universities do it, and at the big plutocratic institutions this placing
bureau becomes a cog in the machine, and is used for the browbeating of
teachers. Several have told me of this kind of thing; I am permitted to
recite the peculiar experience of Mr. Otto Koeb at Stanford. Inasmuch as
Mr. Koeb’s name has a German sound, I mention that he is the son of a
Swiss diplomat, and the incident happened in 1912, when German names
were entirely respectable. Mr. Koeb had been graduated from the Colorado
State Teachers’ College, and then from the University of California, and
went to take a master’s degree at Stanford. As a result of his declaring
himself a Socialist, he was secretly blacklisted by the “appointment
office” of the university. For nine years he struggled to get a good
teacher’s position, and his applications were always turned down—until
finally a friend betrayed to him the reason; in the “recommendations”
which Stanford was sending out concerning him there were statements
about his political views, deliberately designed to keep him from
getting employment!
The agencies, both private and public, of course give close attention to
the character of teachers and to their opinions. I have referred to the
fact that some city school superintendents require teachers to join the
N. E. A. A high school instructor, whose name I am not permitted to
quote, says: “I have known of many fellows who have been refused
positions as teachers of printing in manual training shops because they
were known to belong to labor unions. I myself carry a card, but I never
tell my superiors about it.” At Wheeling, West Virginia, the official
application blank asks you for “references, including your pastor.” When
you furnish this information, a blank is sent to each of the references,
asking among other things: “Has applicant ever shown a tendency towards
extreme radicalism?” and “Does applicant take any part in church work?”
Hundreds of superintendents follow this practice of asking about the
church affiliations of teachers; in spite of the fact that to ask such a
question of an applicant for a public position is to violate the
constitutional rights of a citizen. Mr. David H. Pierce declares:
For the sake of a job, many Catholics become Episcopalians, and Jews
turn into Unitarians for the time being. I know of one teacher in a
small college, a Congregationalist, who has successively been Baptist
and Methodist, and who has informed me confidentially that he is
willing to become a member of any church under the sun, just as long
as he can keep on teaching music. One of my personal friends, in
seeking a college position, invariably discovers what denomination the
school is, then furnishes credentials to show that he is a devout
member of that particular church.
I have a letter from a teacher in California, who discusses the taming
of her profession. I know of no teacher who has put up a harder fight
against the gang, and it is significant that even this hard fighter asks
me not to use her name; she writes:
The average teacher is a cringing coward, and boards of education play
this as their trump card. The only recommendation the teacher has is a
clean bill from her last berth. She is given no chance to make good in
a new position. “Where did you teach last year?” is the first question
she is asked. “Why did you leave?” the second one. Unless a teacher
has “pull” and friends it is practically impossible for her to get a
position, if she has lost her previous one by the will of the board of
trustees. By this you can see it is the same with her as for a doctor
to lose his certificate. Teachers know and fear this, boards know it
and work it to control teachers. Boards control their teachers usually
through their major domo, the city superintendent. If he is fair, and
a man of convictions, the board cannot do much; but he is dependent
upon the board for his position, and unless he pleases them he may go
the way of the teacher who dares think for herself.
Mr. David H. Pierce has been a high school teacher for five years, and
does not expect to remain one. He explained the reason in a very
illuminating article published in the “Survey,” May 15, 1923. He says:
We graduated from college, having specialized, let us say, in
mathematics. In the course of two years we have presided over classes
in elocution, biology, economics, vocational guidance, sociology,
German and chemistry. We get no intellectual stimulation from our
neighbors in the school. Outside the school we are addressed as
“professor,” by elderly people who do not know us. We become experts
in sitting through lengthy prayer meetings and meaningless sermons. We
develop remarkable skill in dodging revivals. Our names are coupled,
in turn, with every eligible girl between fourteen and forty in the
community. About once a month a preacher “cheers” us by saying: “Next
to the ministry, brothers and sisters, there is no greater calling
than that of the teacher. The opportunity to mold our youth into
citizens is unlimited. I sometimes believe that they are even on a
level with those who follow in God’s footsteps.”
Mr. Pierce pictures himself becoming dissatisfied with his position, and
applying to an agency, and filling out a blank:
We underscore three times those subjects we prefer to teach, draw two
lines under those we have taught, and add a single line for those
branches we can teach. Having covered possibly twenty subjects, we are
ready to prove to any school board within five hundred miles that we
are the most educated, experienced and docile individual our alma
mater has produced in a decade. We prepare a barrage of testimonials
from board members who never entered our classroom, preachers with
whom we have never had a frank discussion, and college instructors who
must rack their memories to recall us.
The fact that we may be specialists in one or two branches is
immaterial. The agency wants its five per cent and we want a job. We
never allow ourselves to be discountenanced by strange requests. A
colleague tells me that in applying for his first position he received
a telegram from an agency, asking “Can you teach sociology?” He
replied at once in the affirmative, secured the position and was
reasonably successful. After he had assumed his duties he frankly
said: “Sociology was new to me. I had to look in the dictionary to
find what the word meant.”
A teacher who had specialized in Latin, taught, within a few years,
algebra, English, civics, German and Spanish as well as his preferred
subject. One woman, trained as an instructor in the domestic arts, was
assigned a hash of household arithmetic, calisthenics, music and story
telling. This is the lot of the great majority of high school
teachers. We are doomed to be intellectually unskilled laborers,
masters of nothing.
CHAPTER LXXX
TEACHERS’ TERROR
I have given in “The Goose-step” a list of some of the offenses for
which college professors have lost their jobs. I might do the same thing
for school teachers, and include everything, from refusing to “pass” the
son of a school board member to refusing to become the mistress of a
superintendent. The main trouble is that you would not believe the
stories without the teachers’ names, and these can so seldom be given.
Even when the teacher has quit the profession, her terror still hangs
on; one writes me that her husband will not let her talk, and others
must protect their relatives who are teachers. I have a letter from one
young lady, who tells me that she has quit teaching and is earning a
good living as a newspaper writer; but she adds: “On second thought, I
am afraid after all I shall have to ask you not to use my name. I
despise being a ‘rabbit,’ but my father is a professor in the state
university. It would be too bad if he should have to suffer for my
opinions.”
This young lady goes on to express her conclusion as to the teaching
profession. I quote one paragraph:
What drives the teachers in this state to marriage, suicide, or
stenography is not the tyranny of wealth—of which they are so
unconscious that even I am not sure whether it exists—but the petty
tyranny of public opinion and of tin-horn superintendents who rejoice
in showing off their power. Where a teacher knows that she cannot
dance or bob her hair or walk about the town alone at night without
getting a severe reprimand, and where she knows that it is as much as
her job is worth to receive a call from one of her boy students, even
although it be to hear him confess his personal problems, she is not
going to be much tempted to any wild flights of intellectual
speculation. Being spied on by the thousand eyes of a village soon
dries up the springs of adventure before they reach the surface.
Mr. David H. Pierce also has something to say on this subject. He points
out that in this respect teaching differs from all other professions;
neither lawyers nor doctors nor engineers permit their superiors to
exercise control over their social life, and forbid them to dance or
play an occasional game of bridge; neither are they kept in such
subservience that they regard themselves as bold progressives when they
utter harmless platitudes. Says Mr. Pierce:
I have known teachers to be dismissed for combating shady athletics.
Others have been forced out because they expected children of
influential parents to do a little work for their credits. In the
course of five years, I have been warned, officially or otherwise, to
refrain from discussing organized labor, the Negro problem, evolution,
the miners’ strike, dancing, card-playing, the controversy between the
chiropractors and the allopaths, and government control of railroads.
And Mr. Burt Adams Tower, who fled all the way to Hawaii to escape from
the school gang, adds a new and unique one to this list: “A few months
before leaving Butte I was called on the carpet for receiving a letter
on your stationery!” Said a teacher at the 1923 convention of the
Northeastern Ohio Teachers’ Association: “The situation today is that if
you don’t accept and apologize for every institution, good, bad and
indifferent, you immediately become suspect.”
There are two very funny stories which I got from friends of the
teachers, and which I am permitted to tell—provided I suppress, not
merely the names of the teachers and the school, but of the city in
which the incident took place! These stories have to do with Bolshevik
hunts, and the hero of the first is a high school boy. He is the son of
intellectual parents, but is a mediocre pupil, being obviously bored by
school work. He is required to write a theme, and comes to his teacher
and tells her that he cannot get warmed up to such subjects as “Beowulf”
and “The Rape of the Lock,” and wonders if she won’t let him write on
something real. She asks what he would choose; and imagine her
bewilderment—he would like to write on Bolshevism!
The teacher probes the boy’s mind, and finds that he knows of Bolshevism
as something wicked; he would like to expose those who are trying to
spread such wickedness in America. The teacher refuses consent, but the
boy comes back and begs again. The teacher points out to him the
seriousness of such a subject, and the dangers of it; he promises to be
very serious and very careful, and gets the consent of his parents; so
finally the teacher relents, and the boy falls to work. He is interested
for the first time, and brings in a theme which shows real study; the
teacher demands more, so the boy scours the city for original data. In
the end, he presents an excellent paper attacking Bolshevism; from a
pupil with a low record on “Beowulf” and “The Rape of the Lock,” he
suddenly shines as the “A” pupil of his class.
But now comes a terrible rumor, spreading like wildfire through the
“silk stocking” district of this city. Some one in the high school has
been teaching Bolshevism! A pupil who wrote against Bolshevism had been
“failed” because he differed with his teacher! The local Babbitts rise
up and roar, and the principal of the school comes to the teacher in
terrible distress, and scolds her severely. The teacher demands the name
of her accusers, and finally is told that the complaint has come from
the chief of police! She threatens to go to the chief, whereupon the
principal writes a long letter of introduction, explaining to the chief
that the teacher has already been “severely reprimanded.” The teacher
protests against this letter, and finally the principal consents to run
his pencil through the word “severely”; otherwise he is obdurate, and at
the next meeting of the faculty he issues the order that in future no
reference to Socialism or Bolshevism is to be allowed in any classroom
of this high school!
The teacher refuses to take the incriminating letter, and seeks out the
assistant superintendent, who happens to know the boy personally, and
takes the teacher to the chief of police. The chief explains that the
boy came to him, asking for data, and received some pamphlets which had
been taken in a “Red” raid. Soon afterwards the chief was talking before
a Sunday School class of parents on the subject: “What are your boys and
girls doing?” He mentioned, as an instance of creditable activity, the
fact that a boy in the high school was looking up Bolshevism, getting
first-hand information so that he could refute the Bolsheviks. So the
spectre was laid; the teacher has gone back to “Beowulf” and “The Rape
of the Lock,” and the high school principal has been promoted to be
assistant superintendent!
The other incident happened in a city fifteen hundred miles away; but
the Babbitts cover a continent—just like the Bolsheviks! We come to an
old and cultured city, with a high school of which the city is proud. In
this school a teacher of English suddenly decided that it was her duty
to find out what her pupils thought about Bolshevism; she had them write
a theme, and discovered to her dismay that a number of them did not
think altogether ill of the subject. She hastened to her principal, who
was equally shocked; he called a meeting of the teachers, and instructed
them that the two thousand pupils of this school were to be immediately
educated as to the wickedness of Bolshevism. School assemblies would be
held, and the teachers would talk to the pupils about the aforesaid
wickedness; also they might get someone from the outside who knew more
about this wickedness.
The young man who told me this story is a friend of the principal, and
saw the whole adventure from the inside. One teacher, when his turn
came, told the pupils that he thought we had plenty of things to concern
ourselves about at home, and that it was our duty to clean our own
house; the principal rebuked this teacher, saying that his talk had been
“too tame.” “You didn’t say a word about the nationalization of women!”
So the principal himself talked about the nationalization of women; and
in the fall, when the campaign was taken up again, a zealous teacher,
whom I will call Mr. Jones, went out and inquired at a church forum for
the name of a competent speaker against Bolshevism. Somebody with a
sense of humor gave the name of Moissaye J. Olgin, well known as a
supporter of the Soviet government! Poor Mr. Jones, too trustful of his
fellowmen, invited Comrade Olgin, who came and lectured. I asked Olgin
about the incident, and quote from his letter, so that you may see for
yourself. He writes:
I explained in a more or less scientific way how it came that the
Bolsheviki obtained the upper hand. I drew a picture of the forces
that made for Bolshevism, among them the craving of the masses for
peace, the craving of the peasants for land, and the explicit desire
on the part of the workingmen to assume control over the factories. I
was simply a man who thinks he knows something about Russia and
explains the working of social forces. The lecture created great
consternation among the teaching staff, but the pupils were most
enthusiastic.
After the lecture was over, the speaker was asked by Mr. Jones what he
thought of a man by the name of Lee-Nyne; to which he answered mildly
that this was “something for history to decide.” But, as you know, the
Babbitts are not willing to await the verdict of history; a child took
home this story to her parents, and the local Babbitts flew to arms. A
newspaper exploded with a scare story, all the way across the front
page:
/* BOLSHEVISM TAUGHT AT HIGH SCHOOL! */
It happened to be just at the time that a high public official was about
to be tried for malfeasance in office, and he was glad of a “Red”
herring to draw across the trail; his office summoned poor Mr. Jones and
proceeded to put him through the third degree. One of the inquisitors
grabbed Mr. Jones’ fraternity pin: “What’s that?” “And what do you know
about the American Revolution?” For two days the grilling went on, and
each day the newspapers had more frightful stories. Mr. Jones came out
mopping his brow, and vowing: “Well, if anything could make me a
Bolshevik, it would be such public officials!”
You know how it is—these Soviet propagandists are cunning rascals, and
hide under many disguises. The local Babbitts were sure they had an
agent of Lee-Nyne in this high school teacher, so they called in the
United States secret service, which took the trail, and followed Mr.
Jones day and night for two weeks—and reported that he did not go
anywhere except to a Methodist prayer meeting! So finally the Babbitts
were convinced that their teacher might be given another chance; but the
principal received special orders—he was never to invite another speaker
without first submitting the name to the superintendent!
Another incident, to show you what it means for teachers who deal with
the finer things of life to work under the shadow of this Black Hand. I
happen to know a lady who is head of the department of English in a high
school of a great city. This lady is a lover of literature, and a
teacher of the highest gifts; she knows how to inspire the young, not
merely to read and think about books, but in all their school
activities, their magazines and debates and dramatic performances. It
happens that she is a Socialist, and makes no bones about teaching the
children to think for themselves about our social system. Also it
happens that she is a “lady,” in the technical sense of that word; she
is good to look at, she was brought up in the Episcopal church, she is
received in the best society—and so it has been impossible for half a
dozen successive school boards to get rid of her. Incessant intrigue has
gone on against her, but she has quietly ignored it, and done her work.
This lady was invited to dine at the home of the school board president;
a prominent judge, a wealthy Republican politician—and incidentally a
gross bar-room animal. The primary purpose of the judge was to get the
lady to appoint his daughter as a teacher in her department; but before
bringing up that subject, he brought up another one. “I want you to
know,” he said, “that I realize you are a Socialist, and that you teach
the girls free love.” The lady rose up, and said: “I will not discuss
that question with you, Judge Smith.” “All right,” said Judge Smith;
“you don’t need to, but I’ve got the goods on you just the same.” The
lady’s reply was: “I don’t know what you’ve got, and I decline to permit
you to tell me.” But Judge Smith laughed, and went on to tell. “You’ve
given the girls a poem by Walt Whitman called ‘The Mystic Trumpeter,’
and I took the trouble to read it, and I know what’s in it.”
Now, I will not complete the story. If I should quote you the lines to
which the bar-room judge objected, apart from their context, you also
might misunderstand. Get the poem, which you will find in “Leaves of
Grass,” the section called “From Noon to Starry Night,” and read a piece
of real eloquence. Meantime, I conclude this chapter with letters from
two teachers. I have many to the same purport, but the book is long, and
two will serve as types of all. A man teacher in California writes:
I have a humiliating request to make of you, Mr. Sinclair. Not having
made provision for going out of the teaching business, I am afraid to
have you mention the —— matter. The story will be unfailingly traced
to me in what will probably be a brief time, considering the interest
commanded by your “Goose-step,” and retribution will be sure to
follow. I have so many sins to answer for before such unpromising
judges within the next year that I have not the courage to add this
delightful one to the rest just now. Will you sacrifice those two
paragraphs?
The other letter is from a man teacher in the far Northwest:
You may think it strange that I am writing to you to repeat my request
that you in no way use my name in connection with the data that I sent
to you for “The Goslings,” nor word any passage in such a way that my
name could be associated with any of the facts that it contains. I
believe that I have sent newspaper clippings confirmatory of the
various statements of fact; in any case, omit any seemingly
significant item rather than connect my name with it. As you well
know, if any person here should suspect me of having so much as passed
on to you information of common knowledge which is contained in
newspaper clippings, in a very short time it will reach the ears of
those who would unhesitatingly put an end to my professional career.
At my time of life, with a family, and a very meagre portion of this
world’s goods, I cannot afford to allow my name to be associated with
an enterprise of this kind, however much I may be in sympathy with it.
With physical condition not at all vigorous and no trade or business
experience, you can readily understand what publication of my name, or
the faintest suspicion of me, would lead to. Although my wife is the
only person here whom I have told of my action, she has become very
apprehensive of late, lest something creep into your book which would
fasten suspicion upon me; in fact, she is verging into a highly
nervous state, unable to drive the thought out of her mind. May I ask,
in order that her anxiety may be relieved, that you send me a letter
assuring me that my name, or any words that may indicate me as a
contributor of data, be kept from the pages of “The Goslings.”
CHAPTER LXXXI
THE SCHOOL SERFS
We have asked the question: is a teacher a citizen? I can name a few
places in the United States in which a teacher may be a citizen,
provided he or she is willing to give up promotion and honors. Under
those conditions a teacher may be a citizen in Chicago, Milwaukee,[M]
and New York, and I might think of a few other places if I searched my
memory. On the other hand, if I wished to name places where a teacher is
not a citizen, I could cover every state in the Union, and districts
large enough to include several states.
-----
Footnote M:
It is amusing to note that after writing this sentence I learned from
a Milwaukee teacher that the Teachers’ Association was at first denied
admission to the “Recreational Council,” a league of civic
organizations for school improvement, upon the explicitly stated
ground that teachers are not citizens!
-----
You have seen that a teacher is not a citizen in North Dakota or in
South Dakota. A teacher is not a citizen in Pennsylvania, where
teachers’ unions have been outlawed by decree of the state
superintendent. A teacher is not a citizen in Terre Haute, Indiana,
where the superintendent has declared that no one may teach history who
believes in the recall. A teacher is not a citizen in the state of
Washington, where Miss Alfa Ventzke was turned out for protesting
against the mobbing of Nonpartisan League members; nor in Texas, where a
gentleman whose name I withhold out of kindness to him, writes me how he
has wandered from place to place seeking a school where a teacher may be
a Socialist outside of school hours. He started out over thirty years
ago, and in those days a teacher could be a Populist; but nowadays he
has to hide—and even then they find him!
A teacher is not a citizen in Oklahoma, where Mr. A. A. Bagwell, who
began life as a Methodist minister, and is now a Christian Socialist,
has been hounded from public school to public school all over the state
for fifteen years. Mr. Bagwell’s story is told in a series of nine
two-column articles in the Oklahoma “Leader,” and it would take several
pages even to sketch his adventures. I glance over the articles and note
the names of town and county schools where he got into trouble—never for
any reason but his Socialist opinions: Gotebo, Greer, Blue Jacket,
Weatherford, Ardmore, Springer. The last place is Gotebo, where Mr.
Bagwell was county superintendent, and the American Legion held its
state convention and complained that the “firing squad” was not being
sufficiently used on teachers. So this Christian Socialist was kicked
out, and although he presents affidavits from literally hundreds of
people where he has taught—including the school boards—he travels from
one to another of his superiors demanding a hearing on the charges
against him, and can get no hearing.
A teacher is not a citizen in Leesville, Louisiana, where Mr. Otto Koeb
went to teach history in the high school. A mile from this town lies the
Llano Colony, at which three or four hundred hard-working earnest men
and women are making an effort to prove that human beings can labor from
other motives than individual greed. Mr. Koeb thought this an
interesting experiment, and wanted to write about it; he went to study
it—and was informed by the superintendent that if he continued such
visits he could not remain a teacher in the high school. So he gave up
his position, and now has none.
Nor is a teacher a citizen in Dallas, Texas, where many years ago Mr.
George Clifton Edwards, a teacher of Latin and mathematics, committed
the crime of being a Socialist. The school board was “a quiet,
vestry-like body,” and let him alone; but a certain rich lumberman, a
combination of note-shaver and psalm-singer named Owens, served notice
on them that if they did not fire the Socialist, he would elect a board
that would. They did not, and so he did. From that time on, Big Business
has run the schools, and has fired three other teachers, the best
qualified in the city. They have closed all the night schools save one,
which is practically an adjunct of the big department stores. As Dallas
is a city of great distances, this means that evening instruction is
denied to the working class.
Nor is a teacher a citizen in Austin, Texas, where sixty-three of them
joined a union, and all the officers were dismissed. The president of
the union, Mr. E. S. Blackburn, appeared before the superintendent and
demanded the reasons in his own case. Mr. Blackburn was director of
manual training, and the superintendent told him he didn’t administer
his department well. As the teacher had given the sixteen best years of
his life to the work, and loved it passionately, this hurt his feelings,
and he asked for specifications. The superintendent, after some
pondering, cited the fact that Mr. Blackburn hadn’t a wood-block floor
in his manual training shop. The next question was, what school did have
such a floor; and that was rather a poser, but finally the answer was
forthcoming—the Manual Training High School of Chicago. Mr. Blackburn at
once telegraphed to Chicago, and three hours later was informed by
Western Union that there was no Manual Training High School in Chicago!
Continuing his researches by telegraph, he learned that no manual
training shop in Chicago had a wood-block floor; he laid these messages
before the board—which was “speechless,” but nevertheless voted to
sustain the superintendent.
Take Elgin, Illinois, a manufacturing city run by the open shoppers,
with the usual board of business men and retainers. The condition of the
schools was so bad that the teachers formed an organization—not a union,
as they explicitly repudiated union tactics; they wanted merely a
respectable teachers’ association, affiliated with the National
Education Association. But the Black Hand wouldn’t stand even that, and
persecuted the teachers to such an extent that they went into politics
and tried to educate the public, and failed. The Black Hand, having been
victorious at the polls, reappointed its superintendent, and he
proceeded to get rid of six teachers and eight principals who had
supported the teachers’ ticket, and to put seventeen other teachers on
monthly contracts, so that they would have to be good. One of the
principals who lost her place had been in the Elgin school system for
twenty-six years, and expressed her feelings about the matter by taking
poison and dying. You have heard of the Chinese custom of committing
suicide upon the door-step of some tyrannical mandarin; it would appear
that this is the one form of protest left to American school teachers in
open-shop cities. In this case it was successful, because public clamor,
accompanied by threats of lynching, caused the open-shop superintendent
to quit.
A teacher is not a citizen in Atlanta, Georgia, where the teachers
organized to work for salary increases and for larger school
appropriations, and Miss Julia Riordan, a principal with a twenty years’
record, was so courageous as to help them. Three prominent business men
called upon members of the board, and instructed them to “slap the
teachers’ association” by discharging Miss Riordan. They did so—in
secret session, and without giving their victim a chance to defend
herself. Then they proceeded to fill the newspapers with mysterious
hints as to this teacher’s offenses; one of the board members, Mr.
McCalley, a gay humorist who represented a New York bond house,
explained that he voted against granting Miss Riordan a hearing because
of affidavits which he had received “under seal” concerning this
teacher. “If those affidavits are true, I cannot vote to give Miss
Riordan a hearing; if they are not true, somebody could be prosecuted.”
The humorous Mr. McCalley failed to explain how anyone could know
whether the affidavits were true, unless the principal were given a
chance to refute them. He failed to explain how “somebody could be
prosecuted,” so long as nobody knew who “somebody” was, or what
“somebody” had charged!
A teacher may be a citizen in Buffalo, New York—provided that he or she
is a very courageous and determined citizen! There was formed in Buffalo
the “Teachers’ Educational League,” to deal with the wretched condition
of the schools. In 1920 they published a pamphlet, in which they
discussed the school situation; I quote four of the paragraphs to which
the school board made objection:
We cherish the pious hope that in some not too distant day there may
arrive in the positions of administration of the schools men and women
of sufficient vision to realize the importance to education of the
intelligent and free-minded co-operation of the teachers.
Since 1910 every increase in salary for the grade teachers has been
secured by the sole efforts of the Teachers’ Educational League, and
with the active opposition of the heads of the school department.
We advocate a sane and sound training for children and cannot fail to
deplore the current makeshift in the form of drives and campaigns and
petty pedagogical pastimes.
The schools are overrun with charlatanism and quackery of the very
cheapest form.
The school board of Buffalo had as its president the local head of the
Standard Oil Company, and as its other members a lawyer to the rich, a
son of a banker, a son of a great lumber merchant, and a wife of a rich
man. The action of these five was to summon the teachers and question
them as to their responsibility for the pamphlet—but refusing to let
them produce any evidence of the truth of their statements. After which
the board met in secret session, and dismissed the president and the
recording secretary of the Teachers’ Educational League. Also they found
four other officers of the League guilty of “disrespect, defiance and
insubordination,” and sentenced them to be removed, but with the
privilege of being restored to their positions if they would sign an
apology and promise to be good in future. Three accepted these terms;
the other, together with the two who were unconditionally dismissed,
appealed to the state commissioner of education, and it is pleasant to
be able to record that this official reversed the action of the school
board. So it appears that a teacher can be a citizen in Buffalo—provided
she is willing to face a scandal and an expensive law-suit.
All this is a part of the “open-shop” movement, whose purpose is to keep
the wage-slaves from organizing and acquiring power. From coast to coast
both school boards and superintendents are solid on this question. In my
home city of Pasadena the board of education unanimously adopted a
resolution condemning the affiliation of teachers with the American
Federation of Labor. At a convention of superintendents in Riverside,
California, Superintendent Wilson of Berkeley declared that “the ends
for which teachers’ unions strive are unsound.” In New York the state
commissioner of education, John H. Finley, made the same statement, his
ground being that a teacher is in the same category as a soldier, “an
officer in the army of future defense.” Commissioners and
superintendents who want to know how to enforce military discipline
among teachers may receive instruction from Mr. J. W. Crabtree,
secretary of the National Education Association, and formerly president
of a state normal school in Wisconsin; at an N. E. A. convention he said
to a friend of mine: “My teachers will never form a union—I keep their
noses to the grindstone!”
Consider the experience of Miss Leida H. Mills, for twenty-nine years a
teacher in the schools of Wichita, Kansas. The teachers there had no
tenure, and were getting the munificent salary of forty dollars per
month; they proceeded to organize, and Miss Mills, who was head of the
Latin department in a high school, committed the crime of becoming
president of their organization. The president of the board of education
was a bank cashier, and he first fought her, and then fired her. She
addressed a protest to the board, which the board ignored. She found a
job on the Pacific Coast, leaving her mother and father back in Kansas;
she has returned twenty times to see them—quite an inconvenience for a
poor teacher! The Wichita board had to invite eight other teachers
before they found someone to take Miss Mills’ place; but of course they
always find someone in the end.
In San Antonio, Texas, there were no funds to increase the teachers’
salaries, and it was proposed to raise the money by private
subscription—a method of putting the teachers under bonds to the
bankers. That this was the plan became evident when the teachers began
to form a union, and one banker withdrew a contribution of fifty
thousands dollars which he had promised! The teachers went on with their
union, however, and got some three hundred and fifty members; also a
separate union of colored teachers with a hundred members. In the
following spring the two active organizers of the union were “let
out”—one of them a school principal who had been teaching the Mexicans
for twelve years, and had spent a good part of his own salary in
providing equipment for them; the other a high school teacher, a
university graduate with four years’ excellent record. Both were well
recommended by the superintendent, but the board fired them, and twelve
more teachers resigned—with the result that both the white and colored
teachers’ unions have disappeared from San Antonio.
In Houston, Texas, the teachers joined the American Federation of Labor,
and the unions threatened the mayor with a recall, and the school board
almost doubled the minimum teachers’ salaries. But then came Mrs.
Josephine C. Preston, past president of the National Education
Association—you remember the lady who presided at the Salt Lake
convention, with Professor Strayer of Columbia seated at her right hand.
Now we discover what the makers of educational “greatness” are up to;
the “great” Superintendent Preston told the teachers of Houston that it
would be far better for them to belong to her organization—it didn’t
cost so much, and it was so much more genteel! So the teachers deserted
the labor unions en masse. The president of the American Federation of
Teachers remarked to me sorrowfully: “The price of a teacher in the
United States is fifty dollars”—meaning that a teachers’ union would
agree to disband if the board of education would give them fifty dollars
a year increase of wages as the price of their civil rights.
CHAPTER LXXXII
THE TEACHERS’ UNION
The effect of official tyranny such as we have been observing is to
reinforce and intensify the occupational diseases of the teaching
profession, which are timidity and aloofness from real life. The teacher
lives in a little world of her own; she spends many hours every day with
her children, and other hours in reading their themes, and marking their
examination papers, and making out complicated reports. For the rest,
she knows only her colleagues, whose life is as narrow as her own. And
this is the way her superiors want it. Said the superintendent in Agra,
Kansas, to a young lady graduate of Wellesley College: “You ought to
have gone to a normal school instead of to college. There they teach the
teachers just what they ought to know, and not anything else.”
It hardly needs saying that a world which is five per cent male and
ninety-five per cent female is an abnormal world, with many jealousies
and suppressions. The teacher is, as a rule, either a very young woman,
looking forward to escape through matrimony, or else a woman grown
prematurely old, and watching with suspicious eye the curvettings of
youth. The tendency of women thus placed to curry favor with their
superiors, and to be spiteful toward their rivals, is very strong; and
the only way to keep the school-room from becoming a place of fussing
and fretfulness is to open the windows to the airs which blow in the
outside world. The teacher must have a vital interest in the great
causes which are stirring the minds of men; she must have some hope
outside her own very slender chances of personal success. The teacher,
in other words, must cease to be an individual, she must become part of
a group; she must share the consciousness of an organized and
disciplined body of workers, with a duty towards the future, and a means
of carrying it out.
In their efforts to keep the teacher an individual, the employing class
has not relied upon terrorism alone; they use all their propaganda
resources to take possession of the teacher’s psychology, to shut up her
mind in class greed and snobbery. The teacher is a “lady” in ninety-five
per cent of cases—and in the other five per cent the teacher is a
“gentleman.” The teacher belongs to the white-collared class, and
receives a monthly salary—never the degrading weekly stipend known as
“wages.” Once or twice in a life-time, the teacher is invited to a
banquet, and given an opportunity to listen to bankers and merchants and
manufacturers grow eloquent upon the dignity and nobility of the
pedagogical profession. These same compliments the teacher finds in her
capitalist newspaper, and her capitalist “Saturday Evening Post,” and
“Outlook,” and “Independent,” and “Literary Digest”; the compliments
cost less than nothing, because the advertisements more than pay for the
paper and printing.
Having spent my childhood in one of the larger-sized brick houses in
Baltimore, I understand thoroughly the psychology of “ladies and
gentlemen,” and the horror with which they contemplate common
workingmen, with grimy hands, and overalls, and no collars—or worse yet,
collars made of celluloid. Having left Baltimore thirty-five years ago,
and spent the rest of my life studying modern economics, I write this
book to tell the seven hundred thousand school teachers of the United
States that the path to independence and self-respect for them is the
path of organization, and of full and whole-hearted cooperation with
organized labor.
We have heard from the hired educators of Big Business a chorus of
denunciation of teachers’ unions; and their point of view is easy to
understand. What I find hard to understand is their serene confidence in
the inability of their wage-slaves to put two and two together. In the
very same breath in which these Big Business educators denounce
teachers’ unions, they praise the unions of bankers and merchants and
manufacturers and lawyers, and urge the teachers to intimacy with these.
Says J. W. Studebaker, superintendent of schools of Des Moines, in a
circular for the National Education Association: “The schools are linked
up with the business interests of the city.” Says C. L. Carlsen,
director of part-time education in the San Francisco public schools:
“The convenience of the employer must be the first consideration.” Says
Dr. Frank M. Leavitt, assistant superintendent of schools in Pittsburgh:
“Of very great importance is the matter of establishing friendly and
intelligent relations with the employers of the juvenile workers.”
Quotations such as this are scattered all through “The Goslings,” and I
could collect another chapter full if it would help.
Why may teachers belong to employers’ unions and not to unions of their
own? There are a few educators who have had the courage to put this
question—one of them Professor John M. Brewer, of the Graduate School of
Education of Harvard University. I owe an apology both to Professor
Brewer and to Harvard, because in “The Goose-step” I forgot to mention
him as one of our liberal educators. He discussed the question of
teachers’ unions in an excellent article in “School and Society,”
January 14, 1922, and no doubt he will send you the leaflet if you ask
for it. He points out that the utmost the teachers have so far dared to
ask in the way of tenure is the right to a hearing before their
superiors. But in Filene’s department store in Boston, no worker can be
discharged without a hearing before his fellow workers. When will the
teachers of America have the courage to ask as much?
What could be more sensible, what could be more essential, if a teacher
is really to _be_ a free man or a free woman? Who is it that knows
whether a teacher is competent and faithful, if not her fellow teachers?
Who can really judge and protect the needs of the child, if not those
persons whose business it is to be in daily and hourly contact with the
child? I have on my desk a letter from a lady who was formerly a teacher
in Terre Haute, Indiana, and who presumed to take an interest in an
organization of the teachers, and was threatened with loss of her
position. The superintendent told her it was because she was
“incompetent”; she took up the fight on this issue, and wrote to the
parents of every one of her children, and an actual majority of these
parents appeared before the school board to defend this teacher, and not
a single parent could be found to say that her work was not
satisfactory, or that she was not beloved by her pupils. Yet this
teacher was forced to move on to another city.
That is just one more illustration; I have given you a bookful of such
stories, and I could compile an encyclopedia on the subject if I had
nothing else to do. The point is clear: The present status of the
American school teacher is that of a wage-slave, an employe of the
school board and the superintendent; it is not the status of a free
citizen, nor of a professional expert. It can only be made that, first,
by the education of the teachers themselves—a process of organization
and self-discipline, guided by the more active and intelligent and
courageous of the profession. In this process there will be many
martyrs, and each can take to himself such comfort as martyrs through
all the ages have had—the knowledge that each one is adding to the sum
total of human progress, and that without this heroism and unselfish
idealism, there would have been no progress in the past, and will be
none in the future.
One of America’s really great educators, who supports the unionizing of
teachers and has had the courage to join a teachers’ union himself, is
John Dewey. Just so that you may not think of the teachers’ union as the
notion of cracked-brained radicals like myself, I quote three paragraphs
from an address delivered by Professor Dewey at a mass meeting of
teachers in New York, and published as a leaflet by the American
Federation of Teachers, located in Chicago:
We have not had sufficient intelligence to be courageous. We have
lacked a sense of loyalty to our calling and to one another, and on
that account have not accepted to the full our responsibility as
citizens of the community.
To my mind, that is the great reason for forming organizations which
are affiliated with other working organizations that have power and
that attempt to exercise the power like the Federation of Labor;
namely, the reflex effect upon the body of the teachers themselves in
strengthening their courage, their faith in their calling, their faith
in one another, and the recognition that they are servants of the
community, and not people hired by a certain transitory set of people
to do a certain job at their beck and call....
We should have an organization which shall not on the one hand merely
discuss somewhat minute and remote subjects of pedagogy with no
certainty as to how their conclusions are going to take effect in
practice, nor simply look after the personal and more or less selfish
interests of teachers on the other hand. But we should have a body of
self-respecting teachers and educators who will see to it that their
ideas and their experience in educational matters shall really count
in the community; and who, in order that these may count, will
identify themselves with the interests of the community; who will
conceive of themselves as citizens and as servants of the public, and
not merely as hired employees of a certain body of men. It is because
I hope to see the teaching body occupy that position of social
leadership which it ought to occupy, and which to our shame it must be
said we have not occupied in the past, that I welcome every movement
of this sort.
CHAPTER LXXXIII
THE TEACHERS’ MAGNA CHARTA
The first objection always brought against teachers’ unions is that they
might lead to strikes. The American Federation of Teachers has met this
proposition by expressly repudiating the policy of teacher strikes, and
the American Federation of Labor has endorsed this attitude. Well,
somebody has to make a start, and if the labor movement will not, I
will. I say squarely, and without compromise or evasion, that I know no
reason in the world why teachers should not strike, and I know hundreds
of reasons why they should. If you want to find these reasons, all you
have to do is to turn back and read this book once more. I say that the
teachers of St. Louis should have struck when Miss Rosa Hesse was kicked
out of the school board for opposing the candidacy of a school board
member for re-election. I say that the teachers of Buffalo should have
struck when five teachers were kicked out by the school board for
publishing a pamphlet criticizing the schools of their city. I say that
the teachers of Chicago should have struck when large numbers of their
colleagues were kicked out of their positions for the crime of belonging
to a union; so should the teachers of Butte, Montana, and of St. Louis,
Missouri, of Fresno, California, of Austin and San Antonio, Texas, of
Wichita, Kansas, of Olean, New York, of Lorain, Ohio, of Atlanta,
Georgia, of Peoria, Marion, and Elgin, Illinois, of Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, of Terre Haute, Indiana.
These are only a few cases, and I might cite many more. In general, what
I say is that school teachers of the United States should have their
professional organizations, and should run these organizations; they
should establish professional standards, setting down not merely their
rights, but also their duties; they should hold their members to these
duties, and should maintain these rights against all comers, including
superintendents and school boards. I say that teachers should do this,
not merely for their own welfare, but for the welfare of the schools; I
say that it is necessary both for the schools and for the children, that
teachers should cease to be rabbits, and should become self-respecting
and alert citizens.
There has been a kind of strike going on in the American public schools
for the past six or eight years; it might be described as an “individual
strike.” It is made by teachers who find their positions intolerable,
and who simply go into some other occupation. Professor John M. Brewer
estimates that there were forty thousand such “individual strikes”
during the labor shortage just after the war. These represent, of
course, the cream of the profession—the people who were sure they could
take care of themselves in the outside world, and who went and did it.
And all these people have been lost to the schools and to the children,
while the feeble-minded and feeble-souled have remained. So the
profession of teacher sinks lower and lower, until now it is agreed by
educators that students at normal schools—that is, those preparing to
become teachers—represent the lowest grade of any to be found in
training schools of the professions. It seems to me that in the light of
this fact, anyone who really cares about the schools and the children
would long for nothing so much as for a real, vigorous, large-scale
strike of school teachers.
The school teachers of England and Canada and Australia belong to
unions, and do not repudiate the policy of the strike. They have struck
on many occasions, and have been dignified and successful, and highly
educative to the community. The National Union of Teachers of Great
Britain sent over their president to represent them at Boston, the 1922
convention of the National Education Association. This gentleman happens
to be, not a college president or a state superintendent of schools, but
a plain ordinary class-room teacher; and what he said about the
backwardness of American teachers, their lack of independence and
class-consciousness, was quite paralyzing to the N. E. A. gang. He told
about the strike against a reduction of salary, then being carried on by
the teachers of Southampton; and the N. E. A. ordered all reference to
his speech stricken from the record of the Department of Classroom
Teachers!
Professor Brewer has discussed this question of the teachers’ strike,
and has not shirked the issue; he says, very sensibly:
It is our business to help discover methods of abolishing the need for
strikes, but it is useless to talk against strikes when no better way
to prevent injustices has yet been discovered. Employers almost always
have the right to the lay-off and lockout. We can aid in the discovery
of better methods for all workers if we work with them and not against
them.... What have we ever done to educate boys and girls in
preparation for better solutions for labor difficulties than strikes?
Laborers do not enjoy striking; they do it because they believe this
to be their only weapon when circumstances which they consider
intolerable arise.
In order to get the fundamentals on this matter, we have to come back
once more to the question, several times discussed in this book: Is a
teacher a citizen? What I ask the teachers of the United States to do is
to write for themselves a Magna Charta; to adopt a collective program,
and put upon the statute books of every state the explicit provision
that teachers are citizens, and that wherever their rights as citizens
come into conflict with the rights of school boards and superintendents
as hirers and firers of labor, the teachers’ rights as citizens are
superior. Teachers have, and should maintain through their
organizations, every right which other citizens have.
What are these rights of citizens? Teachers have a right to employ their
spare time as they see fit. Teachers have a right to belong to such
organizations as they see fit. Teachers have a right to take part in
politics alongside all other citizens—and this includes the election of
superintendents and school boards. Teachers have a right to discuss
school affairs, and to say anything they please about the schools and
those who conduct the schools. If they say things which are not true,
they are liable, like all other citizens who make false statements, to
due process of law; but they are not liable to lose their positions for
exercising any of the rights of American citizens. They may belong to
political parties, and may hold and advocate such political opinions as
they see fit. If they advocate sabotage, violence and crime, they may be
dealt with by the law, but they may not be dealt with by school boards
or superintendents for political ideas which they hold, or for political
activities outside the class-room.
These principles, I take it, are fundamental, and no teacher is a
citizen until they are rigidly upheld; the first duty of every school
teacher in the United States is to back every other school teacher in
the assertion and protection of these rights, and nothing that any
teacher can do or fail to do to our children is so important as this
assertion of teacher self-respect and teacher dignity. Am I too much of
an optimist when I say, that before I leave this earth I hope to see the
teacher rabbits come out of their holes and band themselves together for
mutual protection as citizens? Am I historically correct when I assert
that this is the true one hundred per cent Americanism, which the author
of the Declaration of Independence and the author of the Emancipation
Proclamation would have endorsed? Or will the teachers of America
forever let themselves be bamboozled by Chamber of Commerce lackeys into
calling a man a “radical” and a “Red” because he stands for these
fundamental liberties in a free republic?
Those who affect such horror at the idea of a teachers’ strike argue
that the teachers are public servants, dedicated to a sacred cause. Of
course; and all I want to do is to extend the boundaries of this service
and this cause. I contend that coal-miners are also public servants, and
likewise oil-workers and railway-workers, and every man or woman who
contributes the labor upon which civilization rests. I assert that all
these workers now occupy the status of industrial serfs, and must raise
themselves to the status of industrial citizens. The way to do it is the
way of organization, education, agitation; and the strongest weapon is
their power to give or to withhold their collective labor.
CHAPTER LXXXIV
WORKERS’ EDUCATION
Some teacher who is not in touch with the labor world will read the
story I have told about labor government in San Francisco and in Butte,
Montana, and will ask, is that what I mean. It isn’t what I mean; and
for the benefit of newcomers, I hasten to explain. I wish that there
existed in modern society a beautiful and altruistic labor movement,
instead of what does exist, a part of the capitalist system, partaking
of the weaknesses and corruptions which are automatically produced in
human societies by the continuous operation of mass rivalries and
greeds. The American Federation of Labor is a machine, precisely like
the Republican party, or the National Education Association; it is a
vested interest of high-salaried leaders, whose function is to dicker
with Big Business for the best terms obtainable in the labor market.
Many of these leaders are sincere but ignorant men, who have grown up in
the present system and can imagine nothing else. Many others have
accepted without realizing it what I call “the dress-suit bribe.” Still
others are cynical corruptionists, who sell out their deluded followers,
and permit labor unions to be used as weapons in the partisan wars of
Big Business. Any teacher who goes to the labor movement without
realizing these things, will suffer bitter disillusionment.
Underneath this machine is the great mass of the workers, groping their
way toward freedom and self-government; betrayed a million times by
leaders throughout the ages, they continue to grope, and to learn. The
modern machine process has brought them together by tens of thousands,
and the printing press and the soap-box have given them the means of
spreading information. Many new organizations may have to be made and
broken, many new weapons constructed by the masses; but they are on
their way toward freedom and self-government, with a movement like that
of a glacier. To understand the workers and their needs, and to help
them to find their path—that is the task to which the teacher may
contribute. Let her go to the labor movement, not expecting too much,
but ready to give the precious things which she has.
The teacher who goes in that spirit will not be disappointed. She will
find in the toiling masses a deep and touching reverence for her
profession. The teacher is well known to the masses, she has messengers
who carry good words about her to the homes of the people. The great
bulk of our wage-slaves have but little hope for themselves; what
ambitions they have are for their children. They send these children to
school, and they think of the teacher as the children’s friend, the
guardian of the children’s future, the keeper of a magic key. To the
very poor in the slums, the teacher comes as a missionary; she is the
only representative of authority who assumes any aspect of kindness. As
one who has been in the labor movement most of his life, I say that I
have yet to hear a labor man speak of teachers without respect; or to
hear of an American city in which the teachers made an appeal to the
working masses without getting a response.
That portion of the labor movement which has especial need of the
teacher, and which should command the teacher’s especial regard, is
workers’ education. I have devoted a chapter to this subject in “The
Goose-step,” and do not want to repeat information which is given there.
Suffice it to say, that the organized workers have grown tired of seeing
their best brains stolen from them, they have set out to educate their
own youth, and train their own leaders. There are now workers’ colleges
or schools in all the leading cities of America, and to know them and to
help them should be one of the joys of progressive teachers. In places
where there is not yet a labor school, it only waits for some group of
teachers who will go to the labor men, and advise with them, and help
them to break into this new field.
There exists in New York a center of information, the Workers’ Education
Bureau, 465 West 23rd Street, which works in harmony with the old-line
labor unions and has received their endorsement. This bureau has
established fifty labor colleges in America in the six years of its
existence. It holds a convention every spring, and if you will read its
proceedings, you will pity the N. E. A.
The more radical labor unions have their own educational centers,
concerning which you may have information for the asking. The
Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, under the presidency of James H.
Maurer, a clear-visioned Socialist, has established a department of
education and labor research at Harrisburg, and has promoted labor
classes in a dozen cities throughout the state. It will send you much
interesting literature on request. The Brookwood School at Katonah, New
York, has twice as many pupils as it had last year, and you will wish to
know about this charming place. You will meet here several of the kicked
out college professors whom you read about in “The Goose-step”; one of
them is Professor A. W. Calhoun, who writes:
We are planning to give this summer a course of interest to teachers
who may care to work into the labor education movement. Opportunity
will be given to such teachers to get the labor point of view and to
associate with labor people. In addition there will be special
attention to the fundamentals of economics, and other matters that
teachers ordinarily need to approach from the labor view point.
I mention also that the I. W. W. have their Work Peoples’ College at
Duluth, Minnesota (Box 39, Morgan Park Station). Mrs. Kate Richards
O’Hare has moved to the Llano Colony at Leesville, Louisiana, and has
started there Commonwealth College, under the direction of W. E. Zeuch,
a college professor whose adventures you may read in “The Goose-step.”
The International Ladies’ Garment Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers are maintaining elaborate educational programs for their members
in many cities.
I give you these various addresses in order that you may get the
literature of the subject. I will also say a friendly word for the
“Labor Age,” an admirable magazine of information edited by Prince
Hopkins, and published at 41 Union Square, New York. The issue of April,
1922, was devoted to the subject of labor education, and is full of
information as to developments both in this country and Great Britain.
In the latter country the Workers’ Education Association has a total of
2,760 branches, to say nothing of the various independent and radical
educational bodies.
Also, I ought to mention that outside the labor movement there are some
independent experimental schools, which are radical so far as concerns
education, and are clearing the way toward the future. In Washington, D.
C., in the Progressive Education Association (1719 35th St., N. W.). Ask
them for their pamphlet, “The Spirit of Adventure in Education”; ask
them for their lists of experimental schools, and especially their
account of what is going on at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio,
which is making an effort to combine real work and study—the basis of
all truly democratic education. Write also to the Organic School at
Fairhope, Alabama, and inform yourself about the splendid work which
Mrs. Marietta Johnson is doing, to train young people in the realities
of life, and to make education a complete and living thing. Write to the
Bureau of Educational Experiments, 70 Fifth Ave., New York. There are a
number of new schools in or near New York; I mention especially the
Walden School at 32 West 68th St., the Teachers’ College Playground, and
the Gregory School at West Orange, New Jersey. The New School for Social
Research, located in New York, is doing excellent work. The Modern
School, at Stelton, N. J., is testing out the theories of “libertarian”
education. Finally, Dean Alva P. Taylor of the State College of New
Mexico has a very interesting plan for organizing a college to be
managed by its faculty; he wishes to hear from others who are
interested.
Also I must not fail to mention the Pathfinders of America, which is
endeavoring to supplement our public school education by character
training, the lack of which is our greatest school defect. The founder
of this organization, Mr. J. F. Wright, is one of our pioneers, and the
work he is doing should be known to all educators. He began with efforts
to redeem convicts, and he had sixty-five organizations when I met him a
year and a half ago, and was reaching five thousand men in prisons. They
have now started “junior councils” in the public schools—much better
than the junior chambers of commerce, I assure you! They eliminate
religion from their training, but teach the children practical conduct
in a practical way, and the parents perceive the results—as do the
juvenile delinquency officers in Detroit.
Also, I should mention the work which is being done by Mr. Vance Monroe,
editor of the “Colorado Union Farmer” of Denver. Here is a co-operative
organization of farmers, which has got up a series of juvenile
clubs—again something better than junior chambers of commerce! There are
forty-eight such organizations in the state, with youngsters up to the
age of sixteen conducting their own courts, forming their own
“co-operative credit associations” for the handling of their savings,
working up their own debating teams, and in general running their own
affairs. There is no control from the grown-ups except the written
suggestions of Mr. Monroe, together with the advice of two adults whom
the youngsters have themselves chosen to fill that rôle when requested.
This is real training for democracy; it is education in the strict sense
of the word—drawing out the child’s own impulses and abilities, instead
of repressing them and crushing them into a predetermined mould. Through
such voluntary and self-governing associations our schools will be made
over—and I fear it will have to be done from the outside, not from the
inside.[N]
-----
Footnote N:
I yield to the temptation to quote a letter from Mr. Monroe, answering
some questions as to his work:
“I have made a study of true co-operation for twenty years and that is
what I deal in. First I tried to educate men. It didn’t work. Then I
tried a combination—men and women. That failed. Then I tried to
educate the children. It was a fruitless effort I discovered, as no
doubt you did long ago, that the children couldn’t be ‘educated,’ but
that if any degree of success was obtained, they must educate
themselves.
“The work is carried on through the medium of clubs which are
co-related and interlocking. Each club has a code. They are bound in
honor to live up to its provisions. They are doing it, too. This may
sound like the ‘boy scout plan’ but it is altogether different. Boy
scouts are disciplined, army style, by adults. Under our plan the boys
and girls discipline themselves. As a matter of fact they help to
build their own program. Many noteworthy character building
suggestions have come from the kids. Our plan helps to obviate the
spirit of warfare without war being mentioned. I feel that war is a
dangerous word. Why use it? Our plan is built around harmony, charity,
peace and good will. There is no need to discuss war if peace can be
thoroly understood.
“The plan sounds complicated to a good many of the adults, but the
children understand it. They have more faith, more optimism, more
energy, more loyalty, more potentialities, more wisdom. Parents tell
me our members are better behaved at home. They are more considerate
and unselfish. They think of others. They are getting to the point in
many cases where they are ready to make co-operation the very
important essential in the texture of life.
“I am working thru the Farmers’ Union. This because it is a vehicle at
my hand. I have undertaken thru the medium of the juvenile
organization to develop a new rejuvenated spirit of co-operation in
the home life, the social life. Each child will thoroly understand the
value of co-operation, spiritual and material, its necessity and
importance in the scheme of life. They, in their own way and time,
come to understand the vitalness of co-operative principles, and learn
by experience that failure is ever the creature of competition.
“By the excessive mental effort and physical energy it is sometimes
possible to arouse the adults for the moment—but only for the moment.
They have been too long victims of a deadly environment. Our hope lies
with the children. Strange as it may seem, part of our plan gives the
children opportunity to assist in education of their parents. It is
altogether surprising to me to see how well this works out in
practice.
“Each club has an ‘editor’ who reads a paper at each meeting night.
This does not mean that the editor simply produces a ‘literary paper.’
As a matter of fact most of the editors take their work seriously.
They make a good job of it. The papers in most instances are
educational, instructive as well as newsy. Practically all of the
clubs take their ‘paper’ to the local newspaper and have it printed
therein. This makes for genuine propaganda. Besides this plan, with
proper tutelage, helps to develop potential editors who may one day be
recognized as factors in the newspaper field.
“All my work is based on the honest conviction that we can expect no
help from the public schools or colleges. Of course the forces of
competition have them absolutely under control. There can be no real
help from the subsidized press of the present time. Even library lists
are censored. Because of such conditions I believe that this is the
way out. The plan works. That’s something. Other states are taking it
up. Kansas, South Dakota and Georgia have already written for the plan
with the intention of carrying it out.”
-----
If this book were not already too long, I should like to take space to
tell you about this kind of work. But all these schools and reform
projects have their own literature, which they will send you for the
asking. I want to add, by way of comforting some anxious souls, that I
am not really a pessimistic and destructive person; I understand that
there are many earnest workers in the schools, and that some of them
manage by tact and force of personality to put liberal ideas into the
heads of their students. I know that plutocratic influences are not
entirely unopposed in America; I know that conditions portrayed in this
book are less bad than they would be, if conscientious men and women
were not risking their jobs every hour. My reason for writing this book
is my belief that these people can do their work better, if they know
exactly what they are opposing. I do not want liberal teachers to be in
the position of Mr. M. C. Bettinger, who gave thirty-eight years of his
life to the school system of Los Angeles, as teacher, assistant
superintendent, and school board member, and then, after he had been
kicked out in his old age, read “The Goose-step” and wrote me these
pathetic words: “I may not be of much help to you, but you certainly
have helped me. I know now what I have been trying to do, and what has
been done to me.”
I close this chapter on workers’ education with a message from an abler
writer than myself. In France the teachers are an organized and
disciplined social force; and to their trade union convention came the
greatest of living French prose masters, a sage and _bel esprit_ whose
high position in the world of letters has not held him from full
sympathy with the revolutionary workers of the world. I quote four
paragraphs from the message of Anatole France to the teachers of his
country; and I mention, in case you want to read it all, that you can
find it in the “Nation,” Vol. 109, or in the “Living Age,” Vol. 302.
Pardon me for returning to this; it is the great point upon which
everything depends. It is for you, without hope of aid or support, or
even of consent, to change primary education from the ground up, in
order to make workers. There is place today in our society only for
workers; the rest will be swept away in the storm. Make intelligent
workers, instructed in the arts they practice, knowing what they owe
to the national and to the human community.
Burn all the books which teach hatred. Exalt work and love. Let us
develop reasonable men, capable of trampling under foot the vain
splendor of barbaric glories, and of resisting the sanguinary
ambitions of nationalisms and imperialisms which have crushed their
fathers.
No more industrial rivalries, no more wars: work and peace. Whether we
wish it or no, the hour is come when we must be citizens of the world
or see all civilization perish. My friends, permit me to utter a most
ardent wish, a wish which it is necessary for me to express too
rapidly and incompletely, but whose primary idea seems to me
calculated to appeal to all generous natures. I wish, I wish with all
my heart, that a delegation of the teachers of all nations might soon
join the Workers’ Internationale in order to prepare in common a
universal form of education, and advise as to methods of sowing in
young minds ideas from which would spring the peace of the world and
the union of peoples.
Reason, wisdom, intelligence, forces of the mind and heart, whom I
have always devoutly invoked, come to me, aid me, sustain my feeble
voice; carry it, if that may be, to all the peoples of the world, and
diffuse it everywhere where there are men of good will to hear the
beneficent truth! A new order of things is born. The powers of evil
die, poisoned by their crime. The greedy and the cruel, the devourers
of peoples, are bursting with an indigestion of blood. However sorely
stricken by the sins of their blind or corrupt masters, mutilated,
decimated, the proletarians remain erect; they will unite to form one
universal proletariat, and we shall see fulfilled the great socialist
prophecy: “The union of the workers will be the peace of the world.”
CHAPTER LXXXV
THE GOOSE-STEP MARCH
As this manuscript goes to the printer, “The Goose-step” has been before
the public nine months. Approximately twenty-two thousand copies have
been sold, and many of them have been going the rounds in colleges. I
have a letter from one school teacher, who tells me that her copy has
been read by forty others. In the “Bookman” for December, 1923, “The
Goose-step” is listed third among non-fiction books most in demand in
public libraries. I was told by an instructor at Stanford that some
students had torn out the Stanford chapters from a dozen copies of the
book, and had pasted these pages, elaborately marked in red ink, upon
bulletin boards and upon the doors of their dormitories. A lecturer, who
visited many colleges in all parts of the country, tells me that he
found “The Goose-step” the principal topic of argument in faculty clubs;
as he phrased it, the member would sit and debate: “Are we like that?”
A number of universities replied, directly or indirectly, to the book.
The most emphatic of all was Harvard. Said President Lowell and his
deans and his corporation: “Go to, we will show this varlet how much we
care about him! Let us tell the world how proud we are to be the
University of Lee-Higginson, with J. P. Morgan connections!” What
happened then was reported in the Boston “American”:
Harvard University today flung a defi in the face of Upton Sinclair.
Today Harvard, at its commencement exercises, presented an honorary
Doctor of Laws degree to Mr. Morgan. In presenting the degree to Mr.
Morgan, Dr. Eliot said: “To John Pierpont Morgan, a son of Harvard,
heir to the power and responsibility of a great financial house. He
has used them with courage in a dark crisis of the World War and at
all times with uprightness, public spirit and generosity.” In effect,
Mr. Morgan gets his honorary degree for multiplying dollars through
his international banking house. Sinclair could not possibly have
wished for a more definite, clearer verification of the charges that
he made.
Another degree—this one a Master of Arts degree—was presented to Eliot
Wadsworth, assistant secretary of the treasury. Mr. Wadsworth is a
member of the firm of Stone and Webster, which is allied with the
Morgan firm. In his book, Sinclair charges that State Street, a suburb
of Wall Street, absolutely owns and controls the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. The president of Tech is Samuel Wesley
Stratton. Mr. Stratton today was presented with an honorary LL.B.
degree. Sinclair charged that Morgan’s control of American colleges
extended not only to the college presidents, but to the clergy which
exercises much influence over these colleges. Charles L. Slattery,
Episcopal Bishop Coadjutor of Massachusetts, referred to by Sinclair
as “Mr. Morgan’s Bishop”—received the honorary degree of Doctor of
Divinity.
Also the University of California made answer to “The Goose-step”; there
was a vacancy on the board of regents, and the governor appointed the
chief of the Black Hand, Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles “Times.” The
alumni of the university also took action; they engaged as their
secretary, an agent of the Power Trust, at a salary of ten thousand a
year! There are thirty-five thousand alumni, you understand, and to be
able to control them means to control the state. This new agent was
formerly editor of the “Electrical World,” and was on the list of the
kept speakers of the Power Trust during the recent campaign against
public ownership; he was put in his new job by Attorney Earl, who runs
the board of regents for Banker Fleishhacker and Publisher Chandler.
I have pointed out in “The Goose-step” that an actual majority of the
regents of this university are Power Trust officials or attorneys; and
the same is true of the council which controls the alumni. I have
nothing more important to tell you than this, because hydro-electric
power is the issue of our time; the Power Trust is today what the
railroads and Standard Oil were a generation ago, the chief active
corrupter of our public life. At the last meeting of the National
Electric Light Association they brought up an elaborate program for
“getting the university professors, holding “institutes” for them,
employing them to write literature, and giving them jobs in local public
utilities. This report was not formally adopted—it was thought not to be
“tactful”; they would just put it through without saying anything!
Professor Vladimir Karapetoff, of the College of Engineering at Cornell,
sends to a friend of mine samples of the poison dope which is being fed
to college professors. This particular dose comes from Philip Torchio, a
high-salaried engineer for a number of electrical companies; it is sent
free, and for no particular reason that the recipient knows. The subject
is “depreciation,” the substance of the argument being that public
utilities never depreciate, and so dividends should be collected on the
basis of the original cost! This argument is signed by two
supposed-to-be public officials, both of whom turn out to be on the
pay-roll of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, a Standard Oil
concern. One of them began his life as an active “reformer” in New York,
then became counsel for the Public Service Commission at fifteen
thousand dollars a year, and prepared a case for the people against the
Consolidated Gas Company. On the very day that the case came to trial he
went over to the gas company, and became their chief counsel, and
carried over to their side every particle of the evidence which he had
prepared for the benefit of the public!
That is just one incident, to show you how the dice are loaded against
you in the world of education. In every great university throughout the
United States today there are rascals of this sort, posing as
scientists, and carrying on intrigues against the public welfare. And
every instructor in high school, and every professor in colleges who
touches on such subjects meets these intriguers with the dice loaded
against him; that is, he knows that to oppose the rascals means to
forfeit promotion, and perhaps his job.
How beautifully the Black Hand has got the professors frightened in the
universities of California was proven by George P. West, who formed an
organization to work for the repeal of the criminal syndicalism law. He
got the backing of the Episcopal bishop and the Catholic archbishop of
San Francisco, and it was proposed to have some university professor
prepare an entirely disinterested study of the actual workings of this
law. Mr. West wrote to the professor of economics at Stanford, asking
him to name a competent man; he received in reply a cold letter,
declining his request. He went to talk with the economics men at the
University of California, and not one of them was willing to meet him in
the faculty room; they asked him to take a walk! Not one of these young
instructors or research men was willing to take the job, even with a
good salary attached, and with the backing of two bishops!
Another instance: I don’t want to indicate the identity of this
informant, so will call him professor of Chinese metaphysics at a large
California university. He gave me some information for “The Goose-step,”
and because of the nature of this information he fell under suspicion,
and the Black Hand set out to punish him. This eminent specialist has a
standard text-book on Chinese metaphysics, in use everywhere in colleges
and universities throughout the United States. It is the most up-to-date
book on the subject, there is no other as good, or anywhere near as
good; nevertheless, this book has been thrown out of the three biggest
institutions in the state of California!
The University of California has a large branch in Los Angeles, and this
also made reply to “The Goose-step.” A young lady presented a copy of
the book to the library, and a few days later was requested to come and
take the contaminating thing away. (But the demand grew so pressing,
they had to let it in!) Then came their professor of education, a
gentleman by the name of Woellner, before the American Civil Liberties
Union, stating that “The Goose-step” was “full of vicious lies.” I wrote
him a courteous note, saying that I never wilfully made a false
statement, and would appreciate his pointing out the specific “lies” he
had noted. The professor in his reply gave no specifications, but
explained that I “state but half the truth.” He went on to put me in my
precise place:
Your scholarship is atrocious, your literary style is pitiful, your
social attitude unwholesome and your recommended cure, Socialism,
worse than any of the diseases you diagnose. American political and
social institutions are remarkably fine. They can only be made better
by those who love them and work for them from the inside. Bury the
hammer, pick up the flag and wave it over consecrated effort for the
perpetuation of all its glories.
I will make you a bet—that this flag-waving professor becomes a dean
inside two years!
Also Stanford makes answer; just as the last of this manuscript is going
to the printer, a new regent is appointed, Mr. Paul Shoup,
vice-president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and perhaps the most
active union smasher in the state. Ten or fifteen years ago we were told
that Hiram Johnson had driven the Southern Pacific out of California
politics. Today the Better America Federation openly controls the state
legislature, and everybody takes it for granted that Mr. Shoup should
dictate both nominations and legislation.
Nicholas Miraculous also made his answer to “The Goose-step”; and this
is one of the funniest stories I have to tell you. You know that for six
years our pious government has refused recognition to Soviet Russia,
because it isn’t “democratic.” We always did business with the czar—he
was “democratic,” but Lenin isn’t! Now, to test our sincerity, a ruffian
rises in Italy, and his thugs beat and murder the Socialists of that
country, and set up a castor-oil dictatorship. Does our pious government
refuse to recognize him? Our pious government falls on his neck. He
sends us an ambassador, and our great universities rush forward to do
him honor, and testify their devotion to the dictatorship of the
capitalist class. A string of American plutocrats, headed by Judge Gary,
go over to Italy and make obeisance before him, and come back to tell us
what a great man he is, and what a fine example he has set us.
So the young snobs of Columbia proceed to organize a castor-oil society
for their own university, and they make the assistant professor of Latin
the head of their organization. Arturo Giovannitti writes to President
Butler in protest: and what do you think Butler answers? He “has no
power to discipline a professor for his ideas,” and his university “has
through a long and honorable history lived up to the highest ideals of
freedom to seek the truth and freedom to teach.” After that, pick up
“The Goose-step” and read the half dozen chapters which tell how
Nicholas Murray Butler kicked out professors for holding and teaching
pacifist or radical ideas. Then you will understand what Alexander
Harvey meant when he wrote in the “Freeman”:
I have rolled over and over on the floor in my struggles to keep from
laughing at Nicholas Murray Butler—the Nicholas Murray Butler one
encounters in the works of Upton Sinclair. I wonder if there exists on
the planet any such person as he who, in the writings of Upton
Sinclair, is referred to by the name of Nicholas Murray Butler.
Whenever I am so melancholy as to think only of suicide I exhilarate
myself with this reflection: “The Nicholas Murray Butler of Upton
Sinclair exists!” Then my heart goes dancing with the daffodils.
To complete the story you must hear how President Butler’s students
proceeded to apply his “highest ideals of freedom to seek the truth and
freedom to teach.” Some members of the Students’ Reserve Corps were
doing the goose-step on the campus, and some other students jeered at
them from the dormitory windows. There was a fuss about it, and the
commandant of the Reserve Corps wrote a letter to the “Spectator,”
denouncing this disrespectful action. A graduate student of the
university, by the name of William L. Werner, a veteran of the Argonne
fighting, wrote to the “Spectator” in reply, stating that “someone
should inform the major that the war is over.” That was “freedom to seek
the truth and freedom to speak it,” according to President Butler’s
formula; and seven students of the university applied the formula by
coming to Werner’s room at midnight, blindfolding and binding him,
taking him out into the country, beating him with sticks and barrel
staves, and putting him through a cross-examination on “loyalty to the
nation.” And while this was going on in New York, the new ambassador
from Mussolini was being marched in the commencement procession at Yale
University, alongside Chief Justice Taft of our Supreme Court, receiving
the honorary degree of doctor of laws, and proceeding to teach to the
assembled college men a lesson in elementary Fascism.
I have told how Clark University made answer to “The Goose-step,” by
firing a dozen professors and getting an alumni whitewash. Also Syracuse
University made answer through its new chancellor, whose baccalaureate
sermon I find published in the “University Bulletin” for July, 1923.
Talking confidentially with members of his faculty, Chancellor Flint
admitted that I had “got Syracuse just about right”; after which he
proceeded to mount the rostrum before the assembled booboisie of the
city, and deliver a eulogy of Chancellor Day occupying twenty-four pages
of the bulletin, and starting with the sentence: “Nor am I willing to
allow Upton Sinclair’s clownish caricature to stand as the last
message,” etc. One of the professors sends me this bulletin, with the
comment: “This shows what a Methodist will do for a dollar!”
Also Amherst came forward to make its answer. I stated in “The
Goose-step” that this college had a liberal president, Alexander
Meiklejohn, who was making a brave fight against the interlocking
directorate. “He is still in office, for how long I do not know.” This
was published in March, and in June President Meiklejohn was fired, and
a dozen of his graduating students had the courage to defend him by
refusing their diplomas. It is amusing to notice that the grand duke of
this board is Dwight L. Morrow of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Company. A
friend of Mr. Morrow’s wrote to me, assuring me that he was really a
liberal, working hard for academic freedom; so I forebore to list him
among my interlocking directorate. Now I learn that he was the prime
mover in the ousting of Meiklejohn! It is worth noting that the
president of these trustees is the head of Ginn and Company, school-book
publishers; and among the other board members is Cal Coolidge, our
strike-breaking president, and Mr. Stearns, his department-store
millionaire “angel”; also Chief Justice Rugg of the Massachusetts
Supreme Court, who is interlocked with Clark University and Ginn and
Company’s Mr. Thurber.
CHAPTER LXXXVI
THE GOOSE-STEP ADVANCE
There are some universities which were not satisfied with the amount of
attention they received in “The Goose-step,” and came forward to demand
more. Most prominent among these is the University of Tennessee. I told
how by devious intrigue its president got rid of a friend of mine, an
excellent professor, on the ground that he was a Unitarian. Two months
after “The Goose-step” was out, the president proceeded to fire
Professor Sprowls, for the crime of having ordered some copies of James
Harvey Robinson’s “The Mind in the Making.” That wasn’t all there was to
it, of course; it had been discovered that Professor Sprowls was a
believer in evolution. Another member of the faculty, Mrs. Hamer of the
history department, was accused of having voted in the recent Knoxville
charter election! “Women have no business to vote,” said President
Morgan; and he told Mrs. Hamer that she would be dismissed if she went
to Nashville to represent some women’s clubs in the interest of equal
rights for women.
Because of these incidents the faculty of Tennessee proceeded to
organize; they drew up a project for faculty representation in the
government of the university, and some of the students who were ardent
in their support published a little paper called the “Independent
Truth.” Whereupon President Morgan prepared a questionnaire, and
summoned the professors before him and grilled them in the presence of a
stenographer. Had they had anything to do with the proposed constitution
for the University of Tennessee? Were they in sympathy with the
administration and its way of doing things? Had they had anything to do,
directly or indirectly, with the publication of the “Independent Truth?”
Had they attended any meetings dealing with the case of Dr. Sprowls? Had
they signed a petition asking the American Association of University
Professors to investigate conditions at the University of Tennessee? All
whose answers to this questionnaire were not satisfactory were summarily
discharged. One of them was Judge Neal, for thirteen years a member of
the Law School faculty, and the best professor at the university.
Another was a dean, whose crime had been an effort to reconcile the two
factions. The student publications were forbidden to discuss the issue
in any way; and in general the University of Tennessee got a thorough
drilling in the goose-step.
The Fundamentalists are going right on kicking out teachers of evolution
from colleges. I note an amusing incident at Kentucky Wesleyan: an
instructor of physics and mathematics signed an apology for believing in
evolution, regretting the harm that he had done to the college, and
agreeing not to discuss the subject during the remainder of his stay. He
did this on April 10th, and his job was up on May 29th; the poor fellow
could not afford to pay forty-nine days’ salary to keep his
self-respect! I am told of a less tragic incident at Morningside
College, Sioux City, Iowa, where a professor with a twelve years’ record
was slated to be fired as a believer in evolution, and hit upon a most
ingenious way of saving himself. There was an “examining committee”
appointed—and the professor recommended the head of this committee to
receive an honorary degree of doctor of divinity!
Some of the professors and students of the University of Missouri were
distressed because their institution got left out of “The Goose-step.”
The president here was determined to get into this volume, so he
canceled a speaking date of Kate Richards O’Hare before the Liberal Club
of the university. Two days later the editor of the St. Louis
“Post-Dispatch” addressed the students of the School of Journalism,
declaring that “the rising tide of intolerance is the greatest menace
our country faces today. The freedom of speaking outright guards our
other privileges; it must be unrestrained, accountable only under the
necessary laws of libel.” And at the end of this address the president
of the university came up to the lecturer, shook his hand and said:
“Sound doctrine; I agree with you.” Lest you be tempted to think that
this university president is mentally irresponsible, I mention that the
board of curators of the university was at this time asking the state
legislature for five million dollars. Also I mention that the students
of this wonderful university took part a few days later in the lynching
of a Negro within sight of the West Campus.
Also you will wish to know what happened at the University of North
Dakota, where a group of professors, learning from a former colleague
that I was to deal with their cases, united in a written request that I
should refrain from doing so. The latest news from North Dakota runs as
follows:
I am sorry to say that Professor Ladd seems definitely out at North
Dakota. The Board exonerated him of charges, but will not give him
back his post or reply to his request for a personal hearing. It is a
sad commentary that the faculty up there seem so cowed that it was
difficult to find a few men who would sign a request for the American
Association of University Professors to come in and make an
investigation. The request, of course, has to be made by members of
the local group at North Dakota. One of them recently wrote to me, “I
suppose Ladd feels pretty sore at us because we do not throw ourselves
into it, but some of us have families to consider and we may be too
old to find other positions, especially if we lose our present ones
under these conditions.” The rumor reaches me that the slick Tracy
Bangs is the man who is secretly responsible for the refusal to give
Ladd a square deal. But Libby hasn’t much to brag of, for he is merely
restored, as the letter to him says, “during good behavior.” I have
tried to do what I can for Ladd at long range, and have written over
my signature to various prominent men in North Dakota, but the replies
show me how reluctant these people are to contend against the forces
at work.
When I visited Pittsburgh I was told a good deal about the rule of the
Black Hand in that community, especially over the Carnegie Institute of
Technology. I omitted these stories at the request of the victims. But
now comes a letter from a student, telling me that some of these men are
gone, and there is to be “another house-cleaning” this year. The student
tells how the secretary of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor
spoke to a group of students, and a few days later an instructor stated
to a class that there had come to Carnegie Tech a notice from the United
States Steel Corporation, reading in substance as follows: Last week, on
such and such a day, at the bidding of your economic staff, so-and-so
spoke before a group of students at your school. He spoke in such and
such a room, and said this and that. If the person who is responsible
for this meeting is kept on the faculty at Carnegie Tech, do not expect
any further aid from the United States Steel Corporation. So came the
house-cleaning.
Another institution which escaped my attention was the Women’s Medical
College of Philadelphia. Immediately after “The Goose-step” appeared,
the board dismissed a professor of seventeen years’ standing, refusing
any explanation or charges. Thirty of the faculty resigned in protest,
among them a number of leading physicians of Philadelphia.
Also you will be interested to learn that the University of Minnesota
has been saved from Socialism by the intervention of the governor of the
state, who put his foot down on a co-operative book-store which the
students were starting. The governor did not think it proper to have “a
commercial enterprise” on the campus—so the sons of Minnesota farmers
will step across the street and buy their books from a private dealer at
thirty or forty per cent higher prices.
You will also wish to hear the latest news from the University of
Jabbergrab, which has graduated a class of fifteen hundred students,
more than half of them receiving commercial degrees. I have a clipping
from the New York “World,” March 11, 1923, occupying the top of four
columns:
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY TRAINS COMPETENT AUTO DRIVERS
TEACHING INSTITUTION HAS COURSES TO MEET SHORT-HAUL PROBLEMS
Also I quote a headline from my own Pasadena newspaper:
KU KLUX KLAN NOW HAS OWN COLLEGE
VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY IS TAKEN OVER TODAY FOR $350,000
Let no one say after this that there is no academic freedom in America!
Also let no one say that colleges and universities are not really
useful. From “Printer’s Ink,” January 18, 1923, I quote:
M. F. Hilfinger, vice-president of the A. E. Nettleton Shoe Company,
Syracuse, speaking before the Greater Buffalo Advertising Club,
declared that the new University of Buffalo will be the greatest
advertising asset the city has. He said that it is estimated that
Syracuse University brought at least $5,000,000 worth of business to
that city.
Also Secretary Weeks of the War Department has paid honor to higher
education: twenty-five of our principal colleges were designated for
special honors as reward for their services in teaching young men to
plunge bayonets into imitation human bodies. At the same time the
secretary of the navy went to Princeton and made a patriotic speech,
while the new Art and Architecture Building was dedicated to the honor
of the harvester machinery king. Mr. Mellon, secretary of the treasury,
and one of the three richest men in America, received an honorary degree
from the University of Jabbergrab; he marched through the Hall of Fame,
and listened to the Reverend Woelfkin, Mr. Rockefeller’s pastor,
denounce the Bolsheviks. Mr. Mellon also collected a degree from
Rutgers, together with the “wet” Governor Silzer of New Jersey, and the
dry Mr. Edward Bok, and the magnetic president of the General Electric
Company. Readers of “The Goose-step” have sent me quite a stack of
newspaper clippings, with the annual orations of the interlocking
directorate at the commencements of their intellectual munition
factories. They range all the way down from the chairman of the Standard
Oil Company of Indiana, and include every reactionary idea that ever
sprouted in the head of a prosperous but worried plutocrat.
CHAPTER LXXXVII
THE GOOSE-STEP DOUBLE-QUICK
I have in my collection a number of clippings, which demonstrate how
fast the goose-steppers are stepping their short journey to hell. At the
extremely pious Northwestern, which I have called “The University of
Judge Gary,” four men students, together with four “co-eds,” were
arrested by police detectives in a night raid on a house of assignation.
At this same Methodist institution a group of students were hazing a
freshman, who was so unsportsmanlike as to die during the procedure. The
hazers were annoyed, but decided to bury the body and say nothing about
it. A year later the body was discovered, and a prominent millionaire
relative of President Scott of the university said in a signed
statement: “An investigation of conduct at Northwestern University would
rock the kings of Evanston. The hypocrisy of the whole regime galls me
and disgusts me.”
Also I notice that at the University of South Dakota a hundred and sixty
men students staged a “pajama party,” in the course of which they
entered the women’s dormitories after midnight, and decked themselves in
various garments of the women, and so paraded through the streets. Also
I note that members of a fraternity at Columbia University have received
letters from a sorority at the University of Alabama, saying that the
sorority was collecting funds for a chapter house, and its members
offered to write love letters to Northern college boys, at the price of
five dollars the series. “Wouldn’t they like to receive once a week,
from now until June 30th, a real, honest-to-goodness love letter from a
little Southern girl?”
But let no one be discouraged; among my clippings I come upon the germ
of a great hope for higher education. A college out here in Southern
California has received a visit from the football team of Notre Dame
University, a Catholic institution with seventeen hundred students,
located in Indiana. It appears that these mighty gladiators have a
tendency to be nervous, prior to the classic contests upon which their
reputations depend, and coaches and alumni have been consulting
psychological experts to find out what to do about it. The result was a
remarkable discovery: the way to keep football men in proper mental
condition is to take their minds off their work and get them interested
in study! So the Notre Dame football team, along with its trainers and
coaches, brought out here to Southern California a squad of professors,
and recitations were conducted both on the train and in the hotel rooms.
You will realize the overwhelming importance of this psycho-gladiatorial
experiment; if once it should become the fashion for college athletes to
study, the fortune of American higher education would be made.
Nor is this the only promising sign in college life. At Dartmouth the
students got out an independent paper, called “Le Critique”; I quote a
few sentences, and you will recognize at once that this is a new note in
American under-graduate journalism:
Dartmouth is graduating about three hundred Babbitts a year to go
forth to exploit others for the good of themselves alone, to become
loyal Americans, and never think. Fraternity life is a joke, without
true brotherhood. The professors are intellectual wrecks, and teach at
Dartmouth only because it would be impossible for them to succeed at
any other trade.”
A similar incident occurred at the University of Wisconsin, where a
group of liberal students started an independent paper called the
“Scorpion.” In their first issue they made so bold as to print two
chapters from “The Goose-step,” dealing with their own university; the
editors, one of whom was my son, were summoned before the dean and
ordered to submit to censorship. There happen to be some twenty
Socialist legislators in the Wisconsin assembly, and these took up the
matter, and the promise was made that if the student editors were
expelled, there would be a legislative investigation, and some
university deans would be expelled; whereupon it was suddenly discovered
that the dignity of the university would be preserved if the editors of
the “Scorpion” would consent to announce at the top of their paper that
it was independent of university control!
Also I ought to mention the interesting incident which happened at the
University of Illinois, where Miss Allene Gregory, daughter of the first
president of the institution, was selected to write a biography of her
father, and to have it published under the auspices of the university.
Miss Gregory decided to have the volume published under other auspices,
and stated her reason:
I have had peculiar opportunities for an intimate knowledge of the
administration of this university since its beginning. I have watched
it grow, through many vicissitudes, on the sound principles of its
foundation, until recent years.
But it is now my duty to declare that those principles are flagrantly
and continually violated by administrative officers who have come into
power since President James retired. These officers have forfeited the
respect of the faculty and of the student body, and are already making
our university a byword in the educational world. No growth in size or
in wealth can compensate for our loss in morale and in reputation. Nor
can noisy self-congratulation and the suppression of criticism alter
the facts. Those of us who know the situation, and are unbiased, and
are free to speak, should do so. Wholesale rebuke is now our best
service. The safe passage of the recent appropriation bill now removes
the temporary expediency of refraining from criticism.
You may recall my story of how Mr. M. H. Hedges was kicked out of Beloit
College for writing a novel about it. Mr. Hedges knows our higher
education, and in an article in the “Nation” he gives a description of
the American college student. I yield to the temptation to quote one
paragraph:
The undergraduate of American colleges has been pictured as an
enthusiast; the fact is, he’s a stone. An apostate to youth, the
psychology books and the general impression notwithstanding, he is
neither passionate, nor impetuously loyal, nor exuberant, nor
impatient of trammels, nor idealistic. On the other hand, he is prim,
correct, frigid in respect to things of the mind; and furtive,
indiscreet, bold in reference to his instincts; and covetous and
greedy in respect to grades, credits, managerships, class
distinctions, and degrees—non-essentials. His favorite word is “pep,”
and goaded by institutional convention he will stand for hours and
shout himself hoarse for a team, but he will callously overlook the
birth of the Russian republic, or the pathetic degradation and
suffering of the Armenian people. He is intolerant of personal
difference and diversity of character and yet clandestinely he will
disturb a college assembly with an inopportune alarm clock, asserting
a right to personal eccentricity. He is everywhere surrounded by
records of the past’s greatness, and blindly moves in a present not
realized. In the classroom he daily examines theories of government
and constitutions, while his own social life upon the campus is a
specimen of primitive tribal life with taboos, hecklings,
mob-contagions, and naive sexual preferences. The fraternity is his
tribe; the college his clan; and in parties and “functions,” he
competes in amorous and pugnacious exploits.
Also I find in the “New Student”—a most useful little paper which you
can order from 2929 Broadway, New York—an account of the activities of
the National Student Forum, which brought six students from Europe to
visit American universities, with the idea of widening the cultural
opportunities of the youth of both parts of the world. The six students
were divided into two groups, and an American student tells how he took
one group, a German, an Englishman, and a Czecho-Slovak, to visit
American colleges. The presidents of two large universities, Minnesota
and Purdue, refused to allow their precious fledglings to be exposed to
this foreign corruption at all.
At Fiske they made a two-day visit, and much to their surprise, were met
at the station by the president, and taken in his car to a hotel. After
a supervised breakfast, they were taken to the chapel, and the leader
and one of the European students gave brief talks before the assembly.
Then the student body was marched out with extraordinary rapidity, and
the four visitors were kept in the president’s office. They were lunched
by the president in the Chamber of Commerce rooms; in the afternoon they
were taken for an automobile ride to inspect historic landscapes—and
when they came back the leader made his escape, and was approached by
one of the students, and asked if the visitors could not find a little
time for the students. “The president says you are all booked up!”
In other words, President McKenzie of Fiske University was devoting his
time to a conspiracy to keep his students from having private
conversation with three young liberals from Europe! Brought face to face
with the issue, the president declared angrily that the visitors had
done the university “a moral wrong” by forcing this issue upon him. But
then, when the party threatened to leave, it appeared that the president
could not afford to have it known that he had refused to permit the
visitors to talk to his students! After hours of “begging, threatening,
and accusing,” meetings with the students took place—and nothing
happened!
The University of Oklahoma received the visitors at the Y. M. C. A. “Our
reception was cold and clammy.” There was a “get-together” conference
with the student leaders; editors of student papers, athletic champions,
Y. M. C. A. secretary, etc. “It took about two minutes to see that these
fellows were quite convinced that we were Bolsheviks, and another two to
realize that they had gathered together, determined to heed and
understand nothing, but merely to be maliciously unintelligent and
disagreeable.” That evening the three foreign students spoke in nearby
churches; while the head of the party was summoned into a session before
the student leaders. He tells the story:
For twenty minutes I sat and listened to the “leaders of the campus”
tell me that although they had nothing against us personally, in fact
they rather liked us, still on careful consideration of their
responsibility for “the good of the whole,” they thought the
university, and especially the freshmen and sophomores, too
underdeveloped, and too susceptible to evil influences to hear what we
had to say. And further, that they just wanted to mention that, as the
whole student body was getting angrier and angrier at our presence on
the campus, they thought it best that we leave as soon as possible,
for fear that some student group would suddenly attain the
overwhelming climax of its wrath and throw us out. Could anyone help
laughing at that? I did laugh, and they commended me on taking the
“disappointment” so well.
CHAPTER LXXXVIII
THE GOOSE-STEP REVIEW
“The Goose-step” would have been a failure if it had not excited bitter
antagonism. Many collegians rushed to defend their alma mater; and the
purpose of this final chapter is to review their reviews.