THE CALIBRE OF CONGRESSMEN
Dr. Van Schaick’s successor as president of the board of education was a
Catholic gentleman by the name of Edwards, prominent in the Chamber of
Commerce, and therefore an undoubted “success.” His intellectual
qualifications you may judge when I tell you that he was president of
the Columbia Correspondence School, and when I explain to you this
amusing product of American public life. Great numbers of newly fledged
statesmen come to Washington, where they have to compose political
speeches and felicitous after-dinner addresses, letters to the
newspapers and to their constituents—all kinds of literary efforts for
which they lack the necessary knowledge of grammar. They cannot all have
private secretaries to write their speeches for them, as did the late
President Harding; so comes the Columbia Correspondence School, filling
a long-felt want.
President Edwards would write you an essay or a speech on any subject,
at prices ranging from fifty cents up. If you used it only once, he
would charge you two dollars. It was all strictly confidential—that is,
until President Edwards was put upon the witness-stand at a
congressional hearing. Then he was asked: Did they sell essays to school
children? He answered, Yes, they would sell essays to people in any part
of the country, asking no questions. He was asked: “What would you do if
a teacher reprimanded a pupil for passing in one of your essays as his
own?” He answered that he was not sure what he would do, but he could
see nothing wrong with that. This disclosure raised such a row that the
new president of the school board was forced to resign; no one could
ever find out which one of the judges of the District Supreme Court had
recommended him, but they all united in getting rid of him!
Under this autocracy of politicians the fate of the Washington school
teachers has been the same as we have seen in other cities. Their wages
in 1917 were on a starvation basis; the minimum was five hundred dollars
for assistant kindergartners, and the next was six hundred. Both the
high school teachers and the grade teachers formed unions, and the
politicians did not dare to stop them. The unions carried the agitation
to Congress, and got an increase of salary during the war. The gang
tried to corral them into the National Education Association. They have
a local “institute” and of course the teachers have little to do with
selecting the speakers.
I have referred to the experience of Miss Alice Wood, and promised to
tell her story, which shows clearly what happens to teachers under an
autocracy of politicians. Miss Wood was a teacher of English at the
Western High School, and in the course of study furnished to her by her
superiors appeared such items as “Current Events,” “War News,” “Study of
Democracy Today,” and “Spontaneous Discussions and Criticisms.” In the
year 1919 it was naturally impossible for a teacher to conduct a class
along the above lines without being asked something about “Bolshevism.”
Miss Wood was asked, and she stated in reply that she had attended a
meeting at Poli’s Theater, where several travelers from Russia had
spoken, and their accounts of conditions were different from the
published stories in the daily press. (Never forget, this was the year
of the nationalization of women!) In answer to a direct question, Miss
Wood stated that she considered the Soviet government “an improvement
over the former government of Russia and a good government for Russia.”
She explained the word “Bolshevik” as meaning majority; and finally, she
advised pupils who wanted to know more about the subject to read
articles from the “Dial,” the “New Republic” and “Current Opinion.”
A few days later Miss Wood received a letter from her principal,
questioning her about these matters. She answered, stating the facts as
above; furthermore explaining that she was extremely patriotic, that her
forefathers had served in the American Revolution, and that she regarded
Woodrow Wilson “as the greatest statesman of all times.” The reactionary
superintendent of schools then took up the matter with the board of
education. Under the law, Miss Wood had the right to a public trial, and
to be represented by counsel; the board set this rule quietly to one
side, and invited Miss Wood to appear informally before a committee,
which questioned her, but without giving her any idea that she was on
trial. She stated that she had received no instructions as to what kind
of answers she was to return on the subject of Bolshevism, and that she
was perfectly willing to follow the directions of her principal, of the
superintendent, or of the board, on this and on all other matters.
Whereupon the board suspended her, without pay, for a period of one
week!
This of course was small punishment in itself—we have seen what is the
pay of a Washington teacher for one week. But what the board really
sentenced her to was disgrace and outrageous publicity in the
carrion-eating press. Therefore the teachers’ union took up the matter,
and engaged an attorney, and a long correspondence with the school
authorities followed, leading to no result. The matter was carried to
the District Supreme Court, and it is pleasant to be able to state that
this body reversed the action of the board, and Miss Wood got her week’s
salary. But in the meantime the Black Hand of our national capital had
accomplished its principal purpose—all the other teachers of the city
learned their lesson, and the pupils in the schools continued to believe
that all women in Russia were “nationalized”!
Also they continued to believe that Washington is governed by great and
patriotic statesmen. Some time previously, a teacher had stated to her
pupils that “the calibre of congressmen of the present day is not as
good it was in the time of Clay and Webster”; and this teacher was made
the object of furious attack upon the floor of Congress! The
congressional committee took it up, and summoned the principal of the
school before them, and read the riot act to him; and so all the
teachers of Washington learned that they are not citizens of a
democracy, but serfs of a plutocratic empire.
I am told now by a group of teachers that the new superintendent is
doing well, and that there is hope for a better deal in the schools; new
buildings are going up, and everyone wants to forget the old unhappy
past. The teachers ask me to plead for the cause which lies nearest to
their hearts, that of teacher participation in school control; and I
answer that this is the thing for which my book is written—to urge that
those who do the work of teaching, and really know about teaching, shall
take the place of traction magnates and real estate speculators in
charge of our children. It is not only in Washington that this is
needed, but everywhere, as you have already had opportunity to see.