THE INVENTOR OF FIVE SCIENCES
The school situation in Portland assumes to some extent the aspect of a
sex-war; the women teachers do the work and the men bosses get the
salaries. After a long campaign the taxpayers voted money to raise the
teachers’ salaries, but some of the teachers got no increase, and others
got only fifty dollars a year, and others a hundred dollars a year,
while the principals got four hundred dollars! Even when the teachers
got the “increase,” they didn’t always get the money. Some of them told
me their misadventures, trying to get this money; but when I wrote out
the stories, they got scared—somebody might recognize them! So you don’t
get the stories, any more than the teachers got the salaries!
I am free to mention, however, that teachers’ salaries are delayed for
one week, and in the meantime the money lies in somebody’s bank. That
may seem a small matter, until you figure that the interest on two
million dollars for one week amounts to three thousand dollars a year—a
sum worth anybody’s taking!
The women teachers complain also of male parasites, who do little work,
but draw high salaries. Many of the supervisors draw an extra salary
from the state university, and seldom come to the schools; the teachers
until recently had to go to them and pay to be taught. There is a
drawing supervisor drawing pay in the state university; there is another
supervisor who is paid twenty-nine hundred dollars a year, who also
teaches in the state university, and whom you may see smoking every
afternoon in a hotel lobby. Teachers assure me that he has not visited
some schools in three years.
There is the usual graft in the purchase of supplies, and the usual
inability of the teachers to get supplies. When they make public
complaint about this, they read items in the “Oregonian” to the effect
that the reason there is no money for school supplies is that it all
goes for teachers’ salaries. Hardly ever is the problem of school funds
discussed, that this little sneer does not emerge. Some teachers became
indignant, and started to investigate the expenditure of school money;
the principal of their school became interested, and took the
investigation off their hands, and discovered so much that he was made
an assistant superintendent to keep him quiet; three other men were
promoted to be principals, as a result of this little affair! They have
taken out cooking, sewing, and manual training from the sixth grade in
the elementary schools; last year they threatened to take out more
subjects—because they are so poor. But they are not too poor to pay
eight hundred and thirteen dollars and sixty-one cents per month for the
teaching of poetry at the assemblies!
They have in Portland a system whereby the teachers are supposed to have
something to do with the selecting of text-books. There was a sort of
“book-election,” at which the teachers were to indicate their choice.
Swarms of book men descended upon the city, and were charming to the
teachers; then the ballot boxes were taken secretly to the court house,
where they were kept all night—open. Ginn & Company got four of the
principal books, and the agent laughed and said he hadn’t had to work
very hard.
Having heard about Portland’s banker-boss, Mr. Mills, you will not be
surprised to learn that the Portland schools are active in the interest
of commercialism. In the last few weeks the bankers have been giving
lectures every week; the Navy got its “day,” and then the “Oregonian”
with a spelling-bee! As a means of teaching Big Business in the schools,
they introduced what they called the “Business Science Normal”; there
were two meetings a week for three weeks, and each meeting was repeated
twice, so that all the teachers might attend. At the suggestion of the
superintendent, invitation cards were sent in bulk to the principals,
and by them distributed to the teachers; the schools were closed early,
so that every teacher might be on hand. In addition to lectures, there
were fifty-two printed articles about business, twelve issues of
“Business Philosophy,” the official organ of the “Business Science
Society,” and “a year’s council privilege with the educational director
of this society.” Here was a wizard without peer in all the realms of
Mammon—as you learned from a circular got out by the Portland Chamber of
Commerce, which described him as “known wherever the English language is
spoken as one of the world’s greatest business scientists. He is the
author of five sciences dealing with human relationships.” Did you ever
hear anything so wonderful? A man who created five new sciences, all out
of one head and in one lifetime! I wonder how many Newton created!
While I was in Portland this wide-awake Chamber of Commerce had taken up
propaganda for a “world’s fair” to celebrate the discovery of the
Northwest. Of course they thought first of the school children: Let the
children write compositions upon the desirability of this world’s fair!
The Chamber of Commerce would supply the arguments, and the children
would copy out maxims, and take them home to their parents, and so the
people would be induced to pay the cost of the fair out of public taxes!
Also, the city has a “Rose Festival” every year, the purpose being to
exhibit advertising “floats” of the various stores. The children are
supposedly not required to appear in this parade, but schools which
neglect their duty are considered disloyal. The children spend two or
three weeks being drilled, and of course lose that time from study. They
have to stand round in the streets all day; there are no toilets
available, and some of the children became seriously ill.
I talked with a group of high school teachers. At the Washington High
School they have a Junior Chamber of Commerce; one of the teachers asked
me to imagine a Junior Central Labor Council, but my imagination was not
equal to this flight. Some of the teachers had wanted to discuss a
teachers’ union, but the principal of the school forbade it. Finding it
impossible to keep the high school students from sometimes hearing of
modern ideas, the business men abolished outright the departments of
economics and sociology. The students signed a petition for the
restoration of these courses; a group of thirty of them went to
interview Superintendent Grout and take him this petition, and he
insulted them, informing them that the Portland schools were not being
run on petitions of the pupils. This school was forbidden to debate the
Plumb Plan, and also to debate Socialism. The teachers have been
forbidden to allow any discussion of the creation, of evolution, of the
Hebrews in history, and of the birth of Christ.
The Portland forbidders, resolving to make a clean sweep, also forbade
the “New Republic” and the “Survey.” A committee of teachers went to
protest in the matter of “The Survey,” and were told that this magazine
was “one-sided” in its treatment of capital; they were advised to
content themselves with such publications as the “Outlook,” the
“Independent,” and the “Literary Digest.” They pointed out that it might
be possible to regard these magazines as “one-sided” in their treatment
of labor, but no answer to this argument was returned. At the Washington
High School the students, with the help of the history department, gave
an entertainment for the benefit of the school library. They earned
three hundred dollars, but they were not permitted to select their own
books—the list had to be passed by the superintendent’s office. Also,
the pupils are forbidden to invite outside speakers. I assume that this
school is named after George Washington, so I recommend an inscription
to be carved across the front of the building—some words taken from the
letters of the Father of his Country, as follows:
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force! Like fire
it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment
should it be left to irresponsible action.”
That government is a fearful master has been thoroughly proven to the
teachers of Portland; the White Terror has raged in the schools, and has
taken all the ugly forms of spying and treachery and brutality. The
first teacher I talked with told me how she had seen a shadow on a
window curtain, and had discovered the superintendent listening outside
her class-room window. The second teacher I talked with had discovered
the second assistant superintendent hiding in a cloak-room watching the
teachers. Of course, all the agents of the Black Hand were training
their children to bring tales home from the school-room. The Portland
“Oregonian” exploded in a furious editorial, revealing that a teacher
had actually defended the “Survey”; another teacher had maintained that
the Socialists who had been elected to the Assembly in New York state
had a right to demand their seats. That Charles E. Hughes agreed with
this school teacher made no difference to the editor of the “Oregonian.”
During war-time, when everybody was selling Liberty bonds, a rumor
spread that the librarian of the public library refused to buy. She was
“grilled” by the city commission, and said: “I have been doing my work
as librarian and minding my own affairs. But if you question me, and
insist upon a reply, why then I inform you that I am a pacifist.” One
commissioner’s answer was: “Would you want a German to ravish you?” You
remember how they used to settle the anti-slavery question in the old
days: “Would you want a Negro to marry your sister?” Of course the
librarian went out, and her persecutor was elected to the school board.
This ultra-patriotic official was a wholesale druggist, and I had a
friend who, in the early days of the war, was talking with an employe in
this establishment, and was told that they had two clerks at work all
day marking up prices. The employe said this in all innocence; he was
proud of being part of such a busy and thriving institution! The
druggist-hero was a Four-Minute Man, whose especial enemy was German
literature and history; he did not rest until he had routed Goethe from
the Portland schools. This reminds me of our adventure here in Pasadena,
where our patriots discovered “The Psychology of the Unconscious,” by
Jung; this great authority happens to be a Swiss, but he has a German
name, and moreover, he was rumored “obscene,” so out he went from our
public library!
There are Catholics in Portland, and they work for their faith; they get
on the school board, and then there are anti-Catholic campaigns, and
they get off again. But one member, thus put off, laughed to a friend of
mine, saying that he didn’t mind, he had accomplished his purpose—he had
sold the Archbishop’s property to the city! Now Oregon has passed a bill
requiring all children to attend public schools; the Catholics are
testing this in the courts—and meantime three public school buildings
have been mysteriously burned down.
Not long ago there was a Catholic chairman of the school board, a
prominent judge and politician. The alarming discovery was made that
there was a teacher of manual training in one of the high schools who
was a Socialist and believer in evolution; he was brought to trial, and
Professor Rebec of the state university took the stand, and testified
that it was quite the common custom among scientific men to believe in
evolution. The chairman of the school board interrupted in rage! “That’s
an exploded standpoint, and we won’t have it here!” The trial lasted for
a week, and was a grand farce comedy. But, of course like all these
Black Hand trials, its end was predetermined, and the teacher was fired.
I asked a large group of teachers what had become of the youngsters,
under this regime of hundred per cent capitalism. Their testimony was
unanimous upon the point that the schools are retrograding and that the
children are not learning as they should. Home study has become a lost
art. In the first place, the children have no room to study at home; in
the second place, they go to the movies. Their parents permit them the
freedom of the streets at night; and what can a teacher do, when she
herself is condemned by official decree to be a mere phonograph? “It
wouldn’t be so bad,” said one teacher, “if the phonograph had
interesting records. But you can imagine what kind of lessons He picks
out!” She had used this word “He” several times in our talk, and finally
I asked, “Who is He?” There came a chorus from several at once: “When we
say He, we always mean Mr. Grout!” Since this was written, “He” has been
re-engaged for a term of three years.