CORRUPT AND CONTENTED
We move south to Philadelphia, the third largest city of the country,
controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad and its allied banks, through an
old-established and smoothly running political machine. Nearly twenty
years ago Lincoln Steffens described it as “Philadelphia corrupt and
contented.” For a while after that it ceased to be contented; there was
a general strike, which was smashed by the mounted police. But then came
the war, and Philadelphia is again at the apex of contented corruption
and corrupt contentment.
So far as concerns the schools, there has always been the usual hundred
per cent plutocratic board, distributing patronage and financial and
real estate favors. When I visited the city in 1922 the schools were
under the care of what was called “the octogenarian board”; at its head
Judge Beeber, president of the Commonwealth Title and Trust Company, who
sees that a good part of the school funds are deposited in his bank.
Next to him was Mr. Burt of the American Bank, and financial intimate of
the Vare brothers, contractors and political bosses who had run the city
for a generation. Next, Mr. Simon Gratz, the czar of the schools for a
generation, and president of a real estate organization—you remember in
“The Goose-step” what I called the “interlocking directorate”; next, an
aged war-horse of the Republican machine, who was open in saying that he
represented the Vare brothers on the board, and whose name was
frequently mentioned in connection with female teachers and pupils, to
whom he had displayed undue ardor in his private office.
Several of these aged plutocrats have just been forced out by a popular
upheaval, and the board is now run by Mr. William Rowan, who has a bank
in Kensington, and whose other qualification for the office of school
board president of a great city is that he is an undertaker. He presided
at a banquet in honor of some distinguished Frenchmen, and one of these
Frenchmen, a member of the Academy, made a speech in perfect English;
Mr. Rowan in reply proposed that the assemblage should unite in singing
the French national anthem, the “Marr-sales.” Also there is Mr. Boyle,
replacing Mr. Burt as representative of the American Bank. Also Mr.
Shallcross, a suburban political boss, whose son was recently president
of the real estaters. Also Mr. Mitten, president of the Rapid Transit
Company, and a nationally known union-smasher. Mr. Mitten has deluged
the schools with his propaganda in favor of company unions; he sent so
much that one high school returned it, marked “Send no more.” This
traction company has been so plundered by the financiers that seventy
per cent of its gross revenue goes to the bond-holders of underlying
companies, which own no property and do no work. In the girls’ high
schools some of the teachers of civics ventured to point out the
significance of this, and so Mr. Mitten transferred this subject of
civics to the grade schools, where the children are too young to
understand high finance.
Philadelphia is an old and slow-moving city, in which everything follows
precedent, and outward respectability is the whole of life. It resembles
London, in that its leisure-class gentlemen have cricket-clubs; also in
that old families have vast holdings of real estate throughout the city,
which they hand down from generation to generation. The rich as a matter
of course send their children to private schools, where they do not have
to associate with the vulgar unwashed; so the big business men do not
care what becomes of the public schools, and only want their tax
assessments held down.
For many years the social service organizations agitated for a school
survey by the city, and finally matters got so bad that the survey was
made by the state. The four volumes of the report, dated 1921, lie
before me. If you are suspicious of my opinions about schools, you may
prefer to hear from the state superintendent of public instruction. Dr.
Thomas E. Finegan is not a muck-raker, but a high-up educational
politician, with more letters after his name than he has in it—A.M.,
Pd.D., Litt.D., L.H.D., LL.D.; and he says:
It cannot be too emphatically stated that the general condition of
Philadelphia’s school plant is deplorable.
Nearly forty thousand elementary pupils are on part-time attendance
because of lack of sufficient classrooms, and the high school pupils
are handicapped by the heavy overcrowding of their classes.
There is a real hazard to the children of Philadelphia in the fact
that seventy-four per cent of the school buildings are not fireproof,
and are not equipped with modern fire protection apparatus. The system
of fire drills and the devotion and competence of the teaching force
afford the chief protection to most of the children in times of danger
from fire.
The citizens of Philadelphia would be shocked to learn of the
unsanitary and unwholesome toilet facilities that are provided for the
children in a majority of the public schoolhouses. It is no
exaggeration to say that many of the conditions not only threaten the
health of the children, but are a menace to their morals as well.
Over eighty per cent of these buildings provide less than the standard
play area now recognized as necessary to the healthy and happy school
life of children.
Moreover, Superintendent Finegan goes on to say:
As matters now stand, however, there is no way in which the people of
Philadelphia can register their will concerning the work of the public
schools. This condition results from the fact that the members of the
Board of Public Education are appointed by the judiciary rather than
elected by the people. There is no escaping either the logic or the
wisdom of maintaining that, where the members of a board of education
have the direct power to levy and collect taxes for the support of the
public schools, it follows as a necessary corollary that the members
of such a board should be elected directly by the people taxed and so
become directly responsible to them.
Of course, one can make out a case from any report by taking the worst
items and quoting these alone. So I hasten to state that the makers of
the survey found some things in the Philadelphia schools of which they
could approve, and they were profuse in pious hopes that other things
would be made better. But nothing can alter the significance of a
statement such as the following:
Sixty-four per cent of the children examined were found physically
defective.
Or of a statement such as this:
The most depressing condition observed was the indifference or
passivity of a large proportion of the classes visited. Pupils asked
very few questions, and it is most exceptional to find a recitation in
which thoughtful inquiry is usual and frequent. Real discussion is as
rare as signs of eager interest.
And again:
There is no organized attempt at any high school in Philadelphia, as
far as the administration is concerned, to teach the pupils how to
study.
Philadelphia has a new superintendent, by the name of Broome, and he was
hailed as “the Broome that sweeps clean.” He had one new idea when he
took charge of the schools; he wanted a teachers’ council, and that
sounded like a revolutionary idea, and the teachers were interested.
This council was to deal with all matters connected with the interests
of teachers, and it would save the board of education the need of being
troubled with teachers’ complaints. Presently it developed that out of
the thirty-one members, considerably more than the majority were to be
elected by small groups from the supervising force. After much political
manipulation the superintendent succeeded in putting this plan over on
the teachers; the council has now been in operation for a year, and all
teachers realize its purpose. It has done nothing for teacher
welfare—but it stands in the way, so that no teacher can any longer get
access to the board of education!
We shall see when we come to study our education from the national
viewpoint, that these superintendents meet together in county and state
and national conferences, to work out plans for the holding down of the
teachers and the regimenting of the school system. This clean-sweeping
Broome of Philadelphia put into effect an ingenious method of enforcing
conformity; he has a group of what he calls “superior teachers,” who are
given extra pay and promises of advancement for exceptional scholarship,
writing of theses, and other outside activity. The result has been gross
favoritism, and the wrecking of the morale of many schools by the
forming of cliques and political gangs.
Teachers who fall out of favor are treated like the policemen in New
York; they are given jobs at the other end of the city from their
homes—and Philadelphia is geographically the largest city in the United
States. Three teachers were driven to suicide by such methods, and great
numbers have left the service. In certain schools the system has now
reached the stage of development with which we are familiar in the
moving picture world, where promotion for women employes depends upon
sexual favors extended to the men in power. Such is the reason which
Philadelphia teachers assign for the sudden rise of certain ladies in
the teaching force; and this condition is so common throughout the rural
schools that the city teachers assign it as their main purpose in
demanding tenure for all the teachers of the state.
A great many of the schools, and especially the high schools, are
organized politically; the alumni associations and parent-teachers’
associations are used, not merely to get favors for their schools, but
to serve the political bosses and their interests. The principal of a
South Philadelphia school not long ago circulated among his staff a
“request” that no teacher should “flunk” a certain notoriously poor
scholar, the reason being given that “his father is the police
lieutenant of our district, and we cannot afford to antagonize him.”
This boy passed triumphantly; and of course the same favors are extended
to prominent athletes, who would otherwise be barred from the school
contests.
You will be prepared to learn that in such a city the feeble effort of
the teachers to start a union was crushed by the discharging of some and
the intimidating of the rest. (There were about a hundred members, and a
prominent leader sold them out for a promotion.) You will be prepared to
learn that the teachers get low salaries, and work all their lives
without promotion, unless they belong to the “gang.” You will be
prepared to hear that the Chamber of Commerce is strong, and has an
“educational bureau,” which formulates the policy for the schools,
especially as regards the training of Chamber of Commerce clerks and
mechanics. You will also be prepared to hear that civil rights are
things forgotten in this corrupt and contented city.
There used to be a certain old-fashioned type of gentleman who had read
the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the
Constitution, and believed in civil liberty as a thing to be trusted and
fought for; but that type is now out of date, and the hustling young
business man, with his “under cover” agent and his “strong arm”
detective, runs both the city and the schools. The spirit was shown by
Superintendent Broome, when he heard a rumor from the Daughters of the
American Revolution (delicious irony of that name!) that there were
supposed to be some revolutionists among school teachers. The
clean-sweeping Broome set to work at once to sweep out “un-Americanism.”
“There are too many insidious influences at work today,” he declared.
“If there are any persons with such ideas in our schools here, I wish
they would resign before I am put to the embarrassing position of asking
them to resign.” The same newspaper quoted “other school officials” as
declaring that “if any teacher was suspected to be a radical, it was the
duty of a citizen to inform the school authorities.”
Needless to say, education in Philadelphia is not inspiring to children;
and, as we have seen in other cities, under such conditions the children
get drunk. Early in 1923 Director Davis of the Prohibition Enforcement
Bureau ordered his investigators to look into reports of drunkenness on
the part of children in three public schools, who were said to be coming
to school in a half stupefied condition. I asked a friend about this,
and he wrote me that they were the children of Italian parents, who make
wine. But then I inquired further, and I learned that among the English
speaking mill-workers in the Kensington district the pastors of the
churches found it necessary to band together to protect the children
from the activities of boot-leggers. The brother of one of the highest
teachers in the city was arrested on this charge, and there have
frequently been charges of teachers imbibing during class sessions.
Also, the use of drugs by school children is prevalent, as in our other
great cities. How can you expect either the children or the boot-leggers
to obey the law, when the public reads in its morning papers that,
nearly five years after the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, the
police of Philadelphia Corrupt and Contented are solemnly informing the
keepers of thirteen hundred saloons that they must positively close next
month! And they don’t!