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!