BEETS AND CELERY
We go from city to city, and I wonder, will you grow tired of reading
the same things over and over? Perhaps we shall be wise to agree on a
few formulas, so that you may get a situation in a phrase. Let us agree
upon “salary campaign,” to mean that the teachers took up the fight to
get an increase in wages—and didn’t get very much. Also the phrase
“union smashing,” to mean that the teachers formed an organization, and
were forced to quit it or to quit the schools. Also the phrase “schools
overcrowded”—meaning that the children of the poor are jammed into old,
unsanitary buildings, while the city is erecting palatial high schools,
with all the luxuries for the children of the rich. Also let us recall
the familiar “Propaganda” and “Repression,” which tell us that business
men come to the schools to sing the praises of business, while teachers
are reprimanded for the slightest hint of a liberal idea. All these
things are a part of the school system in the metropolis of automobiles.
As one teacher phrased it to me: “We know that the old watchful eye is
on us!”
I have before me a copy of a publication called the “Industrial
Barometer,” Detroit, Michigan, September, 1923. It is the organ of the
Employers’ Association, and is full of bitter, sneering arguments
against labor unions and public ownership—proving that public ownership
of railroads leads inevitably and “by easy steps” to public ownership of
babies! A copy of this publication is sent free of charge to every
school teacher in Detroit, and when the teachers read it through they
find the menace which is meant for them: “The spread of radical and
iconoclastic theories in colleges calls for a closer inspection of
persons and things herein than heretofore.” (This of course is intended
as a lesson in economics, not in English!)
I got an interesting light on Detroit education from a group of
Socialist children. Needless to say, these children were not having a
happy time in the schools; they were forced to listen all day long to
attacks upon their faith—and this regardless of what might be the
supposed subject of instruction. One teacher discussed the wickedness of
teachers forming unions, and pictured their plight when ordered on
strike: “And we’d be clubbed over the head if we refused!” A teacher of
economics explained all poverty as due to the extravagance of the poor;
she talked for half an hour about a case she had known, a poor woman who
bought a mahogany furniture set costing six hundred dollars, and
including three plate glass mirrors! You understand, it is not permitted
the children of Detroit to argue with their educators; as one child said
to me: “We almost die with rage!”
Sometimes these children would be pained to note that teachers of a
liberal bent of mind would make some statement, and then be seized with
fear, and apologize and explain that they didn’t really mean it. One
teacher explained that she was using a very reactionary text-book,
because she had to. “And,” added the child, “that teacher is not
teaching any more.” The child understood exactly why, having often
observed the principal standing behind a half-opened door, listening to
what was going on in the class!
The Socialist children brought me their text-books, to show what they
had to endure. For example, that work on English literature written by
the principal of the Northern High School of Detroit, Edwin L. Miller.
This local celebrity tells the children of his city that George Bernard
Shaw “persistently obtrudes upon the public the absurd proposition that
all property should be held in common.” I hereby publicly offer to Mr.
Miller or his publishers, the Lippincotts, the entire income which I may
derive from this book if they will point out to me a single passage from
the writings of George Bernard Shaw in which this proposition is
advanced. Will Mr. Miller or his publishers let me hear from them? They
will not!
Also “The Elements of Political Economy,” by Professor J. Laurence
Laughlin, prize reactionary of the University of Standard Oil. This
eminent economist tells the school children of Detroit that “Socialistic
teaching strikes at the root of individuality and independent
character.” I have known some thousands of Socialists in my lifetime,
and I venture the estimate that nine out of ten of them possess more
individuality and independent character than a kept college professor of
the Rockefellers. This professor is so rabid in defense of his masters
that he even finds it necessary to underscore the phrases in his
text-books: “The great _difficulty with these schemes_,” etc. He reveals
himself so ignorant of Socialism that he cannot even spell correctly the
names of its leaders; he gives three names, Proudhon, Karl Marx, and
Lassalle, and misspells two of them!
Or consider this sentence: “If men constantly hear it said that they are
oppressed and down-trodden, deprived of their own, ground down by the
rich, and that the State will set all things right for them in due time,
what other effect can that teaching have on the character and energy of
the ignorant than the complete destruction of all self-help?” I take the
liberty of answering this rhetorical question: such teaching can have
the effect of making the ignorant realize that for the mass of the
proletariat under the capitalist system individual effort is a pitiful
delusion and snare, and that the one hope for the workers lies in
class-conscious collective action. And when the ignorant have learned
that lesson, they will be wiser than a professor who teaches economics
under a Rockefeller subsidy, and produces poison text-books to be
published by Mr. Barnes of the American Book Company, and sold to the
schools of Detroit by the convicted henchman of Mr. Barnes’
brother-in-law, and purchased for the city of Detroit by the brother of
this convicted henchman!
I got another interesting sidelight on the schools of this metropolis of
automobiles by talking with a group of citizens interested in the
prevention of child labor. Because the workers of Detroit are taught by
poison text-books to rely upon self-help instead of solidarity, they are
so poor that they are unable to keep their children in school. The big
business men of Detroit are charmed with this condition, not merely
because it enables them to avoid paying taxes to build new schools in
the slums, but also because it provides them with an abundant supply of
child labor for their industries. In the effort to abolish such labor,
the reformers of Michigan obtained passage of a law allowing
poverty-stricken parents a sum equal to what the children might earn if
they worked; also, they obtained a mother’s pension law, for the support
of those children whose fathers are killed in the automobile factories.
But what is the use of such excellent laws when there is no budget
provided to pay the money? In the county in which the state capital is
located some mothers are getting as little as fifty cents a week for the
support of their children!
A group of church workers, seeking to raise a fund to agitate against
these conditions, had the bright idea of getting “society ladies” to
assist them. The “society ladies” were to go about and collect
subscriptions from the manufacturers; but for the first time the ladies
found their charms entirely futile—they could not raise a penny! To
enforce these child labor laws would destroy the prosperity of Detroit,
said the great captains of industry. So every week the truant officers
and child labor officers bring children into the Recorder’s Court, and
the recorder investigates and learns that the reason the children are
out of school is because in school they would starve. The recorder has
to admit he does not know what to do with cases of this sort.
We shall in due course examine the enormous organization, including all
the big manufacturers of the country, which for thirty years has carried
on a nation-wide campaign to paralyze the schools in the interest of
child labor. While we are in Michigan, let us see what they have been
doing here. All over the state are vast fields of beets and celery, and
for the cultivation of these cheap labor is a necessity. A man applies
for a job, and only one question is asked him: “What is your gang?”—the
meaning of the question being: “How many child slaves have you got?”
Children as young as five years of age stagger about the fields,
carrying in each hand a beet which weighs as much as six pounds, and
with the clay on it as much as ten pounds. The National Child Labor
Committee, covering one-seventh of the beet-territory, counted
sixty-nine children under six years of age, working as high as fifteen
hours a day!
Of course, such babies, working such hours become ill, and are malformed
for life; yet before committees of the legislatures of forty-eight
states you will hear suave manufacturers explaining that child labor is
good for children—all the great presidents of America were raised on
farms! These suave gentlemen got through a law exempting the canning
industry from the child labor laws during the canning season; and then
the suave gentlemen devised a method, by the use of vats, to make the
canning season last the year round! This being a depressing subject, you
will be glad to end with a laugh; so I mention that one of these big
business gentlemen, a bitter and persistent enemy of the child labor
laws, is an active officer in the national organization of the Animal
Welfare League!