COLORADO CULTURE
We move on to Colorado, where we have not only copper kings, but coal
and iron and oil and gold and silver kings—half a dozen dynasties
dividing an empire. It would take a large volume to tell the corruption
of government in the state of Colorado and the city of Denver; I have
given a sketch of it in “The Goose-step.” Suffice it here to say, there
is no “invisible government” in this community, the offices and
privileges are sold on a curb market. As for education, only taxpayers
have a right to vote for school bonds, the banks control the handling of
the money, and their politicians spend it.
For a generation the active institution in control was the First
National Bank, whose educational agent began his career in Denver as
“Fudge” Sommers, clerk of the police department. He specialized in the
stealing of school elections; he would have a “bunch of money” at each
election, and workers awaiting him with their hands out. As “de gang”
would say, “dere ain’t no easier money”; the school elections were
entirely unguarded—there was no registration, and the ballot-boxes would
be carried to the East Denver High School, and there fixed according to
orders. “Fudge” was a Democrat, but at times when his party became
progressive, he took his influence and his talents to the Republicans.
He grew respectable, and is now the Honorable Elmer S. Sommers, oil
magnate, good roads promoter, prominent in the Rotary Club, a society
man rich enough to have his own “hooch” parties.
Under such conditions the citizens are helpless. For the most part they
do not trouble to vote; now and then they protest, and are taught their
place. I talked with a member of a committee which entered objection to
the waste of school funds, and threatened to nominate a citizens’
ticket. The answer of the boss was: “You put up your board, and I’ll
take my bag of money, and we’ll see how far you get!”
Next to Mr. First National Bank Keeley, the most active agent of the
plutocracy in controlling the Denver schools was Mr. Great Western Sugar
Company Morey. Mr. Morey was the “Sugar Trust” in our national capital,
one of the most notorious of the war profiteers. He built himself a
magnificent palace in Denver, facing the lofty Mt. Evans, and with the
whole of Cheesman Park for a back-yard; then he died, and Denver has the
Morey Junior High School, just as other cities have Washington Schools
and Lincoln Schools and Jefferson Schools. We may assume that Mr. Morey
dwells happily in a celestial palace, because as a far-seeing business
man he provided for his spiritual welfare, being a pillar of the
exclusive St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral.
Once more the firm of God, Mammon and Company; and note how the schools
are taken in as junior partners. For twenty years Denver had a most
efficient school superintendent, a former president of the National
Education Association by the name of Gove. I call him efficient, meaning
that he served his masters, by keeping out of the system all
revolutionary and dangerous new ideas, such as kindergartens, manual
training and directed play. The progressive women’s clubs waged war upon
him, and at the end of the twenty years succeeded in getting rid of him.
And where do you think he went? Why, he became confidential lobbyist for
the Great Western Sugar Company in our national capital! A congressional
investigating committee raided some offices and got hold of the letters
of his employers, and it was disclosed that Gove had been “interviewing”
congressmen in their home districts; he had been instructed not to name
his employers, and not to itemize his expense accounts!
The president of the Denver school board is a young aristocrat by the
name of Hallett, whose qualification for spending the money of the
schools was described to me by one of his friends: “He never earned a
dollar in his life.” His father was a millionaire federal judge, whose
tyrannies and fearful temper made his name one of terror to labor unions
and would-be reformers in Colorado. Young Mr. Hallett also is a socially
prominent vestryman of the exclusive St. John’s Cathedral, and he helped
to import the very expensive Dean Brown from the effete East. Mr.
Hallett was in a delicate position—he was both vestryman of the
cathedral and president of the school board, and the cathedral owned
twenty-six lots which it wanted to sell to the city as a school site. It
must have been hard for Mr. Hallett to make up his mind where his duty
lay, but apparently he decided that all eternity meant more to him than
his term as president of the school board; his vestry sold the lots to
his school board for a hundred thousand dollars, which was two or three
times what they were worth.
In May, 1923, Mr. Hallett came up for re-election, together with Mr.
Taylor, seventy-four-year-old vestryman of the cathedral, who serves the
mining kings as an engineer; and Mr. Schenck, seventy-three years old, a
former store-keeper at coal-mines for Mr. Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel
and Iron Company. (The other board members are a lumber dealer,
sixty-seven years old, a nice old lady of seventy, and an able-bodied
contractor, active in politics.)
There was an opposition ticket put up by the liberals, and a second put
up by labor, and a third put up by the Denver “Post.” In order that you
may appreciate this story, I explain that the “Post” is a wealthy and
powerful newspaper, which began in the old “shirt-sleeve” days, when
newspapers in mining camps lived by blackmail. The “Post” has seen no
reason for mending either its morals or its manners; its two
proprietors, Tammen and Bonfils, are former gamblers and saloon keepers,
whom I have told about in “The Brass Check.” Tammen, a frank and
delightful personality, tells at Chamber of Commerce meetings how he
would toss a dollar in the air, and if it stuck to the ceiling it
belonged to the boss, and if it came down again it belonged to him. The
Chamber of Commerce whoops with delight at this anecdote.
The “Post” now broke loose against President Lucius Hallett and his
board. For a month or two the murders, highway robberies and sexual
scandals of Colorado were shoved off the front page, and the red
head-lines of the paper were given up to the crimes of the school board.
The “Post” charged that the board members had permitted corrupt deals
with members of the Real Estate Exchange and the Chamber of Commerce,
and that the taxpayers had been robbed of great sums through shady land
purchases. It went into details concerning the “favoritism” of the
school authorities for the American Book Company. It showed also how the
school board was favoring the children of the rich, and published
pictures of the luxurious high schools in the rich neighborhoods and the
overcrowded old fire-traps in the slum districts. It charged that the
school board was maintaining the worst political machine in Denver’s
history; the teachers were in fear for their jobs, the principals were
political henchmen, and propaganda literature for the school board was
distributed among the children to be taken to their homes. A Denver
edition of “The Goslings” in serial form!
Why this sudden concern of the “Post” for the welfare of the schools? I
do not know that. But I know that President Hallett published the
statement that the cause of the attack was the school board’s refusal to
make a contract with a coal company owned by the “Post.” I know also
that the “Post” did not deny this charge of Mr. Hallett’s, or refer to
it. An intimate friend of Mr. Tammen’s has asked me to meet him when
next I am in Denver; then I shall ask him about it, and I have no doubt
he will live up to his reputation as a “good sport.” Every now and then
the “Post” has entered into campaigns against the stealing of city
franchises, and when Tammen’s friends have asked him why so much fuss,
he has answered with his cheerful laugh, “Because we didn’t get in on
the graft.”
Election day came and passed, and Mr. Hallett and his friends were
declared re-elected. The grand jury took up the charges of the “Post”
concerning real estate graft, and it was shown that one prominent
“realtor,” or a dummy of his firm, had bought a parcel of land for
several thousand dollars, and a few days later sold it to the school
board for so many more thousands that it was considered dishonest even
in Denver. Another “realtor,” recently a member of the city council, had
bought land and sold it to the board for twice the price—and had charged
a commission at both ends besides. He had used dummies—an office-boy,
also his own son—and on this technicality the courts let him off. You
will form an idea of the state of Colorado culture when I tell you that
I consulted the Denver telephone directory, and found listed therein
approximately 450 of these “realtors”—and to balance this, book-stores
to the number of sixteen!
In the face of such obstacles, a few devoted souls labor to save the
children of the city. The schools have been shockingly overcrowded—with
classes in cook-rooms, in hallways, in basements, in rooms without light
or air. And, of course, the school board has made to the teachers the
usual explanations why the city could not pay them a living wage. The
high school teachers called a mass meeting, intending to affiliate with
labor; whereupon the school authorities rushed to head them off—by
bringing in a famous orator of the National Education Association, and
then by granting the raise in wages! When the president of the Denver
Labor College asked for the right to use school rooms for classes, the
board with seven representatives of business and not one of labor turned
him down in horror; if they allowed a working-class school, they would
have to allow a capitalist school! Let the labor college allow the board
to appoint the instructors, and then they might consider the matter.
“Won’t you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly!
For ten years the progressives have pleaded with the school board to
permit school buildings to be used by the citizens for public
meetings—but in vain. As I write, they are winning a long struggle to
have some attention paid to the health of the school children; the
“interests” denounce this as Bolshevism—though just why it is Bolshevism
to take care of the children’s bodies, when it is not Bolshevism to take
care of their minds, is not explained. There is one devoted friend of
the children in Denver, Judge Lindsey of the Juvenile Court; all over
the United States he has spoken to great gatherings in the schools—but
not in Denver! He tells me that he hopes to get back this fall; if so,
it will be the first time in ten years that he has spoken in a Denver
school! The officials have told him quite frankly that “business” would
not permit it.[F]
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Footnote F:
In December, as I am reading the proofs of this book, Mrs. Lindsey
writes me that he has not yet spoken, and she knows of no prospect.
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So we see the same thing that we saw in Los Angeles and Spokane—the
children, being deprived of the joys and excitements of the intellectual
life, follow the example of their elders and go “wild.” If I had the
power to gather all the parents of America for one hour, and make them
listen to whatever I chose, I think I should put them in the private
chambers of Judge Lindsey. I had the pleasure of spending several days
with him. I thought I knew something about what is going on among the
school children, but I was staggered when I heard Lindsey’s story. I am
going to tell it, but later on—for the reason that these conditions are
not peculiar to Denver, they are a problem of the entire country. After
we have satisfied ourselves what plutocratic education is, we shall want
to know what it has done to our children, and how our grand-children are
to be saved.