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.