THE BREWER’S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW
I have referred to the Francis Scott Key School in Baltimore, and you
will be interested to hear more about this rare phenomenon—a beautiful
building, animated by a beautiful spirit, and located in a city slum.
“Locust Point” is out in the shipping district, and the school overlooks
the harbor and the old Fort McHenry; it is named after the author of
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” who composed the song close to this spot. A
few years ago the people of Locust Point had the usual old wooden
fire-trap for their children; it burned down, and then came a struggle
with the politicians for a better school. The neighborhood is a Catholic
stronghold, and the priests wanted the building in an inaccessible
place; it had a library, and the priests do not wish Catholic children
to have too easy access to modern books. They would have had their way,
if it had not been for one rich woman of Baltimore, who has made herself
a kind of godmother to the schools.
Meet Mrs. William Bauernschmidt, daughter-in-law of a well-known
Baltimore brewer lately deceased. This lady got her education in
Baltimore politics in a somewhat amusing way. A quiet, mild-mannered
young daughter-in-law, she used to sit in a corner of the library of the
old brewer’s home and do her knitting, while the men of the family
talked business. As the brewery business was all mixed up with politics,
the daughter-in-law came to know a great many secrets. She explained:
“The men paid no more attention to me than if I were a dormouse; so now,
when I come to deal with Baltimore politicians, I tell them, ‘I know
every filling you’ve got in your teeth!’”
This, you perceive, is not refined language; not the sort that was used
by ladies during my boyhood in Baltimore! “But,” said Mrs.
Bauernschmidt, “there’s no use talking ‘up-town talk’ to them. I use
their own language.” She told me about one of these potentates—I forget
his name, but his nickname is “Sunny”—and said Mrs. Bauernschmidt: “I
know whose man you are every day; you belong on Monday to the gas
company, and Tuesday to the street railways, and on Wednesday you belong
to the breweries. I want you to know that I always know when our day
comes round!”
But also she cajoles these fellows, and touches their hearts. Once upon
a time they were children, and some of them went to school; now they
have children of their own, and these are going to school; do they want
to steal the children’s money? And then she goes after the big fellows,
and sometimes she finds that even they have hearts! When she was
fighting for this new school on Locust Point, she tackled not merely the
mayor and the school board and the Catholic hierarchy, she tackled the
president of the Baltimore Dry Dock and Ship Building Company. She
wanted a park around the school, so that it would have room to grow, and
she got this mighty magnate to the point of declaring that if the
politicians wouldn’t vote the forty-five thousand dollars, he would put
it up himself and he would spend another forty-five thousand to find out
why he had had to do it! So, of course, the politicians fell all over
themselves, and the school has its park.
Here was a second case of plutocratic generosity in Baltimore, and I
began to fear for the thesis of “The Goslings”! I asked Mrs.
Bauernschmidt about it, and she made a face. They will never be able to
fool her again, said she. Four years ago the schools wanted six million
dollars, and all the civic agencies of Baltimore were fighting for a
bond issue; they went to the business organizations, which endorsed
their program cordially, and there was thanksgiving among the educators.
But then it was discovered that a group of politicians and
land-speculators intended to tack on another bond issue of forty-two
million dollars for a “port loan”! The people of Baltimore were invited
to put up this enormous sum to provide harbor facilities for Big
Business, and the six million dollars for the schools was to provide the
“human appeal.” The combined propositions were carried in a whirlwind
campaign, and a “Port Commission” was appointed, which has been drawing
fat salaries for four years—but not a single dock has been built to
date!
No, I do not expect to get very much for the people’s schools from the
plutocracy; but you note that I am perfectly willing to take what I can
get. For example, I take Mrs. Bauernschmidt! I don’t think she knows
much economics, and I am sure she never met a Socialist before; but she
has a robust mind, and she faces facts, whatever they may be. When there
was a strike of the ship-workers on Locust Point, she faced the fact
that the children were starving, and she helped raise money to feed
them. That, of course, was a terrible thing; everywhere throughout the
United States it is one of the worst offenses you can commit against the
plutocracy, because they rely upon the cries of the starving children to
break down the morale of strikers.
Years passed, and Mrs. Bauernschmidt continued her wayward course. She
took up the fight for the new school at Locust Point, and did not stop
for the Catholic priest, nor yet for the political machine and its
political superintendent of schools. She went to speak before a
Parent-Teachers’ Association; a teacher asked her, and the
superintendent rebuked this teacher, saying that she had made a grievous
mistake, that Mrs. Bauernschmidt must not speak in the schools of
Baltimore, and a teacher ought not even be seen on the street with her.
He added words to this effect: “I know my business so well that I never
give promotion to a teacher who doesn’t stand in with the powers that
be.”
So Mrs. Bauernschmidt went to war with this superintendent. She put him
on trial before the school board—when you have money you can do that
kind of thing. The gang was greatly exercised, because a teacher and a
principal who had been witnesses to the superintendent’s statement, told
the truth before the board; and that was a violation of the first
principle of gang ethics, it meant the end of discipline in the school
machine. The upshot of the controversy was that my native city got one
or two new board members, and the old superintendent was dismissed. You
see how it pays to keep track of the fillings in the teeth of your
politicians!
There is the same story in Baltimore that we saw in San Francisco, St.
Louis and Boston; the people appropriate money for their schools, and
the representatives of God, Mammon and Company refuse to spend it. They
even get the courts to forbid them to spend it! The schools were
discovered to be fire-traps—and what better way to make Catholic parents
send their children to the parochial schools, than to have it generally
rumored that there is danger of fire in the public schools? So the money
for fire-escapes was not spent; and a delegation waited on the mayor,
one from each of the twenty-five schools which lacked fire-escapes. Mrs.
Bauernschmidt went along, and the Baltimore newspapers reported the
“wallop” which she delivered to the mayor: “History tells us about a
ruler who fiddled while the town burned, but I don’t remember reading of
his re-election, and I’ll bet you he couldn’t be re-elected mayor of
this city!”
So the schools got some fire-escapes—but not all. Last year the
politicians returned an “unexpended balance” of $104,000 out of $600,000
appropriated for school repairs; and so Mrs. Bauernschmidt’s
organization, the Public School Association, went after them once more.
Now it is promised that all the schools will be safe; and the Catholic
priests, realizing that they have to come up to the new standards, pay
visits to the Francis Scott Key school—a dozen of them in the course of
a couple of months—to find out about modern education!
I make this Baltimore chapter the basis of a special word to those
people who read my books and write me that I am too bitter, that I
refuse to believe anything good about the rich. The story of Mrs.
Bauernschmidt gives me the chance to show that I like rich people
exactly as well as poor. All I ask of the rich is that they turn traitor
to their class and serve the general welfare. Not one in a hundred can
conceive of doing this, and not one in a thousand has the courage to act
on the idea; but at least I give them the chance. In every city, town
and village of the United States there is room for a woman of wealth who
will turn out and fight for the schools—not merely to get more money
from the tax-payers, and to keep the grafters from stealing it, but to
make the schools places of freedom, with windows open to the new
doctrines which are blowing over the world. In free inquiry and free
discussion lies the salvation of America; and it may be my misfortune,
but nevertheless it is a fact, that after having spent a year and a half
making inquiries, I am unable to name a single public school in the
United States in which the policy of free inquiry and free discussion is
consistently and boldly followed.