received
instructions from the school board not to permit any mention of it in
classes.[I]

-----

Footnote I:

  My account of the Boston police strike in “The Goose-step” was
  ridiculed by the Boston newspapers, and a Cambridge professor wrote me
  that he knew it was not true, because he had been on the
  ground—meaning that he had read what the Boston newspapers published
  concerning it, and had talked with other people who had read the same.
  I take this occasion to state that my account of what went on during
  this strike in the private offices of the Black Hand of Boston was
  furnished by one of Boston’s leading bankers. This old gentleman wrote
  it out for me with his own hand, and sent it to me—under the pledge
  that when I had read it and made notes concerning it, I would send it
  back. I am not sure that I would have had the nerve to publish what I
  did about Cal Coolidge and his black eye, if I had known that this
  strike-breaking hero was to become the next President of the United
  States. But I have published it now, and can’t unpublish it!

-----

There was a Boston tea-party once upon a time, and the history books are
proud of it; but those old days are past, and the White Terror holds
sway in Boston and its suburbs. A teacher in the Cambridge public
schools was driven from the system for telling her pupils that the
Soviets had a right to determine their own way. At one of the Boston
high schools a child was writing on Bolshevism, and asked the teacher
about it, and the teacher gave her an article from the “Review of
Reviews,” which presented some facts favorable to the Russian
government. This teacher was called before the board and suspended, with
two weeks’ loss of pay, and was told never again “to teach anything with
two sides.” In Boston they passed an ordinance forbidding the displaying
of the red flag; and only after they had passed it did somebody
recollect that the red flag is the emblem of Harvard. I should like to
tell you of a number of other funny things which have happened in the
shadow of our “cradle of liberty”; I spent several hours listening to
stories of teachers—and after I got back home, most of these teachers
wrote, forbidding me to repeat what they had told me!




                              CHAPTER XLI
                       THE OPEN SHOP FOR CULTURE


While we are in Massachusetts, let us have a look at its second city,
Worcester, the manufacturing center of the metal trades, and “open shop”
headquarters of New England. We have studied this “open shop” system in
Southern California, and it will be interesting to note some further
evidence of the unity of the United States.

What does the term “open shop” mean? It means that a place is “open” to
unorganized wage-slaves, and closed to union men; as corollary to this,
it means a universal spy system, with the beating, jailing and deporting
of union organizers. That there are factories in which the employers
maintain such conditions is bad enough; but when you have, as in
Worcester, an open shop city, the case is infinitely more serious. An
“open shop city” is a place where the organized employers apply to a
whole community those tactics of terrorism which they have learned
inside their factory gates; so that the “open shop” becomes not merely
the industrial policy, but the philosophy and religion and morality of
two hundred thousand human beings.

The Black Hand of Worcester is known as the Metal Trades Association. It
has a whole group of subsidiary propaganda organizations, the Chamber of
Commerce, the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club, the Economic Club. It has
two kept newspapers, the “Telegram” and the “Gazette,” also a smaller
paper, the “Post,” controlled by the Catholics. There is a large Irish
population, also a French-Canadian population, to which the open shop is
handed down as the will of the Pope. The Protestant God thunders
actively through the mouths of fashionable clergymen, who denounce labor
unionism and Socialism, not merely in sermons, but in illustrated
lectures in colleges and schools, their denunciations being reprinted in
the next day’s newspapers.

At the top of the educational system of this Black Hand is Clark
University, once a center of America’s feeble intellectual life. I have
told in two chapters of “The Goose-step” the story of this university’s
collapse. I will restate briefly: one of the trustees, Mr. Thurber,
general manager of Ginn & Company, school-book publishers, discovered an
opportunity to boost the sales of the Frye-Atwood Elementary
Geographies, and selected as the new president of Clark University and
Clark College the author of these masterpieces, who proceeded to open in
the institutions enormous geographical and geological and
physiographical and anthropographical and anthropogeological
and physicoanthropological and geophysicogeographical and
anthropophysicogeological departments, institutes, summer schools,
chautauquas, and correspondence schools, at which teachers and
superintendents of the United States are assembled, winter and summer,
to meet the book writers and book agents of Ginn & Company, with Mrs.
Helen Goss Thomas, head of the geographical division of Ginn & Company,
graciously pouring the tea.

It happened that Scott Nearing was lecturing at Clark University on the
control of American colleges by the plutocracy, and President Atwood
came in to hear him, and being dissatisfied with the proofs he quoted,
and wishing to furnish more conclusive proofs, got up in the middle of
the lecture and ordered Scott Nearing off the platform and out of the
hall. This was the greatest triumph of plutocracy in American
educational history, and all Worcester rose with a yell and hailed
President Atwood as the saviour of the learned world. The Rotary Club
gave him a banquet, welcoming him with such uproar that the newspaper
reporters had to admit their best eloquence inadequate. The Economic
Club elected him president for the new year, the superintendent of
schools sang his praises, and the clergy ordered special anthems.

Nor were more substantial rewards forgotten; I inspect a list of the
text-books used in the public schools of Worcester for the year after
the Nearing incident, and I discover that in the high schools there are
forty-two text-books of Ginn & Company, in the elementary schools
twenty, in the supplementary reading list thirty-five, a total of
ninety-seven books—and, needless to say, under the heading of
“Geography” we find “Frye’s New Geography, Book I, (Frye-Atwood
Series),” and also “New Geography, Book II, Atwood, (Frye-Atwood
Series).”

While we are on the subject, you will be interested to know of recent
developments at Clark University. The chapters in “The Goose-step”
evidently got under the skin of the alumni, for they appointed a
committee of three to investigate President Atwood’s administration. The
chairman of this committee was a young Catholic physician of Worcester,
having political ambitions. He looked into the matter, and assured a
number of the faculty members that he was going to make a report
condemning Atwood’s administration. But then he was summoned before the
Clark trustees, who are the big chiefs of Worcester’s Black Hand; and
his committee rendered a report which said that everything was just as
it should be. Mr. Thurber came out with a statement that “everything is
lovely at Clark”; and this at a time when the freshman class had been
reduced one-half, the graduate school had been reduced nearly
two-thirds, and the trustees were obliged to raise the tuition fifty per
cent in order to offset the decrease in income! They have now made plans
to drum up students for the next year, and have engaged one of the
foremost chautauqua artists, ventriloquists, magicians, and vocal
acrobats in New England, to lead the force of salesmen.

Also you will be amused to know that at the close of the last academic
year President Atwood summoned all those members of the faculty who were
his supporters, and asked them if they could suggest anything wrong
about his administration. One of the academic rabbits summoned courage
to make a squeak; he said the exclusion of the “Nation” and the “New
Republic” from the university library had done more than anything else
to injure the reputation of Clark. Whereupon the librarian flared up,
and declared that if either of these magazines were restored to the
library, he would resign. They have not been restored.

Instead of that, Clark University is sending out bulletins offering
“home study courses” to people who want to learn to talk about the
weather! You may think that just one of my hideous jokes, but here is
the “Supplement” for April, 1923, listing “Courses Now Ready,” and the
first course is entitled: “The Passing Weather.” Says the description:
“This course will prove of interest and value to all who wish to know
the simple, scientific facts which underlie that ever-present widely
discussed subject, the weather.” The advertisement goes on to explain
that “the person who finds pleasure in observing and anticipating the
ever-changing face of the sky will find this study interesting and
profitable.”

There remains to be mentioned a tragic incident. Among the faculty of
Clark who were in rebellion against the Atwood regime was Arthur Gordon
Webster, an internationally known scientist and physicist. Professor
Webster had been on the faculty for thirty years. I was advised to write
and ask him, in confidence, his ideas and conclusions. He wrote briefly,
but did not give me what I wanted, and I was told afterwards by some of
his colleagues that he was afraid to do so, and that the shame of his
position preyed upon his mind. Two months after “The Goose-step”
appeared, and while the faculty and student-body at Clark were
discussing the book, Professor Webster said to his students: “This is
the last time I shall address you from this platform—that is, for a long
time.” He wrote a note to his son, saying that his life had been a
failure; then he retired to his laboratory and put two bullets into his
head.

Let us now take up the training of the goslings of this open shop city.
There is the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, with President Hollis, a
former naval officer and martial soul, who boasts that he is ready at
any time to place the entire student body of the Institute at the
disposal of the police to break strikes. (Last summer he loaned his own
daughters to break the strike of the underpaid telephone operators!) A
list of the trustees of this concern is a list of the Black Hand of
Massachusetts. At the head stands George I. Alden, president of the
state board of education, also president of the Norton Grinding Company,
a thoroughly feudal concern, which owns its workers’ homes, and
ruthlessly ferrets out every independent thought in their heads. Just
for fun, I will list the rest of these trustees by occupation, so that
you may see what a really plutocratic board can be when it tries.

The manager of the American Steel & Wire Company, another feudal
concern, whose special device is to avoid paying pensions by discharging
its old employes a year or two before they become eligible; a prominent
banker and member of this same concern; a prominent lumber dealer and
manufacturer; the head of the largest loom manufactory in the United
States, heavily interested in banks and in the two Worcester newspapers;
the head of the United States Envelope Company; a leading banker; the
president of a sprinkler company, a notorious reactionary; the treasurer
of the Norton Company; the vice-president and sales manager of a forge
company; the president of the White Motor Company; the president and
general manger of a pump machinery company; the vice-president and
superintendent of the shoe machinery trust; the vice-president of the
Westinghouse Electric Company; the manager of a tool manufacturing
concern; the vice-president of a scales company, president of two other
scales companies, chairman of a typewriter company, director of an
asbestos corporation, a cement company, two banks, a safety razor
company, an arms company, a finance and trading corporation, a guarantee
company, and a water power company; the treasurer of a construction
company; another magnate of the Norton Company; the vice-president of a
national bank; the president of a lumber company; another manufacturer;
the treasurer of another manufacturing company; and three
representatives of the open shop of Jesus Christ.

Let me give you also an illustration of what it means to run education
for such a board of magnificoes. The brother-in-law of one, an
interlocking director of manufacturing, banking, journalism and
hospitals, found himself with a son on his hands; and in the effort to
get this son through this institution he employed one of the
institution’s young instructors as a tutor. The son being unwilling to
take the trouble to visit the tutor, it was arranged that an automobile
should come each day to bring the tutor to the son. On one occasion
there turned up at the tutor’s door a large industrial truck of
unprepossessing appearance. As the tutor knew the garage of the great
magnate was stocked with motor cars of all kinds and sizes, he felt
himself injured in his dignity, and declined to climb aboard the
industrial truck. When the magnate learned of this, he was enraged, and
threatened the tutor—not merely with loss of the opportunity to tute,
but also with the loss of his position in the Worcester Polytechnic
Institute.

The tutor still remaining obstinate, the issue was carried to President
Hollis, who took the side of his instructor: how could a retired naval
officer preserve the proper strike-breaking spirit in his faculty, if
members of the faculty were required to ride alongside common workingmen
in industrial trucks? He refused to discharge the instructor—and this in
spite of the fact that the magnate threatened the institution with loss
of a big donation. The tutor stopped tuting, but went on instructing at
Worcester Polytechnic; and I take pleasure in recording this first
feeble sprout of academic dignity in the Open Shop for Culture.

Next in turn comes Worcester Academy, a preparatory school for young
plutocrats, correct, spiritual, and athletic; the principal a Rotary
Club educator, an ardent open shopper, who bars all liberal periodicals,
and rushed forward to denounce as “dissolute” those members of the Clark
faculty who opposed President Atwood. The grand duke of the board of
trustees is the president of a great construction company, and a leading
member of Worcester’s Black Hand. I might give you the complete list of
these plutocrats, but it would bore you, because it is the same kind of
thing as you have just read a minute ago.

Next, the Worcester State Normal School, an entirely innocuous and
thought-excluding institution, in which the Black Hand trains its
teachers. One of the students reports everyone ardent in support of
Atwood, everything correct and cautious—because the funds depend upon
the open shop magnates.

Next, Holy Cross College, a Jesuit school, where theology is queen of
the sciences and logic her chief handmaiden. The leading trustees are
prosperous Irish business men, lawyers and politicians. The institution
is prosperous, crowded with students, and has famous athletic teams,
noted for their bruising tendencies. Holy Cross graduates used to come
to Clark for graduate work, and express astonishment upon discovering
the existence of the sciences of economics and sociology. Whole new
vistas of mental activity would be opened up to them—which vistas have
now been closed by President Atwood.

Next, Assumption College, founded by the monks of the Augustinian order,
who were driven out of France some twenty years ago. Its trustees are
the leading business men and lawyers among the French-Canadian
population, and the ideas taught are those which were considered a
menace to the existence of the republic in France a generation ago, but
which are exactly appropriate to the medievalism of plutocratic New
England.

Finally the public schools. These are conducted by a “school committee,”
made up of leading representatives of the firm of God, Mammon & Company.
There used to be one professor of Clark University on this board, Frank
H. Hankins, an eminent sociologist, and it was his liberal ideas which
had a great deal to do with the decision of the Worcester plutocracy to
smash Clark. Now Professor Hankins and a dozen of his liberal colleagues
are gone, and the “school committee” is filled with semi-illiterates,
most of whom could not qualify to teach an elementary class in the
schools they control.

The Metal Trades Association, with the consent of this “school
committee,” sends circulars to the teachers, warning them of the dangers
of the closed shop, and of all modern ideas in history, civics and
economics. Two or three years ago they encouraged a series of inter-high
school debates on the open shop, taking it for granted that their side
would win. Of course it didn’t win—it never can where both sides are
heard. The secretary of the Black Hand was infuriated, and declared this
one more evidence of the prevalence of Bolshevism in the educational
world. Nearing and Watson’s “Economics” was first mutilated, and then
ousted altogether; the same fate befell the entirely conventional
text-book of Professor Thomson, because he stated that immigrants were
frequently brought in to get cheaper labor, and were frequently not well
treated.

The superintendent of schools in Worcester was, until recently, a
gentleman by the name of Gruver. He was a good-natured person, who tried
to keep friends with everybody; he made the mistake of recommending in a
newspaper interview the reading of Wells’ “Outline of History,” and from
that time he was doomed. He moved on, and his assistant took his place,
a gentleman by the name of Young, a special darling of the Worcester
plutocracy, and a special _bete noire_ of the Worcester teachers; a
meddlesome, domineering pedagogue, who delights in the exercise of
authority, and is never so happy as when he can order some passage
blacked out of a text-book, or can storm at some teacher for an
unplutocratic utterance.

Under the former superintendent a number of teachers studied diligently
in summer schools, acquiring special credits; they were promised a
hundred dollars increase in salary, as reward for ten years of such
labor. Superintendent Young has abolished this reward—and so the
teachers are “out of luck.” He has substituted an arrangement whereby
high school students are enabled to earn money, to the vast satisfaction
of the Worcester plutocracy. The boys and girls lose two weeks of their
school work, and in return have the educational experience of acting as
clerks in the Worcester department-stores during the holiday rush!

The Catholics are so strong that the “school committee” has had a
difficult time adjusting promotions to suit all parties. It used to be
arranged that executive positions were given alternately to the Knights
of Columbus and the Masons; but there developed a deadlock at the secret
sessions of the school committee—known to the populace as the “gum-shoe
meetings.” The Knights of Columbus were demanding a position out of
turn, and the Masons wouldn’t stand for it—so finally they compromised
by giving the position to a Jew! The Catholics had to be satisfied with
getting an uneducated blacksmith made assistant principal of a high
school; first he had been taken on to teach forge work in the manual
training department, and then, through his political pull, he became a
regular member of the faculty, and now assistant principal, on the way
to the top!

Equally powerful in Worcester education are the Rotarians and the
Kiwanis. Superintendent Young was chosen by the Rotarians to travel all
the way to California as their representative in a national convention;
his predecessor, Gruver, was president of the Kiwanis. This book will be
translated into a number of European languages, and my translators will
write to ask me about these strange words, which are not in any
dictionary. So pardon me while I explain that Rotarians and Kiwanis are
business men who have made money rapidly, and who meet together to
express their satisfaction with the city and the civilization which have
made possible their success. Being human, these men would like to make
the world better, if it could be done without interfering with business;
since it cannot be done, they proceed to make the world bigger, and more
like what it is.

How completely these men are divorced from the intellectual life, it
will be difficult for a European to imagine. They are bursting with
energy; but lacking contact with ideas, they are like engines whirling
in a vacuum, unconnected with driving shaft or gears. They assemble and
partake of luncheons and dinners in sumptuous hotels, and summon to them
preachers and teachers of all degrees, to tell them that they are the
ultimate product of evolution. Left to himself, a Rotarian or Kiwani
might now and then experience a gleam of humility; but intellectual men
accept their hospitality, and for the sake of promotion and pelf flatter
their mass-vanities and whip up their herd-emotions—and this surely is
what is meant by the sin against the Holy Ghost.




                              CHAPTER XLII
                         CORRUPT AND CONTENTED


We move south to Philadelphia, the third largest city of the country,
controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad and its allied banks, through an
old-established and smoothly running political machine. Nearly twenty
years ago Lincoln Steffens described it as “Philadelphia corrupt and
contented.” For a while after that it ceased to be contented; there was
a general strike, which was smashed by the mounted police. But then came
the war, and Philadelphia is again at the apex of contented corruption
and corrupt contentment.

So far as concerns the schools, there has always been the usual hundred
per cent plutocratic board, distributing patronage and financial and
real estate favors. When I visited the city in 1922 the schools were
under the care of what was called “the octogenarian board”; at its head
Judge Beeber, president of the Commonwealth Title and Trust Company, who
sees that a good part of the school funds are deposited in his bank.
Next to him was Mr. Burt of the American Bank, and financial intimate of
the Vare brothers, contractors and political bosses who had run the city
for a generation. Next, Mr. Simon Gratz, the czar of the schools for a
generation, and president of a real estate organization—you remember in
“The Goose-step” what I called the “interlocking directorate”; next, an
aged war-horse of the Republican machine, who was open in saying that he
represented the Vare brothers on the board, and whose name was
frequently mentioned in connection with female teachers and pupils, to
whom he had displayed undue ardor in his private office.

Several of these aged plutocrats have just been forced out by a popular
upheaval, and the board is now run by Mr. William Rowan, who has a bank
in Kensington, and whose other qualification for the office of school
board president of a great city is that he is an undertaker. He presided
at a banquet in honor of some distinguished Frenchmen, and one of these
Frenchmen, a member of the Academy, made a speech in perfect English;
Mr. Rowan in reply proposed that the assemblage should unite in singing
the French national anthem, the “Marr-sales.” Also there is Mr. Boyle,
replacing Mr. Burt as representative of the American Bank. Also Mr.
Shallcross, a suburban political boss, whose son was recently president
of the real estaters. Also Mr. Mitten, president of the Rapid Transit
Company, and a nationally known union-smasher. Mr. Mitten has deluged
the schools with his propaganda in favor of company unions; he sent so
much that one high school returned it, marked “Send no more.” This
traction company has been so plundered by the financiers that seventy
per cent of its gross revenue goes to the bond-holders of underlying
companies, which own no property and do no work. In the girls’ high
schools some of the teachers of civics ventured to point out the
significance of this, and so Mr. Mitten transferred this subject of
civics to the grade schools, where the children are too young to
understand high finance.

Philadelphia is an old and slow-moving city, in which everything follows
precedent, and outward respectability is the whole of life. It resembles
London, in that its leisure-class gentlemen have cricket-clubs; also in
that old families have vast holdings of real estate throughout the city,
which they hand down from generation to generation. The rich as a matter
of course send their children to private schools, where they do not have
to associate with the vulgar unwashed; so the big business men do not
care what becomes of the public schools, and only want their tax
assessments held down.

For many years the social service organizations agitated for a school
survey by the city, and finally matters got so bad that the survey was
made by the state. The four volumes of the report, dated 1921, lie
before me. If you are suspicious of my opinions about schools, you may
prefer to hear from the state superintendent of public instruction. Dr.
Thomas E. Finegan is not a muck-raker, but a high-up educational
politician, with more letters after his name than he has in it—A.M.,
Pd.D., Litt.D., L.H.D., LL.D.; and he says:

  It cannot be too emphatically stated that the general condition of
  Philadelphia’s school plant is deplorable.

  Nearly forty thousand elementary pupils are on part-time attendance
  because of lack of sufficient classrooms, and the high school pupils
  are handicapped by the heavy overcrowding of their classes.

  There is a real hazard to the children of Philadelphia in the fact
  that seventy-four per cent of the school buildings are not fireproof,
  and are not equipped with modern fire protection apparatus. The system
  of fire drills and the devotion and competence of the teaching force
  afford the chief protection to most of the children in times of danger
  from fire.

  The citizens of Philadelphia would be shocked to learn of the
  unsanitary and unwholesome toilet facilities that are provided for the
  children in a majority of the public schoolhouses. It is no
  exaggeration to say that many of the conditions not only threaten the
  health of the children, but are a menace to their morals as well.

  Over eighty per cent of these buildings provide less than the standard
  play area now recognized as necessary to the healthy and happy school
  life of children.

Moreover, Superintendent Finegan goes on to say:

  As matters now stand, however, there is no way in which the people of
  Philadelphia can register their will concerning the work of the public
  schools. This condition results from the fact that the members of the
  Board of Public Education are appointed by the judiciary rather than
  elected by the people. There is no escaping either the logic or the
  wisdom of maintaining that, where the members of a board of education
  have the direct power to levy and collect taxes for the support of the
  public schools, it follows as a necessary corollary that the members
  of such a board should be elected directly by the people taxed and so
  become directly responsible to them.

Of course, one can make out a case from any report by taking the worst
items and quoting these alone. So I hasten to state that the makers of
the survey found some things in the Philadelphia schools of which they
could approve, and they were profuse in pious hopes that other things
would be made better. But nothing can alter the significance of a
statement such as the following:

  Sixty-four per cent of the children examined were found physically
  defective.

Or of a statement such as this:

  The most depressing condition observed was the indifference or
  passivity of a large proportion of the classes visited. Pupils asked
  very few questions, and it is most exceptional to find a recitation in
  which thoughtful inquiry is usual and frequent. Real discussion is as
  rare as signs of eager interest.

And again:

  There is no organized attempt at any high school in Philadelphia, as
  far as the administration is concerned, to teach the pupils how to
  study.

Philadelphia has a new superintendent, by the name of Broome, and he was
hailed as “the Broome that sweeps clean.” He had one new idea when he
took charge of the schools; he wanted a teachers’ council, and that
sounded like a revolutionary idea, and the teachers were interested.
This council was to deal with all matters connected with the interests
of teachers, and it would save the board of education the need of being
troubled with teachers’ complaints. Presently it developed that out of
the thirty-one members, considerably more than the majority were to be
elected by small groups from the supervising force. After much political
manipulation the superintendent succeeded in putting this plan over on
the teachers; the council has now been in operation for a year, and all
teachers realize its purpose. It has done nothing for teacher
welfare—but it stands in the way, so that no teacher can any longer get
access to the board of education!

We shall see when we come to study our education from the national
viewpoint, that these superintendents meet together in county and state
and national conferences, to work out plans for the holding down of the
teachers and the regimenting of the school system. This clean-sweeping
Broome of Philadelphia put into effect an ingenious method of enforcing
conformity; he has a group of what he calls “superior teachers,” who are
given extra pay and promises of advancement for exceptional scholarship,
writing of theses, and other outside activity. The result has been gross
favoritism, and the wrecking of the morale of many schools by the
forming of cliques and political gangs.

Teachers who fall out of favor are treated like the policemen in New
York; they are given jobs at the other end of the city from their
homes—and Philadelphia is geographically the largest city in the United
States. Three teachers were driven to suicide by such methods, and great
numbers have left the service. In certain schools the system has now
reached the stage of development with which we are familiar in the
moving picture world, where promotion for women employes depends upon
sexual favors extended to the men in power. Such is the reason which
Philadelphia teachers assign for the sudden rise of certain ladies in
the teaching force; and this condition is so common throughout the rural
schools that the city teachers assign it as their main purpose in
demanding tenure for all the teachers of the state.

A great many of the schools, and especially the high schools, are
organized politically; the alumni associations and parent-teachers’
associations are used, not merely to get favors for their schools, but
to serve the political bosses and their interests. The principal of a
South Philadelphia school not long ago circulated among his staff a
“request” that no teacher should “flunk” a certain notoriously poor
scholar, the reason being given that “his father is the police
lieutenant of our district, and we cannot afford to antagonize him.”
This boy passed triumphantly; and of course the same favors are extended
to prominent athletes, who would otherwise be barred from the school
contests.

You will be prepared to learn that in such a city the feeble effort of
the teachers to start a union was crushed by the discharging of some and
the intimidating of the rest. (There were about a hundred members, and a
prominent leader sold them out for a promotion.) You will be prepared to
learn that the teachers get low salaries, and work all their lives
without promotion, unless they belong to the “gang.” You will be
prepared to hear that the Chamber of Commerce is strong, and has an
“educational bureau,” which formulates the policy for the schools,
especially as regards the training of Chamber of Commerce clerks and
mechanics. You will also be prepared to hear that civil rights are
things forgotten in this corrupt and contented city.

There used to be a certain old-fashioned type of gentleman who had read
the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the
Constitution, and believed in civil liberty as a thing to be trusted and
fought for; but that type is now out of date, and the hustling young
business man, with his “under cover” agent and his “strong arm”
detective, runs both the city and the schools. The spirit was shown by
Superintendent Broome, when he heard a rumor from the Daughters of the
American Revolution (delicious irony of that name!) that there were
supposed to be some revolutionists among school teachers. The
clean-sweeping Broome set to work at once to sweep out “un-Americanism.”
“There are too many insidious influences at work today,” he declared.
“If there are any persons with such ideas in our schools here, I wish
they would resign before I am put to the embarrassing position of asking
them to resign.” The same newspaper quoted “other school officials” as
declaring that “if any teacher was suspected to be a radical, it was the
duty of a citizen to inform the school authorities.”

Needless to say, education in Philadelphia is not inspiring to children;
and, as we have seen in other cities, under such conditions the children
get drunk. Early in 1923 Director Davis of the Prohibition Enforcement
Bureau ordered his investigators to look into reports of drunkenness on
the part of children in three public schools, who were said to be coming
to school in a half stupefied condition. I asked a friend about this,
and he wrote me that they were the children of Italian parents, who make
wine. But then I inquired further, and I learned that among the English
speaking mill-workers in the Kensington district the pastors of the
churches found it necessary to band together to protect the children
from the activities of boot-leggers. The brother of one of the highest
teachers in the city was arrested on this charge, and there have
frequently been charges of teachers imbibing during class sessions.
Also, the use of drugs by school children is prevalent, as in our other
great cities. How can you expect either the children or the boot-leggers
to obey the law, when the public reads in its morning papers that,
nearly five years after the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, the
police of Philadelphia Corrupt and Contented are solemnly informing the
keepers of thirteen hundred saloons that they must positively close next
month! And they don’t!




                             CHAPTER XLIII
                       THE SCENES OF MY CHILDHOOD


Let us move farther south to Baltimore, another old and slow-moving
city, with a dynasty of long-established merchant princes. For forty
years, to my knowledge, their political gang has run the city and
pocketed the proceeds. It is a community in which you can lose yourself
in miles of brick houses, all exactly alike—little two-story brick
houses for the working class and larger three and four-story brick
houses for their “betters.” I was born in one of these larger brick
houses, and spent my childhood playing on the cobble-stoned streets of
“Ballamaw”—as we called it. I never went to school there, because in my
childhood the family doctor thought I was learning too fast, and did not
realize that to send me to school might be the quickest way to stop me.
In Baltimore, as in Philadelphia, the children of the rich have
beautiful private schools, and leave the children of the poor to the
politicians. As one teacher said to me: “The people take it for granted
that the school system is working, like the water system under the
pavement.” After I had looked a little farther into school matters, I
wanted to substitute for the “water system” the “sewers.”

It is the old story of the business partnership between God and Mammon.
The Catholics are strong in Baltimore, and are doing everything in their
power to choke the public schools; at the same time the merchant princes
are holding down taxes, and their politicians are leaving the old
buildings out of repair, without fire escapes, without proper heat—in
some cases even without books. The salaries of the teachers are
inadequate; but if ever there were two of them who had the courage to
start a union, they kept it so quiet that I was unable to find them.

Baltimore is an old-fashioned city, and the middle-class
respectabilities hold it immovable. I was invited to the home of a lady
and gentleman who were interested in education, and there I found a
large company assembled. I asked them what was the economic control of
their schools, and found that in an audience of twenty-seven educators
there was apparently only one who knew what I meant by the phrase. They
were not conscious of any such thing, they said. I wanted to point out
to them that a horse never feels the rein until he starts to travel in
an undesired direction; but having been brought up in Baltimore, I knew
what politeness required.

Another of the unwritten laws of Baltimore decrees that woman’s place is
the home. Woman is now permitted to leave the home to teach the children
in classrooms, but she is not permitted to come out of the classrooms to
discuss the conduct of the schools. In this company, with which I spent
a couple of hours, I counted ten men and seventeen women, and all of the
men said their say about the Baltimore schools and about education in
general. But only three out of the seventeen women had anything to say
at all; and one of these was the hostess, while the other two were
directly called upon by the hostess to answer a question. Such is the
state of the feminist movement in Baltimore!

I found upon inquiry that the same condition prevailed in the schools.
Although the women teachers in the schools outnumbered the men seven to
one, they were practically unrepresented on the teachers’ councils.
Among nineteen representatives of the white teachers’ training schools
there was only one woman representative; from the girls’ high schools
there was only one woman representative out of thirty. From the colored
schools there was no woman representative, and many groups of the white
teachers had no woman representative. It was interesting to note that
the twenty-one hundred elementary teachers were represented as follows:
four principals, one kindergartner, one teacher in a secondary high
school, and three members of the Schoolmasters’ Club. You can imagine
how easy it is to handle the teachers in Baltimore!

One of the things they need is a Henrietta Rodman in their city; for
they have the old Tammany system of “mother-baiting.” When the women
teachers marry they automatically resign; if they have a “pull” they may
get themselves re-employed as substitutes, at a lower salary—the
advantage in handling substitutes being that they may be immediately
dismissed without excuse. The women teachers in Baltimore have never
dared to have anything to do with the move for equal pay; this fight has
been carried on by the woman’s clubs. The city council was induced to
appropriate money to abolish discriminations between men and women
teachers; but the school board refused to spend the money, and the issue
has now been carried to the court of appeals.

When I asked my impolite question about “economic control,” a former
school board member who was in the company told me how he had taken up
the fight for an increased tax to make possible better schools; he had
found one rich man to whom this increase would mean ten thousand dollars
per year, yet this man was willing to support the program. Surely that
disproved my idea of economic control! I answered patiently that I knew
there were individual rich people capable of generosity; but it was
different with classes, and especially when it came to anything which
threatened class control. Would this rich man have been willing for the
teachers of Baltimore to form a union?

You may recollect that in Los Angeles I criticized the bankers for their
“thrift campaign” in the schools; and perhaps you wondered: did I object
to thrift in the schools? And why could I not believe that the bankers
might have a genuine interest in teaching thrift to the school children?
Well, you may learn about this from what happened in Baltimore. At the
Francis Scott Key School a beginning was made at a school bank, and the
bankers objected. Here, as in Los Angeles, the children were learning
thrift; but in Los Angeles the money was turned over to the bankers,
while in Baltimore the money was kept for the school! So here is a
laboratory test, proving that what the bankers want is not to teach the
children thrift, but to get the children’s money.

The biggest banker in Baltimore is Mr. Robert Garrett, whose palace on
what we used to call “Charles Street Avenue” was one of the scenes of my
childhood. Mr. Garrett is director in half a dozen great financial
institutions, also of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; he is a graduate
of Princeton and of Johns Hopkins, and was selected as the city’s most
eminent financier to act as chairman of the Public Improvement
Commission, and spend twenty-two million dollars of the people’s money
for new school buildings. The work goes forward, under the very highest
capitalistic auspices; and one of the great new high schools is nearly
completed, when a group of independent citizens makes an investigation,
and discovers and proves that all through this building the contractors
have been substituting inferior materials—terra cotta pipe instead of
cast-iron pipe, cement bricks instead of clay bricks, inferior floor
materials, an inferior motor, etc. To cap the climax, the “panic bolts”
on the doors, which were to have brass rods, have steel rods
substituted; steel rusts, you understand, so when there is a fire, and
the children try to fling the doors open in a hurry, they will find the
bolts rusted fast, and the doors immovable. Does that dispose you to
trust your schools to the tender care of your bankers?




                              CHAPTER XLIV
                      THE BREWER’S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW


I have referred to the Francis Scott Key School in Baltimore, and you
will be interested to hear more about this rare phenomenon—a beautiful
building, animated by a beautiful spirit, and located in a city slum.
“Locust Point” is out in the shipping district, and the school overlooks
the harbor and the old Fort McHenry; it is named after the author of
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” who composed the song close to this spot. A
few years ago the people of Locust Point had the usual old wooden
fire-trap for their children; it burned down, and then came a struggle
with the politicians for a better school. The neighborhood is a Catholic
stronghold, and the priests wanted the building in an inaccessible
place; it had a library, and the priests do not wish Catholic children
to have too easy access to modern books. They would have had their way,
if it had not been for one rich woman of Baltimore, who has made herself
a kind of godmother to the schools.

Meet Mrs. William Bauernschmidt, daughter-in-law of a well-known
Baltimore brewer lately deceased. This lady got her education in
Baltimore politics in a somewhat amusing way. A quiet, mild-mannered
young daughter-in-law, she used to sit in a corner of the library of the
old brewer’s home and do her knitting, while the men of the family
talked business. As the brewery business was all mixed up with politics,
the daughter-in-law came to know a great many secrets. She explained:
“The men paid no more attention to me than if I were a dormouse; so now,
when I come to deal with Baltimore politicians, I tell them, ‘I know
every filling you’ve got in your teeth!’”

This, you perceive, is not refined language; not the sort that was used
by ladies during my boyhood in Baltimore! “But,” said Mrs.
Bauernschmidt, “there’s no use talking ‘up-town talk’ to them. I use
their own language.” She told me about one of these potentates—I forget
his name, but his nickname is “Sunny”—and said Mrs. Bauernschmidt: “I
know whose man you are every day; you belong on Monday to the gas
company, and Tuesday to the street railways, and on Wednesday you belong
to the breweries. I want you to know that I always know when our day
comes round!”

But also she cajoles these fellows, and touches their hearts. Once upon
a time they were children, and some of them went to school; now they
have children of their own, and these are going to school; do they want
to steal the children’s money? And then she goes after the big fellows,
and sometimes she finds that even they have hearts! When she was
fighting for this new school on Locust Point, she tackled not merely the
mayor and the school board and the Catholic hierarchy, she tackled the
president of the Baltimore Dry Dock and Ship Building Company. She
wanted a park around the school, so that it would have room to grow, and
she got this mighty magnate to the point of declaring that if the
politicians wouldn’t vote the forty-five thousand dollars, he would put
it up himself and he would spend another forty-five thousand to find out
why he had had to do it! So, of course, the politicians fell all over
themselves, and the school has its park.

Here was a second case of plutocratic generosity in Baltimore, and I
began to fear for the thesis of “The Goslings”! I asked Mrs.
Bauernschmidt about it, and she made a face. They will never be able to
fool her again, said she. Four years ago the schools wanted six million
dollars, and all the civic agencies of Baltimore were fighting for a
bond issue; they went to the business organizations, which endorsed
their program cordially, and there was thanksgiving among the educators.
But then it was discovered that a group of politicians and
land-speculators intended to tack on another bond issue of forty-two
million dollars for a “port loan”! The people of Baltimore were invited
to put up this enormous sum to provide harbor facilities for Big
Business, and the six million dollars for the schools was to provide the
“human appeal.” The combined propositions were carried in a whirlwind
campaign, and a “Port Commission” was appointed, which has been drawing
fat salaries for four years—but not a single dock has been built to
date!

No, I do not expect to get very much for the people’s schools from the
plutocracy; but you note that I am perfectly willing to take what I can
get. For example, I take Mrs. Bauernschmidt! I don’t think she knows
much economics, and I am sure she never met a Socialist before; but she
has a robust mind, and she faces facts, whatever they may be. When there
was a strike of the ship-workers on Locust Point, she faced the fact
that the children were starving, and she helped raise money to feed
them. That, of course, was a terrible thing; everywhere throughout the
United States it is one of the worst offenses you can commit against the
plutocracy, because they rely upon the cries of the starving children to
break down the morale of strikers.

Years passed, and Mrs. Bauernschmidt continued her wayward course. She
took up the fight for the new school at Locust Point, and did not stop
for the Catholic priest, nor yet for the political machine and its
political superintendent of schools. She went to speak before a
Parent-Teachers’ Association; a teacher asked her, and the
superintendent rebuked this teacher, saying that she had made a grievous
mistake, that Mrs. Bauernschmidt must not speak in the schools of
Baltimore, and a teacher ought not even be seen on the street with her.
He added words to this effect: “I know my business so well that I never
give promotion to a teacher who doesn’t stand in with the powers that
be.”

So Mrs. Bauernschmidt went to war with this superintendent. She put him
on trial before the school board—when you have money you can do that
kind of thing. The gang was greatly exercised, because a teacher and a
principal who had been witnesses to the superintendent’s statement, told
the truth before the board; and that was a violation of the first
principle of gang ethics, it meant the end of discipline in the school
machine. The upshot of the controversy was that my native city got one
or two new board members, and the old superintendent was dismissed. You
see how it pays to keep track of the fillings in the teeth of your
politicians!

There is the same story in Baltimore that we saw in San Francisco, St.
Louis and Boston; the people appropriate money for their schools, and
the representatives of God, Mammon and Company refuse to spend it. They
even get the courts to forbid them to spend it! The schools were
discovered to be fire-traps—and what better way to make Catholic parents
send their children to the parochial schools, than to have it generally
rumored that there is danger of fire in the public schools? So the money
for fire-escapes was not spent; and a delegation waited on the mayor,
one from each of the twenty-five schools which lacked fire-escapes. Mrs.
Bauernschmidt went along, and the Baltimore newspapers reported the
“wallop” which she delivered to the mayor: “History tells us about a
ruler who fiddled while the town burned, but I don’t remember reading of
his re-election, and I’ll bet you he couldn’t be re-elected mayor of
this city!”

So the schools got some fire-escapes—but not all. Last year the
politicians returned an “unexpended balance” of $104,000 out of $600,000
appropriated for school repairs; and so Mrs. Bauernschmidt’s
organization, the Public School Association, went after them once more.
Now it is promised that all the schools will be safe; and the Catholic
priests, realizing that they have to come up to the new standards, pay
visits to the Francis Scott Key school—a dozen of them in the course of
a couple of months—to find out about modern education!

I make this Baltimore chapter the basis of a special word to those
people who read my books and write me that I am too bitter, that I
refuse to believe anything good about the rich. The story of Mrs.
Bauernschmidt gives me the chance to show that I like rich people
exactly as well as poor. All I ask of the rich is that they turn traitor
to their class and serve the general welfare. Not one in a hundred can
conceive of doing this, and not one in a thousand has the courage to act
on the idea; but at least I give them the chance. In every city, town
and village of the United States there is room for a woman of wealth who
will turn out and fight for the schools—not merely to get more money
from the tax-payers, and to keep the grafters from stealing it, but to
make the schools places of freedom, with windows open to the new
doctrines which are blowing over the world. In free inquiry and free
discussion lies the salvation of America; and it may be my misfortune,
but nevertheless it is a fact, that after having spent a year and a half
making inquiries, I am unable to name a single public school in the
United States in which the policy of free inquiry and free discussion is
consistently and boldly followed.




                              CHAPTER XLV
                      AN AUTOCRACY OF POLITICIANS


Next comes our national capital; and here we have a unique situation,
owing to the fact that the people of the District of Columbia have no
votes, but are governed by an autocracy of politicians. The school board
was formerly appointed by the District Commission; now it is appointed
by the District Supreme Court. The invisible government of the city is
made up of the traction interests and the real estate speculators, who
work hand in glove with the political machine, quite regardless of
whether this machine happens to be Democratic or Republican. There are
innumerable ways in which the public may be plundered, and innumerable
forms of “honest graft,” whereby it may be made worth while to
congressmen and senators to stand in with the plunderers. During the war
the population of Washington jumped from 300,000 to 450,000 in three
months; real estate values leaped to the skies, and rents beyond them,
so there was a harvest for every kind of speculator.

The business gang had run our national capital for so long that they had
forgotten the possibility of anything else. But President Wilson
appointed two or three men of liberal sympathies to the District
Commission, and also to the District Supreme Court; so for the first
time some attention was paid to the public clamor concerning the
run-down state of the schools. Probably seventy-five per cent of the
buildings were old and unsanitary, and the overcrowding was unendurable,
especially in the high schools and the schools for Negroes; many of the
pupils had to do their work by artificial light. The way toward school
progress was blocked by entanglements of “red tape”; there was, and
still is, a triple control of school construction—recommendations for
new building sites are made by the board of education to the District
Commission, and from there go to the Appropriation Committee of the
House of Representatives.

The movement for a new deal in school affairs came to a head in 1916. A
Universalist clergyman, Dr. John Van Schaick, Jr., was appointed to the
school board, and shortly afterwards became its president. He secured an
assistant for his church, paying this assistant out of his church
salary, while Dr. Van Schaick gave most of his time, without salary, to
the service of the Washington schools. He was a man of culture and broad
vision, a liberal of the finest type; and what the gang thought of him
was revealed three years later, when he was nominated for the District
Commission, and a congressional hearing was held. The first witness to
take the stand was a Washington business man, who set forth that Dr. Van
Schaick was neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but “a man who has been
handling a few dollars in a church,” whereas “we want a man who has been
in our city here, who has made a success of life.” Reading this, I could
not help thinking of a story I was told, about a former president of
this board of education who had made such a success. He remarked to a
friend that he had sold for a school site a lot so steep that it had to
be measured perpendicularly!

The war came, and Dr. Van Schaick obtained leave of absence from the
school board and served as Commissioner for Belgium of the American Red
Cross. He has written a book about this, “The Little Corner Never
Conquered.” Returning, he again became president of the school board,
and took up the fight for the public. The district commissioners were
fixing the value of the traction lines, squeezing out a little of the
“water,” and Dr. Van Schaick supported them. He opposed one of the
traction mergers, which would give value to millions of dollars worth of
this “water.” Also, there was a commission to reduce rents, and Dr. Van
Schaick committed the crime of supporting one of its members who was
trying to expose the high rate of interest charged by the banks on
second mortgages. He had tried to get the new tuberculosis hospital
located in a decent site, whereas the real estate interests wanted it in
a swamp. As if that were not enough, this clergyman-educator advocated
prohibition enforcement—and anybody who knows Washington life will
understand how intolerable this would be to senators and congressmen.
Also, he supported the commissioner of police, who was trying to clean
up the “red-light” district; and this also would cause much
inconvenience to our leading statesmen.

There was a superintendent of schools who was incompetent, but who stood
in with the gang. He had made political appointments, he had fought the
unions of the teachers and held down the teachers’ salaries; also, he
was a local favorite, raised in our own schools, and supported by the
Washington “Star.” Now Dr. Van Schaick and his board of education had
the temerity to get rid of this superintendent by a vote of eight to
one. The gang took up the challenge, and “Pat” Harrison of Mississippi
introduced into the Senate a resolution for an investigation of school
affairs. This investigation occupied a period of six weeks, during which
time the work of the schools came pretty much to a stand-still.

Senator Harrison was not the chairman of the committee, but he took upon
himself the rôle of prosecutor, and did ninety-five per cent of the
questioning. He is the fighting type of statesman, who specializes in
not very courteous wit. I don’t suppose that many of my readers will
care to peruse the 1349 closely printed pages of this government
document, but my sense of duty has carried me through it, and I report
briefly thereon. It was a trial of four or five leading citizens for the
crime of being public-spirited. Dr. Van Schaick was on the stand for two
or three days, and showed himself a man of social vision and of the
finest courtesy. The spirit in which he was questioned may be judged
from one sentence of Senator Harrison’s: “And you have a very great
admiration for your ability in answering the questions that have been
propounded to you, have you not?” This caused the other members of the
school board to submit a written request that they might be represented
by counsel at the hearing; but the request was denied.

The next victim was Mrs. Margarita Spalding Gerry, novelist, widow of a
former teacher in the Washington schools. Mrs. Gerry, a self-supporting
woman, had given herself without salary. She was accused of the crime of
owing Dr. Van Schaick a thousand dollar mortgage on her home, which
compelled her to vote as he directed. She was able to prove, first, that
Dr. Van Schaick did not own, and never had owned, any mortgage on her
home; and, second, that her vote had frequently been opposed to his.
There was a school teacher, Miss Alice Wood, who was accused of having
answered some questions of her pupils on the subject of Bolshevism.
Later on we shall hear her story; suffice it for the moment to say that
the school board had punished her, but that Mrs. Gerry, coming to know
her, had realized that injustice had been done. That constituted Mrs.
Gerry a Bolshevik, and made it necessary that both she and Miss Wood be
questioned minutely as to their political views. Dr. Van Schaick, on
returning from Belgium, had persuaded the board to reverse its action in
Miss Wood’s case; and that constituted Dr. Van Schaick a Bolshevik.

Then came the turn of Mrs. Coralie Cook, a colored citizen, representing
the large Negro population of the city on the board of education. In
Mississippi the Negroes do not get much education, and Senator Harrison
felt it his duty to put this wife of a professor at Howard University in
her place. He referred to her niece, a teacher, as “this Clifford
woman,” and to a Negro teacher in the Washington schools as “a fellow by
the name of.” At the same time the Senator was cordially cooperating
with a Negro board member who had turned traitor to the liberal board.

It had chanced that prior to the war the Dutch consul had sent to Dr.
Van Schaick a scientist from his country with a letter of introduction,
and Dr. Van Schaick, as a matter of routine, and in the midst of many
pressing duties, gave this gentleman a letter authorizing him to inspect
the schools. Subsequently this man was accused of being a German spy,
and it was proved that, as an anthropologist, and being interested in
racial types, he had taken nude photographs of women. Whether these
photographs were really obscene, I cannot say; but in any case, Dr. Van
Schaick had known nothing about the matter. But there was that letter of
introduction; and you can imagine what use the kept press made of such a
chance! Professor H. B. Learned of Yale University and Stanford, having
been so unwise as to serve on this school board, had to travel all the
way from California to explain that the Dutch anthropologist had visited
his home one evening and played on the piano and sung!

The city of Washington can claim the prize over all the capitals of the
world for the degradation of its press. The leader of this man-hunt was
Theodore Noyes of the “Star,” who has always run the school board; he is
the brother of Frank Noyes, director of the Associated Press. Also
Edward B. McLean, owner of the Washington “Post,” heir of one vast
fortune and husband of another; Mr. McLean is notorious among Washington
newspaper men for his defiance of the prohibition laws, and it takes
some real defiance to achieve such prominence in Washington.

These two newspapers made the claim that Dr. Van Schaick was not
eligible for the office of district commissioner, because he had not
been a resident of Washington for three years. They published a
photographic facsimile of a ballot alleged to have been cast by Dr. Van
Schaick at his summer home in Cobleskill, New York. It was subsequently
proved that this ballot had been cast by Dr. Van Schaick’s father, at
the time when Dr. Van Schaick was busy with Red Cross work in Belgium.
You will not need to be told that the newspapers did not feature this
correction!

At the close of the investigation Senator Harrison delivered three or
four hours of eloquent denunciation in the Senate. But the school board
persisted in asserting its right to appoint a competent man as
superintendent. Then, having made sure of this appointment, Dr. Van
Schaick resigned, so that the new superintendent might not inherit all
his enemies. Also, Mrs. Gerry resigned—saying to a friend of mine:
“After all, my life is worth something to myself, and apparently it is
worth nothing to the city.” You can understand that the effect of this
uproar has been to make self-respecting citizens very reluctant to
assume the unpaid and thankless task of being responsible for the
Washington schools.




                              CHAPTER XLVI
                       THE CALIBRE OF CONGRESSMEN


Dr. Van Schaick’s successor as president of the board of education was a
Catholic gentleman by the name of Edwards, prominent in the Chamber of
Commerce, and therefore an undoubted “success.” His intellectual
qualifications you may judge when I tell you that he was president of
the Columbia Correspondence School, and when I explain to you this
amusing product of American public life. Great numbers of newly fledged
statesmen come to Washington, where they have to compose political
speeches and felicitous after-dinner addresses, letters to the
newspapers and to their constituents—all kinds of literary efforts for
which they lack the necessary knowledge of grammar. They cannot all have
private secretaries to write their speeches for them, as did the late
President Harding; so comes the Columbia Correspondence School, filling
a long-felt want.

President Edwards would write you an essay or a speech on any subject,
at prices ranging from fifty cents up. If you used it only once, he
would charge you two dollars. It was all strictly confidential—that is,
until President Edwards was put upon the witness-stand at a
congressional hearing. Then he was asked: Did they sell essays to school
children? He answered, Yes, they would sell essays to people in any part
of the country, asking no questions. He was asked: “What would you do if
a teacher reprimanded a pupil for passing in one of your essays as his
own?” He answered that he was not sure what he would do, but he could
see nothing wrong with that. This disclosure raised such a row that the
new president of the school board was forced to resign; no one could
ever find out which one of the judges of the District Supreme Court had
recommended him, but they all united in getting rid of him!

Under this autocracy of politicians the fate of the Washington school
teachers has been the same as we have seen in other cities. Their wages
in 1917 were on a starvation basis; the minimum was five hundred dollars
for assistant kindergartners, and the next was six hundred. Both the
high school teachers and the grade teachers formed unions, and the
politicians did not dare to stop them. The unions carried the agitation
to Congress, and got an increase of salary during the war. The gang
tried to corral them into the National Education Association. They have
a local “institute” and of course the teachers have little to do with
selecting the speakers.

I have referred to the experience of Miss Alice Wood, and promised to
tell her story, which shows clearly what happens to teachers under an
autocracy of politicians. Miss Wood was a teacher of English at the
Western High School, and in the course of study furnished to her by her
superiors appeared such items as “Current Events,” “War News,” “Study of
Democracy Today,” and “Spontaneous Discussions and Criticisms.” In the
year 1919 it was naturally impossible for a teacher to conduct a class
along the above lines without being asked something about “Bolshevism.”
Miss Wood was asked, and she stated in reply that she had attended a
meeting at Poli’s Theater, where several travelers from Russia had
spoken, and their accounts of conditions were different from the
published stories in the daily press. (Never forget, this was the year
of the nationalization of women!) In answer to a direct question, Miss
Wood stated that she considered the Soviet government “an improvement
over the former government of Russia and a good government for Russia.”
She explained the word “Bolshevik” as meaning majority; and finally, she
advised pupils who wanted to know more about the subject to read
articles from the “Dial,” the “New Republic” and “Current Opinion.”

A few days later Miss Wood received a letter from her principal,
questioning her about these matters. She answered, stating the facts as
above; furthermore explaining that she was extremely patriotic, that her
forefathers had served in the American Revolution, and that she regarded
Woodrow Wilson “as the greatest statesman of all times.” The reactionary
superintendent of schools then took up the matter with the board of
education. Under the law, Miss Wood had the right to a public trial, and
to be represented by counsel; the board set this rule quietly to one
side, and invited Miss Wood to appear informally before a committee,
which questioned her, but without giving her any idea that she was on
trial. She stated that she had received no instructions as to what kind
of answers she was to return on the subject of Bolshevism, and that she
was perfectly willing to follow the directions of her principal, of the
superintendent, or of the board, on this and on all other matters.
Whereupon the board suspended her, without pay, for a period of one
week!

This of course was small punishment in itself—we have seen what is the
pay of a Washington teacher for one week. But what the board really
sentenced her to was disgrace and outrageous publicity in the
carrion-eating press. Therefore the teachers’ union took up the matter,
and engaged an attorney, and a long correspondence with the school
authorities followed, leading to no result. The matter was carried to
the District Supreme Court, and it is pleasant to be able to state that
this body reversed the action of the board, and Miss Wood got her week’s
salary. But in the meantime the Black Hand of our national capital had
accomplished its principal purpose—all the other teachers of the city
learned their lesson, and the pupils in the schools continued to believe
that all women in Russia were “nationalized”!

Also they continued to believe that Washington is governed by great and
patriotic statesmen. Some time previously, a teacher had stated to her
pupils that “the calibre of congressmen of the present day is not as
good it was in the time of Clay and Webster”; and this teacher was made
the object of furious attack upon the floor of Congress! The
congressional committee took it up, and summoned the principal of the
school before them, and read the riot act to him; and so all the
teachers of Washington learned that they are not citizens of a
democracy, but serfs of a plutocratic empire.

I am told now by a group of teachers that the new superintendent is
doing well, and that there is hope for a better deal in the schools; new
buildings are going up, and everyone wants to forget the old unhappy
past. The teachers ask me to plead for the cause which lies nearest to
their hearts, that of teacher participation in school control; and I
answer that this is the thing for which my book is written—to urge that
those who do the work of teaching, and really know about teaching, shall
take the place of traction magnates and real estate speculators in
charge of our children. It is not only in Washington that this is
needed, but everywhere, as you have already had opportunity to see.




                             CHAPTER XLVII
                           THE LOCAL MACHINES


We have now examined school conditions in nineteen of the largest
American cities; the total population of these cities amounts to
eighteen million, which means four million children subject to the
education here portrayed. You have noticed how much alike these school
machines are; it has no doubt occurred to you that such resemblance
cannot be a matter of accident, there must be some centralized control,
some bureau of standardization in charge of school systems in the United
States. And this is true; the local school machines, in cities, towns
and villages, are part of county machines, and these county machines are
part of state machines, and these state machines are united and
co-ordinated and standardized by the National Education Association,
with the help of the United States Bureau of Education, and the
Rockefeller General Education Board, and the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching.

Let us begin with the counties. Under the American system a county
superintendent of schools invariably has to be a school politician, and
almost invariably has to be a political politician as well. His school
gang is made up of his assistants and clerks and principals and other
numerous appointees, all of whom depend upon his favor and are looking
for promotion; also those teachers who serve him as bell-wethers,
leading the flocks of teacher sheep. In order to preserve the
self-respect of teachers, and make them think they have something to do
with education, they are organized into associations or clubs, all of
which are affiliated with the National Education Association, and
practically all of which are run by the local school machine. These
teachers’ associations thus occupy in the school world the same position
as the company or “yellow” unions, in the labor world. In the great
percentage of cases the officers in these teachers’ associations are the
superintendents and principals and other members of the supervising
force; in the remaining cases they are teachers who take their orders
from this force. In the few cases where the teachers have dared to rebel
and control their own organizations, their leaders have been browbeaten
and persecuted, slandered and denied promotion.

The county superintendent works hand in glove with the local politicians
and their local financial masters. Whether he is appointed, or whether
he is elected, makes little difference, because the election must be
preceded by a nomination, which depends upon the local political
machine. Back of this nomination and the ensuing election are all the
sinister forces of graft which expect to profit from the schools. There
are the land speculators, who either have land to sell, or want to buy
school lands upon which wealth of some sort has been discovered. There
are contractors who want to put up school buildings for profit; there
are school book agents, who are bosom friends of all superintendents,
and put up money to elect them, and get it back ten-fold. I shall show
you in due course how these book agents serve also as teachers’ agents,
controlling the appointment of teachers and handing out favors and
promotions to those who support their “line.”

And of course there are the bankers, who want the handling of school
funds, and also of the teachers’ funds; you shall see how the teachers
put up money for their own pensions, and the gang takes charge of it,
and turns it over to the bankers, either for cash or for political
support, which comes to the same thing. Also there are business
interests which want child labor, and want the compulsory school
attendance laws repealed or ignored. There are the various organizations
of Big Business propaganda—the National Association of Manufacturers,
which wants the children trained for servitude in mills and stores; the
American Legion and the militarists, who want them taught war and the
patriotism of greed; the newspapers, which support all forms of
reaction, and hold over the head of every official the imminent threat
of ruin as the penalty for insubordination. Such is the position of
county superintendents of schools, and of county boards of education
everywhere throughout the United States—except in those few counties
where the people, through the Farmer-Labor movement or something of the
sort, have been able to take over control of their own affairs.

Next, the state superintendents and the state boards, which are the same
thing upon a bigger scale. The state machine has more money, the state
superintendent gets a higher salary, and so he is a politician of more
skill and subtlety. He stands in with the state gang, and his office is
a “hang-out” for idle functionaries smoking numerous big cigars. He
works with the land grafters and the book companies, the bankers and
merchants and manufacturers; he is their man, and gives the people their
kind of education. As a rule, the people are satisfied with that—there
being no other kind of education in sight, and no other kind
conceivable. The devout peasants of America have been taught to sing a
hymn about “the old-time religion,” which was good for their fathers and
is good enough for them; in exactly the same way their children get the
old-time education from the old-time gang. The average American has been
taught to believe in the public schools as next to the church in
sacredness, and he takes it for granted that public educators must be
noble-minded and disinterested men.

There are frequently disputes between the educational politicians and
the political politicians; but if you examine these, you will generally
find that they are disputes over the division of the public funds. The
educational politicians are naturally fighting for the educational
machine; they want it to grow big, they want to be able to promote their
subordinates, and to carry on their propaganda, and to build up their
prestige. Here in my state of California, as I write, the state
superintendent is in the midst of a dispute with the newly elected
governor of the Black Hand. The governor cut down appropriations for the
state school machine to almost nothing—it was part of his program of
“economy,” and the state simply must have a new penitentiary if the
“criminal syndicalism” law is to be saved. The state superintendent of
schools carried the issue to the legislature, and the legislature voted
him the money, and the governor vetoed the bill.

So now in the Los Angeles “Times” you learn that the state
superintendent is guilty of “political activities”; he is using the
power of his office to appeal to the people against the governor. In
such a dispute the sympathies of the local educational machines
throughout the state will be with the superintendent; they too want
funds, and they have to fight the forces which cut off their funds. But
they will all be careful not to overstep a certain limit in their
activities; the ultimate arbiter is Big Business, and both parties
appeal thereto.

I have emphasized the uniformity of school systems and of their
political control. This uniformity is attained by constant communication
among the superintendents and the supervising force. In California they
make the state pay the expenses of this inter-communication; twice every
year there are conventions attended by all county and city
superintendents; once a year there is a convention for all principals of
high schools; and the traveling expenses of these functionaries are paid
out of the school funds. We shall find when we come to study the
national body that it has a “Department of Superintendence,” and holds a
convention in the course of each winter, at which all the
superintendents gather, expenses paid. Here is the great clearing-house,
where the bosses exchange experiences and perfect the technique of
holding down the salaries of the teachers, breaking up their
organizations, eliminating the rebels from the system, and making fast
the hold of the gang.

We are going to attend several of these conventions of the National
Education Association, and meet some thirty thousand educators,
assembled from every corner of the country. But first it is desirable
that we should know more about the county and state organizations, all
of which send delegates to the national conventions. Let us take up the
state machines—bearing in mind that they are all alike, and that when
you know one you know forty-eight.




                             CHAPTER XLVIII
                            THE STEAM ROLLER


I again select California, because it is the nearest, and the easiest
for me to study. We can best know the California machine by following
the adventures of a rebel teacher; so permit me to introduce Mr. Ray E.
Chase, until recently head of a department at the Manual Arts High
School of Los Angeles. Mr. Chase was a man of brains, who refused to
take the orders of the gang; and we shall see what the gang did to him.

In the year 1917 Mr. Chase was chosen by the Los Angeles High School
Teachers’ Association as their legislative representative, to proceed to
the state capital and watch out for the interests of teachers. He
applied to the school board of Los Angeles for leave of absence without
pay, whereupon the board members called him before them, and required
him to submit a complete list of the measures proposed or endorsed by
the Teachers’ Association. Said Mrs. Waters, widow of a bank president
and member of the board: “How could we know but that you meant to
advocate something of which the board would not approve?” But having
heard an outline of the projects, she declared: “I think those are all
harmless.” So they “allowed” Mr. Chase to go—and incidentally invited
him to work for some measures of theirs!

Turn back to our Los Angeles story, and refresh your mind concerning
“Bill 1013” whereby the Better America Federation and its political
crooks tried to cripple the schools of the state. When this bill came up
before the legislature, the teachers’ agents were assured that it would
not affect the schools, so they let it go by; afterwards, the teachers
had to initiate and put through a referendum to repeal this bill, so as
to keep the schools functioning. Mr. Chase was a leader in this
procedure, and earned thereby the deadly enmity of the Black Hand. They
did all they could to drive him out of the school; his principal was
offered promotion by Judge Bordwell, president of the school board, on
condition that he would get rid of Chase and two other “radicals.” It
was during this intrigue that Bordwell asked the question: “Can’t you
get something on their morals?”

Mr. Chase came back to Los Angeles and set to work on a plan to enable
the teachers of the city to exercise control of their Association. At
risk of repetition, let me make it clear that these teachers’
associations are purely voluntary affairs—the teachers’ clubs, or
professional societies, which they try to run in their own interest and
according to their own ideas. Not merely does the gang take this control
away from them; the gang has made it a matter of professional life and
death for a teacher to stand out for the independence of the federation.
When elections are held, principals and superintendents are nominated,
and teachers who oppose their superior’s ambitions are denied promotion,
and sometimes dismissed. Let me remind you of the teacher in Oakland who
refused to vote for Superintendent Hunter’s candidate, and was hounded,
not merely in the schools, but in the business world outside.

It is no easy matter for a common teacher to travel to a convention;
only the high-salaried ones can afford such a luxury. The rules of the
teachers’ associations permit members of one group to send members of
another group as delegates; so when the teachers cannot go, it is
tactfully suggested that a superintendent or a principal would like to
go; and how should a teacher be rude enough to deny credentials to such
a personage? So these personages go; they go fully versed in the
technique of controlling conventions, and the first thing they do is to
enter a caucus, and come out of it with a program of proceedings and a
“slate,” all ready to be “jammed through.”

For three years the independent teachers of Los Angeles worked over a
plan to reorganize the Southern section of the association, taking it
out of the hands of the superintendents and putting it under the control
of the class-room teachers. The project came up in December, 1920, at a
convention whose chairman was Dr. E. C. Moore, director of the Southern
branch of the University of California. We met this gentleman as
superintendent of schools in Los Angeles seventeen years ago, getting
himself into trouble by cutting out General Otis’s “open shop”
propaganda from the program of the National Education Association. Since
then Dr. Moore has learned discretion, and become a thoroughly tame
servant of the Black Hand. At this convention he ruled out the report of
the reorganization committee, on the technical ground that he had not
had thirty days’ notice of the matter. Mind you, this committee was
reporting according to orders given at the last year’s convention, where
it had made a tentative report; Dr. Moore had known all about it at that
time, but he now shut the committee off, and appointed a new committee
to “work over” the constitution. This took another year, and resulted in
a document under which the association is a closed corporation, entirely
controlled by the supervising element in the schools.

Simultaneously with all this, and practically duplicating it, was Mr.
Chase’s experience with the State Council of Education, the executive
body of all these California teachers’ associations. At its meeting in
Oakland, April, 1918, Mr. Chase brought up a project to bring these
associations under control of the classroom teachers. He had a detailed
and carefully worked out program to reorganize the associations, and
provide for their democratic control from the floor of the conventions.
Mr. Chase swept the assemblage with this project, and was made chairman
of a committee to perfect it. His ill health prevented his activity for
two years; but finally the project was got into shape, and was brought
before local bodies, and approved by every one that voted on it. In
December, 1920, Mr. Chase took it to the state council; but the gang
leaders, knowing what was coming, deliberately kept the convention busy
all day, and called for “new business” late at night, when everybody had
gone home except the administrative crowd. Out of thirty present, there
was only one class-room teacher! They meant of course, to vote down the
project, and then have the kept press flash the news over the state. So
Mr. Chase forbore to introduce it; he never will introduce it now,
because his story came to a sudden end. The Black Hand in Los Angeles
succeeded in “getting” him, according to the formula suggested by Judge
Bordwell some years earlier. The story is a complicated and rather
ghastly one; suffice it to say that they put him in a position where he
could not defend himself without dragging in some other people. As he
was unwilling to do that, he is out of the schools, and the gang leaders
are secure in their grip upon the teachers’ associations of Southern
California.

But California is our most reactionary state, you will say. Very well:
then let us skip to Wisconsin, which is our most progressive state. Let
us see what has happened to the Wisconsin Teachers’ Association.

There is one significant detail for you to get clear at the outset: In
state after state we find the people taking over their political
government, but they cannot get hold of their schools. The school
machine is intrenched behind entanglements of “red tape”; the
supervising force has “pull,” sometimes it is protected by civil
service—anyhow, the machine is tough, and hangs on until the
reactionaries come back. We shall see that happening in North Dakota, in
Minnesota, in Wisconsin. Senator LaFollette carried his state last time
by the biggest plurality ever known in America; but Mrs. LaFollette was
barred from speaking in country school-houses! The state educational
machine, the county machines, and most of the city machines in Wisconsin
are still in the hands of the gang.

The situation in Milwaukee is especially interesting. Before the war
Milwaukee was under the eye of Victor Berger, while the schools were
under the eye of Victor Berger’s wife; so there was one American city
with no graft in its school affairs. But during the war the gang came
back, and they still have the schools—Mrs. Berger was for years the lone
Socialist member, and the board is run by the so-called “Voters’
League,” which consists of exactly seven men, the chiefs of the Black
Hand of Wisconsin. These seven picked the candidates for the school
board at every election, and the newspapers printed the list
conspicuously, and told the people to “cut this out and take it to the
polls”; and, like good, patriotic Americans, they did so.

In the effort to bludgeon the Teachers’ Federation, this Voters’ League
proposed a bill making it unlawful for public employes to organize. But
this bill failed, and the teachers of Milwaukee have stayed organized,
and what is more, they have kept the control of their own organization.
They went over the heads of their reactionary school board, and appealed
to a progressive state legislature, and got the school taxes in
Milwaukee conditioned upon the payment of a minimum salary of $1,500 to
grade teachers, running up to $2,400. Imagine a school board unable to
terrify its teachers by threats of salary reduction, and you will
understand the fury with which the educational gang regards the
Milwaukee Teachers’ Federation!

Not content with getting their own salaries increased, these Milwaukee
teachers contributed $2,400 to the publicity campaign of the state
association, to get salary increases for the other teachers. They
lobbied through the state legislature the best kindergarten law in the
United States. They proposed legislation for tenure, and drafted the
best law on this subject. In short, the Milwaukee Local of the Wisconsin
Teachers’ Association is Bolshevism, raw, red and bloody, trampling the
holy ground of American education.[J]

-----

Footnote J:

  From the “Clarion,” Milwaukee, November 18, 1922:

                      “EDUCATIONAL BOLSHIVISM (sic)

  “Milwaukee last week entertained the literati of Wisconsin’s leading
  educationalists. The convention, designed to be creative in works of
  harmony, good will and a spirit of constructive development, resulted
  in a wild and riotous effort to determine the status of the caste
  system with regard to our state educators. Topping it all, the head of
  the Milwaukee’s Teachers Association emits a theory so rank in its
  bolshevistic nature as to rock the very foundation of learning and to
  place in extreme jeopardy the principles and ideals of our system of
  state education.” (Note: This “theory” was that teachers are the
  equals of superintendents.)

-----

In order to get clear what follows, you must understand that outside
Milwaukee, the gang still controls the teachers’ organizations, as it
does in California and all the other states. We are now going to watch
the gang leaders of Wisconsin at their job of holding down the Milwaukee
local.

The constitution of the Wisconsin Teachers’ Association provided that
representation at conventions should be on the basis of one delegate for
every fifty members or major fraction of fifty. This provision was as
explicit as the English language could make it, and it had been
thoroughly threshed out, and understood by everyone. The Milwaukee local
had 1,347 paid members, and on that basis their representation had been
fixed at twenty-seven. But now the gang set up the claim that small
communities should have a chance to send representatives to the
convention; let it be provided that communities having less than fifty
teachers might have one delegate for every twenty-six members. To this
the Milwaukee teachers answered: Very well: but if the basis of
representation is to be one delegate for every twenty-six members, then
let the large cities also have one representative for every twenty-six
members, instead of one for every fifty. But you see, that did not fit
the purpose of the gang, which wanted to hold the Milwaukee teachers
down to one in fifty, while giving double representation to the country
districts, which the gang had under its thumb.

In February of 1922 a meeting of the executive committee of the state
association was held, and it was resolved to permit the forming of
locals of the association in small communities, these locals to consist
of twenty-six members or more, the understanding being that the
convention, to be held in November, would determine whether or not it
approved this procedure. All over the state delegates were chosen under
this arrangement, and forty-six of them came to the convention. The
scheme of the gang was to get these country delegates seated, overwhelm
the twenty-seven delegates from Milwaukee, and put through an
arrangement to perpetuate that semi-disfranchisement of the
“Bolsheviks.”

The “floor leader” who put through the job for the gang was Mr. Carroll
G. Pearse, then president of the Milwaukee State Normal School, and now
a book agent. I point out to you in passing that he is one of the big
chiefs of the national school machine. You remember, I have referred to
this as our educational Tammany Hall; and if you thought I was just
calling bad names, read this account of the “steam-roller” at the 1922
convention of the Wisconsin Teachers’ Association, and see if Tammany
could teach anything to the school-masters!

On the evening before the convention there was a meeting of the
credentials committee, which voted that the forty-six delegates,
representing locals having less than fifty members, were to be admitted
in violation of the constitution. And next day the president of the
convention placed his chair in such a way that he could not see the
Milwaukee representatives when they rose to demand recognition; he
called for a viva voce vote on the report of the credentials committee,
and declared that this report had carried. The Milwaukee teachers, of
course, demanded a roll-call; but the president refused to order it. One
after another he recognized the representatives of the supervising
force, who orated to the convention amid storms of protest.

Here was a large gathering of people, and no one had any means of
knowing which were delegates and which were not; yet the president
refused to determine who was voting on this motion or on that. He
refused even to rule on the point of order, that he should determine who
had votes! He drove his “steam-roller” ahead, rushing through one motion
after another. The assembly adopted an amendment to the constitution,
admitting delegates from locals with twenty-six members or more. The
assembly elected a normal school president as president of the state
association for the next year. The assembly passed a resolution, offered
by Mr. Pearse, validating and legalizing all proceedings up to that
time—and all this without a single roll-call, without any record
whatsoever as to what persons had voted for these various resolutions,
what mob had altered the state constitution and disfranchised the
Milwaukee teachers!

Having a night to think it over, the gang must have realized that this
story would look just a little “raw” when told in “The Goslings.” So
Floor-leader Pearse appeared next morning with a resolution excluding
those representatives whose rights to seats had been questioned on the
day before. But all the motions which had been passed by the shouts of
these representatives were permitted to stand! The disfranchised
delegates were directed to leave the hall; then they were reseated—the
whole transaction occupying five minutes! Finally a superintendent of
schools was elected secretary of the association, at a salary of
fifty-five hundred dollars, and the public school system of the state of
Wisconsin was safe for another year! Take this to any ward-healer or
henchman of your local political machine, and see if he can “beat it!”




                              CHAPTER XLIX
                      THE DISPENSERS OF PROMINENCE


We now ascend to the top of our great school pyramid, the National
Education Association. This is the professional organization of the
educators of the United States, and as such it possesses tremendous
prestige and power in the educational world. You probably know very
little about it, and may think that it has nothing to do with your local
schools; but in this you will be deceiving yourself, for its influence
is none the less strong because indirect. What the N. E. A. does is to
set the standards of the school world; in its councils, open or secret,
the thing called educational greatness is determined.

Who are the “great” educators of America? Who are the ones that really
know how children should be taught, and what they should be taught? Do
you know who they are? Manifestly you do not; you have to be told who
they are, and the function of the N. E. A. is to tell you. It is the
dispenser of educational prominence and applause. The final test of
greatness in the school world is to be invited to deliver one of the
addresses before its annual convention; while to have your name added to
the list of presidents of the organization is in the school world the
same thing as it is in public life to have your name added to the list
of presidents of the United States, which every school child has to
learn by heart. You step out before this vast assemblage, amid a flutter
of applause, and tens of thousands of teachers and sympathizers absorb
your utterances, and carry them away to the farthest hamlets—this is
what is known in America as “inspiration.” The local newspapers print
your address in full, and the Associated Press sends a summary of it to
its thirteen hundred leading newspapers. Thus, if you are a reactionary,
you help to set backward the clock of American history, and to render
the position of your capitalist employers secure. If you are not a
reactionary, then you do not get within many feet of the platform at the
N. E. A. convention.

There are at the present time a hundred and twenty-five thousand members
of the N. E. A., and they pay dues at the rate of two dollars per
member. More than eighty per cent of them are the plain, ordinary,
humble, rank and file classroom teachers, whose function is that of the
day laborer in the great corporation—to produce the wealth, while their
superiors spend it. You will be told that the N. E. A. is a “democratic”
organization, and you will understand what this means when I tell you
that Tammany Hall also is a “democratic” organization. New members are
welcome, in fact, they are eagerly sought-“drives” are carried on, and
the prestige of schools is established by the fact that they have one
hundred per cent membership in the N. E. A. Some school systems are even
going so far as to make membership in the N. E. A. compulsory to all
applicants for teachers’ positions. The Journal of the National
Education Association for September, 1922, triumphantly quotes the
superintendent of schools at Onaway, Michigan, as stating that
“teachers’ contracts in Onaway, Michigan, will in future require
teachers to become members of state and national educational
associations.” And in the case of St. Joseph, Missouri, the blanks to be
filled out by applicants for teaching positions contain the following
two questions: “Are you a member of the N. E. A.? If not, will you be a
member this year?”

Now the classroom teachers are the real educators in America. They do
the actual work of teaching your children; they are the ones who know
your children, they spend some twenty-five hours with them every week,
and they are not seduced from the job of understanding children by
prominence and applause, nor by high salaries, nor by any other lure.
The classroom teachers are the ones we must depend upon if education is
to be improved. The classroom teachers represent democracy in the school
world, and the test of democracy in the N. E. A. is what happens to this
rank and file. So I begin my study of this great organization with its
Department of Classroom Teachers.

Until a year or two ago the Department of Classroom Teachers of the N.
E. A. was nothing but a name. The way it leaped into sudden life is an
amusing story. The school superintendents of the N. E. A. decided that
they would have an exclusive organization, and hold meetings
uncontaminated by the presence of the school proletariat. At their
mid-winter convention of 1920 they reorganized themselves into an
autonomous body, called the Department of Superintendence. After they
had done this, the embarrassing discovery was made that they had
violated the by-laws of the N. E. A.; but, of course, at the next
convention of the N. E. A. special amendments were passed, so as to
legalize what the superintendents had done. Being a superintendent in
the N. E. A. is like being a millionaire in a police-court.

Now to each of the N. E. A. conventions come the “Bolsheviks” of the
Milwaukee Teachers’ Association, headed by their president, Ethel
Gardner; also the “Bolsheviks” of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation,
headed by Margaret Haley. These groups are fighting for the school
proletariat, and they watch with practiced eyes the tricks and
contrivances of their superiors. They pounced upon this brilliant scheme
of the Department of Superintendence; why not reorganize the Classroom
Teachers’ Department of the N. E. A., and have it autonomous, like the
Department of Superintendence? A beautiful scheme, you see! The
Department of Superintendence had excluded from its membership everyone
who was not a superintendent; now let the Department of Classroom
Teachers exclude everyone who was not a classroom teacher!

Here was treason and rank rebellion; and actually, these teachers had
the insolence to call a convention in Chicago, in February, 1922, at the
same time as the midwinter meeting of the Department of Superintendence.
The gang was so indignant that in Milwaukee the board of education
refused leave of absence to Miss Ethel Gardner, who was president of the
Department of Classroom Teachers, so that she might attend the
convention she had called. The gang moved heaven and earth to oust her
from her job as a teacher; but it so happened that she had an honest
principal, and when they asked him to report her as incompetent he
replied: “I will not tell a damned lie.”

The convention was held without Miss Gardner, and the teachers appointed
a committee of Milwaukee and Chicago “Bolsheviks,” which spent all the
spring drawing up a constitution and having it made air-tight by a
competent attorney. At the 1922 convention of the N. E. A., held in
Boston, they appeared with a printed draft of their scheme. They were
going to re-elect Miss Ethel Gardner, the Milwaukee “Bolshevik,” as
their president; and it goes without saying that the gang did not intend
to let that happen. The gang picked out a “tame” teacher, Miss Effie
MacGregor of Minneapolis, and decreed that she was to become president
of the Department of Classroom Teachers—in spite of the classroom
teachers!

This chapter is called “Dispensers of Prominence,” and here you see what
I mean. The classroom teachers had never heard of Miss Effie MacGregor;
she had never attended a meeting of the Department of Classroom
Teachers, nor was she a member of a classroom teachers’ association. She
had fought hard against the increase of their salaries; but now she was
to be their president, and have the spending of their ten thousand
dollars for a year! President Charl O. Williams of the N. E. A.
proceeded to place the lady on the main program of the N. E. A.,
introducing her as “the foremost classroom teacher in the United
States.” President Williams went on to explain the lady’s credentials to
that title—she had arranged a movie benefit at a theatre, and raised
funds to send eight delegates to the convention! Please understand, that
is not a joke; that is the N. E. A. idea of “greatness.”

Come back with me to Oakland, California, and recall the picture of Fred
M. Hunter, superintendent and educational ward leader, with his school
henchmen and his grafting contractors. Recall Miss Elizabeth Arlett,
“who, while supposed to be teaching the school children of Oakland, was
touring the United States, shortly before the 1920 convention, in the
interest of Mr. Hunter’s candidacy for president of the N. E. A. For
that service and her subsequent activities, Miss Arlett was promoted to
be principal of a high school in Oakland,” etc. You will expect to find
Miss Arlett at this 1922 convention, ready to carry out Mr. Hunter’s
orders for the smashing of the classroom teachers. You will be prepared
to hear that the gang went into caucus in Miss Effie MacGregor’s room,
and that Miss Arlett took the initiative and made the principal speech,
endorsing her and outlining the program.

The gang had engaged Symphony Hall for the business meeting of the
Department of Classroom Teachers—an afternoon meeting, and there was to
be a concert in the hall in the evening. The promise had been made that
the hall would be vacated at five o’clock; but not a word was said to
the teachers about this, and the gang proceeded to drag the meeting out
with technical discussions over the details of the constitution. At six
o’clock a slip of paper was sent up to the presiding officer, stating
that the meeting had already kept the hall for an hour beyond the time
agreed upon, and must vacate immediately!

The teachers had just got down to the work of electing officers; they
wanted to finish this work in a hurry, for they knew exactly whom they
wanted, and it wouldn’t have taken five minutes. But the gang would not
let that happen; a member of the board of trustees of the N. E. A. began
a violent and noisy filibuster, and so prevented the election. The
assembly twice rejected a motion to hold an adjourned meeting; they
wanted to do their electing right there, but the gang held on and
delayed matters, until finally the janitor threatened to turn out the
lights, and thus forced the teachers from the hall.

So here was the Department of Classroom Teachers left without officers
for a year! They did not know what to do; but the gang knew, you may be
sure. They sprung the proposition at an assembly of the N. E. A.
convention, at which very few of the classroom teachers were present,
but at which four out of five of those present were superintendents or
members of the supervising force. To this gathering the president of the
N. E. A. announced that she “ordered” a meeting of the Classroom
Teachers’ Department, to be held as soon as this N. E. A. assembly had
adjourned. Under the by-laws, the president of the N. E. A. was
absolutely without authority to order any such meeting; but she ordered
it, and the incoming president of the N. E. A. took charge—Mr. William
B. Owen, president of the Chicago Normal School, “ward leader” of the
gang in that city.

The meeting was held; that is to say, a number of spectators stayed
over, and Mr. Owen called them to order as classroom teachers, but
without making any effort to find out whether they really were classroom
teachers or not. The climax of absurdity was reached when this
meeting—it was held in a theatre—was forced to vacate, and adjourned to
the Boys’ Trade School. Fewer than two hundred people came to this
place, and no effort was made to ascertain who they were, or what right
they had to vote in the affairs of the classroom teachers. By means of
this assemblage, the gang proceeded to elect Miss Effie MacGregor to run
the Department of Classroom Teachers for a year! And you may be sure
that in the course of that year the gang got busy, and pulled its wires,
and saw to it that at the next convention there was a good majority
against Miss Ethel Gardner, the Milwaukee “Bolshevik!” The job was an
easy one, because the convention was in Oakland, and we have been there
and seen how Superintendent Hunter keeps his teachers under his thumb.

I think that to make the above story complete and perfect you will need
to know something about the lady-president of the N. E. A. who put this
job through for the gang. You already have her name—Charl O. Williams;
she was school superintendent of Shelby County, Tennessee, and
immediately after this convention she got her reward—a permanent N. E.
A. job, carrying not merely a salary of $7,500 a year, but the privilege
of uplifting the teachers with Southern eloquence at one hundred dollars
per lift. This lady ex-superintendent ex-president field secretary also
represents her State of Tennessee on the national committee of the
Democratic party, where she sits in conference with the chiefs of
Tammany Hall; so you see exactly where this rascality comes from. Keep
the lady in mind, because a year later we shall find her selected by the
N. E. A. to uplift the world conference of educators—and to soothe their
cravings for peace with weazel words of war.




                               CHAPTER L
                        A PLOT AGAINST DEMOCRACY


The National Education Association is a very old institution, predating
the Civil War. It has always been controlled entirely by the supervising
force; in other words, it has been an employers’ organization. During
several decades of its history no classroom teacher was ever elected to
any office. At the present time some well trained teacher is
occasionally admitted to office for the sake of appearances. It required
many years of struggle to get the National Education Association to give
any consideration whatever to the living and working conditions of the
classroom teacher, or to recognize salaries, pensions and tenure as
legitimate subjects for discussion. It required a revolution in the
organization to secure in the year 1903 the appointment of a committee
on salaries, tenure and pensions; and this committee made a report which
was full of misrepresentations. Not until 1911 was action taken even to
gather the real figures on these questions.

I will give you a glimpse of the organization in those early days, just
to let you see how these things remain the same. At the 1901 convention
in Detroit, the United States Commissioner of Education gave a paper
outlining the progress of the schools. He was an aged dotard; as an
eye-witness said to me, “In the educational system we don’t bury the
dead. We let them walk around to save funeral expenses.” This speaker
congratulated the country upon the growing number of school pupils, but
said not a word about the need of more school money. An orator who rose
to applaud him declared that the educational sky was without a cloud,
and his only regret was that the American public schools had not been
able to get a donation from Rockefeller.

But suddenly a cloud rose upon the educational sky. A thing happened
which had never before happened in the history of the N. E. A.—a
classroom teacher rose up from the floor of the convention and asked to
speak! To make matters worse, it was a woman teacher. This female rebel
declared that she for one was glad that the American public schools had
not got any money from Rockefeller, and she hoped they would keep clear
of all corporation influence. If the rich wanted to help the schools,
let them pay their taxes; let the railroads, for example, pay taxes on
their franchise valuations, which they were everywhere evading.

You may not need to be told that this was Margaret Haley, making her
debut to the N. E. A. twenty-three years ago. The great assemblage was
stunned; to attack the railroads, the N. E. A.’s main source of revenue!
At that time, you see, when you bought your ticket to the convention,
the ticket included your dues, and the N. E. A. got the rake-off!

The aged commissioner felt called upon to put down this insurrection. He
got up again and stated that all the wealth of the railroads had come
from economy in administration—he knew, because he was a personal friend
of Commodore Vanderbilt. As for the attitude of the lady teacher, these
meetings were held at the end of the school year, when all the teachers
were tired; if there were any more such hysterical outbursts, he would
insist upon having the time of the convention changed. He urged the
delegates to pay no attention to this; the teachers were worn out from
the school routine, and were not in condition to think soberly.
Moreover, the delegates must bear in mind that Chicago was no criterion
of the rest of the country; Chicago was “morbid and cyclonic.” You can
imagine how the Chicago newspapers appreciated this compliment from
Detroit!

Sixteen years passed, and revolution came in Russia, and our school
superintendents realized the danger of permitting the lower classes to
get out of hand. They resolved to put down the classroom teachers in the
N. E. A., and to keep them down. The procedure by which they did it
constitutes one of the most amazing public crimes in the history of the
United States. Bear in mind: this National Education Association was a
public institution, with a charter from Congress, according to which it
was controlled by its members. Any educator—including teachers—might pay
four dollars and become an active member, and these active members met
in convention once a year, and there voted and elected officers. This
was democracy, as our ancestors understood it; and this was the thing
which was suddenly discovered by school superintendents and their
capitalist masters to be a menace to the American schools.

At N. E. A. conventions there would appear two kinds of active members.
There would be those who had come from all parts of the country, and
ninety per cent of these were from the employing class of the schools.
These had the money to come, and made it their business to come; most of
them had their expenses paid, either by the public, or by the
organization to which they belonged. The other group was made up of
members who lived in or near the city where the convention was held, and
these would be ninety per cent classroom teachers. They were the only
classroom teachers who could attend the convention without great
expense, and they represented, and properly felt that they represented,
the great mass of the teachers who could not attend, but who had a vital
stake in education, and had needs to be voiced.

So at N. E. A. conventions there was beginning to be noticed that major
phenomenon of our time—the class struggle. Here were the high-up and
prosperous and powerful superintendents and “great educators”; and here
were the common riff-raff of the school proletariat. In any big city it
would happen, inevitably, that the proletariat would be in the majority.
They would have little idea what was going on, or how they should vote;
but here would come a dozen or two of the New York and Chicago and
Milwaukee “Bolsheviks,” who would get up in meeting and ask questions
and explain matters to the classroom teachers, and induce them to vote
for their own class—or shall we say for their own classes?

This was the thing which the educational employers decided to change.
They worked out the scheme at their midwinter convention of 1918—the
Atlantic City meeting of the Department of Superintendence. Instead of
the N. E. A. being governed by the democratic vote of its active members
at the annual convention, the N. E. A. was to become a representative
body, like the United States of America; the members in the various
cities and towns and counties would elect delegates to the state bodies,
and both local and the state bodies would elect delegates to the
national convention. The gang, of course, would be on hand at every
stage of these elections to pull wires and get its own politicians
chosen. So, when the convention assembled in some big city, the
classroom teachers of that city would no longer have votes as active
members of the N. E. A.; instead of that, they would be represented by
delegates on the floor, one delegate for every hundred teachers, and, in
case they had more than five hundred members, one delegate for each five
hundred members thereafter. So the classroom teachers of the convention,
instead of having one vote per teacher, would have one-hundredth of one
vote per teacher, or maybe one five-hundredths of one vote per teacher!
And so the N. E. A. would be made safe for the superintendents!

There was only one difficulty with that scheme, and that was explained
to you when you were a child and read Aesop’s “Fables.” The mice wanted
a bell put around the neck of the cat, but how was it to be done? At
some one convention of the N. E. A., the classroom teachers of an
American city must be induced, not merely to disfranchise themselves,
but to disfranchise the classroom teachers of the entire country forever
and ever after! Such was the job; and I repeat that the doing of it was
one of the most amazing public crimes in the history of the United
States. We are now going to hear the story of it in detail.




                               CHAPTER LI
                             THE PLOT FAILS


First you will ask to know the people who did the job; which means that
you will be introduced to the bosses of our educational Tammany Hall.
Some of them you know already; but for convenience I will re-introduce
them.

Superintendent Fred M. Hunter, ward leader of Oakland, 1921 president of
the N. E. A., and life director of the N. E. A. During his presidency,
Mr. Hunter had a liberal teacher, whom he recommended for discharge to
his board of education. The board thought the teacher ought to have a
hearing, to which he was legally entitled; but Hunter’s proposition was
that he would give the teacher a hearing if the teacher would first
resign. “In other words,” said a board member, “you want to hang him
first and try him afterward.” With these words ringing in his ears,
Hunter went to the convention of the N. E. A., and presided over
meetings at which eloquent orators set forth in glowing terms the rights
of teachers under our great American democracy!

Carroll G. Pearse, formerly president of the Milwaukee State Normal
School, and now a book agent; also a trustee and life director of the N.
E. A. We have seen Mr. Pearse smashing the classroom teachers of his own
city. If we had time for a detailed study, we should discover him
running the N. E. A. machine for a decade, from the time he was
president in 1912.

Next, President William B. Owen, of the Chicago Normal School, 1923
president of the N. E. A. Mr. Owen is the ward leader of Chicago, and we
have just seen him in Boston, stealing from the classroom teachers their
own national organization. Mr. Owen is vice-president and life director
of the N. E. A.

Next, Professor Howard Driggs, of the English department of the
University of Utah, author of “Live Language Lessons,” president of the
Utah Educational Association, a power in the Mormon church, and
vice-president of the N. E. A.

Next, Superintendent Charl O. Williams, of Shelby County, Tennessee, a
lady of fine presence, an “inspirational” orator of the old Southern
style, an aggressive Democratic politician, 1922 president, and now life
director and field secretary of the N. E. A.

Next, Mrs. Josephine C. Preston, state superintendent of public
instruction of Washington, 1920 president and life director of the N. E.
A. We have seen Mrs. Preston browbeating the teachers and defending the
incorporate tax-dodging creatures of the lumber country.

Next, Principal Olive Jones of New York, 1924 president of the N. E. A.,
also trustee and director. I asked two New York teachers to tell me
about her, and the answer came: “She is small-minded, vindictive, not
over-scrupulous, a self-advertiser and office seeker, a good, clever
politician.”

Last but not least, the representative of Columbia University in our
educational Tammany Hall. Before introducing him it is necessary to
explain that for the first decade of this century our national school
machine was run by Nicholas Murray Butler, who was president of the N.
E. A. in 1895, and then head of the Department of Education at Columbia
University. Becoming president of Columbia, Butler dispensed the
educational patronage of Teachers’ College for his gang. How great this
patronage is, you will understand when I tell you that Teachers’ College
has officially announced that it furnishes more teachers than all the
other universities and colleges of the United States and Canada
combined. You will find half a dozen chapters about the dispenser of
this patronage in “The Goose-step,” and I point out to you that the most
bitter critics of the book did not find a single error in my statements
concerning him; nor did one educator in the United States come to his
defense.

“Nicholas Miraculous” was preparing himself to take charge of the
American government, so he no longer had time to bother with the school
world. He turned this detail over to one of his subordinates, George D.
Strayer, professor of educational administration in Columbia University,
and 1919 president of the N. E. A. It was during Strayer’s presidency
that the great plot was hatched, and he received a year’s leave of
absence from his university, so that he might devote his entire time to
putting it through. He presided at the Milwaukee convention of 1919,
where he failed. Then he was elected first vice-president, and sat at
the right hand of the president at the Salt Lake City convention of
1920, and supervised her every move. Both Strayer and Butler are life
directors of the N. E. A.; and so, as you read this story, you must
understand it as one more of the Nicholas Murray Butler chapters of “The
Goose-step”—it is the spectral hand of old J. P. Morgan, the elder,
reaching out and seizing the minds of your children, and twisting them
out of shape, so that Morgan’s heirs shall be able to pick their pockets
without inconvenience.

Our story begins with the midwinter convention of the N. E. A. in 1918.
Miss Frances Harden of Chicago was the first classroom teacher who ever
attended a midwinter convention—and she had to pay her own substitute in
order to do it! She saw the plot being hatched by the Department of
Superintendence, and brought back word to the Chicago teachers, who got
out a circular describing it, and pointing out what had happened in
their own state of Illinois, which had just been “reorganized” and made
a delegate body according to the new scheme. The first Illinois
convention under this plan had been held in December, 1917; 1,360
teachers had attended, and the effect of the scheme had been that 1,193
of these teachers were disfranchised! There were only 167 delegates
entitled to vote, and the occupations of these delegates were listed as
follows: county superintendents, 42; city superintendents, 53;
presidents of colleges, 4; principals of high schools, 12; principals of
elementary schools, 24; teachers in colleges, 5; teachers in high
schools, 13; teachers in elementary schools, 14. In other words, out of
167 delegates, 135 represented the supervising departments, and only 32
were teachers—only 14 of these being elementary classroom teachers!

This Illinois reorganization was the work of Owen of Chicago; it was his
pet scheme. At the Pittsburgh convention notice was given of intention
to apply it to the N. E. A., and the gang set to work to line up the
school bosses.

Then came the Milwaukee convention of 1919; here Strayer presided, and
the gang had a charming device to get rid of the teachers. The by-laws
provided for the business meeting at 11 a. m. of the 4th of July.
Milwaukee had a “sane Fourth” program for that day, and the teachers
were supposed to be occupied in the parks; the gang, thinking to catch
them off guard, called a “snap” meeting at nine in the morning. But the
Milwaukee teachers have been trained in politics, and know its devices.
They had arranged to have the “sane Fourth” program taken care of by
those teachers who were “associate” members of the N. E. A., while the
“active” members, who had votes, were to attend the business meeting.
Some of them got wind of the 9 a. m. trick, and these went in and
started singing “America.” They went right on singing “America” until 11
a. m.—they are so patriotic in Milwaukee, and that was their idea of a
“sane Fourth!” To make sure of keeping it sane, these Milwaukee teachers
omitted to eat any lunch, and stayed by the convention until it came to
an end at 5 p. m.

The gang brought up their reorganization scheme, and Margaret Haley
arose on the floor of the convention, and told them that they were
violating their federal charter. The reply was that they would put the
scheme through and get the charter changed afterwards. But Margaret
Haley, who has a way of consulting lawyers, pointed out to them that any
teacher could get a court injunction, and forbid them spending a penny
of the association’s money for a year. So they dropped the proposal;
Owen resigned from the committee and moved to discharge it; the slate
was wiped clean, and the teachers thought the scheme was dead—except for
a few who made note of a motion to appoint a committee to take up the
question of amending the charter of the N. E. A!

The place selected for the next national convention was Salt Lake City.
The classroom teachers made no protest—how were they to know that the
gang had been conducting an “educational survey,” combing the United
States with a fine comb, to find one place where they might be sure of
getting their way? Said one teacher, when she got to Salt Lake and saw
the frame-up: “We should have had notice of this.” Said H. S. Magill,
field secretary of the N. E. A.: “You blocked us twice; this year we’ve
come where your cohorts couldn’t follow us!” Said Strayer, strutting
like a little bantam: “We took it where we could put it over.” And if
that is not enough for you, a prominent official of the Milwaukee
convention told Miss Ethel Gardner, quite naively, that Professor
Strayer had a most wonderful plan, by which he was going to get all the
big business men of the United States back of the N. E. A! (He did.)

When the minutes of the Milwaukee business meeting were produced, they
included a notice of intention to amend the by-laws at the next
convention, by repealing the provision which requires a year’s notice
before a constitutional amendment can be adopted. No one could recollect
having heard such notice given, but the minutes showed that it had been
given by Professor Howard Driggs, the great Mormon educator. It was a
peculiar kind of proposition for a great educator to make; whenever you
mention the subject of constitutions and by-laws to such an educator,
the first thing he praises is that system of “checks and balances”
prevailing in the Constitution of the United States, which imposes
restrictions upon the hasty passions of the masses and compels us all to
stop and think before we act. Such a provision had been put into the
by-laws of the N. E. A.; and now it was proposed to abolish it, and
permit the hasty passions of the masses to prevail!

Professor Driggs apparently realized the strangeness of such a
proposition, coming from a great educator; discussing the matter on the
floor of the Salt Lake convention, he said he had not known the contents
of the notice when he gave it. Somebody had handed it to him—he thought
perhaps it was Mr. Magill, the field secretary—and asked him to give the
notice, and he did so. Dear, innocent, trusting Mormon educator—you
could hardly believe that he was forty-seven years of age! Before you
decide what to believe about him, wait and see what use the gang made of
that alleged notice.

They had a whole year to work in, and they went at it systematically.
They drafted an amendment to the charter of the N. E. A., known as
Section 12, providing that it might be organized as a delegate body and
governed by a representative assembly. The gang leaders spent much time
in our national capital, getting this charter amendment passed by
Congress and signed by the President. When our leading plutocratic
educators appear in Washington, asking to be permitted to govern their
school proletariat in their own way, how should a plutocratic Congress
refuse? The amendment was being trumpeted over the country as a plan to
make the N. E. A. “democratic.” The President of the United States had
just made the whole world “democratic,” so it was to be expected that he
would approve the plan and sign the bill.




                              CHAPTER LII
                              MORMON MAGIC


Come now to Salt Lake City, and see why the N. E. A. machine selected it
for their next convention. Externally there are reasons, in the form of
beautiful temples and educational institutions, erected by the devotees
of a weird religious cult. This cult is based upon “certain tablets
having the appearance of gold,” which were dug out of the ground by an
ignorant New York farmer-youth named Joseph Smith, and were found to be
miraculously inscribed with fantastic chronicles in biblical language;
Smith was able to interpret them by the aid of two magic stones, and
they are now the inspired word of God to half a million people. One of
the customs recommended in this “word” is the patriarchal Old Testament
virtue of polygamy, and the United States government fought a little war
with the Mormons over this issue, and Utah was not admitted as a state
until the chiefs had agreed to follow the example of the rest of our
plutocracy, and keep their polygamy under cover.

This is not a work on religion, but on economics, and what here concerns
us are the two great Mormon virtues of industry and submissiveness.
Seldom has a priestly caste evolved a more perfect system for separating
its devotees from their cash. The Mormon hierarchy is a Big Business
institution, which works hand in glove with the great corporations of
Utah, and their political representative, the Grand Old Party. The
Mormon church is practically the same thing as the Sugar Trust in the
state, and also the Smelter Trust and the railroads; their two
representatives in the United States Senate are equally active in the
affairs of God and Mammon. The church machine has its own educational
institutions, and at the same time, like the Catholic church in other
parts of the United States, it controls the public schools. I have
portrayed in “The Goose-step” its domination of the University of Utah,
and how sixteen professors resigned at once in protest against its
policy.

So you begin to see why the N. E. A. machine picked out Salt Lake City.
Utah is a long way off, and few classroom teachers could afford the
journey. As for the teachers of Utah, the majority of them are Mormons,
and the rest either take the orders of the church or move out. It takes
no stretch of the imagination to picture Professor Driggs, the great
Mormon educator, telling Owen and Strayer and Hunter and Pearse and the
other great educators how we manage things in Utah—so much better than
in Milwaukee! And how beautifully the great Mormon “tabernacle” would
serve as a setting for this “reorganization” drama! I remember in my
childhood reading a fearsome story about an innocent American virgin
lured into the clutches of a diabolical Mormon patriarch; and here is
the story made real—the victim being the associated school-marms of
America.

The delegates arrived, and were welcomed by the entire hierarchy—the
Mormon governor, the Mormon mayor, the Mormon bishops, the presidents
and professors of the Mormon colleges and universities, and the two
United States senators from the Sugar Trust. You may imagine the effect
upon the Salt Lake City school teachers of this array of religious and
financial power; but even so, it was not enough! Church and State and
Big Business combined could not prevail against a few simple facts put
before the teachers of the city! At the very outset of the convention
there was a meeting of classroom teachers, with Margaret Haley and Ethel
Gardner and the rest on hand, and Mr. Magill, field secretary of the N.
E. A., was so indiscreet as to come upon the platform and face the
questions of these teachers. At the end of the session the gang could
not muster three votes among those present; rebellion was spreading, and
the great educators were frantic.

That night hundreds of telegrams were sent out all over the state of
Utah. Superintendents and principals of schools summoned their teachers
to Salt Lake City. It was J. Fred Anderson, president of the Utah
Educational Association, who knew these teachers; and we have seen in
our story of Oakland how Superintendent Hunter presented to him a high
salaried position in the Oakland schools. Hunter was here, hard at work,
and received his reward by being elected president at this convention.

The master of ceremonies of course was Howard Driggs, who was on his
home ground, and had guaranteed to put the job through. With the help of
the Mormon hierarchy, both religious and educational, he got the
teachers of Utah into a caucus on the night preceding the business
meeting of the convention. These teachers were told nothing whatever
about the significance of the issue; they were merely told how to vote.
The radicals, of course, got wind of this meeting, and came to it, but
some of them were excluded, and the stenographer they had brought was
ordered to leave. A motion was made that none should be granted the
floor except Utah state teachers, or those who might be invited by them.
Once during the proceedings a man ventured to ask if they might not hear
the other side and know what were the objections to this plan. Chairman
J. Fred Anderson glowered at the assembly, and roared: “If there is
anyone from the state of Utah who objects to this plan, we’ll listen to
him!”

An important part of the plot was a series of amendments to the by-laws,
providing for great numbers of “ex officio delegates” to N. E. A.
conventions. All the officers and all past presidents were to be such
delegates, likewise all state superintendents, and all N. E. A.
directors in each state—every such personage was to have a vote, and
every such vote was to be equivalent to the vote of from one hundred to
five hundred classroom teachers! Naturally, some one asked for an
explanation, and so was born the classic jest of the American school
world. You might be puzzled to understand why a superintendent of
schools should be referred to as an “oil-dome”; but Professor Howard
Driggs explained the symbolism to the Utah teachers. When you saw a
train of oil-cars on the railroad track, you noted that these cars had
little domes on top. The reason was that on curves the oil would acquire
momentum which would throw the cars off the track, but these domes
served to change the direction of the momentum and so prevented an
accident. And the “oil-domes” of the N. E. A. machine were the
superintendents!

If I thought you could possibly do it, I would ask you to imagine the
mentality of a country school-marm from the far-off mountains and
deserts of Utah, brought up to a devout belief in the golden tablets of
Joseph Smith. Suffice it to say, that at this group meeting the Mormon
ladies listened patiently, and not a single classroom teacher opened her
mouth. Mr. Magill gave them printed statements containing the arguments
of the gang, adding that of course they would vote as they saw fit. But
the Mormon managers were not satisfied with such a careless formula, and
one of them got up and pointed out that it was sometimes a difficult
matter to follow the technicalities of business meetings, and the Utah
teachers ought to take precautions to keep from getting lost in the
parliamentary labyrinths. These managers knew they had to come out on
the floor of the convention next day, and face Margaret Haley and Ethel
Gardner and the rest of the “Bolsheviks”; so they had reason to be
nervous!

It was arranged that the Utah teachers should sit together in a group,
and in their voting they should follow the example of a leader, saying
“aye” when he said “aye,” and “nay” when he said “nay.” And who was that
leader to be? Whom would you guess but Howard Driggs, professor of
English at the University of Utah, author of “Live Language Lessons,”
vice-president of the N. E. A., and president of the Utah Educational
Association? And lest perchance these teachers from the mountains and
deserts of Utah might never have seen the great Mormon professor, the
professor was invited to stand up and display his impressive presence to
the assemblage. It was furthermore ordered that the Utah teachers were
to be on hand in their Mormon Tabernacle half an hour in advance of the
opening of the business session.

Immediately after this meeting there was a secret session in the room of
President Pearse of Milwaukee, at the Utah Hotel. At this meeting the
gang leaders staged a full-dress rehearsal of the proceedings. They had
someone to play the part of Margaret Haley, and to make all the motions
and objections which they expected her to make; they worked out the
method of foiling her, with each one’s duty assigned, each part learned
and recited. This secret meeting lasted until one o’clock in the
morning, and goes down into educational history as “the midnight
rehearsal.”




                              CHAPTER LIII
                        THE FUNERAL OF DEMOCRACY


The business meeting of the National Education Association was called
for 8:30 on Friday morning, and the program stated that there would be a
paper read and singing before the transaction of business; but the
moment the meeting opened, they made a motion to dispense with the paper
and the singing. Thus they rushed through a good part of their program
with very little opposition. When Margaret Haley and Ethel Gardner
entered the hall the assemblage was voting on the by-laws, article by
article, and adopting them with vigorous roars from the rehearsed Utah
teachers. In the uproar it was impossible to tell just what was being
voted on.

The presiding officer at this convention was Superintendent Josephine C.
Preston, whom we saw working hard for the Black Hand in Seattle, and
whom we were asked particularly to remember. The report of the Executive
Committee was presented by Professor Strayer of Columbia, first
vice-president, who explained the act of Congress permitting the
reorganization. This report having been adopted by a thunderous “aye”
from the rehearsed Utah teachers, Professor Vice-president Strayer
seated himself at the right hand of Superintendent President Preston,
and was seen to whisper into her ear at every stage of the future
proceedings. No one can say what he whispered, but there were some who
suspected that he was telling her what to do next.

Professor Vice-president Driggs now arose, and had the good fortune to
catch the eye of Superintendent President Preston—or possibly the eye of
Professor Vice-president Strayer. He was recognized, and proceeded to
bring up the resolution of which he had so innocently given notice at
Milwaukee, providing that it should not be necessary to give a year’s
consideration to a by-law amendment.

Now the classroom teachers’ delegates were certain that no notice had
been given, the assembly had had no warning of this revolutionary
proposition. They sought to explain matters, but for some strange reason
Chairman Preston, or possibly Professor Strayer, was unable to see any
of them, and they could not get the floor. Professor Driggs insisted
that the notice appeared in due form in the minutes of the Milwaukee
meeting, therefore his motion was in order. The motion was put, and was
carried by a thunderous “aye” from Professor Driggs and his rehearsed
Utah teachers.

Then at once it appeared what was the purpose for which the innocent
Mormon professor had introduced this resolution without knowing what was
in it. The purpose was that the Salt Lake convention might adopt the new
“Section 12” of the charter, without waiting a year to give the
membership a chance to find out what it was all about! Immediately the
motion to adopt this section was made by Superintendent Life-director
Hunter of Oakland—I hope I don’t bore you with these “titles,” for you
ought to see just who these gang-leaders are, and just how they put the
job over. Ex-Superintendent Field Secretary Magill explained the
proposition to fill the representative assembly with supervising
delegates—life directors, state superintendents, state directors, and
officers. Superintendent Newton of Denver strongly supported the
proposition, and a New York teacher opposed it. A rehearsed Utah teacher
took the side of the gang, as did also the president of a state normal
school in Michigan, Superintendent Dorsey of Los Angeles, and
Superintendent Gwinn of San Francisco. The chairman ruled Margaret Haley
out of order; the chairman instantly ruled out of order everyone who
tried to refer to the rehearsing of the Utah teachers, or to the packing
of the convention. There were shouts of “Question! Question!”—and the
amendment was adopted by a thunderous “aye” from the rehearsed Utah
teachers. The vote was declared unanimous—for the reason that the
steam-roller was rolling so furiously that the opposition teachers could
not find out what was being voted on!

An unforeseen emergency now arose—the tactics of the gang were so crude
that an ex-superintendent of schools of Salt Lake City became troubled
in his conscience, and actually had the temerity to propose that this
coup d’etat should be submitted to a referendum vote of the membership
of the N. E. A.! Ex-Superintendent Field Secretary Magill hastened to
explain that under the resolution just adopted this procedure would be
utterly illegal. In other words, the charter obtained from Congress had
been “loaded” so as to make this very thing impossible; and the gang was
“loaded” with legal opinions to prove that it had so arranged matters!
Mr. Magill’s argument was supported by Principal Trustee President-to-be
Olive Jones of New York, State Superintendent Wood of California,
Superintendent Hunter’s Principal J. Fred Anderson of Utah, and
Professor Vice-president Driggs of Utah. The published minutes of this
business meeting condescend to tell us that Margaret Haley of Illinois
spoke—but they don’t tell us on which side she spoke, nor do they tell
us how the chairman shut her off! They merely record that “the proposed
amendment was laid on the table”—of course by the vote of the rehearsed
Utah teachers.

And note this curious detail: among the new by-laws rolled through by
this steam-roller was one providing for amendments to the by-laws by a
two-thirds vote after a year’s notice given in writing; in other words,
the very same provision which had been done away with, less than an hour
ago, by the motion of Professor Vice-president Driggs! The system of
checks and balances, which had just been destroyed, was magically
restored! Humpty-dumpty, having been knocked off the wall, was put
together again! To choose a more accurate simile—the farmer, having let
down the bars while he got his pig into the pen, now put the bars up
again, to keep the pig inside forever after!

Piled on top of that came an even wilder flight of humor! Margaret Haley
moved that Congress be asked to amend the charter and abolish the
life-directors; whereupon ex-Superintendent Field Secretary Magill
explained that Congress would never again pass another special
charter—this trick was positively the last that could ever be played in
America! Miss Haley’s motion was tabled by a shout of the rehearsed Utah
teachers; and the convention proceeded to elect Superintendent
Life-director Hunter of Oakland its new president, and to hear his
fervid speech in celebration of “democracy”!

It is interesting to note that the minutes of this meeting were withheld
from the membership of the N. E. A. for eleven months, and were finally
published in very inadequate and doctored form. Margaret Haley had
arranged with a stenographic agency to obtain a transcript of the
proceedings, but after the show was over she discovered that she had
been cheated out of this transcript. The agency would not be permitted
to furnish a transcript until it had been “edited.” You see, the gang
had also ordered a transcript from this same concern!

I obtained a copy of this “edited” transcript, and have checked every
statement in this chapter. In case you find my account incredible, I
suggest that you consult in your public library the “Journal of
Education,” Boston, August 19, 1920, in which an eye-witness tells the
story with amiable mockery. That American school teachers should have
had their own organization stolen away from them seems to Editor Winship
just the most delightful joke in the world. Such a comical spectacle—a
great convention, lasting for six days, with several thousand people
devoting all their labors to keeping one little woman from getting the
floor![K]

-----

Footnote K:

  Just to make the thing real to you, I give you one glimpse of the
  steam-roller, taken from the transcript as furnished by the N. E. A.
  secretary. The assembly is here voting on Section 9, which provides
  for the packing of the N. E. A. with a hundred and fifty-one
  ex-officio delegates, state superintendents, state directors, life
  directors, and miscellaneous officers. It has been moved to amend this
  section by striking out the ex-officio members; but in the uproar it
  is impossible for the opposition to know what is being voted on. The
  amendment is voted down, Section 9 is jammed through, and Margaret
  Haley is refused the right to ask a question. Field secretary Magill
  starts to go on to Section 10; but the protest against this becomes so
  vehement that the gang sees it has to give way, and Professor Driggs
  blandly rises and pleads for fair play—delicious irony! So Margaret
  Haley receives an opportunity to be informed by the chairman that the
  measure she has been trying to oppose has already been carried! The
  text follows:

THE CHAIRMAN: Are you ready for the question? (Cries of question,
  question.)

A DELEGATE: I rise to a question of personal privilege.

THE CHAIRMAN: What is your question of personal privilege?

A DELEGATE: There has been some imputation cast upon the teachers of
  Salt Lake and Utah as to the packing of this convention. (Cries of out
  of order, out of order.)

THE CHAIRMAN: You are out of order. (Cries of question, question.)

THE CHAIRMAN: We will now vote on the amendment. All of those in favor
  of the amendment say aye. All those opposed say no. The amendment is
  lost.

A DELEGATE: Question on the original motion.

THE CHAIRMAN: The question is now on the original motion. Are you ready?
  (Cries of question, question.)

THE CHAIRMAN: All those in favor signify by saying aye. Those opposed.
  Unanimously carried.

A LADY DELEGATE: A question of information——

THE CHAIRMAN: The motion is unanimously carried.

MISS MARGARET HALEY (Chicago): We couldn’t hear what you were voting on.

A DELEGATE: Madam Chairman, I think at this point it would be well to
  listen to the lady’s question. She rose and asked for information
  before that vote was put. Because of the inability of the chairman to
  hear her it was passed.

THE CHAIRMAN: Out of order.

A DELEGATE: She just asked a question, that is all.

A DELEGATE: Is it possible we cannot present a question in this
  assembly?

MR. MAGILL: Section 10——

A DELEGATE: Madam Chairman, Madam Chairman, I rise to a point of order.
  Is it possible we cannot hear a question in this assembly?

A DELEGATE: No, it is not possible.

A DELEGATE: That lady wants to hear a question. I would like to know
  what it is. (Applause.)

MR. DRIGGS (Utah): I appeal from the decision of the chair on a point of
  order. Salt Lake is going to stand for a square deal. We want the
  lady’s question. (Applause.)

A DELEGATE: Come to the platform.

MISS MARGARET HALEY (Chicago): It is not necessary for me to go to the
  platform. I wished to ask the question before the vote is taken. It
  was impossible for us to hear what was being done and I didn’t know
  the question that was being voted on. I ask for information as to what
  the motion was.

THE CHAIRMAN: The amendment was voted down and the motion was carried,
  Miss Haley. We presented to everyone that came, when the business
  opened, a copy; we want it in the hands of every active member and I
  so announced exactly what we were doing.

MISS HALEY (Chicago): That is not the question I asked. I asked what was
  the motion that we were voting on. We didn’t hear it when it was
  stated.

THE CHAIRMAN: We were voting on section 9 then: we were voting on the
  amendment to section 9.

-----




                              CHAPTER LIV
                        THE FRUITS OF THE SOWING


So now our National Education Association is what the gang wants it to
be. Let us see exactly what that is.

The next convention was held at Des Moines in 1921, and here were the
first fruits of the sowing. I have before me a tabulation of the
delegates to the Des Moines convention, classified according to their
occupations. Statistics make tiresome reading, but in this case the
statistics are the heart of the argument, so I beg you to consider these
figures carefully. There were present at this convention a total of 553
delegates having votes; among them were: state superintendents, 33;
county superintendents, 21; city superintendents, 104; presidents of
colleges and normal schools, 28; principals of high schools, 34;
principals of elementary schools, 54; supervisors, 23. That makes a
total of 297 delegates belonging to the employing class—297 out of 553,
a comfortable majority. But note further: the tabulation includes 14
miscellaneous, 46 not classified, 6 editors of educational journals, and
2 agents of book companies; if we set these to one side, we find that
the 297 members of the supervising force were figured upon a total of
485 delegates.

And now, to balance this, consider the representation of the teachers:
special teachers, 8; teachers in colleges and normal schools, 34;
teachers in high schools, 65; and teachers in elementary schools, 81.
That makes a total of 188 teachers, including college professors; and
this to be balanced against 297 members of the supervising force! In our
schools the teachers outnumber the supervising force by ten or fifteen
to one; but in this national body, as between the two groups, they have
thirty-nine per cent, while the supervising force has sixty-one. Such is
“democracy” in the great educational organization of the school world!

At the close of the 1923 convention, held in Oakland, it happened that I
was in the locality, and said something to a newspaper reporter about
our school Tammany Hall. Some of the gang leaders made indignant reply;
and I received a letter from Mr. Joy E. Morgan, editor of the official
“Journal of the National Education Association,” who said that I was
misinformed concerning the organization, and asked me to have lunch with
him. I am shy about breaking bread with the enemy, but I am always glad
to talk with him, because he never fails to give me better ammunition
than I could otherwise get. So I went to call on Mr. Morgan after lunch,
and we had a pleasant chat of an hour or so. He is a young man, and
friends assure me that he is well meaning but uninformed. I will pass no
judgment, but my story will make clear his amazing ignorance, not merely
concerning his own organization, but even concerning his own paper.

Mr. Morgan started off with the ancient formula that the N. E. A. is
“democratic”; all the teachers of the United States were welcome—in
fact, they were implored to join their professional organization. I
asked Mr. Morgan about this matter of having honorary members who were
ex-officio delegates and endowed with votes. Here was a representative
body, purporting to be democratic, but which started out with 23 life
directors and a long list of ex-officio delegates, the president, the
treasurer, the 12 vice-presidents, the 5 members of the executive
committee, 52 state directors, 52 state superintendents of public
instruction—and, to cap the climax, all the past presidents, a new one
added every year! The total of these ex-officio delegates was 151, and
out of this total just three were classroom teachers! That constituted a
handicap against the teachers of 145 votes; and since it took 100
classroom teachers to elect one delegate, and in big cities five hundred
teachers, it took somewhere between 14,500 and 72,500 teachers to
overcome the handicap against them in every N. E. A. convention! Was
that what Mr. Morgan understood by “democracy”?

The young editor did not use the phrase, “oil-domes,” but he did assure
me that the interests of superintendents and teachers were not opposed,
and that the teachers of the country, many of them, elected their
superintendents to represent them; moreover, there were great numbers of
teachers who were delegates—probably a majority of the convention, Mr.
Morgan actually said that; and then I handed him the tabulation of the
Des Moines convention, which showed 188 teachers, as against 297 members
of the supervising force. He studied it, and was obviously embarrassed.
“I don’t know just what to say,” he replied. “I hardly think it can be
accurate. The tabulation must have been made by some interested party.”

Now the tabulation had been given to me by Frances Harden, who is in
Margaret Haley’s office, and I could not deny that Miss Harden was
“interested” in the problems of N. E. A. representation. I said to Mr.
Morgan: “I will investigate and find out just how that tabulation was
prepared.”

“It looks to me absurd on the face of it,” continued the young editor,
“because you see it gives two ‘agents of book companies,’ and that is
preposterous. No agent of a book company could be a delegate to the N.
E. A.”

“I will look into that,” I promised; and we chatted for a while about
other aspects of the class struggle in education. Mr. Morgan gave me a
file of his publication for the past year, in order that I might see
what excellent material they were using; then I took my departure, and
sought out Miss Harden and her bunch of “Bolsheviks,” who had come on to
attend this Oakland convention. We had dinner in a little “dago”
restaurant, and I told them of Mr. Morgan’s objection, and it would have
done you good to hear Miss Harden laugh. “Why,” she said, “that
tabulation was made from the official list in his own paper, the Journal
of the N. E. A.; and Mr. Morgan was managing editor at the time the list
was published! When I get back to Chicago I’ll send you a copy of that
issue; they listed all the delegates at the Des Moines convention,
giving the occupation of each, and all I had to do was to go through the
list and check the number of superintendents, the number of principals,
and so on. We made the tabulation and published it, and it’s interesting
to notice that next year the list of delegates as published in the
Journal no longer states the occupations of the delegates, but merely
the organizations they represent. You may take it from me, it will be
many a long year before the Journal again makes the blunder of revealing
the make-up of one of its annual conventions!”

“What about the matter of the book company agent?” I asked; and Miss
Harden and her “Bolshevik” friends laughed more merrily than ever.

“Why, one of those two agents is Major Clancy, and Mr. Morgan knows him
as well as he knows anybody at the convention. He’s here at Oakland—one
of the first sights that is pointed out to a new delegate. He’s a kind
of unofficial host to all of us.”

“But is he here as a book company agent?” I asked, in bewilderment.

“Why, of course,” said the teachers; and Miss Ethel Gardner explained
that he had got up some kind of club or association of the agents in his
locality, and got himself named as their representative.

In case you should find all this as incredible as I found it, let me add
that Miss Harden faithfully carried out her promise; when she got back
to Chicago she sent me two issues of the “Journal of the National
Education Association.” The first is the issue for December, 1921, and I
note the name of Joy Elmer Morgan, managing editor. Beginning at page
199, and continuing to page 205, I find a list headed, “The First
Representative Assembly; delegates who attended the 59th annual meeting
of the National Educational Association in Des Moines, July 5-8, 1921.”
There I find the delegates by state, with the occupation of each one
given; on page 203 I find “Robertson, W. W., agent for Charles E.
Merrill Co., 19 West Main St., Oklahoma City.” And on page 202 the name
“Clancy, Major A. W., 502 Globe Building, Minneapolis.”

The second issue of the Journal is that for September, 1922, and again I
find Joy Elmer Morgan, managing editor. From pages 291 to 298 I find the
list of the second representative assembly, with the occupations of the
delegates not given. On page 295 I find as follows: “Clancy, A. W.,
Bookmen’s Department of Minnesota, 2516 Humboldt Avenue, South,
Minneapolis.” And then, as I complete this manuscript, the Journal of
October, 1923, appears, and gives the list for the third representative
assembly, at Oakland, California—and again the occupations are not
given, and again Major Clancy _is_ given!

Yes, you may count upon Major Clancy to attend all N. E. A. conventions!
Turn back to our Minneapolis chapters, and read about this one-armed old
veteran of the threshing machine. And come to Oakland, and see him in
the luxurious parlors of the Oakland Hotel; come to San Francisco and
see him in the parlors of the Fairmont. He is the lord of motor cars and
of boat-rides; never does he sit down at table except it is crowded with
guests. The editor of the “Journal of Education”—not the official N. E.
A. Journal, but an independent weekly, published in Boston—portrays this
aspect of the Salt Lake convention of 1920 in a playful paragraph. Says
the witty editor Winship: “No one in the association at summer and
winter meetings, has in fifty years had as many men and women to as many
feasts as has Major Clancy.”

Perhaps all this hospitality is poured out from the Major’s own generous
heart; perhaps again, it is his employers, the book companies, who fill
the cornucopia. However it may be, the major is the idol of the
schoolmarms; he chats with them jovially in the lobbies, and now and
then you see him jump up and run across the floor—some superintendent
has entered, and he must shake the hand of all superintendents.
Presently you see him button-holing one of the great leaders of the
gang, and there is a whispered conversation; it is by these little chats
in lobbies that we get our business done—the gentlemen’s agreements
whereby votes and influence are traded for contracts involving your
money and mine.

A teacher friend of mine traveled all the way from the East to attend
the N. E. A. convention of 1923 at Oakland; on the day before the
opening of the convention she visited the Fairmont Hotel in San
Francisco, where in the lobby she observed Major Clancy in conversation
with Principal Olive Jones of New York. This conference lasted for a
couple of hours, and other members of the gang took part in it from time
to time. My friend wondered what it was about; she never found out, but
she noted that before the convention came to a close, Principal Olive
Jones of New York was chosen as the new president of the N. E. A. The
Major had had advance information, you may be sure; and likewise the
rest of the gang had had it. In fact, this 1923 convention had been held
in Oakland, because it was the bailiwick of Hunter, and he and Strayer
had promised the honor to Miss Jones when they asked her influence at
Salt Lake City. This promise had been for 1921, but the gang had fallen
to quarreling among themselves—Owen of Chicago had broken with Strayer,
and Miss Williams had got the prize in 1921, and Owen had grabbed it for
himself at Boston in 1922. You see what the inside ring is giving its
time to, and why the great national organization of the school world is
an object of contempt to every educator who has a truly professional
ideal.




                               CHAPTER LV
                          TEACHERS TO THE REAR


The National Education Association now stands complete, according to the
design of its architects. It is a political machine, maintained by Big
Business to do a certain job in the interest of Big Business. And just
as in any other great factory, the workers are deprived of all power,
but are cajoled into thinking themselves free citizens. At the annual
conventions you will hear floods of oratory in praise of democracy,
while every precaution is taken to keep the rank and file from having
any say whatever about their own affairs. All the power is in the hands
of one little group; they put themselves in the key positions—each one
on six or eight committees. They make the plans, and when the time comes
they jam them through.

The classroom teachers form a large group at each convention, but they
are helpless. They are outside the circle, a floating group, untaught,
untrained, without a background or policy. At Salt Lake City Miss Harden
attended a meeting of seventy-five of them, and she asked how many of
them had ever come to a previous N. E. A. convention, and found that
only eight or ten had had this experience. What do such delegates know
about the machine and its tricks? What chance do they stand against the
gang?

Miss Flora Menzel of Milwaukee came in 1923, with instructions to
recommend certain policies on behalf of her group. She was put on the
“credentials committee,” and wandered about the corridors of the Oakland
Hotel trying to find out where this committee met. The meeting was set
for a certain hour; she succeeded in finding the place, fifteen minutes
late, and there was no one in the room. Subsequently she ascertained
that the “credentials committee” had already met, named a sub-committee
of the gang, and adjourned in fifteen minutes! And that is only one of
many devices whereby classroom teachers known to be loyal to their own
groups are shunted to one side. In 1921, at Des Moines, they appointed a
committee on the revision of elementary education, and they made it up
of college presidents and professors, state superintendents, the United
States Commissioner of Education—and one elementary teacher. They were
going to determine the policy of the N. E. A. toward the most important
of all subjects connected with the schools, and they put on this
committee just one person who was having actual experience with
children!

For more than twenty years Margaret Haley has been fighting in the
interest of the teachers for action on salaries, tenure and pensions. It
took ten years to get them to adopt resolutions on the question, and ten
years more to get them to do anything. I have told about the Atlantic
City mid-winter convention of 1918, at which the Department of
Superintendence planned the Salt Lake City swindle, and how Miss Frances
Harden was there, having paid her own substitute. She was representing
Margaret Haley, who had been put on the committee for salaries, tenure
and pensions. The chairman of the committee was President Joseph Swain
of Swarthmore College, past president of the N. E. A. President Swain
got up and made a momentous announcement: two young men from the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching had been giving him
invaluable assistance on this pension question. The two young men were
present, and thus introduced they practically ran the committee
throughout the sessions. They had a “model teachers’ pension bill,” and
they asked the endorsement of the Department of Superintendence, after
which they proposed to take the bill to each of the states, and get the
endorsement of the state educational machines, and then force it through
the legislature.

Perhaps you may wonder why the Carnegie Foundation should be proposing
to take charge of teachers’ pension money. Well, if you will turn to
“The Goose-step,” pages 408-9, you will find how this institution, with
an endowment of some seventeen million dollars, has taken the pension
money of the college professors of the United States and made it into a
club to be held over the heads of professors, compelling them to obey
the orders of presidents and trustees. If you will read Professor
Cattell’s book, “Carnegie Pensions,” published in 1919, you will be
informed about the wonderful insurance corporation, devised by this
Carnegie crowd, and run by Elihu Root and Nicholas Murray Butler; the
scheme was submitted by “School and Society” for the consideration of a
great number of college professors, and was voted down by 636 to 13.

And now here are these Carnegie specialists in autocracy, setting the
very same trap for the seven hundred thousand school teachers of the
United States! Their device is known as the “standard pension plan”; it
provides a graded pension, and needless to say the sums are very low,
while the age limit is very high, from sixty to sixty-five years, and
the term of service required is long, from thirty to forty years.
Needless to say, also, the women are treated as inferior animals; their
heirs have no pensions, while the heirs of men teachers do have
pensions; moreover, the women contribute at a higher rate than the men.

Get clear this essential point, that all this pension money is teachers’
money; a certain amount is deducted each month from the salaries of
every teacher, and it is of this money that the pension is composed.
And, of course, the feature that really counts is the control of the
money; you may be sure that under the capitalist system no plan of any
sort would be “standard,” that did not provide for the control of the
money by those whom God has created for the purpose of controlling
money. The essence of this “standard pension plan” is that the teachers
have no control over their own pension funds; in all cases this control
is in the hands of politicians who serve on the pension board ex
officio—the state superintendent, the comptroller, the attorney general,
and other leaders of the gang.

It was decided that this Carnegie pension plan should be taken to the
state of Vermont and there tried out; and at the summer convention at
Pittsburgh the new Carnegie experts appeared again, and their
proposition was jammed through, in spite of the protests of Margaret
Haley. You see, Margaret Haley wanted the teachers to have the control
of their own money, so the gang evolved one of their clever schemes—they
divided the “committee on salaries, tenure and pensions” into three
separate committees, and they put Margaret Haley on the salary
committee, which had already acted! Also, they put in a by-law,
providing that these three committees should serve for one year only,
and should then be reappointed. This would give them the chance to drop
any “kickers”; and sure enough, the next year they dropped Margaret
Haley!

But they couldn’t drop her from Chicago. The teachers there have power
of their own, and they have just got the legislature to adopt the
“Chicago teachers’ pension plan.” Under this plan the teacher gets a
pension after having taught for twenty-five years in the United States,
fifteen years of which must be in Chicago. Women are recognized as human
beings, getting equal treatment with men. But the all-important point is
this: the pension funds are under the control of a committee of nine,
three of them being members of the board of education, and the other six
being teachers elected by teachers. This is the only pension fund in the
United States which is under the democratic control of those who put up
the money; and it is hereby suggested that every teacher in the United
States should set to work to make that Chicago law the “standard”
pension law of the United States.

Next, let us consider the attitude of the N. E. A. on the equally
important question of teachers’ tenure. Is a teacher a civil servant,
with some permanence and security; or is a teacher a wage-slave, who may
be “fired” without notice and without excuse? At Salt Lake City the
committee on tenure handed in a report and a resolution. All the
resolutions appeared in printed form—but that on tenure was left out.
Margaret Haley fought for a whole day to get the floor, and finally one
superintendent who had a sense of decency insisted that she should be
heard, and she asked about this resolution. The chairman asked the
secretary what had become of it, the secretary asked somebody else, and
so they “passed the buck.” The resolution had been mysteriously “lost,”
and nobody knew what had become of it. At Boston, in 1922, they passed a
resolution to work for tenure in every state, but they have not done it
in a single state.

They don’t want to be bothered with the teachers, they want the teachers
to obey orders and teach. Miss Ethel Gardner told me of her experience
at Salt Lake City, where she happened to be the only classroom teacher
present at a conference of administrators. They told how they had been
trying to improve their teachers by holding meetings every Saturday
morning and talking to these teachers. But the stubborn teachers
persisted in not improving, and even showed resentment at having their
Saturday mornings taken in that way. The superintendents discussed the
question whether the teachers might not become more docile if the school
board would pay them for attending these Saturday morning improvement
meetings. Finally some one asked Miss Gardner what she thought about it,
and she asked if it had ever occurred to them to let the teachers talk
at these teachers’ meetings. It was as if Miss Gardner had thrown a bomb
into their midst. Not one of them had ever thought of such an idea! She
went on to tell what the Milwaukee Teachers’ Association was doing for
the improvement of teaching, and when she got through they thanked her
quite earnestly for having made an entirely original contribution to
their conference:

These were unusually polite superintendents. As a rule, they resent such
interference, and take any suggestion from a teacher as an affront to
their dignity. Margaret Haley is one of the most charming of women, a
delightful companion, and on the floor of a convention the very soul of
wit and good fellowship; but to the N. E. A. bosses she is a fiend in
petticoats. They regularly ignore all her resolutions; and when she gets
the teachers stirred up, and some action becomes necessary, they take
her resolutions and write them over and present them as a contribution
of their own. At the same time they diligently circulate slanders about
her; she has been paid ten thousand dollars to deliver the Department of
Classroom Teachers over to the American Federation of Labor; she
received a salary of ten thousand dollars a year from the Chicago
Teachers’ Federation. Such falsehoods as this are circulated and
believed by most of the delegates at the convention—the facts being that
Miss Haley gets the salary of a teacher from her own organization, and
her organization is not affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor.

At the same time the gang, like all other political gangs, is not too
scrupulous about its own personnel. It carried for years one life
director while he was in Joliet prison for appropriating public funds.
It did not hesitate to make use of a man who, while secretary of a state
teachers’ association, charged the association for plumbing work done on
his home, and then it was found that the plumber hadn’t got the
money—the secretary had kept it for himself! And of course the gang
leaders are all tied up with the book graft and with other Big Business
in their own localities. The book agents swarm to the conventions, and
they have their candidates, and if these candidates do not win, it is
because some other book agent has been more active. At the last
mid-winter convention of the Department of Superintendence, a prominent
candidate for president was the school superintendent of Milwaukee, and
Major Clancy boasted to a friend of mine that this great educator would
surely win. He was favored by the American Book Company. Major Clancy is
getting old, and somebody fooled him; the successful candidate came from
the city where Ginn & Company has its headquarters!

The first aim of the prudent school superintendent is to stand in with
the “bookmen,” as they call themselves. For, whenever there is a vacancy
in a desirable place, the book companies are the first to learn of it,
and they know their own. So the N. E. A. is honeycombed with book
intrigue and graft—especially the Department of Superintendence, the
part which really counts. I shall tell you bye and bye of an especially
crooked five year book “adoption” in the state of Indiana. Immediately
after that event, it was noticed that a practically unknown
superintendent from Indianapolis became president of the Department of
Superintendence.

That caused a scandal, and efforts were made to break the book
companies’ hold; it is like the efforts to drive the railroads out of
state politics. At the last meeting of the Department of Superintendence
it was announced that no “bookmen” were to have rooms in the Cleveland
Hotel, where the N. E. A. had its headquarters; but I am told by a
gentleman who was present that the American Book Company had all the
rooms it wanted. This same gentleman tells me that he was present at a
convention in Milwaukee, some years ago, when it was discovered that the
American Book Company had taken the entire second floor of the hotel in
which the N. E. A. had settled; Cooley of Chicago, who happened to be
president that year, moved his headquarters to another hotel.

Many of the big chiefs of the N. E. A. draw royalties from text-books.
Strayer of Columbia edits a whole series of “teachers’ professional
books” for the American Book Company; also, it features one of his
educational books. Then there are the elaborate systems of record cards
which he edits; these are advertised and exhibited at every meeting of
the Department of Superintendence. Also there are fees for surveying
city school systems, and recommending buildings. I am told by one who
knows Strayer that he is eager for money; and this is a part of his
Columbia heritage—you may recall the three hundred thousand dollar
residence, built out of trust funds for “Nicholas Miraculous.” Sometimes
a great expert is summoned to survey a school system, and he tells the
city that it needs many new buildings. Also he names the architects who
know how to put up just the sort of buildings which he recommends. The
architects get six per cent for their work, and pay the expert
one-twelfth of that. A modern city thinks nothing of spending a million
dollars for a new high school, so the expert’s rake-off will be five
thousand dollars.




                              CHAPTER LVI
                           BREAD AND CIRCUSES


We have followed closely the business and politics of the N. E. A.
conventions; let us now consider them in their educational and social
aspects. They are imposing assemblages, and of course loom colossal to
the cities in which they occur. To have thirty or forty thousand
visitors spend a week in the city inspires the local merchants with a
deep respect for culture, and the local boosters get busy to show the
school-marms a good time. The N. E. A. politicians naturally make this a
condition in the placing of the convention; they want to have the
delegates occupied with scenery and entertainments, so as to distract
their minds from political controversies. This wisdom has come down to
us from the Roman Empire; then it was bread and circuses, now it is
boat-rides, auto-rides, luncheons, and telephone calls.

I have before me a page from the “Chicago Schools Journal” for June,
1922, giving the official announcement of the Boston Chamber of Commerce
regarding the convention of that year. There are thirty-five affiliated
societies to hold meetings, and halls have been engaged for all. The
leading business men have organized a committee to prepare receptions,
the head of it being a former secretary of the Chamber of Commerce.
Excursions have been planned upon a vast scale; the railroads are
co-operating, likewise the hotels and tourist bureaus; we note the
interesting detail that “One of the book companies has compiled an
exhaustive literary history of Greater Boston and will publish it in
compliment to the convention. A copy of this history will be given to
every teacher who registers.”

Also we note that two hundred guests are coming from Memphis, Tennessee,
in honor of President Charl O. Williams, who is on a year’s leave of
absence to enable her to uplift the educational associations of each of
the states, as well as sectional meetings—price one hundred dollars per
lift. Other notables are coming, General Pershing, Vice-president
Coolidge, Secretary of State Hughes; President Harding has promised to
attend if possible. Most significant of all, there will be “a patriotic
demonstration of mammoth proportions, managed by the commander-in-chief
of the American Legion.”

It was at the 1921 convention at Des Moines that our N. E. A. turned its
political conscience over to the keeping of our Fascisti. In the
official “Journal” for November of that year I find a report of the
special committee on this subject. The chairman of it is Superintendent
Gwinn—the gentleman we saw moving from New Orleans to San Francisco to
take the place of the Superintendent of Trombones. This program provides
that all teachers must be American citizens; it provides for flag
worship, and for the American Legion to furnish speakers for patriotic
exercises in the schools. At the very time that this resolution was
published in the official “Journal,” the American Legion was displaying
its fitness to educate our children by conducting a three-days’ drunken
orgy in Kansas City, in the course of which they stripped young girls
naked on the street and wrecked the lobby of the Baltimore Hotel. As I
write, they are further displaying their passionate affection for
democracy by inviting Mussolini to come and address their San Francisco
convention!

Such is the educational department of capitalist imperialism; there is
nothing too murderous and blood-thirsty for them, and no degree of
reaction from which they will shrink. If Premier Mussolini should bring
his castor-oil squad to the next N. E. A. convention, there would be
only the change of language and the absence of black shirts to let him
know that he had crossed the ocean. Our leading reactionaries would be
there to greet him, headed by United States Commissioner of Education
John J. Tigert, who before the Des Moines convention discussed the
subject of Socialism, and pointed out the vote for Debs as proving that
900,000 Americans were advocating the abolition of all law, all
constitutions, and all forms of government! Addressing the school
teachers of San Diego, he sounded a warning against the increasing
tendency of the public schools to delve into sociology and economics,
which subjects were perilously close to “radicalism.” Said Commissioner
Tigert:

  There is altogether too much preaching of these damnable doctrines of
  Bolshevism, Anarchy, Communism and Socialism, in this country today.
  If I had it in my power I would not only imprison, but would
  expatriate all advocates of these dangerous, un-American doctrines. I
  would even execute every one of them—and do it joyfully.

Mr. Tigert is a great favorite at conventions of all sorts; he got his
appointment at the hands of President Harding because of his charm as a
teller of humorous anecdotes. He is able to keep sober enough to tell
them—something which his predecessor in office was unable to do. At the
1919 convention of the N. E. A., held in Milwaukee, this gentleman was
apparently lured into celebrating the last “wet” night in the history of
the United States. An eye-witness writes me:

  He clung desperately to the desk in front of him, and babbled
  incoherently for two hours and a half. People clapped and clapped in
  the monotonous fashion they have when they want a speaker to quit, but
  he still went on. I don’t know where the efficient President Strayer
  was, but nobody stopped him. You ask if it is true that he was carried
  off the stage; he may have been for I got tired and left.

I shall be called a vile gossip for publishing things like this. All I
can answer is that I think it is of the utmost importance for the
American people to know what kind of men the Black Hand puts in charge
of the vast and increasing educational work of our government. At the
present time the chiefs of the N. E. A. are concentrating all their
energies upon the so-called Shepard-Towner bill, providing for a Federal
department of education, with a cabinet member at its head, and an
appropriation of a hundred million dollars. When they get it, there will
be one more boot-legging politician in Washington, and one more source
of reactionary propaganda for the kept press to broadcast.

At the same Des Moines convention at which Commissioner Tigert spread
himself, the chiefs of the N. E. A. showed their intellectual caliber by
putting through two resolutions, the first urging disarmament, and the
second urging military training in the schools! The business men got up
a luncheon for the teachers and themselves, and invited Governor Allen
of Kansas, who at that time saw a glorious vision of himself becoming
president of the United States on the platform of putting all strikers
into jail. Under his supervision the big business vigilantes had been
mobbing and tarring and feathering the organizers of the Nonpartisan
League throughout Kansas. Governor Allen delighted the lunchers by his
wit, of which I give a sample: “The I. W. W.—I beg pardon, the
Nonpartisan League—come in, and we deal with them.” The lunchers laughed
so merrily that the Governor repeated this wit several times: “The I. W.
W.—I beg pardon, the Nonpartisan League!” At an evening meeting John
Gay, representative of the miners, showed again and again how Governor
Allen had lied in his statements concerning the Kansas miners’ strike.
He was booed by the audience, under the supervision of the chairman,
Fred M. Hunter, superintendent of schools of Oakland and president of
the N. E. A.

More recently someone had the bright idea of gathering educators from
all over the world and forming a world federation of educators, to be
run by the N. E. A. gang. The call went out to all nations to send their
school representatives to San Francisco, at the same time as the Oakland
convention of 1923. The delegates came* *—nine-tenths of them
“Bolsheviks,” in the N. E. A. sense of that dreadful word; that is,
people dissatisfied with narrow and futile nationalism, and groping
towards international solidarity. They found themselves assembled in a
hall decorated with enormous American flags, and little dinky flags of
all the other nations; also they found themselves being ushered about by
lads in uniform—members of our high school and college military
organizations! The address of welcome was delivered by our gracious
lady-superintendent from Shelby County, Tennessee, field-secretary and
past President Charl O. Williams; and these world-wise and war-weary
educators, who had traveled all the way from China and Czecho-Slovakia
to hear her golden words, were told that we have wonderful scenery in
the Grand Canyon and the Yosemite; also that:

  Whenever in the name of democracy the serpent of Communism or
  Bolshevism or Anarchy, feared alike in the countries from which you
  come, shall rear its head to strike its poisoned fangs into the
  charter of our liberties, it will be crushed under the heel of a true
  democracy, just as we kill without fear or hesitation, the common,
  ordinary garden variety which plays at our feet and then go on about
  our business.

Of course no public address is delivered nowadays without pious
statements that we dearly love peace; you remember how dearly the Kaiser
loved peace—but let his foes beware! Said past-President Charl O.
Williams: “It has been thought by some that this meeting is wholly in
the interest of peace. It is not so.” And the eloquent lady from
Tennessee explained the other purpose—if another war for liberty should
be called, “please God, we shall not send a soldier who cannot write his
name!” As a piece of pacifist fervor, that almost equals the utterance
of Cal Coolidge, as quoted on the front page of the Los Angeles “Times”
feature section, October 7, 1923: “The only hope for peace lies in the
perfection of the arts of war!”

At this same San Francisco convention, a young high school teacher from
Santa Barbara brought in a proposition for the establishment of an
international university, to teach world problems from the international
point of view. They put a committee in charge of this fine project, and
I predict that when the university appears before the next convention,
it will be a university to teach capitalist nationalism. At the N. E. A.
gathering, which was going on across the bay, Mrs. Fannie Fern Andrews
of Boston, a social worker and tireless advocate of international
understanding, was chairman of a committee which brought in an excellent
report, recommending the teaching of history and civics from the
international point of view. The American Legion agents were on hand to
see that this report was postponed; also the National Security League,
whose representative was orating against “Bolshevism.” The gang-leader
selected to postpone Mrs. Andrews was the president of the Department of
Superintendence, Commissioner Payson Smith of Massachusetts. His motion
was carried with a roar, and a crowd of superintendents in the rear of
the room yelled out: “Hurrah for Payson Smith!”

A study of this convention oratory reveals two prominent features:
first, the fulsome flattery which these great educators pour out upon
one another in public; the devout school-marms and enthralled visitors
are told that they are listening to the eloquence of the gods. Second,
the prominence given in all the discussions to the material side of
education, to administrative routine and “red tape.” This, of course,
comes from Columbia University, whose standard-bearers occupy the
prominent places on the program, put there by George D. Strayer,
professor of Educational Administration at Columbia University. Get this
title clear; it means that he teaches, not education, but the business
of conducting education factories. In other words, education has become
a Big Business in itself—a chain system of mills for the grinding out of
standardized minds. That is the thing they deal with at these N. E. A.
conventions; and if you could imagine the soul of a child being present,
you would picture it as a midge rolled over by a ten-ton truck.

The central bureau of the Department of Superintendence is trying out
many great schemes. For example, no longer are janitors for schools to
be employed individually, there is now to be a contract janitor system,
and one great capitalist firm is to take care of all the schools in a
city. Before long we shall find the N. E. A. recognizing a new section,
and its annual conventions will be listening to the specialists of the
“Department of Janitorial Contracting.”

In other parts of the country the “four-term year” is being tried out;
the children of the poor are to be rushed through, and delivered to
their Big Business masters in six years instead of eight. Also, an
enterprising superintendent from Oklahoma has taken up the problem of
what to do with the teacher during the period that used to be the
teacher’s vacation—a dangerous interlude, when she might read
unauthorized books, such as “The Goslings.” The teacher is now to spend
one summer term attending a university under proper supervision; the
next summer she is to be sent to acquire culture by travel under
supervision; the third summer she is to teach in the summer schools of
the city; and during the fourth she is to be permitted to have
recreation—if she has succeeded in passing the requirements of the
previous three summers.




                              CHAPTER LVII
                      SCHOOLS FOR STRIKE-BREAKERS


We have seen the National Education Association assembling in Boston,
and welcomed by the Chamber of Commerce. We have seen them assembling in
Oakland, and welcomed by the same organization. Wherever they go, they
are welcomed with open arms by Big Business, and the school-marms hasten
to this bear’s embrace. It is no exaggeration to say that from the
earliest days of the public school system its worst enemy has been
organized commercialism. I understand that there are individual business
men of vision, who believe in and work for the schools; but the
organizations, the class groups of the exploiters did all they could to
block the establishment of public schools, realizing that to educate the
lower classes was to prepare the overthrow of wage-slavery.

What Big Business wants of children is their labor. Twenty years ago
Margaret Haley was lobbying at the state capital of Illinois for a bill
to abolish child labor, and she talked with the head of the Levis
family, which owns enormous glass works at Alton. It was provided in the
bill that children shouldn’t work in these factories earlier than
fourteen. Said Mr. Levis: “If you keep the children in school till then,
they aren’t of any use to us when they come.” This he said before the
legislature; and afterwards Miss Haley went up to him asking: “Just what
is it in the public schools which hurts the children?” The answer was:
“All this literature stuff, and history and music. In the schools where
they don’t have such things the children are willing to go to work.”
Before the legislature Mr. Levis threatened that if this bill were
passed the glass works in Alton would move to some other state. The work
of the children was carrying bottles a short distance, and they couldn’t
get men to do it—not at their price. The bill was passed—and immediately
the manufacturers decided that the work could be done by machines.

Having realized that the schools are here to stay, Big Business now
seeks to turn them to its own ends. Modern educators, with their manual
training want to use handwork to develop the brains of the child, while
the manufacturers want to develop the hands only. The educators want to
keep the unity of the system, understanding that where hand and brain
are separated both degenerate. The business interests want schools in
which their workers may be trained; they are willing to pay generously,
in order to get cheap skilled labor which they may use in
strike-breaking. They want two separate school systems, with separate
boards, buildings, funds and corps of teachers. They want no
co-ordination between the two systems—the plan being that when they have
got them separate, they can feed the vocational schools and starve the
cultural schools. The organized teachers of Chicago have understood this
plan from the beginning, and they have explained it to the organized
workers, who have beaten it.

Move up to Minnesota, and you find the same fight, financed by the same
people. The National Association of Manufacturers has had this definite
policy for the schools for a generation, and they have had highly paid
lobbyists and organizers at work all over the country. In Minnesota
these lobbyists came to the legislature with their bill for industrial
training under the direction of employers. The money was to be put up by
the public, but the school authorities were to have nothing to do with
the spending. There was to be a second school system, run by the
manufacturers, and they were to have power to transfer students without
the consent of their parents! Also, the local school boards were to be
permitted to accept petitions to provide industrial education in the
public schools.

Mr. H. E. Miles, agent of the National Association of Manufacturers,
came to Wisconsin and denounced the schools there, declaring that the
vocational schools would never amount to anything until they were run by
the manufacturers themselves. Once more, Big Business was to train its
wage-slaves, and the state was to pay the bill. Mr. Miles made the
beginning of what he wanted, starting a trade school in a tannery in
Sheboygan. Mr. Schultz, a member of the state board, wanted one in his
chair factory; he objected to all scholastic subjects, especially
civics—he wanted only the trade taught. Many of these pupils were
foreigners, many were feeble-minded and could not get beyond the third
grade.

Mr. Charles P. Cary, state superintendent of education, insisted that
these children should spend half their time in self-improvement; but Mr.
Miles would take nothing less than their whole time. He wanted them to
learn but one thing—the exact thing they were going to do the rest of
their lives; anything else was “overeducating” them. Talking with Mr.
Cary in April, 1921, Mr. Miles admitted that what he wanted of the
part-time schools was to train strike-breakers. “I was talking with one
of our great manufacturers,” he said, “and he told me that by putting in
the plant system of training he had made twenty thousand dollars in one
year. Now if that were paid for by the city and state”—and then suddenly
Mr. Miles realized that Mr. Cary was not a man to appreciate this line
of argument; he said abruptly: “It’s a remarkably fine day, is it not?”

We went to war with Germany, thinking to abolish the German system of
autocracy. But here was a high-salaried agent of our biggest business
organization, representing many billions of dollars of invested capital,
devoting his energies to establishing the complete Prussian system in
the American schools! In Germany of the old regime, this system
comprised two distinct types of schools; first, the people’s schools,
and secondly, the gymnasia for the privileged classes. The children of
the poor dropped out at the age of fourteen years; ninety per cent of
them took to part time study and part work, fitting themselves to do
what their fathers were doing. Those who were destined for the gymnasia
pulled out at the third year, and began on foreign languages. A boy who
finished the people’s school had to go back and take up foreign
languages in order to get into the gymnasia, and very few ever achieved
the feat.

This is class education, and it is what the National Association of
Manufacturers has been working for all over the United States. Margaret
Haley told me of a legislative hearing at Springfield, Illinois, at
which they produced Superintendent Cooley of Chicago, who gave an
elaborate lecture on the European system of vocational training, which
he pretended to know. Mr. Frederick Roman had gone to Germany, with
credentials from the governor of North Carolina, and had spent two years
making an independent study. Superintendent Cooley didn’t know about
this, and was taken by surprise when Mr. Roman walked in upon this
legislative hearing, and showed that Cooley had misrepresented both the
law and the facts of the European system. The vocational training which
the Chicago superintendent of schools was recommending for the state of
Illinois was worse than anything in Prussia!

Superintendent Cary of Wisconsin told me the details of his long
struggle with the manufacturers. They informed him that if he did not
obey orders, they would put him out; he must play the political game,
and name the county superintendents selected by them. When he refused,
they put up a candidate against him—whose son was an agent for Ginn &
Company, book publishers. A little later on we shall deal with these
book companies in detail; suffice it here to say that one book agent
offered to put up fifteen thousand dollars for Mr. Cary’s campaign fund,
and the offer was refused. The manufacturers, being unable to get the
trade schools they wanted from Mr. Cary, went to the legislature and got
provision for separate vocational schools, and put their man in charge
of these. When the next election came round, they put up a man for Mr.
Cary’s place, and set out to raise a campaign fund; one contractor sent
out a letter to the others, the book companies rallied—and so Mr. Cary
no longer has anything to say about public education in Wisconsin.

The National Association of Manufacturers, together with the National
Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers’ Association and the rest
of them, now have a comfortable working majority in the Supreme Court,
and they got a decision granting them the right to work our babies in
their factories. They have several million now at work; and you
recollect how in California the Better America Federation tried to force
through the state legislature a bill providing for the dismissal of any
teacher who should discuss with any pupil the desirability of any
amendment to the Constitution. As an illustration of the conditions they
want, take the state of Delaware, which has no compulsory school
attendance law, and where children are bound out to employers on the old
English apprentice system, which is practically the same thing as
selling them into slavery. In Delaware the powder interests, owned by
the Dupont family, have very kindly taken over the educational system of
the state; they have established a School Association, which under the
law does all the buying of supplies and the putting up of school
buildings.




                             CHAPTER LVIII
                    THE NATIONAL SPIES’ ASSOCIATION


Next comes the question of the open shop, the most important in the
world to our National Manufacturers, who have been active in putting
anti-union propaganda into the schools, and in spying on those who deal
with unions. We have seen this going on in city after city—Los Angeles,
Oakland, Portland, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Detroit; and now we
discover the central source from which these impulses come. The National
Association of Manufacturers maintains an “Open Shop Department,” with a
huge campaign fund, and Mr. Noel Sargent as manager. Mr. Sargent
obtained the distribution of his anti-union literature to every school
child of New York, and when he was challenged about this he explained
quite innocently that “the association wished merely to see that
students and teachers understood its view-point.” The American
Federation of Labor made protest to the school authorities; but it
happened, amusingly enough, that at this very time the big labor chiefs
of New York City were doing their best to elect the Tammany ticket—the
very gang under whose direction the distributing had been done!

Cross the continent to Stockton, California, and observe the local
branch of the Black Hand, known as the M. M. & E. (Merchants,
Manufacturers and Employers), engaged in strangling the high school
paper, the “Guard and Tackle,” because the student publishers committed
the crime of accepting the lowest bid for printing the paper—which bid
happened to be made by a concern employing union printers! The editor of
the “Forum,” an independent newspaper of Stockton, is greatly distressed
by this action; he thinks the M. M. & E. is drawing the class lines in
an artificial and fantastic way. Secretary Baker of the M. M. & E.
admits that he has caused advertising to be withdrawn from the school
paper, and admits the reason, but declines to put the statement into
writing, so that his organization would be legally responsible. It
appears that Professor Reed, financial adviser of the school boys, is a
canny gentleman, who advised the boys, at the time they made their
contract with the union concern, to reserve the right to cancel the
contract in case of interference by the business masters of Stockton. So
the work was taken from the union printers; but six months have passed,
and the school paper has not yet got back its lost advertising!

As a rule, we put through these little jobs without disagreeable
publicity; but once in a while accidents happen. We may take the best of
care in selecting our educators, but now and then a Bolshevik will creep
in. Take, for example, the United States Bureau of Education; we have
had some most eminent Bolshevik-hunters in charge of that organization,
and had every right to feel safe about it. Who could have foreseen that
when the United States Commissioner of Education selected a young lady
by the name of Alice Barrows, whose ancestors went back two hundred and
eighty years in our history—a niece of Thomas Brackett Reed, Republican
party boss of the House of Representatives for a generation—who could
possibly have foreseen that this hundred per cent respectable young lady
would turn out to have sympathy for a labor union? Thereby hangs a
story, full of tragedy for our merchants and manufacturers of woolen
materials.

In the course of the war we discovered a great many foreigners who
didn’t speak English and didn’t know how to read and write. That seemed
dangerous in war-time, so we started campaigns of “Americanization.” So
after the war the Bureau of Education sent Miss Alice Barrows to
Passaic, New Jersey, to make a study of the problem of adult education
among the foreigners who work in the woolen mills. It so happened that
only a few months ago there had been a big mass strike among these
workers, and they had formed a union. We were quietly engaged in
strangling this union, when Miss Barrows, entirely neglectful of her
dignity as a government investigator, had the bad taste to go and
consult with the president of the union about teaching the union workers
to speak and read and write English.

Of course, we merchants and manufacturers can’t hold down this foreign
riff-raff without a great many spies to keep track of them. We have had
to develop a whole industry of espionage, almost as elaborate as our
school machine. We have scores of secret service agencies, some of which
spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and have complete
private armies of their own, cavalry, infantry and artillery. Naturally,
we had spies in the office of the Amalgamated Textile Workers of
Passaic, and one of these spies sent in a report concerning a “Mrs.
Alice Borrows of the Educational Division of the United States
Department of Labor.” There were a number of slips in that description,
but we haven’t as yet been able to introduce courses on espionage in our
schools, so our spies are not as highly cultured as we should like.

The report referred to “Mrs. Borrows” as “a misguided zealot,” and
pictured her engaged in “a long and earnest conversation with Mathew
Pluhar, the head of this so-called union.” The two of them were
concocting a vile plot; there were to be night schools for the workers,
and the workers were actually to be permitted to select their own
teachers—who would, of course, teach them Bolshevik doctrines disguised
as English lessons! “This appears to be a very subtle scheme,” said our
spy, and he brought his report in haste to Mr. J. Frank Andres,
secretary of the Passaic Council of the Woolen Manufacturers’
Association. Mr. Andres naturally hastened with it to the superintendent
of schools, so as to warn him against this subtle scheme and keep these
night schools from getting started. But here again an unforeseeable
accident happened. The superintendent of schools, instead of regarding
Miss Barrows as “a misguided zealot,” regarded her as a fellow educator,
and sent for her and put the report into her hands!

Miss Barrows went to interview Mr. Andres, who consented not to punish
her for what she had done, but put it up to her fairly: “Don’t you think
that a corporation worth twenty million dollars ought to have some
control over the policy of the public schools?” There is a cheap
newspaper in Passaic, catering to the lower classes, and this published
the story; the yellow newspapers of New York took it up—they set out to
find out about our spy system, pretending never to have heard of such a
thing! Our Mr. Andres took a high moral position, explaining that “It is
of the highest importance for manufacturers to use agents among their
workers for the dissemination of truth against the doctrines of hatred
and antagonism which are being preached by such men as the leaders of
the Amalgamated.”

But not all our members were as courageous as this. Miss Barrows began
calling upon the presidents of our great woolen corporations, and one of
them, Mr. Forstmann, denied that he had ever heard of such a thing as
industrial espionage, and promised to have it abolished except inside
the mills. Of course, that made us laugh; but it didn’t help to stop the
publicity. In order to hold down the Bolshevik agitators during the late
strike, our city authorities had required all speakers to get a permit;
and we didn’t give permits to unionists. But now came another kind of
union, a parlor Bolshevik affair called the American Civil Liberties
Union, demanding to hold meetings without permits.

They have a clever trick—they hire a hall, and get up and start to read
the Constitution of the United States; they don’t really care anything
about the Constitution, of course, they just want to put us in a hole.
In this case they put up the Polish president of the Amalgamated, to
translate the Constitution into Polish, something which ought to be a
crime in itself. They wanted to make us arrest him, but we were too
clever for that; our chief of police just turned out the lights in the
hall, and then shoved all the foreigners and workingmen outside, and
left the newspaper reporters and parlor Bolsheviks inside to listen to
the Constitution in Polish! Of course, the Bolshevik newspapers made a
great fuss over that; there was a fellow by the name of William Hard,
who made it into a farce comedy in four issues of the “New Republic,”
April 7 to April 28, 1920.

But, as the saying is, we showed them where to get off. To make
everything legal, our city council passed an ordinance, requiring that
everyone who speaks at a public meeting in Passaic shall first get a
permit from the police; and then, to complete the matter, our mayor put
Mr. J. Frank Andres on the school board. Now he is right there to see
that foreigners who belong to labor unions don’t get into the night
schools to learn English or anything else! Also we sent a couple of our
manufacturers down to Washington to try to have that Barrows woman
turned out of her job; but we couldn’t manage that—the politicians were
too much afraid of the publicity. We tried to keep them from printing
her report, but they wouldn’t even do that. It was published as the
Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1920, No. 4, and we hope you won’t send
for it. It is unfit for any decent person to read, as you can tell from
one sentence on page 23:

  It should, however, be clearly understood by the people of Passaic
  that, so long as an espionage system so subversive of mutual trust and
  social confidence among the adult population of Passaic continues, the
  educational process is impossible.




                              CHAPTER LIX
                        BABBITTS AND BOLSHEVIKS


Space is limited, so let us drop the merchants and manufacturers, and
consider another great power, the American Bankers’ Association, which
has gone aggressively into education. This power has formally declared
its disapproval of the popular custom of using such words as “Wall
Street” and “capitalistic” in a disrespectful manner; so, in combination
with the American Institute of Banking, it takes steps to make the new
generation more polite. It has prepared a program of lectures, beginning
with the seventh grammar grade and continuing through the four years of
high school. Its “Committee on Public Education” has prepared a series
of ten lectures, and arranged to distribute them in the schools through
the eighty-three city chapters of the American Institute of Banking.
Bankers from each chapter will give lectures in the public schools at
the rate of one a month during the school year, teaching the economic
system upon which our banks are founded.

What this economic system is can be stated in one sentence: our
government has turned over the most important function of modern life,
the creation of credit, to a group of selfish interests, which are
thereby enabled to confiscate the greater part of the product of the
modern industrial machine. Naturally, the bankers want the schools to
teach that this is a divinely inspired arrangement. We have seen their
educators at work in city after city, with lectures and “thrift
campaigns.” We have seen them in Montana, taking over the whole school
curriculum, and in Colorado taking a good part of the school funds as
well.

Also the lawyers come forward to do their part. At the annual meeting of
the American Bar Association, in Minneapolis, 1923, a “Committee on
American Citizenship” brought in an elaborate report, full of words of
terror: “inroads,” “threatened changes,” “insidiousness,” “dangerous
tendencies,” “dangerous elements,” “long established institutions,”
etc., etc. There are four hundred “Red” newspapers, with five million
readers, say the lawyers of the United States; and these lawyers propose
to protect the people by taking charge of the schools. All local bar
associations are to organize committees, and there is to be “unity of
policy and action” all over the country; “direct contact will be made
with all our schools and colleges.”

And already, it appears, some of the local lawyers have got to work. In
the September, 1923, issue of “School Life,” published by the Bureau of
Education, I learn that the Indiana State Bar Association is
co-operating with the schools, sending speakers on the Constitution; and
of course this will be the same thing, the lecturers will say nothing
about the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, they will interpret it
solely as an instrument for the perpetuation of privilege.

Next, the National Chamber of Commerce, under the guidance of Professor
Strayer of Columbia University, Educator-in-Chief of J. P. Morgan &
Company. This mighty school magnate has organized a committee for
co-operation between chambers of commerce and city school departments.
We have seen this “co-operation” working in many cities, resembling the
alliance between the lady and tiger—“they came back from the ride with
the lady inside!” The co-operating organization is known by the imposing
title of “The American City Bureau of the National Committee for
Chambers of Commerce Co-operation with Public Schools”; think what a
delicious mouthful for a functionary—executive secretary of the A. C. B.
N. C. C. C. C. P. S.!

This mammoth institution issued a report based upon a survey of schools
in nine hundred cities, from which most optimistic conclusions were
drawn by the “Outlook,” house organ of the firm of God, Mammon and
Company. Miss Josephine Colby, a “kicked-out” union teacher, wrote to
the “Outlook,” pointing out how misleading this editorial was, because
it gave the impression that the Chamber of Commerce report represented
the entire country, whereas it covered the large city schools, which are
the best, and left out the rural schools, which are the worst. Needless
to say, the “Outlook” had no space for this letter; and that is why
boards of education all over the United States recommend the “Outlook”
as proper reading for goose-herds and goslings.

Next, the National Industrial Conference Board, which is the research
and propaganda bureau of a long list of Big Business associations—cotton
manufacturers, hardware, paper and pulp, electrical, chemical, wool,
automobiles, boot and shoe, metal trades, erectors, founders, rubber,
silk, railway cars, etc. Here is one of the most powerful “educational”
organizations of the country; its active manager is a consulting
engineer of the General Electric Company, who got his education in
Austria and Germany, and is working to introduce the German system of
slave training. This great organization has been active all over the
country in censoring text-books and supervising the contents of our
children’s minds. At its instance the Chamber of Commerce in St. Louis
caused Washington University to cease using the book entitled “Community
and National Life,” by Professor Charles H. Judd, head of the department
of education of the University of Chicago.

Also, this National Industrial Conference Board discovered that the
Bureau of Education of the United States government was circulating a
series of pamphlets by Professor Judd, entitled “Lessons in Community
and National Life”; which pamphlets were discovered to be full of most
terrible Bolshevik material. They quite definitely labored to prejudice
the minds of little children against the leading doctrines of our
organized American manufacturers. Consider, for example, a sentence such
as the following:

  Those in favor of the minimum wage for men say that men should receive
  a wage sufficient to marry and rear a family without the dangers that
  come from insufficient employment and wages.

Or consider a criminal Bolshevik utterance like the following:

  The prohibition of night work, the eight-hour day, and the minimum
  wage for women are necessary to protect the health of the mothers of
  the next generation.

Or an incendiary statement such as this:

  Social insurance helps to maintain normal family standards.

Again, think of telling a tender young child about a workingman who
contracted tuberculosis, so that his oldest boy had to leave school, and
the mother had to go out to day sewing, with the result that “the young
children ran wild.” Then follows the subtle propaganda:

  The misfortune of this family could have been prevented if a law
  providing for social insurance against sickness, or health insurance,
  had been in effect.

There was a whole list of Bolshevik utterances such as this, which you
may find quoted and discussed in a pamphlet published by the National
Industrial Conference at Boston. The title of the pamphlet is: “A Case
of Federal Propaganda in our Public Schools.” The pamphlet doesn’t state
what was done about this matter, so I mention that the circulation of
the wicked propaganda by the United States government was immediately
stopped.

Next, the National Association for Constitutional Government, which is
sending out lecturers to talk to school children on the Constitution. A
teacher in St. Paul tells me about a woman from this organization, who
was allowed half an hour in a high school of St. Paul, and devoted two
minutes to the Constitution, and twenty-eight minutes to the
Bolsheviks—meaning, of course, everybody who believes in municipal milk
inspection and government control of railroads. This lady has just
turned up in Southern California, having got herself transferred to the
Better America Federation. She lectures in the drawing-rooms of our rich
ladies, and feeds them all the old garbage—free love, nationalization of
women, the communization of children, the tearing down of churches. She
lends spice to her discourse by telling how she herself in her youth was
seduced by these cults of Satan. It is noted that no one is ever given
an opportunity to question her, and she never appears before those
organizations whose rules provide that both sides of every question
shall be heard. She has a new and curious formula for getting at the
truth: “If you want to know about Socialism, don’t go to the
Socialists!” To a friend of mine she said, with lifted eyebrows: “Do you
really think Upton Sinclair is sincere?”

Next, the National Security League. From a syndicated newspaper article,
occupying two columns, I cut the following head-lines:

/* LESSONS IN PATRIOTISM ARE FREE FOR TEACHERS

REVISION IN STUDY OF CIVICS ALL OVER COUNTRY HELPED BY NOBLE WORK OF
LEAGUE SECRETARY */

In the text which follows I learn about this wonderful secretary, the
daughter of a “patriotic instructor” of the G. A. R., who now maintains
an office in New York, and is the “personal friend” of the seven hundred
thousand school teachers of the United States. Many of these teachers do
not know much about the Constitution; being afraid to reveal the fact to
their supervisor, they are glad to write for advice to a specialist in
patriotism. In the past five years a quarter of a million teachers have
had either direct or indirect relationship with this system. Twenty-six
states have passed laws requiring the teaching of the Constitution in
the schools, and this secretary is right there with the dope, especially
prepared for children of every age. For example: “The Supreme Court is
the greatest contribution to free government ever made, in that it
exists to protect the people from the tyranny of the government they
themselves set up.” In other words, nine venerable gentlemen, seven of
them the lifelong hired men of great corporations, have usurped to
themselves the power of annuling laws of Congress—including a law
intended to save several million children from slavery in glass
factories and cotton mills and enable them to go to school.

There are numerous other great organizations of Bolshevik hunters
supervising our schools—the American Civic Association, the “America
First” Publicity Association, the International Association of Rotary
Clubs, the Inter-Racial Council, the National American Council, the
Sentinels of the Republic—a whole universe of Babbitts! The New York
“Commercial,” a daily newspaper of Wall Street, makes a regular feature
of Bolshevik hunting. It has an “expert” who publishes a daily
department, “The Searchlight,” all got up in official fashion, with
index numbers ready for filing in your spy cabinet: “File No. 21, Report
No. 7, November 21, 1923, Schools and Colleges, Radicalism In”—this kind
of thing gives delight to the Babbitt soul, like a stuffed cat to a
baby. This particular report deals with the National Student Forum and
its branches in the colleges, particularly the Harvard Liberal Club. It
quotes me as approving these organizations. The passage is taken from
“The Goose-step,” page 466, and appears in the New York “Commercial” as
follows:

  As an illustration of the activities of this group I mention that the
  Harvard Liberal Club, during the year 1922, had sixty luncheon
  speakers in five months, including such radicals as Clark Getts,
  Lincoln Steffens, Florence Kelley, Raymond Robins, Frank Tannenbaum,
  Roger Baldwin, Percy Mackaye, Clare Sheridan, Norman Angell, and W. E.
  B. Dubois.

The New York “Commercial” stopped there, and stopped, according to the
rules of punctuation, with a period. But, as it happens, that period
constitutes a lie; for in “The Goose-step” the punctuation mark is not a
period, but a semi-colon, followed by the words:

  Properly balanced by a group of respectable people, including Admiral
  Sims, Hamilton Holt, President Eliot, and a nephew of Lord Bryce.

You see what a dirty piece of work! The Harvard Liberal Club is what its
name implies, an organization believing in free discussion and a hearing
for both sides. I gave an account of its activities which proved it to
be that. The New York “Commercial,” desiring to prove the Harvard
Liberal Club a “radical” organization, deliberately mutilates my
sentence, and represents the Harvard Liberal Club as inviting only
radicals, and myself as endorsing such a procedure in colleges!

Now skip one or two thousand miles, to where the Sioux Indians once
chased the buffalo, and the capitalist Indians now chase professors
through college halls. The legislature of Iowa passed a law providing
for a course in “citizenship,” and the state superintendent appointed a
committee to prepare a course, the chairman being Harry G. Plum,
professor of European History at the state university; a Columbia Ph.D.,
author of several historical works, and an entirely respectable person.
Professor Plum, with the help of his graduate students, prepared a
syllabus, in which he made so bold as to discuss American problems on
the basis of facts. So Professor Plum became a target for the arrows of
the Ottumwa “Courier,” which insisted that high school students ought
not hear about such a topic as “the English Industrial Revolution.” Said
the editor of the “Courier”: “To the teacher of history industrial
revolution may mean a change in mechanical methods, but to the radical
it means overthrow of government.”

Furthermore, Editor Powell objected to the use of such words as
“problem” and “difficulty” in connection with our civilization. High
school students ought not to know that there are any problems or
difficulties—unless possibly it be the problem or difficulty of
compelling college professors to obey their masters! Also Editor Powell
would not permit Professor Plum to list the I. W. W. among labor
organizations; he would not let the professor make frequent references
to “the capitalist group” and to “capital and labor”; he would not let
the professor state that the farmers were responsible for the Populist
movement and the Nonpartisan League; nor would he permit the suggestion
to be made that high school pupils should “participate in the working
out of problems.” Editor Powell was so determined about all this that he
carried the matter to the state legislature and forced an investigation,
at which Professor Plum was grilled, and the university faculty was made
unhappy. As Editor Powell put it in his paper: “Iowa City does not want
any question to arise as to the brand of teaching at the university,
while the big appropriations for the institution are pending before the
legislature.” Needless to say, the wicked syllabus was thrown out of the
schools of the state.




                               CHAPTER LX
                         THE SCHOOLS OF SOCONY


Among the great capitalists who have been making over our schools, the
most active has been Mr. John D. Rockefeller. Mr. Rockefeller
established the General Education Board, an institution with an
endowment of a hundred and twenty-five million dollars, for the purpose
of exercising supervision over American education. Of course this is all
supposed to be entirely altruistic; its purpose is to improve our
standards of education, and has no relationship whatever to the fact
that Mr. Rockefeller is engaged in collecting tens of millions of
dollars every year from a long list of our biggest industries. I have
discussed this matter in detail in “The Goose-step”; but it is of such
overwhelming importance to the schools, that I must repeat the facts
here. The Rockefeller General Education Board is without doubt the most
powerful single agency now engaged in keeping our schools subservient to
special privilege. Dr. W. J. Spillman, of the United States Bureau of
Agricultural Economics, tells of the efforts of the Rockefeller board to
control the agricultural colleges in the different states, and of the
activities of their agent, David F. Houston, ex-president of the
University of Texas, and Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson,
to keep the farmers of the United States from learning anything about
how they were “deflated” by the Federal Reserve banks.

Dr. Houston is a member of the Southern Education Board, one of the
Rockefeller organizations, and later became chairman of the Federal
Reserve and Farm Loan Board. Dr. Spillman was on the inside all through
the Houston administration of the Department of Agriculture, and
portrays his chief as “lying, cheating and intriguing, resorting to
every device in order to keep the facts about farming costs from being
collected.” You see, the farmers were expected to raise food and sell it
below the cost of production; they are still being expected to do this,
and are doing it. There was circulated through Dr. Houston’s department
a typewritten sheet, said to have come from Mr. Rockefeller’s General
Education Board, and concurred in by Secretary Houston, forbidding the
department to make any investigation which would determine the cost of
producing farm products; no one should ever hint at over-production in
farm products, and the sole business of the department was to persuade
the farmers to produce more.

This General Education Board possesses unlimited funds, pays no taxes,
and renders no accounting to anyone. It employs a huge staff of experts
in lobbying and wire-pulling. These experts got control of the farm
demonstration work in the South, and because Dr. Spillman fought them in
the North and West, they did everything in their power to handicap his
work. I refer you to “The Goose-step” for the story of Professor T. N.
Carver of Harvard University, who became head of a government department
for which the Rockefeller board put up the funds. Professor Carver was
an honest man, who really wanted to help the farmers, and worked out an
elaborate program. It was turned down flat by the Rockefeller board, and
Professor Carver told them in plain language what he thought of them,
and then quit. In consequence of such intrigues on the part of the
Rockefeller experts, the farmers of the Northwest are now flat on their
backs, and ignorant of how it happened, or what to do about it.

Hundreds of expert super-educators, with strings of college degrees, are
put upon the payrolls of the General Education Board, and sent to every
portion of the United States to run our schools free of charge; and if
you were to ask the General Education Board, or the capitalist press of
the United States, you would be assured that never, never could it
happen that anyone of these educators would cease for one moment from
his altruistic labors, or think about anything so base as the interests
of the Rockefeller corporations. But I invite you now to give attention
to the story of Mr. Granville Cubage, who in 1922, announced himself as
candidate for superintendent of public instruction in Union County,
Arkansas. Mr. Cubage got out a pamphlet entitled “How Arkansas Schools
Lost a Million Dollars,” and here is the strange story he tells. Mr.
Cubage’s opponent in the race for state superintendent was Mr. A. B.
Hill, state high school inspector at a salary of thirty-five hundred
dollars a year paid by the Rockefeller General Education Board, together
with an expense allowance of twelve hundred dollars. Mr. Hill’s second
in rank got the same salary and allowance of Rockefeller money, his
third in rank got the same, and his fourth in rank, the supervisor of
Negro schools, got a little more—presumably to salve his feelings and
preserve his prestige among the people of Arkansas, who do not like
Negro schools.

Mr. Cubage, who has been for the past fourteen years a teacher at the
State Normal School, goes on to explain how these four great educators
have spent most of their time playing politics, and have secured one act
after another from the state legislature, building up the power of their
machine. Mr. Hill obtained the power to grade the schools, and to hire
and fire teachers, and to give orders to the county superintendents—so
on through a long list of powers. That may be all right, of course—if
the educators are really educators, trying to serve the people. Also it
may be proper that the state board of education should be filled up with
Rockefeller agents, drawing Rockefeller salaries; but are they really
serving the people?

Read on a little further, and you discover that Mr. Cubage is advocating
that the great oil and pipe line companies, principally Standard
Oil-Rockefeller concerns, should pay a “severance tax” upon the natural
wealth which they draw from the state of Arkansas. And what have the
great Rockefeller educators to say about that?

Mr. Cubage, in his campaign circular, tells us about an amendment to the
state constitution, providing that the people shall pay more taxes to
provide more money for the schools. At the meeting of the State
Teachers’ Association, November 11, 1920, such an amendment was
approved—but also containing a provision for the severance tax.
Immediately Mr. Hill rose in the convention, and proposed that a
“Committee on Phraseology” be appointed, to put the finishing touches to
this resolution. Mr. Hill himself was not named on this committee, but
his influence counted—for when the bill came out from the committee,
with the “finishing touches” complete, it was discovered that the
principal “finishing touch” had finished the severance tax provision!
This provision had entirely disappeared, and Amendment 14, as approved
by the teachers of the state, said nothing about such a tax. In order to
beat Mr. Cubage, who favored the tax, and elect Mr. Hill, who opposed
it, the gang assessed all the Arkansas school teachers three times, and
made all county and city superintendents contribute one hundred dollars
each to the campaign fund!

Later on, when the legislature came to consider bills providing for a
severance tax, the great Rockefeller educators were at the state
capital, advising the legislators that these bills were objectionable.
And so, the next time you read about the abundant generosity of Mr.
Rockefeller, the greatest educational philanthropist of all time, don’t
forget this little story from Union County, Arkansas. By paying out a
few thousand dollars for the improvement of Arkansas education, Mr.
Rockefeller’s industries expected to save a million dollars a year in
one single bill! I am sorry I have not access to the complete files of
the General Education Board and of the Standard Oil Company, so that I
can tell you how many tens of millions a year have been added to Mr.
Rockefeller’s income by this simple little scheme of paying the salaries
of educational politicians!

When you question our great captains of industry about proceedings such
as this, they make one defense—they have to do it, because the other
fellow is doing it. We must give Mr. Rockefeller the benefit of this
plea; the rivals of the Standard Oil Company have also been buying up
educators and state governments. Especially they have done this in order
to get school lands which have been discovered to contain oil.

I have before me a copy of the Oklahoma “Leader” for July 1, 1922,
telling the story of Robert H. Wilson, then candidate of the Black Hand
for governor of Oklahoma. It appears that Wilson had been a member of
the School Land Commission, and he had awarded a lease for a hundred and
eighteen thousand acres of school land to an oil operator by the name of
Marland, who made sixty-seven million dollars out of this lease and
others. The scandal became so great that the legislature took up the
matter and prescribed terms for releasing; but the School Land
Commission met and solemnly took the stand that the act of the
legislature was unconstitutional, and proceeded to continue Marland’s
holdings on the old terms. In the court battle which ensued, the state
of Oklahoma obtained $1,400,000 from the Marland interests—a sum which
the School Land Commission had endeavored to throw away. If the school
commission had held on to the lands and leased them upon proper terms,
the schools of Oklahoma would have had not less than thirty million
dollars.

It is interesting to note the outcome of the gubernatorial election. Mr.
Wilson, the candidate of the Black Hand, was beaten by “Jack” Walton,
hero of the Farmer-Labor party. Immediately afterwards it was discovered
that all Walton’s campaign expenses had been met by the oil interests,
and he proceeded to kick over his party and run the state of Oklahoma
for these oil interests—among other things, turning out of office a
radical educator, president of the Agricultural College. Governor Walton
would still, no doubt, have been running the state for the oil men, if
he had not made the mistake of attacking the Ku Klux Klan.

While we are in this Southwestern country, with its new rich and its new
poor, let us take time to consider the great Invisible Empire, which is
so rapidly taking over the control of our political life. Wherever you
travel in the West nowadays, people consider it necessary to ask whether
you belong; so I answer that I have been invited to join, but have not
availed myself of the opportunity. Many klansmen will read this book,
and discover that some of the things they want are the things I want;
but I venture to tell them that they will not get these things through
the Klan, whose leaders got rich in a hurry, and are now hand in glove
with Wall Street. A great many Klan members are former Socialists, who
have got tired of waiting for something to happen; they will wait a
while longer, and then the class struggle will begin inside the Klan,
and its membership will decide whether Americanism means wage slavery
and no more.

For the present I record that Socialist school teachers are being
hounded by the Klan, in places as far apart as Oklahoma and Indiana. How
intelligent the conduct of the organization is, you may judge from the
fact that the school board of the large city of Dallas, Texas, has been
formally condemned by the Klan, and sentenced to extinction at the next
election. The local Klan potentate wrote officially to the school board
in substance as follows: “We have been informed that the wife of the
manager of the lunch room at the Forest Avenue High School has told her
husband that if he joins the Ku Klux Klan, she will leave him. Now we
beg to inform you that the Ku Klux Klan is a one hundred per cent
Christian and American organization, and it resents such statements; and
we expect the school board to see that they are not repeated and that
proper punishment is meted out to persons in the school that make such
remarks.” The Dallas school board committed the offense of filing this
letter without action, and so it is slated to go.




                              CHAPTER LXI
                          THE RIOT DEPARTMENT


Next, our military men present themselves as educators; nothing would
please them more than to take over our schools entirely, and make a
hundred thousand little West Points. They have made much progress, and
Big Business cheers them on, and puts up the money for their propaganda.
We have seen the N. E. A. turning over its conscience to the American
Legion, which may be described as the Riot Department of the plutocracy.
In city after city the chambers of commerce and merchants and
manufacturers have built palatial club-houses for the Legion; they are
subsidizing its worst activities, and keeping its inciters of violence
upon their secret payrolls. They are working out a program to have a
representative of the Legion as one of the orators at every school
commencement. All reactionaries understand that to get the school
children into uniform and drill them is the one sure way to save us from
modern thought. Hear, for example, General Pershing, orating at a
banquet tendered to him by the Chamber of Commerce and its Riot
Department in San Diego. According to the Los Angeles “Times”:

  More than 500 persons whistled, applauded and pounded the tables when
  the commander of the United States Army in war and in peace paid his
  compliments to the Reds. “Military training with its teaching of
  submission to the will of authority is one of the best methods of
  teaching young and old the sacredness and the power of the
  Constitution of the United States,” said Gen. Pershing. “I firmly
  believe that a sane program of military training for every young man
  is a great immunity against the idle, insidious and foolish propaganda
  of the I. W. W., the parlor Bolsheviks and all other shades of Reds of
  which there are too many right now.”

Thus the “Times”; and if you think the schools are not drinking in this
poison, I refer you to “School Life,” the official publication of the
United States Bureau of Education, December, 1921. The front page of
this magazine opens with an article by Commissioner Tigert,
self-appointed slaughterer of Socialists. The title is “Educational
Aspects of the American Legion’s Convention.” Let me make clear to you
before you go on that this is that same hideous orgy in Kansas City, to
which I have previously referred. You may find a sketch of it at the end
of my novel, “They Call Me Carpenter,” and a detailed account published
in the “Nation” for November 23, 1921. After you have read these, read
how the convention is made to appear to the school children. The
headlines continue:

  Presence of International Figures Made Occasion a Memorable Event.
  School Children Impress General Diaz. Program of Americanization
  Enthusiastically Indorsed. Policies and Principles of Legion. Program
  for American Education Week.

Then follows a list of the “international figures” who were
present—Marshal Foch, Admiral Beatty, General Diaz, General Jacques,
General Pershing, Vice-president Coolidge, etc. “Gigantic parade of
40,000 heroes of the Great War, the banquet given in honor of the
distinguished gentlemen,” etc. “Thousands of school children lined along
the boulevards to see Foch.” And here is the message of the pious
Catholic general to America: “You boys, when you grow up, must work. You
little girls, when you grow up, must remember to pray.”

They are getting the little children into the Boy Scout movement, which
is the first step. They get them into uniforms and march them, and teach
them the military ideal of obedience. The Boy Scouts become more and
more warlike every hour; and the men who run the movement become more
warlike in their attitude toward the school authorities. Says Mr. O. G.
Wood, quoted in our Butte story:

  One Scout Master in Butte by the name of Owen used to come before the
  school board and tell them what to do in regard to allowing the public
  schools for Scout meetings. He fixed the dates and no change was made.
  He threatened to have any member of the board beaten at the next
  election if an objection was hinted at.

For the high school and college boys they have what they call the
Reserve Officers’ Training Corps; wherever possible, they compel them to
serve and where the people have prevented this, they lure the boys by
uniforms and music and badges and banners and holidays in camp. They
teach them to plunge bayonets into human bodies, and to snarl and howl
like wild beasts while doing it. Says Mr. Ray McKaig, of Boise, Idaho:

  In 1922 one very prominent club woman came home to find a group of
  children watching her fourteen-year-old boy bayoneting a dummy and
  screaming while so doing. To her horror she found that he was learning
  this at high school. She learned that the commandant, a West Point
  officer, was deliberately instilling arrogance into the boys.
  Oftentimes the boys, in squads led by a corporal and fully armed,
  would walk down the sidewalk brushing others in the gutter. A large
  public funeral was held of one of the leading Boise citizens, and the
  high school boys were having a military drill. With insolence
  characteristic of militarism “made in Germany” these young future
  soldiers were ordered to break through the funeral procession, instead
  of waiting quietly until it had passed by.

One of the lads who was being taught militarism in Camp Kearney,
California, turned traitor and delivered to me the typewritten
memorandum of a lecture on “Military Psychology,” delivered July 26,
1920, by Robert J. Halpin, Lt. Colonel of Infantry. It consists of
approximately fifteen hundred words of blood-thirsty raving; I cannot
spare space for it all, but I quote one paragraph from the beginning and
one from the end, and assure you that the rest is all the same:

  This is a period of a truce. The Great Wars of the world have not been
  fought. . . .

  Gentlemen: There will be wars until the end of time. Everlasting peace
  is for the grave—not for life. The wish for everlasting peace is born
  of fear and ignorance. It is a sure sign of weakness and a declining
  civilization.

This is an old, old story—the training of little children to the
murdering of their fellowmen and calling it glory. In the old days this
was Kultur, and we went to war to put a stop to it, but apparently have
not done so. The capitalists who now rule Germany are being robbed by
the capitalists of France; and they are preparing the school children of
Germany for the next war, in which they will gain a chance to rob the
capitalists of France. In a “German History for Schools,” which is used
in all the schools of present-day Germany, it is stated that French
airplanes bombarded German railways before the declaration of war; this
in spite of the fact that the German ambassador at Paris asserted the
falsity of the charge.

This is wicked of the Germans, and ought to be stopped at once. The
French are getting ready to stop it; the capitalists of France, who are
robbing the capitalists of Germany, are training the children of France
for the next war, by teaching them from text-books equally full of lies.
There is a history of the great war, in use throughout the schools and
written by a school director; “For Our France” is the title, and in it
the Germans are described as “a host of savages, whose profession is
war, and who go about to despoil, to devastate, and to terrorize.” Under
the heading of “Entertainment” there is a series of questions adapted to
children, dealing with the savageness of the Teutons. There is also a
reader for primary and secondary schools, full of terrible stories of
murder and rape; also a volume entitled “Les Lectures des Petits,” that
is, readings for young children, full of such stories. In Belgium there
is an “Atlas Manual of Geography,” intended for use in high schools,
published four years after the end of the war, describing the Germans as
“brigands, thieves and assassins”; they are not to be received into the
League of Nations, but must be kept under surveillance, like the Negroes
and the Malay races—even these have hearts but the Germans have none.

Strange as it may seem to you, they are teaching such stuff, not merely
to the children of Belgium and France, but to the children of America
who study French! For example, a standard text-book, Chardenal’s
“Complete French Course,” New and Revised Edition, 1920, is full of the
basest French chauvinism: Germany was the sole author of the war; the
real hero of the world, and of France, is always the warrior; the sacred
places of France are the victorious battle-fields, and the scenes of
peace conferences such as Versailles. The date of the signing of this
most infamous of all the world’s peace treaties has a mystic
significance, because it was four hundred years previously, on that same
day, June 28, 1519, that Charles V was elected Emperor!

There are some really sane men writing on the subject of war and peace
in France at the present time; but never would it do for American school
children to read anything by Anatole France or Romain Rolland! Any more
than it would do for them to read the writings of American
humanitarians, such as Jane Addams or David Starr Jordan. Says Dr.
Jordan, concerning our school text-books:

  They have glorified deeds of blood and celebrated most persistently
  the heroes of the battle-field. The heroes of peace barely appear on
  their pages, and they fail to recognize that the actual heroisms which
  have brightened the records of war like flashes of lightning in a
  thunderstorm are not products of war. They represent the divine in man
  revealed in desperate conditions, in wallowing in physical and moral
  mud, midst the barbaric loneliness of war.

And, needless to say, our chambers of commerce with their Riot
Department are going to see that we continue to get text-books of this
sort. Says Colonel Galbraith of this Riot Department, at a May Day
meeting, 1921:

  We will see what kind of courses these teachers are giving and what
  text-books they use. If we find that they are disloyal we’ll tell you,
  and you can kick them out. We don’t care what you do with them.

And in another newspaper item I read:

  Captain Walter I. Joyce, chairman of a sub-committee of the
  Americanization Committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, is
  appointed to meet with the representatives of the American Book
  Company to scrutinize history text-books gotten out by that company in
  order to prevent the creeping in of un-American propaganda. The
  investigation of American histories has been going on for the past two
  years, and as a result thereof, two histories have been discarded by
  the Board of Education of New York and several are under consideration
  at the present time in Boston.

This kind of thing has been the rule all over the country, and the
National Council for the Prevention of War has been making a study of
standard text-books of history to determine the result. Here they are,
briefly stated:

  Fully 25% of the space in each approved text-book on history is
  devoted to war. “The test of a state is its ability to wage war,” is a
  statement frequently found in text-books. “Americans demonstrated
  their instinctive military talent.” “Fair field of battle,” “valor,”
  “bravery,” “audacious courage,” “brilliant,” “magnificent drive,” “our
  great adventure,” are terms frequently used to glorify war.

  Underlying conditions predisposing to international friction, such as
  commercial rivalry, territorial ambitions, centralized autocratic
  government control and the maintenance of gigantic military and naval
  establishments, are rarely, and usually very inadequately, analyzed.

  In analyzing the results of war, emphasis is always laid on the
  territorial gains acknowledged in the treaty of peace. If reference is
  made at all to tremendous destruction and cost of war, it is to point
  out that it was worth while.

  No attempt is made in the text-books to understand developments in
  Russia. Sweeping terms are used in characterizing the present regime
  there; such phrases as “two sinister figures, Lenin and Trotzky,”
  “brazenly serving Germany’s ends,” “the anarchy known as Bolshevism,”
  are frequent.

  In treating of the world war, all recent text-books perpetuate the
  hate and rancor engendered by the war. The guiltlessness of the allies
  is always proclaimed.




                              CHAPTER LXII
                   THE BLINDFOLD SCHOOL OF PATRIOTISM


Needless to say, it is not only the military men who are revising our
school text-books; all the business interests are wielding their blue
pencils, and likewise the religious groups, and the racial and national
groups. In New York City, Commissioner of Accounts David Hirshfield is
leading a crusade against those who want to bring up our school children
without hatred for England. The commissioner held a series of hearings,
and gave an opportunity for all patriots to vent their dissatisfaction
with school text-books which failed to make proper capital out of Betsy
Ross and John Paul Jones, and which committed such offenses as
mentioning that Sam Adams was a smuggler, or that Alexander Hamilton had
said: “Your people, Sir, is a great beast.” Commissioner Hirshfield
published at the expense of the city of New York an elaborate pamphlet,
listing the offenses of such “un-American” text-books—David S. Muzzey’s
“American History,” Willis M. West’s “History of the American People,”
Albert B. Hart’s “School History,” and so on.

This crusade has spread widely, directed by what might be called the
blindfold school of patriotism. According to this school, all our
ancestors are equally to be revered, regardless of the fact that they
called one another all the vile names in the dictionary; they are
equally to be followed, although they lead in opposite directions. The
bewildered historian must manage to agree with both Thomas Jefferson and
Alexander Hamilton, with Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln; a
generation from now he will learn to agree with Calvin Coolidge and
Eugene V. Debs!

It is easy to poke fun at Chinese ancestor-worship transplanted to
America; but, on the other hand, one does not like to be in the same
boat with those Anglo-maniacs whose purpose in writing text-books is to
line us up with the British ruling-classes in their future wars. It is
hard to take one’s choice between Commissioner Hirshfield, and, for
example, Professor Greenlaw of the University of North Carolina, whose
“Builders of Democracy” is one of the most popular text-books in our
schools. Here is a book of more than three hundred and fifty closely
printed pages, full of Anglo-American military glory. The first part is
“The Call to the Colors,” and that is all American flags and battles.
The second part is “The Builders and Their Work,” and that is Tennyson
and Elizabethan seamen and the mariners of England, and “Burke, the
Friend of America.” Part Three, “Soldiers of Freedom,” is “The Soul of
Jeanne d’Arc,” and “Vive la France!” and “A Chant of Love for England,”
and all the battles and glories of the late war. I search this book from
cover to cover without finding one line about the builders of industrial
democracy. There is a short section entitled “The Growth of Sympathy for
the Poor Man,” which gives us “A Cotter’s Saturday Night,” and oddly
enough, “To a Mouse”! But there isn’t one word about labor, there isn’t
one word about Socialism, there isn’t one hint to any school child of
the colossal struggle for economic self-government now going on all over
the world, with its roll of heroes and martyrs as magnificent as any
ever sung in the days of political revolutions.

All over this country the hunt for the unorthodox text-book is going on,
and the principle upon which the revisers are working is set forth by
Edward Mandel, district superintendent of schools in New York, who
ordered every school principal in the city to direct his teachers of
history to examine the history books and transmit reports. Said Mr.
Mandel: “The question to be considered is not one of whether statements
made in the text-books are truthful and based on fact, but whether
propriety would be observed if they were included in them.” You will not
be surprised to hear that this educational gang-leader went up to
Albany, and was active in pushing through a series of bills known to the
teachers as the “spoils bills,” their purpose being to undermine the
merit system and give the gang entire control over promotions; and when
he got through with this job, he was promoted to be associate
superintendent at a considerably higher salary.

The final goal of these patriots has been reached in Arkansas, where the
state legislature has just passed a bill providing exactly how American
history shall be taught; the teachers are to avoid “a mere recital of
names and events,” and devote themselves to “instilling an understanding
and a love of country,” etc. In other words, there is to be no more
history, only propaganda; and any teacher who slips up on it is to be
fined from one hundred to five hundred dollars, or to serve in jail from
thirty days to six months, or both. As we used to say when we were
youngsters, and had got somebody down with our thumb in his eye: “Now
will you be good?”

The leader in the crusade against what he calls “treason texts” is Mr.
Charles Grant Miller, organizing director of the “Patriot League.” Mr.
Miller tells me how “for years in my newspaper work I have encountered
evils arising from the rivalries of text-book publishers and their
unscrupulous methods of manipulating school officials and intimidating
teachers.” He then goes on to tell how the Patriot League has set to
work to give the text-book companies a dose of their own medicine. The
haughty American Book Company has been brought to its knees; they
submitted to Mr. Miller the proofs of a new school history, which had
won the endorsement of the Sons of the American Revolution. But it
didn’t suit Mr. Miller; he specified over three hundred unsatisfactory
passages, and the American Book Company agreed to accept ninety-five per
cent of these corrections. It has just sent Mr. Miller proofs of another
school history, which he finds to be ninety-nine per cent all right from
his viewpoint. Then they asked him to read in manuscript a new high
school history; says Mr. Miller:

  I have had a conference with the full editorial and business staffs of
  the American Book Company, within the last few days, and am satisfied
  that, whether for business reasons or because of real conversion to
  our cause, they will, for the present at least, issue no more texts
  that are not patriotic.

I have not undertaken a thorough study of school text-books; most of my
readers have them in their own homes, and can investigate for
themselves. However, I have on my desk a few samples, which were thrown
at my head by indignant teachers and pupils in the course of my travels.
For example, here is “Economics and the Community,” published by the
Century Company, and written by Professor J. A. Lapp, a prominent
Catholic propagandist. I consult the index for the most important aspect
of “economics and the community”—that is, Socialism—and I find it is not
mentioned! And then I take up a book prepared for the education of
immigrants, Howard and Brown’s “United States,” published by Appleton. I
glance over it, and in six different places I find enthusiastic praise
of our great American newspapers. Also, the unsuspecting immigrants are
told that “in our great country there is almost always work for
everybody.” At the time this book was handed to me there were nearly
five million unemployed in the United States! Later on the immigrants
are told that “in the South Central and Southern states there are
millions and millions of acres of good land which cannot now be
cultivated because there are not laborers enough.” Nothing is said, of
course, about the rents the poor immigrants will have to pay for this
land, or what the bankers will charge them for crop and chattel
loans—see “The Book of Life,” a quotation from a report of the United
States comptroller of the currency.

And while we are dealing with country problems, let me quote from the
letter of Mr. W. J. Hannah, of Big Timber, Montana, chairman of a rural
school board:

  As you know, even the grade schools are now teaching “scientific
  agriculture.” My boy of twelve has just placed in my hand Stone-Mills
  “Intermediate Arithmetic.” It contains page after page of so-called
  “Problems of the Farm.” I cite you a composite of half a dozen—by
  actual count there are twenty-four like this in one small text:

  “Farmer Jones raised ten acres of wheat, which yielded 100 bushels and
  sold at $1 per bushel. What did he receive for his crop? How much more
  would he have received if, by better cultivation, better seeding,
  better seed and more careful harvesting, he had raised 200 bushels on
  the same field?”

  Now, the fact is that in this problem there has been inserted the most
  deliberate falsehood that was ever spoken in the name of economic
  science. The implication is that in order to double his income all the
  farmer has to do is to double his output. And that implication is a
  lie. It is a known fact that with our present marketing system the
  farmers of the country receive even less for their bumper crops than
  they receive for their lean crops of the same products. And why not?
  If there is an iota of truth in the so-called law of demand and
  supply, it follows that just as the farmer increases his output of
  crops, there must follow a corresponding decrease in price or
  purchasing power. Hence an increased output cannot possibly benefit
  the farmer.

In the chapters dealing with Detroit we made the acquaintance of
Professor Edwin L. Miller, principal of the Northern High School. An
agonized pupil mails me another book by this professor, entitled
“Practical English Composition, Part II.” It deals with the subject of
journalism, and I find the margin dug into by an indignant pencil, where
Professor Miller tells his students what public-spirited and
well-meaning men are the editorial writers of the American press. The
professor gives examples of editorials, one of them an exposition of the
follies of Socialism, taken from the Philadelphia “Record.” I quote one
paragraph:

  There is a common impression among Socialistic workmen, encouraged by
  some of the new-fangled college professors, that the weaver produces
  all the cloth that comes off the loom he tends, and he is robbed if
  his wages are only a part of the value of the cloth. But he is only
  one of a long line of producers, each of whom has to get some of the
  money for which that cloth is sold.

There follows a detailed argument to the effect that the farmers who
raised the raw fibre and the railway men who transported it are entitled
to their share of the product. And after the pupils have read and
assimilated this marvelous discovery, they are asked the question: “What
is proved by this editorial?” Let me tell Mr. Miller’s future pupils
what is proved—that the editorial-writer of the Philadelphia “Record” is
an ignoramus. I challenge Professor Miller and the “Record” both, to
find anywhere in the world a Socialist authority who does not plainly
state that the Socialist demand is for the _collective_ workers to
receive the full value of their _collective_ product. Under Socialism,
as a matter of course, all workers of whatever sort, whether of hand or
brain, who contribute to the making of finished products, will receive
their proportionate share of the value they have created. The only
people who will be left out are the owners of stocks and bonds and other
pieces of paper, who under the present system of wage-slavery draw off
the surplus product of the collective labor, and use this unearned
wealth to hire educational experts to misrepresent the cause of social
justice.

Or take the volume entitled “Representative Modern Constitutions,”
extensively used in the colleges and high schools in Southern
California. It is edited by two instructors at the Southern Branch of
the University of California, and published, of course, by the Los
Angeles “Times.” Among the constitutions of a dozen different European
countries is included that of Russia; but our “Times” is not content to
print the constitution of Russia and let it speak for itself, it is
necessary to provide an antidote in the form of a preface by W. J.
Ghent, retired Socialist who is introduced as “a distinguished authority
on Russian affairs.” Ex-Comrade Ghent’s preface elaborately explains to
the student that the Russian constitution doesn’t really mean anything.
He talks about its “safeguards against democracy,” as if such safeguards
were obviously wicked; overlooking that other text-book published by the
“Times,” “Back to the Republic,” by Harry Atwood—which compares
democracy with promiscuity, free love, gluttony, drunkenness, discord
and insanity!

Says ex-Comrade Ghent: “Never before has anything professing to be a
constitution set up such elaborate safeguards against democracy.” The
students will swallow that, without bothering to look into the
constitution and see; but I did bother, and I quote you a few of the
things expressly provided for: “The land to those who work it ... a
general democratic peace ... the free determination of the peoples ...
real freedom of conscience ... freedom of expression of the toiling
masses ... free meetings ... full and free education ... equal rights to
all citizens ... recall of deputies.” Do you think I would be
exaggerating if I were to reverse Ghent’s statement and make it read:
“Never before has anything professing to be a constitution set up such
elaborate _protection_ of democracy?”




                             CHAPTER LXIII
                       PROFESSOR FACING BOTH-WAYS


The situation confronting a would-be writer of school text-books in the
United States is as follows: If he writes on astronomy, engineering, or
Spanish grammar, he may write the truth; but if he writes on history,
economics, or literature, he either writes dishonest books, or he writes
no books.

Says Professor James Harvey Robinson, author of “The Mind in the
Making”: “No publisher of text-books for the schools would venture to
permit a writer to give children the best and most authoritative
knowledge that we have today.” Says Mr. Aaron Sapiro, attorney for the
Farmers’ Co-operative Societies: “The text-books we now use are censored
by political and social factions.” Says Mr. William McAndrew, member of
the board of education in New York: “The text-books which are supposed
to discuss our civic problems do not know enough to keep a women’s whist
club from financial and moral bankruptcy.”

I have a letter from Mr. S. M. Dinkins, principal of a private school at
Selma, Alabama, who tells me about his experience with a text-book,
“Problems of American Democracy,” by Professor R. O. Hughes. Mr. Dinkins
found this book so unsatisfactory in its attitude toward modern
questions that he wrote to the professor, and received in reply the
statement: “I know my publishers would be pleased to learn that my
readers cannot tell from my book what my own opinions about many
questions really are.” Mr. Dinkins was so much troubled by this that he
wrote to the publishers, Allyn and Bacon of Boston, to ask them if that
could possibly be true; it took Mr. Dinkins two months of continuous
letter-writing before he finally got from the publishers a reply to the
effect that school authorities would not adopt any other kind of book,
and publishers had to meet the demand; they did not care to publish a
book that would not sell.

That many college professors have taken up the role of “Mr. Facing
Both-Ways,” adjusting their opinions to the demands of the school bosses
and school-book publishers, is amusingly shown in the pamphlet published
by Commissioner Hirshfield. He takes some American history text-books
and gives us in parallel columns the statements which were made before
and after the patriots got to work. For example, here is Dr. W. B.
Guitteau, director of schools of Toledo, Ohio, who published a text-book
in 1919, with a preface urging the international point of view:

  Throughout this book, therefore, special emphasis has been placed upon
  the relations of the United States to other countries, in order that
  the young citizens who study it may realize more fully the importance
  of our world relations and our world responsibilities.

But then the hundred percenters got after Dr. Guitteau, and he brought
out a new edition of his book in 1923, and started his preface with this
statement:

  Recent events have demonstrated that our teaching of history should
  emphasize more than ever before the peculiar and characteristic genius
  of American institutions, and the permanent and outstanding assets of
  American democracy.

Or take Professor Everett Barnes, who published an American history book
in 1920, in which he described the battle of Bunker Hill as follows:

  The courage shown on both sides was wonderful. To march, as those
  British soldiers did up to the works, so near that each one felt that
  the man who was aiming at him could not miss, required a nerve as
  steady as was ever shown on battlefield since men began to kill each
  other.

But then the super-patriots landed on Professor Barnes, and there was a
new edition of his book in 1922, in which the incident is told as
follows:

  The courage shown on both sides was wonderful. “Don’t fire until you
  see the whites of their eyes,” said the American commander, who knew
  that their supply of ammunition was small, and that his men did not
  have enough bayonets to be used successfully in meeting the charge of
  the British.

I could take up a great deal more space with this kind of fun; but
instead I will go on to mention that there are in America a few
educators who have not been willing to play the part of Professor Facing
Both-Ways. One of these men is Scott Nearing. He had three text-books on
economics, all written in collaboration with some other person. These
text-books enjoyed the greatest popularity; for example, the “Elements
of Economics” had seventy-five per cent of the field; also “Community
Civics” had a big sale. But after Nearing was kicked out of the
University of Pennsylvania for his loyalty to the truth, the sale on
these text-books stopped. When I talked with him in 1922 he told me that
his publishers had not made a contract on them in two years, and they
were about to bring out new editions without Scott Nearing’s name!

As it happens, I am able to tell Nearing exactly how he lost some of
this business. I have mentioned Mr. W. H. Powell, editor of the
“Courier” of Ottumwa, Iowa, who haled a college professor before the
state legislature for the crime of referring to the “English Industrial
Revolution,” and for listing the I. W. W. as a labor organization. Mr.
Powell is naively proud of his achievements, and has written to a friend
of mine, telling about them. So let us hear one of these Bolshevik
hunters speaking for himself:

  I discovered, along in 1918—late in the year—that our high school was
  using and had been using for about eight years, Burch and Nearing’s
  “Principles of Economics.” Nearing had made himself notorious during
  the war and I thought a book by him, on whatever subject, would not be
  a good thing to have in our schools. I suggested that much through a
  reporter, to the superintendent of schools, but he replied that the
  board was under contract to use the book, or had bought a certain
  number on a contract, and it could not be eliminated. I may say that
  we supply text-books here at public expense.

  Inquiry developed that there were only perhaps a hundred of these
  books in use and as each was worth less than one dollar, the expense
  didn’t seem to me to be prohibitive. I got a copy of the book and
  found in it some matter decidedly socialistic and radical. Then I
  canvassed the school board members and found none of them had ever
  read the book. The superintendent admitted he never had read it and
  the teacher who had charge of the class in which it was being studied
  told me he hadn’t read the text ahead of the day to day lessons. The
  principal of the high school hadn’t read it, either. In fact, I seemed
  to be about the only one in town who knew what was in the book.

  But the members of the board backed the superintendent, who didn’t
  want to stir up a quarrel with book publishers. Finally, however, he
  changed front and our first mention of the affair, publicly, was an
  announcement in the news columns that he had ordered the book out of
  the course of study. Thus we gave him credit for the move.

  In the meantime, however, I had discovered that two other
  objectionable texts were being used at the high school—David Saville
  Muzzey’s American History, and “Outlines of European History—Part II,”
  by Robinson and Beard. Muzzey’s book is socialistic, or
  pro-socialistic, and it is rankly unfair in its treatment of several
  subjects, in my opinion. The Robinson and Beard book had been thrown
  out of the Seattle schools in the summer of 1918 because of its
  pro-German taint. It was re-written twice during that summer by
  Professor James Harvey Robinson, according to the information given me
  by a representative of the publishers—Ginn and Company. Robinson is a
  more or less radical professor and Beard had been the subject of
  considerable adverse comment during the war.

  We took the position that regardless of its text, a book by those men
  was not a fit volume to have in the hands of boys and girls. We held
  that Muzzey’s book condemned itself, as did Nearing’s.

And then Mr. Powell goes on to tell how the superintendent of schools
sold these Nearing books second-hand, for use in schools in Indiana,
price ten cents per copy. Mr. Powell was not complaining about this
sacrifice price—quite the contrary, he thought the books should have
been burned, and he says that “this sale turned public sentiment against
the superintendent.” He does not tell us, but we are permitted to guess,
that the Ottumwa “Courier” may have had something to do with the turning
of public sentiment in the matter!

Another educator who is entitled to honorable mention is Professor
Willis N. West, historian. I have told in “The Goose-step” how Professor
West was kicked out by the Black Hand of the University of Minnesota.
His admirable text-book on American history has been kicked out of
schools in various parts of the country, because it tells the truth
about the buying of state and national governments by the corporations.
Mr. Ray McKaig tells me how the gang went after this history in Boise,
Idaho. The Nonpartisan League being so strong, they did not dare attack
the book on political grounds; but they discovered that Professor West
described General Grant as a simple-minded soldier, and General Lee as a
noble figure. They brought this to the attention of the G. A. R., and
the old veterans attended to the matter!

I have before me a letter from Gilson Gardner, Washington correspondent
of the Scripps newspapers, and a well-known liberal. Mr. Gardner tells
his own experience as a writer of text-books:

  Largely for my own amusement, but with a view to making a little more
  pleasant the task of high school students in approaching political
  economy, I wrote a little book called “The New Robinson Crusoe.” It
  was put out by that thoroughly staid and respectable firm, Harcourt &
  Brace. The book did nothing but illustrate in a microcosm the
  commercial and economic system of our world as it is. There was no
  attempt at suggesting a remedy such as Socialism or Communism, nor any
  effort at propaganda. So at least it seemed to my mind in writing it,
  and so it seemed to the mind of Mr. Harcourt. He thought it would be
  an excellent book for side reading in high school economics courses,
  and took it as a commercial prospect. In addition to the regular
  edition, he printed 250 copies in pamphlet form, which were sent to
  high school teachers with letters asking them to look it over and give
  their opinion. Harcourt showed me letters received from teachers,
  which run about as follows:

  “I am a teacher in such and such a high school and teach political
  economy. I have read ‘The New Robinson Crusoe,’ and find it very
  interesting. I should like to recommend it to my pupils, but you know
  as well as I do that the day I make such a recommendation I would lose
  my job. Our supervisors will not stand for that amount of truth in
  regard to our political and economic system. How did you come to print
  the book?”

I was told of many cases of text-book publishers who are literally
facing both ways—running two editions of books, adjusted to the
prejudices of their customers. The American Book Company has one version
of Civil War history for the North, and another for the South. In
text-books on biology, you may believe in evolution in your editions for
New England; but if you want to sell to the far South, you must have an
edition in which “Darwinism” is repudiated. I have before me an
editorial from the Newton, Mississippi, “Record,” a daily newspaper
whose pious editor is not much shocked to learn that the book companies
have been “robbing the state and the poor students,” but is horrified by
the news that they have been furnishing books “contrary to the teaching
of the Bible.” We may assure this pious editor that the book companies
will accept a compromise with him, whereby they may continue to “rob the
state and the poor students,” in consideration of their leaving out the
achievements of modern science!




                              CHAPTER LXIV
                            POISON PICTURES


There are other forms of propaganda now being turned out wholesale for
our children. There are various papers and magazines, to which in many
cases the pupils are required to subscribe. For example, a four-page
weekly newspaper called “Current Events”; during the time of the White
Terror in this country this paper was full of the most atrocious
slanders concerning the radicals. As I am working on this book someone
sends me a sample copy; a new president of Armour & Company has been
appointed, and the event is recorded to the school children under a
headline, “Reward for Hard Work.” Such little touches, you see! Nothing
is said about “The Jungle”; indeed, I could tell you of teachers who
have lost their jobs for advising their pupils to read “The Jungle.” At
the high school of Claremont, California, some thirty miles from where I
live, the Better America Federation dragged a teacher into the
newspapers because he ordered from the county library “The Jungle Book,”
by Rudyard Kipling, and the librarian sent him “The Jungle” by mistake!

Also there are moving pictures. Quite recently one of the great
statesmen of our plutocracy was appointed director of moving picture
propaganda, at a salary of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year;
our kept press celebrated this as one of the great events of our
history. Speaking before the Bond Club in New York City, Mr. Will H.
Hays unbosomed himself to his masters: “Unless people are properly
entertained, this country may go Red; but shake a rattle at the baby and
it calms down.” The rattle is now being diligently shaken from eleven
o’clock in the morning until eleven o’clock at night, in some twenty
thousand moving picture houses throughout the United States; and the
censors keep careful watch over the infant’s mental states. Some of the
organized workers made an effort to start a moving picture business of
their own, the Labor Film Service; and among the films they tried to
show was “The Jungle.” They submitted it in due course to the National
Board of Review, and were ordered to remove a caption describing the
United States of America as “Not just the sweet land of liberty.” Also
they were ordered to remove a caption in a court house scene, “Pleading
for Justice.” This seemed to convey the idea that workingmen sometimes
did not get justice in the United States without pleading for it!

Take the experience of D. W. Griffith, who produced a film called “The
Whistle,” dealing with the life of a factory worker. The Philadelphia
Chamber of Commerce took offense at this picture, and issued a bulletin
warning the masters of industry throughout the United States of the
perils contained in such films. One caption ran: “Since the days of
Plato and Socrates there have been many men of wisdom, but none sage
enough to solve the eternal struggle between capital and labor.” Mr.
Griffith was forbidden to mention the struggle between capital and labor
in Pennsylvania, and the caption had to read: “One of the eternal
struggles of life.” Another line read: “Connors’ widow came to you and
you sent her away with a few filthy dollars when you killed her
husband.” This had to be modified to read: “When Connors’ widow came to
you, why didn’t you act like the decent bosses of today?” And again the
lines: “You’ve had six years to make this place safe. You’ve been
thinking of dollars. You haven’t had time to think of lives.” The censor
changed this to read: “You had no right to put off making this place
safe.”

Also there are films prepared especially for schools; “educational
films,” they are called. This industry is the growth of the past four
years, and already there are a hundred firms offering films, and some
thirty thousand schools using them. Will Hays went before the N. E. A.
convention of 1922 in Boston, and shook his rattle; the moving picture
manufacturers of the country yearned to co-operate with the educators,
to produce great pictures for the schools. Then he went back to his
masters, who turned him over their knee and spanked him; the
manufacturers had no remotest desire to co-operate with anyone—the movie
houses would stand no competition from the schools, and the schools
could not have pictures except second hand. So the poor educators have
to make out with scenery pictures boosting the railroads, and so-called
“industrial films,” boosting various makes of auto tires and shoes.

If you get tired of these, there are propaganda pictures, in support of
every base prejudice. Needless to say, the product is full of the
trickery of Big Business. A state inspector of “visual instruction”
sends me some samples. Here is the National Film Company, with its
newest release, “Wolves of the Street, an absorbing story showing
machinations of the Bolsheviki.” And here is the Victor Animatograph
Company, with Mr. Bryan’s “wonderful illustrated address. Back to the
Ape, or Back to God?” And here are the “Better America Lectures,”
prepared by Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, chaplain to the military
department of God, Mammon and Company. For only $425 you may purchase
these ten complete “lectures,” which have been supplied to the United
States Army and Navy to the amount of $55,000, and which are full of
every mental poison you can imagine.

This chaplain, it appears, is making up for the money he lost a few
years ago, when he got caught in some stock-gambling business, and had
to confess in tears before his congregation. If you will consult “The
Brass Check,” pages 186-7, you will find him lying about the Colorado
miners, and having his lies circulated in expensive form by parties whom
he dares not name; also you will find him, pages 389-90, hiring himself
out to the anti-Bolshevik liars, and perpetrating this culmination of
all human infamy: “It is now conceded that the interior towns and cities
of Russia have gone over to this nationalization of women.” From the
flamboyant circular of his lectures, I learn that he has spoken before
2,600 audiences, and in every state of the union, and that the subjects
he offers to colleges and schools include: “How Bolshevism Ruined
Russia, and how it works Ruin where Tried; Is Socialism the Perpetual
Motion Machine Delusion converted into Economics; False Views of
Equality as Incitements to Social Revolution”—etc., etc. And such a list
of sponsors—the whole Interlocking Directorate, and the Chiefs of its
Riot Department, and of its Grand Old Party, and of its Goose-herds and
Goose-step Drill-masters.

There is a preface, written by James Roscoe Day, ex-Chancellor of the
University of Heaven, and now Chancellor of Heaven. Being right up
there, and in position to know, the chancellor tells us that these
lectures are “a providential instrument.” If you should be curious to
know what Providence wishes the soldiers and sailors of the United
States to believe, I mention, for example, that John Ruskin and Henry C.
Frick and John D. Rockefeller are benefactors of equal rank and
significance; that human equality is disproven by the fact that the
ostrich is a bigger bird than the lark; that there is a radical agitator
by the name of “Hayward”; that the title “Lazy Socialists and their
Loot” represents thinking on social problems; and that New York city,
“The Flower of Individual Ownership,” has magnificent libraries and
museums, and no slums worth referring to!




                              CHAPTER LXV
                           THE BOOK BUSINESS


In addition to the patriots, who are interested in the contents of our
school books, there are large groups of business gentlemen interested in
these books as merchandise. Every year our twenty-three million school
children and seven hundred thousand college students require and consume
millions of new books; so here is a great industry, like every other in
America, a battle-ground of graft and favoritism. It is a main support
of the political machine in our schools, a reason why we cannot get
honest and competent educators for our children.

For a long period the school-book industry was practically a monopoly.
The American Book Company controlled ninety per cent of the business,
and everywhere its name was synonymous with corruption. Now there are
many competitors in the field, and the business of the American Book
Company represents only sixty or seventy per cent of the total. But it
remains an enormous corporation, and its methods are the same as ever.
According to the law of business competition, which is praised in all
school and college text-books, the competitors of the American Book
Company are forced to meet its methods and to buy their share of
success.

There are something like a hundred and fifty “independent” firms
manufacturing and selling school-books; some of them are very large
firms. I had the pleasure of talking with a number of these book
gentlemen, and I found them willing to go into detail about the doings
of their rivals. As to their own doings, nothing is said; but you can
inquire next door. Two of these gentlemen assured me that direct
corruption has gone out of fashion in the book game; no longer do the
agents pay spot cash to superintendents and state commissions for
“adoptions.” I asked one at what date this happy change had taken place,
and made note that the date was prior to some cases of cash payment of
which I had positive information.

However, I report the statements of these book gentlemen. The graft is
now of the “honest” variety; there has been the same evolution that we
have seen in the Tammany machine, from the days of Tweed, when the
property of the city was stolen outright, to the present time, when the
Traction Trust pays the campaign expenses of politicians, and gives them
legal retainers, and contracts, and other “tips” of a legitimate
business nature. What the agent of a book company now does is to
contribute generously to the campaign funds of superintendents and
school board members. Thus the various book companies have their “own”
superintendents and their “own” school machines. The superintendents not
only select the books of these companies, but they accept friendly
recommendations as to teachers and promotions; so book company agents
also conduct informal teachers’ agencies, and have long lists of their
“own” teachers.

And when promotions and favors in the system are desired, the big,
powerful, and always genial book company agent is a good man to see. He
is always present at conventions, pulling wires for his crowd. If
legislation is wanted, he knows the legislators, and if investigation is
threatened he knows the press correspondents and managing editors. All
these things will be told to you by any book man who is willing to talk.
Their excuse is that they have to do it, because the other fellow does
it, and there is no other way to get business. They are in the same
position as the railroads, which have to control the political machines
in order to keep the machines from “holding them up.”

In one of our Eastern cities I had an amusing experience. I happened to
meet socially a certain large capitalist, high up in the councils of the
employers’ association of his city. He was a merry old gentleman, and
meeting a muckraker appealed to his humor; he “blew” me to a fine lunch
at what I guess is the most costly athletic club in the world. He asked
me what I was writing; and when I told him, he mentioned a friend of
his, a high-up official in a big text-book company, who had told him a
number of amusing anecdotes of the buying of state legislatures and city
school boards and superintendents. Naturally, I said I would like to
meet that school book official; so the old gentleman put me in his
limousine and took me to his friend’s office, where I spent an hour or
so, listening to an inside account of conditions in many states.

The substance of what the man said was that it was impossible for book
companies not to pay commissions; the politicians would demand anywhere
from a thousand to five thousand dollars for a state contract. He
described in detail the state of Indiana, where the text-books are
adopted for periods of five-years, and there is a political board of
utterly incompetent men, with no qualifications for judging text-books.
On the date of adoption there will be perhaps fifty agents swarming to
the state capital; you will find out what the price is, and you either
pay it, or you go out of business so far as concerns the state of
Indiana.

I went off and made some notes of what this gentleman had told me; but I
wasn’t sure of some details, so I wrote him a seductive letter—all in
the strictest confidence, of course—asking him to verify certain
statements. In reply came a no less polite letter, assuring me of his
pleasure in the recollection of my visit, but saying that my capitalist
friend and myself had misunderstood the purport of his conversation. He
had entertained us “with some of the legends of the business, which had
been handed down from one generation to another.” But these things
weren’t done any more, and selling text-books is now “an honorable
business.”

It happened through a coincidence that I had on my desk a letter from
Professor Charles H. Judd of the University of Chicago, whose adventures
with the National Industrial Conference Board were told a few chapters
back. Professor Judd, as head of a great department of education, has
had opportunity to watch the book company business from the inside. He
says, among other things:

  The situation in the state of Indiana, where there is a book adoption
  by the state board of education every five years, is certainly worth
  your investigation. The state board of Indiana, which is made up of a
  number of ex-officio members, is asked every time there is a book
  adoption to canvass an impossible number of school books. It would be
  worth while to find out exactly how many are submitted for judgment by
  the board. None of these busy professional men can make the analysis
  of a book necessary to an intelligent choice, and yet they have to
  make the choice. I was told by one of the members of that board that
  at the time of the recent adoption an attorney, living in the city of
  Richmond, Indiana, where one of the members of the state board lives,
  was paid a fee of $10,000 for a month’s work, the character of which
  was not otherwise known.

Let us consider the American Book Company, because it is the biggest,
and has set the pace for the rest. Thirty years ago my friend George D.
Herron, then a Congregational clergyman and college professor, came upon
the wholesale knaveries of this concern. Henry D. Lloyd and President
Gates of Grinnell College took up the facts, and published them in a
little Christian Socialist paper in Minneapolis, the “Kingdom.” The
answer of the American Book Company was to file suit for a hundred
thousand dollars damages. Dr. Herron writes me:

  The suit has never been brought to trial to this day. The Book Trust
  never had any intention of facing the trial or facing the facts in our
  possession at that time. They merely meant to announce, as they did
  through the Associated Press and with great acclaim, that they had
  brought immediate suit for damages because of these infamous and false
  charges; and that was all that was necessary. They knew perfectly well
  what a short memory the public has, and that they would gain all the
  benefits of a victory in the public mind without ever bringing the
  matter to trial.

And now, a generation later, we find the Commissioner of Accounts in New
York City carrying on his investigation into text-books, and there
appears before him Mr. George E. Morrison, editor of “The Historic
Hudson,” and recently a reporter for the Detroit “Journal.” You will
recall Detroit as the home of Mr. A. V. Barnes, president of the
American Book Company; also of ex-Senator Newberry, his brother-in-law;
also of Mr. Fred Cody, agent of the American Book Company, convicted
with Newberry of election frauds; also of Mr. Frank Cody, brother of Mr.
Fred, and superintendent of schools in Detroit. Under these
circumstances you will not be surprised to learn that Michigan is a
center of American Book Company activity. Mr. Morrison in his testimony
stated that he had been given several weeks’ leave of absence by the
Detroit “Journal,” to collect evidence concerning this matter. Mr.
Morrison interviewed a hundred and twenty-seven witnesses, and turned
over their evidence, with the affidavits of eighteen out-of-town people,
to the prosecuting authorities. The matter was presented to the grand
jury, which took minutes and returned a report in which Mr. Morrison was
abused by numerous public officials, who stood in with the Newberry-Cody
gang. The influence of this gang, said Mr. Morrison, was sufficient to
paralyze the arm of the public prosecutor, and to cause a police justice
to get busy and prevent indictments.

Mr. Morrison went on to explain the methods of the American Book
Company, and just how the money of the school children of the United
States was used to buy a seat in the Senate for Truman H. Newberry. I
quote from the stenographic record:

  All his money practically has come from the American Book Company. His
  brother-in-law, Mr. Barnes, is head of the American Book Co., and both
  he and his brother John have more money than they know what to do
  with. In his campaigns Mr. Truman H. Newberry transferred his funds
  from John’s bank account to Truman’s, and no question was ever asked.
  The private agent of Mr. Truman H. Newberry was Mr. Frank Cody, who
  was by the way indicted with Newberry and the others in the United
  States Court at Grand Rapids. He was involved in the scandal of the
  American Book Company in Oklahoma at the time Haskell was governor,
  and has been a legislative representative of the American Book Company
  and a salesman on special occasions when special force was needed to
  put over contracts. He always had declined to admit that he was a
  representative of the American Book Company. During the time that I
  was more or less closely identified with trying to find out about the
  American Book Co., I was never able to learn absolutely the identity
  of anyone that ever represented the American Book Co. There was one
  man that came into the open when I worked at Grand Rapids, Michigan,
  who supplied the members of the Board of Education with money. The
  members said that the money represented campaign contributions. The
  agent and the two members of the Board of Education were indicted, and
  it seemed to be difficult to prove that the money was given to them as
  members, and as I recall the case never came to trial. This man named
  White, as I recall, subsequently declined to see me, and as I say, I
  have never known any representative of the American Book Company.

Also I quote from another portion of this interesting testimony:

THE COMMISSIONER: Do you think the American Book Company would be
    inclined to pay large premiums, call it that way, to anyone who has
    the power to introduce any set of books?

MR. MORRISON: I think there is no question about that at all.

THE COMMISSIONER: Of course, I have no reference to our schools. I am
    talking about these schools in Michigan.

MR. MORRISON: The American Book Company is always willing to give. It is
    the financial angel of the candidates that would do its bidding.

THE COMMISSIONER: Let me ask you, are the members of the Board of
    Education in Detroit elected?

MR. MORRISON: Yes, they are.

THE COMMISSIONER: And you say that the American Book Company is looked
    upon as the angel of these candidates for the position of members of
    the Board of Education?

MR. MORRISON: Yes.

THE COMMISSIONER: And supplies every one of them?

MR. MORRISON: Yes.




                              CHAPTER LXVI
                        TEN PER CENT COMMISSIONS


The solution of the problem of our school-book supply waits upon our
training a generation of social servants who believe in public welfare
and in knowledge, as our forefathers believed in their religions. I
should say that the first step toward this goal is to fill our hearts
with disgust for the present situation, in which private greed and
self-seeking are provided with unlimited sums of money and turned loose
to corrupt our schools, making efficient and even honest education
unattainable. Such is the situation, alike in the crowded cities of the
East and in the farming and ranching country of the far West and the
South. Here and there you will find educators fighting loyally for the
schools; and at the head of the intrigue against them you will find the
representatives of book and supply companies. Wherever you hear of a
superintendent or board member who has gone down fighting in the
people’s cause, you will find it was book and supply companies which
beat him.

I have told the story of Mr. Charles P. Cary, state superintendent of
education in Wisconsin. Early in his teaching career, Mr. Cary tells me,
an agent for the American Book Company asked certain favors of him, and
offered in return to make him superintendent of schools in a big city;
the place depended entirely on this book agent. All through Mr. Cary’s
work as superintendent in Wisconsin, the book-agents would come to him,
demanding this and that. When the question of his re-election came up,
one of the most prominent lawyers in Milwaukee told him that he could
get thirty-five hundred dollars toward his campaign fund by calling on a
certain state official and agreeing to certain terms laid down. Mr. Cary
was told that this was the money of a leading firm of book publishers.
When Mr. Cary did not accept this proposition, an agent of Ginn and
Company put up his father to beat Mr. Cary—and somebody put up the money
to elect this father!

Ginn and Company has been for more than a generation the most active
competitor of the American Book Company, and it would not be surprising
if they had learned something about its methods. We have come upon the
activities of Ginn and Company agents in the school politics of many
cities; as I revise this chapter, there comes a letter from
Philadelphia, telling me how its salesman there became principal of the
girls’ high school. I remind you of the situation in Worcester,
Massachusetts, where Mr. C. H. Thurber, manager of Ginn and Company, and
trustee of Clark College and Clark University, put into the presidency
the author of the Frye-Atwood geographies, and started a whole series of
new sciences, with departments and summer schools and chautauquas based
upon these popular school geographies. The head-lady of Ginn and
Company’s geography department pours tea with the best social charm, and
there are ninety-seven Ginn and Company text-books used in the public
schools of Worcester. Also I should note that the senior partner of this
firm, Mr. George A. Plimpton, is a trustee of Amherst College, which has
just kicked out a liberal president; and also a trustee of Barnard
College, thus interlocking with Nicholas Miraculous, and with Professor
George E. Strayer, who runs the National Education Association.

Let us move to North Dakota, where I listened to the story of a county
superintendent of schools, elected by the Nonpartisan League. The gang
is on top once more in North Dakota, so this man is no longer an
educator, but is earning a living in the real estate business;
nevertheless, he asks me to call him Mr. Smith! Among the forces which
were active in defeating the people in North Dakota while they tried to
control their own schools was a certain Mr. Gleason, agent of the
American Book Company, “whose boast it was that he had placed more
school superintendents than any other man in the United States.” When a
new superintendent was appointed, Mr. Gleason always called, and the
superintendent was always glad to see him—the reason being that it was
the custom of the American Book Company to pay superintendents ten per
cent commission on all books sold in the county. They paid this
quarterly, as a matter of regular routine. They kept track of the
situation in every school district, and if any book was not reordered,
they sent an agent to find out about it.

Mr. Gleason’s subordinate, Mr. Thorson, came to see Mr. Smith, and was
very genial. He wanted him to sign up a new list of books for the
county. But Mr. Smith explained that the request was a little premature,
as he had not yet taken the oath of office. As soon as Mr. Smith had
assumed his duties, Mr. Thorson came again, but Mr. Smith wanted a
little time to get acquainted with the situation. Then came Mr. Gleason
himself; but Mr. Smith insisted upon having his own ideas about
text-books. He made out a list, which gave the American Book Company
sixty per cent of the books, forty per cent being divided among other
companies. Mr. Gleason was dissatisfied with this, because he had been
getting ninety-seven per cent of the business. When these agents could
not persuade Mr. Smith, they tried to threaten him, but this also did
not avail.

In the following year Mr. Thorson came again. He wanted to see Mr. Smith
in private, and asked Mr. Smith to dismiss his stenographer, which Mr.
Smith refused to do. He then asked to see him after office hours, and
Mr. Smith absented himself from the office so as to make this
impossible. The agent telephoned on Sunday evening, and came to Mr.
Smith’s home for an interview; but Mr. Smith’s wife was present, and
that also was not satisfactory. He asked Mr. Smith to come to meet him
in his room in the hotel; Mr. Smith refused this. He begged for an
interview on Monday morning, and Mr. Smith said that he would come to
the hotel at six o’clock in the morning. He went, and took with him his
“Uncle Charley,” who followed Mr. Smith up to Mr. Thorson’s room. When
Mr. Thorson saw this, he asked that “Uncle Charley” should wait in the
lobby; so “Uncle Charley,” by prearrangement with Mr. Smith, pretended
to go down to the lobby, but came back to the door of the room and
listened through the open transom to what was going on. Mr. Thorson
offered Mr. Smith ten per cent commission on all books sold within the
county, and he had the cash with him. Mr. Smith threw the money on the
floor, and walked out of the room.

And so began a long campaign against him. Mr. Gleason, Mr. Thorson, Mr.
James, and several other agents put in nine weeks in the county, trying
to get the school machine lined up against Mr. Smith. They approached a
number of the teachers, as well as school directors; they gave Mr. Smith
“a dirty fight.” But he won with a good majority, and threw out all the
American Book Company’s books. He ordered some of Ginn and Company’s
books for the consolidated school of one township, and Mr. Thorson and
Mr. James went to this school with a supply of American Book Company
books, and traded book for book, taking out the Ginn and Company books,
and putting in their own. But Mr. Smith took the trouble to interview
school boards, and in every case he succeeded in persuading them that
the other books were better; he completely drove the American Book
Company out of the county—that is, until they drove him out of the
schools!

They have one system throughout all North Dakota; they get the
superintendents to an “educational meeting,” which is really a banquet
paid for by book company agents. When they are properly fed, the list of
books is flashed upon them, all carefully prepared for the various
grades of their schools. Many superintendents don’t know anything about
books, and don’t want to bother with them; they know the subject is a
dangerous one, and the easiest way is to sign the list. The book company
then prints this list at its own expense, and sends the copies to the
superintendent for distribution to the school boards. The boards,
receiving this list, assume that it represents the superintendent’s
selection, and they put the list through.

And apparently it is the same way in South Dakota. Miss Alice Daly
resigned in 1921 from the Madison State Normal School, and in a public
statement declared as follows:

  The book trust operates in South Dakota exactly the way that it has
  operated in other states, against the interests of the great mass of
  working people, against the freedom of the teacher, against any
  efficient organization of teachers, against the frank and honest
  discussion of vital questions of the day, against labor; in short,
  against democracy. The book trust operates for its own selfish
  interests, for capitalism and for autocracy within and without the
  school. The book trust whenever it has enjoyed control, operates
  against education in any genuine sense of the word.

The manager of one concern which sells books all over the country, and
concerning which I have not learned of any graft, assures me that
throughout the middle West, especially the states of Missouri and Iowa,
the county “adoptions” are almost uniformly a matter of purchase. The
petty politicians on the school committees see a chance to make a little
money, and they make it—that seems obvious enough. The price is five or
six hundred dollars; and this manager found it so hopeless to try to do
business without paying that he told his agents to quit the county
field. I have not heard of any American counties being without
text-books, so presumably there are other companies not so fastidious.




                             CHAPTER LXVII
                       THE SUPERINTENDENT-MAKERS


Wherever you travel in the school world of the United States, you find
these same activities. You recall the almost universal graft in the
school affairs of Chicago; it should hardly need saying that the book
trust was “up to the eyes” in this graft. You never know where you meet
them; they operate under the names of various companies. A member of the
school board made the statement that one of the book companies had “a
whole trainload of books on a siding,” which they were trying to unload
in Chicago; all the newspapers knew about it, but they would not publish
the facts. The beginning of the graft exposure was the determination of
the agents to dump this supply of books onto the Chicago board.

The same thing extends over the state of Illinois. An agent of one book
company was chairman of the state committee of the Republican party, and
a superintendent of Peoria, Illinois, was discovered to have grafted to
the extent of more than a million dollars, and was sent to jail for it.
They had the governor of the state, and had got a five-year “adoption.”
They did the same thing in Cincinnati, where they ran the superintendent
and school board for a decade. Again, it was a leading book company
agent who was mixed up in a scandal with the governor of Oklahoma. There
was another exposure in Kentucky—and I was told of other states where
there might be an exposure, if I would go there and make inquiries!

In Texas also there was a scandal and a political upheaval. The American
Book Company was prosecuted as a trust, and fined fifteen thousand
dollars and ousted from the state. It was at that time a New Jersey
corporation, and the Texas authorities allowed it to plead guilty,
whereupon it was reorganized as a New York corporation and readmitted to
do business in the state. Such little jokes as this the big corporations
and their attorneys take great pleasure in playing upon state
prosecuting authorities and legislatures! An attorney in Dallas writes
me:

  The American Book Company got an outrageous contract from the state
  text-book board, headed by the sanctimonious Governor Neff, making a
  number of needless changes, that would cost the public school fund
  many hundreds of thousands of dollars; but this contract has been,
  temporarily at least, defeated. It must be said, however, that the
  chief reason it has been defeated is not the action of public-spirited
  Texas citizens, but the activity of other publishers, particularly
  Ginn and Company, for whom I have the same sort of respect that I have
  for the American Book Company.

As it happens, I learned of another case, in which the American Book
Company was pulling off some dirty work in Michigan, and in that case
they were stopped by Heath and Company. So let us be thankful that the
school book business is still in the competitive stage!

Kansas was one state in which the farmers went to war against the book
trust. You will be interested in the adventures of Mrs. Ella S. Burton,
who took up the issue as lecturer for the State Grange. These granges
are farmers’ societies; and like the teachers’ associations, they have
been taken over by the gang. Mrs. Burton found herself fighting the
school-book machine inside of her own organization. The book trust
controlled not merely the state school book commission; it had its
high-priced educators and corporation lawyers and politicians inside the
grange. Charges were brought against Mrs. Burton, and a committee
appointed to investigate these charges unanimously vindicated her; but
the master of the State Grange would not give her the floor, nor hear
the committee report, and adjourned the meeting in order to suppress
her. It was promised that the findings of the committee would be
published in the annual report, but not a word of it was published, and
Mrs. Burton was finally expelled from the grange. The right-hand man of
the grange master throughout the proceedings was, of course, an American
Book Company agent.

Nevertheless, the Kansas legislature passed a bill providing for state
manufacture of text-books; and so Kansas shares with California the
distinction of being the object of many pamphlets published by
school-book company representatives, proving the evils of its
school-book habits! I am not going into the cost of text-book
publication, but I think it may be worth mentioning that while I was in
the state of Washington I found that the schools there were using in
many cases the same text-books as in California, and were paying for
them from a hundred to a hundred and fifty per cent more than it was
costing the people of California to manufacture them.

Sometimes the law permits school teachers to have something to say about
the adoption of text-books, and then you have book company agents
playing the generous host to teachers. We have seen Major Clancy at
Oakland and Boston and Des Moines. In California, I am told by a
prominent educator that many teachers get their summer vacations at the
expense of the book companies. It is a favorite device to offer them a
trip to the East to see where the school books are made; that is not
graft, but education! Teachers learn to look to book company agents for
promotion; and almost invariably you notice that when any superintendent
or board member is turned out of his job, the book companies take care
of him. We saw a school superintendent of Chicago becoming president of
Heath & Company; we saw President Pearse of the Milwaukee State Normal
School becoming an agent for Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia. I am told
by Mr. William Bouck, head of the Washington Progressive Grange, that
the American Book Company has named more superintendents in the state of
Washington than all the big agencies put together; also that the agents
of this concern were put on the program of every school institute on the
west coast of Washington. This point is also touched upon by Professor
Charles H. Judd, of the University of Chicago. He writes:

  It is a matter of constant rumor that the selection of the
  superintendent in various cities is altogether in the hands of book
  companies. The most impressive and detailed story of this sort that I
  ever heard relates to the superintendency of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The
  man who told me the story is still in the educational profession and
  would hardly want to be implicated, but he said that he was met at the
  station, when he went to see the board of education at Fort Wayne, not
  by any member of the board of education, but by the local
  representative of one of the book companies. His conversation about
  the position was altogether with this representative of the book
  company, and he left town telling him that he did not want the place.
  The representative of the book company told him that he was not going
  to ask him to keep the conference confidential, because he knew that
  it was all the superintendent’s professional career was worth to have
  a controversy with him, and that if the superintendent ever reported
  any part of this discussion, the representative of the book company
  would deny the whole affair. This story was told to me by a man who is
  absolutely reliable and he would not, I am sure, in any wise distort
  the facts.

Professor Judd goes on to explain his belief that in many cases these
things are done by book agents without the knowledge of the company, and
that the company would be “greatly distressed to know that these things
happen.” I have a great respect for Professor Judd, one of the most
liberal and courageous educators in this country; also I have great
respect for a college professor, a very distinguished author of school
text-books, who writes me that the trouble is due to “the less
scrupulous agents in the heat of a campaign.” This gentleman’s own
publishers “deprecate these methods, but perhaps the heat of a campaign
will now and then lead local agents astray. I have plenty of reason to
suspect that other publishers make it impossible to play the game very
fairly.”

In answer to this, I can only state my own point of view—that I cannot
take much stock in the idea that heads of large-scale modern industries
do not know what their employes and agents are doing. They make it their
business to know, and any lack of knowledge which they have is formal;
that is, a business man smiles and says: “Don’t let me know about it!”
But in reality he knows; and the school officials who get the “rake off”
also know. Says Professor Robert Morse Lovett, also of the University of
Chicago: “There is scarcely a large city in the country in which the
pupils and teachers alike are not shamefully and scandalously defrauded
by action of school trustees, which would be characterized in the
mildest terms as wilful mismanagement conducing to private profit.” And
Professor Guido Marx of Stanford University tells me how he referred to
school book graft before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, and a
representative of a book company said to him: “What’s the matter? Have
you got a book you can’t get published?”

It appears that ethical codes on book matters are in a somewhat
unsettled state—out here in California at any rate. I have on my desk a
series of letters from a California school-book publisher, personally a
very likeable and genial fellow, who assures me that he doesn’t think
there is any harm in the fact that a lady editor of his magazine,
formerly a stockholder in his business, and still having a desk in his
office, is also a member of the local school board, and in this capacity
signed orders for the purchase of something less than a thousand dollars
worth of books from this publisher. I suppose that if I were to meet
David P. Barrows, Dean of Imperialism at our state university, he would
assure me there was nothing wrong in the fact that he, while head of the
department of political science at the university, was invited by the
Mexican government to come down there and advise them on the subject of
education; and that he went, and became vice-president of the Vera Cruz
Land & Cattle Company, and came back to recommend war on Mexico, so as
to give value to his holdings in that concern!

All this time we have been thinking of text-books as a source of
dividends. It is necessary to remind ourselves that these sources of
dividends are also sources of ideas to our children. How do the ideas
count, in comparison with the dividends? Let me quote Professor Judd
once more:

  There is a more fundamental matter which is not scandalous but which
  is important. Book companies influence the schools to an enormous
  degree by furnishing the materials of instruction. The ordinary
  teacher in the American school is so little prepared for his or her
  work that the material supplied in text-books is absolutely
  indispensable to the conduct of classes. When a book company gets a
  successful text-book, it is very loath to make any changes in the book
  for obvious reasons: the cost of making new plates and the danger of
  losing the market prevent revision of text-books. The result is that
  there are sets of text-books which exercise a thoroughly unwholesome
  influence on school practices, just because the book companies are
  unwilling to make expensive revisions and are interested primarily in
  selling the books that they now have in stock. When a good report is
  prepared by one of the technical societies, and book companies are
  asked to conform to the progressive ideas which are expressed in such
  a report, one finds these companies very reluctant to try any
  experiments.

When I was a lad, I learned geometry and algebra as two entirely
separate subjects, and until today it never occurred to me that they
were in any way related, and might be taught as parts of one subject.
But now I learn from an educator that this is the case. And why are they
taught separately in all high schools of the United States? Well,
because geometry and algebra are the private preserves of Ginn and
Company, owners of the Wentworth text-books, which lead in this field.
Any teacher or superintendent who should suggest that these profitable
works be scrapped would not be regarded with favor by the hundred and
twenty-five agents of this great book concern, who have so much to say
about high salaried school positions.




                             CHAPTER LXVIII
                         THE CHURCH CONSPIRACY


We have seen the activities of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in many
American cities; but because this is a national system, competing with
the public schools in every part of the country, it is necessary to
consider the general aspects of the parochial school problem. Many
Catholics will read this book and write me letters; therefore I will
save both my time and their feelings if I explain at the outset that I
know there are a great many decent, hard-working Catholics in the United
States, and also many earnest and devoted Catholic teachers in the
American public schools. My quarrel here is with the Roman hierarchy,
which holds the faith of millions of sincere people, and sells it out to
the exploiters of the world. This is a book on economics, and its plea
is to Catholic working people, to open their eyes to the class struggle,
and see how they are being betrayed and plundered in modern capitalist
society.

This class struggle is in the Catholic Church, precisely as in other
organizations. There are Catholic trust magnates and exploiters of
labor, and they give their money to Catholic educational institutions,
and then control these institutions in the interest of the open shop and
general reaction. I was not well informed about the insides of Catholic
affairs, and when I came to investigate I could not keep from laughing,
to discover how completely Catholic education reproduces all the
features of Protestant education. Here, for example, is James A.
Farrell, president of the Steel Trust; he got part of a common school
education, and then went to work in a steel mill; in 1922 we find him
getting an honorary degree from the Catholic Georgetown University!

Here is Francis P. Garvan, wealthy corporation lawyer, Attorney-General
Palmer’s assistant in robbing helpless Germans during the war. He gives
generously to Catholic schools and colleges, and gets an honorary degree
from Fordham University, and is a trustee in the Catholic University of
America. He vigorously carries on the open-shop propaganda in the
Catholic world, and bitterly fights the influence of Father Ryan, who
sympathizes with labor. Here is Condé B. Pallen, graduate of Georgetown
University, a wealthy Catholic propagandist, editor of the “Catholic
Encyclopedia,” and head of the “Committee for the Study of Revolutionary
Movements of the National Civic Federation.” Mr. Pallen is one of the
“Helen Ghouls”; and thereby we discover that in the world of Big
Business the gulf between Catholics and Protestants has been bridged. It
is my hope that this gulf may be bridged in the world of labor, and that
Protestant and Catholic wage-slaves will no longer permit themselves to
be divided and conquered by their masters.

Six or seven hundred years ago the Catholic Church had its Golden Age,
and at that time it was to some extent a proletarian movement. There are
Catholics today who dream of a return of that Golden Age, and see in the
modern labor unions something resembling the medieval guilds. These men
are fighting vigorously inside the church; they got a group of bishops
to support the National Catholic Welfare Council, and the Catholic
Church issued an extremely progressive manifesto on social problems. You
remember during the war we had quite a wave of enthusiasm for the making
over of the world; and there were Catholic idealists, sharing that
bright dream.

But now the war is over, and we no longer need to make promises to
labor, and the “hard guys” are in the saddle. The open-shop gang goes
after the Catholic radicals, and you hear less about the reconstruction
program. John D. Ryan, chairman of the Anaconda Copper Company and
leading Catholic capitalist, resigns from the board of the Catholic
University of America, and Nicholas F. Brady, Catholic traction magnate,
declares that this university will get no more funds while Father John
A. Ryan, the radical, is on its teaching staff. Father Ryan’s teachings
are denounced by the Lusk Committee as “subversive,” and the open-shop
intriguers protest to the Apostolic delegate in America. The Catholic
bishops turn lukewarm to social reconstruction, and the funds to be
devoted to this work are suddenly discovered to be missing. Mr. Condé B.
Pallen travels to Rome, and the next thing we hear is that the Papal See
has ordered the dissolution of the National Catholic Welfare Council.

The Catholic liberals, of course, do not give up without a struggle, and
they have powerful arguments on their side. For a generation the Church
has seen with dismay the organized workers drifting away from its
authority and taking up with Socialism. And what chance has the Catholic
machine to win unless it professes some interest in the cause of social
justice? What chance will the Church have with the American Federation
of Labor if it sells itself body and soul to the open shop? In
Cincinnati a Catholic priest, Father Peter Dietz, started a liberal
organization, the American Academy of Christian Democracy; he opened the
convention of the American Federation of Labor with a prayer, and was
then suspended by the archbishop of the diocese. Thereupon high
officials of the Federation addressed a protest to the archbishop; if
such protests are not heeded, how can the Church hope to hold the rank
and file of organized labor?

The National Catholic Welfare Council appealed to the Pope to reconsider
the order for its suspension. It ought to be interesting to American
Catholics to know the names of the judges who heard and decided this
grave question of American policy; they were Gasparri, Merry del Val,
Bisleti, Sbaretti, Van Rossum, and Pompili: four of them Italians, one a
Spaniard, and one a Hollander! There are no Americans in the Roman
Curia, and American Catholics are excluded from any share in the control
of their church. This seems to me something which every American has a
right to make note of, and which American Catholics must find
embarrassing.

The most active of Catholic propaganda agencies in this country is the
Knights of Columbus, and this order has recently resolved to assume its
share of the labors of revising our schools and school text-books.
“Knight” McSweeney has declared that “half the history text-books should
be destroyed.” It is interesting to note that the class struggle is
going on inside this organization, precisely as in the National
Education Association. There are some Catholics who object to seeing
their church used by the political henchmen of Big Business. When
District Attorney Pelletier of Boston, a high-up official of the
Knights, was prosecuted for selling justice to rich criminals, there
were resolutions passed by several state branches to demand his
resignation. Pelletier of course raised the cry that he was being
persecuted because he was a Catholic; such is the device by which the
grafters try to hold on. But Pelletier had to quit.

When I was a boy of sixteen, earning my way through college by writing
jokes and sketches, I went to call upon Street and Smith, publishers of
the “half-dime novels” of my boyhood; detective and Wild West tales,
full of thrilling adventures, and having illustrated covers in brilliant
red and green and blue and yellow. The editor in charge of these
publications was a gentleman who called himself Enrique H. Lewis; he had
lived in South America, and enlisted in the navy. I took him the
manuscript of a long novel, and presently began to write for him a
series of stories about West Point life. Someone asked him if I had been
through West Point, and he answered that I had been through it in three
days! The Spanish War came on, and I took to slaughtering the enemy by
land and sea—on the land I was Lieutenant Frederick Garrison, and on sea
I was Ensign Clark Fitch. My editorial chief used to marvel at the speed
with which these manuscripts appeared; there was a year when I was
turning out a total of fifty-six thousand words a week. We used to have
office consultations, and he was worried about the state of my soul; it
didn’t seem natural that a boy of my age should be holding such serious
views about human problems. His forebodings proved to be justified—I
spoiled myself as a writer of dime novels, and lost my job with Street
and Smith!

My former chief took better care of his career, and is now Henry
Harrison Lewis, editor of “Industrial Progress,” organ of the “open
shop.” I have before me one of his articles, entitled: “The Great
Open-Shop Conspiracy.” You might guess this conspiracy to be the effort
of the Black Hand to make the American people believe that “open shop”
means freedom for labor; but no—this conspiracy is the action of the
National Catholic Welfare Council, together with the Protestant
churches, in defending the right of workers to form unions if they want
to. This article is reprinted in pamphlet form, and copies of it are
sent to every Catholic priest and every Protestant clergyman in the
United States. Mr. Lewis admits that the cost of this is defrayed “by
other persons and organizations”; but he refuses to tell us who these
persons and organizations are!




                              CHAPTER LXIX
                      CATHOLICISM AND THE SCHOOLS


Just what is the attitude of the Catholic Church to the American public
schools? This is an important question, because there are fourteen
million Catholics in our country, and they control the education, not
merely of two million children in their own schools, but of other
millions in public schools where the Catholic vote has elected Catholic
officials and school board members, and obtained the appointment of
Catholic superintendents and teachers. There has been so much
controversy over this question, so much has been affirmed by one side
and denied by the other, that I decided I would go into it thoroughly
and settle it once for all. I may as well state at the outset that I
found I had been overambitious. The question cannot be settled once for
all; for the reason that no two Catholic authorities agree with each
other, and in controversy with Catholic theologians the most explicit
Latin and English words are discovered to be capable of so many
interpretations that all meaning goes out of them.

The most detailed statement of the official Catholic attitude towards
Church and State, and State activities such as public schools, is found
in the “Syllabus of Errors” of Pope Pius IX. This is a list of eighty
propositions of liberalism and democracy, which are lumped together and
condemned as “the principal errors of our time.” I had often seen this
Syllabus summarized and discussed, but I had never seen the complete
text. I consulted the public libraries in Pasadena and Los Angeles, but
in vain. I applied to Catholic bookstores, but likewise in vain. I
applied to Loyola College and to the Catholic bishop in Los Angeles, but
these had it only in Latin. I telegraphed to the largest wholesale
book-seller in New York, but was informed that an English text was not
obtainable. By that time I began to suspect that the church authorities
were not anxious to have the American public read their fundamental law
on the subjects of liberalism and democracy; when I finally obtained the
text, I discovered why.

It was left to an enemy of the Church to supply me with this most vital
church document. William Ewart Gladstone attacked the Syllabus with
righteous wrath, and I found the text in his volume “Rome and the Newest
Fashions in Religion.” This Syllabus is extremely awkward to quote, for
the reason that the propositions are all negative—a list of statements
which are condemned; and some of the statements themselves are negative,
so that you find yourself with double negatives to disentangle. A few of
the most important of the propositions will have to suffice; and let me
say that I have brushed up my rusty Latin for the occasion, and made
certain that the translations are literal and precise. Bear in mind that
this is the Supreme Pontiff speaking ex cathedra, which is the same as
the voice of God; so the following statements are not subject to
question or revision, so long as the Holy Catholic Church endures. Thus,
formally and finally, we are told that it is an error to teach that:

  15. Every man is free to embrace and profess the religion he shall
  believe true, guided by the light of reason.

This of course means that every man is _not_ free to embrace and profess
his own religion; and carries the obvious corollary that every man must
let the Catholic Church tell him what religion to embrace.

  17. We may entertain at least a well-founded hope for the eternal
  salvation of all those who are in no manner in the true Church of
  Christ.

This means, in brief, that all non-Catholics are damned eternally, and
it is false doctrine to teach otherwise.

  20. The ecclesiastical power must not exercise its authority without
  the permission and assent of the civil government.

This means that the Church may exercise its authority without the
consent of the State; that, for example, the Church may marry and annul
marriage, in defiance of the civil laws. This must be taken in
connection with

  30. The immunity of the Church and of ecclesiastical persons derives
  its origin from civil law.

This means that the Church and its priests are immune to civil law, and
this immunity comes from God, and cannot be taken away by the State. If
the Church could maintain this proposition in America, neither the
Church nor any ecclesiastic could be sued or tried by the regular
courts, but only by courts of their own.

  42. In the case of conflicting laws between the two powers, the civil
  law ought to prevail.

This means that civil law ought not to prevail over Church law; and
since it is manifest that two laws cannot both prevail, it follows that
Church law is proclaimed superior to civil law.

Such is the Church’s own version of her attitude to the State; and now,
let us see what is her attitude to the schools of the State? The
propositions dealing with this matter are longer, and more involved with
double negatives; but we will take the time to disentangle them, and the
reader who is not interested in the problem may skip.

  45. The entire direction of public schools, in which the youth of
  Christian states are educated, except (to a certain extent) in the
  case of episcopal seminaries, may and must appertain to the civil
  power, and belong to it so far that no other authority whatsoever
  shall be recognized as having any right to interfere in the discipline
  of the schools, the arrangement of the studies, the taking of degrees,
  or the choice and approval of the teachers.

The phrase “episcopal seminaries” means what we should call “Catholic
schools” or “parochial schools”; and this proposition states that the
Church is not satisfied with being permitted to teach what it pleases in
these schools, but denounces the claim of the State to exclusive control
of teaching in the State schools.

The next proposition, 46, defends the right of the Church to teach as it
pleases in its own schools. Since that is not commonly disputed in
America, we pass on.

  47. The best theory of civil society requires that popular schools
  open to the children of all classes, and, generally, all public
  institutes intended for instruction in letters and philosophy, and for
  conducting the education of the young, should be freed from all
  ecclesiastical authority, government, and interference, and should be
  fully subject to the civil and political power, in conformity with the
  will of rulers and the prevalent opinions of the age.

This is an exact statement of the theory upon which the American public
school system is founded, and this theory is declared to be an error.

  48. This system of instructing youth, which consists in separating it
  from the Catholic faith and from the power of the Church, and in
  teaching exclusively, or at least primarily, the knowledge of natural
  things and the earthly ends of social life alone, may be approved by
  Catholics.

This is practically a definition of what we call “secular education”; it
is what we give in our public schools, and we are declared to be in
error when we do so.

There are many other statements in this Syllabus which are of
importance. Thus in 77 we learn that the Church refuses to give up its
demand that the State shall maintain it as the only religion. In 78 we
are told that the State should not permit non-Catholics to worship
publicly in Catholic countries. In 79 we are told that freedom of
worship, and freedom of manifesting opinions and ideas, conduce to
corrupt the minds of the people. In 80 we are told that the Roman
Pontiff cannot and ought not “reconcile himself to, and agree with,
progress, liberalism, and civilization as lately introduced.” I think
that will suffice to make plain to the average American why the
“Syllabus of Errors” cannot be found in English translation in Catholic
volumes obtainable in libraries or book-stores!

While in the midst of these researches I came upon a little pamphlet
entitled: “The Catholic Answer. An Honest, Dignified Statement of Facts
for Fair-Minded People,” published by “Our Sunday Visitor,” of
Huntington, Indiana. This pamphlet has the American flag on the cover,
and contains an entirely different statement of the Catholic attitude;
also an offer of a thousand dollars to anyone who can disprove anything
in the pamphlet. So I wrote to the editor of this publication, asking
him for help in my researches. At the time of writing I did not have the
full text of the Syllabus; I had merely a summary of some of its
propositions, and I sent these to the editor, asking him to explain the
matter. From the letter-head of his reply I gain the information that
“Our Sunday Visitor” is “the popular National Catholic weekly with
2,000,000 readers scattered over every country in the world. Thousands
of priests order it for all of their people.” The editor is the Rt. Rev.
Msgr. J. F. Noll, and he tells me:

  We do not have the Syllabus of Pius IX at hand, and therefore are not
  able to determine the accuracy of the quotations which you submit for
  verification. The last two quotations seem so utterly abhorrent even
  to the Catholic, that I am quite certain that they are not genuine.
  You understand that this is the day of bogus documents, concocted and
  circulated by enemies of the Catholic Church.

After that, of course, I was more than ever determined to get the full
text of the Syllabus. When I got it, I found that the passages to which
Monsignor Noll takes exception are merely a brief practical summary of a
few propositions, turning their negatives into positive affirmations.
Thus, one of the passages which I sent to the Monsignor and which he
finds “utterly abhorrent even to the Catholic” reads as follows:

  The Church has the right to avail itself of force, and to use the
  temporal power for that purpose. The Church has the right to exercise
  her power without the permission or consent of the State.

And that is covered by Proposition 24 of the Syllabus, which states that
it is an error to teach that

  The Church has not the power of availing herself of force, or any
  direct or indirect temporal power.

and also Proposition 20, which denounces the error that

  The ecclesiastical power must not exercise its authority without the
  permission and assent of the civil government.

You will note variations in the translation; no two people, rendering
the same Latin into English, would use the same English words. The Latin
“potestas” is called “right” in one version, and “power” in the other;
but the meaning is the same, for the power claimed by the Church is
moral power, the power given by God, which is what we call “right.” So
far as I can see, the statement which Monsignor Noll finds “utterly
abhorrent even to the Catholic” is a perfectly fair summary of the
practical effect of the Syllabus. And the same applies to the other
quotation, which, as submitted to Monsignor Noll, read:

  The Church and her priests have the right to immunity from all civil
  laws.

That is Proposition 30 of the Syllabus, which denounces as an error the
doctrine that

  The immunity of the Church and of ecclesiastical persons derives its
  origin from civil law.

Now there can be no dispute that this proposition asserts “immunity” for
the Church and for ecclesiastical persons; and the word “immunity” is a
technical church word, meaning immunity from civil law—a prerogative
which was maintained by the Church until recent times. The question
considered in the Syllabus is whether this “immunity” is derived from
the State or from God. If it is derived from the State, it can be
abolished by the State, and this is the “error” which the Pope is
denouncing. He affirms the contrary, that the immunity is from God, and
therefore can never be taken away. Is not this the very proposition
which Monsignor Noll finds “utterly abhorrent even to the Catholic”?

The Monsignor goes on to discuss the propositions referring to the
schools, and to say that they are applicable only where there is union
of Church and State, and have nothing to do with the Catholic Church in
its relation to our own public schools. “Outside of countries where
there is union of Church and State, the Catholic Church does not pretend
to have any jurisdiction, nor would she ever dream of interfering with
the public schools. The teaching of the Church is that both the State
and Church are supreme, each in its own domain.” And then, after reading
that, I get the text of the Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII, which are part
of the supreme law of the Church, and I read:

  The Church of Rome is one monarchy over all the kingdoms of the earth,
  and is, among temporal kingdoms, as the mind or soul to the body of a
  man, or as God in the world. Therefore the Church of Rome must not
  only have the spiritual power, but also the supreme temporal power.

And once more:

  It is an impious deed to break the laws of Jesus Christ for the
  purpose of obeying the magistrates, or to transgress the laws of the
  Church under the pretext of obeying the civil law.

In the effort to clear up these mysteries, I wrote to the fourteen
catholic archbishops of the United States, also to the papal delegate in
Washington, and to the Paulist Fathers in New York. The first reply came
by telegraph from the archbishop of New Orleans, referring me to the
Catholic Encyclopedia. I consulted in that work the topics “Pius IX,”
and the “Syllabus of Errors,” and the first thing I read was that the
Encyclical containing this “Syllabus of Errors” “was solemnly received
in national and provincial councils by the episcopate of the whole
world.” I also learned that “the ‘Syllabus’ is not only the defense of
the inalienable rights of God, of the Church, and of truth against the
abuse of the words _freedom_ and _culture_ on the part of unbridled
Liberalism, but it is also a protest, earnest and energetic, against the
attempt to eliminate the influence of the Catholic Church on the life of
nations and of individuals, on the family and the school.” And again:
“It has done an inestimable service to the Church and to society at
large by unmasking the false liberalism which had begun to insinuate its
subtle poison into the very marrow of Catholicism.”

But I do not find one word in either of these articles to indicate that
the propositions of the Syllabus do not apply to America, but only to
countries which have separation of Church and State. I find sweeping
endorsements of sweeping propositions; and how can I bring myself to
believe that ecclesiastical authorities, solemnly laying down the law
for all time, would omit to state such vital qualifications, if they
wished such qualifications to be understood?

I have before me a stack of letters from Catholic authorities, also a
stack of Catholic pamphlets, and references to a great number of books;
I realize now that if I were to make an authoritative pronouncement on
the attitude of the Catholic Church toward the American public schools,
I should have to write a volume instead of a chapter. How complicated
the subject is you may judge from one sentence, quoted to me by
Archbishop Keane of Dubuque. This is a statement made by Cardinal
Newman, in the course of his controversy with Gladstone over the meaning
of the “Syllabus of Errors.” Says the great master of Catholic
apologetics: “The ‘Syllabus,’ viewed in itself, is nothing more than a
digest of certain errors made by an anonymous writer.” I can only give
my reaction to this sentence—it shows me that I should be wasting my
time if I tried to understand Catholic controversy. The “Syllabus” is an
explicit statement by the highest Catholic authority, that the
propositions of the “anonymous writer” are errors; from which it follows
that the contrary of these propositions is upon the highest Catholic
authority affirmed. If someone tells me that I am reported to have
burglarized a bank, that is an anonymous statement; but if I answer,
“that is a lie,” then I am making the flat assertion that I did not
burglarize a bank. And if anyone denies that, I say that he is not
seeking truth, but merely juggling words, and I have no more time to
waste on Cardinal Newman.




                              CHAPTER LXX
                   THE PRACTICAL CHURCH ADMINISTRATOR


Let us now break through the tangle of ecclesiastical sophistry, and try
to get in a few paragraphs the common sense of the situation. Why are
Catholic authorities reduced to quibbling and evading, and hiding their
real dogmas from the world? The answer is that Catholic students
throughout the world are inevitably influenced by their environment;
those who live in liberal countries take on a tinge of liberalism. But
meantime the dogmas of the church are laid down by a group of
medieval-minded bigots in Rome, who set their faces against the whole of
modern life, and prescribe formulas which are excruciatingly
embarrassing to American Catholics with political and social ambitions.
Hence it comes about that the “Syllabus of Errors” of Pius IX is not
obtainable in official Catholic translations in American public
libraries; hence also it comes about that one Catholic archbishop after
another writes to assure me that the propositions of the “Syllabus” do
not apply to public schools in America.

The frankest letter is from Archbishop Dowling of St. Paul, who
practically admits that I am right in my suspicion that American
Catholics are going as far as they dare to put the dogmas of the Papal
reactionaries upon the shelf. He says:

  The theologian still holds that in itself that State is most perfect
  where the rights of God are recognized as well as the rights of man.
  He assumes all the implications of that position. But his thesis
  receives the attention and the respect that are usually given to
  Utopias. The practical church administrator loyally accepts the _fait
  accompli_. He adjusts his policies and his plans to things as he finds
  them.

And again:

  So far as I know nobody with any influence in the Catholic body of
  this country opposes the public school system. I doubt if Catholics
  ever give the subject of such a fatuous movement a single thought. In
  fact, Catholics are not effectively organized in any but parish
  groups. They have not an influential press. There is not a Catholic
  paper of any kind that circulates largely throughout the whole
  country. They are divided into many racial groups with no point of
  contact save a common creed.

I should like to accept this very courteous statement; but when I am
dealing with men who admit that they are “practical,” meaning that they
profess creeds which they do not try to apply, I am necessarily led to
wonder whether such an attitude might not lead a man to feel justified
in “shading” his views while writing to a non-Catholic correspondent.
Also, I am obliged to contrast the archbishop’s statement with that on
the letter-head of Msgr. Noll: “‘Our Sunday Visitor,’ the popular
National Catholic weekly with 2,000,000 readers scattered over every
country in the world. Thousands of priests order it for all of their
people.” How can this be fitted to the statement that “there is not a
Catholic paper of any kind that circulates largely throughout the whole
country?”

For the rest of this chapter let us follow the program of the “practical
church administrator,” and adjust ourselves to things as we find them.
What one finds everywhere throughout America is as follows: The
Catholics are maintaining a rival system to the public schools; they are
running an enormous business, spending tens of millions of dollars, and
they take toward the public schools precisely the attitude which
business rivalry engenders in every human group. They say in their
propaganda literature that they wish to be “fair” to the public schools.
But just what can be the meaning of this word, to men who regard secular
education as destructive to the souls of the children who receive it?
Inevitably, they wish to save as many souls as possible; and the fact
that they do it from the best of motives makes no difference to us. The
attitude of the Catholic church is to get as much for the church schools
as possible, and to hold down the public schools as much as possible;
that is the fact, and any denial of that fact is propaganda, and a part
of the game.

So when you travel from city to city, and from state to state, as I have
done, you find that the Catholics are everywhere claiming what is
“right”; but that “right” is never the same in two places. It varies
according to one simple formula—it is always a little bit more than the
Catholics are getting in that place. In Italy, Catholic “right” demands
that the Pope shall be the civil ruler of the papal state, including the
city of Rome, and that there shall be no schools except church schools.
Catholic “right” requires this latter in South American countries also.
In cities of the United States where the Catholic vote is large,
Catholic “right” demands that church schools be supported out of public
taxes. In California, which is not Catholic, “right” is somewhat less
than this—merely that the state should furnish free text books for the
Catholic schools. In order to get this concession, the Catholic
lobbyists made a deal with the Y. M. C. A., agreeing to help the “Y,”
which thought it had a “right” to be released from having to pay taxes
on its property![L]

-----

Footnote L:

  Franklin Hichborn: “Legislative Bulletin,” April 21, 1917.

-----

Archbishop Dowling tells me that the Catholic “finds that the secular
State which is founded on liberty is, after all, not such a bad sort.”
But then I go to my Catholic documents once more, and I note that only a
few years ago the most beloved of modern Catholic popes, Leo XIII, sent
an Encyclical to the most beloved of American Catholic prelates,
Cardinal Gibbons, dealing with that dangerous and wicked thing known as
“Americanism,” and insisting that the growth of the church in America
must not be attributed to the excellence of America and American
institutions, but solely to the peculiar divine excellence of the
church. What the beloved Leo thought of our American scheme of
separation of Church and State, with a fair field and no favor for all
religions, he set forth in his Encyclical “Immortale Dei,” dated 1885;
denouncing as one of the products of “unbridled license” the theory that
the State is “not obliged to make public profession of any one religion,
but on the contrary is bound to grant equal rights to every creed.” And
lest any “practical” American archbishop should try to do funny work
with that sentence, he went on to nail the doctrine down; declaring
“that it is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual,
either to disregard all religious duties, or to hold in equal favor
different kinds of religion; that the unrestrained freedom of thinking
and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights
of citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favor and
support.”

I could go on for chapters, exposing such inconsistencies between the
divinely revealed papal doctrines, and the propaganda of the “practical
church administrator.” But the thing you are really interested in is
what I have shown you in Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis, San Francisco—the
Catholic hierarchy building a whole school system to replace the public
schools; and at the same time electing to the public school boards of
these cities Catholic ladies and gentlemen who omit to develop the
building programs of the public schools, and when the people persist in
voting the money, refuse to spend the money and have the buildings
constructed.




                              CHAPTER LXXI
                        FAITH AND MODERN THOUGHT


One more important question we have to consider: What is Catholic
education? Here again we find two aspects of the problem—first, the
doctrines of the church, and second, their “practical” application to
American life.

When Catholic priests and Catholic sisters teach the
multiplication-table, they teach the same multiplication-table as the
public schools. When they teach chemistry, they teach the same formulas
as the public schools. When they teach astronomy, they teach that the
earth is positively known to move round the sun. But when they teach the
_history_ of astronomy, they have to call upon their subtle casuists,
and get round the fact that their infallible popes infallibly decreed
that the sun moves round the earth, and caused the imprisonment of
Galileo in a dungeon for having taught the devilish Copernican heresy.

During my last year in the New York public schools I had an Irish
Catholic gentleman for my teacher. I never had a better teacher, and
wouldn’t want one; he was efficient, and at the same time human and
jolly. He discovered that it was possible to let us talk to him and ask
him questions without the formality of raising our hands. He would let
us argue and “scrap” with him, and he evolved a most delightful method
of discipline for boys who did not pay attention—he would let fly a
piece of chalk at their heads. I learned more from him in one year than
I learned from some other teachers in two; so I have a kindly spot in my
heart for Irish Catholic teachers.

But then I went on to college, and here it was quite different; for I
was not studying spelling and geography and arithmetic, about which all
the world agrees; I was studying history and philosophy and literature,
about which Catholics differ from everybody else. I was studying at a
public college, run by Tammany Hall, and many of the professors were
Catholics; later on, when the college moved up to its new buildings,
they took most of its staff from Fordham College, a Catholic
institution, and without any examinations or preliminaries.

I had as my Latin teacher Professor Charles G. Herberman, editor of the
“Catholic Encyclopedia,” and a captain of the Society of Jesus. He was a
great Latin scholar, but a despot as well as a bigot; and when he
wandered from the subject, which he did frequently, he supported every
obscurantist idea in the world. My philosophy teacher, John J. McNulty,
taught me the intellectual cob-web spinning of all the ages. Naturally,
he could not have taught me a philosophy of evolution, or a philosophy
of common-sense, such as pragmatism. I spent my entire time in his
classes marveling that no one of the world’s great philosophers had ever
thought of relating metaphysical theories to the plain facts of life
which everybody knows and lives by; I would try to pin Professor McNulty
down on this point, only to find that he couldn’t understand what I
meant.

And then Professor George E. Hardy, who taught us English, according to
the New York “Sun” and Tammany Hall. I have told about him in “The
Goose-step”—how he made us learn and recite Catholic poetry, and taught
us that Milton was a narrow bigot and Chaucer not a Wyckliffite. I
didn’t know what a Wyckliffite was, but I understand now that he was the
Bolshevik of the fourteenth century—a creature so wicked that it wasn’t
safe for you to know about him, for fear you might come to agree with
him!

Now, manifestly the education which these Catholic gentlemen tried to
give me was absurd; and if they had tried to give me education in
biology, or in sociology, or in history, it would have been equally
absurd. To the Catholic Church the entire development of modern thought
is a kind of malignant tumor upon the human race. This again is
something about which there can be no argument—there simply is not in
the Catholic system any place for the secular state, or for rationalism,
or for evolution, or for democracy; I could give a long list of other
impossibilities—but instead I invite you to study a book by the leading
literary Catholic of England, Hilaire Belloc. I don’t think I exaggerate
in saying that Belloc is the one living Catholic man of letters who has
managed to achieve a first-rate position in English letters. And here he
writes a big book, “Europe and the Faith,” working out in detail the
exact point of view which I have just set forth.

He begins by telling us that he is the only real historian, he is the
only one who can in the deep and mystic sense know his subject, because
he has the Faith; all those who have not the Faith are outsiders and
predestined to error. According to this Faith, Mr. Belloc knows that
Rome is the source of European civilization, Rome created the Eternal
Empire—from Scotland to the Sahara, and from Syria to Spain. All was
going well with this Eternal Empire until the lust and greed of King
Henry VIII of England led him upon a path of crime; England turned
traitor to the great European Empire—and as a result of that came all
the monstrosities and abnormalities of the last four hundred years,
Protestantism, Capitalism, Industrialism, Atheism, Pessimism,
Imperialism, and the World War.

Such is Catholic history; and Catholic biology and Catholic sociology
and Catholic philosophy and Catholic literature will be things equally
and inevitably as remote from reality. When you go into Catholic
colleges you will find such fantasticalities being taught, you will find
all knowledge being distorted to fit the Catholic theories and sustain
the Catholic Faith. One illustration—in Milwaukee the Catholic
archbishop objected to a pageant of the Pilgrims being given by the
Milwaukee school children, because it was said that the Pilgrim Fathers
came to this country in search of religious liberty; the archbishop
forced the change of the word “religious” to “political”! You will find
everything thus taught from the point of view of the Faith—or else not
taught at all. For what does it really matter? Our stay on this earth is
brief, and so long as our souls are saved, why care what becomes of our
minds? Says the Milwaukee “Catholic Citizen” of July 15, 1922: “One
would imagine that devotional books are the chief output of our Catholic
publishing houses—ten new books of devotion to one of history or
biography.”

What are the standards of the Catholic parochial schools? This again is
something which follows from the premises already stated. Mr. Franklin
Hichborn, one of the most careful of social investigators, tells me that
he has been collecting data on the effect of the parochial schools upon
the public school system, in a town of six thousand inhabitants. This
material has not yet been published, but Mr. Hichborn gives me a
summary:

  I found that the dual school system is most demoralizing. It increases
  the difficulties of the truant officer, and is a drag upon progressive
  school policies. Furthermore, I found that children who started in the
  parochial school were from two to five years behind when they entered
  the public schools. Or, to put it another way, children from the
  parochial school, who left such school at the age of ten, for example,
  were qualified for public school grades where the ages of the children
  were eight or even seven years. Children leaving the parochial school
  at the age of sixteen entered public school grades where the age of
  the students was nine or ten. I have this information with the names,
  dates and grades, and covering a number of years.

In America the Catholic Church has to build and run schools, because
they have the competition of the public schools to meet; but there are
other countries in which they do not have this competition, and there we
may see what the Church would do with education if it had its own way. I
will give you a few of the statistics of illiteracy throughout the
world, and to make the contrast vivid I will give first a Protestant
country, and then a Catholic country—and see if you can tell which is
which! The percentages, taken from the U. S. Census of 1920, are as
follows: U. S. A., 6; Argentina, 54; Canada, 11; Brazil, 85; Australia,
1.8; Bolivia, 82; Holland, .08; Chili, 49; England, 1.8; Colombia, 73;
Denmark, .2; Hungary, 33; Scotland, 1.6; Mexico, 70; Sweden, .2;
Portugal, 68; Germany, .05; Spain, 58; Switzerland, .3; Italy, 37. It
seems to me these figures cover the case.

The main basis of the Catholic attack upon the American public schools
is that they are “godless”; the children come out without religion and
without morality. But then you go to the juvenile courts, and what do
you find? Judge Collins of the Juvenile Court in New York City,
addressing a meeting of Catholics at St. Charles Borromeo Church,
reports 145,000 cases brought up each year in the children’s court, 60%
of them Catholic, 30% Jewish, and the remaining 10% of other faiths; 65%
of the boys in the reformatories are Catholic—and this in a city whose
population is 25% Catholic. According to the Department of Correction of
New York, there were 23,539 Catholics in New York jails, as against
9,278 non-Catholics. On the other side of the continent, in San
Francisco, I find a tabulation of the inmates of the state prison; 76%
of these are from Catholic schools, brought up in the Catholic faith,
yet the Catholics have less than 20% of the population of California.

I close this subject with one glimpse of what might be called Catholic
adult education. In some parts of our country the church has become so
powerful that the capitalist press has taken to publishing Catholic
propaganda; I have before me a specimen of such propaganda, cut from the
Boston “Post” of July 25, 1921:

                         MEDAL GIVEN TO AUTOISTS

             Special Blessing from Patron Saint of Motorists

  Some 2000 autoists—chaffeurs and car owners—thronged St. Leonard of
  Port Maurice Church, Prince Street, North End, yesterday to receive
  special blessing and obtain a St. Christopher medal, bearing the
  picture of the patron saint of automobilists—the charm against motor
  accidents and death.

The story spread over two columns, describes the “solemn high mass and
adoration of the St. Christopher relic,” and the “eloquent sermon”
preached by the Reverend Christopher Burzi, who told all the legends
concerning the saint, and how this particular feast had been ordered by
Pope Pius X. “At the conclusion of the mass the relic of the saint
encased in glass was brought to the altar rail, where the congregation
gathered to kiss the sacred relic.”

Here we have what we may describe as an adult vocational course of the
parochial schools. In the “godless” public schools, you must realize,
there are night classes where men painfully acquire knowledge of the
proper handling of automobiles; but under this Catholic system all these
tiresome details become superfluous, and men avoid automobile accidents
by kissing the bones of a saint and purchasing magic medallions—“one a
pocket charm, and the other a sterling silver plate that can be attached
to the car itself.”




                             CHAPTER LXXII
                          THE SCHOOLS OF STEEL


We are now familiar with the principal agencies which have taken over
our education upon a national scale. In addition to these, each
community has its local interests, which may be small from a national
standpoint, but are big enough to block the vision of a school board.
Wherever capitalist industry exists in America, in towns or villages or
country districts, that industry dominates the schools. There are whole
counties, hundreds of them scattered over the United States, which are
feudal domains of great corporations. In cases where these corporations
own the land and the homes of the workers, as in the coal towns of West
Virginia and Colorado, the corporations support the schools, and the
teachers are the least competent and poorest paid of their clerks. In
cases where other landlords have a chance to exploit the workers, the
burden of the schools falls upon the tax-payers—with the great
corporations dodging their taxes.

I talked the other day with a teacher from Benicia, California, a
“tannery town.” A school board member, elected to serve the people, got
the idea that the tannery was not paying its proper share of taxes, and
he brought an expert from the city to get the facts. The firm was
assessed on a quarter of a million dollars, and should have been
assessed on two millions. This same school board member belonged to the
city council, and brought the matter up before that body, which decided
to do nothing. Of course the schools were starved, and sometimes the
teachers did not get their salaries at all. Again, I talked with a
gentleman from Wisconsin, whose father was an engineer. A lumber company
wanted his services, but could not afford to pay what he was worth, so
they decided to give him an extra salary, and ordered the secretary of
the school board to resign!

I talked with a teacher who had taught in several of the coal towns of
Southern Illinois; the invariable condition is wretched schools, with
the vast wealth of the corporations untaxed. The miners who attempt to
control their own schools are browbeaten or tricked. The mines
invariably work on school election days; the club women turn out with
their automobiles, and bring the voters to the polls—those who will vote
the business men’s ticket. By the time the miners get out of the pits
the polls are closed, so the miners’ candidates are not elected. At
Eldorado, Illinois, the organized miners endeavored to put up a ticket,
and the clerk of the school board lied to them as to the date for the
filing of petitions.

For a detailed study of what industrial feudalism does to education, I
propose that we investigate Judge Gary and his Steel Trust. In
Pittsburgh, I talked with a reporter on one of the newspapers, who had
been watching school conditions for twenty years. Here is a whole county
entirely dominated by steel; you cannot hold meetings without permission
of the police, which means that if you are a labor organizer you do not
hold them at all. The valley is a solid line of “steel-towns,” and in
one of them, McKeesport, representatives of the American Civil Liberties
Union duplicated my experience at San Pedro—they were arrested for
reading the Constitution of the United States on private property.

The Pittsburgh schools of course are run by the steel interests; the
president of the board is David B. Oliver, eighty-five year old steel
magnate. The people have nothing to do with the matter, because the
school board is named by the judges of the county, and this board levies
taxes as it sees fit, and spends the money on its friends. A Pittsburgh
physician writes me: “The offices of the board are palatial, the staff
of clerks legion, the extra teachers unnumbered, and the equipment of
paper and materials would keep any supply-house wreathed in smiles.” He
goes on to add that the present superintendent draws a salary of $12,000
a year, with automobile, chauffeur, and upkeep of car; “he is rumored to
be on speaking terms, at least, with a book-publishing house.”

But that is a lot better than what Pittsburgh had ten years ago—a
superintendent who represented a school-book house in St. Paul, and
spent the rest of his time seducing his girl pupils; it was proved in
court that he had had a criminal operation performed on one of them. My
reporter friend had dug up four cases of rape by this superintendent in
his own office, and the affidavits were presented to the grand jury. The
school children went on strike against their superintendent, and finally
he was tried, and the jury disagreed. Juries in Allegheny County agree
only with steel officials.

In the slum neighborhoods of Pittsburgh you find atrociously crowded
schools, in wretched buildings, some of them made of corrugated iron; in
the rich districts you find palatial high schools. The system is run on
a basis of political pull; good teachers are shifted, so that the
sisters of ward-heelers may get promotion. When parents venture to
complain they are insulted—especially if they are poor. There is a
political machine even of the doctors; the favorites of the board of
health get the jobs of vaccinating in the schools.

Further down the valley is Homestead, from which the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching derives its millions. You will
appreciate the gay humor of this situation—in the schools of Homestead
the steel-slaves are drinking water from the Monongahela River, into
which various industrial plants discharge their acids. When complaint
was made about this water in Homestead, the newspapers saw an
opportunity to be witty, and assured the public that the water needed no
filtering—the acids would kill the bacteria! I am assured that, owing to
the effect of these acids, the plumbing in the homesteads of Homestead
wears out in one-third the normal time; and this suggests the subject
for an important scientific monograph—I see it in my mind’s eye,
catalogued in Carnegie libraries throughout the United States and Great
Britain: “The Internal Plumbing of Pupils; a Study of the Stimulation
Effects of Sulphuric and Nitric Acids on the Renal Canals of One
Thousand School Children at Homestead, Pennsylvania. By A. Learned
Phaque, A.M., Ph.D., T.O.A.D.Y.; Bulletin of the Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching, No. 4-11-44.”

Come to Northern Minnesota, and see what the Steel Trust does to the
shipping port of its vast ore fields. I have before me a copy of the
Duluth “Rip-Saw,” containing a detailed account of the activities of
school board members who have had charge of teachers’ pension money, and
have been lending it out for their private graft. One board member was
an insurance agent, and if he loaned you the teachers’ money, you had to
place your insurance with him. Needless to say, along with this go
accounts of the humiliating of teachers, the beating down of wages, and
the driving out of those with liberal sympathies. Judge Gary, of course,
would say that he has nothing to do with all this; all that he does is
to put up the campaign funds to keep such gangs in office.

Again, Lorain, Ohio, a port on Lake Erie, headquarters of one of the
Steel Trust subsidiaries, the National Tube Company. Here are forty
thousand people, most of them wage-slaves, and recently they elected a
mayor who made an effort to serve them, and was smashed by the Black
Hand. On the school system of Lorain the people have been unable to make
any impression whatever. The house agent of the National Tube Company, a
sort of watch-dog against the radical element in the mills, occupies the
same post on the school board. The president of the board is a dentist
and bank director, a high-up Mason and pillar of the Lutheran church; he
rolls down-town in his big limousine, and lives “on the Avenue” in a
large residence, which is taxed less than the small cottage of a
machinist. Another member is a jeweler and bank director, a pillar of
the Congregational church, who sees to it that the works of Scott
Nearing, Jack London, Bernard Shaw and Upton Sinclair are kept out of
the Carnegie library. The other members are a bank teller and a very
intolerant ex-teacher, both devout Methodists.

As superintendent this board has had for ten years a perfect autocrat,
who finds opportunity for many financial activities on the side. He is a
typical small-town mind, and excludes from the system all teachers whose
minds are bigger. The two most popular teachers in the system were
driven out because their parents happened to be Socialists. A high
school teacher, who had been on the faculty for twelve years, was
charged with “refusing to do team work”—the real reason being that he
attended labor meetings and tried to help the workers. When he was
fired, a petition was presented, signed by every student in his
class—except one, whose father was manager of the Chamber of Commerce.
The fight was carried to the school board elections, but to no purpose,
and this teacher left town.

There must be “no politics” in Lorain school affairs, the board solemnly
ordains; but four years ago, when the ring was kicked out of the city
hall, the school board hastened to make a job for one ring member. A
working-boy was a minute or two late because a draw-bridge which he had
to cross was swung open; he was punished for this, and on the second
offense was threatened with loss of his grades. The son of a big bank
director and promoter was found smoking cigarettes in the high school
building, the punishment for which is expulsion, but the young man
graduated three months later. These are petty details, and I only cite
them because they are typical of a thousand school systems in small
towns. Lorain would tell you that its schools are “progressive,” and
would mention the beveled glass mirrors in the new high school, costing
ninety-five dollars a piece. Its educators stand high—the superintendent
got his enamel finish under Nicholas Miraculous last summer, and the
high school principal did the same thing the year before, and other
members of the faculty have done it or intend to. Superintendent Boone
is a director of the Chamber of Commerce and of the Y. M. C. A., a Mason
and a Kiwani, and when he came back from his course in “school
management” at Columbia, he showed what he had learned by joining the
Elks!




                             CHAPTER LXXIII
                           THE SCHOOLS OF OIL


So much for what steel does to schools; let us now see what oil does.
Our journey of inspection will be under the escort of a rare high school
teacher—one who is willing to tell his experiences over his own
signature. Mr. David H. Pierce specializes in sociology, and at present
is teaching hygiene and Spanish at a high school in Ohio. Two or three
years ago he accepted a position as principal of a high school in the
oil country of West Virginia. The town of Littleton, containing about
seven hundred inhabitants, is spread along a valley, sharing it with a
creek, a mud road, and a railroad; as far as the eye can see in every
direction the hillsides have sprouted oil derricks. Mr. Pierce went
there because he was tired of the “rigid” school system of New York
state, and was told that in West Virginia things were more free. He
found a commodious brick high school, and felt much encouraged—until the
first faculty meeting, when the district superintendent stated: “There
are two boys in your senior class who must pass regardless of their
work. They have never been known to work in school and never will, but
they come from a good family and must graduate.”

Mr. Pierce was supposed to be the principal of the school, but the
superintendent hadn’t much else to do, and made his headquarters in the
building. Mr. Pierce describes him as “a kindly gentleman, a good
husband and father”; he let his teachers alone, except when it became
necessary to protect his own position, by pleasing the aristocracy of
Littleton. He would say to a student who was deficient in half a year of
algebra: “Work six cases of factoring, and it will be satisfactory.” To
a girl who had failed to take a year of high school mathematics he would
suggest: “Go down and observe the class in eighth grade arithmetic a few
times.”

The faculty spent several hours working out a schedule of classes, and
the school ran for three weeks, when news came that a prominent athlete,
desired for the basket-ball team, was to be admitted to school. He was
employed in the mornings at outside work, so it was necessary to arrange
three afternoon classes for this young athlete. As this conflicted with
the schedule of the school, Mr. Pierce suggested that the boy should
spend his entire day in school, in order to secure the fifteen hours per
week of class work. The superintendent’s reply was that this could not
be required, because the lad’s father was president of the school board;
the old schedule must be destroyed and a new one arranged. Immediately
after this had been done, the boy changed his mind and decided he would
not come to school. The athletic coach spent a month persuading him,
then he concluded to come to school for the entire day. When Mr. Pierce
had occasion to admonish this young man for truancy, he retorted: “Ah,
what the hell difference does it make? I’ve been guaranteed graduation a
year from June.” Says Mr. Pierce:

  In many cases the athlete runs the school. I heard of one who told a
  school superintendent to “go to hell” and was given one day’s
  suspension. I have known of others to engage in physical combat with
  instructors, with no ill results to their scholastic position. They
  are privileged characters. They obey only those rules which they
  desire. Being assured of a coterie of hero-worshipers in the
  community, they live in no terror of penalties or punishments. It
  would be as much as a principal’s or teacher’s place is worth if he or
  she dared to prevent a boy from taking part in an important game. This
  is no exaggeration. It is a fact. To put it mildly, a teacher in many
  a small West Virginia high school who attempted honestly to enforce
  the rules laid down by the State High School Athletic Association
  would be blacklisted. He would suffer indignities. Littleton High
  School was of this sort, and the villagers of Littleton wanted teams
  that could win.

I have shown in “The Goose-step” how the coaches and the athletic alumni
run the colleges, and here in this high school of the oil country we
find the same phenomenon. Mr. Pierce’s year in Littleton was one long
struggle, because he would not permit mid-week basket-ball games, which
drew a large part of the students from their work. The coach of the
basket-ball team was a junior high school teacher, and he advised Mr.
Pierce that “It ain’t the way we do them things in this section.” He
proceeded to give instructions to the girls’ basket-ball team:

  Girls, you’ll be up against a stiff team tonight. Go in and foul for
  all you’re worth. Remember if you are fouled by the referee, and the
  opponents make a goal it counts one point. If the opposing team is
  given room to shoot from the open floor, every basket they make counts
  two.

The team proceeded to follow this advice. The referee was one of their
own students, and because of foul play Mr. Pierce went down on the floor
and stopped the game and ordered the referee from the floor. The crowd
was raving, and for several days the town debated whether or not the
principal should be dismissed from the high school. There was a meeting
in honor of the coach, and his admirers presented him with a fountain
pen, and he made them a speech:

  Fellows, maybe it ain’t right, but I’ve got to tell you what was told
  me by a man that saw you play. He said “Christ, but you’ve a hell of a
  good team,” and I agree with him. You fellows have been there with the
  goods.

This oil town was extremely religious. Mr. Pierce provided some of his
students with copies of the “Survey,” but the paper was thrown out of
the homes by two parents, who were afraid it would interfere with the
children’s religion. Mr. Pierce taught at the Methodist Sunday school,
but at his boarding house he ventured to question the existence of a
future life, and so the word spread that he was an “atheist,” and he
found on his school blackboard the announcement: “Reverend Pierce will
lecture on ‘No Heaven, No Hell.’” A gentleman was appointed to spy upon
his Sunday school class, to discover what he was teaching. A preacher
devoted two-thirds of his sermon to the glories of basket-ball, and
closed with an earnest prayer for victory in the approaching game.
Dancing and card playing were barred. The town’s idea of diversion was
to tie one end of a rope to a switch engine and the other end to
somebody’s front porch.

A part of Mr. Pierce’s story was published in an article in the
“Survey,” entitled “A Village School,” April 23, 1921. Mr. Pierce was
then teaching in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and the superintendent of
Littleton wrote to him, threatening to “beat him up.” The superintendent
sent this threat through the mail, and thereby laid himself liable to
several years’ imprisonment; but Mr. Pierce, being, like myself, an
amiable muckraker, forebore to press the point. Besides, he had new
troubles in Clarksburg; the high school team won a debate favoring
government control of railroads, and this so frightened the principal
that “he spent ten minutes notifying the entire assembly that debates do
not mean anything, and the decision was not to be taken seriously.” Mr.
Pierce continues:

  Upon another occasion, he advised me not to discuss the coal strike in
  my class, or at least to show no sympathy for organized labor, because
  he asserted that ninety per cent of my students were children of coal
  miners who belonged to unions, and they would be inclined to be
  aroused too much. Upon another occasion, he entered my class casually,
  when I was discussing some of the advantages of government control of
  railroads, and he told the class that the movement for government
  control was Bolshevistic. I was using, at that time, New York state as
  an example, in trying to show what saving could be made, if, for
  example, the Erie Railroad was used for passenger service and the
  Lackawanna for freight. Of course, I had to defend myself from the
  accusation of Bolshevism, but as we were personally friendly (in fact,
  I was a roomer at his house), he did not carry the case up at all.

That indicates at least one way for a liberal to keep his job in a high
school!




                             CHAPTER LXXIV
                           THE COUNTRY GEESE


We have had glimpses of rural school conditions in the far West. Let us
glance at the wheat country. From the point of view of politics and
education the Dakotas are a back-yard of Minneapolis and St. Paul, being
governed by the railroads and banks and chambers of commerce of these
cities. The farmers made a desperate effort to free themselves by their
Nonpartisan League, and the story of their ten years’ struggle to
control their schools is most illuminating.

The Nonpartisan League was strong in the country districts, while the
gang still held the towns; so their legislature put through a measure
taking control of city schools away from the state; after which the gang
proceeded to dump overboard all city teachers who belonged to the
League, or who ventured to speak in its support. “The Reds have taken
the schools,” was the cry; and in cases where the Nonpartisan League
appointed principals or heads of state institutions, the students were
incited to strike against these officers. The Teachers’ Union was forced
to disband in Fargo, and in the State Agricultural College a teacher who
became secretary of the Teachers’ Union was refused the increase of
salary to which she was legally entitled.

By methods such as these the gang managed to hold on in North Dakota;
they were sure the political tide would turn, and it did. The Federal
Reserve Board “deflated” the farmers, and the price of wheat dropped to
less than half the cost of producing it; when I was in North Dakota, in
1922, there were counties of the state in which every farm was being
sold for taxes. In four months during 1923 over seventy small banks went
to the wall, and two hundred others were in trouble. The Nonpartisan
League program included state-owned mills and elevators, and these
half-completed enterprises of course were useless. The League was
without funds—the bankers saw to that, by calling the loans of farmers
who paid their dues. So the gang came back, and they put out MacDonald,
the League superintendent of schools—not content with that, they hounded
him literally to his death. A friend of his writes me:

  Wherever he secured a position, he was followed by his North Dakota
  enemies. The new superintendent and the new director of vocational
  training prepared letters and bulletins denouncing him; they sent
  these to his students and the officers under whom he worked, and this
  would be continued until he was dismissed. As soon as he would get a
  new job and they would get him located, they would repeat.

The gang put in as its new superintendent a political woman, Miss
Neilson, president of the Federation of Women’s Clubs, an organization
controlled by the Black Hand, in North Dakota as in Los Angeles. Miss
Neilson is not a graduate of any college, normal school or high school;
under the law she was ineligible to the position, but the courts very
kindly held this law unconstitutional. The uneducated lady now has
absolute control of the teachers of North Dakota, and can and does
withhold certificates from her political opponents. They have set up a
system of “grading” schools, a purely political scheme to strengthen the
control of the gang; they have four politicians as “school inspectors,”
and the standards on which the grading is done are wholly artificial,
having no relationship to merit. If the schools stand in with the gang,
the pupils from those schools do not have to pass examinations to enter
the higher state institutions, or to secure positions from the gang.

The text-book graft is back again; and also the banker-graft. There are
quarter sections of land belonging to the bankers, and these have been
left out of the school districts, so that they do not have to pay school
taxes. The law requires the banks to pay interest on school money, but
the bankers handle that matter by the simple device of naming the school
treasurer and keeping the books for him—and incidentally keeping the
interest! In the county where my friend Smith was superintendent, the
school treasurer was threatened that if he made trouble he would have to
pay up his own note at the bank; and when Mr. Smith persisted in making
trouble, the banker came in a fury, demanding: “What’s this?”

Mr. Smith told me also about the graft in building jobs—the biggest of
all. Mr. Smith had to see to putting up school buildings, and was told
to charge as much as the other counties were paying, otherwise the money
would not be allowed him. When he refused to do this, they passed a law
compelling him to do it! He put up a building 42 by 54, with a full
basement, for $3,700; while for the same building other counties were
paying from nine to ten thousand dollars. But in spite of such public
services, Mr. Smith never had a safe majority in the county—he had
against him the bankers’ machine and the bankers’ newspapers, and the
vote of the towns, whose people depended for their jobs upon the
bankers, and for their ideas upon the bankers’ newspapers. Imagine the
political conditions in a community where a man, hoping to get back into
the educational field, dares not permit me to relate these incidents in
connection with his real name!

These conditions prevail wherever the farmer movement has been active.
In South Dakota the Nonpartisan League was never able to carry the
state; but it is growing, and the gang has been frantic to stamp it out
of the schools. At the Madison State Normal School there were several
teachers who made so bold as to declare their sympathy with the League.
In 1920 one of these teachers, Mrs. Anna Mae Brady, was unceremoniously
kicked out by the president, and a prominent Republican politician
stated as the reason her sympathy with the League. But realizing that
this wouldn’t look well as a campaign issue, President Higbie discovered
that Mrs. Brady had been giving lectures at teachers’ institutes in
other counties. Mrs. Brady had been doing this for eight years, and it
was a custom of teachers throughout the state. But the president had
nothing more to say, and when Mrs. Brady demanded a hearing before the
board of regents, they graciously permitted her to come and speak, but
professed to know nothing about the matter, and refused to summon
President Higbie and permit Mrs. Brady to question him. Another teacher,
Miss Alice L. Daly, handed in her resignation in protest, and stated
that the political machine of the state, and powerful financial
interests outside the state, were running South Dakota education. The
answer of President Higbie to this protest was to drop three more
teachers who were sympathetic to the League.

Also in Idaho the farmer movement is becoming powerful, and the
interests have been hard put to it. In Boise they have a beautiful new
high school, with a big auditorium, and the school board had made the
rule that under no circumstances was it to be open for political
gatherings. But it happened that at the close of the 1922 campaign, the
radical candidate for governor secured the big opera house; the gang
wished to offer a counter attraction, and there was no hall big enough
for their purposes. So the school board met and rescinded their
resolution, and the Republican party held a meeting in the high school
auditorium, addressed by the Republican governor. Next day the school
board met again, and restored the rule forbidding political gatherings
in the public schools of Boise! Laws made to order, so to speak!

Let us take the country districts of California, from which you get most
of your fruits, canned and dried. I have notes of the misadventures of
many California teachers; apparently the habit of breaking the law is
universal among school boards and superintendents of this state. In
Bishop the principal of the high school drops teachers contrary to law,
and when they resort to the courts he solves the problem by eliminating
the courses of study taught by these teachers. In Calexico the courts
refused to enforce the law regarding teachers’ tenure. In Santa Cruz the
board of education has set aside the state law providing equal pay for
equal work as between men and women. They have a school principal who
for a trivial offense whipped two little boys so severely that they had
to have medical attention. This also was against the law, but the board
paid no heed to the petitions of the parents. Mrs. Josephine Tyler, who
writes about this matter, states:

  I secured one letter from a former resident of Santa Cruz, who had
  taken her adopted daughter out of school because of insulting
  treatment from Forsyth. I gave this letter to the president of the
  board to read, and, after reading it, he remarked, “I believe the man
  is crazy.” But he didn’t advocate his removal. He asked permission to
  show the letter to other members of the board, and I granted his
  request, after securing his promise to return the letter to me. I
  afterwards learned that some members of the board were very loath to
  return the letter to me, and I heard only recently that there is still
  some apprehension concerning that letter.... Forsyth holds his job
  because he stands in with and is a good propagandist tool of the
  lodges and the banking and business interests.

Or take the strange experience of the teachers at Fresno, the place from
which you get your raisins. Up to recently the schools in Fresno had a
superintendent by the name of Cross; he used to run the high school in
Pasadena, and we played tennis together, and took pleasure in licking
the school champions. I never observed in Mr. Cross any failure of
manners on the tennis court, so I long for the day when we apply inside
our schools the same standards as on the play-grounds outside. When Mr.
Cross came to Fresno the sanitary conditions in the schools were
“shocking,” and he so reported them; but next year one of the teachers
ventured to make a report, showing that conditions in her school were
still more “shocking,” and Mr. Cross resented the meddling of teachers
in such affairs. This teacher was persecuted until she resigned, and the
result was the forming of a teachers’ union in Fresno. Miss Verna Carson
became the president of this union, and one of the board members told
her that “the business men of this town are getting tired of having you
going around through the state and organizing other locals.” In June of
that year Superintendent Cross dropped Miss Carson, and when the
teachers made protest, he declared his attitude to organized teachers:
there was no use trying to deal with them by conference—“a base-ball bat
or a gatling-gun is needed.” That was the kind of talk the Chamber of
Commerce wanted, and they rallied to their superintendent’s support, and
gave him a raise of a thousand dollars. When pushed by friends of Miss
Carson, Mr. Cross finally gave a reason for her dismissal, “professional
incapacity.” Miss Carson, being unable to get a hearing, proceeded to
bring a libel suit, and Mr. Cross on the witness stand was invited to
state what acts of “professional incapacity” she had committed. He could
not give any, so he was adjudged guilty of libel, and obliged to pay the
costs of the suit, and at the end of the year to resign from his
position. This is one of the pleasantest school stories I have to tell,
and I wish that teachers would make note of it and do likewise.




                              CHAPTER LXXV
                        THE SCHOOLS OF SNOBBERY


So far our attention has been given to the public schools. There is
another large field of education, at which we can only stop for a
glance—the private schools. There are over two thousand private high
schools and academies in the United States, with two or three hundred
thousand students; and apart from parochial and a few experimental
schools, these institutions are maintained by the rich for the purpose
of giving their children a class education. Some of them are large and
wealthy, with endowments running into the millions; when we glance at
their boards of control we are reminded of the interlocking directorates
of “The Goose-step.”

For example, here is Phillips Exeter, a hundred and forty-two years old;
in control we find Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, partner in the firm of J. P.
Morgan and Company, director of the Guaranty Trust Company, overseer of
Harvard University, trustee of Smith College, and director of the
Crowell Publishing Company, which gives us that lovely “American
Magazine” about which you may read in “The Brass Check.” Also Colonel
William Boyce Thompson, mining magnate and Republican party chief; also
Mr. George A. Plimpton, trustee of Amherst College, who has just helped
to kick out its liberal president, and senior partner of Ginn and
Company, who run Clark University and Clark College for the benefit of
the Frye-Atwood geographies.

Also there is Phillips Andover, a hundred and forty-five years old,
having at the head of its board a Boston bank president, interlocked
with Yale University; as board members a clergyman, interlocked by
marriage with the Boston Lowells, who are even more exclusive than the
Boston banks; also a New York corporation lawyer, who ran our war
department under Taft. At Hotchkiss we find the president of a trust
company and a dean of Yale; a partner in a stock exchange firm, who is
also treasurer of Yale; and a president of a bank, vice-president of a
trust company and of the American Brass Company, director of a life
insurance company and a trustee of Trinity College. At Groton we find as
secretary the chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, interlocked
with Barnard College and Nicholas Miraculous; also a member of the firm
of Lee, Higginson & Company, the Boston bankers, interlocked with the
University of Lee-Higginson, popularly known as Harvard; also two
representatives of the Episcopal department of God, Mammon & Company.

At St. Paul’s we find the New Hampshire bishop and two other members of
this same aristocratic firm, one of them interlocked with Yale; also a
Baltimore copper magnate, interlocked with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad
and Johns Hopkins University; also a carpet manufacturer; a Republican
politician of Boston; a Philadelphia lawyer, who is president of a bank
and two railroads, director in four railroads, a trust company, an
electrical company and an asphalt company; and finally, a real
sure-enough, honest-to-goodness, cross-my-heart-and-swear-it English
lord! At St. Marks we have the same bishop as at Groton, and two other
representatives of the firm; also a cotton goods merchant interlocked
with Boston Edison and Massachusetts Gas, the invisible government of
Harvard; also a president of several manufacturing companies, who is
vice-president of a railroad; one of the Choates, who directs railroads,
banks and life insurance in New York; and finally “Jim” Wadsworth,
senator and Republican boss of New York state, whose father I had the
pleasure of putting out of politics some eighteen years ago. (See “The
Brass Check,” page 45.)

The Lawrenceville School, a magnificent institution located five miles
from Princeton, has on its board of trustees President John Grier Hibben
of Princeton, one of our leading clerical militarists; also a New York
banker who directs much foreign exploitation; also a bank president who
directs insurance. At Lawrenceville they had a head master who was
liberal, or at least human; he died recently, and the plutocratic alumni
came, offering to raise a few millions, on condition that they should
name the head master. They brought in the very successful coach of the
Yale rowing crew; incidentally he was professor of Latin, but that is
hardly worth mentioning in comparison. Because of his services in
beating the Harvard crew, Yale gave him the degree of M.A., _honoris
causa_—the same as they had extended to Jane Addams! This rowing
gentleman proceeded to coach Lawrenceville under the new Prussian spy
system, with the result of a faculty explosion too unsavory to be
detailed in this book.

These schools of snobbery are scattered all over New England and the
eastern states. They are training grounds for the athletic teams of the
big universities, also for the university fraternities, so that social
strivings and jealousies make up a good part of their student life.
Admission to the more exclusive of them is an hereditary privilege; if
you belong to the right families, your children and grandchildren are
booked when they are born. Needless to say, the plutocratic psychology
of these schools is never offended by the least breath of liberalism. In
place of ideas, the boys are furnished with golf courses, motor cars,
saddle-horses, boot-leggers, and all other comforts of home.

You have heard of Roger W. Babson, who sends out bulletins to keep the
rich informed as to the progress of social revolution. Mr. Babson deals
also in plutocratic education; conducting at Wellesley Hills,
Massachusetts, the Babson Institute, where thirty sons of the plutocracy
are trained to be magnates, at two thousand dollars per magnate per
year—room and meals not included! The Babson Institute also undertakes
to educate your employes, furnishing you with magic circulars to be put
in their pay envelopes. I have seen some of this magic; Mr. Babson asks
the wage-slaves: “What is the law of capitalism?” and answers, in
capital letters: “The law of capitalism is that wealth saved in
production should be honored and respected.” I wonder what Mr. Babson
tells his thirty budding magnates to answer when their wage-slaves ask
concerning wealth which has been stolen in corruption.

Of course there are private schools which are less expensive, and less
plutocratically correct. They descend in a sliding scale, until you come
to places which only a Dickens could describe. Society ladies enjoying
life in Reno or Paris, captains of industry who are sent to Congress or
to jail, want some place where they can stow their children out of the
way. Professor William Ellery Leonard was once a master in one of these
places, up in New York state, and told me vivid tales about the hordes
of young savages, and how, for trying to enforce a little discipline, he
incurred such furious enmity that on his last night in the school he had
to barricade himself in his room and defend his life with a baseball
bat!

I know a lady who, in order to get an education for her only son,
accepted a position as “house-mother” in another of these private hells,
and found herself housed in a room with fungus on the walls and on the
floor the overflow from an adjoining urinal. Everywhere the toilets were
overflowing and the floors covered with filth, the cooking atrocious,
the boys ill with indigestion, colds and sore throats, no infirmary or
provision for the sick, and among the hundred and fifteen boys a general
prevalence of smoking and wine-drinking, and practice of self-abuse so
general that many of the boys were mentally helpless—a lad would sit in
class “with dropped jaw and staring eyes, or with nervous spasms which
furnished entertainment for the other boys.”

I talked with a group of young masters at one of the older and more
reputable of these “schools of snobbery.” To show how closely the boys
were guarded from modern thought, one of these masters said that he had
passed through the school as a pupil, and then gone out into the world
and become a bit of a liberal; returning to the school as a master, he
had met his former masters, and discovered that they too were liberals.
But never a whisper of their ideas had got to him as a pupil, nor are
they getting to the pupils now. All the boys’ attention is on wealth,
all their standards are those of worldly possessions, and this is what
their parents desire and ordain.

I have referred to Phillips Andover; this school is located five miles
from Lawrence, Massachusetts, the headquarters of the Woolen Trust, run
by William M. Wood, one of our most ruthless labor smashers, who ten
years ago was prosecuted for a dynamite frame-up against the strikers in
his mills. A group of conspirators, headed by a prominent contractor,
placed dynamite in the home of a non-union worker, the intention being
that the explosion should be blamed upon the strikers. The contractor
who placed the dynamite blew out his brains rather than face an inquiry.

Such is the atmosphere of Lawrence. In 1919 came another great strike,
and a group of young Quaker clergymen took the part of the workers. I
have told about one of these, A. J. Muste, in “The Goose-step.” Among
others whose consciences were stirred was Bernard M. Allen, a teacher of
Latin in Phillips Andover; he went with a party of twenty-five ladies
and gentlemen to attend a meeting of the strikers in Lawrence. The
police commissioner had announced that no more “agitators” would be
allowed to enter the city, and when these ladies and gentlemen left the
railroad station and started to walk across the open square, they were
charged by mounted police, and Mr. Allen was severely clubbed over the
head. This was the first of a series of unprovoked assaults by the
police, in one of which young Muste and another clergyman were driven
into a side street and nearly clubbed to death.

As for Mr. Allen, it happened unfortunately that Phillips Andover was
beginning a campaign for two million dollars’ endowment. (It had just
received half a million dollars from the late Oliver Payne, who had
purchased a United States senatorship for his father.) Mr. Allen’s
resignation from Phillips Andover was requested and promptly accepted.
If I do not tell you many such incidents concerning our schools of
snobbery, you may believe that it is because young masters in these
schools do not often get themselves clubbed over the head in sympathy
for “dagoes” and “wops” on strike.

What these schools are really for was very interestingly shown by a
study of class standing in Harvard University, published in the Harvard
“Advocate” at the end of the year 1923. Here was a graduating class
consisting of 379 men from private schools and 858 from public schools.
The study showed that in the eight major athletic teams there were 40
men from these private schools, and only 22 from public schools. All the
managers were private school men. As regards class officers, musical and
glee clubs, debating teams, dramatic clubs, class day officers, etc.,
there were 183 private school men, as against 29 from the public
schools. But after that came the record on scholarship, and the contrast
was amusing: the scholarship honors had been won by 41 from private
schools, and 82 from public schools! It is interesting to note that this
study was made by a son of Thomas W. Lamont, and I welcome him to the
ranks of the “Bolsheviks.”

In New York City I met a well-known writer, who had taught in a private
school on Staten Island, and had been summoned before the principal for
the crime of putting on the blackboard a stanza by Don Marquis, setting
forth the idea that discontent is a good thing! I met also a woman
teacher from a private school in Brooklyn; this school is located in a
Y. M. C. A. building and the Y. Secretary used to come and pray with the
students—he prayed that God might give them power to smash the Huns, and
power to smash the Bolsheviks, and power to smash many other enemies.
These expensive young gentlemen drove to the school in costly motor
cars, to which God had given power to smash everything in their way.

In Boston I talked with a teacher in one of the private schools for
young ladies, and she described to me the atmosphere in this place. She
had got into trouble, by stating that the happiest people are those who
earn their own way in life; also for stating that labor should be
respected because of its importance. By remarks such as this the teacher
occasioned so much resentment that she was never asked to lead in
chapel. These girls would not stand the simplest kind remark about
working people—not even common humanitarianism.

I talked with another who taught in a girls’ school, where the pupils
were advised to avoid hard thinking, because it would spoil their
complexions and bring wrinkles and other signs of care. I could make a
novel out of the story which this teacher told me about the treatment of
a girl whose father had failed in business, and who was trying to pay
her way through the school by selling an encyclopedia. The teachers at
this place were underpaid and pitiful decayed gentlewomen, who lived
starved lives and read sentimental romances; but they did not feel
sentimental about a girl who was trying to redeem her family fortunes.

Concerning a school of “secretarial science” in Boston I was told a
story which at least has the grace of being funny. Mr. William Lloyd
Garrison, Jr., a Boston banker, was invited to address the young ladies
of this school, and the principal’s speech of introduction ran as
follows: “The gentleman whom we have the privilege of hearing is the
grandson of William Lloyd Garrison” (dead silence); “he is the nephew of
Lucretia Mott” (dead silence); “he is the lightest quarter-back that
ever played on the Harvard eleven” (tumultuous applause).

I am especially informed concerning young ladies’ finishing schools,
because of the fact that my wife was sent up from Mississippi to attend
one. This school stood on the fashionable part of Fifth Avenue, and in
the catalogue you were informed that it adjoined the homes of the Goulds
and Vanderbilts, and the pupils had opportunities to meet the
multi-millionaires of New York. The pupils used to watch these
multi-millionaires and their multi-wives from the windows—hiding behind
the curtains, of course, so that they might not be seen. One of these
fortunate wives came frequently to call upon the young ladies, bringing
her multi-dogs. Helen Gould came once, and it was the same as a court
ceremony, the thrills of it lasted for weeks.

The husband of this establishment was an old gentleman with humiliating
plebeian tastes; he used to go out every afternoon and disappear around
the corner, and come back with a small paper bag, which was a source of
fascinated speculation to the young ladies—until finally one of them
succeeded in brushing it out of his hand as she passed him on the
stairs, and it was discovered to contain a ten-cent apple pie purchased
on Third Avenue! My wife thinks I ought not to tell this story, because
it is unkind to the old gentleman, who has since died. I hasten to
explain that I myself now and then bring home an apple-pie in a paper
bag; the point of the story is not that the old gentleman liked pie, but
that the young ladies considered his liking it a scandal of first-class
proportions. It was only permitted to like expensive things!

My wife came from the far South, and had the prestige which attaches to
that region in the world of elegance. It has been written up in
romances, you understand; so the mining princesses from Idaho and the
cattle kings’ daughters from Wyoming were eager to model themselves upon
the gestures and mannerisms of a real daughter of the Confederacy. The
teachers at this school were forbidden to correct her Southern dialect;
therefore the standard of good English for the “Four Hundred” was set by
a Negro field-hand, black as a scuttle of coal, who had been picked out
as a house servant before the war, and had become “mammy” to a dozen
white babies. When this aged negress was cross she would say: “I never
said any such of a thing”; and when she was pleased she would say: “The
prettiest thing I nearly ever saw.” When the Goulds and Vanderbilts
heard that, they called it “charm”!

What these young ladies were taught in their “finishing school” is
“accomplishments”; everything from the standpoint of the drawing-room,
and just enough to get by on. When my wife was completely “finished,”
she could play three pieces on the piano, and three on the violin; she
could sing three songs, and recite three poems, and dance three dances;
she had painted three pictures, and modeled three busts, and heard three
operas, and read three books. What was more important, she had had tea
in all the luxurious palm-rooms and Louis Quinze rooms of the great New
York hotels; she had acquired connections with the most expensive
fashion shops, and had had obsequious foreign gentlemen study her
colors, and tell her what was her proper style; she had seen the inside
of a number of Fifth Avenue homes, and learned the names of “period”
furniture; she had been to West Point to attend the annual football
match with Annapolis, and to New Haven to attend the annual rowing match
with Harvard. Now she lets me poke fun at such culture, but she still
has affection for her old teachers, and insists that I specify—they were
giving the young ladies exactly what the parents of these young ladies
demanded, and the only thing they were willing to pay for.




                             CHAPTER LXXVI
                            A SCHOOL SURVEY


To just what extent does the plutocracy control our schools? In “The
Goose-step,” pages 28-29, I quoted from a study by Scott Nearing,
reported in “School and Society” for September 8, 1917, showing that in
143 of the leading colleges and universities of the United States there
were a total of 2,470 trustees, of whom 1,444 were of the commercial and
financial class—that is, a percentage of 58. In “School and Society” for
January 20, 1917, Scott Nearing gave the results of a similar
investigation with regard to school boards. He wrote to the
superintendents of schools in all American cities having a population of
over forty thousand; there were a total of 131 such cities, and 104
replies were received.

The total population of the cities was twenty-four million, or
one-fourth of the American people at that time. The number of board
members was 967. The business class, including merchants and
manufacturers, capitalists, contractors, real estate and insurance men,
and officials in railroads, banks and corporations, numbered 433, the
professional class 333, and miscellaneous 201—this last including 18
teachers, mostly college professors, 48 clerks and salesmen, 39
mechanics and wage-earners, and 25 foremen. Nearing points out that in
these cities the wage earners and clerks included five-sixths of the
employed population, but that they had only one-tenth of the school
board representation; nine-tenths of the members had been chosen from
one-sixth of the population. It is interesting to note that women
compose 48% of the population, but only 7% on the boards of education in
large cities, and only 3% on the boards of trustees of colleges and
universities. The commercial class, with their lawyers, compose 58% of
college boards, and 59% of city school boards.

So we see that the plutocracy really does hold the whip hand; whatever
this class has wanted to do with the schools, it has done. Let us now
see, in the form of statistics, just what it has wanted to do.

First: It has been far more interested in killing the young than in
educating them. We are able to put this preference into figures—which is
how the plutocracy likes a thing put. Its interest in war has been
ninety-three times as great as its interest in education and science put
together. According to an analysis of federal appropriations by the
chief of the United States Bureau of Standards, the appropriation of the
government for the year 1920, which was a year of peace, was as follows:
Past wars, 68%; future wars, 25%; civil departments, 3%; public works,
3%; education and science, 1%. Disregarding small fractions, out of a
total of $5,685,000,000 appropriation, the share of wars, past or
future, was $5,279,000,000, and education and science combined got only
$57,000,000.

That represents federal appropriations. Still more illuminating is a
study of the total expenditure of the American people for education, as
contrasted with expenditure for other purposes. The “Survey” for July
16, 1921, presents a table: “The Schools’ Share in the Nation’s Wealth.”
According to this, it appears that the American people spent in 1920,
upon joy-rides, races and pleasure resorts, $3,000,000,000 and upon all
departments of education in the entire country $1,000,000,000. The
American people spent upon sundaes, sodas and drinking fountain
delights, including ice cream, a total of $600,000,000, and upon higher
education $137,000,000. The American people spent upon face lotions and
cosmetics $750,000,000, and upon the public elementary schools
$762,000,000. They spent upon chewing gum $50,000,000, and upon schools
to train their teachers $20,000,000. They spent upon candy alone as much
as they spent upon all departments of education, and upon cigars,
cigarettes, and tobacco more than twice the amount.

We are a self-satisfied people, and we propose to make our foreign
population like ourselves; but we really ought to hesitate, because the
1920 census shows that in illiteracy we are behind nearly all the
civilized nations—Australia, England, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand, the
Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. We boast of six
per cent illiteracy, while Denmark has only two-tenths of one per cent,
Switzerland and New Zealand three-tenths of one per cent, England and
Wales one and eight-tenths per cent; the German Empire, which we went to
war to destroy, had only three-hundredths of one per cent, which is two
hundred times better than the United States!

The war brought us some definite information about our education. The
Army test of illiteracy was based on the ability to read as well as
children in the second grade, and 25% of our would-be soldiers “flunked”
this test. We cannot get away by attributing our illiteracy to the
Negroes, because Camp Devens in Massachusetts showed 22%; nor can we
attribute it to the foreigners, because there were seven hundred
thousand native-born illiterates in the first draft. The chief of the
Americanization Bureau estimates that there are three and a half million
native-born adults who cannot read any language.

Also it is worth while to glance at the physical condition of our
people. More than one-third of the country’s best manhood between the
ages of twenty-one and thirty-one was disqualified because of physical
defects; and another large percentage was later rejected for the same
reason. One-fourth of all college boys were rejected—it would appear
that shouting at football games does not constitute the whole of
physical training. A report of the committee on health problems of the
National Council of Education estimates that three-fourths of our
twenty-five million school children are suffering from physical defects;
the professor of physical education at Columbia University tells us that
25% of our school children are underfed, while from 50 to 75% have
defective teeth. You would think that our plutocracy would be concerned
about these matters, even on purely business grounds. Taking the state
of Massachusetts, one million workers lose an average of nine days a
year from sickness, which means in wage losses and medical bills
$40,000,000, and $35,000,000 a year additional expenses to the state.

We spend on our school children less than fifty dollars per child per
year, which does not seem a munificent sum. Let us see what we spend per
teacher. The United States Bureau of Education has provided up-to-date
figures, in a study of rural school salaries for the year 1923, covering
one-half the counties in the United States. The number of “one-teacher
schools” reported was 97,758, and the average salary was $729. Sixty
dollars and seventy-five cents per month will keep a teacher alive, but
it won’t keep her a teacher. According to a bulletin of the National
Education Association, there are approximately 600,000 public school
teachers, and one-fourth of them serve in the schools two years or less,
and half of them serve less than five years; in other words, teaching is
a temporary job, by which the teacher earns pin money until she can get
a husband or something better. Naturally these teachers do not trouble
to acquire fitness for their work; one-sixth of them are under twenty
years of age, and half of them have no professional preparation
whatever. Ten per cent have no education beyond the eighth grade, while
half have no more than four years beyond the eighth grade; in other
words, the teachers know as much as the pupils will know at the end of
the school work—and no more!

These figures include the city schools, whose teachers have considerably
more training. Let us see what reward they get for this extra training.
The National Chamber of Commerce, in its survey of school salaries
covering 359 cities, shows that in 1919-’20 more than half the male
elementary teachers were receiving less than $1262 a year; their
salaries had increased 33% in six years, while the cost of living
increased 104%. So naturally the men teachers are leaving the public
schools; from 1880 to 1915 the percentage of men teachers fell from
42.8% to 9.6%; and this was before the increase in the cost of living!
Said the “Bankers’ Magazine,” discussing this question (January, 1919;
the Bankers’ Publishing Co., New York): “We pay the day laborer more
than the teacher because he is worth more—because he produces a service
of greater value to society—just as the corporation manager is paid more
than the preacher.”

Who is to blame for illiteracy in America? Is it the fault of the
children and of the parents, or is it the fault of the propertied
classes, who will not furnish schools for the poor? Upon the opening of
the public schools, September, 1923, it appears that in New York, the
richest city in the world, 150,000 children can receive only part time
instruction, while 200,000 will be taught in double sessions; of the
high school pupils more than two-thirds will have to be content with
less than normal instruction. Los Angeles is even worse, with 16% of its
pupils unseated; Chicago follows with 12%. In the year 1921, with
one-sixth of its population in the public schools, the propertied
classes of the country saw fit to tax but one cent and a half in every
hundred dollars of their income, to provide housing for the school
children. The National Chamber of Commerce reports that 37% of city
school buildings are fire-traps, and only 5% are considered fire-proof.

There is a strong movement under way for federal expenditures upon
education. Educators recite that our government spent $600,000 for a
book about horses; we spend $30,000,000 annually on the prevention of
diseases in hogs and cattle, and the destroying of insects which injure
crops; so surely we ought to spend something on the child! But this
money will have to be spent through our present political machines; and
consider the figures of ex-Congressman John Baer, who made a study of
federal educational expenditures, and showed that out of more than
thirty million dollars appropriated for educational purposes, our chief
educational agency, the Bureau of Education, expended less than one per
cent in actual administration of education. “Federal educational
activities are now directed through more than eighty different offices,
divisions, bureaus, commissions, and other agencies of the government.”

Such is “red tape” in Washington; and if you follow the strands of this
tape, you find it extending to all the seven hundred thousand school
rooms of the country. We have seen our “great educators” keeping the
teachers in submission by loading them with routine work, reports,
questionnaires, examinations and re-examinations. The most universal
complaint of the school teachers, from Los Angeles to Boston, and from
Minnesota to Mississippi, has to do with this administrative and routine
labor, taking up their time and destroying their eyesight and their
nerves. This of course is the very essence of machine education, the
running of schools by business men on the quantity production basis. It
occurred to the National Council of Teachers of English to make a survey
of conditions in their profession, and they found that the average
teacher had four hours of “theme” reading to do every day, while the
average high school teacher had five hours. Many reported that they
skipped and skimmed through every paper, others destroyed the great bulk
of them unread and gave credit without reading. In high schools the
teachers of English were required to take care of 125 pupils per
teacher! Needless to say, the survey reports that teachers of English
are overworked, underpaid, underequipped and underestimated.

A detailed picture of this routine in one school is given in a paper,
“Should English Teachers Teach?” by Edwin M. Hopkins, professor of
English at the University of Kansas, and editor of the “English
Journal.” Professor Hopkins complains that English teachers do not have
time to teach English, because of the other kinds of work piled upon
them by those who run the great educational factories. Many teachers, it
appears, have to do janitor work, because the schools have no janitor
and divide such work among the teachers. Practically all teachers have
to do “school bookkeeping.” In one school the supervisor has provided
printed forms with finely divided blanks, in which the teachers have to
fill in information concerning no fewer than sixty items. These printed
forms vary in size, from ordinary cards to sheets fifteen by twenty
inches; there are “quarantine cards, record cards for office and
superintendent, record of transfer to other schools, registration cards,
three forms of attendance reports, inventories, seating charts,
duplicate schedules”; records must be kept of “absence excuses, term
record sheets, duplicate attendance slips, library cards and library
service, correspondence duty, telephone duty, patrol duty, meeting
parents, care of lockers and keys, returning lost books to pupils.”

A single item, the filling out of a library or text-book card for each
pupil, occupies seven full hours of the teacher’s time for the pupils of
a single section; and this principal makes six sections, of from fifty
to sixty-five pupils each, the regular assignment of his English
teachers. Other details include the filling in of from forty to a
hundred separate items on each of the room cards; also the making of
more than seventy entries of each pupil’s full name and room number, on
the seat-charts of every recitation-room, for each recitation-hour and
subject—there being fifteen or twenty of these for each teacher. Then
there are “schedule cards,” handled by a special committee of three
members assisted by ten or twelve volunteers. This takes two or three
weeks of each semester, and the classes have to wait, doing no work
while this is going on. Then there is the “checking of assembly-room
slips,” an average of eight slips per pupil in a section of forty
pupils. Each of these three hundred and twenty must be checked in its
proper compartment on the individual pupil’s room card, which is ruled
for fifty compartments. “For this item of duty no time allowance
whatever is made.”

And if you trace all this back to its source, you will find it runs in a
straight line, through Professor George D. Strayer and President
Nicholas Murray Butler, to J. P. Morgan, the elder. I have mentioned
that Strayer himself is the author of an elaborate series of
card-systems, which are sold in quantities to teachers; and you will
find that the young men and women who come out from Strayer’s mill are
never happy till they get settled at some job of “scoring.” Thus one
Columbia man is marking a city map with a red dot for every high school
student in each city block. Another writes to a book publisher, asking
for one hundred free copies of six different text-books—he is testing
out text-books, a thousand different volumes, using one hundred copies
of each. Two other Columbia men, with the highest degrees, have been
“scoring” history topics; they have marked subjects mentioned in
seventeen leading magazines for five years, a total of 92,000
references, showing how many times Columbus is named, and Magellan, and
Theodore Roosevelt! They publish this in the “Journal of Educational
Research,” of which Strayer is co-editor.

And every teacher’s college throughout the United States becomes a
little Columbia, with some little “Nicholas Miraculous” at its head. I
have a friend who was brought up within the shadow of such a place, and
writes me what is going on. Listen:

  The education of the future high school teachers in Nebraska is
  largely in control of the teachers’ college of the state university.
  And the teachers’ college has a compact, steam-roller organization run
  by a group from Columbia University, who are known to the irate
  professors in the other colleges of the university as “the Columbia
  ring.” They direct very nearly the whole course of the candidates for
  the teachers’ certificates, and you who know Columbia can easily
  imagine how they direct it. There is wild war between the “Columbia
  ring” and the more liberal professors in the arts and science college,
  but the dear little teachers-to-be never hear anything about it. They
  go out to their various schools with their life’s ideas supplied to
  them ready made, and with the fine “morale”—in the building of which
  the teachers’ college prides itself—to safeguard them against getting
  any new ideas.

This young lady goes on to explain that so far as she knows, the
Columbia ring are “perfectly sincere and earnest gentlemen,” and no one
has ever heard of the financial powers taking a hand in the matter. I am
advising this correspondent to consult “The Goose-step,” and see who it
was that paid for the costly education of these Nebraska educators. All
the contributors are Wall Street gentlemen who never contributed a
dollar in their lives without being certain that they got two dollars’
worth; and if they can train great educators to serve their interests
sincerely and earnestly—and without knowing it—is not that exactly the
way the driver of a dray-horse likes the horse to be?




                             CHAPTER LXXVII
                         THE EDUCATIONAL MILLS


The “little red school-house” may of course be anything, depending on
the individual teacher. In our two hundred thousand “one-teacher”
schools, there are many which are jolly and human, and many which are
efficient, and many which are places of irritability and oppression. But
the characteristic product of our modern system is the big school, the
great educational mill, run by efficiency experts on a quantity
production basis. These huge machines are but little influenced by
individual personalities; they acquire momentum of their own, and grind
up everything which gets in their way. These are the institutions in
which our modern “great educators” specialize; the science of running
them is what you get from experts such as Professor Strayer, head of the
Department of Educational Administration of Columbia University.

From the state of Pennsylvania survey of the schools of Philadelphia, I
take this picture of a well disciplined school:

  The teachers in charge watched very carefully and jotted down notes of
  the slightest transgressions. All pupils raising their eyes from their
  books were liable to punishment. The principal believed that the
  amount of study done by pupils in the study hall depended upon the man
  in charge. The strictest policing would produce the best results. The
  practice was clearly one of coercion and pressure.

And now let us skip one-half the continent and visit the high school at
Superior, Nebraska, where a young lady of my acquaintance was a teacher
three or four years ago; she writes:

  The much-vaunted “discipline” of this school included an iron-clad
  military regime which forbade pupils ever to run up or down stairs or
  to cut corners in passing between classes. When classes were
  dismissed, two teachers were required to stand in the hall to see that
  nobody cut a corner or took two steps at a time. During general
  assembly, when the whole school was gathered together, all the
  teachers were required to be in the auditorium and each was assigned
  two rows of students to watch during the program. No teacher was
  allowed to sit down during assembly, as she was expected to be
  watching her rows and seeing that no students exchanged a remark. The
  students not unnaturally referred to the school as “the penitentiary,”
  and while they were still as mice when the superintendent was looking,
  the place seethed with suppressed revolt. Any sort of meanness that
  could be done on the sly was a short cut to glory, and teachers were
  fair game for anybody who could torment them and get away with it.

And now skip the other half of the continent, and read part of a letter
from Mrs. Edith Summers Kelley, author of a splendid novel, “Weeds.”
Mrs. Kelley describes what is happening to her two children in the
schools of San Diego, California:

  At the “Junior High” which my little girl, aged eleven, attends, they
  are given no time to play at all. The children race directly from one
  classroom to another and have only half an hour for lunch. There is no
  chance whatever to form individual friendships, for as the twelve
  hundred race from classroom to classroom they are continually changing
  roommates and instead of school friendships there is simply a
  confusion of half familiar faces soon forgotten. My little girl still
  exchanges letters with the friends she made in school in Imperial
  Valley. But since she came here she has not made one friend. She could
  leave the school tomorrow without the slightest regret for it or any
  person, teacher or pupils in it. This seems to me a most damaging
  thing to say about a school.

  At the “Junior High” they keep strict account of time. If a child has
  to go to the toilet during a class he or she is given a “detention
  slip” and has to stay after school the length of time that he was out
  of the classroom. This sounds like burlesque; but the child tells me
  that it is the sober truth. Of course they stuff them at both schools
  with flag saluting and patriotic songs, etc. Among other things they
  have taken the “Anvil Chorus” from “Il Trovatore” and set to it some
  didactic-patriotic words. “With peace and union throughout our happy
  land,” is all that the children remember; but you will agree with me
  that it is enough.

  There is a very strong tendency in both schools to subordinate
  individual consciousness to group consciousness. Both of my children
  are strongly individualistic, though differently so, and they resent
  this. The children are taught they should be “loyal” to their country,
  still more so to their state and city, and quite belligerently so to
  their school. They have cheer leaders, school yells and songs, and
  they hire men to coach the boys in their games so that they can beat
  the teams of other schools. The aim seems to be not to encourage the
  individual characteristics of a child but to make them all as nearly
  as possible alike. My little girl is possessed of insatiable mental
  curiosity, and yet she hates the school. This being the case, it seems
  to me the fault must be with the school.

The point for you to get is that all this is training for “democracy.”
The teacher in Nebraska just quoted confesses that she was a “misfit,”
and explains the reason:

  It seemed so perfectly inane to me to try to bring up citizens for a
  democracy under a system which is an old-style bureaucracy. The school
  board vents its lust for authority on the superintendent, the
  superintendent takes it out on the principal, the principal takes it
  out on the teachers, and the teachers take it out on the classes. The
  one unforgivable crime seems to be for student, teacher, principal or
  superintendent to be “disloyal” or “insubordinate” to the upper layers
  of the hierarchy.

With all the discipline and regimentation, just how much do the pupils
succeed in learning? Dean Marshall of the University of Chicago was
chairman of the Committee on Correlation of Secondary and Collegiate
Education, and he examined the first hundred and fifty freshmen who
registered for the School of Commerce and Administration at his
university. He found that of these students, 59% had had no modern
history, 24% no United States history, 86% no English history, 92% no
industrial history, 39% no civics, 72% no economics, 98% no sociology.

And in the courses which they do take, how much do they learn? I think I
do not exaggerate in saying that there is general complaint throughout
the country that they learn far less than they should. Two illustrations
come to me while I am writing. The first is from the San Francisco
“Examiner,” November 10, 1923, and I quote it without change:

  Failure of students in the sophomore year at the Sacramento high
  school to solve problems involving the subtraction of 2 from 3 was
  announced today in connection with arithmetic examinations recently
  given to 500 pupils at the institution. In multiplying 3 by 2 eleven
  students failed, the test papers show, while fifteen gave incorrect
  answers when asked to divide 6 by 3. Though a check of the examination
  papers has not yet been completed, early returns establish that 416
  boys and girls could not multiply a mixed decimal by a plain decimal.

The second is from the New York “Times,” July 22, 1923, and presents a
column of data collected from examination papers on “current events” in
the high schools of a Tennessee city. The “Times” mercifully withholds
the name of this city—no doubt figuring that all are alike. Prizes were
offered, and 1,160 high school students entered a competition, to answer
a list of sixty questions; the first discovery was that less than 28%
knew the name of the governor of their own state! Michael Collins, Irish
Free State leader, was described as “ex-President of England,” “a noted
boot-legger,” “real estate agent,” “head of labor union,” “manager
Boston Red Sox,” “Chicago ball player,” “manager of Piggly-Wiggly
store.” Clara Barton was classified as a “movie actress,” “nurse whom
the Germans murdered,” “race horse,” “noted writer,” “woman who is to
sing for Kosmos Club,” “candidate for Mayor of a city,” “an unmarried
woman who lives in exile.” It would appear that not many students in
these Tennessee high schools have read “The Goose-step”; for when they
were asked to identify Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, they guessed:
“President Harding’s private physician,” “a well-known Bible teacher,”
“newspaper editor,” “a leader in the medical convention,” “minister,”
“writer and essayist.” Needless to say, they scored a hundred per cent
of correctness on the identity of “Babe” Ruth; and they doubtless would
have done the same for “Fatty” Arbuckle; and who won the last prizefight
or the last world’s baseball series, and who are Mutt and Jeff, and have
we any bananas today. On the other hand, it would have been easy to
frame questions dealing with the higher culture, on which the high
school students would have scored one hundred per cent of failure. Mr.
O. G. Wood, for four years a teacher and for two years clerk of the
school board of Butte, Montana, writes:

  The average American boy of today does not care a fig about the
  beautiful and art side of life. He wants to see the wheels go round
  and run an automobile and fix a spark plug. He is not studious. The
  foreign-born boy or the boy born of foreign parentage is far more
  studious than the American boy, and I have made an especial study of
  this subject right in the class room. The American boy wants to “get
  by.” He will shuffle in and out of every class he can. He “fakes” from
  morning to night with all kinds of lies and excuses on his mind. It is
  doubtful if a single parent will think their boy does this, yet there
  are millions of them in the country.

In the course of our travels from city to city we have seen our
miseducated school children indulging in rowdyism, patronizing
boot-leggers, racing in high-powered automobiles, and spending the night
at road-houses. Someone with a sense of humor sends me a copy of a Texas
newspaper, the Dallas “Morning News,” October 4, 1923, in which there
are three items on one page, which seem to have been especially placed
to vindicate my thesis concerning American education. The first item
tells that a committee of preachers are investigating the Southern
Methodist University, to make sure that no one is teaching modern
science. The second reports the director of physical training at this
university, speaking at a luncheon of the Junior Chamber of Commerce,
telling the youngsters that “foot-ball is character building and
training for life.” The third item tells how nine boys and five girls
have been arrested and thrashed, either by their parents or their
principals, for raiding a Jewish synagogue and doing more than a
thousand dollars worth of damage. The Junior Ku Klux Klan!




                            CHAPTER LXXVIII
                            DESCENSUS AVERNO


The person who can tell us about the morals of our school children is
Ben B. Lindsey, judge of the Juvenile Court of Denver. Lindsey knows,
not merely because he has been on the job for twenty-five years, but
because he has evolved a technique for getting this particular
information. The children come to him literally by thousands—not merely
to tell him their troubles, but to ask his advice on every sort of
question. Instead of sending delinquent children to jail, Lindsey has
fought and exposed the gang politicians, the saloon-keepers, the
proprietors of wine-rooms and dives who were preying on the young. At
every election he has been fought by these powers, backed by the money
of Big Business; he has been supported and elected by the children and
their friends. “Our little Ben,” they call him; and “court” is more like
a home—or like what a school ought to be.

The first principle upon which Lindsey proceeds is that he never
“snitches.” Several times the powers that rule Denver have threatened to
send him to jail, and on one occasion they fined him five hundred
dollars for contempt of court, because he refused to betray a child’s
confidence. As I write, the grand jury is threatening him with
imprisonment, because he has made the statement that the abortion rate
of Denver is one thousand per year, and he will not tell who the
abortionists are, because he has learned their names from women and
school girls “in trouble.”

The Denver board of education has adopted a righteous attitude upon this
question; any teacher or principal who learns of immorality on the part
of any Denver student is required to expel the student and notify the
parents; which is an excellent way for the school authorities to keep
from knowing uncomfortable facts! Lindsey tells me of a school
superintendent who made a statement to reassure the parents: “In more
than twenty years’ experience in the Denver schools I have known of but
three of our high school girls who were guilty of immorality.” It
happened that on that very day four such girls had come to Lindsey’s
court to seek his advice! He tells me that he knew of more than three
hundred sexual cases involving high school girls in a two-year period of
investigation; and two-thirds of these girls came to him of their own
free will. More than a thousand of high school age have confessed to
him.

And, mind you, these are not servant girls and shop girls and
waitresses, the victims of poverty, but the daughters of Denver’s
leading families, copper kings and coal kings and iron kings and gold
kings and silver kings, together with the lawyers who protect their
property, and the doctors who look after their bodies, and the clergymen
who save their souls. A prominent Denver churchman dramatically
denounced Lindsey before a public body because of his attitude on the
question of censorship; and this churchman’s beloved daughter, a high
school student, had confided her troubles to Lindsey, who helped her to
be secretly treated for venereal infection! Another minister’s daughter
became involved with the son of a high-up school official; both of them
were recent high school students, and the affair developed under the
steps of a school building while the young couple were on their way from
church!

You might hunt the moving pictures through and find no stranger
incidents. Here comes a father, one of the great public utility men, who
has been fighting Lindsey tooth and nail in politics. Now the man is
broken; he has discovered that his beloved daughter is in trouble, and
he is going to shoot the youth who seduced her. But Lindsey persuades
him to wait, and the man promises to come back next day; he comes, and
in Lindsey’s chambers, by a coincidence not of Lindsey’s planning, he
meets his own son. The son, thinking the father has been brought there
to confront him, breaks down and tells how he, the son, is responsible
for the pregnancy of a young girl!

At the railroad station, as Lindsey and I were parting, a costly
limousine came rolling up, and three fashionable society beauties
alighted, together with an elderly gentleman. They were the sort of
people you see pictured in the fashion plates and advertisements of
motor cars; Lindsey remarked to me: “One of those three girls came to my
court. She was too rich to attend high school, she went to our fanciest
and most expensive finishing school for young ladies; and she got into
trouble, one night on the way home from the country club. She went away
for two months and had her baby, and I saw to its adoption. I wanted the
mother to “adopt” it herself, some day after marriage; but her nerve
failed her. There are just five people who know—the girl and myself, a
doctor and a nurse, and a prominent young business man, who happened to
have a wife already. I suppose that if the girl’s father knew, he’d drop
dead on the spot.”

Lindsey insists that these conditions are not peculiar to Denver; on the
contrary, matters are worse in other big cities. He attributes the evil
in part to the prudery of parents; more girls are “ruined” by the
attitude of their parents and teachers than by the girls’ own acts. The
parents keep the girls ignorant, and drive them to rebellion by their
unwillingness to face the facts of life. Lindsey himself tries to tell
the parents, but they will not listen; they prefer to “spit on Lindsey’s
shoes”—such was a resolution before the Real Estate Exchange in 1914,
when the miners’ wives whose children had been burned in the Ludlow
massacre were taken by Lindsey to interview President Wilson in
Washington. It happens many times that Lindsey gets permission from some
girl to tell the girl’s parents; he sends for the parents, and starts to
tell them, and there come looks of incredulity and even of rage—he is
accusing their precious children, and the parents are up in arms to deny
the charge and defend their offspring.

I told you how Lindsey has been barred from speaking in the Denver high
schools. All over the country he is invited to speak in other schools—on
his last lecture trip he spoke to thirty-five thousand adolescent boys
and girls. He talked to them “straight”; but now and then a principal
would timidly ask him to avoid “improper” subjects. In one city he was
informed that it would be “distasteful to the school board,” who
expected to be present, if he were to discuss “love, marriage, or
divorce.” He omitted these delicate matters; but after the lecture fifty
children, mostly girls, crowded about him, begging him to answer
questions. And what were the questions? What did he think about
marriage, divorce, love and beauty! Here were these starved little souls
pining for real knowledge about the vital things of their lives; and it
was “distasteful to the school board” to permit them to learn!

A still more powerful cause is the example which the parents of these
children are setting. Many are brought up in luxurious homes, with a
multitude of servants; they are used to every gratification, automobiles
and chauffeurs and extravagant clothes. They hear the smart talk of the
young matrons, they read the literature of the new license, they go to
the movies and drink the poisons of Hollywood. Recently Lindsey visited
one of the fashionable hotels at Colorado Springs, and there he met a
lovely girl from a Denver high school. She made no concealment of the
fact that she was enjoying the gaieties of the season with a lover; and
when the judge remonstrated, she laughed and pointed out “Mrs.
So-and-So,” one of Denver’s leading society matrons, who was there with
a prominent business man not her husband. “Their rooms are on the same
floor as ours,” said the girl.

“Society” girls, now-a-days, know that their parents are breaking the
laws, not merely in business, but in their private lives; they take it
for granted that there is wine on every table, and booze in every
hip-pocket and vanity bag. Their religion is a fairy tale, and they have
nothing with which to replace it. They have learned about
birth-control—but not quite thoroughly, it would appear from Lindsey’s
experiences! So they have to ascertain the names and addresses of the
fashionable abortionists. The leading doctors possess the knowledge, and
will give you the “tip”; the only people who do not know are the
prosecuting authorities!

In the course of my trip I visited a certain wealthy relative. According
to the fashion of the time, this old gentleman chatted about his
bootleggers, and told how the cellar of his country home had been broken
into, and some tens of thousands of dollars worth of precious old
liquors had been stolen. But there was more to replace it—my relative
was making mint juleps for the rest of the company while he denounced
the Eighteenth Amendment. After he had said his say, and his son had
done likewise, and H. L. Mencken had agreed with them, the old gentleman
asked me: “Upton, what do you think about it?” My answer was: “I don’t
think it’s a Bolshevik plot, but if it were, it wouldn’t be different!”
The old gentleman sat up, for he was keen on Bolshevik plots. I
explained: “The poor cannot afford much liquor, so they stay sober; the
rich can afford all they want, and they get it. If this continues for
another ten years, the rich will have got to a condition where they can
no longer pull the trigger of a machine gun. So the Bolsheviks will have
their way.”




                             CHAPTER LXXIX
                           THE TEACHER’S JOB


We have seen what becomes of the child in the great educational mill.
Let us now see what becomes of the teacher. Let us inquire, to begin
with, how the teacher gets in; put yourself in the position of the
graduate of a high school or normal school who wishes to enter the cheap
and easy profession. I consult a book called “Out of Work,” by Frances
A. Kellor, a detailed study of the problems of unemployment in America.
Turning its pages, I realize what a vast trap for the poor our country
is—and how little the teachers count in the mass of misery! The problem
of jobs for teachers gets only eight or ten out of the five hundred and
forty-nine pages of this book.

The placement of educators has fallen into the hands of great private
agencies. These “teachers’ bureaus” have set up the claim that they are
not common employment agencies, and on this basis have generally escaped
license fees and regulations. They collect from the teachers a fee,
somewhere from two to five dollars, usually called a “consultation fee”;
it gives you the high privilege of having your name enrolled for one
year, and of visiting the office and asking questions of a clerk. A
great many agencies live entirely upon such fees; that is to say, they
list the teachers’ names and do nothing else. One agency charges three
dollars in its main office, and then advises you to register in ten
branch offices at one dollar each. One agency charged two dollars “for
advice only,” and when a teacher paid the money, the advice she got was:
“Try some other line, as the demand for women teachers is very small
this year.”

When you get a position, the agency claims five per cent of your first
year’s salary, and in some cases ten per cent. You have to pay the
entire sum within one or two months, and even though you lose the
position immediately afterwards, you don’t get the fee back. If you get
an increase of salary, you pay a percentage on that. If you get board as
part of your salary, you pay a percentage on that. Says Miss Kellor: “A
contract seems to give an agency a lien on a teacher for at least one
year, and sometimes for longer. It requires considerable skill to find
any rights or protection for the teachers in these contracts.” Many of
the agencies require the teachers to give them information about
vacancies, thus turning the teachers into unpaid canvassers for them.
They freely use threats of removal to compel teachers to fulfil their
unfair contracts. “A hint of ‘later information’ to a school board can
cause all kinds of trouble.”

Some of the states now have bureaus for placing teachers; some of the
universities do it, and at the big plutocratic institutions this placing
bureau becomes a cog in the machine, and is used for the browbeating of
teachers. Several have told me of this kind of thing; I am permitted to
recite the peculiar experience of Mr. Otto Koeb at Stanford. Inasmuch as
Mr. Koeb’s name has a German sound, I mention that he is the son of a
Swiss diplomat, and the incident happened in 1912, when German names
were entirely respectable. Mr. Koeb had been graduated from the Colorado
State Teachers’ College, and then from the University of California, and
went to take a master’s degree at Stanford. As a result of his declaring
himself a Socialist, he was secretly blacklisted by the “appointment
office” of the university. For nine years he struggled to get a good
teacher’s position, and his applications were always turned down—until
finally a friend betrayed to him the reason; in the “recommendations”
which Stanford was sending out concerning him there were statements
about his political views, deliberately designed to keep him from
getting employment!

The agencies, both private and public, of course give close attention to
the character of teachers and to their opinions. I have referred to the
fact that some city school superintendents require teachers to join the
N. E. A. A high school instructor, whose name I am not permitted to
quote, says: “I have known of many fellows who have been refused
positions as teachers of printing in manual training shops because they
were known to belong to labor unions. I myself carry a card, but I never
tell my superiors about it.” At Wheeling, West Virginia, the official
application blank asks you for “references, including your pastor.” When
you furnish this information, a blank is sent to each of the references,
asking among other things: “Has applicant ever shown a tendency towards
extreme radicalism?” and “Does applicant take any part in church work?”
Hundreds of superintendents follow this practice of asking about the
church affiliations of teachers; in spite of the fact that to ask such a
question of an applicant for a public position is to violate the
constitutional rights of a citizen. Mr. David H. Pierce declares:

  For the sake of a job, many Catholics become Episcopalians, and Jews
  turn into Unitarians for the time being. I know of one teacher in a
  small college, a Congregationalist, who has successively been Baptist
  and Methodist, and who has informed me confidentially that he is
  willing to become a member of any church under the sun, just as long
  as he can keep on teaching music. One of my personal friends, in
  seeking a college position, invariably discovers what denomination the
  school is, then furnishes credentials to show that he is a devout
  member of that particular church.

I have a letter from a teacher in California, who discusses the taming
of her profession. I know of no teacher who has put up a harder fight
against the gang, and it is significant that even this hard fighter asks
me not to use her name; she writes:

  The average teacher is a cringing coward, and boards of education play
  this as their trump card. The only recommendation the teacher has is a
  clean bill from her last berth. She is given no chance to make good in
  a new position. “Where did you teach last year?” is the first question
  she is asked. “Why did you leave?” the second one. Unless a teacher
  has “pull” and friends it is practically impossible for her to get a
  position, if she has lost her previous one by the will of the board of
  trustees. By this you can see it is the same with her as for a doctor
  to lose his certificate. Teachers know and fear this, boards know it
  and work it to control teachers. Boards control their teachers usually
  through their major domo, the city superintendent. If he is fair, and
  a man of convictions, the board cannot do much; but he is dependent
  upon the board for his position, and unless he pleases them he may go
  the way of the teacher who dares think for herself.

Mr. David H. Pierce has been a high school teacher for five years, and
does not expect to remain one. He explained the reason in a very
illuminating article published in the “Survey,” May 15, 1923. He says:

  We graduated from college, having specialized, let us say, in
  mathematics. In the course of two years we have presided over classes
  in elocution, biology, economics, vocational guidance, sociology,
  German and chemistry. We get no intellectual stimulation from our
  neighbors in the school. Outside the school we are addressed as
  “professor,” by elderly people who do not know us. We become experts
  in sitting through lengthy prayer meetings and meaningless sermons. We
  develop remarkable skill in dodging revivals. Our names are coupled,
  in turn, with every eligible girl between fourteen and forty in the
  community. About once a month a preacher “cheers” us by saying: “Next
  to the ministry, brothers and sisters, there is no greater calling
  than that of the teacher. The opportunity to mold our youth into
  citizens is unlimited. I sometimes believe that they are even on a
  level with those who follow in God’s footsteps.”

Mr. Pierce pictures himself becoming dissatisfied with his position, and
applying to an agency, and filling out a blank:

  We underscore three times those subjects we prefer to teach, draw two
  lines under those we have taught, and add a single line for those
  branches we can teach. Having covered possibly twenty subjects, we are
  ready to prove to any school board within five hundred miles that we
  are the most educated, experienced and docile individual our alma
  mater has produced in a decade. We prepare a barrage of testimonials
  from board members who never entered our classroom, preachers with
  whom we have never had a frank discussion, and college instructors who
  must rack their memories to recall us.

  The fact that we may be specialists in one or two branches is
  immaterial. The agency wants its five per cent and we want a job. We
  never allow ourselves to be discountenanced by strange requests. A
  colleague tells me that in applying for his first position he received
  a telegram from an agency, asking “Can you teach sociology?” He
  replied at once in the affirmative, secured the position and was
  reasonably successful. After he had assumed his duties he frankly
  said: “Sociology was new to me. I had to look in the dictionary to
  find what the word meant.”

  A teacher who had specialized in Latin, taught, within a few years,
  algebra, English, civics, German and Spanish as well as his preferred
  subject. One woman, trained as an instructor in the domestic arts, was
  assigned a hash of household arithmetic, calisthenics, music and story
  telling. This is the lot of the great majority of high school
  teachers. We are doomed to be intellectually unskilled laborers,
  masters of nothing.




                              CHAPTER LXXX
                            TEACHERS’ TERROR


I have given in “The Goose-step” a list of some of the offenses for
which college professors have lost their jobs. I might do the same thing
for school teachers, and include everything, from refusing to “pass” the
son of a school board member to refusing to become the mistress of a
superintendent. The main trouble is that you would not believe the
stories without the teachers’ names, and these can so seldom be given.
Even when the teacher has quit the profession, her terror still hangs
on; one writes me that her husband will not let her talk, and others
must protect their relatives who are teachers. I have a letter from one
young lady, who tells me that she has quit teaching and is earning a
good living as a newspaper writer; but she adds: “On second thought, I
am afraid after all I shall have to ask you not to use my name. I
despise being a ‘rabbit,’ but my father is a professor in the state
university. It would be too bad if he should have to suffer for my
opinions.”

This young lady goes on to express her conclusion as to the teaching
profession. I quote one paragraph:

  What drives the teachers in this state to marriage, suicide, or
  stenography is not the tyranny of wealth—of which they are so
  unconscious that even I am not sure whether it exists—but the petty
  tyranny of public opinion and of tin-horn superintendents who rejoice
  in showing off their power. Where a teacher knows that she cannot
  dance or bob her hair or walk about the town alone at night without
  getting a severe reprimand, and where she knows that it is as much as
  her job is worth to receive a call from one of her boy students, even
  although it be to hear him confess his personal problems, she is not
  going to be much tempted to any wild flights of intellectual
  speculation. Being spied on by the thousand eyes of a village soon
  dries up the springs of adventure before they reach the surface.

Mr. David H. Pierce also has something to say on this subject. He points
out that in this respect teaching differs from all other professions;
neither lawyers nor doctors nor engineers permit their superiors to
exercise control over their social life, and forbid them to dance or
play an occasional game of bridge; neither are they kept in such
subservience that they regard themselves as bold progressives when they
utter harmless platitudes. Says Mr. Pierce:

  I have known teachers to be dismissed for combating shady athletics.
  Others have been forced out because they expected children of
  influential parents to do a little work for their credits. In the
  course of five years, I have been warned, officially or otherwise, to
  refrain from discussing organized labor, the Negro problem, evolution,
  the miners’ strike, dancing, card-playing, the controversy between the
  chiropractors and the allopaths, and government control of railroads.

And Mr. Burt Adams Tower, who fled all the way to Hawaii to escape from
the school gang, adds a new and unique one to this list: “A few months
before leaving Butte I was called on the carpet for receiving a letter
on your stationery!” Said a teacher at the 1923 convention of the
Northeastern Ohio Teachers’ Association: “The situation today is that if
you don’t accept and apologize for every institution, good, bad and
indifferent, you immediately become suspect.”

There are two very funny stories which I got from friends of the
teachers, and which I am permitted to tell—provided I suppress, not
merely the names of the teachers and the school, but of the city in
which the incident took place! These stories have to do with Bolshevik
hunts, and the hero of the first is a high school boy. He is the son of
intellectual parents, but is a mediocre pupil, being obviously bored by
school work. He is required to write a theme, and comes to his teacher
and tells her that he cannot get warmed up to such subjects as “Beowulf”
and “The Rape of the Lock,” and wonders if she won’t let him write on
something real. She asks what he would choose; and imagine her
bewilderment—he would like to write on Bolshevism!

The teacher probes the boy’s mind, and finds that he knows of Bolshevism
as something wicked; he would like to expose those who are trying to
spread such wickedness in America. The teacher refuses consent, but the
boy comes back and begs again. The teacher points out to him the
seriousness of such a subject, and the dangers of it; he promises to be
very serious and very careful, and gets the consent of his parents; so
finally the teacher relents, and the boy falls to work. He is interested
for the first time, and brings in a theme which shows real study; the
teacher demands more, so the boy scours the city for original data. In
the end, he presents an excellent paper attacking Bolshevism; from a
pupil with a low record on “Beowulf” and “The Rape of the Lock,” he
suddenly shines as the “A” pupil of his class.

But now comes a terrible rumor, spreading like wildfire through the
“silk stocking” district of this city. Some one in the high school has
been teaching Bolshevism! A pupil who wrote against Bolshevism had been
“failed” because he differed with his teacher! The local Babbitts rise
up and roar, and the principal of the school comes to the teacher in
terrible distress, and scolds her severely. The teacher demands the name
of her accusers, and finally is told that the complaint has come from
the chief of police! She threatens to go to the chief, whereupon the
principal writes a long letter of introduction, explaining to the chief
that the teacher has already been “severely reprimanded.” The teacher
protests against this letter, and finally the principal consents to run
his pencil through the word “severely”; otherwise he is obdurate, and at
the next meeting of the faculty he issues the order that in future no
reference to Socialism or Bolshevism is to be allowed in any classroom
of this high school!

The teacher refuses to take the incriminating letter, and seeks out the
assistant superintendent, who happens to know the boy personally, and
takes the teacher to the chief of police. The chief explains that the
boy came to him, asking for data, and received some pamphlets which had
been taken in a “Red” raid. Soon afterwards the chief was talking before
a Sunday School class of parents on the subject: “What are your boys and
girls doing?” He mentioned, as an instance of creditable activity, the
fact that a boy in the high school was looking up Bolshevism, getting
first-hand information so that he could refute the Bolsheviks. So the
spectre was laid; the teacher has gone back to “Beowulf” and “The Rape
of the Lock,” and the high school principal has been promoted to be
assistant superintendent!

The other incident happened in a city fifteen hundred miles away; but
the Babbitts cover a continent—just like the Bolsheviks! We come to an
old and cultured city, with a high school of which the city is proud. In
this school a teacher of English suddenly decided that it was her duty
to find out what her pupils thought about Bolshevism; she had them write
a theme, and discovered to her dismay that a number of them did not
think altogether ill of the subject. She hastened to her principal, who
was equally shocked; he called a meeting of the teachers, and instructed
them that the two thousand pupils of this school were to be immediately
educated as to the wickedness of Bolshevism. School assemblies would be
held, and the teachers would talk to the pupils about the aforesaid
wickedness; also they might get someone from the outside who knew more
about this wickedness.

The young man who told me this story is a friend of the principal, and
saw the whole adventure from the inside. One teacher, when his turn
came, told the pupils that he thought we had plenty of things to concern
ourselves about at home, and that it was our duty to clean our own
house; the principal rebuked this teacher, saying that his talk had been
“too tame.” “You didn’t say a word about the nationalization of women!”
So the principal himself talked about the nationalization of women; and
in the fall, when the campaign was taken up again, a zealous teacher,
whom I will call Mr. Jones, went out and inquired at a church forum for
the name of a competent speaker against Bolshevism. Somebody with a
sense of humor gave the name of Moissaye J. Olgin, well known as a
supporter of the Soviet government! Poor Mr. Jones, too trustful of his
fellowmen, invited Comrade Olgin, who came and lectured. I asked Olgin
about the incident, and quote from his letter, so that you may see for
yourself. He writes:

  I explained in a more or less scientific way how it came that the
  Bolsheviki obtained the upper hand. I drew a picture of the forces
  that made for Bolshevism, among them the craving of the masses for
  peace, the craving of the peasants for land, and the explicit desire
  on the part of the workingmen to assume control over the factories. I
  was simply a man who thinks he knows something about Russia and
  explains the working of social forces. The lecture created great
  consternation among the teaching staff, but the pupils were most
  enthusiastic.

After the lecture was over, the speaker was asked by Mr. Jones what he
thought of a man by the name of Lee-Nyne; to which he answered mildly
that this was “something for history to decide.” But, as you know, the
Babbitts are not willing to await the verdict of history; a child took
home this story to her parents, and the local Babbitts flew to arms. A
newspaper exploded with a scare story, all the way across the front
page:

/* BOLSHEVISM TAUGHT AT HIGH SCHOOL! */

It happened to be just at the time that a high public official was about
to be tried for malfeasance in office, and he was glad of a “Red”
herring to draw across the trail; his office summoned poor Mr. Jones and
proceeded to put him through the third degree. One of the inquisitors
grabbed Mr. Jones’ fraternity pin: “What’s that?” “And what do you know
about the American Revolution?” For two days the grilling went on, and
each day the newspapers had more frightful stories. Mr. Jones came out
mopping his brow, and vowing: “Well, if anything could make me a
Bolshevik, it would be such public officials!”

You know how it is—these Soviet propagandists are cunning rascals, and
hide under many disguises. The local Babbitts were sure they had an
agent of Lee-Nyne in this high school teacher, so they called in the
United States secret service, which took the trail, and followed Mr.
Jones day and night for two weeks—and reported that he did not go
anywhere except to a Methodist prayer meeting! So finally the Babbitts
were convinced that their teacher might be given another chance; but the
principal received special orders—he was never to invite another speaker
without first submitting the name to the superintendent!

Another incident, to show you what it means for teachers who deal with
the finer things of life to work under the shadow of this Black Hand. I
happen to know a lady who is head of the department of English in a high
school of a great city. This lady is a lover of literature, and a
teacher of the highest gifts; she knows how to inspire the young, not
merely to read and think about books, but in all their school
activities, their magazines and debates and dramatic performances. It
happens that she is a Socialist, and makes no bones about teaching the
children to think for themselves about our social system. Also it
happens that she is a “lady,” in the technical sense of that word; she
is good to look at, she was brought up in the Episcopal church, she is
received in the best society—and so it has been impossible for half a
dozen successive school boards to get rid of her. Incessant intrigue has
gone on against her, but she has quietly ignored it, and done her work.

This lady was invited to dine at the home of the school board president;
a prominent judge, a wealthy Republican politician—and incidentally a
gross bar-room animal. The primary purpose of the judge was to get the
lady to appoint his daughter as a teacher in her department; but before
bringing up that subject, he brought up another one. “I want you to
know,” he said, “that I realize you are a Socialist, and that you teach
the girls free love.” The lady rose up, and said: “I will not discuss
that question with you, Judge Smith.” “All right,” said Judge Smith;
“you don’t need to, but I’ve got the goods on you just the same.” The
lady’s reply was: “I don’t know what you’ve got, and I decline to permit
you to tell me.” But Judge Smith laughed, and went on to tell. “You’ve
given the girls a poem by Walt Whitman called ‘The Mystic Trumpeter,’
and I took the trouble to read it, and I know what’s in it.”

Now, I will not complete the story. If I should quote you the lines to
which the bar-room judge objected, apart from their context, you also
might misunderstand. Get the poem, which you will find in “Leaves of
Grass,” the section called “From Noon to Starry Night,” and read a piece
of real eloquence. Meantime, I conclude this chapter with letters from
two teachers. I have many to the same purport, but the book is long, and
two will serve as types of all. A man teacher in California writes:

  I have a humiliating request to make of you, Mr. Sinclair. Not having
  made provision for going out of the teaching business, I am afraid to
  have you mention the —— matter. The story will be unfailingly traced
  to me in what will probably be a brief time, considering the interest
  commanded by your “Goose-step,” and retribution will be sure to
  follow. I have so many sins to answer for before such unpromising
  judges within the next year that I have not the courage to add this
  delightful one to the rest just now. Will you sacrifice those two
  paragraphs?

The other letter is from a man teacher in the far Northwest:

  You may think it strange that I am writing to you to repeat my request
  that you in no way use my name in connection with the data that I sent
  to you for “The Goslings,” nor word any passage in such a way that my
  name could be associated with any of the facts that it contains. I
  believe that I have sent newspaper clippings confirmatory of the
  various statements of fact; in any case, omit any seemingly
  significant item rather than connect my name with it. As you well
  know, if any person here should suspect me of having so much as passed
  on to you information of common knowledge which is contained in
  newspaper clippings, in a very short time it will reach the ears of
  those who would unhesitatingly put an end to my professional career.
  At my time of life, with a family, and a very meagre portion of this
  world’s goods, I cannot afford to allow my name to be associated with
  an enterprise of this kind, however much I may be in sympathy with it.
  With physical condition not at all vigorous and no trade or business
  experience, you can readily understand what publication of my name, or
  the faintest suspicion of me, would lead to. Although my wife is the
  only person here whom I have told of my action, she has become very
  apprehensive of late, lest something creep into your book which would
  fasten suspicion upon me; in fact, she is verging into a highly
  nervous state, unable to drive the thought out of her mind. May I ask,
  in order that her anxiety may be relieved, that you send me a letter
  assuring me that my name, or any words that may indicate me as a
  contributor of data, be kept from the pages of “The Goslings.”




                             CHAPTER LXXXI
                            THE SCHOOL SERFS


We have asked the question: is a teacher a citizen? I can name a few
places in the United States in which a teacher may be a citizen,
provided he or she is willing to give up promotion and honors. Under
those conditions a teacher may be a citizen in Chicago, Milwaukee,[M]
and New York, and I might think of a few other places if I searched my
memory. On the other hand, if I wished to name places where a teacher is
not a citizen, I could cover every state in the Union, and districts
large enough to include several states.

-----

Footnote M:

  It is amusing to note that after writing this sentence I learned from
  a Milwaukee teacher that the Teachers’ Association was at first denied
  admission to the “Recreational Council,” a league of civic
  organizations for school improvement, upon the explicitly stated
  ground that teachers are not citizens!

-----

You have seen that a teacher is not a citizen in North Dakota or in
South Dakota. A teacher is not a citizen in Pennsylvania, where
teachers’ unions have been outlawed by decree of the state
superintendent. A teacher is not a citizen in Terre Haute, Indiana,
where the superintendent has declared that no one may teach history who
believes in the recall. A teacher is not a citizen in the state of
Washington, where Miss Alfa Ventzke was turned out for protesting
against the mobbing of Nonpartisan League members; nor in Texas, where a
gentleman whose name I withhold out of kindness to him, writes me how he
has wandered from place to place seeking a school where a teacher may be
a Socialist outside of school hours. He started out over thirty years
ago, and in those days a teacher could be a Populist; but nowadays he
has to hide—and even then they find him!

A teacher is not a citizen in Oklahoma, where Mr. A. A. Bagwell, who
began life as a Methodist minister, and is now a Christian Socialist,
has been hounded from public school to public school all over the state
for fifteen years. Mr. Bagwell’s story is told in a series of nine
two-column articles in the Oklahoma “Leader,” and it would take several
pages even to sketch his adventures. I glance over the articles and note
the names of town and county schools where he got into trouble—never for
any reason but his Socialist opinions: Gotebo, Greer, Blue Jacket,
Weatherford, Ardmore, Springer. The last place is Gotebo, where Mr.
Bagwell was county superintendent, and the American Legion held its
state convention and complained that the “firing squad” was not being
sufficiently used on teachers. So this Christian Socialist was kicked
out, and although he presents affidavits from literally hundreds of
people where he has taught—including the school boards—he travels from
one to another of his superiors demanding a hearing on the charges
against him, and can get no hearing.

A teacher is not a citizen in Leesville, Louisiana, where Mr. Otto Koeb
went to teach history in the high school. A mile from this town lies the
Llano Colony, at which three or four hundred hard-working earnest men
and women are making an effort to prove that human beings can labor from
other motives than individual greed. Mr. Koeb thought this an
interesting experiment, and wanted to write about it; he went to study
it—and was informed by the superintendent that if he continued such
visits he could not remain a teacher in the high school. So he gave up
his position, and now has none.

Nor is a teacher a citizen in Dallas, Texas, where many years ago Mr.
George Clifton Edwards, a teacher of Latin and mathematics, committed
the crime of being a Socialist. The school board was “a quiet,
vestry-like body,” and let him alone; but a certain rich lumberman, a
combination of note-shaver and psalm-singer named Owens, served notice
on them that if they did not fire the Socialist, he would elect a board
that would. They did not, and so he did. From that time on, Big Business
has run the schools, and has fired three other teachers, the best
qualified in the city. They have closed all the night schools save one,
which is practically an adjunct of the big department stores. As Dallas
is a city of great distances, this means that evening instruction is
denied to the working class.

Nor is a teacher a citizen in Austin, Texas, where sixty-three of them
joined a union, and all the officers were dismissed. The president of
the union, Mr. E. S. Blackburn, appeared before the superintendent and
demanded the reasons in his own case. Mr. Blackburn was director of
manual training, and the superintendent told him he didn’t administer
his department well. As the teacher had given the sixteen best years of
his life to the work, and loved it passionately, this hurt his feelings,
and he asked for specifications. The superintendent, after some
pondering, cited the fact that Mr. Blackburn hadn’t a wood-block floor
in his manual training shop. The next question was, what school did have
such a floor; and that was rather a poser, but finally the answer was
forthcoming—the Manual Training High School of Chicago. Mr. Blackburn at
once telegraphed to Chicago, and three hours later was informed by
Western Union that there was no Manual Training High School in Chicago!
Continuing his researches by telegraph, he learned that no manual
training shop in Chicago had a wood-block floor; he laid these messages
before the board—which was “speechless,” but nevertheless voted to
sustain the superintendent.

Take Elgin, Illinois, a manufacturing city run by the open shoppers,
with the usual board of business men and retainers. The condition of the
schools was so bad that the teachers formed an organization—not a union,
as they explicitly repudiated union tactics; they wanted merely a
respectable teachers’ association, affiliated with the National
Education Association. But the Black Hand wouldn’t stand even that, and
persecuted the teachers to such an extent that they went into politics
and tried to educate the public, and failed. The Black Hand, having been
victorious at the polls, reappointed its superintendent, and he
proceeded to get rid of six teachers and eight principals who had
supported the teachers’ ticket, and to put seventeen other teachers on
monthly contracts, so that they would have to be good. One of the
principals who lost her place had been in the Elgin school system for
twenty-six years, and expressed her feelings about the matter by taking
poison and dying. You have heard of the Chinese custom of committing
suicide upon the door-step of some tyrannical mandarin; it would appear
that this is the one form of protest left to American school teachers in
open-shop cities. In this case it was successful, because public clamor,
accompanied by threats of lynching, caused the open-shop superintendent
to quit.

A teacher is not a citizen in Atlanta, Georgia, where the teachers
organized to work for salary increases and for larger school
appropriations, and Miss Julia Riordan, a principal with a twenty years’
record, was so courageous as to help them. Three prominent business men
called upon members of the board, and instructed them to “slap the
teachers’ association” by discharging Miss Riordan. They did so—in
secret session, and without giving their victim a chance to defend
herself. Then they proceeded to fill the newspapers with mysterious
hints as to this teacher’s offenses; one of the board members, Mr.
McCalley, a gay humorist who represented a New York bond house,
explained that he voted against granting Miss Riordan a hearing because
of affidavits which he had received “under seal” concerning this
teacher. “If those affidavits are true, I cannot vote to give Miss
Riordan a hearing; if they are not true, somebody could be prosecuted.”
The humorous Mr. McCalley failed to explain how anyone could know
whether the affidavits were true, unless the principal were given a
chance to refute them. He failed to explain how “somebody could be
prosecuted,” so long as nobody knew who “somebody” was, or what
“somebody” had charged!

A teacher may be a citizen in Buffalo, New York—provided that he or she
is a very courageous and determined citizen! There was formed in Buffalo
the “Teachers’ Educational League,” to deal with the wretched condition
of the schools. In 1920 they published a pamphlet, in which they
discussed the school situation; I quote four of the paragraphs to which
the school board made objection:

  We cherish the pious hope that in some not too distant day there may
  arrive in the positions of administration of the schools men and women
  of sufficient vision to realize the importance to education of the
  intelligent and free-minded co-operation of the teachers.

  Since 1910 every increase in salary for the grade teachers has been
  secured by the sole efforts of the Teachers’ Educational League, and
  with the active opposition of the heads of the school department.

  We advocate a sane and sound training for children and cannot fail to
  deplore the current makeshift in the form of drives and campaigns and
  petty pedagogical pastimes.

  The schools are overrun with charlatanism and quackery of the very
  cheapest form.

The school board of Buffalo had as its president the local head of the
Standard Oil Company, and as its other members a lawyer to the rich, a
son of a banker, a son of a great lumber merchant, and a wife of a rich
man. The action of these five was to summon the teachers and question
them as to their responsibility for the pamphlet—but refusing to let
them produce any evidence of the truth of their statements. After which
the board met in secret session, and dismissed the president and the
recording secretary of the Teachers’ Educational League. Also they found
four other officers of the League guilty of “disrespect, defiance and
insubordination,” and sentenced them to be removed, but with the
privilege of being restored to their positions if they would sign an
apology and promise to be good in future. Three accepted these terms;
the other, together with the two who were unconditionally dismissed,
appealed to the state commissioner of education, and it is pleasant to
be able to record that this official reversed the action of the school
board. So it appears that a teacher can be a citizen in Buffalo—provided
she is willing to face a scandal and an expensive law-suit.

All this is a part of the “open-shop” movement, whose purpose is to keep
the wage-slaves from organizing and acquiring power. From coast to coast
both school boards and superintendents are solid on this question. In my
home city of Pasadena the board of education unanimously adopted a
resolution condemning the affiliation of teachers with the American
Federation of Labor. At a convention of superintendents in Riverside,
California, Superintendent Wilson of Berkeley declared that “the ends
for which teachers’ unions strive are unsound.” In New York the state
commissioner of education, John H. Finley, made the same statement, his
ground being that a teacher is in the same category as a soldier, “an
officer in the army of future defense.” Commissioners and
superintendents who want to know how to enforce military discipline
among teachers may receive instruction from Mr. J. W. Crabtree,
secretary of the National Education Association, and formerly president
of a state normal school in Wisconsin; at an N. E. A. convention he said
to a friend of mine: “My teachers will never form a union—I keep their
noses to the grindstone!”

Consider the experience of Miss Leida H. Mills, for twenty-nine years a
teacher in the schools of Wichita, Kansas. The teachers there had no
tenure, and were getting the munificent salary of forty dollars per
month; they proceeded to organize, and Miss Mills, who was head of the
Latin department in a high school, committed the crime of becoming
president of their organization. The president of the board of education
was a bank cashier, and he first fought her, and then fired her. She
addressed a protest to the board, which the board ignored. She found a
job on the Pacific Coast, leaving her mother and father back in Kansas;
she has returned twenty times to see them—quite an inconvenience for a
poor teacher! The Wichita board had to invite eight other teachers
before they found someone to take Miss Mills’ place; but of course they
always find someone in the end.

In San Antonio, Texas, there were no funds to increase the teachers’
salaries, and it was proposed to raise the money by private
subscription—a method of putting the teachers under bonds to the
bankers. That this was the plan became evident when the teachers began
to form a union, and one banker withdrew a contribution of fifty
thousands dollars which he had promised! The teachers went on with their
union, however, and got some three hundred and fifty members; also a
separate union of colored teachers with a hundred members. In the
following spring the two active organizers of the union were “let
out”—one of them a school principal who had been teaching the Mexicans
for twelve years, and had spent a good part of his own salary in
providing equipment for them; the other a high school teacher, a
university graduate with four years’ excellent record. Both were well
recommended by the superintendent, but the board fired them, and twelve
more teachers resigned—with the result that both the white and colored
teachers’ unions have disappeared from San Antonio.

In Houston, Texas, the teachers joined the American Federation of Labor,
and the unions threatened the mayor with a recall, and the school board
almost doubled the minimum teachers’ salaries. But then came Mrs.
Josephine C. Preston, past president of the National Education
Association—you remember the lady who presided at the Salt Lake
convention, with Professor Strayer of Columbia seated at her right hand.
Now we discover what the makers of educational “greatness” are up to;
the “great” Superintendent Preston told the teachers of Houston that it
would be far better for them to belong to her organization—it didn’t
cost so much, and it was so much more genteel! So the teachers deserted
the labor unions en masse. The president of the American Federation of
Teachers remarked to me sorrowfully: “The price of a teacher in the
United States is fifty dollars”—meaning that a teachers’ union would
agree to disband if the board of education would give them fifty dollars
a year increase of wages as the price of their civil rights.




                             CHAPTER LXXXII
                          THE TEACHERS’ UNION


The effect of official tyranny such as we have been observing is to
reinforce and intensify the occupational diseases of the teaching
profession, which are timidity and aloofness from real life. The teacher
lives in a little world of her own; she spends many hours every day with
her children, and other hours in reading their themes, and marking their
examination papers, and making out complicated reports. For the rest,
she knows only her colleagues, whose life is as narrow as her own. And
this is the way her superiors want it. Said the superintendent in Agra,
Kansas, to a young lady graduate of Wellesley College: “You ought to
have gone to a normal school instead of to college. There they teach the
teachers just what they ought to know, and not anything else.”

It hardly needs saying that a world which is five per cent male and
ninety-five per cent female is an abnormal world, with many jealousies
and suppressions. The teacher is, as a rule, either a very young woman,
looking forward to escape through matrimony, or else a woman grown
prematurely old, and watching with suspicious eye the curvettings of
youth. The tendency of women thus placed to curry favor with their
superiors, and to be spiteful toward their rivals, is very strong; and
the only way to keep the school-room from becoming a place of fussing
and fretfulness is to open the windows to the airs which blow in the
outside world. The teacher must have a vital interest in the great
causes which are stirring the minds of men; she must have some hope
outside her own very slender chances of personal success. The teacher,
in other words, must cease to be an individual, she must become part of
a group; she must share the consciousness of an organized and
disciplined body of workers, with a duty towards the future, and a means
of carrying it out.

In their efforts to keep the teacher an individual, the employing class
has not relied upon terrorism alone; they use all their propaganda
resources to take possession of the teacher’s psychology, to shut up her
mind in class greed and snobbery. The teacher is a “lady” in ninety-five
per cent of cases—and in the other five per cent the teacher is a
“gentleman.” The teacher belongs to the white-collared class, and
receives a monthly salary—never the degrading weekly stipend known as
“wages.” Once or twice in a life-time, the teacher is invited to a
banquet, and given an opportunity to listen to bankers and merchants and
manufacturers grow eloquent upon the dignity and nobility of the
pedagogical profession. These same compliments the teacher finds in her
capitalist newspaper, and her capitalist “Saturday Evening Post,” and
“Outlook,” and “Independent,” and “Literary Digest”; the compliments
cost less than nothing, because the advertisements more than pay for the
paper and printing.

Having spent my childhood in one of the larger-sized brick houses in
Baltimore, I understand thoroughly the psychology of “ladies and
gentlemen,” and the horror with which they contemplate common
workingmen, with grimy hands, and overalls, and no collars—or worse yet,
collars made of celluloid. Having left Baltimore thirty-five years ago,
and spent the rest of my life studying modern economics, I write this
book to tell the seven hundred thousand school teachers of the United
States that the path to independence and self-respect for them is the
path of organization, and of full and whole-hearted cooperation with
organized labor.

We have heard from the hired educators of Big Business a chorus of
denunciation of teachers’ unions; and their point of view is easy to
understand. What I find hard to understand is their serene confidence in
the inability of their wage-slaves to put two and two together. In the
very same breath in which these Big Business educators denounce
teachers’ unions, they praise the unions of bankers and merchants and
manufacturers and lawyers, and urge the teachers to intimacy with these.
Says J. W. Studebaker, superintendent of schools of Des Moines, in a
circular for the National Education Association: “The schools are linked
up with the business interests of the city.” Says C. L. Carlsen,
director of part-time education in the San Francisco public schools:
“The convenience of the employer must be the first consideration.” Says
Dr. Frank M. Leavitt, assistant superintendent of schools in Pittsburgh:
“Of very great importance is the matter of establishing friendly and
intelligent relations with the employers of the juvenile workers.”
Quotations such as this are scattered all through “The Goslings,” and I
could collect another chapter full if it would help.

Why may teachers belong to employers’ unions and not to unions of their
own? There are a few educators who have had the courage to put this
question—one of them Professor John M. Brewer, of the Graduate School of
Education of Harvard University. I owe an apology both to Professor
Brewer and to Harvard, because in “The Goose-step” I forgot to mention
him as one of our liberal educators. He discussed the question of
teachers’ unions in an excellent article in “School and Society,”
January 14, 1922, and no doubt he will send you the leaflet if you ask
for it. He points out that the utmost the teachers have so far dared to
ask in the way of tenure is the right to a hearing before their
superiors. But in Filene’s department store in Boston, no worker can be
discharged without a hearing before his fellow workers. When will the
teachers of America have the courage to ask as much?

What could be more sensible, what could be more essential, if a teacher
is really to _be_ a free man or a free woman? Who is it that knows
whether a teacher is competent and faithful, if not her fellow teachers?
Who can really judge and protect the needs of the child, if not those
persons whose business it is to be in daily and hourly contact with the
child? I have on my desk a letter from a lady who was formerly a teacher
in Terre Haute, Indiana, and who presumed to take an interest in an
organization of the teachers, and was threatened with loss of her
position. The superintendent told her it was because she was
“incompetent”; she took up the fight on this issue, and wrote to the
parents of every one of her children, and an actual majority of these
parents appeared before the school board to defend this teacher, and not
a single parent could be found to say that her work was not
satisfactory, or that she was not beloved by her pupils. Yet this
teacher was forced to move on to another city.

That is just one more illustration; I have given you a bookful of such
stories, and I could compile an encyclopedia on the subject if I had
nothing else to do. The point is clear: The present status of the
American school teacher is that of a wage-slave, an employe of the
school board and the superintendent; it is not the status of a free
citizen, nor of a professional expert. It can only be made that, first,
by the education of the teachers themselves—a process of organization
and self-discipline, guided by the more active and intelligent and
courageous of the profession. In this process there will be many
martyrs, and each can take to himself such comfort as martyrs through
all the ages have had—the knowledge that each one is adding to the sum
total of human progress, and that without this heroism and unselfish
idealism, there would have been no progress in the past, and will be
none in the future.

One of America’s really great educators, who supports the unionizing of
teachers and has had the courage to join a teachers’ union himself, is
John Dewey. Just so that you may not think of the teachers’ union as the
notion of cracked-brained radicals like myself, I quote three paragraphs
from an address delivered by Professor Dewey at a mass meeting of
teachers in New York, and published as a leaflet by the American
Federation of Teachers, located in Chicago:

  We have not had sufficient intelligence to be courageous. We have
  lacked a sense of loyalty to our calling and to one another, and on
  that account have not accepted to the full our responsibility as
  citizens of the community.

  To my mind, that is the great reason for forming organizations which
  are affiliated with other working organizations that have power and
  that attempt to exercise the power like the Federation of Labor;
  namely, the reflex effect upon the body of the teachers themselves in
  strengthening their courage, their faith in their calling, their faith
  in one another, and the recognition that they are servants of the
  community, and not people hired by a certain transitory set of people
  to do a certain job at their beck and call....

  We should have an organization which shall not on the one hand merely
  discuss somewhat minute and remote subjects of pedagogy with no
  certainty as to how their conclusions are going to take effect in
  practice, nor simply look after the personal and more or less selfish
  interests of teachers on the other hand. But we should have a body of
  self-respecting teachers and educators who will see to it that their
  ideas and their experience in educational matters shall really count
  in the community; and who, in order that these may count, will
  identify themselves with the interests of the community; who will
  conceive of themselves as citizens and as servants of the public, and
  not merely as hired employees of a certain body of men. It is because
  I hope to see the teaching body occupy that position of social
  leadership which it ought to occupy, and which to our shame it must be
  said we have not occupied in the past, that I welcome every movement
  of this sort.




                            CHAPTER LXXXIII
                       THE TEACHERS’ MAGNA CHARTA


The first objection always brought against teachers’ unions is that they
might lead to strikes. The American Federation of Teachers has met this
proposition by expressly repudiating the policy of teacher strikes, and
the American Federation of Labor has endorsed this attitude. Well,
somebody has to make a start, and if the labor movement will not, I
will. I say squarely, and without compromise or evasion, that I know no
reason in the world why teachers should not strike, and I know hundreds
of reasons why they should. If you want to find these reasons, all you
have to do is to turn back and read this book once more. I say that the
teachers of St. Louis should have struck when Miss Rosa Hesse was kicked
out of the school board for opposing the candidacy of a school board
member for re-election. I say that the teachers of Buffalo should have
struck when five teachers were kicked out by the school board for
publishing a pamphlet criticizing the schools of their city. I say that
the teachers of Chicago should have struck when large numbers of their
colleagues were kicked out of their positions for the crime of belonging
to a union; so should the teachers of Butte, Montana, and of St. Louis,
Missouri, of Fresno, California, of Austin and San Antonio, Texas, of
Wichita, Kansas, of Olean, New York, of Lorain, Ohio, of Atlanta,
Georgia, of Peoria, Marion, and Elgin, Illinois, of Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, of Terre Haute, Indiana.

These are only a few cases, and I might cite many more. In general, what
I say is that school teachers of the United States should have their
professional organizations, and should run these organizations; they
should establish professional standards, setting down not merely their
rights, but also their duties; they should hold their members to these
duties, and should maintain these rights against all comers, including
superintendents and school boards. I say that teachers should do this,
not merely for their own welfare, but for the welfare of the schools; I
say that it is necessary both for the schools and for the children, that
teachers should cease to be rabbits, and should become self-respecting
and alert citizens.

There has been a kind of strike going on in the American public schools
for the past six or eight years; it might be described as an “individual
strike.” It is made by teachers who find their positions intolerable,
and who simply go into some other occupation. Professor John M. Brewer
estimates that there were forty thousand such “individual strikes”
during the labor shortage just after the war. These represent, of
course, the cream of the profession—the people who were sure they could
take care of themselves in the outside world, and who went and did it.
And all these people have been lost to the schools and to the children,
while the feeble-minded and feeble-souled have remained. So the
profession of teacher sinks lower and lower, until now it is agreed by
educators that students at normal schools—that is, those preparing to
become teachers—represent the lowest grade of any to be found in
training schools of the professions. It seems to me that in the light of
this fact, anyone who really cares about the schools and the children
would long for nothing so much as for a real, vigorous, large-scale
strike of school teachers.

The school teachers of England and Canada and Australia belong to
unions, and do not repudiate the policy of the strike. They have struck
on many occasions, and have been dignified and successful, and highly
educative to the community. The National Union of Teachers of Great
Britain sent over their president to represent them at Boston, the 1922
convention of the National Education Association. This gentleman happens
to be, not a college president or a state superintendent of schools, but
a plain ordinary class-room teacher; and what he said about the
backwardness of American teachers, their lack of independence and
class-consciousness, was quite paralyzing to the N. E. A. gang. He told
about the strike against a reduction of salary, then being carried on by
the teachers of Southampton; and the N. E. A. ordered all reference to
his speech stricken from the record of the Department of Classroom
Teachers!

Professor Brewer has discussed this question of the teachers’ strike,
and has not shirked the issue; he says, very sensibly:

  It is our business to help discover methods of abolishing the need for
  strikes, but it is useless to talk against strikes when no better way
  to prevent injustices has yet been discovered. Employers almost always
  have the right to the lay-off and lockout. We can aid in the discovery
  of better methods for all workers if we work with them and not against
  them.... What have we ever done to educate boys and girls in
  preparation for better solutions for labor difficulties than strikes?
  Laborers do not enjoy striking; they do it because they believe this
  to be their only weapon when circumstances which they consider
  intolerable arise.

In order to get the fundamentals on this matter, we have to come back
once more to the question, several times discussed in this book: Is a
teacher a citizen? What I ask the teachers of the United States to do is
to write for themselves a Magna Charta; to adopt a collective program,
and put upon the statute books of every state the explicit provision
that teachers are citizens, and that wherever their rights as citizens
come into conflict with the rights of school boards and superintendents
as hirers and firers of labor, the teachers’ rights as citizens are
superior. Teachers have, and should maintain through their
organizations, every right which other citizens have.

What are these rights of citizens? Teachers have a right to employ their
spare time as they see fit. Teachers have a right to belong to such
organizations as they see fit. Teachers have a right to take part in
politics alongside all other citizens—and this includes the election of
superintendents and school boards. Teachers have a right to discuss
school affairs, and to say anything they please about the schools and
those who conduct the schools. If they say things which are not true,
they are liable, like all other citizens who make false statements, to
due process of law; but they are not liable to lose their positions for
exercising any of the rights of American citizens. They may belong to
political parties, and may hold and advocate such political opinions as
they see fit. If they advocate sabotage, violence and crime, they may be
dealt with by the law, but they may not be dealt with by school boards
or superintendents for political ideas which they hold, or for political
activities outside the class-room.

These principles, I take it, are fundamental, and no teacher is a
citizen until they are rigidly upheld; the first duty of every school
teacher in the United States is to back every other school teacher in
the assertion and protection of these rights, and nothing that any
teacher can do or fail to do to our children is so important as this
assertion of teacher self-respect and teacher dignity. Am I too much of
an optimist when I say, that before I leave this earth I hope to see the
teacher rabbits come out of their holes and band themselves together for
mutual protection as citizens? Am I historically correct when I assert
that this is the true one hundred per cent Americanism, which the author
of the Declaration of Independence and the author of the Emancipation
Proclamation would have endorsed? Or will the teachers of America
forever let themselves be bamboozled by Chamber of Commerce lackeys into
calling a man a “radical” and a “Red” because he stands for these
fundamental liberties in a free republic?

Those who affect such horror at the idea of a teachers’ strike argue
that the teachers are public servants, dedicated to a sacred cause. Of
course; and all I want to do is to extend the boundaries of this service
and this cause. I contend that coal-miners are also public servants, and
likewise oil-workers and railway-workers, and every man or woman who
contributes the labor upon which civilization rests. I assert that all
these workers now occupy the status of industrial serfs, and must raise
themselves to the status of industrial citizens. The way to do it is the
way of organization, education, agitation; and the strongest weapon is
their power to give or to withhold their collective labor.




                             CHAPTER LXXXIV
                           WORKERS’ EDUCATION


Some teacher who is not in touch with the labor world will read the
story I have told about labor government in San Francisco and in Butte,
Montana, and will ask, is that what I mean. It isn’t what I mean; and
for the benefit of newcomers, I hasten to explain. I wish that there
existed in modern society a beautiful and altruistic labor movement,
instead of what does exist, a part of the capitalist system, partaking
of the weaknesses and corruptions which are automatically produced in
human societies by the continuous operation of mass rivalries and
greeds. The American Federation of Labor is a machine, precisely like
the Republican party, or the National Education Association; it is a
vested interest of high-salaried leaders, whose function is to dicker
with Big Business for the best terms obtainable in the labor market.
Many of these leaders are sincere but ignorant men, who have grown up in
the present system and can imagine nothing else. Many others have
accepted without realizing it what I call “the dress-suit bribe.” Still
others are cynical corruptionists, who sell out their deluded followers,
and permit labor unions to be used as weapons in the partisan wars of
Big Business. Any teacher who goes to the labor movement without
realizing these things, will suffer bitter disillusionment.

Underneath this machine is the great mass of the workers, groping their
way toward freedom and self-government; betrayed a million times by
leaders throughout the ages, they continue to grope, and to learn. The
modern machine process has brought them together by tens of thousands,
and the printing press and the soap-box have given them the means of
spreading information. Many new organizations may have to be made and
broken, many new weapons constructed by the masses; but they are on
their way toward freedom and self-government, with a movement like that
of a glacier. To understand the workers and their needs, and to help
them to find their path—that is the task to which the teacher may
contribute. Let her go to the labor movement, not expecting too much,
but ready to give the precious things which she has.

The teacher who goes in that spirit will not be disappointed. She will
find in the toiling masses a deep and touching reverence for her
profession. The teacher is well known to the masses, she has messengers
who carry good words about her to the homes of the people. The great
bulk of our wage-slaves have but little hope for themselves; what
ambitions they have are for their children. They send these children to
school, and they think of the teacher as the children’s friend, the
guardian of the children’s future, the keeper of a magic key. To the
very poor in the slums, the teacher comes as a missionary; she is the
only representative of authority who assumes any aspect of kindness. As
one who has been in the labor movement most of his life, I say that I
have yet to hear a labor man speak of teachers without respect; or to
hear of an American city in which the teachers made an appeal to the
working masses without getting a response.

That portion of the labor movement which has especial need of the
teacher, and which should command the teacher’s especial regard, is
workers’ education. I have devoted a chapter to this subject in “The
Goose-step,” and do not want to repeat information which is given there.
Suffice it to say, that the organized workers have grown tired of seeing
their best brains stolen from them, they have set out to educate their
own youth, and train their own leaders. There are now workers’ colleges
or schools in all the leading cities of America, and to know them and to
help them should be one of the joys of progressive teachers. In places
where there is not yet a labor school, it only waits for some group of
teachers who will go to the labor men, and advise with them, and help
them to break into this new field.

There exists in New York a center of information, the Workers’ Education
Bureau, 465 West 23rd Street, which works in harmony with the old-line
labor unions and has received their endorsement. This bureau has
established fifty labor colleges in America in the six years of its
existence. It holds a convention every spring, and if you will read its
proceedings, you will pity the N. E. A.

The more radical labor unions have their own educational centers,
concerning which you may have information for the asking. The
Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, under the presidency of James H.
Maurer, a clear-visioned Socialist, has established a department of
education and labor research at Harrisburg, and has promoted labor
classes in a dozen cities throughout the state. It will send you much
interesting literature on request. The Brookwood School at Katonah, New
York, has twice as many pupils as it had last year, and you will wish to
know about this charming place. You will meet here several of the kicked
out college professors whom you read about in “The Goose-step”; one of
them is Professor A. W. Calhoun, who writes:

  We are planning to give this summer a course of interest to teachers
  who may care to work into the labor education movement. Opportunity
  will be given to such teachers to get the labor point of view and to
  associate with labor people. In addition there will be special
  attention to the fundamentals of economics, and other matters that
  teachers ordinarily need to approach from the labor view point.

I mention also that the I. W. W. have their Work Peoples’ College at
Duluth, Minnesota (Box 39, Morgan Park Station). Mrs. Kate Richards
O’Hare has moved to the Llano Colony at Leesville, Louisiana, and has
started there Commonwealth College, under the direction of W. E. Zeuch,
a college professor whose adventures you may read in “The Goose-step.”
The International Ladies’ Garment Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers are maintaining elaborate educational programs for their members
in many cities.

I give you these various addresses in order that you may get the
literature of the subject. I will also say a friendly word for the
“Labor Age,” an admirable magazine of information edited by Prince
Hopkins, and published at 41 Union Square, New York. The issue of April,
1922, was devoted to the subject of labor education, and is full of
information as to developments both in this country and Great Britain.
In the latter country the Workers’ Education Association has a total of
2,760 branches, to say nothing of the various independent and radical
educational bodies.

Also, I ought to mention that outside the labor movement there are some
independent experimental schools, which are radical so far as concerns
education, and are clearing the way toward the future. In Washington, D.
C., in the Progressive Education Association (1719 35th St., N. W.). Ask
them for their pamphlet, “The Spirit of Adventure in Education”; ask
them for their lists of experimental schools, and especially their
account of what is going on at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio,
which is making an effort to combine real work and study—the basis of
all truly democratic education. Write also to the Organic School at
Fairhope, Alabama, and inform yourself about the splendid work which
Mrs. Marietta Johnson is doing, to train young people in the realities
of life, and to make education a complete and living thing. Write to the
Bureau of Educational Experiments, 70 Fifth Ave., New York. There are a
number of new schools in or near New York; I mention especially the
Walden School at 32 West 68th St., the Teachers’ College Playground, and
the Gregory School at West Orange, New Jersey. The New School for Social
Research, located in New York, is doing excellent work. The Modern
School, at Stelton, N. J., is testing out the theories of “libertarian”
education. Finally, Dean Alva P. Taylor of the State College of New
Mexico has a very interesting plan for organizing a college to be
managed by its faculty; he wishes to hear from others who are
interested.

Also I must not fail to mention the Pathfinders of America, which is
endeavoring to supplement our public school education by character
training, the lack of which is our greatest school defect. The founder
of this organization, Mr. J. F. Wright, is one of our pioneers, and the
work he is doing should be known to all educators. He began with efforts
to redeem convicts, and he had sixty-five organizations when I met him a
year and a half ago, and was reaching five thousand men in prisons. They
have now started “junior councils” in the public schools—much better
than the junior chambers of commerce, I assure you! They eliminate
religion from their training, but teach the children practical conduct
in a practical way, and the parents perceive the results—as do the
juvenile delinquency officers in Detroit.

Also, I should mention the work which is being done by Mr. Vance Monroe,
editor of the “Colorado Union Farmer” of Denver. Here is a co-operative
organization of farmers, which has got up a series of juvenile
clubs—again something better than junior chambers of commerce! There are
forty-eight such organizations in the state, with youngsters up to the
age of sixteen conducting their own courts, forming their own
“co-operative credit associations” for the handling of their savings,
working up their own debating teams, and in general running their own
affairs. There is no control from the grown-ups except the written
suggestions of Mr. Monroe, together with the advice of two adults whom
the youngsters have themselves chosen to fill that rôle when requested.
This is real training for democracy; it is education in the strict sense
of the word—drawing out the child’s own impulses and abilities, instead
of repressing them and crushing them into a predetermined mould. Through
such voluntary and self-governing associations our schools will be made
over—and I fear it will have to be done from the outside, not from the
inside.[N]

-----

Footnote N:

  I yield to the temptation to quote a letter from Mr. Monroe, answering
  some questions as to his work:

  “I have made a study of true co-operation for twenty years and that is
  what I deal in. First I tried to educate men. It didn’t work. Then I
  tried a combination—men and women. That failed. Then I tried to
  educate the children. It was a fruitless effort I discovered, as no
  doubt you did long ago, that the children couldn’t be ‘educated,’ but
  that if any degree of success was obtained, they must educate
  themselves.

  “The work is carried on through the medium of clubs which are
  co-related and interlocking. Each club has a code. They are bound in
  honor to live up to its provisions. They are doing it, too. This may
  sound like the ‘boy scout plan’ but it is altogether different. Boy
  scouts are disciplined, army style, by adults. Under our plan the boys
  and girls discipline themselves. As a matter of fact they help to
  build their own program. Many noteworthy character building
  suggestions have come from the kids. Our plan helps to obviate the
  spirit of warfare without war being mentioned. I feel that war is a
  dangerous word. Why use it? Our plan is built around harmony, charity,
  peace and good will. There is no need to discuss war if peace can be
  thoroly understood.

  “The plan sounds complicated to a good many of the adults, but the
  children understand it. They have more faith, more optimism, more
  energy, more loyalty, more potentialities, more wisdom. Parents tell
  me our members are better behaved at home. They are more considerate
  and unselfish. They think of others. They are getting to the point in
  many cases where they are ready to make co-operation the very
  important essential in the texture of life.

  “I am working thru the Farmers’ Union. This because it is a vehicle at
  my hand. I have undertaken thru the medium of the juvenile
  organization to develop a new rejuvenated spirit of co-operation in
  the home life, the social life. Each child will thoroly understand the
  value of co-operation, spiritual and material, its necessity and
  importance in the scheme of life. They, in their own way and time,
  come to understand the vitalness of co-operative principles, and learn
  by experience that failure is ever the creature of competition.

  “By the excessive mental effort and physical energy it is sometimes
  possible to arouse the adults for the moment—but only for the moment.
  They have been too long victims of a deadly environment. Our hope lies
  with the children. Strange as it may seem, part of our plan gives the
  children opportunity to assist in education of their parents. It is
  altogether surprising to me to see how well this works out in
  practice.

  “Each club has an ‘editor’ who reads a paper at each meeting night.
  This does not mean that the editor simply produces a ‘literary paper.’
  As a matter of fact most of the editors take their work seriously.
  They make a good job of it. The papers in most instances are
  educational, instructive as well as newsy. Practically all of the
  clubs take their ‘paper’ to the local newspaper and have it printed
  therein. This makes for genuine propaganda. Besides this plan, with
  proper tutelage, helps to develop potential editors who may one day be
  recognized as factors in the newspaper field.

  “All my work is based on the honest conviction that we can expect no
  help from the public schools or colleges. Of course the forces of
  competition have them absolutely under control. There can be no real
  help from the subsidized press of the present time. Even library lists
  are censored. Because of such conditions I believe that this is the
  way out. The plan works. That’s something. Other states are taking it
  up. Kansas, South Dakota and Georgia have already written for the plan
  with the intention of carrying it out.”

-----

If this book were not already too long, I should like to take space to
tell you about this kind of work. But all these schools and reform
projects have their own literature, which they will send you for the
asking. I want to add, by way of comforting some anxious souls, that I
am not really a pessimistic and destructive person; I understand that
there are many earnest workers in the schools, and that some of them
manage by tact and force of personality to put liberal ideas into the
heads of their students. I know that plutocratic influences are not
entirely unopposed in America; I know that conditions portrayed in this
book are less bad than they would be, if conscientious men and women
were not risking their jobs every hour. My reason for writing this book
is my belief that these people can do their work better, if they know
exactly what they are opposing. I do not want liberal teachers to be in
the position of Mr. M. C. Bettinger, who gave thirty-eight years of his
life to the school system of Los Angeles, as teacher, assistant
superintendent, and school board member, and then, after he had been
kicked out in his old age, read “The Goose-step” and wrote me these
pathetic words: “I may not be of much help to you, but you certainly
have helped me. I know now what I have been trying to do, and what has
been done to me.”

I close this chapter on workers’ education with a message from an abler
writer than myself. In France the teachers are an organized and
disciplined social force; and to their trade union convention came the
greatest of living French prose masters, a sage and _bel esprit_ whose
high position in the world of letters has not held him from full
sympathy with the revolutionary workers of the world. I quote four
paragraphs from the message of Anatole France to the teachers of his
country; and I mention, in case you want to read it all, that you can
find it in the “Nation,” Vol. 109, or in the “Living Age,” Vol. 302.

  Pardon me for returning to this; it is the great point upon which
  everything depends. It is for you, without hope of aid or support, or
  even of consent, to change primary education from the ground up, in
  order to make workers. There is place today in our society only for
  workers; the rest will be swept away in the storm. Make intelligent
  workers, instructed in the arts they practice, knowing what they owe
  to the national and to the human community.

  Burn all the books which teach hatred. Exalt work and love. Let us
  develop reasonable men, capable of trampling under foot the vain
  splendor of barbaric glories, and of resisting the sanguinary
  ambitions of nationalisms and imperialisms which have crushed their
  fathers.

  No more industrial rivalries, no more wars: work and peace. Whether we
  wish it or no, the hour is come when we must be citizens of the world
  or see all civilization perish. My friends, permit me to utter a most
  ardent wish, a wish which it is necessary for me to express too
  rapidly and incompletely, but whose primary idea seems to me
  calculated to appeal to all generous natures. I wish, I wish with all
  my heart, that a delegation of the teachers of all nations might soon
  join the Workers’ Internationale in order to prepare in common a
  universal form of education, and advise as to methods of sowing in
  young minds ideas from which would spring the peace of the world and
  the union of peoples.

  Reason, wisdom, intelligence, forces of the mind and heart, whom I
  have always devoutly invoked, come to me, aid me, sustain my feeble
  voice; carry it, if that may be, to all the peoples of the world, and
  diffuse it everywhere where there are men of good will to hear the
  beneficent truth! A new order of things is born. The powers of evil
  die, poisoned by their crime. The greedy and the cruel, the devourers
  of peoples, are bursting with an indigestion of blood. However sorely
  stricken by the sins of their blind or corrupt masters, mutilated,
  decimated, the proletarians remain erect; they will unite to form one
  universal proletariat, and we shall see fulfilled the great socialist
  prophecy: “The union of the workers will be the peace of the world.”




                             CHAPTER LXXXV
                          THE GOOSE-STEP MARCH


As this manuscript goes to the printer, “The Goose-step” has been before
the public nine months. Approximately twenty-two thousand copies have
been sold, and many of them have been going the rounds in colleges. I
have a letter from one school teacher, who tells me that her copy has
been read by forty others. In the “Bookman” for December, 1923, “The
Goose-step” is listed third among non-fiction books most in demand in
public libraries. I was told by an instructor at Stanford that some
students had torn out the Stanford chapters from a dozen copies of the
book, and had pasted these pages, elaborately marked in red ink, upon
bulletin boards and upon the doors of their dormitories. A lecturer, who
visited many colleges in all parts of the country, tells me that he
found “The Goose-step” the principal topic of argument in faculty clubs;
as he phrased it, the member would sit and debate: “Are we like that?”

A number of universities replied, directly or indirectly, to the book.
The most emphatic of all was Harvard. Said President Lowell and his
deans and his corporation: “Go to, we will show this varlet how much we
care about him! Let us tell the world how proud we are to be the
University of Lee-Higginson, with J. P. Morgan connections!” What
happened then was reported in the Boston “American”:

  Harvard University today flung a defi in the face of Upton Sinclair.
  Today Harvard, at its commencement exercises, presented an honorary
  Doctor of Laws degree to Mr. Morgan. In presenting the degree to Mr.
  Morgan, Dr. Eliot said: “To John Pierpont Morgan, a son of Harvard,
  heir to the power and responsibility of a great financial house. He
  has used them with courage in a dark crisis of the World War and at
  all times with uprightness, public spirit and generosity.” In effect,
  Mr. Morgan gets his honorary degree for multiplying dollars through
  his international banking house. Sinclair could not possibly have
  wished for a more definite, clearer verification of the charges that
  he made.

  Another degree—this one a Master of Arts degree—was presented to Eliot
  Wadsworth, assistant secretary of the treasury. Mr. Wadsworth is a
  member of the firm of Stone and Webster, which is allied with the
  Morgan firm. In his book, Sinclair charges that State Street, a suburb
  of Wall Street, absolutely owns and controls the Massachusetts
  Institute of Technology. The president of Tech is Samuel Wesley
  Stratton. Mr. Stratton today was presented with an honorary LL.B.
  degree. Sinclair charged that Morgan’s control of American colleges
  extended not only to the college presidents, but to the clergy which
  exercises much influence over these colleges. Charles L. Slattery,
  Episcopal Bishop Coadjutor of Massachusetts, referred to by Sinclair
  as “Mr. Morgan’s Bishop”—received the honorary degree of Doctor of
  Divinity.

Also the University of California made answer to “The Goose-step”; there
was a vacancy on the board of regents, and the governor appointed the
chief of the Black Hand, Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles “Times.” The
alumni of the university also took action; they engaged as their
secretary, an agent of the Power Trust, at a salary of ten thousand a
year! There are thirty-five thousand alumni, you understand, and to be
able to control them means to control the state. This new agent was
formerly editor of the “Electrical World,” and was on the list of the
kept speakers of the Power Trust during the recent campaign against
public ownership; he was put in his new job by Attorney Earl, who runs
the board of regents for Banker Fleishhacker and Publisher Chandler.

I have pointed out in “The Goose-step” that an actual majority of the
regents of this university are Power Trust officials or attorneys; and
the same is true of the council which controls the alumni. I have
nothing more important to tell you than this, because hydro-electric
power is the issue of our time; the Power Trust is today what the
railroads and Standard Oil were a generation ago, the chief active
corrupter of our public life. At the last meeting of the National
Electric Light Association they brought up an elaborate program for
“getting the university professors, holding “institutes” for them,
employing them to write literature, and giving them jobs in local public
utilities. This report was not formally adopted—it was thought not to be
“tactful”; they would just put it through without saying anything!

Professor Vladimir Karapetoff, of the College of Engineering at Cornell,
sends to a friend of mine samples of the poison dope which is being fed
to college professors. This particular dose comes from Philip Torchio, a
high-salaried engineer for a number of electrical companies; it is sent
free, and for no particular reason that the recipient knows. The subject
is “depreciation,” the substance of the argument being that public
utilities never depreciate, and so dividends should be collected on the
basis of the original cost! This argument is signed by two
supposed-to-be public officials, both of whom turn out to be on the
pay-roll of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, a Standard Oil
concern. One of them began his life as an active “reformer” in New York,
then became counsel for the Public Service Commission at fifteen
thousand dollars a year, and prepared a case for the people against the
Consolidated Gas Company. On the very day that the case came to trial he
went over to the gas company, and became their chief counsel, and
carried over to their side every particle of the evidence which he had
prepared for the benefit of the public!

That is just one incident, to show you how the dice are loaded against
you in the world of education. In every great university throughout the
United States today there are rascals of this sort, posing as
scientists, and carrying on intrigues against the public welfare. And
every instructor in high school, and every professor in colleges who
touches on such subjects meets these intriguers with the dice loaded
against him; that is, he knows that to oppose the rascals means to
forfeit promotion, and perhaps his job.

How beautifully the Black Hand has got the professors frightened in the
universities of California was proven by George P. West, who formed an
organization to work for the repeal of the criminal syndicalism law. He
got the backing of the Episcopal bishop and the Catholic archbishop of
San Francisco, and it was proposed to have some university professor
prepare an entirely disinterested study of the actual workings of this
law. Mr. West wrote to the professor of economics at Stanford, asking
him to name a competent man; he received in reply a cold letter,
declining his request. He went to talk with the economics men at the
University of California, and not one of them was willing to meet him in
the faculty room; they asked him to take a walk! Not one of these young
instructors or research men was willing to take the job, even with a
good salary attached, and with the backing of two bishops!

Another instance: I don’t want to indicate the identity of this
informant, so will call him professor of Chinese metaphysics at a large
California university. He gave me some information for “The Goose-step,”
and because of the nature of this information he fell under suspicion,
and the Black Hand set out to punish him. This eminent specialist has a
standard text-book on Chinese metaphysics, in use everywhere in colleges
and universities throughout the United States. It is the most up-to-date
book on the subject, there is no other as good, or anywhere near as
good; nevertheless, this book has been thrown out of the three biggest
institutions in the state of California!

The University of California has a large branch in Los Angeles, and this
also made reply to “The Goose-step.” A young lady presented a copy of
the book to the library, and a few days later was requested to come and
take the contaminating thing away. (But the demand grew so pressing,
they had to let it in!) Then came their professor of education, a
gentleman by the name of Woellner, before the American Civil Liberties
Union, stating that “The Goose-step” was “full of vicious lies.” I wrote
him a courteous note, saying that I never wilfully made a false
statement, and would appreciate his pointing out the specific “lies” he
had noted. The professor in his reply gave no specifications, but
explained that I “state but half the truth.” He went on to put me in my
precise place:

  Your scholarship is atrocious, your literary style is pitiful, your
  social attitude unwholesome and your recommended cure, Socialism,
  worse than any of the diseases you diagnose. American political and
  social institutions are remarkably fine. They can only be made better
  by those who love them and work for them from the inside. Bury the
  hammer, pick up the flag and wave it over consecrated effort for the
  perpetuation of all its glories.

I will make you a bet—that this flag-waving professor becomes a dean
inside two years!

Also Stanford makes answer; just as the last of this manuscript is going
to the printer, a new regent is appointed, Mr. Paul Shoup,
vice-president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and perhaps the most
active union smasher in the state. Ten or fifteen years ago we were told
that Hiram Johnson had driven the Southern Pacific out of California
politics. Today the Better America Federation openly controls the state
legislature, and everybody takes it for granted that Mr. Shoup should
dictate both nominations and legislation.

Nicholas Miraculous also made his answer to “The Goose-step”; and this
is one of the funniest stories I have to tell you. You know that for six
years our pious government has refused recognition to Soviet Russia,
because it isn’t “democratic.” We always did business with the czar—he
was “democratic,” but Lenin isn’t! Now, to test our sincerity, a ruffian
rises in Italy, and his thugs beat and murder the Socialists of that
country, and set up a castor-oil dictatorship. Does our pious government
refuse to recognize him? Our pious government falls on his neck. He
sends us an ambassador, and our great universities rush forward to do
him honor, and testify their devotion to the dictatorship of the
capitalist class. A string of American plutocrats, headed by Judge Gary,
go over to Italy and make obeisance before him, and come back to tell us
what a great man he is, and what a fine example he has set us.

So the young snobs of Columbia proceed to organize a castor-oil society
for their own university, and they make the assistant professor of Latin
the head of their organization. Arturo Giovannitti writes to President
Butler in protest: and what do you think Butler answers? He “has no
power to discipline a professor for his ideas,” and his university “has
through a long and honorable history lived up to the highest ideals of
freedom to seek the truth and freedom to teach.” After that, pick up
“The Goose-step” and read the half dozen chapters which tell how
Nicholas Murray Butler kicked out professors for holding and teaching
pacifist or radical ideas. Then you will understand what Alexander
Harvey meant when he wrote in the “Freeman”:

  I have rolled over and over on the floor in my struggles to keep from
  laughing at Nicholas Murray Butler—the Nicholas Murray Butler one
  encounters in the works of Upton Sinclair. I wonder if there exists on
  the planet any such person as he who, in the writings of Upton
  Sinclair, is referred to by the name of Nicholas Murray Butler.
  Whenever I am so melancholy as to think only of suicide I exhilarate
  myself with this reflection: “The Nicholas Murray Butler of Upton
  Sinclair exists!” Then my heart goes dancing with the daffodils.

To complete the story you must hear how President Butler’s students
proceeded to apply his “highest ideals of freedom to seek the truth and
freedom to teach.” Some members of the Students’ Reserve Corps were
doing the goose-step on the campus, and some other students jeered at
them from the dormitory windows. There was a fuss about it, and the
commandant of the Reserve Corps wrote a letter to the “Spectator,”
denouncing this disrespectful action. A graduate student of the
university, by the name of William L. Werner, a veteran of the Argonne
fighting, wrote to the “Spectator” in reply, stating that “someone
should inform the major that the war is over.” That was “freedom to seek
the truth and freedom to speak it,” according to President Butler’s
formula; and seven students of the university applied the formula by
coming to Werner’s room at midnight, blindfolding and binding him,
taking him out into the country, beating him with sticks and barrel
staves, and putting him through a cross-examination on “loyalty to the
nation.” And while this was going on in New York, the new ambassador
from Mussolini was being marched in the commencement procession at Yale
University, alongside Chief Justice Taft of our Supreme Court, receiving
the honorary degree of doctor of laws, and proceeding to teach to the
assembled college men a lesson in elementary Fascism.

I have told how Clark University made answer to “The Goose-step,” by
firing a dozen professors and getting an alumni whitewash. Also Syracuse
University made answer through its new chancellor, whose baccalaureate
sermon I find published in the “University Bulletin” for July, 1923.
Talking confidentially with members of his faculty, Chancellor Flint
admitted that I had “got Syracuse just about right”; after which he
proceeded to mount the rostrum before the assembled booboisie of the
city, and deliver a eulogy of Chancellor Day occupying twenty-four pages
of the bulletin, and starting with the sentence: “Nor am I willing to
allow Upton Sinclair’s clownish caricature to stand as the last
message,” etc. One of the professors sends me this bulletin, with the
comment: “This shows what a Methodist will do for a dollar!”

Also Amherst came forward to make its answer. I stated in “The
Goose-step” that this college had a liberal president, Alexander
Meiklejohn, who was making a brave fight against the interlocking
directorate. “He is still in office, for how long I do not know.” This
was published in March, and in June President Meiklejohn was fired, and
a dozen of his graduating students had the courage to defend him by
refusing their diplomas. It is amusing to notice that the grand duke of
this board is Dwight L. Morrow of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Company. A
friend of Mr. Morrow’s wrote to me, assuring me that he was really a
liberal, working hard for academic freedom; so I forebore to list him
among my interlocking directorate. Now I learn that he was the prime
mover in the ousting of Meiklejohn! It is worth noting that the
president of these trustees is the head of Ginn and Company, school-book
publishers; and among the other board members is Cal Coolidge, our
strike-breaking president, and Mr. Stearns, his department-store
millionaire “angel”; also Chief Justice Rugg of the Massachusetts
Supreme Court, who is interlocked with Clark University and Ginn and
Company’s Mr. Thurber.




                             CHAPTER LXXXVI
                         THE GOOSE-STEP ADVANCE


There are some universities which were not satisfied with the amount of
attention they received in “The Goose-step,” and came forward to demand
more. Most prominent among these is the University of Tennessee. I told
how by devious intrigue its president got rid of a friend of mine, an
excellent professor, on the ground that he was a Unitarian. Two months
after “The Goose-step” was out, the president proceeded to fire
Professor Sprowls, for the crime of having ordered some copies of James
Harvey Robinson’s “The Mind in the Making.” That wasn’t all there was to
it, of course; it had been discovered that Professor Sprowls was a
believer in evolution. Another member of the faculty, Mrs. Hamer of the
history department, was accused of having voted in the recent Knoxville
charter election! “Women have no business to vote,” said President
Morgan; and he told Mrs. Hamer that she would be dismissed if she went
to Nashville to represent some women’s clubs in the interest of equal
rights for women.

Because of these incidents the faculty of Tennessee proceeded to
organize; they drew up a project for faculty representation in the
government of the university, and some of the students who were ardent
in their support published a little paper called the “Independent
Truth.” Whereupon President Morgan prepared a questionnaire, and
summoned the professors before him and grilled them in the presence of a
stenographer. Had they had anything to do with the proposed constitution
for the University of Tennessee? Were they in sympathy with the
administration and its way of doing things? Had they had anything to do,
directly or indirectly, with the publication of the “Independent Truth?”
Had they attended any meetings dealing with the case of Dr. Sprowls? Had
they signed a petition asking the American Association of University
Professors to investigate conditions at the University of Tennessee? All
whose answers to this questionnaire were not satisfactory were summarily
discharged. One of them was Judge Neal, for thirteen years a member of
the Law School faculty, and the best professor at the university.
Another was a dean, whose crime had been an effort to reconcile the two
factions. The student publications were forbidden to discuss the issue
in any way; and in general the University of Tennessee got a thorough
drilling in the goose-step.

The Fundamentalists are going right on kicking out teachers of evolution
from colleges. I note an amusing incident at Kentucky Wesleyan: an
instructor of physics and mathematics signed an apology for believing in
evolution, regretting the harm that he had done to the college, and
agreeing not to discuss the subject during the remainder of his stay. He
did this on April 10th, and his job was up on May 29th; the poor fellow
could not afford to pay forty-nine days’ salary to keep his
self-respect! I am told of a less tragic incident at Morningside
College, Sioux City, Iowa, where a professor with a twelve years’ record
was slated to be fired as a believer in evolution, and hit upon a most
ingenious way of saving himself. There was an “examining committee”
appointed—and the professor recommended the head of this committee to
receive an honorary degree of doctor of divinity!

Some of the professors and students of the University of Missouri were
distressed because their institution got left out of “The Goose-step.”
The president here was determined to get into this volume, so he
canceled a speaking date of Kate Richards O’Hare before the Liberal Club
of the university. Two days later the editor of the St. Louis
“Post-Dispatch” addressed the students of the School of Journalism,
declaring that “the rising tide of intolerance is the greatest menace
our country faces today. The freedom of speaking outright guards our
other privileges; it must be unrestrained, accountable only under the
necessary laws of libel.” And at the end of this address the president
of the university came up to the lecturer, shook his hand and said:
“Sound doctrine; I agree with you.” Lest you be tempted to think that
this university president is mentally irresponsible, I mention that the
board of curators of the university was at this time asking the state
legislature for five million dollars. Also I mention that the students
of this wonderful university took part a few days later in the lynching
of a Negro within sight of the West Campus.

Also you will wish to know what happened at the University of North
Dakota, where a group of professors, learning from a former colleague
that I was to deal with their cases, united in a written request that I
should refrain from doing so. The latest news from North Dakota runs as
follows:

  I am sorry to say that Professor Ladd seems definitely out at North
  Dakota. The Board exonerated him of charges, but will not give him
  back his post or reply to his request for a personal hearing. It is a
  sad commentary that the faculty up there seem so cowed that it was
  difficult to find a few men who would sign a request for the American
  Association of University Professors to come in and make an
  investigation. The request, of course, has to be made by members of
  the local group at North Dakota. One of them recently wrote to me, “I
  suppose Ladd feels pretty sore at us because we do not throw ourselves
  into it, but some of us have families to consider and we may be too
  old to find other positions, especially if we lose our present ones
  under these conditions.” The rumor reaches me that the slick Tracy
  Bangs is the man who is secretly responsible for the refusal to give
  Ladd a square deal. But Libby hasn’t much to brag of, for he is merely
  restored, as the letter to him says, “during good behavior.” I have
  tried to do what I can for Ladd at long range, and have written over
  my signature to various prominent men in North Dakota, but the replies
  show me how reluctant these people are to contend against the forces
  at work.

When I visited Pittsburgh I was told a good deal about the rule of the
Black Hand in that community, especially over the Carnegie Institute of
Technology. I omitted these stories at the request of the victims. But
now comes a letter from a student, telling me that some of these men are
gone, and there is to be “another house-cleaning” this year. The student
tells how the secretary of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor
spoke to a group of students, and a few days later an instructor stated
to a class that there had come to Carnegie Tech a notice from the United
States Steel Corporation, reading in substance as follows: Last week, on
such and such a day, at the bidding of your economic staff, so-and-so
spoke before a group of students at your school. He spoke in such and
such a room, and said this and that. If the person who is responsible
for this meeting is kept on the faculty at Carnegie Tech, do not expect
any further aid from the United States Steel Corporation. So came the
house-cleaning.

Another institution which escaped my attention was the Women’s Medical
College of Philadelphia. Immediately after “The Goose-step” appeared,
the board dismissed a professor of seventeen years’ standing, refusing
any explanation or charges. Thirty of the faculty resigned in protest,
among them a number of leading physicians of Philadelphia.

Also you will be interested to learn that the University of Minnesota
has been saved from Socialism by the intervention of the governor of the
state, who put his foot down on a co-operative book-store which the
students were starting. The governor did not think it proper to have “a
commercial enterprise” on the campus—so the sons of Minnesota farmers
will step across the street and buy their books from a private dealer at
thirty or forty per cent higher prices.

You will also wish to hear the latest news from the University of
Jabbergrab, which has graduated a class of fifteen hundred students,
more than half of them receiving commercial degrees. I have a clipping
from the New York “World,” March 11, 1923, occupying the top of four
columns:

            NEW YORK UNIVERSITY TRAINS COMPETENT AUTO DRIVERS

       TEACHING INSTITUTION HAS COURSES TO MEET SHORT-HAUL PROBLEMS

Also I quote a headline from my own Pasadena newspaper:

                     KU KLUX KLAN NOW HAS OWN COLLEGE

          VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY IS TAKEN OVER TODAY FOR $350,000

Let no one say after this that there is no academic freedom in America!
Also let no one say that colleges and universities are not really
useful. From “Printer’s Ink,” January 18, 1923, I quote:

  M. F. Hilfinger, vice-president of the A. E. Nettleton Shoe Company,
  Syracuse, speaking before the Greater Buffalo Advertising Club,
  declared that the new University of Buffalo will be the greatest
  advertising asset the city has. He said that it is estimated that
  Syracuse University brought at least $5,000,000 worth of business to
  that city.

Also Secretary Weeks of the War Department has paid honor to higher
education: twenty-five of our principal colleges were designated for
special honors as reward for their services in teaching young men to
plunge bayonets into imitation human bodies. At the same time the
secretary of the navy went to Princeton and made a patriotic speech,
while the new Art and Architecture Building was dedicated to the honor
of the harvester machinery king. Mr. Mellon, secretary of the treasury,
and one of the three richest men in America, received an honorary degree
from the University of Jabbergrab; he marched through the Hall of Fame,
and listened to the Reverend Woelfkin, Mr. Rockefeller’s pastor,
denounce the Bolsheviks. Mr. Mellon also collected a degree from
Rutgers, together with the “wet” Governor Silzer of New Jersey, and the
dry Mr. Edward Bok, and the magnetic president of the General Electric
Company. Readers of “The Goose-step” have sent me quite a stack of
newspaper clippings, with the annual orations of the interlocking
directorate at the commencements of their intellectual munition
factories. They range all the way down from the chairman of the Standard
Oil Company of Indiana, and include every reactionary idea that ever
sprouted in the head of a prosperous but worried plutocrat.




                            CHAPTER LXXXVII
                      THE GOOSE-STEP DOUBLE-QUICK


I have in my collection a number of clippings, which demonstrate how
fast the goose-steppers are stepping their short journey to hell. At the
extremely pious Northwestern, which I have called “The University of
Judge Gary,” four men students, together with four “co-eds,” were
arrested by police detectives in a night raid on a house of assignation.
At this same Methodist institution a group of students were hazing a
freshman, who was so unsportsmanlike as to die during the procedure. The
hazers were annoyed, but decided to bury the body and say nothing about
it. A year later the body was discovered, and a prominent millionaire
relative of President Scott of the university said in a signed
statement: “An investigation of conduct at Northwestern University would
rock the kings of Evanston. The hypocrisy of the whole regime galls me
and disgusts me.”

Also I notice that at the University of South Dakota a hundred and sixty
men students staged a “pajama party,” in the course of which they
entered the women’s dormitories after midnight, and decked themselves in
various garments of the women, and so paraded through the streets. Also
I note that members of a fraternity at Columbia University have received
letters from a sorority at the University of Alabama, saying that the
sorority was collecting funds for a chapter house, and its members
offered to write love letters to Northern college boys, at the price of
five dollars the series. “Wouldn’t they like to receive once a week,
from now until June 30th, a real, honest-to-goodness love letter from a
little Southern girl?”

But let no one be discouraged; among my clippings I come upon the germ
of a great hope for higher education. A college out here in Southern
California has received a visit from the football team of Notre Dame
University, a Catholic institution with seventeen hundred students,
located in Indiana. It appears that these mighty gladiators have a
tendency to be nervous, prior to the classic contests upon which their
reputations depend, and coaches and alumni have been consulting
psychological experts to find out what to do about it. The result was a
remarkable discovery: the way to keep football men in proper mental
condition is to take their minds off their work and get them interested
in study! So the Notre Dame football team, along with its trainers and
coaches, brought out here to Southern California a squad of professors,
and recitations were conducted both on the train and in the hotel rooms.
You will realize the overwhelming importance of this psycho-gladiatorial
experiment; if once it should become the fashion for college athletes to
study, the fortune of American higher education would be made.

Nor is this the only promising sign in college life. At Dartmouth the
students got out an independent paper, called “Le Critique”; I quote a
few sentences, and you will recognize at once that this is a new note in
American under-graduate journalism:

  Dartmouth is graduating about three hundred Babbitts a year to go
  forth to exploit others for the good of themselves alone, to become
  loyal Americans, and never think. Fraternity life is a joke, without
  true brotherhood. The professors are intellectual wrecks, and teach at
  Dartmouth only because it would be impossible for them to succeed at
  any other trade.”

A similar incident occurred at the University of Wisconsin, where a
group of liberal students started an independent paper called the
“Scorpion.” In their first issue they made so bold as to print two
chapters from “The Goose-step,” dealing with their own university; the
editors, one of whom was my son, were summoned before the dean and
ordered to submit to censorship. There happen to be some twenty
Socialist legislators in the Wisconsin assembly, and these took up the
matter, and the promise was made that if the student editors were
expelled, there would be a legislative investigation, and some
university deans would be expelled; whereupon it was suddenly discovered
that the dignity of the university would be preserved if the editors of
the “Scorpion” would consent to announce at the top of their paper that
it was independent of university control!

Also I ought to mention the interesting incident which happened at the
University of Illinois, where Miss Allene Gregory, daughter of the first
president of the institution, was selected to write a biography of her
father, and to have it published under the auspices of the university.
Miss Gregory decided to have the volume published under other auspices,
and stated her reason:

  I have had peculiar opportunities for an intimate knowledge of the
  administration of this university since its beginning. I have watched
  it grow, through many vicissitudes, on the sound principles of its
  foundation, until recent years.

  But it is now my duty to declare that those principles are flagrantly
  and continually violated by administrative officers who have come into
  power since President James retired. These officers have forfeited the
  respect of the faculty and of the student body, and are already making
  our university a byword in the educational world. No growth in size or
  in wealth can compensate for our loss in morale and in reputation. Nor
  can noisy self-congratulation and the suppression of criticism alter
  the facts. Those of us who know the situation, and are unbiased, and
  are free to speak, should do so. Wholesale rebuke is now our best
  service. The safe passage of the recent appropriation bill now removes
  the temporary expediency of refraining from criticism.

You may recall my story of how Mr. M. H. Hedges was kicked out of Beloit
College for writing a novel about it. Mr. Hedges knows our higher
education, and in an article in the “Nation” he gives a description of
the American college student. I yield to the temptation to quote one
paragraph:

  The undergraduate of American colleges has been pictured as an
  enthusiast; the fact is, he’s a stone. An apostate to youth, the
  psychology books and the general impression notwithstanding, he is
  neither passionate, nor impetuously loyal, nor exuberant, nor
  impatient of trammels, nor idealistic. On the other hand, he is prim,
  correct, frigid in respect to things of the mind; and furtive,
  indiscreet, bold in reference to his instincts; and covetous and
  greedy in respect to grades, credits, managerships, class
  distinctions, and degrees—non-essentials. His favorite word is “pep,”
  and goaded by institutional convention he will stand for hours and
  shout himself hoarse for a team, but he will callously overlook the
  birth of the Russian republic, or the pathetic degradation and
  suffering of the Armenian people. He is intolerant of personal
  difference and diversity of character and yet clandestinely he will
  disturb a college assembly with an inopportune alarm clock, asserting
  a right to personal eccentricity. He is everywhere surrounded by
  records of the past’s greatness, and blindly moves in a present not
  realized. In the classroom he daily examines theories of government
  and constitutions, while his own social life upon the campus is a
  specimen of primitive tribal life with taboos, hecklings,
  mob-contagions, and naive sexual preferences. The fraternity is his
  tribe; the college his clan; and in parties and “functions,” he
  competes in amorous and pugnacious exploits.

Also I find in the “New Student”—a most useful little paper which you
can order from 2929 Broadway, New York—an account of the activities of
the National Student Forum, which brought six students from Europe to
visit American universities, with the idea of widening the cultural
opportunities of the youth of both parts of the world. The six students
were divided into two groups, and an American student tells how he took
one group, a German, an Englishman, and a Czecho-Slovak, to visit
American colleges. The presidents of two large universities, Minnesota
and Purdue, refused to allow their precious fledglings to be exposed to
this foreign corruption at all.

At Fiske they made a two-day visit, and much to their surprise, were met
at the station by the president, and taken in his car to a hotel. After
a supervised breakfast, they were taken to the chapel, and the leader
and one of the European students gave brief talks before the assembly.
Then the student body was marched out with extraordinary rapidity, and
the four visitors were kept in the president’s office. They were lunched
by the president in the Chamber of Commerce rooms; in the afternoon they
were taken for an automobile ride to inspect historic landscapes—and
when they came back the leader made his escape, and was approached by
one of the students, and asked if the visitors could not find a little
time for the students. “The president says you are all booked up!”

In other words, President McKenzie of Fiske University was devoting his
time to a conspiracy to keep his students from having private
conversation with three young liberals from Europe! Brought face to face
with the issue, the president declared angrily that the visitors had
done the university “a moral wrong” by forcing this issue upon him. But
then, when the party threatened to leave, it appeared that the president
could not afford to have it known that he had refused to permit the
visitors to talk to his students! After hours of “begging, threatening,
and accusing,” meetings with the students took place—and nothing
happened!

The University of Oklahoma received the visitors at the Y. M. C. A. “Our
reception was cold and clammy.” There was a “get-together” conference
with the student leaders; editors of student papers, athletic champions,
Y. M. C. A. secretary, etc. “It took about two minutes to see that these
fellows were quite convinced that we were Bolsheviks, and another two to
realize that they had gathered together, determined to heed and
understand nothing, but merely to be maliciously unintelligent and
disagreeable.” That evening the three foreign students spoke in nearby
churches; while the head of the party was summoned into a session before
the student leaders. He tells the story:

  For twenty minutes I sat and listened to the “leaders of the campus”
  tell me that although they had nothing against us personally, in fact
  they rather liked us, still on careful consideration of their
  responsibility for “the good of the whole,” they thought the
  university, and especially the freshmen and sophomores, too
  underdeveloped, and too susceptible to evil influences to hear what we
  had to say. And further, that they just wanted to mention that, as the
  whole student body was getting angrier and angrier at our presence on
  the campus, they thought it best that we leave as soon as possible,
  for fear that some student group would suddenly attain the
  overwhelming climax of its wrath and throw us out. Could anyone help
  laughing at that? I did laugh, and they commended me on taking the
  “disappointment” so well.




                            CHAPTER LXXXVIII
                         THE GOOSE-STEP REVIEW


“The Goose-step” would have been a failure if it had not excited bitter
antagonism. Many collegians rushed to defend their alma mater; and the
purpose of this final chapter is to review their reviews.

There must be at least ten thousand statements of fact in “The
Goose-step”; which means ten thousand possible errors. I wish I could
announce that I scored a hundred per cent exactness. I set out to do
that in “The Brass Check,” but it couldn’t be done. I have to rely upon
many other people for my information, and it is inevitable that slips
should be made by some of these; also, it is necessary to type each
manuscript several times—and after that comes the printer and his
“devil,” and three sets of proofs to be read. I am told that some pious
society in England offered a reward of a thousand pounds for an edition
of the Bible without a typographical error; but the reward has not yet
been claimed.

I begin with my own blunders. There exists in our national capital an
institution called the Catholic University of America; also, in the same
place, a Methodist institution called American University. It so
happened that I did not know of the latter institution, but assumed that
“American University” was an every-day name for the Catholic University
of America. As soon as “The Goose-step” appeared, Father John A. Ryan
wrote me a note, calling attention to my error, which was corrected in
the second edition. This was my most serious slip—and it is amusing to
note that it was not caught in a single one of the several hundred
reviews I have read!

The most important error which the critics did catch was that referring
to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During a
period of a few years there existed an alliance between these two
institutions; and in my manuscript I had referred to M. I. T. as “until
recently a part of Harvard.” My Harvard chapters were revised by at
least a score of Harvard professors, alumni and students, but only at
the last moment was this phrase questioned, by an M. I. T. student,
Phillip Herrick, son of Robert Herrick, who happened to call upon me. I
had him telegraph to the authorities at M. I. T., and get me by
telegraph a statement of the exact relationship. Upon that basis I put
into the proofs of the book, pages 80-81, a footnote giving the facts.

But, alas, I overlooked the fact that the phrase, “until recently a part
of Harvard,” occurred in two places in the manuscript; there were about
seven hundred pages of this manuscript, and it was hard to remember
every word. I did not correct the other place—and so Harvard and M. I.
T. had an error upon which to base a whole indictment of “The
Goose-step”! The “Technology Review,” organ of M. I. T., even took up
the fact that I put my corrected statement in a footnote; “for a
technical reason of Sinclair’s own”—which sounds very mysterious and
wicked! The fact was that I was making corrections in the proofs, and it
was cheaper to slip in a footnote than to have a paragraph reset.

Mr. John Macy made strenuous use of this slip in his review of “The
Goose-step” in the “Nation.” Mr. Macy dealt with the book “as a friend,”
and was pained to discover that it was “cluttered with misstatements and
sophomoric conceit.” And pray, how many instances of misstatement would
you think it takes to make a “cluttering”? It took precisely one—this
Harvard-M. I. T. detail!

As to my “sophomoric conceit” Mr. Macy quoted from “The Goose-step”
(page 11): “In the course of the next year I read all the standard
French classics.” He pictured Brander Matthews answering, with a
superior smile: “My dear young man, a born Frenchman could not read all
the standard French classics in ten years.” Professor Matthews would
love to say something incisive like that; but possibly he would be
honest enough to mention, what my context makes plain, that I was
referring to “standard French classics” as taught in undergraduate
language courses at Columbia, and not to standard French classics as
understood by “a born Frenchman.”

Mr. Macy was also troubled by the “pathetically absurd egotism” of my
sentence on page 17: “I was as much alone in the world as Shelley a
hundred years before me.” Here is a case of suppression of the context,
so flagrant as to be beyond excuse. In the passage in question I was
criticizing the education I had received from my college and university,
on the ground that it had taught me nothing about the modern Socialist
movement, to which the rest of my life was to be devoted. I took two
whole paragraphs to explain this in detail. The first two sentences were
as follows: “Most significant of all to me personally, I was unaware
that the modern revolutionary movement existed. I was all ready for it,
but I was as much alone in the world as Shelley a hundred years before
me.” Is not the meaning of that statement plain—that “I _felt myself_ as
much alone in the world,” etc.? Of course, I wasn’t really “alone in the
world,” for my millions of Socialist comrades existed, and in the rest
of the two paragraphs I tell how I found them. How came it that Mr.
Macy, indicting “The Goose-step” for being “cluttered with
misstatements,” could bring himself to suppress one half a sentence, and
thus obscure its meaning?

Fourth and last of this critic’s specifications: “And even his
unverifiable statistics: ‘Eighty-five per cent of college and university
professors are dissatisfied with being managed by floorwalkers.’ Why not
sixty-nine per cent or ninety-three per cent?” The answer to this is
found on page 55 of “The Goose-step,” referring to Professor Cattell at
Columbia University: “In 1913 he published a book on ‘University
Control,’ in which he demonstrated that eighty-five per cent of the
members of college and university faculties are dissatisfied with the
present system of the management of scholars by business men.” The same
matter is discussed more at length on page 401: “Three hundred leading
men were consulted, and out of these, eighty-five per cent agreed that
the present arrangements for the government of colleges are
unsatisfactory.” Now, if Professor Cattell’s questionnaire had revealed
that sixty-nine per cent were dissatisfied, or ninety-three per cent, I
should have given this figure. As it was, I gave eighty-five per cent,
as Professor Cattell records it in his book.

Also, my respects to Mr. Charles Merz, who gave a page and
three-quarters to kidding “The Goose-step” in the “New Republic.” Mr.
Merz would be disappointed if I passed him over; he says: “There is a
tradition that whoever takes issue with Mr. Sinclair about one of his
own books is certain to be pounced upon, in turn, by an eagerly
dissenting author.” Mr. Merz has a lot of fun calling me Captain
Parklebury Todd:

/* He couldn’t walk into a room Without ejaculating “Boom!” Which
startled ladies greatly. */

This is good fun, and the fact that in the course of it Mr. Merz admits
my entire contention makes it easy for me to share the laughter. Mr.
Merz thinks it natural and inevitable “that able and successful
capitalists ordinarily control the universities produced by capitalism.”
Of course, Mr. Merz; you know it, and I know it—and a lot of other
people know it, since “The Goose-step” has been passed about in
colleges.

Mr. Merz had one serious objection—that in fifty-six cases I failed to
name sources of information. He doesn’t tell you in how many cases I
_did_ name sources of information; and it seems to me that in fairness
the two figures should have been put side by side. I can only say that I
named my sources in every case where I was permitted to name them; and I
suppressed them in every case where I had pledged my word to do so. Mr.
Merz complains that in some cases I do not even name my “villains”; and
again I think he ought to count up the “villains” I _do_ name. Let me
tell him, in strict confidence: I think I take more risks of libel suits
than any other man in America; but there is a limit to the risks I am
willing to run. I never make a statement unless I feel sure it is the
truth, but I frequently make statements which cause great distress to
friends who happen to be lawyers. As this book goes to press, my wife
sends me a special delivery letter from one of these gentlemen: “Of
course, if Upton _wants_ to go to jail, this is a good way to break
in”—and so on.

In the case of “The Brass Check,” one of the most prominent corporation
lawyers in the United States read the manuscript, and told me there were
fifty criminal libels in it, and not less than a thousand civil
suits—unless I could prove my charges. Right now I am on the point of
going over “The Goslings,” for the last time before the manuscript goes
to the printer; and in a hundred different places I shall stop with my
pencil in the air, and ponder the question: shall I leave in this name,
or shall I cut it out? And in each case there will be a series of
guesses: what will be in this “villain’s” mind? How much has he done,
and how much will he think I know? And if it came to a show-down, would
this professor or that teacher stand by me? And would I have to travel
to Minnesota, or to Massachusetts, or to Texas to defend a libel suit?
And where would I get the money? And how would my poor wife stand the
ordeal? You see, Mr. Merz, the rôle of Captain Parklebury Todd is a lot
more complicated than you realize; there is really more to it than just
walking into a room and ejaculating “Boom!”

To come back to the confessions of myself, my secretaries, and my
printer and his “devil”: Somebody—I don’t know who it was—played a trick
on my Vassar story, taking one of the letters of the Y. W. C. A. and
turning it upside down; which brought a worried communication from the
president of that institution, asking if I could possibly be under the
impression that it was co-educational. (I wasn’t!) But I made several
small slips. I got one professor’s initial wrong; I made Finley J.
Shepard a lawyer as well as a railroad official; I made Frank B. Leland,
Detroit banker, a brother to the motor-magnate, and confused Ogden L.
Mills with his grandfather, D. Ogden Mills. I have a letter from Judge
Lindsey, telling me that some high-up educator in Denver proved “The
Goose-step” an unreliable book by the fact that I stated “that J. P.
Morgan was buried from Trinity Church, when as a matter of fact he was
buried from St. George’s Church!”

In this case I seem to be, but really am not, guilty. In “The
Goose-step,” page 21, I was drawing a humorous picture of the
interlocking directorates, and how they work. I imagined Justice
Brandeis, in his account of these directorates, going from railroads and
steel and coal and telegraphs, to such things as hospitals and churches
and universities. “He ought to picture Mr. Morgan dying, and being
buried from Trinity Church, in which several of his partners are
vestrymen.” Elsewhere I have described Trinity Church as the “Church of
J. P. Morgan & Company”—and this not merely because of its supply of
Morgan vestrymen, but because of the whole spirit of the institution is
Morgan. I was aware that Mr. Morgan himself had his own church, for many
times in my boyhood I attended it, and saw the old wild boar of Wall
Street passing the collection plate.

Also, I made some statements concerning Delaware, and the benevolent
feudalism which the du Ponts have set up in the education of that state.
My statements were disputed by an elderly gentleman, formerly connected
with Delaware College, and having a reputation as a liberal. On the
other hand, the statements were strenuously sustained by the two people
who had given me the information, and who have reputations as
hard-fighting radicals. Not being able to visit Delaware and make a
thorough investigation, I cut these paragraphs from the second edition
of “The Goose-step.”

No book of mine can be published nowadays without a report upon the
latest activities of Professor James Melvin Lee, director of the
Department of Journalism at the University of Jabbergrab. I gave
Professor Lee a whole chapter in “The Goose-step,” explaining what a
peculiar antagonist he is—you supply him with evidence, and he pays no
heed to it, but goes right on clamoring for the same evidence. Among
many cases, I listed the following detail:

  Thus, to a single anecdote of Gaylord Wilshire being misrepresented by
  the Associated Press, Professor Lee devoted three paragraphs in the
  “Globe,” demanding at great length the names of the newspapers and the
  dates; I supplied him with the names and dates of two newspapers—but
  to no result that I could discover.

Soon after “The Goose-step” came out I began receiving letters from
college professors and others, asking for the names and dates of these
two newspapers. So I knew that Professor Lee must be up to his old
trick! And sure enough, there came a letter from John Haynes Holmes,
stating that Professor Lee persisted in arguing with him concerning my
truthfulness, and was now basing his case upon the fact that in “The
Goose-step” I stated that I had furnished him with the names and dates
of two newspapers dealing with the Wilshire story—whereas I had done
nothing of the sort. Dr. Holmes requested that I would be so good as to
settle the matter by advising him when and how I had supplied these
names and dates to Professor Lee.

This issue had come up during my controversy with Professor Lee in New
York “Evening Globe,” mentioned in “The Goose-step,” pages 324-6. The
conduct of this controversy was as follows: Professor Lee submitted his
first article to the “Globe,” and either sent me a copy, or the “Globe”
sent me a copy. I then wrote my reply, and either sent a copy to
Professor Lee, or the “Globe” sent it. Each of us studied the other’s
arguments in detail, trying to pick flaws therein. I presume therefore I
may fairly assume that Professor Lee read my three articles! One of
these three articles bears the date of Thursday, August 4, 1921, and in
it occurs the following:

                        IN THE MATTER OF WILSHIRE

  Professor Lee asks about the dates of the story which the Associated
  Press sent out to the effect that Gaylord Wilshire had been prevented
  from speaking in York, Pa., by a mob, when, as a matter of fact, he
  was never in this city. Professor Lee makes three paragraphs out of
  this one demand. It happens that Wilshire is away from home. I have
  searched his house, but cannot find the volume of “Wilshire’s
  Magazine” for 1901. Maybe this volume is in the New York Public
  Library or in the Congressional Library. Meantime I can furnish
  Professor Lee with two references—the Philadelphia “North American”
  for Sept. 9, 1901, and the Los Angeles “Express” for the same date.

If you will consult the second edition of “The Goose-step,” you will
find that on page 309 I have added in parentheses the words, “A joke.”
This has to do with Mr. Hendrik Willem Van Loon’s adventures at Cornell:
“When he asked to see the Dante collection, they took him to inspect an
electric manure sprayer.” Several reviewers of “The Goose-step” took
occasion solemnly to suspect that in this anecdote Van Loon must have
been “spoofing” me! Not being supposed to have a sense of humor myself,
I am resolved that in future, whenever I do any “spoofing,” or allow
anybody else to do any “spoofing,” I will follow the precedent of
Artemus Ward, and put in the explanation: “This is a goak.”

Another bit of comedy: In my jesting at Mr. Rockefeller’s University of
Chicago, I wrote: “They are sensitive on the subject of petroleum at the
university; they blush at the mention of the word, and do not admit the
conventional book-plates showing the lamp of knowledge.” This was a pure
piece of phantasy on my part; some more “spoofing,” in short. But, lo
and behold, soon after “The Goose-step” was out, came a letter from a
former student, as follows: “One fact you got, Lord knows how, I got it
straight from Dean Robertson (in an address in chapel); it is a matter
of the rejection of the oil lamp as a symbol in the ‘Coat of Arms’ of
the University.”

  Postscript: As this book goes to press, Vassar College makes the
  answer to “The Goose-step” which really pleases me. A formal “statute
  of instruction” is issued, granting to all teachers “complete freedom
  of research, instruction and utterance upon matters of opinion.”




                             CHAPTER LXXXIX
                           THE CALL TO ACTION


I have now said my say, concerning both colleges and schools. I have
given two years to the subject, have written nearly four hundred
thousand words on it—and these words are the truth to the best of my
ability. The problem is now up to the American people, and especially to
the rank and file of school teachers and college professors; the tens of
thousands of devoted men and women who are giving their undivided
thought to a glorious ideal—the delivering of every child in a whole
nation from the curse and enslavement of ignorance.

This great cause has many enemies—and some of these enemies will try to
use my work to spread distrust of education, and cut down the money
supplies of both colleges and schools. I wish to state explicitly that
the purpose of my study is the very opposite of this; I would have the
American people devote to this cause ten times the money they now
devote—I would have them give all that is given, so that education may
be free from the charity of the rich. But I want them, while giving
their money, to give also their time; to study the schools and school
problems, and see that their money is honestly spent for the children,
and that educational policies are in the hands of men and women who love
the children, and believe in freedom and enlightenment—not, as so often
at present, in the hands of intriguing politicians, and the sycophants
and hirelings of vested greed. The aim of my two books is to set our
educators free from this control of selfish private interest; to awaken
them to their position in a society which is ruled by organized
exploitation.

When you talk with school and college administrators, you discover that
the thing they crave above all other things is “harmony.” Everyone in
the system must be loyal, everyone must co-operate, there must be an
attitude of cheerfulness; in short, the school teacher and the college
professor must comply with the formula which was frequent in the want
advertisements of “domestics” in the days of my boyhood: “willing and
obliging.” Manifestly, the program I have laid out in this book does not
make for harmony—at least, not right away. If it would not sound too
much like a Bolshevik utterance, I would say to the educator: “Think not
that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a
sword. For I am come to set the teacher at variance against the
superintendent, and the professor against the president, and the
educator against the board of education. And a man’s foes shall be they
of his own school.”

In a social system based upon justice and freedom we have a right to ask
for harmony; but where the system is based upon injustice and servitude,
to ask for harmony is merely to be a tool of intrenched wrong. So my
advice to teachers and professors is that they should stand up and
assert themselves, and let harmony come when educational institutions
are controlled by educators, and not by the owners of stocks and bonds
and other symbols of parasitism.

To the educators of the United States—and also to the parents of the
United States—I say: Look about this country of ours. Look at it, not
through the rose-colored glasses of the capitalist press, but look with
your own eyes, and ask if this is a civilization with which you are
really satisfied. A country in which five per cent of the population
owns ninety-five per cent of the wealth, and uses it to increase its
share of income and control; in which ten per cent of the population
exists always below the line of bare subsistence, unable to get food
enough to maintain physical normality; in whose richest city twenty-two
per cent of the children come to school suffering from undernourishment;
whose city slums are growing like monstrous cancers, while the farms are
being deserted because it no longer pays to work them; where tenantry
and farm mortgages are increasing one or two per cent every year; where
crime and prisoners in jails are increasing even faster; where between
one million and five million men, willing to work, are kept unemployed
all the time; where half a million women have to sell their bodies to
get bread to live; where ninety-three per cent of the expenditures of
government are devoted to the destroying of human lives; where the
surplus wealth needed at home is not permitted to be consumed at home,
but is sent abroad to seek opportunities of exploitation, to make our
flag a symbol of greed, and turn our army and navy into debt-collecting
agencies for Wall Street profiteers. Such is America as it really exists
today; such are the facts—and ten thousand fancy-salaried administrators
of education are forbidden ever to mention them, but required to tell
their seven hundred thousand teacher-geese and their twenty-three
million goslings that this is the greatest, the grandest, the most
beautiful and most Christian country that God ever created.

Perhaps you are satisfied with this country, and my proposals for
changing it do not appeal to you; but even so, that does not alter the
fact that the changes are under way. Our country is in the rapids, along
with all the rest of the world. Modern capitalist society is rushing to
a swift and terrifying breakdown; and this not because of crimes or evil
designs of any man or class of men, but because of economic forces
inherent in it, and beyond the power of our feeble social will to
change.

Under the scheme of modern industry enormous quantities of goods can be
produced, but they cannot be distributed, because of what I call “the
iron ring” which binds the profit system. The great mass of the people,
being upon a competitive wage, do not get money enough to purchase all
that they produce; hence comes over-production, periodic crises, “hard
times” and unemployment. Out of this is born the labor movement—and this
again not due to wickedness of individual agitators, but to irresistible
economic force. Under the capitalist method of production the great mass
of the workers are under a pressure which I call “the economic screw.”
Their ultimate fate is extinction, and they organize to save themselves;
the first to go down are the unorganized—including that white-collared
proletariat to which the educators are so proud to belong.

Because no capitalist country can consume its own wealth, every
capitalist country has to seek foreign markets, and in that search it
conflicts with the other capitalist countries. Out of that rivalry grows
war: incessant world-wide war is the abyss into which our present
society is doomed to be hurled. We have seen the collapse come to
Russia; as I write this book it is coming to Germany—and before I write
many more books we shall see it come to the Central European countries,
then to France and Italy, then to England and Japan, and—last of all,
perhaps, but none the less inevitably—to America.

You will recall one of our famous school orators, recently president of
the National Education Association, defining to the world-educators in
San Francisco the function of teachers—to see to it that to the next war
“we shall not send a soldier who cannot write his name.” Such is the
capitalist concept of education and the duty of the educator. Is it
yours? You may answer that it is not; but take note of this fact—what
you answer makes not the slightest difference. That is what you are
doing, and it is what you will continue to do, under the present class
control of industry; training boys to be loyal servants of the
plutocracy, to manufacture new and more terrifying engines of
destruction, and to go out and die horrible deaths whenever the
plutocracy, in its lust for foreign markets, has brought about such a
condition of jealousy and hate that the people can be stampeded into a
war for the defense of liberty, or democracy, or whatever the rascal
politicians and rascal kept editors choose to call it. That is the
future of our children, and that is the rôle which you, the educators,
are commanded to play—which you _do_ play hour by hour, and with the
perfectly explicit understanding that the penalty of refusal is to lose
your status among the white-collared class, the so-called “ladies and
gentlemen,” and to be beaten down to the status of grimy hands and
overalls and celluloid collars.

What can you do about this? The first thing you can do is to understand
it; to get those books and magazines and newspapers which your masters
are moving heaven and earth to keep away from you, and in which you may
find explained the economics of the class struggle, and the forces which
are dragging mankind into the pit.

When you have acquired this knowledge, you will realize once for all
that you can place no hope in the exploiting class. Individual employers
may be kindly and liberal; but with very few exceptions they are bound
in the psychology of their occupation, and the great mass of them are
like every other ruling class in history, drunk with power, and bent
upon their own aggrandizement. In this present world situation they find
themselves confronted with two possible alternatives—world conquest and
class rule for themselves, or abdication and class suicide. In no
country are they going to choose the latter alternative; so you, the
educators under the capitalist regime, are going to fulfill your destiny
as cultivators of cannon-fodder.

The middle class, in which you aspire to remain, is being ground between
the upper and nether mill-stones. You have seen the value of the rouble
and the mark wiped out; you see the franc started on the toboggan, and
some day you will watch the pound and the dollar travel the same road.
More and more the outlines of the world struggle become clear—on the one
side the plutocracy, and on the other the workers. It is the workers,
and they alone, who can deliver us from slaughter; they alone have the
numbers, the potential power, and they alone have the ethics—being
producers, not gamblers and speculators and wasters. The future world of
co-operation and brotherhood is theirs to make, and all they lack is
ripened understanding and vision of the better life.

Twenty years ago, when I first came into the Socialist movement, I had
the beautiful fond idea that the intellectuals would furnish that new
psychology. Twenty years of watching the brain-workers climb out upon
the faces of the poor, and take their comfortable stations as retainers
of privilege, have brought me to realize that the workers must save
themselves; they must supply not merely the numbers, the industrial
power, but also the idealism, the moral power. When I appeal to
educators, I am not indulging in youthful utopianism; the salary
struggles of the past six or eight years have brought vividly home to
the rank and file of teachers the fact that they too are workers, and
that, far from being superior to the proletariat, they are actually less
paid and less respected than carpenters and masons and machinists, who
are organized and able to protect themselves in the wage market. I am
not for a moment overlooking the fact that educators are idealists and
social ministrants; but I assert that they are also members of the
intellectual proletariat, having nothing but their brain power to sell,
and I appeal to them to realize their status, and to act upon the
realities and not the fairy tales of the capitalist world. The educator
is a worker, a useful worker, and the educator’s place is by the side of
all his brothers of that class. “Workers of the world, unite. You have
nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to gain.”




                                 INDEX

  Roman numerals refer to chapters, Arabic numerals to pages. Names of
                  colleges and schools are in italics.


 Adams, Sam, 301
 Addams, 299
 Addicott, 112, 119
 Harvard “Advocate”, 366
 Agencies, 386
 Agra, 402
 _Alabama_, 428
 Alden, 198
 Algebra, 329
 Alleghany, 351
 Allen, Gov., 272
 Allen B. M., 366
 Alpert, 52
 Am. Asso. of University Professors, 425
 Am. Bankers’ Asso., 284
 Am. Bar Asso., 284-5
 Am. Book Co., LXV, 107, 170, 176, 185-6, 189, 268, 300, 303, 311
 Am. Civil Liberties Union, IV, 47, 282, 350, 420
 Am. Federation of Labor, 28, 332, 400, 406, 410
 Am. Fed. of Teachers, 165, 170, 181, 401, 405–6
 American Legion, LXI, 54, 226, 270, 396
 “American Magazine”, 362
 _American_, 433
 “Americanization”, 91
 _Amherst_, 423
 Anaconda, XXX-I
 Anderson, J. F., 126–7, 250–251, 255
 Andres, 282
 Andrews, F. F., 274
 Andrews, S. M., 163
 Andrus, 53
 _Antioch_, 413
 Arbuckle, 380
 Architects, 269
 Arkansas, 292–4, 303
 Arlett, 127, 238
 Armour & Co., 312
 Army, 371
 Ashley, 50
 Associated Press, 124, 145, 235
 Atlanta, 398
 Atwood, H., 49, 51, 306
 Atwood, W., XLI, 129
 Augustinian, 201
 Austin, 397
 Australia, 407

 Babbitts, 108, 392
 Babcock, 33
 Babson, 364
 Bachrach, 107
 Backus, 115
 Baer, 373
 Bagwell, 396
 Ball, 181
 Baltimore, XLIII-IV, 403
 Bancroft, 117
 “Bankers’ Magazine”, 373
 Bardwell, 178
 Barnes, A. V., 185, 189, 319–20
 Barnes, E., 308
 Barrows, LVIII, 120, 124, 328
 Barton, 380
 Bauernschmidt, XLIV
 Beals, XXV
 Bean, 56
 Beard, 310
 Beardsley, 11
 Beeber, 203
 Belgium, 299
 Belloc, 346
 _Beloit_, 430
 Benicia, 349
 _Bennett Medical_, 98
 “Beowulf”, 390
 Berger, 231
 Berkeley, XXV
 Berry, 69, 70
 Better America Federation, I, 36, 47, 228, 421
 Bettinger, 22
 Bible, 145
 Bither, 96–99
 Blackburn, 397
 Blackwood, 87
 Bloch, 107
 Boise, 298, 360
 Bok, 428
 Bolley, 171
 “Bolsheviks”, 237, 243, 252, 260, 273, 286, 314, 367, 385, 392, 432
 “Bolshevism”, 107, 222, 391-3
 Bonfils, 156
 Book Business, LXV-VII
 “Bookmen”, 268, 417
 Boone, 353
 Bordwell, 24, 25, 228, 230
 Boston, XL, 177, 266, 270, 367
 Bouck, 144, 327
 Boyle, 204
 Brady, A. M., 359
 Brady, N. F., 331
 “Brass Check”, 433, 437
 Brewer, 404, 407–8
 Briggs, 179
 Bristol, 32
 Broadhurst, 96
 Brookline, 193
 _Brookwood_, 412
 Broome, 206
 Brougher, 26
 Brown, Dean, 156
 Browne, S., 65
 Bryan, W. J., 314
 Buffalo, 399, 427
 Bunker Hill, 308
 Burch, 309
 Bureau of Education, U. S., 281, 372
 Bureau of Standards, U. S., 370
 Burns, W. J., II
 Burt, 204
 Burton, 326
 Burzi, 348
 Butler, N. M., 25, 245, 246, 265, 375–6, 380, 421
 Butte, XXX, 390

 Calexico, 360
 Calhoun, A. W., 412
 Calhoun, P., 110
 _California_, 110, 118, 120, 418–2
 California, XLVIII, 226–7, 326, 328, 360–1, 387, 395, 407
 “Call,” N. Y., 81
 Cambridge, 194
 Cammack, 165–6
 Campbell, 111
 Carlsen, 403
 _Carnegie_, 264, 265, 426
 Carson, 361
 Carver, 291
 Cary, 277–9, 320–1
 Catholic, XL, LXVIII-LXXI, 65, 168, 202, 209, 212, 215, 331, 339
 _Catholic_, 433
 Cattell, 264, 434
 Century Dictionary, 192
 Chafee, 193
 Chandler, 30–32, 51, 120, 418
 Chardenal, 299
 Chase, R. E., 228–30
 Chaucer, 345
 Chauvinism, 299
 _Chicago_, 379, 439
 Chicago, XX, XXII, 242, 266, 276, 324–5, 373, 406
 Child Labor, 189
 Chinese, 398
 Choate, 363
 Citizen, LXXXI, 408–9
 Clancy, 176, 260–1
 Claremont, 312
 “Clarion,” Milwaukee, 232
 _Clark_, XLI, 422
 Clark, E. P., 32, 43
 Clark, H., 38
 Clark, W. A., 150
 Clarksburg, 356
 Clarvoe, 9
 Classroom teachers, 236
 Class struggle, 242
 Clay, 223
 Cleveland, 268
 Clum, 129–130
 Coal, 160
 Cody, 186
 Cohn, 68
 Colby, J., 285
 Colorado, XXXII-III, 349
 Collins, 348
 Collins, M., 379
 _Columbia_, 245, 274, 375–6, 421–2, 428, 434
 Columbia Correspondence School, 221
 “Commercial,” N. Y., 288–9
 Commissioner of Education, 241, 264
 Commissions, 320
 _Commonwealth_, 412
 Compton, 327
 Connell, 160
 Constitution, 18–35, 279, 282–3, 288, 350
 Cook, C., 219
 Cooley, 103–4, 269, 278
 Coolidge, 129, 273, 423
 Copp, 24, 30–1
 _Cornell_, 439
 Cotter, 167
 “Courier,” Ottumwa, 289–90, 310
 Crabtree, 400
 Crawford, 16
 Criminal syndicalism, 5, 96, 227
 Croker, 60–1
 Cronkite, 37
 Cross, 361
 Cryer, 16–17
 Cubage, 292–4
 “Current Events”, 312

 “Daily Miner,” Butte, 150
 Dallas, 295, 380, 397
 Daly, 324, 359
 Darrow, 24
 _Dartmouth_, 429
 Davis, E. S., 99
 Davis, Director, 208
 Day, J. R., 314–5, 423
 Debs, 271
 Delaware, 279, 437
 Denver, XXXII-III, LXXVIII
 Department of Classroom Teachers, 236, 240, 267
 Department of Justice, 21
 “Department of Superintendence”, 227, 236, 268, 274
 Des Moines, LIV, 177, 264, 270–2
 Detroit, XXXVIII-XXXIX, 100–2, 242, 318–20
 Dewey, 75, 405
 de Young, 112
 “Dial”, 80
 Dickson, 32
 Dietz, 332
 Dinkins, 307
 “Direct Legislation”, 134
 Doran, 115
 Dorsey, V, XI, 34–9, 254, 571
 Dotey, 72, 77–84
 Dowling, 341, 343
 Doyle, 37
 Driggs, LII-III, 244–8, 251
 Duluth, 352, 412
 Duncan, L. J., 147–8
 Dunlap, 38
 Dunn, Principal, 57
 Dunne, 95
 Dupont, 279

 “Eagle,” Brooklyn, 90
 Earl, 418
 “Educational films”, 313
 “Educational Review”, 25
 Edwards, 46
 Edwards, G. C., 397
 Edwards, President, 221
 Eldorado, 350
 “Electrical World”, 418
 Elgin, 398
 Eliot, George, 89
 Ellis, 169
 Eltzbacher, 76
 Emerson, 92, 192
 England, 407
 English, 374
 “Ephebian Society”, 52
 Ettinger, 81–3
 Evanston, 428
 “Examiner,” S. F., 379
 “Express,” L. Angeles, 34

 Faber, 172
 Fairhope, 413
 Faneuil Hall, 193
 Fargo, 357
 Farmer-Labor Party, 173
 Farrell, 330
 Feitshans, 32–3
 Fifth Avenue, 368
 Filene’s, 404
 Finegan, 205
 Finley, 400
 Fiske, J., 181
 _Fiske_, 431–2
 Fleishhacker, 110–11, 418
 Flint, 422
 Foch, 297
 Ford, H., 100, 106, 185
 _Fordham_, 330
 Fordization, 186
 Forsythe, 66
 Foshay, 22
 “Four-Term Year”, 275
 France, 298–9, 416
 France, A., 299
 Francis, J. H., 23
 Frayne, 84
 Fredericks, 20–32, 33
 “Freeman”, 141
 “Free Press,” Oakland, 127
 French Classics, 434
 Fresno, 361
 Frick, 315
 Frye-Atwood, 196
 Fundamentalists, 424

 Galbraith, 300
 Gallagher, 112, 119
 Gardner, 237–40, 248, 250, 253, 261, 266–7, 311
 Garrett, 212
 Garrigues, 73, 75, 76
 Garrison, W. L., Jr., 367
 Gartz, 15
 Garvan, 330
 Gary, 102, 350, 352, 421
 Gates, President, 318
 Gay, 272
 “Gazette,” Worcester, 195
 Gellhorn, 172
 General Education Board, LX
 Geometry, 329
 _Georgetown_, 330
 Germany, 277, 298–9
 Gerry, 219, 221
 Ghent, 306
 Gibbons, 343
 Ginn & Co., 136, 196, 268, 278, 310, 321, 329, 362, 423
 Giovannitti, 421
 Gladstone, 334
 Glassberg, 78, 79
 Gleason, 322–3
 “Globe-Democrat,” St. L., 169
 “Globe,” N. Y., 438
 “The Goose-step”, LXXXV-VIII, 197
 Goetbo, 396
 Gould, 183
 Gould, H., 368–9
 Gove, 155
 Grand Rapids, 319
 Grange, 326
 Grant, 310
 Gratz, 204
 Green, 166
 Greene, 56
 Greenlaw, 302
 Gregory, 430
 Griffith, 313
 _Groton_, 362
 Grout, XXVII-VIII
 Gruver, 201
 Guitteau, 308
 Gwinn, 119, 254, 270
 Gymnasia, 278

 Haldeman, 27, 32, 47, 51
 Haley, XX-XXII, LIII, 87, 186, 237, 241, 247, 250–2, 264–6, 275–6
 Hallett, XXXII
 Halpin, 298
 Hamer, 424
 Hamilton, 54, 301
 Hammond, A. B., 13–4
 Hankins, 201
 Hanna, 113
 Hannah, 151, 304
 Hansen, 41
 Hanson, 129
 Harcourt, 311
 Hard, W., 283
 Harden, 260–1, 263, 246
 Hardin, 152
 Hardy, 345
 Hardyman, 18, 43
 “Harmony”, 440
 Harrison, P., 218–20
 Harrisburg, 412
 Harrow, 80
 Hart, 301
 _Harvard_, 194, 366, 404, 417, 433–4
 Harvard Liberal Club, 288–9
 Harvey, H., 422
 Hays, W. H., 312–3
 Heath, 104, 325
 Hedges, 430
 Heinze, 147
 Hellman, 15, 20
 Helm, 29
 Heney, 110
 “Herald”, 86
 Herberman, 345
 Herrick, 433
 Herron, 318
 Hesse, 170–3, 406
 Hibben, 363
 Hichborn, 347
 Higbie, 359
 Hilfinger, 427
 Hill, A. B., 292–4
 Hillis, N. D., 314–5
 Hirshfield, LXII, 308
 Hollywood, 3, 28, 384
 Hollis, 198–200
 Holmes, J. H., 83, 438
 Homestead, 351
 Hopkins, E. M., 374
 Hopkins, P., 18, 412
 _Hotchkiss_, 362
 Houston, 401
 Houston, D., 291
 Howe, 89
 Hubbard, 144
 Huns, 367
 Hunter, XXVI, 229, 238, 244, 251, 254, 262, 272
 Hughan, 85–6
 Hughes, C. E., 139
 Hughes, R. O., 307

 Ibsen, 150
 Idaho, 360
 Illinois, 246, 325, 350
 _Illinois_, 430
 Illiteracy, 347, 371, 373
 Immorality, 382
 Imperial Valley, 378
 “Independent”, 138
 “Independent,” Walsenburg, 163
 Indiana, 285, 317–8
 “Individual Strike”, 407
 “Industrial Barometer”, 187
 “Industrial Progress”, 333
 Insull, 109
 Italy, 421
 I. W. W., 5, 6, 14, 130, 145, 179, 272, 412
 Iowa City, 290, 324
 Irish, 192, 193

 Jabbergrab, 427
 James, 323
 Jefferson, 54
 Jepson, 174
 Jesuit, 193, 200
 Johnson, C. W., 172
 Johnson, H., 421
 Johnson, M., 413
 Jones, O., 245, 255, 262
 Jones, S., 114
 Jordan, 299
 “Journal,” Detroit, 318
 “Journal of A. M. A.”, 98
 “Journal of Education”, 256, 261
 “Journal of Educational Research”, 376
 Joyce, 300
 Judd, 171, 286, 317–8, 327
 Jung, 139
 Jungle, 312

 Kahn, 114
 Kaiser, 273
 Kansas, 326
 Kansas City, XXXIV, 270
 Karapetoff, 419
 Keane, 340
 Kelley, 378
 Kellor, 385–6
 Kemper, 164
 Kennan, 162
 Kennedy, C. R., 150
 Kensington, 208
 Kentucky, 325
 _Kentucky Wesleyan_, 424
 Keyes, 15
 Kidder, Peabody & Co., 191
 Kimbrough, 10–8
 “Kingdom”, 318
 Kinney, 176, 182–3
 Kipling, 312
 Kiwanis, 202
 Klein, 96
 Knights of Columbus, 202, 332–3
 Knoxville, 424
 Koeb, 386, 397
 Koenig, 12
 Ku Klux Klan, 65, 295, 381, 427
 Kunze, 181

 LaFollette, 231
 “Labor Age”, 4
 Labor Film Service, 312
 “Labor Review”, 180
 Labor Unions, 387
 Lacy, 38–9
 Ladd, Prof., 425
 Lamont, 362, 366
 Lapolla, 84
 Lapp, 304
 Lassalle, 188
 Laughlin, 188
 Lawrence, 365
 _Lawrenceville_, 363–4
 “Leader,” Okla., 294, 396
 Learned, 220
 Leavitt, 403
 Lee, 310
 Lee, J. M., 438–9
 Lee, Higginson & Company, 191, 417
 Lee-Nyne, 393
 Leesville, 397
 Lefkowitz, 183
 Leigh, 51
 Leland, 437
 Lenin, 78, 79–83, 421
 Leo XIII, 339, 343
 Leonard, W. E., 364
 Levenson, 128
 Levine, 148
 Levis, 275–6
 Lewis, H. H., 333
 Libel, 436
 Lickley, VIII
 Lindsey, LXXVIII, 159, 437
 Lippincotts, 188
 “Literary Digest”, 138
 Littleton, LXXIII
 Llano Colony, 397
 Lloyd, H. D., 318
 Loeb, 102–3
 “Looters,” The, 160
 Lorain, 352–3
 Los Angeles, I-XII, XLVII, 373
 Lovett, 328
 Lucey, 66
 Ludlow Massacre, 383
 Lusk, 81
 Lowell, 417

 Macbeth, 33
 MacDonald, Milo, 66
 Macy, J., 434
 Magill, LIII, 247–8, 250–2
 Magna Charta, 406
 Mandel, 302
 Marckwardt, 186
 Marland, 294
 Marquis, 367
 Marshall, 379
 Marshall Field & Co., 108
 Marx, G., 328
 Marx, K., 188
 _Mass. Tech._, 433–4
 Matthews, B., 434
 Maurer, 412
 Maxwell, 67
 McAndrew, 307
 McAndrew, Principal, 107
 McCalley, 399
 McCooey, 66
 McKaig, 297, 310
 McKeesport, 350
 McKenzie, 431
 McKinley, 98–9
 McKnight, 37
 McLean, 220
 McNulty, 345
 McSweeney, 332
 Means, G. B., 12
 Meiklejohn, 423
 Melish, 83
 Mellon, 427–8
 Mencken, 385
 Menzel, 263
 Merz, 434–5
 Metzger, 99
 Mexico, 328–9
 Michigan, 325
 Miles, 277
 Miller, C. G., 303
 Miller, E. L., 188, 305
 Mills, A. L., 130–1, 136
 Mills, D. O., 437
 Mills, L. H., 400
 Mills, O. L., 437
 Milton, 345
 Milwaukee, 231–4, 247, 268, 271, 327, 346, 396
 Minneapolis, XXXVI-VII, 276
 _Minnesota_, 181, 426, 431
 Minor, 12
 Missouri, 324
 _Missouri_, 425
 Mitten, 204
 Monroe, V., 413
 Montana, XXX-I
 Moore, E. C., 23, 227
 Morey, 155
 Morgan, J. E., LIV
 Morgan & Company, 102, 285, 375, 417–8, 437
 Morgan, Pres., 424
 Mormon, LII
 _Morningside_, 425
 Morrison, 318–20
 Morrow, 423
 “Mother-baiting”, 89, 211
 Mott, L., 367
 Moynihan, 99
 Muma, 32, 40–2
 Murfin, 185
 Murphy, 167
 Mussolini, 271, 421–2
 Muste, 366
 Muzzey, 301–9
 Mystic Trumpeter, 394

 Nafe, 162
 Nashville, 424
 “Nation”, 50, 80, 141, 197, 297, 430, 434
 National Association for Constitutional Government, 286
 National Association of Manufacturers, 226, 276–280
 National Catholic Welfare Council, 231–2
 National Chamber of Commerce, 285, 373
 National Child Labor Committee, 190
 National Council of Education, 372
 National Council for the Prevention of War, 300
 National Council of Teachers of English, 374
 National Educational Association, XLIX-LVI, 119, 125–6, 142, 158, 225,
    372, 407
 National Electric Light Association, 418
 National Industrial Conference Board, 286–7
 National Security League, 274, 287
 National Student Forum, 283, 431
 National Tube Company, 352
 Nationalization of Women, 392
 Neal, Jud., 308-9
 Nearing, 196, 369
 _Nebraska_, 376
 Negro, 219, 425
 Neilson, 358
 New Freedom, 146
 “New Republic”, 50, 80, 138, 141, 197, 434
 “New Student”, 431
 New Robinson Crusoe, 311
 _New School_, 413
 New York, XIII-XIX, 373
 _New York_, 427
 “News,” Dallas, 380
 “News,” Chicago, XX
 Newberry, 185, 186, 319, 320
 Newman, 340–1
 Newton, 254
 Nichols, 164
 Noll, 337, 342
 Nonpartisan League, 151, 164, 272, 310, 322, 357
 _Notre Dame_, 429
 North Dakota, 322, 357–9
 _North Dakota_, 425
 _Northwestern_, 428
 Noyes, 220
 Nugent, 164

 Oakland, XXVI, 230, 258–6, 262–3, 272
 Oaks, III
 Odell, 33, 57
 Officers’ Reserve Corps, 180
 Ogden, M., 56
 O’Hare, 412, 425
 Ohio, 390
 Oil, LXXIII
 “Oil-Dome”, 251, 259
 Oklahoma, 294–5, 325, 396
 _Oklahoma_, 432
 Older, 110–114
 Olgin, 392–3
 Oliver, 350
 Olsen, 181
 O’Mahoney, 115
 Open shop, 165, 195, 333
 Onaway, 236
 “One-Teacher Schools”, 372, 377
 “Oregonian”, 136–9
 _Organic_, 413
 Otis, 23–29
 “Our Sunday Visitor”, 337, 342
 “Outlook”, 138
 Owen, 239, 244–7, 262
 Owens, 397
 “Owls”, 36–8
 Oxnam, 30, 34–9

 Pallen, 84, 331
 Parent-Teachers Associations, 48
 “Parochial Schools”, 336
 Pasadena, II, 400
 Pathfinders, 413
 “Patriot League”, 303
 Patriotism, 301
 Paul, Dr., 73
 Payne, L., 52, 56
 Payne, O., 366
 Payne, 169
 Pearse, 233–4, 244, 252, 327
 Pelletier, 332
 Pensions, 264–6
 Pennsylvania, 396
 Peoria, 325
 Pershing, 296
 Petersen, 113
 Philadelphia, XLII, 377
 _Phillips Andover_, 362, 365–6
 _Phillips Exeter_, 362
 Pictures, LXIV
 Pierce, LXXIII, 387–9, 390
 Pinkerton, 164
 Pittsburgh, 350–1, 426
 Pius IX, LXIX
 “Platoon System”, 100–2
 Plimpton, 321, 362
 Pluhar, 281
 Plum, 289–90
 Plummer, III
 Portland, XXVII-VIII, 139
 “Post,” Boston, 348
 “Post,” Worcester, 195
 “Post-Dispatch,” St. Louis, 425
 Powell, 290, 309–10
 Power, A. R., 116
 Power Trust, 418
 Prang, 41
 Preston, LIII, 142, 144, 245, 401
 _Princeton_, 427
 “Printers Ink”, 427
 Progressive Education Association, 413
 Proudhon, 188
 _Purdue_, 431
 Purdy, 173, 178, 182

 Quale, 49

 “Rape of the Lock”, 390
 Raynor, 79
 Rebec, 140
 “Record,” Newton, 311
 “Record,” Phila., 305
 “Reds”, 30, 35, 62
 “Red Tape”, 374
 Reed, T. B., 280
 Reedy, 95
 “Review of Reviews”, 194
 Rice, I. H., 8
 Richmond, 16
 Riordan, 398–9
 Riot Department, LXI
 “Rip-Saw,” Duluth, 352
 Riverside, 400
 Robertson, Dean, 439
 Robertson, J. D., 98, 100
 Robertson, W. W., 261–2
 Robins, R., 79
 Robinson, J. H., 307, 310, 424
 Rockefeller, LX, 161, 315
 Rodman, XIX
 Rolland, 299
 Roman, F., 278
 Roncovieri, XXIII, 119
 Root, E., 265
 Rotarians, 202
 Rowan, 204
 Ruef, 110
 Rugg, 423
 Ruskin, 315
 Russia, 242, 306, 314
 Rutberg, 37
 _Rutgers_, 428
 Ruth, 380
 Ryan, Father, 330, 331, 433
 Ryan, J. D., 331
 Ryan, T. F., 61

 St. Christopher, 348
 St. Joseph, Mo., 236
 St. Louis, XXXV, 406
 _St. Marks_, 363
 St. Paul, 286
 _St. Paul’s_, 363
 Salary campaign, 26
 Salt Lake, LII, 247, 266
 San Antonio, 401
 San Diego, 271, 296, 378
 San Francisco, XXIII-IV, 272–3
 San Pedro, 6
 San Quentin, 5
 Santmyer, 142–3
 Sapiro, 307
 Sargent, 279
 Schenck, 156
 Scott, Pres., 428
 Schmalhausen, 73–7
 Schmitz, 109–10
 “School Life”, 296
 “School and Society”, 369, 404
 School survey, LXXVI
 Schultz, 277
 “Scoring”, 376
 Seattle, XXIX
 Seligman, 86
 Shallcross, 204
 Sharples, 141–3
 Shaw, G. B., 188
 Shaw, L. M., 50, 129
 Sheldon, 15
 Shelley, 434
 Shepard, 84, 437
 Shepard-Towner Bill, 272
 Shiels, 25
 Shorrock, 141
 Shoup, 421
 Shutter, 180
 Silzer, 428
 Sinclair, M., 77
 Sinclair, U., 15, 34–5, 53, 286, 422–3, 434
 Slattery, 418
 Smith, Examiner, 66–8
 Smith, Joseph, 249, 252
 Smith, P., 274
 Snobbery, LXV
 Socialists, 295, 394, 420
 Socony, LX
 Somers, 67
 Somers, H. H., 114
 Sommers, 154
 Southampton, 407
 South Dakota, 324, 359
 _South Dakota_, 428
 South Jersey, 117
 Southern California, I-XII
 Southern Pacific, 421
 _Southern Methodist_, 381
 Spain, C. L., 102
 Spillman, 291
 Spokane, 145–6
 Spreckels, 110
 Sprowls, 424
 Soviet Russia, 421
 Stafford, 180
 Standard Oil, 418, 428
 _Stanford_, 420-1, 386-7
 “Star-Spangled Banner”, 212
 “Star,” K. C., 164
 “Star,” Wash., 218
 Stearns, 423
 Steel, LXXII, 426
 Sterling, 178
 Steffens, 83, 203
 Stevenson, 84
 Stillman, 29
 Stockton, 280
 Stratton, 418
 Strayer, LI, LIII, 262–9, 274, 285, 321, 375–6, 377
 Street and Smith, 333
 Strikes, LXXXIII
 Studebaker, 403
 Sullivan, 115
 Sullivan, J. T., 144
 Sunday, “Billy”, 25
 Superintendents, 226, 227, 316
 Superior, 377
 Supreme Court, 279
 “Survey”, 138–9, 370, 356, 388
 Suzzallo, 141
 Swain, 264
 Swenson, 176
 “Syllabus of Errors”, LXIX
 _Syracuse_, 422, 427

 Taft, 422
 Tammany Hall, 160, 233, 235, 240
 Tammen, 156, 157
 Tannenbaum, 83
 Taylor, 142, 156
 Taylor, A. P., 413
 Teachers’ Associations, 225
 “Teachers’ Bureaus”, LXXIX
 Teachers’ Union, LXXXII-III
 “Technology Review”, 434
 “Telegram,” Worcester, 195
 Tennessee, 144, 379
 _Tennessee_, 423
 Terror, Teachers’, LXXX
 Texas, 325, 396, 404
 Text-Books, LXI-LXVIII, 298–301
 Thatcher, 79
 “They Call Me Carpenter”, 297
 Thomas, Mrs., 196
 Thompson, Lynn, XXXVI-VII
 Thompson, Mayor, 102
 Thompson, W. B., 362
 Thomson, Prof., 201
 Thorson, 322–3
 Thurber, 195, 197, 321, 423
 Tigert, 271, 272, 296
 Tildsley, XVI, 69, 70, 85–6, 90–1
 “Times,” Detroit, 185
 “Times,” Los Angeles, I, III, V, 30, 34, 227, 296, 306
 “Times,” N. Y., 71, 81, 86, 89, 93, 379
 Todd, Capt. P., 434
 Torchio, 419
 Tower, 390
 Townsend, 21
 “Tribune,” Chicago, XX, 105–6
 “Tribune,” N. Y., 86
 “Tribune,” Oakland, 126
 Trotsky, 78–9
 Trovatore, 378
 Tweed, 62
 Tyler, 360

 Undergraduate, 430
 Unemployment, 385
 Unitarian, 423
 United Press, 10
 University Club, II
 Utah, LII

 _Valparaiso_, 427
 Van de Goorberg, 30
 Van Loon, 439
 Van Schaick, XLV
 Vanderbilt, 241, 368–9
 Vare, 204
 Vassar, 437
 Veblen, 80
 Ventzke, 396
 Vermont, 265
 Viereck, 70
 “Villains”, 436
 Visional Instruction, 314

 Wadsworth, E., 418
 Wadsworth, J., 363
 Wald, 84
 Walton, J., 294–5
 Ward, A., 439
 Washburn, 24
 Washington State, XXIX, 326, 396
 Washington, D. C., XLV-XLVI
 Water power, 49
 Waters, 24, 228
 Weaver, 27, 28
 Webster, 223
 Webster, A. G., 198
 “Weeds”, 378
 Weeks, 427
 Wells, H. G., 81, 201
 Wentworth, 329
 Werner, 422
 West, G. P., 419
 West, W. M., 301, 310
 West Virginia, LXXIII, 349
 Whalen, 72, 75
 Wheeling, 387
 White, W. A., 164
 _Whitman_, 142
 Whitman, 394
 Whitney, 61
 Wilshire, 438
 Wilson, W., 73, 146, 223, 294
 Wilson, Supt., 400
 Williams, C. O., 238, 240, 245, 270, 273
 Winkley, 174
 Winship, 256
 Wisconsin, #231–4:Page_231, 321, 349
 _Wisconsin_, 429
 Wise, S. S., 83
 Withers, 169
 Woelfkin, 428
 Wolfner, 169
 _Women’s Medical_, 426
 Wood, A., 219, 222–3
 Wood, Father, 111
 Wood, O. G., 149, 297, 380
 Wood, W. M., 365
 Worcester, XLI
 Workers’ Education, LXXXIV
 Workers’ Educat. Bureau, 411
 Workers’ Party, 12
 “World,” N. Y., 427
 Wright, J. F., 413
 Wyckliffite, 345

 _Yale_, 363, 422
 Yorke, 115
 Young, 147, 201
 Young, E. F., 108
 Y. M. C. A., 343, 367, 432
 Young Workers’ League, 56

 Zeuch, 412

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                      Who Owns the Press, and Why?

When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda? And
whose propaganda?

Who furnishes the raw material for your thoughts about life? Is it
honest material?

No man can ask more important questions than these; and here for the
first time the questions are answered in a book.

                           =THE BRASS CHECK=

                     A Study of American Journalism

                           By UPTON SINCLAIR

Read the record of this book to August, 1920: Published in February,
1920; first edition, 23,000 paper-bound copies, sold in two weeks.
Second edition, 21,000 paper-bound, sold before it could be put to
press. Third edition, 15,000 and fourth edition, 12,000, sold. Fifth
edition, 15,000, in press. Paper for sixth edition, 110,000, just
shipped from the mill. The third and fourth editions are printed on
“number one news”; the sixth will be printed on a carload of lightweight
brown wrapping paper—all we could get in a hurry.

The first cloth edition, 16,500 copies, all sold; a carload of paper for
the second edition, 40,000 copies, has just reached our printer—and so
we dare to advertise!

Ninety thousand copies of a book sold in six months—and published by the
author, with no advertising, and only a few scattered reviews! What this
means is that the American people want to know the truth about their
newspapers. They have found the truth in “The Brass Check” and they are
calling for it by telegraph. Put these books on your counter, and you
will see, as one doctor wrote us—“they melt away like the snow.”

           From the pastor of the Community Church, New York:

  “I am writing to thank you for sending me a copy of your new book,
  ‘The Brass Check.’ Although it arrived only a few days ago, I have
  already read it through, every word, and have loaned it to one of my
  colleagues for reading. The book is tremendous. I have never read a
  more strongly consistent argument or one so formidably buttressed by
  facts. You have proved your case to the handle. I again take
  satisfaction in saluting you not only as a great novelist, but as the
  ablest pamphleteer in America today. I am already passing around the
  word in my church and taking orders for the book.”—John Haynes Holmes.

  =440 pages. Single copy, paper, 60c postpaid; three copies, $1.50; ten
 copies, $4.50. Single copy, cloth, $1.20 postpaid; three copies, $3.00;
                            ten copies, $9.00=

                Address: UPTON SINCLAIR, Pasadena, Cal.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         They Call Me Carpenter

                           By UPTON SINCLAIR

Would you like to meet Jesus? Would you care to walk down Broadway with
him in the year 1922? What would he order for dinner in a lobster
palace? What would he do in a beauty parlor? What would he make of a
permanent wave? What would he say to Mary Magna, million dollar queen of
the movies? And how would he greet the pillars of St. Bartholomew’s
Church? How would he behave at strike headquarters? What would he say at
a mass meeting of the “reds”? And what would the American Legion do to
him?

  _From the “Survey”_:

  “Upton Sinclair has a reputation for rushing in where angels fear to
  tread. He has done it again and, artist that he is, has mastered the
  most difficult theme with ease and sureness. That the figure of Jesus
  is woven into a novel which is glorious fun, in itself will shock many
  people. But the graphic arts have long been given the liberty of
  treating His life in a contemporary setting—why not the novelist?

  “Heywood Broun and other critics notwithstanding, it must be stated
  that Sinclair has treated the figure of Christ with a reverence far
  more sincere than that of writings in which His presence is shrouded
  in pseudo-mystic inanity. By an artistry borrowed from the technique
  of modern expressionist fiction, he has combined downright realism
  with an extravagant imaginativeness in which the appearance of Christ
  is no more improper than it is in the actual dreams of hundreds of
  thousands of devout Christians.

  “Like all of Sinclair’s writings, this book is, of course, a Socialist
  tract; but here—in a spirit which entirely destroys Mr. Broun’s charge
  that he has made Christ the spokesman of one class—he is unmerciful in
  his exposure of the sins of the poor as well as of the rich, and
  directs at the comrades in radical movements a sermon which every
  churchman will gladly endorse.

  “It is not necessary to recommend a book that will find its way into
  thousands of homes. Incidentally one wonders how a story so
  colloquially American—Mr. Broun considers this bad taste—can possibly
  be translated into the Hungarian, the Chinese and the dozen or so
  other languages in which Sinclair’s books are devoured by the common
  people of the world.”

                Price, cloth $1.50; paper 75c; postpaid.

                               Order from

                            UPTON SINCLAIR,

                          Pasadena, California

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 _A book which has been absolutely boycotted by the literary reviews of
                               America._

                        THE PROFITS OF RELIGION

                           BY UPTON SINCLAIR

A study of Supernaturalism as a Source of Income and a Shield to
Privilege; the first examination in any language of institutionalized
religion from the economic point of view. “Has the labour as well as the
merit of breaking virgin soil,” writes Joseph McCabe. The book has had
practically no advertising and only two or three reviews in radical
publications; yet forty thousand copies have been sold in the first
year.

  _From the Rev. John Haynes Holmes_: “I must confess that it has fairly
  made me writhe to read these pages, not because they are untrue or
  unfair, but on the contrary, because I know them to be the real facts.
  I love the church as I love my home, and therefore it is no pleasant
  experience to be made to face such a story as this which you have
  told. It had to be done, however, and I am glad you have done it, for
  my interest in the church, after all, is more or less incidental,
  whereas my interest in religion is a fundamental thing.... Let me
  repeat again that I feel that you have done us all a service in the
  writing of this book. Our churches today, like those of ancient
  Palestine, are the abode of Pharisees and scribes. It is as spiritual
  and helpful a thing now as it was in Jesus’ day for that fact to be
  revealed.”

  _From Luther Burbank_: “No one has ever told ‘the truth, the whole
  truth, and nothing but the truth’ more faithfully than Upton Sinclair
  in ‘The Profits of Religion.’”

  _From Louis Untermeyer_: “Let me add my quavering alto to the chorus
  of applause of ‘The Profits of Religion.’ It is something more than a
  book—it is a Work!”

  315 pages. Single copy, 60c postpaid; three copies, $1.50; ten copies,
  $4.50; By freight or express, collect, twenty-five copies at 40c per
  copy; 100 copies at 38c; 500 copies at 36c; 1,000 copies at 35c.
  Single copy, cloth, $1.20 postpaid; three copies, $3.00; ten copies,
  $9.00. By freight or express, collect, twenty-five copies at 80c per
  copy; 100 copies at 76c; 500 copies at 72c; 1,000 copies at 70c.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     A New Novel by Upton Sinclair

                                  100%

                         THE STORY OF A PATRIOT

Would you like to go behind the scenes and see the “invisible
government” of your country saving you from the Bolsheviks and the Reds?
Would you like to meet the secret agents and provocateurs of “Big
Business,” to know what they look like, how they talk and what they are
doing to make the world safe for democracy? Several of these gentlemen
have been haunting the home of Upton Sinclair during the past three
years and he has had the idea of turning the tables and investigating
the investigators. He has put one of them, Peter Gudge by name, into a
book, together with Peter’s ladyloves, and his wife, and his boss and a
whole group of his fellow-agents and their employers.

The hero of this book is a red-blooded, 100% American, a “he-man” and no
mollycoddle. He begins with the Mooney case, and goes through half a
dozen big cases of which you have heard. His story is a fact-story of
America from 1916 to 1920, and will make a bigger sensation than “The
Jungle.” Albert Rhys Williams, author of “Lenin” and “In the Claws of
the German Eagle,” read the MS. and wrote:

  “This is the first novel of yours that I have read through with real
  interest. It is your most timely work, and is bound to make a
  sensation. I venture that you will have even more trouble than you had
  with ‘The Brass Check’—in getting the books printed fast enough.”

Single copy, 60c postpaid; three copies, $1.50; ten copies, $4.50. By
freight or express, collect, twenty-five copies at 40c per copy; 100
copies at 38c; 500 copies at 36c; 1,000 copies at 35c. Single copy,
cloth, $1.20 postpaid; three copies, $3.00; ten copies, $9.00. By
freight or express, collect, twenty-five copies at 80c per copy; 100
copies at 76c; 500 copies at 72c; 1,000 copies at 70c.

         UPTON SINCLAIR         —         Pasadena, California

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             JIMMIE HIGGINS

“Jimmie Higgins” is the fellow who does the hard work in the job of
waking up the workers. Jimmie hates war—all war—and fights against it
with heart and soul. But war comes, and Jimmie is drawn into it, whether
he will or no. He has many adventures—strikes, jails, munitions
explosions, draft-boards, army-camps, submarines and battles. “Jimmie
Higgins Goes to War” at last, and when he does he holds back the German
army and wins the battle of “Chatty Terry.” But then they send him into
Russia to fight the Bolsheviki, and there “Jimmie Higgins Votes for
Democracy.”

A picture of the American working-class movement during four years of
world-war; all wings of the movement, all the various tendencies and
clashing impulses are portrayed. Cloth, $1.20 postpaid.

  _From “The Candidate”_: I have just finished reading the first
  installment of “Jimmie Higgins” and I am delighted with it. It is the
  beginning of a great story, a story that will be translated into many
  languages and be read by eager and interested millions all over the
  world. I feel that your art will lend itself readily to “Jimmie
  Higgins,” and that you will be at your best in placing this dear
  little comrade where he belongs in the Socialist movement. The opening
  story of your chapter proves that you know him intimately. So do I and
  I love him with all my heart, even as you do. He has done more for me
  than I shall ever be able to do for him. Almost anyone can be “The
  Candidate,” and almost anyone will do for a speaker, but it takes the
  rarest of qualities to produce a “Jimmie Higgins.” You are painting a
  superb portrait of our “Jimmie” and I congratulate you.

                                                     EUGENE V. DEBS.

  _From Mrs. Jack London_: Jimmie Higgins is immense. He is real, and so
  are the other characters. I’m sure you rather fancy Comrade Dr.
  Service! The beginning of the narrative is delicious with an
  irresistible loving humor; and as a change comes over it and the Big
  Medicine begins to work, one realizes by the light of 1918, what you
  have undertaken to accomplish. The sure touch of your genius is here,
  Upton Sinclair, and I wish Jack London might read and enjoy.

                                                    CHARMIAN LONDON.

  _From a Socialist Artist_: Jimmie Higgins’ start is a master portrayal
  of that character. I have been out so long on these lecture tours that
  I can appreciate the picture. I am waiting to see how the story
  develops. It starts better than “King Coal.”

                                                        RYAN WALKER.

                     Price, cloth, $1.20 postpaid.

                  UPTON SINCLAIR, Pasadena, California

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                               Concerning

                              =The Jungle=

                                  ---

Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there been
such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as has
come to Upton Sinclair.—_New York Evening World._

                                  ---

It is a book that does for modern industrial slavery what “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” did for black slavery. But the work is done far better and more
accurately in “The Jungle” than in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”—_Arthur Brisbane
in the New York Evening Journal._

                                  ---

I never expected to read a serial. I am reading “_The Jungle_,” and I
should be afraid to trust myself to tell how it affects me. It is a
great work. I have a feeling that you yourself will be dazed some day by
the excitement about it. It is impossible that such a power should not
be felt. It is so simple, so true, so tragic and so human. It is so
eloquent, and yet so exact. I must restrain myself or you may
misunderstand.—_David Graham Phillips._

                                  ---

In this fearful story the horrors of industrial slavery are as vividly
drawn as if by lightning. It marks an epoch in revolutionary
literature.—_Eugene V. Debs._

                                  ---

          Mr. Heinemann isn’t a man to bungle;
          He’s published a book which is called “The Jungle.”
          It’s written by Upton Sinclair, who
          Appears to have heard a thing or two
          About Chicago and what men do
          Who live in that city—a loathsome crew.
          It’s there that the stockyards reek with blood,
          And the poor man dies, as he lives, in mud;
          The Trusts are wealthy beyond compare,
          And the bosses are all triumphant there,
          And everything rushes without a skid
          To be plunged in a hell which has lost its lid.
          For a country where things like that are done
          There’s just one remedy, only one,
          A latter-day Upton Sinclairism
          Which the rest of us know as Socialism.
          Here’s luck to the book! It will make you cower,
          For it’s written with wonderful, thrilling power.
          It grips your throat with a grip Titanic,
          And scatters shams with a force volcanic.
          Go buy the book, for I judge you need it,
          And when you have bought it, read it, read it.
                               —_Punch_ (_London_).

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                 BOOKS

                                  _By_

                             UPTON SINCLAIR

=THE GOOSE-STEP=

    A Study of American Education. =Price $2.00 cloth; $1.00 paper.=

=THEY CALL ME CARPENTER=

    A Tale of the Second Coming. =Price $1.50 cloth; 75 cents paper.=

=THE BOOK OF LIFE=

    A Book of Practical Counsel: Mind, Body, Love and Society. Published
    by E. Haldeman-Julius, Girard, Kansas; for sale also by the author.
    =Price $2.00.=

=THE CRY FOR JUSTICE=

    An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. =Price $1.50
    cloth; $1.00 paper.=

=HELL=

    A Blank Verse Drama and Photoplay. =Price 25 cents.=

  (All the following books; 60 cents paper, $1.20 cloth, postpaid. Any
               three copies; paper, $1.50; cloth, $3.00)

=THE BRASS CHECK=

    A Study of American Journalism—Who Owns the Press and Why?

=THE JUNGLE=

    A Novel of the Chicago Stockyards.

“=100%=”

    The Story of a Patriot.

=KING COAL=

    A Novel of the Colorado Coal Country.

=THE PROFITS OF RELIGION=

    A Study of Supernaturalism as a Source of Income and a Shield to
    Privilege.

                             UPTON SINCLAIR

             Pasadena      -      -      -      California

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           Transcriber’s Note

Each page or chapter reference in the Index is linked for navigation to
the top of that page as it appeared in the original or to the beginning
of that chapter. Since those page breaks are not preserved, the topic
referenced by page may appear on the _next_ page as displayed here.

There is an error in the Index for Judge Neal and the following item for
Scott Nearing.

Neal, Jud., 308-9
Nearing, 196, 369

Judge Neal is mentioned only on p. 424. The reference to pp. 308-9 is
obviously intended to be included in the Nearing item.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
The following issues should be noted, along with the resolutions.

  16.4     worth not[h]ing what happened                  Removed.
  41.6     develop addit[i]onal sources of supply         Inserted.
  41.30    in transactions such as this[.]                Added.
  78.12    the twen[t]y-seven would testify               Inserted.
  138.10   “New Republic” and the “Survey.[”]             Added.
  142.22   w[b/h]ose purpose was                          Replaced.
  207.37   who would otherwise [h/b]e barred              Replaced.
  253.1    one o’clock in the mornin[g]                   Added.
  259.38   a majority of[ of] the convention              Removed.
  262.18   the gentlemen’[t/s] agreements                 Replaced.
  297.15   Vice-president Coolidge,[”]                    Removed.
  326.8    th[e]y have been taken over                    Inserted.
  373.30   housing for the school children[.]             Added.
  374.30   teachers of English are overworke[r/d],        Replaced.
  390.13   regard themselves as bold prog[r]essives       Inserted.
  396.16   the mobbing of Nonpartis[i]an League members   Removed.
  414.39   if peace can be [thoroly] understood.          _sic_
  415.18   Each child will [thoroly] understand           _sic_
  428.8    of their i[m/n]tellectual munition factories   Replaced.
  437.32   “Church of J. P. Morgan & Company[”]           Added.
  446.51   Dorsey, V, XI, 34–9, 254[, 571]                Invalid.
  454.9    [“]Times,” N. Y., 71, 81, 86, 89, 93, 379      Added.