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.