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.”