THE DOMAIN OF KING COAL
Back in the days of President Buchanan the American Congress set aside
large tracts of federal land, to be devoted forever after to the support
of schools; and these lands have ever since been the favorite pasturage
of Big Business. In state after state I found highly cultured members of
old ruling families interested in education—and living upon fortunes
made by the theft of school lands! In Maine and Wisconsin and Oregon
these lands were stolen for the timber; in Minnesota for the iron ore;
in Michigan for the copper; in Oklahoma and Texas for the oil; in
Indiana and Illinois and Colorado for the coal.
The story of the Colorado school lands is told in a little pamphlet,
“The Looters,” by George A. Connell, Cedaredge, Colorado. The sections
set aside were Numbers Sixteen and Thirty-six of all government
townships; and according to data available, the schools of Colorado own
about six billion tons of coal. Instead of working these mines for the
benefit of the schools, the state of Colorado turns the land over to the
coal companies for a royalty of ten cents per ton of coal mined! The
schools have to have coal themselves, and they purchase it from these
same coal companies. It costs the companies, to mine this coal and
deliver it to the schools, $5.80 per ton, while the price which the
schools pay for it is $10.50 per ton; the coal companies therefore make
$4.70 per ton, and this after paying the ten cents royalty to the
schools! In the year 1920 there were mined almost a million tons of coal
from the state school lands; the schools got for this a net profit of a
little over eighty-five thousand dollars, while the coal gang made a net
profit of nearly four and a half million dollars. In other words, the
coal companies made in one year from the coal more than the schools will
make in fifty years. Under the present method of doing business, the
schools and the people of Colorado will surrender to the coal
corporations for the coal taken from the school lands a total net profit
of twenty-seven billion dollars.
Let us follow this coal money. Under the law a part of it has been
turned into a “permanent school fund,” which now totals ten million
dollars. And where does this money go? Why, to the banks, of course; and
what do the banks pay for it? They pay three per cent interest; and at
the same time the various school districts are borrowing money, and have
to pay five and a half per cent on their bonds! The difference between
these two items means a quarter of a million dollars, which the schools
of Colorado are donating to the bankers every year! That pleases the
bankers, and they use their control over the educators of Colorado to
keep the people from knowing about the graft.
In September, 1920, there was a contest arranged between two district
schools, and an eighteen-dollar basketball was put up as a prize for the
school which could give the best answers to twenty-four questions. The
principals of both schools accepted the terms of the contest, and the
county superintendent agreed to assist. The questions were to be
published in the local newspaper, the Surface Creek “Champion”; the
editor said he would take them under advisement, but he never published
them. The Republican county committeeman was called in to the
“advisement”; the county superintendent, who was up for re-election, was
also called in, and this lady made a hurried trip to the two towns and
called off the contest. And would you like to know why? Well, one of the
twenty-four questions read this way: “How much of the permanent school
fund is loaned to the banks, and how much is on deposit?”
The county superintendent had sent this question to the state
superintendent, and a letter came back, signed by both the state
superintendent and the deputy: “I cannot answer this question. I could
not get any information along this line.” The question was presented to
various educators throughout the state, and they admitted that they did
not dare to touch it. The question was presented to the editor of the
“Rocky Mountain News,” the great organ of the plutocracy of Denver, and
the editor not only refused to print anything about it, but stated that
“any man that stirred up such things is a Bolsheviki and an undesirable
citizen.”
In 1914 there was a great strike of the Colorado coal miners, which led
to a civil war, not merely at the mines, but also in front of 26
Broadway, New York, the offices of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and
also at Tarrytown, where the Rockefellers, father and son, have their
palatial estates. This civil war was of concern to the Colorado schools,
because they paid all the cost of it; the coal company gang in the state
legislature put through a bill, taking five hundred thousand dollars
from the school funds of the state, to pay the cost of breaking a strike
for Mr. Rockefeller. The radicals carried on a campaign for a year or
two over this issue, and as a result of the publicity one-fifth of the
amount was paid back to the schools.
In the East Side High School of Denver there were two teachers who made
so bold as to talk about these matters, and also to concern themselves
with the civil rights of miners. Of the six demands of the strikers,
five were for the enforcement of the laws of the state; and a pupil in
one of the high school classes asked Miss Ellen A. Kennan whether this
was true. An embarrassing moment for a teacher—with sons and daughters
of coal operators in the class! Miss Kennan answered the question
truthfully, and forthwith the president of the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company, Mr. Rockefeller’s concern which was breaking the strike, came
to the school to demand an explanation!
Miss Kennan was one of the prize teachers of the Denver school system, a
Greek and Latin scholar and a prominent lecturer at women’s clubs; she
had been in the system for seventeen years. Her friend, Gertrude Nafe,
had been in for seven years, and during the strike had the difficult
experience of teaching the son of General Chase, the combination dentist
and militia officer who was setting aside the Constitution in the coal
country and supervising the Ludlow massacre. Miss Nafe also answered her
pupils’ questions truthfully, and so the general and his employers made
up their minds to get these two ladies out of the schools.
It took them four years to do it, and they had to increase the number of
school board members, packing it with their henchmen. Even so, it was
only the war that gave them their chance. They drew up an oath for the
teachers to take, pledging loyalty to the Constitution and the
government, and “to promote by precept and example obedience to laws and
constituted authorities.” Miss Kennan and Miss Nafe cheerfully signed
the first part of this pledge, but they found themselves in difficulties
when it came to the second part. How can one pledge obedience to laws
and constituted authorities, when constituted authorities are defying
the laws? Consider the 1914 strike, in which the miners had tried to
compel the constituted authorities to enforce the laws—and had failed!
The teachers had explained this to their pupils, and now could not
stultify themselves. Their friends begged them to sign, the pledge being
”nothing but a joke”—the teachers all so regarded it; but these two
ladies took the matter seriously, and struck out the word “obedience.”
So they were slated to be driven from the system. They demanded a
hearing before the board, and were permitted to make a brief statement
explaining their reverence for their revolutionary ancestors, who had
defied the constituted authorities when these authorities defied human
rights. The principal of the school asked to be heard, and said: “I have
never wavered in my faith in their value to the schools, in my faith in
their services to the coming citizens of this republic.” But the board
turned them out, and for the past five years the children of Denver have
been taught by some teachers who take their oath to be a joke.
Time passed, and there came another strike of the Colorado mine-slaves,
and another curious test of Colorado education. I have before me an
issue of a weekly paper published by the striking miners, the Walsenburg
“Independent,” January 3, 1922. It bears across the top in large letters
the caption, “This paper was censored by the Colorado Rangers.” Then
follows a news item to the effect that Professor S. M. Andrews, school
superintendent of Walsenburg, and also of Huerfano County, had addressed
a teachers’ meeting in Denver, and praised the rangers and their martial
law. That much I learn from the paper; then comes the statement: “Censor
cut out report of his speech as printed in the ‘Rocky Mountain News,’
December 30th.” Of course I might hunt up this issue of the “Rocky
Mountain News” and tell you what Professor Andrews said, but I don’t
think it worth the bother. The point is clear: a superintendent of
schools, supposedly a public official, drawing two salaries from a coal
mining community, goes up to the state capital, and before a convention
of teachers defends the state police in their abrogation of state and
federal constitutions during a strike; and the commanding officer of
these gunmen in uniform forbids the miners’ newspaper to communicate to
the miners what their own superintendent of schools has said about them
in their own state capital!