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]
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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.
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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]
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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.”
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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”!