7 


JUNE, 1927 ‘ VOL. XI—No. J0 


Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 


The 
American Teacher 


KS, THE ORGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 


Ss ——<$<— 


T 


Y 
Pacific Coast 























Number 











SERENE 








, | a | A Tribute 


“Knowledge may be gained 
from books; but the love of 
knowledge is transmitted 
only by personal contact. 
No one has deserved better 
of the Republic than the * 
Unknown Teacher.” 


—HENRY VAN DYKE. 


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- 
— — = 


Published by _ , i 
RICAN "FEDERATION AB B026 327 So. La Salle St., ~ Beier 





Single Copy 15c—Yearly Subscription $1.00 











2 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 











Volum 





TI 





HEREFORE when we build let us think that we build forever. Let it 
not be for present delight, nor for present use alone, let it be such work 
as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think as we lay stone on stone, 
that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands 
have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and 


























































the wrought substance of them, “See! this our fathers did for us.”—John The 
Ruskin. ; can Fe 
Franci: 
DUCATION does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It the loc 
g peop y + 
means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. It is not teaching lejo (1 
the youth the shapes of the letters and the tricks of numbers, and leaving them (1) a 
to turn their arithmetic to roguery, and their literature to lust. It means, on further 
the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of made 
their bodies and souls. It is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done right o: 
by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise, but above of Lab 
all—by example.—John Ruskin. The 
bind th 
tack fr 
ment ; 
IL thority 
policies 
to spea 
— At a meeting of the general membership of the in a 
Teachers’ Union in the City of New York, Local §, fie the 
CONTENTS American Federation of Teachers, the following resolu- side c 
: f reatme 
Sila tion was adopted: 
The California State Federation.......... i Whereas, The Chinese people have been conductinga§ The 
Samuel Gerald McLean long struggle for national independence ; amply j 
Sabbatical Leave ee ee ee ee 4 Whereas, The success of their struggle for. freedom tion . - 
Th gated ty A oe 5 is threatened by the battleships and troops of four of 7. h: 
‘ E. Ek. yy Ban wa Be BAG wr o9’2 he five great powers and at any moment the mobilization gate, ‘ 
The Development of Junior Colleges in of troops and marines may lead to another world war; the disc 
EI 0% i Gaiclocich bv en dedcduascadeus Whereas, The trade unions of China are playing a of th: 
Pp we z Cook Q leading role in the struggle for a free China, a struggle & teacher: 
von, Ph wa, SOU ty 2 rea 1 Ae eee - which will raise the standard of living of the Chines By... 
May Darling : workers and prevent investors in Chinese industry from He ha 
The Portland Teachers’ Tenure........... 10 using the low-paid Chinese workers to reduce the living , . 
P. auline I. Newlin : : f standards in America; therefore be it spective 
ge me ag hry ee eae e 11 Resolved, That we adopt this resolution and urge the § routine 
ft eee er American Federation of Teachers to bring this resolt- develops 
The Diary of a Teacher................- 13 tion before the attention of the Executive Board of the = 
. Pe ooo hea idles 14 American Federation of Labor to extend its i has oe 
art time vee SS: SESORER. +00 + + aid and support to the Chinese Labor Movement e 
oe of Typewriting..... 15 to the national movement for independence in theit § "Umeric 
F. M. Butts efforts for a higher living standard and for a gover Legislat 
Address Before Cambridge Teachers...... 17 ment free from outside imperialist domination; be " § teach, 
John M. Brewer further ae a 
; , . 
aay ge New Tricks............ 2 Resolved, That we request the withdrawal of ouf additi ~ 
INS oki | oicdvgs cys conde . xs 22 marines and battleships from China, the cancellation of J “C1t10n 
eas 1’ ale dy sdutuce as ¢uameakeny ks 28 unequal treaties which oppress China, the recognition Californ 
Our Locals TUTOR OVE Geert Pe eee 31 of the Canton National Government by the government Worked 
=_—— of the United States. 














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The American Teacher 


Entered as second class matter October 20, 1926, at the post office at Chicago, Illinois, under the Act of March 3, 1879. 


for mailing at special rate of postage p 


for in section 1103, Act of February 28, 


Acceptance 
1925, authorized November $8, 1926. 











Volume XI, No. 10 


JUNE, 1927 


One Dollar a Year 














The California State Federation of the American 
Federation of Teachers 
Samuel Gerald McLean, Local No. 31 


The California State Federation of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers was organized in San 
Francisco in October, 1919, by representatives of 
the locals then existing in the state, namely, Val- 
lejo (1), Fresno (2), San Francisco (1), Visalia 
(1) and Sacramento (2). The affiliation of 
further locals with the state organization was 
made optional. Furthermore, the discretionary 
right of locals to affiliate with the state. Federation 
of Labor was definitely recognized. 

The objects of the state organization were to 
bind the young locals firmly together against at- 
tack from enemies of the teacher-union move- 
ment; to create a centralized representative au- 
thority that would not only tend to guide the 
policies of locals, but would also be in a position 
to speak for a large body of California teachers 
in times of crises; and to build up a central fund 
for the defense of any teacher suffering unjust 
treatment at the hands of local school officials. 

The experience of the past seven years has 
amply justified the existence of the State Federa- 
tion. The State meetings, executive and dele- 
gate, have furnished excellent opportunities for 
the discussion of general educational policies and 
of th: difficulties besetting particular locals and 
teachers. The class-room teacher has had a 
chance to express. his viewpoint clearly and fully. 
He has been given a conscious entity with a per- 
spective extended beyond customary class-room 
routine into the broad field of general educational 
development. 

In matters of legislation the State Federation 
has been effective out of all proportion to its 
numerical strength. During sessions of the State 
Legislature it has often maintained an official 
teacher representative at the State Capitol to 
watch over educational interests in general. In 
addition, Paul Scharrenberg, Secretary of the 
California State Federation of Labor, has always 
Worked in the closest co-operation with union 


teachers to rally labor members tp the support 
or opposition of school bills. Finally, the Sac- 
ramento locals, right on the spot night and day, 
during sessions of the legislature, have rendered 
to the teachers of California and indirectly to 
the teachers of the United States a wealth of 
arduous service that has never been, and doubtless 
never will be, fully understood and appreciated 
outside the union movement. 

An outstanding piece of legislative work was 
the enactment of the California Teachers’ Tenure 
Law, which provided that after two years’ pro- 
bationary service, a teacher could not be arbi- 
trarily dismissed by a school board without a 
public hearing at which he might be represented 
by counsel, 

Again, amongst other measures sponsored by 
the State Federation was the Teachers’ Retire- 
ment Bill providing for an increase of some 300% 
in the teachers’ retirement allowance after some 
30 years’ service. Conflict between Governor 
Richardson and State School Superintendent 
Wood—who, by the way, has always been a faith- 
ful friend of the Federation—resulted however, in 
the veto of this measure as well as of other school 
measures equally progressive. An important 
thing from the union standpoint, however, has 
been the recognition of the State Federation as a 
definite factor in the educational work of the 
state. r 

The State Federation has gone openly to the 
support of teachers believed to have been un- 
justly treated by their school superiors. In Fres- 
no, for example, before the enactment of the 
state Tenure law, several teachers were dismissed 
on the ground of incompetence (?). A libel 
action against the City School Superintendent was 
started and WON. Although under the law-as it 
then existed, it was impossible to force reinstate- 
ment of the accused teachers, yet their records 
were publicly cleared and the superintendent very 


4 ) THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


soon left Fresno!!! Similarly, in the cases of 
Owens v. Santa Cruz Board of Education, and 
Hardy v. Albany Board of Education, the State 
Federation took a financial interest. 

But perhaps the greatest service that the State 
Federation has rendered the teachers of Calif- 
ornia and of the United States, has been to force 
some democratization at least of the old-line 
orthodox teachers’ associations. To my mind, 
that has been, the truly great work: of the 
American Federation of Teachers also. Such 
has always been the real mission of liberal minori- 
ties. The class-room teacher has been given some 
recognition in the deliberations of general 
teachers’ associations; he has even been allowed 
to have a separate class-room organization as 
superintendents have had all along and here and 
there he has been given the privilege of sitting 
in on Councils of Administration. 

The tragic thing is that with such democratiza- 
tion comes the seed of the destruction of the 
democratizing agency itself. The young teacher, 
born into an educational world already com- 
paratively democratized through the bitter sacri- 
fices of his predecessors, sees little excuse for 
the existence of an organization whose professed 
original objects are apparently more or less iden- 
tical with those of an old association to which, 
willingly or unwillingly, the great herd of teachers 
belong. He knows not how or when the old re- 
actionary organization stole the thunder of the 
new liberal one. Furthermore, there is always the 
silent pressurd of the ruler on the movement that 
in any way threatens to cramp his authority. Well 
has J. Russell Smith of Columbia University 
said: “While a benevolent despotism is the most 
efficient type of government, history records no 
means of keeping despots benevolent.” 


THE SAN FRANCISCO FEDERATION OF 
TEACHERS’ PROGRAM OF ACTION 
FOR THE YEAR 1927 No. 61 
Revision of the Course of Study for Grades 7-12, 


Inclusive, on the Basis of Junior High and Senior 
High Plan. 

A Professional Library for Teachers with Reading 
Room Facilities. 

One Year Off with Half Pay After Each Ten Years 
ef Service for Purposes of Study or Travel. 

An Adequate State Tenure Law for Teachers. 

Equal Pay for Teachers Having Equal Experience, 
Preparation, and Certification. 

Co-operative Bulletin for Publicity Purposes. 

Retirement Regulations. 

An Educational Building. 





SABBATICAL LEAVE 
Paul J. Mohr, President, California State Fed. 
eration of Teachers and Local No. 61 


In our previously published program of action 
for the year 1926-7, item three, was “One year 
off with half pay after each ten years of service.” 


The first. step toward a realization of the 
privileges and benefits of sabbatical leave has been 
accomplished for the teachers of California in the 
enactment by our legislature of a bill which 
authorizes boards of education to grant special 
leave on part pay to teachers who have served at 
least seven years in the district. 

A committee of representatives from teacher 
organizations of the bay region was formed early 
in the school year, and an active campaign was 
begun through the teachers of the state in favor 
of the principle of sabbatical leave. Individuals 
and officers of organizations were requested to 
confer with their legislators and ask per sup- 
port and cooperation. 

At the request of the joint committee the City 
Attorney of San Francisco drafted a bill in the 
form of an enabling act authorizing boards of 
education to grant leaves on part pay and also 
providing for the exchange of teachers. The pre- 
liminary work had been so well done that the 
bill, when submitted to the legislature, found little 
opposition in the assembly and none in the sen- 
ate. It is now before the governor for signa 
ture. 

The provisions of the bill briefly areas fol- 
lows : 

1. One year off with pay not to exceed one-half the 
regular salary after seven years of continuous service 
in the district. (Short leaves for illness do not in- 
terrupt the continuity of service.) 

2. Exchange of teacher with one of another state 
or nation. A temporary certificate may be issued to 
the exchange teacher for a period of one year. The 
teacher on exchange is paid his or her regular salary by 
the board granting the leave. 

3. Absence on account of sabbatical leave or ¢x- 
change of teacher is not to be deducted in computing 
the length or continuity of service for retirement oF 
for salary increments. 

4. The above leaves may be granted to those in ad- 
ministrative positions as well as to classroom teachers. 

5. Boards of education are authorized to make neces 
sary regulations for carrying out the provisions of the 
act. 

The next step is to get local boards to put im 
operation a system of granting the desired leaves. 





(The 
Union 
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(The following account of the Portland Teachers’ 
Union is not given on the assumption that its history 
and its achievements are anything unusual. They are 
not. However, when some day the story of the growth 
and development in America of the movement for or- 
ganization of its teachers is fully told, a record of such 
growth and development in its integral parts will be 
most valuable. The American Federation of Teachers 
will do the teachers of America, and the labor move- 
ment in particular, a great service in making available 
the materials for such a story by encouraging the local 
teachers’ unions throughout the United States each to 
make their contributions to the project. Some one with 
the spirit and the enthusiasm for such a task will then 
come forward to weave the parts into a connected 
whole. The Portland Teachers’ Union herewith makes 
its humble contribution. toward. that end.) 

The Portland Teachers’ Union began its 
existence in 1919. It was a child of necessity. 
The Great War had boosted the cost of living 
toa point which made teachers feel the pinch. 
Portland had an unenviable record for paying 
its teachers low wages. In 1914 the maximum 
was $1,350. In 1916 an increase of $250 was 
granted the teachers and they looked upon 
their $1,600 as a munificent sum—until they 
began to pay bills on the ever. rising price 
level. Agitation, therefore, began, but by the 
time it had got well under way, the war had 
ended and the period of deflation of wages had 
set in. Teachers therefore saw themselves in 


increase which had hardly kept them at the 
pre-war level. 

In the meantime, labor in the city of Port- 
land had had its heyday of high wages and 
phenomenal growth. Never had it felt such 
power in numbers and. in full treasuries as 
during the Wilsonian period of encourage- 
ment. Teachers could not but make com- 
parisons. Meek and submissive, they had ac- 
cepted gratefully the crumbs that had fallen 
tothem from the riches which showered itself 
upon the nation as it helped to make the world 
safe for democracy. Labor, through effective 
otganization, had secured new levels in wages. 
Even in slow-moving, conservative Portland, 
labor was becoming daring enough to think 
of building itself a permanent home, a con- 





The Portland Teachers’ Union 


E. E. Schwarztrauber, Vice-Pres. American Federation of Teachers 
Local No. 111 




































a worse state than before even with the $300 


summation realized in 1921. Its evident pros- 
perity was an object lesson to teachers. 

The American Federation of Teachers was 
at that time fortunate in the possession of 
funds for maintaining organizers in the field. 
Miss Josephine Colby, then of Fresno, Cali- 
fornia, was doing some active work up and 
down the coast educating the teachers in the 
necessity for a new type of organization. The 
term “teachers’ union,” thrilled some of us and 
alarmed others. But the idea was novel and, at 
the time, a good many Portland teachers flirted 
with it. Committees were authorized in both 
grade and high school organizations to make 
a study of teachers’ union activities elsewhere. 
Public meetings were held for the purpose of 
allowing open discussion of the question. The 
Oregon Civic League, an actively functioning 
organization of men and. women at that time, 
invited Charles B. Stillman, then touring the 
West on an organization campaign, to present 
his case before the public at a noon luncheon. 
Teachers, who were present at that meeting 
in large numbers since it was on a Saturday, 
expressed, in no uncertain manner, their sym- 
pathies for the speaker. Further publicity on 
the unionization of teachers, now an issue in 
staid old Portland, came from the newspapers 
who were naturally shocked that teachers 
should be thinking of being so undignified as 
to affiliate with labor. 

It was an organizer who finally did the work 
in Portland, and did it among high school, 
not grade, teachers. The grade teachers had 
a strong local organization controlled by a 
small group of teachers hostile to teachers’ 
unions. In the spring of 1919, a. committee 
was authorized by the high school teachers to 
make an investigation and bring in a. report 
on teachers’ unions in the fall. On this com- 
mittee were some of the most active leaders 
of the association. A majority of the com- 
mittee were favorably inclined to the forma- 
tion of a union. They set to work. In the 
meantime Mrs. Mary Brennan Inkster, then 
doing organization work in Seattle, had come 




































6 








down to Portland to speak before a meeting 
of high school teachers. Mrs. Inkster in the 
course of her lecture urged immediate sign- 
ing of the charter for a local. A few signed. 
At an evening meeting, the required number 
of signatures was secured and the union was 
launched. 


The signers of the charter were later charged 
with having acted without authority. Thev 
had, but subsequent events proved that had 
they waited for authorization from the High 
School Teachers’ Association, there never 
would have been a union in Portland. Jn 
spite of opposition, membership in the new 
union grew until, by the end of the following 
school year, it included about 30% of the 
high school teachers of the city. 

Without doubt, the impelling motive in 1919 
for membership in the teachers’ union, then 
known as the High School Teachers’ Union, 
was the hope that through it leverage might 
be secured for prying loose another increase 
in salary. The fact is that in the fall of 1920, 
the Board of Education promised the teachers 
an additional $500 per year, thus raising the 
maximum to $2,100. Whether that raise 
caused loss of ardor for unionization or 
whether the novelty of being affiliated with 
workers had worn off, membership began to 
fall off as it was doing in the world of the 
worker at large. And with the population of 
Portland steadily increasing, thus necessitat- 
ing an increase of one-third in the high school 
teaching staff, the teachers’ union is not yet 
back to its former numerical status. It re- 
mains a minority group. Yet it is in this con- 
nection an interesting coincidence, scarcely 
necessary to point out, that the second salary 
increase came a year after the organization of 
the union. 

Opposition to the union, by the press and 
by the school administration, was most in 
evidence at the time of its organization, and 
for a time afterwards. For some three years 
no official recognition was accorded the union 
by the superintendent’s office. Gradually 
there came a change, until by now the union 
is practically on a par with the other school 
organizations in the place accorded it in school 
matters. Its services are sought particularly 
where it can act as a bridge between the 
schools and the local labor unions. 










THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The activities of the union have been. varied 
and valuable. In 1921, it was instrumental in 
the formation of the Portland Labor College. 
Its members were on the original committee 
which presented to the Portland Central 
Labor Council the plan for a labor college, 
From its ranks have been drawn a large share 
of the teachers for the classes. A formter presi- 
dent of the teachers’ union was for four years 
director of the college. A member of the 
Board of Representatives of the college is al- 
ways supplied by the teachers’ union. In fact 
the backbone of support of the Portland Labor 
College has been the teachers’ union. 

Space will allow scarcely more than a nam- 
ing of further activities the union has engaged 
in. When the thrift campaign brought bank- 
ing into the schools, the union protested the 
undue pressure being exerted on teachers by 
the local bank interested in the project. When 
the American Bankers’ Association, through 
its local branch, sought to establish its type 
of propaganda in the schools by means of 
lectures to seniors of the high schools, the 
union gave aid to the labor college in its 
efforts to secure similar rights for labor lee 
tures in the schools. 


When Senator Eddy, of the state legislature, 
attempted, at successive sessions, to revise the 
high school course of study by legislation in 
the interests of “practical business men,” the 
union aroused opposition, and, at the last ses- 
sion, helped definitely to defeat such revision. 
During the past winter it has actively aided 
the labor college in putting across a series of 
open forum lectures. 


The Portland Teachers’ Union, as it is now 
called since the opening of its membership 
privileges to grade teachers, has consistently 
conducted studies within its own group 
economic questions, international relations, 
and the problems of the teaching profession 
in general. It sponsored a successful confer 
ence of history teachers in the city on “Ob 
jectives in History Teaching.” At the present 
time it is making a study of teacher load 
propaganda in the schools, sabbatical leave, 
teachers’ tenure, and problems in progressivé 
education. , 








The people never give up their liberty but une 
some delusion.—Burke. 






















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The Development of Junior Colleges in California 
Edward I. Cook, Sacramento Junior College, Local No. 31 


Unexpected growth of our high schools within 
the past decade flooded the colleges and universi- 
ties with students to such an extent that relief 
became imperative. Proposals were of two kinds: 
(1) limit the number to be admitted, arbitrarily 
or by selection; (2) provide a new type of in- 
stitution. 

The pressure of numbers coming from the high 
schools, coupled with the desire of parents for 
additional educational opportunities nearer home, 
rendered the restrictive policy unacceptable. The 
number of students graduated from the high 
schools of California increased from 8,963 in 
1916 to 23,992 in 1926. One-tenth of all high 
school students in the United States are enrolled 
in the schools of California. 

A junior college as it is known in California 
is an institution that provides two years of col- 
lege work on four years of high school. As 
early as 1907, high schools were permitted to 
give some work of college grade. Few schools, 
however, availed themselves of the provisions of 
the law. In 1921, the present law was enacted 
“which provides for junior colleges in the follow- 
ing types of districts: (1) district junior colleges 
in high school districts; (2) union junior college 
districts ; (3) county junior college districts. Be- 
lore a junior college can be established in any 
district, it must have an average daily attendance 
“fof four hundred in high school and an assessed 
valuation of ten million dollars. 

High school boards in districts having an as- 
sessed valuation of three million dollars are 
authorized to establish junior college courses of 
study covering not more than two years of col- 
kge work. They may include subjects required 
for the junior certificate at the University of 
California and such other courses as they may 


MS, deem advisable. 


There are at present eight separate junior col- 


“Bleges in operation and three more have been 


authorized by the State Board of Education. 
There were 3,479 students enrolled in 1926. To 


74 these should be added 2,293 students enrolled in 


‘BJunior college courses given in nineteen high 
schools, making a total of 5,772 students that 
have received instruction in the first two years 
of college work. This number is considerably in 


~ excess of. the number of freshmen in the state 


university. 

Figures furnished by the Sacramento Junior 
College present striking evidence of the popularity 
of this new type of school. 


Reg. Ex.-Hr. 
Stu- Stu- Gradu- 
Year dents dents Total ates 

1922-23 198 174 174 22 (Mixedwith $ 50,944 
1923-24 227 352 579 40 H.S.2yrs.) 78,466 
1924-25 402 320 722 54 22 97,255 
1925-26 516 331 847. 8&3 27 121,850 
1926-27, 727 405 1132 130 36 162,037 


Faculty Budget 


This is the largest. junior college in the state 
but its growth is fairly typical of the others. 


From the funds derived from the Federal 
Mineral Lands Act of Feb. 25, 1920, the state 
appropriates $2,000 for each junior college and 
$100 for each student in average daily attendance. 
Additional funds are raised by county and dis- 
trict taxation. If students from a county having 
no junior college attend elsewhere, the tuition is 
provided by the county in which the student 
claims residence. 

The law provides that all graduates of Calif- 
ornia high schools shall be admitted and other 
persons eighteen years of age, if in the judgment 
of the principal they would profit by the instruc- 
tion, may be admitted. Graduates of the high 
schools are divided into two classes: (1) those 
students having fifteen recommended units and 
(2) those having less than fifteen recommended 
units. The University of California accepts for 
admission to the freshman class only those of 
the first group while the junior colleges must 
accept all who graduate from high school. 

To this second group, the junior college offers 
another chance to secure a college education. If 
a non-recommended student enters junior college 
and does the work required for the full two years, 
the faculty may recommend him for transfer to 
the upper division of the university. It has been 
found that approximately one-third of the non- 
recommended students coming from the high 
schools attain the standard required for recom- 


‘ mendation to the university. Touton of the Uni- 


versity of Southern California found that 40% 
of the non-recommended group from high school 





8 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


rated higher than the average of the recommended 
group. . 

The junior college is frequently described as 
an “isthmus.” But it is more than that. For an 
increasing number it provides “terminal facili- 
ties.” Students who do not plan to complete a 
university course and those who find it inadvisable 
to continue for the full four years, but who de- 
sira to pursue work in cultural or vocational sub- 
jects for one or more years are enabled to do su 
without feeling under obligation to explain ever 
afterward why they did not graduate from col- 
‘lege. 

To meet the needs of the community, many 
junior colleges offer extra-hour courses in music, 
art, dramatics, history, languages, education, 
psychology, social science and a variety of other 
subjects. In these courses and in the regular 
classes are found increasing numbers of people 
who are continuing their education while follow- 
ing their regular vocations. 

As to the standards of work done in the junior 
colleges, a recent statement by Ray Lyman Wil- 
bur, President of Stanford University, is in point: 
“The quality of the instruction in the junior col- 
leges offers at least as satisfactory preparation as 
does our own lower-division work, judged on 
the basis of our experience.” Stanford is pre- 
paring to turn over the lower division work to 
junior colleges. Other higher institutions will 
doubtless consider the policy. 

For California, it may be said with some de- 
gree of assurance that the development of the 
junior college has proceeded far enough to in- 
dicate that “the normal public school system of an 
established community will soon have its junior 
college.” 


BIRTH OF BETTER LABOR PLAN SEEN IN 
PEACE BANQUET IN FRESNO 


In Fresno on December 8, 1926, occurred a banquet, 
the spirit of which would have been interesting to any 
union teacher. The organized workers of Fresno enter- 
tained their employers in what is expected to be the 
first annual get-together of employer and employee in 
Fresno. The result as prophesied by speakers will be 
a still finer spirit of co-operation between capital and 
labor. One of the speakers of this banquet said, “Em- 
ployer and employee meet on the basis of just plain 
ordinary friendship and citizenship with no condescen- 
sion or patronage on either side.” 

Members of Fresno’s teachers’ union were seated at 
one table with their guests, the city superintendent of 
schools and members of the board of education. 








MR. PAUL J. MOHR, PRESIDENT OF NO. 6j, 
AND THE CALIFORNIA STATE FED- 
ERATION OF TEACHERS 
Mr. Paul J. Mohr, president of No. 61, and of the 
California Federation of Teachers, is a widely-known 
educator.. He is a graduate of Oberlin College, holds 
a degree of Master of Arts from the University of 
California, and is also a member of the national scholar- 
ship society, Phi Beta Kappa. For many years, he has 
taught Mathematics at Polytechnic High School, where 
he now holds the position of Head of the Mathematics 

Department, Dean of Boys and Vice Principal. 

Ever since the constitution of No. 61 was adopted, in 
1920, Mr. Mohr has served as president. As it 
would seem very unfamiliar and strange not to see 
Mr. Mohr at his daily duties at “Poly,” so it would 
seem very strange to think of No. 61 without President 
Mohr, so intimately and directly has his deep interest, 
influence and efficiency affected the organization. He 
has been serving for some time as delegate to the 
Labor Council and has been honored with the position 
of Chairman of the Educational. Committee of the 
Council. Our interests, professional as well as educa- 
tional, in the Labor Council, have, therefore, been most 
ably represented. P 

Every professional movement in San Francisco, which 
has for its aim the improvement of the condition and 
status of the teacher along professional and educational 
lines, finds Mr. Mohr as a leader. Two years ago he 
was Chairman of the Joint Salary Campaign Commit 
tee of the different teacher organizations, which suc- 
cessfully culminated in a salary increase for every 
teacher in the San Francisco School Department. Mr. 
Mohr served on the Sabbatical Leave Committee; the 
result of this committee’s work being the sabbatical 
leave bill, which has just passed both houses of the 
legislature, and is now awaiting the signature of the 
governor. 

The officers and members of No. 61 are proud that 
their president is the state president of the California 
State Federation of Teachers. When Mr. Mohr was 
elected president of the State Federation, last De- 
cember, he was asked by one of the officers of No. 6l 
about the state convention. With characteristic modesty 
he told all of the details except his election as state 
president. Two weeks later the chagrined officer found 
out that Mr. Mohr had been elected president of the 
State Federation. 

We know that progressive measures will be carried 
on, that wise judgment and tolerance will prevail, 3 
Mr. Paul J. Mohr, efficiently, quietly and modestly cat 
ries on his work as president of No. 61 and of the 
California State Federation of Teachers. 

Sacramento, Calif., May 25, 1927. 














































ARE SCHOOL HOURS TOO LONG? 
Physicians attending the annual meeting of the New 
York State Medical Society at Niagara Falls are 
ported to have been unanimous in the conclusion that 
school hours are too long, the lunch period too short 
and requirements for home study too severe. 
























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As We See Ourselves 


May Darling, Portland Teachers’ Union, Local No. 111 


In discussing conditions relative to Port- 
land public schools, one is forced to admit 
that the chief hindrance to progress lies not 
so much in the general school system nor in 
the administrative departments, as in. the 
teaching force. While conditions having to 
do with the supervisory and administrative 
departments are by no means ideal, still there 
has been such a marked improvement in the 
past few years that one cannot be. disheart- 
ened. The willingness of the superintendents 
to listen to suggestions from the teachers and 
their very evident desire to better the lot of 
the teachers, indicate that they are sincerely 
interested in improving the school system. 

But when one turns to the teaching force 
there is less reason for optimism. A visitor 
coming to Portland from the East often 
imagines that in this land of “great open 
spaces” he will find not merely disregard for 
many of the conventions of life, but also signs 
of progress; perhaps, forsooth, even “radical- 
ism.” He is always disappointed—or relieved, 
as the case may be. He discovers a com- 
munity where ideas take root slowly, where 
traditions and fixed habits of thinking hold 
people to customs long since discarded in 
more progressive cities. 

What is true of the community as a whole, 
is true to an even greater degree of teachers. 
Many of them native Oregonians, children of 
pioneers who struggled to gain a rich and 
beautiful land for their descendants, passing 
iton to them with the admonition to hold 
it at all costs, educated in schools dominated 
by a narrow provincialism, spending their 
lives in a locality almost untouched by the 
seething currents of modern industrial life, it 
is little wonder that teachers of Portland are 
Cautious, not to say reactionary, 

A campaign for the increase of salaries, ox 
the possibility of the election to the school 
board of someone unfriendly to the teachers, 
will arouse a temporary enthusiasm and reveal 
arather amazing ability for united political 
action. But once the battle is over, the old 
lethargy returns—acceptance without a mur- 
mur of conditions that make for bad teaching 


—poorly equipped school houses, backward 
courses of study, outworn methods, obsolete 
text books. The two main teachers’ organiza- 
tions, the Grade Teachers’ Association and the 
High School Teachers’ Association, function 
excellently and efficiently when the material 
needs of the teachers are at stake; for the rest 
little is accomplished by them. 

Organized labor likewise reflects the gen- 
eral atmosphere of the community. Respect- 
able, \bothered but little by many of the prob- 
lems affecting great industrial centers, it is 
content to fight doggedly, and usually suc- 
cessfully, for better hours and higher wages, 
concerning itself very little with abstract ques- 
tions having to do with social and economic 
justice. Politicians respect its power. Sel- 
dom does a campaign for bonds to build a 
new bridge, or to change the city charter so 
as to provide for an increase in the salaries 
of the city fathers, come to a close without 
organized labor being visited by public offi- 
cials, or members of influential civic organiza- 
tions, respectfully requesting labor’s support 
for their pet projects. 

The above being true, it naturally follows 
that there is no great stigma attached to mem- 
bership in the Teachers’ Union. School offi- 
cials do not frown on union teachers; non- 
tunion teachers apparently do not fear them— 
not much, at least.. The Portland Teachers’ 
Union is recognized as a legitimate school 
organization. 

And yet the millenium dawneth not ; 

One is tempted to add, as a postscript, the 
answer to the question as to why teachers 
with an urge for progress remain in Portland. 
A visitor may learn the answer by standing 
some evening at sunset on the ridge of hills 
that guard the western entrance to the city. 
Around him are tall fir trees; below him a 
gleaming river; beyond the river, blue hills 
with a majestic motintain rising from’ their 
midst, its snowy slopes turning ‘from’ Tose~ to 
amethyst in the setting sun; behind him a 
beautiful evergreen valley stretching away 
towards the Pacific Ocean.. These are com- 
pensations not to be scorned! 





10 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


THE PORTLAND TEACHERS’ TENURE 
Pauline I. Newlin, Portland Teachers’ Union, 
Local No. 111 


The right of teachers to be secure in their 
positions as long as they render efficient ser- 
vice is now more or less generally conceded ; 
but in order to secure to them this right, 
tenure laws have been enacted. A committee 
from the Portland Teachers’ Union has just 
completed a study of the Oregon law on teach- 
ers’ tenure, which has been thought to give 
very satisfactory protection, and it has come 
to the conclusion that Oregon’s law gives no 
security beyond the word of the superintend- 
ents. 

In 1913 a tenure law was passed for districts 
containing a population of 20,000 or over. 
Permanent teachers, those who had served 
the district two years or more, were not sub- 
ject to annual appointment. These teachers 
might not be dismissed or transferred to a 
lower branch of service without the privilege 
of a trial before a commission made up of 
three disinterested persons selected by the 
judge of the Circuit Court. The decision of 
this commission was final for both Board of 
Education and teacher. From the teachers’ 
position this law was satisfactory. 

But in 1921 the law was so amended that 
from the teacher’s standpoint its protective 
features practically disappeared. The new 
law placed the duty of holding hearings in the 
hands of the Board of Education. The board 
is now both judge and jury while the super- 
intendents, who are chosen by the board, are 
the prosecuting attorneys. If action for dis- 
missal or transfer is concurred in by five of 
the seven members of the board, it is final 
with no redress for the teacher. If less than 
five concur, the teacher has the right to appeal 
to the commission. If this exigency should 
occur, the case would be presented to a spe- 
cially called commission, for no standing com- 
mission has been in existence for several years. 

The superintendents hold a very important 
place in the election and dismissal of teachers. 
A precedent has been established by which 
the board without question follows the recom- 
mendations of the superintendents. The 
superintendents of Portland today are sincere 
and honest men and, as far as can be learned, 


all dismissals and transfers have been just 
and fair. Since there is no absolute assur- 
ance that Portland will always be favored with 
honest superintendents, and since it is com- 
paratively easy to get five members of a 
board of seven to concur when weighing evi- 
dence and recommendations of superinten- 
dents of its own choosing, it cannot be said 
that Portland teachers are protected by a real 
tenure law. In fact a protective tenure law 
for Portland teachers is a myth, all the more 
harmful in that it has lulled the average unin- 
formed teacher into a false sense of security 
in her position. 


CONFUSING PUBLIC BY FALSE TERMS Is 
OLD TRICK 

Social progress is slow because experience, rather 
than reason, must often overcome emotion and senti- 
ment. These are effective weapons of privilege. 

False cries have always been used to divert men from 
their objective. Gustave Le Bon, in “The Crowd, a 
Study of the Popular Mind,” says: 

“A pyramid far loftier than that of old Cheops could 
be raised merely with the bones of men who have been 
the victims of the power of words and formulas.” 

Psychologists employed by anti-unionists are aware 
of the point made by Le Bon. They know the ease 
with which legendary heroes and catchy phrases sway 
large sections of the people. 

They know that sophistry can be “put over” by a 
highly-organized propaganda machine. 

When trade unionists urge collective bargaining, op- 
ponents pretend to approximate union recognition by 
their “open shop” cry—that no distinction is made be- 
tween organized and unorganized workers. _ 

This has been repeated so often it has become patt 
of our national vocabulary. Its seeming fairness ap- 
peals to unthinking and emotionalists who glibly repeat 
the formula with no idea of the sinister purpose of those 
behind the scenes and who encourage its use. 

Those who understand crowd psychology stress the 
“open shop” value. They know it conceals trade union 
opposition; that it is an opiate and is more effective 
than clear-cut antagonism. 

An untruth affects the will to do. When men lack 
conviction—when they are not sure of their ground 
because of tricky and confusing propaganda—theit 
activity is lessened and their cause is weakened. 

A shop is either union or anti-union. An employef 
concedes collective bargaining or he does not. When 
men talk of “open shop” or the “American plan,” they 
confuse the issue to the joy of anti-unionists. 

The foundation of trade unionism, rests on collective 
bargaining. Incorrect phraseology bewilders men ¢ 
gaged in this struggle. They should refuse to accept 
the program of attack developed by opponents. 

They should insist that issues be correctly stated—- 
A. F. L. Weekly News Service. 








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Mutual Aid of American Federation of Teachers 
and Workers’ Education 


J. L. Kerchen, Local No. 61, Director of Workers’ Education—State Federation of Labor 


The American Federation of Teachers and the 
proponents of workers’ education in America have 
at least one common ground, that is, they share 
a fellowship in mutual disillusionment. The 
achievements of neither one have measured up 
to early ambitions. Elaborate educational pro- 
grams have gone unheeded and many hopeful 
aims yet remain unfulfilled. 

It has been a desperately difficult struggle for 
the American Federation of Teachers to convince 
increasing numbers of the teaching rank and file 
that benefits are to be derived from affiliation 
with labor groups or that in such affiliation 
teachers would likely receive more from labor 
than they gave. Likewise workers’ education, if 
we care to face the truth about it, has not 
reached goals that were first thought none too 
high. In many cases it scarcely exists outside the 
florid reports of those who are trying so hero- 
ically to keep it alive. Further, this situation is 
not so much due to the fact that labor resents or 
approves education administered above or below, 
insice or outside union control. The evidence 
seems to justify the painful conclusion that the 
basic reason is a general indifference among 
workers themselves to formal instruction of any 
kind, whatever the brand. 

However, there remains the faith that num- 
bers are not the surest criterion of improvement, 
that truth and a few individuals usually com- 
pose a minority and, relatively speaking, efforts 
have been rich in experience. Endeavor, also, 
has been enjoyed every bit of the way. There 
is plenty of time and we are not disheartened. 

But wherein lies the common field for mutual 
effort in the promotion of what we think is 
amore liberal, progressive and enlightened edu- 
cation? In the first place there is the pos- 
session of like objectives. Among the con- 
stitutional aims of the American Federation 
of Teachers are co-operation, ‘security and 
maintenance of rights, enhanced professional 
service and a democracy that will equip pupils 
to take their places in the industrial, social and 
political life of the community. With this declara- 
tion of principles, workers’ education finds itself 
in major accord. It would also at least enrich 


11 


the ideals of labor if it did nothing else, In 
fact, if workers’ education is to find opportunity 
for co-operation at any point in our educational 
system it must of necessity find it in the only 
educational group that is not the willing servant 
of that which discredits, debases and degrades 
present day democracy. 

Faith in labor as a promising field for the 
development of newer ideals in education offers 
another common ground. The American Federa- 
tion of Teachers and workers’ education alike look 
to labor as the field in which eventually will de- 
velop some of these attainments. This hope 1s 
based upon the assumption and upon the record 
that many, if not most of the forward looking 
social and educational measures have emerged, 
either as a prime concern, or a by-product ot the 
struggles of labor. Confidence in this trust is 
not given because it is felt that labor possesses 
inherently more democracy, higher ideals or finer 
responses than others in our social life; it is 
placed in labor because labor in our great society 
occupies the most strategic position on the firing 
line of industry. It is this fact that compels 
the social conscience, the educational vision of 
labor whether it wills it or not. The economic 
emergencies that labor has faced in its industrial 
struggles has forced it to react in terms of co- 
operation, demands for rights, appeals for justice 
and countless struggles for an existence at all. 
These experiences have made and are yet making 
the going concerns of labor the most interesting 
and at the same time the most hopeful drama 
that is being enacted today. The promotion of 
adult education is of utmost importance to both. 
The immediate educational problem of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers is the education of 
children and yet not educating them entirely in 
the accepted traditions of primitive culture. 
While this is of utmost importance in itself, it 
is directly limited by the resistance that is offered 
to modern scientific teaching by the average com- 
munity. Unless this community can be educated 
to accept newer education in its changing, evolu- 
tionary and scientific aspects, teaching it to chil- 
dren will always prove a precarious adventure. 
The protest against eyolution at Dayton, Tenn., 





12 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


was not a student objection; it was the adult 
fundamentalists that placed Bro. Scopes upon the 
rack. 

Participation in the proceedings of labor is a 
difficult task for the academic teacher. The 
traditional training of the school room teacher 
does not prepare for the rough and tumble sort 
of controversy that is commonly exhibited at 
labor gatherings. With few exceptions, the 


teacher who sits in as a delegate at a central 
labor body soon acquires an inferiority complex 
that inhibits any vigorous oral expression. 


But there is ample service to be done on edu- 
cational committees. Business of an educational 
nature is -naturally diverted to the hands of 
instructor delegates. Legislative measures that 
pertain to education is the first business of 
teacher representatives. Educational programs 
can be prepared and school representatives can 
be brought before labor groups thereby creating 
a common understanding between educators and 
-labor membership. It is felt by the writer that 
‘on the Pacific coast the most practical and im- 
portant achievements of the American Federation 
of Teachers has been the result of this form of 
activity. 

Labor yet looks and expects trained teachers 
to do most of its teaching. It expects teachers 
who know labor and who are in sympathy with 
a labor point of view. Such should be found 
most largely in American Federation of Teacher 
groups. This service offers opportunity for recip- 
rocal improvement for instructor as well as 
students. It presents the chance for a new ad- 
venture in education, and what is more worth 
while? 





PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION IN PORTLAND 


The meeting at the home of Miss Northup sponsored 
by the Committee on Progressive Education of the 
teachers’ union, was well attended by union history 
teachers. It was an interesting experiment, particularly, 
in that it revealed to us present some dominant motives 
in history teaching which it is a safe venture to assume 
are typical of teachers in general. Miss Darling led 
off in the evening’s discussion with a brief statement of 
her own objectives, actual and ideal, in the teaching of 
history. Her statement of objectives immediately drew 
fire and the discussion became general. Before the close 
of the evening every teacher present had frankly stated 
his or her objectives. That process of frank presenta- 
tion of one’s own objectives was valuable to us all. If 
our own objectives were not in all cases entirely clear 


in our own minds, the discussion of the evening did 
much to clarify them. Whether or not any new ideas 
were exchanged, it is at least certain that thought was 
stimulated; we went away better prepared to put tests 
to our respective positions. That, at least, was the 
experience of the writer of these notes. 

Three definite objectives stood out rather clearly as 
held by different teachers. The objectives in social science 
teaching were as follows, as nearly as they can be 
stated: (1) the teaching of ideals, which, in the words 
of one of those present, classified the teachers of such 
as moralists, (2) the teaching of truth, and the teachers 
of such would be termed the scientists, (3) the teaching 
of a definite program for a new social order, and the 
teachers classed as propagandists. It was quite apparent 
from the discussion among those teachers who claimed 
to belong to one or the other of the three types that 
there was nevertheless a mixing of objectives. That is, 
no teacher probably is pure propagandist, pure moralist, 
or pure scientist. And, in the opinion of many of us 
it seems improbable that there are any appreciable 
number of teachers anywhere who do not in some 
degree act as propagandists, either for a new social 
order or for the present established order. The ques- 
tion was raised whether the school system existed to 
perpetuate the existing social order. 

It would be interesting and instructive if there could 
be found a way to get frank expression on teaching 
objectives from all the social science teachers of the 
city. In fact it would be greatly worth while to test 
teachers in like manner in all the other departments of 
teaching in the city. English teachers, for instance, 
what do they want? Is it that youth shall learn to 
use pure English and appreciate good literature? But 
to what end? To satisfy Senator Eddy and “practical” 
business men? To make good citizens, of course, but 
good for what? The very question indicates or as- 
sumes a purpose. Should teaching have a purpose of 
should we just teach. Foolish question, of course, but 
immediately one agrees that teaching should be with a 
purpose there arises the problem of defining purpose. 
All this is probably futile speculation, but is it? One's 
whole philosophy of life is wrapped up in the answer 
to such questions. 

One tangible result of the evening’s discussion was 4 
desire expressed by many that meetings of social science 
teachers under union anspices be continued, and that 
definite questions be taken up such as methods and 
other specific teaching problems. It is quite probable 
that that will be done though perhaps no more meetings 
can be held this year—News Letter, Portland Teachers 
Union. 

So long as society is founded on injustice, the func- 
tion of the laws will be to defend and sustain injustice. 
And the more unjust they are the more respectable they 
will seem. Observe, also, that being ancient for the 
most part, they do not represent altogether present 
iniquity, but a past iniquity—rougher and more brutal. 
They are monuments of barbarous times which have 
survived to a gentler period.—Anatole France. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 13 


THE DIARY OF A TEACHER 


Hilma Anderson, President, Portland 
Teachers’ Union, Local 111 


(A compilation of duties, aside from teaching, which 
come to the teacher in the course of an average day.) 


The following is an actual record of the 
clerical details which we teachers stupidly 
submit to from day to day. It is typical of 
what goes on in high schools of the Portland 


system. Some of it is, of course, unavoidable. 


Before School: 

Signed four readmittance slips. Signed four emerg- 
ency excuses. Gave our three library slips. Signed one 
conference slip. Gave help to two pupils in history. 
Boy came in to give out “rulers” for Near East relief. 
Took the roll. Boy spilled ink, and asked for a blotter. 
First Period: 

Checked library pupils. Took the roll. Gave pocket 
book to pupil who had lost it in the hall. Signed a 
“Wed.” welcome card. Got programs from pupils. 
Second Period: 

Student entered at 9:40; signed his slip. Another 
student came at 10:00; signed his slip. Sent to library 
to have boy sign library slip. Signed three R. A. Slips. 
Study Period: 

Announcements about signing library slips and about 
meeting of 7th term girls. Five minutes taken by the 
room representatives in reading general announcements. 
Made out number and combination of classes for the 
office. Made out part of list for Head of the Department. 
Wrote Latin sentences on the board for Latin 2 classes. 
Third Period: 

This is a vacant period. Spent twenty-five minutes in 
the office getting assembly seating of my room cor- 
rected ; the office had made a mistake. 

Fourth Period: 

Interrupted by a teacher asking for a registration 
room pupil. Checked library slip and signed R. A. Slips. 
Gave a registered girl permission to leave the room. 
Fifth Period: 

Signed Tardy Slip. A boy came from the office with 
message for another boy. Signed an R. A. Slip. Took 
the roll and noticed that one excused from gym is not 
in the room, and made note of it. 

Sixth Period: 

Took the roll. Signed an R. A, Slip. Told pupils 
of composition contest. One boy left early. 
After School: 

Signed R, A. Slip. Girls came for stunt property. 
Teachers’ meeting. Made lists asked for in meeting. 
Had to count programs to find out how many take 
four subjects, how many less than four, and how many 
more than four. Two members of the band practiced 
in my room, 


The above is an excerpt from the present 
committee’s report on findings in two typical 
schools, one in which conditions are fairly 
good, the other in which little, if anything, 


has been done to relieve the burden of teach- 
ers; these schools are Lincoln High School 
and Jefferson High School respectively. Rec- 
ommendations to the superintendent’s office 
on the basis of the committee’s findings will 
be made in the fall. 





DEATH OF WILLIAM MANN FINCKE 

William Mann Fincke, valued member of the Amer- 
ican Federation of Teachers, died Tuesday in St. Luke’s 
Hospital, New York, after a protracted illness. 

Although he began life as a mining engineer, Mr. 
Fincke devoted the major portion of his life and his 
interest to the cause of freedom of speech and of opin- 
ion in America. He also devoted much effort to the 
solution of labor problems and to adult education. He 
helped to found the Brookwood Labor College in 1921 
and was one of the founders of the Manumit School 
in Pawling, N. Y., in 1924. He was a director in the 
school at the time of his death. Previously he was 
pastor of the Greenwich Presbyterian Church, 1912-17, 
and director of the Labor Temple in New York, 1918-19. 

Born in New York in 1878, Mr. Fincke graduated 
from Scheffield Scientific School of Yale in 1901 and 
became an engineering executive for several. years, 
before his interests led him into espousing the cause of 
the workers in various labor fields. In 1919 he. inter- 
ceded in a steel strike in Duquesne, Pa., in behalf of 
free speech, was arrested and sent to jail there. Mr. 
Fincke was a member of the National Committee of 
the American Civil Liberties Union. All progressive 
movements suffer a great loss in the death of Mr. 
Fincke, our beloved and devoted co-worker. 


SURVEYS ON VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN 
CALIFORNIA 


It was stated orally at the offices of the Federal Board 
for Vocational Education that a survey is: being con- 
ducted in Crockett, Calif., to formulate preliminary 
plans for offering courses of vocational education in 
the new John Swett Union High Schovl. The work 
is being conducted by George F. Haller, formerly head 
of the department of vocational education of the Berke 
ley (California) High School. 

A similar survey is being undertaken at Oakland, 


Calif., under the leadership of L. B. Travers, formerly 


an agent for the Trade and Industrial Education Serv- 
ice of the Federal Board for Vocational Education. 

Frank Cushman, chief of the Trade and Industrial 
Education Service, is on ten months’ leave of absence 
to direct a new project in industrial training in the 
public schools of Los Angeles. 


It- has 


Trade unionism has passed the trial stage. 
come to its maturity out of long years of struggle and 
experience to an earned position of trust and confi- 
dence. The unions have built up standards of life and 
living, carefully, step by step—Wéilliam Green. 





14 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


PART TIME SCHOOLS IN CALIFORNIA 


Myra Green, Local No. 31 
Co-ordinator, Sacramento Part Time High 
School 


Part Time Schools have been in existence in 
California for seven years, the Part Time Act hav- 
ing been passed by the state legislature in 1919 and 
the first schools established in 1920. Such schools 
are now to be found in all of the large centers 
and in many of the smaller districts as well. It 
is compulsory to establish part-time classes where- 
ever there are twelve minors subject to the pro- 
visions of the act. At the present time, how- 
ever, an amendment is pending to raise this quota 
as it is believed to provide part-time classes for 
so small a group tends to work a hardship in rural 
districts, 

The California Part Time Act at present re- 
quires all minors between the ages of sixteen 
and eighteen years who are not attending a regu- 
lar full-time day school or have not completed the 
equivalent of a four year high school course 
to attend special day classes for four hours per 
week. This time must be included in the forty- 
eight hour working week allowed to minors. As 
this article is written there is in the hands of the 
governor an amendment to this act making it com- 
pulsory for all minors between the ages of sixteen 
and eighteen years who are not employed and 
not in attendance at full-time school to attend 
part-time school twenty hours per week. To 
those who have been very close to this group 
of boys and girls for some years this seems a 
long stride in the direction of greater social in- 
surance. There seems to be so great a tendency 
on the part of many young people to drop out 
of full-time school at sixteen with no employment 
in view and with no burning desire to find a place 
in industry that long periods of idleness result 
and habits of drifting aimlessly along are formed. 


By means of this act it is hoped that it will be, 


possible to havea definite check on all minors 
with a view to supervising them in such a way 
that better trained and more contented and satis- 
fied employees may be the result. 

Part Time Schools in California are not hedged 
about by any hard and fast rules with regard 
to. courses of study. As a result it has been 
possible to organize the individual schools along 
the lines best suited to the respective localities. 
For this reason no two schools could be found 
that could be considered identical. In spite of 
this rather wide variety of treatment, however, 


there is an underlying philosophy which binds 
them ali into one whole. This is that they are 
existing for such purposes as giving greater effi- 
ciency to the young worker insofar as the actual 
performance of his job is concerned ; inspiring 
him with ambition to go on; and providing him 
with knowledge of health, training for leisure, 
and ideals of citizenship so that the most may 
be secured from life. 

In all of the larger schools, supervision of em- 
ployment plays no small part in the organizatior, 
This is due to the principle to which all thought- 
ful people will subscribe that boys and girls should 
be either in school or at work. This department, 
therefore, acts as a regular agency to secure 
employment for all the students in the school. 
This does not mean merely getting just any job 
for any boy or girl but making a study of the 
individual and the possible fields of activity and 
placing him where he will be most useful to 
society and himself. This department is tied 
very closely to the guidance and co-ordination 
program. Not only is it necessary to secure the 
employment but to follow up in such a way that 


the school program relates closely to the job. 
A high mark of efficiency is thus not only attained 


but retained. In most of the large schools the 
employment service is also the U. S. Junior Em- 
ployment Service, meaning that a check is to be 
had on a great majority of the junior workers 
in industry. 

Last, but by no means least, probably the ques- 
tion arises in the minds of the reader, “What 
is the attitude of the employer toward this type 
of education?” Perhaps this can best be answered 
in the words of employers themselves. On one 
occasion an emergency call came in for six part 
time students to help during a rush period in 2 
large retail store. The superintendent in com 
menting on them said, “I can pay them no higher 
compliment than that I placed them in my or 
ganization and forgot them.” Another employer 
of many part-timers voiced his opinion in the 
remark, “The Part Time School has increased the 
efficiency of our junior employees 100 per cent.” 
The tie up of job and education makes a strong 
appeal to the far sighted and progressive type of 
employer. He feels that the definite effort o 
the part of the school to understand industry, 
a long step in the direction of a friendly & 
operation which cannot but prove beneficial 
both organizations. 





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ferent 


The New Psychology of Typewriting 


By F. M. Butts, Ph. D., Washington, Local 8 


A widespread dissatisfaction with the old, 
wasteful trial and error methods of instruction 
in typewriting is leading to a practical applica- 
tion of the findings of the best researches in 
the fields of ideational and motor learning, and to 
a growing disposition to measure and evaluate 
typewriting reactions and achievements. As a 
consequence there is developing a new psychology 
of typewriting which has taken practical form 
lately in a kinesthetic finger-development system 
of reach-touch typewriting. 

The reach-touch aim is to. eliminate hesita- 
tion, reduce to a minimum the possibilities of 
error, and cultivate definite rhythmic reach, 
touch, and return habits with reference to every 
key on the keyboard. By so doing, the dread 
of the unfamiliar is removed and writing power 
is extended alike to all of the words in the Eng- 
lish language, or in any other language expressed 
in the symbols of our alphabet, with the excep- 
tion, of course, of the small increment of prac- 
tice resulting from the usual repetition of. high- 
frequency words in ordinary composition. This 
direct finger-keyboard attack is a departure from 
the vocabulary method of other days, in which 
the aim was to acquire a stock in trade of more 
or less automatically written words. Think of 
the number of words in the English language! 
Think of the time and energy wasted in trying 
to acquire these, one at a time, -with often a line 
or more of consecutive repetitions of each word! 
The new psychology of typewriting turns off 
the spigot; the old stood endlessly mopping up 
the oncoming waters. 

This new system enlists and sustains the pupil’s 
interests and co-operation. The interest value 
of the first impression is utilized to establish 
an intimate acquaintance with the much dreaded 
and often neglected top row of figures and other 
symbols. Throughout the course the emphasis 
on this and other hesitation sources is heavy. 

Psychology says avoid the necessity of un- 
learning. The law of merital and neural economy 
says, “Do not form two habits when one will 
do.” It is a violation of this law of parsimony 
to have to break the finger habits formed for 
the three lower rows of keys and establish dif- 
ferent ones for the top row. The tendency now 


is to use the eight-finger method uniformly on 
all four rows. 

The first thesis for keyboard presentation and 
development is that a complete kinesthetic mem- 
ory picture of the entire keyboard should be 
established as soon as possible, so that thereafter 
the tendency of the brain will be to react to the 
whole or any part of that pattern. Dr. Hollings- 
worth tells us, in “The Psychology of Thought,” 
that, , 

“Part of a complex stimulus occuring 
by itself, or in some new context, provokes 
a complete perceptual reaction such as was 
previously made to the total situation of 
which this stimulating detail was a part.” 

A perseverating mental picture of the keyboard 
is, therefore, first established by presenting it 
to consciousness as a vivid whole. It is then 
offered for practice in the largest units com- 
patible with a practical manipulation of the 
reaches. One of our leading psychologists has 
said that he would go further if he could and 
make it appeal to the senses of taste and smell 
as well as to the vision. Many of the older 
systems say, “Get a mental picture of the key- 
board,” and then proceed to confuse the mind by 
offering it piecemeal in small sections. 

The second keyboard thesis is that a complete 
set of finger responses with reference to every 
related key on the keyboard should be established 
as quickly as possible and reviewed thereafter 
in practice periods of decreasing frequency 
throughout the entire course. We are told in 
“The Psychology of Typewriting” by Altmaier 
that: 

“The recurrence of these sensations of 
movement develops kinesthetic memories and 
when the memories become sufficiently vivid 
there results ‘The Perception of Muscular 
Movement’.” 

This kinesthetic objective is accomplished by 
means of four reach-touch scales with variations 
which are used later also as daily “warming 
up” exercises. By the use of these scientifically 
arranged reach-touch scales the danger of form- 
ing error complexes is reduced to a minimum 
and the pupil is encouraged by a feeling of 
satisfaction from work well accomplished. Count- 





16 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


ing, dictating, and the use of stimulating rhythmic 
music have great motivation value in scale prac- 
tice. 

The third keyboard thesis is that the first 
and continued reach-touch development emphasis 
should fall on the weaker third and fourth fingers 
in order to bring them up to and hold them at 
an equal stroke facility with the already stronger 
first and second fingers. 

“Speed in typewriting is mainly achieved 
by shortening the (stroke) intervals.” . . 
“The rhythm would be further improved if 
the period of contacts were also equal.” 

Motion Study in Typewriting by J. M. Lahy, 
Head of the Laboratory of Experimental Psy- 
chology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris. 

Mr. Lahy shows by graphic representation that 
fast writing is rhythmic and that the time measure 
in rhythmic writing falls into the reach-touch 
and return time of the slower third and fourth 
fingers. It is, therefore, a waste of time and 
energy to begin with the already over-developed 
first and second fingers and to go on widen- 
ing the gap between them and the rhythm con- 
trolling weaker fingers. The newer psychology 
says begin with the weaker fingers and continue 
to emphasize them throughout the course. 

The new psychology agrees also that there 
is a distinct loss from the use of much isolated 
nonsense syllable and word practice material. 
We are told to learn by larger units. A smai! 
amount of judiciously chosen and arranged word 
material has motivation value §n the earliest 
stages of learning, but no word should be re- 
peated over five times. Thereafter the law of 
diminishing returns begins to operate, poisonous 
body chemicals accumulate, and the tissues 
weaken. 

Conservation is an underlying aim throughout 
the newer system of typewriting, the conserva- 
tion of time, energy, and materials. The result 
is an economy of pupil and teacher time and 
energy that may be utilized for error correction 
and analysis in personal consultation with the 
pupil, and for a more careful consideration of 
the rules of mechanical usage, of the principles 
of transcribing, and of special problems relating 
to particular kinds of work. This refinement of 
method is followed as usual by a demand for 
greater beauty of production. Art steps in when 
time will permit. A system of picture place- 
’ ment has been evolvel that insures to the reader 


a feeling of satisfaction by placing the exact 
center of the body of the letter on the optical 
center of the page, and by arranging light and 
dark spaces with due regard to ancient Jaws 
of balance, variation, and harmony. No stand- 
ards, however, are accepted as right or wrong 
without evidence. The new psychology of type- 
writing supports the statements of Dr. E. L. 
Thorndike and others that “There is no value 
in average opinion as such.” Everything must 
be measured by the yardstick of truth. The good 
is retained and all is rejected that fails to present 
true objective credentials. Recent textbooks re- 
flect this tendency. | 

The new psychology demands that the organ- 
ization of material in a textbook be broad enough 
to provide for a wide range of individual abili- 
ties and for both group and individual instruc- 
tions and that it be simple enough to prevent 
wasteful questioning on the part of the pupil. 
Instruction and practice material should gradually 
unfold a connection with the great unity runniny 
through all of life’s activities. Typewriting as a 
tool of communication touches nearly every phase 
of life, but in viewing its practical values its 
value as a vehicle of enrichment must not be 
lost to view. Therefore the new psychology 
says that the textbook should have informational 
and character building qualities. It should aim, 
says Hall-Quest, 

“To develop vital initiative, broad under- 

standing, and genuine creative interest ... . 

a consensus of the most modern opinions in 

the subject of which it treats.” 

The aim of the textbook is the aim of the 
new psychology of typewriting. 





LABOR DENOUNCES NORMAL SCHOOL 
OFFICIALS 


The Pennsylvania Federation of Labor in convention 
at Harrisburg recently passed resolutions condemning 
the action of the Board of Trustees of the West Chester 
Normal School, in dismissing two faculty members and 
interfering with student activities because of alleged 
seditious activities. The resolutions also call for a hear- 
ing for the two faculty members expelled. This action 
is an outcome of the controversy at the school last 
April in which the Liberal Club of the school was 
accused by the Bernhard F. Schlegel Post of the Amer- 
ican Legion of being an agency for the dissemination of 
subversive doctrines. In a voluminous report the Legion 
Post charged that all liberal clubs in the schools and 
colleges of the United States are linked in a gigantic 
conspiracy of which the American Civil Liberties Union 
is the ‘directing head. 





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(Teachers desirous of improving teaching conditions 
and educational standards will find help in Professor 
Brewer's article.—Editor.) 


In every large city personnel problems con- 
nected with the teaching body present themselves, 
and these are chiefly due to the size of the system 
and lack of personal acquaintance among the 
individuals concerned. The Superintendent of 
Schools is busy in his central office, while the 
first-grade teacher in one of the suburbs per- 
haps is equally busy with her own task, but 
the rulings made in the central office affect very 
seriously the work of the first-grade teacher. 
She often has no way of telling the central 
ofice what she thinks about the rules and regula- 
tions, and sometimes even about the curriculum 
itself. The most common method for solving 
this problem has been the Teachers’ Council. 
It is supposed that an organization representative 
of the teachers themselves can meet either with 
or without the superintendent’s being present, 
and formulate the opinions of the teachers on 
various questions of educational policy. Since 
the teachers in the classroom are the ones who 
are carrying On the actual business of education, 
it seems necessary for them to have some way 
of participating in the formulation of educational 
policies. Cambridge has no such council* and 
there seems no way, short of a direct appeal 
to the Superintendent or the School Committee 
itself, either for individual teachers or groups 
of teachers to make known their opinions and 
complaints. 

The problem has arisen, shall the Cambridge 
women tea¢hers in the high school affiliate their 
association with the American Federation of 
Teachers? This Federation is affiliated with the 
American Federation of Labor. The issue has 
developed through a sense of injustice on the 
part of the women teachers and a feeling that 
further appeal in regard to the salary question 
and other matters at issue, to the School Com- 
mittee itself would be futile. 

The principles involved in this question may 
be stated as follows: 

Associations of teachers, like all other associa- 
tions, ought to have wider and wider affiliations, 


——_. 


‘Later one was organized. 


ADDRESS 


John. M. Brewer, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Before the 
Public School Association of Cambridge, Massachusetts 


a_i meee eo 4 6 6S) 606 eee. 4. 4eweoawnee, 


provided these affiliations are justified from the 
standpoint of education. 

Contact as between teachers and school authori- 
ties should, of course, be based upon the will- 
ingness to give a hearing to all complaints and to 
endeavor to satisfy the complainants. It is fast 
becoming an axiom in industry that any work- 
man or group of workmen that has a complaint, 
no matter what the nature of the complaint or 
the nature of the method of presenting it, should 
be given a cordial hearing. 

The question of actual affiliation with the 
American Federation of Teachers is a difficult 
one which the teachers must decide without my 
advice. There are a number of affiliations which 
are possible with strong reasons for each, and 
there are strong reasons for affiliation with the 
American Federation of Teachers. Will the 
Chamber of Commerce of this community allow 
the teachers to affiliate with the Chamber, and 
under what terms will the Chamber offer this 
affiliation? Will they appoint an Educational 
Committee and will the services of this com- 
mittee be available for questions concerning the 
welfare of the teachers? . 

Will the Rotary Club or the Harvard Square 
Business Men’s Association or any other organ- 
ization interest itself in the problems which the 
teachers face? The union affiliation, as I under- 
stand it, was suggested by leaders in labor unions 
in Cambridge who offered to use their influence 
to secure a hearing for the teachers. Secretary 
Hover in recent speeches and the Industrial 
Conference Board in a recent report say that the 
labor union workers are better off financially than 
before the war. That is, that the purchasing 
power of their wages is larger than it was ten 
years ago and that their wages have increased 
faster than has the cost of living. It may be 
possible that at least consultation with the union 
people may help the teachers to find out how 
this favorable situation was brought about. 

Union labor has always favored public educa- 
tion and has always supported vocational educa- 
tion. The Teachers’ Union of New York City 
in ten years of service, has many good accom- 
plishments to its credit. I quote from the Presi- 
dent of the organization in New York City, Dr. 
Henry R. Linville: 


7x 


18 


“We bear a productive relationship to -the 
American Federation of Labor in our being able 
to assist in the formulation of the educational 
program of the great labor movement. Our 
representatives at the annual conventions are 
always on the convention committee of educa- 
tion, and I. myself am on the standing committee 
of education which is making important re- 
searches all the time. As a by-product of our 
affiliation, we feel that the fundamental interest 
of the labor movement in education is in the re- 
organization of the public school systems along 
the lines that will be more socially helpful to all 
grouy : and freer than they are now from the 
domination of class interests. 

“Tt has been generally supposed that the labor 
movement is interested in education -because it 
wants to set up a propaganda in its own behalf, 
but I can say with assurance, after ten years 
given to the labor movement, that such is not 
the demand of the labor movement. They are 
very earnest about their demand that the public 
school system shall not be used to launch propa- 
ganda against the labor movement. But, on the 
other hand they make no demands that the public 
school systems shall propagandize for organized 
labor. This seems to me a more generous and 
social position than is commonly attained by 
other organizations that have national extent, and 
for that reason we feel the labor movement is 
ungrudgingly socially minded.” 

There is absolutely no possibility of a teachers’ 
union considering a strike, and affiliation with the 
American Federation of Labor would never in- 
volve the question of striking or supporting a 
strike. The Cambridge firemen are affiliated with 
the American Federation of Labor but no one 
imagines the possibility of their striking. 

The !situation confronted by the women 
teachers in Cambridge is the dual salary schedule, 
with discrimination in favor of men. 

In any impartial investigation of the ques- 
tions at issue the following facts and principles 
are so close to the surface that they may be 
secured and considered with very little trouble 
indeed. 

No psychologist has yet been able to discover 
marked differences in mental qualities between 
men and women. In any quality which can be 
named there is an enormous overlapping of 
ability ; in good influence on boys, courage, execu- 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








tive ability, mathematical knowledge, teaching 
ability, etc. If 200 teachers, 100 of each sex, are 
arranged on the basis of any mental quality you 
can name, a large number of the women will be 
found to surpass the average ability of the men, 
and a large number of the men will be below 
the average of the women. In all such studies 
the overlapping of ability is the significant thing 
revealed by the investigation. Even in such 
physical qualities as lifting ability or ability to 
run, it is not true that all the men exceed al! 
the women. Any investigation of the number of 
dependents would also show the same overlapping. 
In some qualities the average of the women 
would exceed the average of the men, but the 
differences between them in the significant quali- 
ties having to do with teaching will usually be 
very small in comparison with the overlapping. 
It appears that the fixing of salaries on a straight 
sex basis is very difficult to defend. 

If supply and demand are to rule then the 
School Committee becomes merely an employer. 
The demand would be on a minimum level of 
teaching ability and knowledge, and the supply 
would be hired without reference to the question 
of sex. Nobody favors such a policy as that. 
The law of supply and demand cannot be rigidly 
applied, chiefly because in teaching we are deal- 
ing with spiritual values and the actual demand 
is difficult to formulate in such terms as can bk 
formulated for sugar, steel, and cotton. 

Neither can the School Board afford -to take 
into account the differences in actual living needs 
of its teachers. This question must be avoided 
by setting the minimum salary at such a figure 
as will safely provide for the cost of living. If 
this is not done and the School Committee at- 
tempts to make the school system a charity or- 
ganization or an organization to help people to 
raise families, support dependents, or discriminate 
among those who carry on other such activities, 
then the School Committee, in order to do justice, 
would require the services of a detective agency 
to examine the personal accounts and _ private 
life of every teacher. The high minimum salary 
is a much safer method. 

Professional morale requires unity among 
teachers, joint associations of men and women. 

The increases‘ from 1915 to 1925 in Cam 
bridge schools have been very uneven: men if 
high school, $1,100; women in high school, $8%; 















































































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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 19 


women in elementary schools, $796. Thus the 
men have been increased $206 more than the 
women, and the women in high school $100 more 
than the women in the grades. 

Not only do these large differences exist but 
also the executive positions in far greater num- 
ber are available for men rather than women. 

In other large cities of Massachusetts the dif- 
ferential between men and women has been 
rather constantly decreased since 1926. Among 
the ten largest cities in Massachusetts, Spring- 
field, Lowell, Lynn, and Lawrence have kept thc 
differences at the same figures while Cambridge 
is the only one in which it has been increased. 

Since 1921 Boston has reducegl the differential 
by $120, Worcester $125, New Bedford $425, 
and Somerville $350, while Cambridge has in- 
creased the difference $194. An examination of 
the figures for smaller cities in Massachusetts 
shows only a very few in which-the difference 
between men’s and women’s salaries has grown 
larger. 

While this difference in salary between men 
and women has decreased in Massachusetts, the 
percentage of men in the schools has increased. 
In 1910 men were 8.9 of all teachers in the 
schools; in 1920, 9.9; in 1925, 10.8. In high 
schools men are about one-third. It is a prime 
necessity that high school children have both 
men and women teachers and: it is decidedly 
unfortunate for either a boy or a girl to have 
teachers of only one sex. 

In Boston High Schools a year or two ago, 
it was found ‘that 48% of the teachers were men 
and in Los Angeles, 44%. Thus if there is any 
gain through paying men a different salary, which 
is very questionable indeed, it is only 4%. 

Another interesting fact in connection with 
teachers’ salaries is that while the cost of living 
in Boston has risen since 1914 so that now it 
stands 167% of the pre-war figure, the increase 
in salaries in Cambridge schools has just about 
kept pace with this increase. Thus the teachers 
have received no real increase in salary whatever, 
if their increase be measured against the increase 
of the cost of living. As a matter of fact, the 
increase of the men, 61%, is less than the in- 
(tease in the cost of living, 67%. The increase 
i the women teachers’ salaries has been 71%. 
But these percentage increases to the teachers 
are not so important as actual money increases, 


especially when the men in 1914 were paid 43% 
more than the women, 

Cambridge is low in salary compared to Massa- 
chusetts, and Massachusetts is not high in com- 
parison to the rest of the United States. The 
median salary paid high school teachers in cities 
over 100,000, among the 29 states having sucli 
cities, shows that Massachusetts is No. 10 in 
this list with $2,445. 

It is not true, that Massachusetts pays more 
of its current income to public schools in pro-. 
portion to other states. Massachusetts spends 
2.16% of its current income and in this amount 
is No. 37 among the states, being surpassed by 
36 others. 

Look at our total income in the United States 
and how we spend it. For tobacco in various 
forms we spend $1,846,000,000. This is more than 
the cost of all public education. For ice cream, 
candy, and soft drinks we spend almost as much. 
Does it appear from these figures that we cannot 
afford to pay more money to the schools? 

Massachusetts and Cambridge need a state 
wide financial investigation like that carried on 
recently for the State of New York. A Com- 
mission was appointed, gave months to its task, 
and the result was a program of public educa- 
tion commensurate with the needs of the com- 
munity. We shall not enjoy having our taxes 
increased but shall take greater satisfaction in 
knowing that better service will be provided for 
the children of Cambridge. 

At the recent convention of New England men 
at Hartford, Connecticut, it was strongly empha- 
sized that the commercial and industrial welfare 
of New England depends upon her becoming the 
Belgium of America, the center for high-class 
skilled manufacture. We cannot longer compete 
with other sections of the country on standard, 
bulky, reasonably priced goods produced by com- 
mon, ignorant, or automatic labor. We must 
produce varied, high-class, small, expensive 
products, produced by well educated, highly - 
trained, skilled men and women. The traditions 
of New England and the basic educational system 
have already laid the foundation for this kind 
of industry, so that we need not be surpassed 
by any other section of the world, but the absolute 
necessity for the realization of such a scheme is 
the building up of an educational system adequate 
to the task. 





Teaching Dollars NewsTricks 


By Duane Swift, Assistant Vice-President, Amalgamated Trust & Savings Bank, Chicago 


Sherman used fire to make war hell. A. Stein- 
metz uses it as man’s chief ally. 

In somewhat the same fashion the Labor Banks 
are setting about the task of directing the credit 
they control into social channels rather than into 
the service of monopoly where it will entrench 
the power of a few and create greater poverty 
for the producing masses of society. This is 
not merely propaganda; it is an actual fact dis- 
cernible in the policies of our older labor banks 
and inherent in the structure of all of them. 

In fact, this phase of labor banking immediately 
enters the mind of the student as soon as he has 
ascertained that the labor banks are supervised 
by regular banking organizations, under compe- 
tent banking executives, and render efficient serv- 
ice in every department of modern banking. It 
usually takes the form of this question: “How 
do your labor banks serve your depositors and 
labor in any fashion different from other banks ?” 

While the answer might well come from other 
institutions of the same character and standing, 
we illustrate from. the accomplishments of the 
two Amalgamated Banks of New York and Chi- 
cago because their record has been under the 
personal observation of the writer. As the oldest 
in the two largest cities of the United States, 
custodian of ten per cent of the total resources 
of all our American Labor Banks, these two are 
as representative as any. 

Organized by workers, with stock held almost 
entirely by them, it is logical that these banks 
would be distinctly co-operative in structure. 
Stock is limited to five units per shareholder. Di- 
vidends must never exceed ten per cent per year 
on Original investment and provisions in the by- 
laws declare that both Amalgamated banks may 
declare depositors’ dividends when stockholders’ 
dividend and reserve requirements warrant. These 
broad democratic principles work to the advan- 
tage of the co-operative movement elsewhere as 
well as within the institutions themselves. Time 
after time co-operative organizations have re- 
ceived credit from the Chicago Bank within the 
five years of its existence. Responsible propertied 
endorsement or collateral has been required in 
all cases and no losses whatsoever have been sus- 
tained in this particular loaning field. Strange 
to say, other banks, through prejudice or ignor- 


20 


ance of co-operative methods, have refused many 
of these same loans. 

The Amalgamated Bank of New York is now 
extending credit to individual union members 
who are purchasing their original equity in the 
new co-operative housing project launched by 
the Amalgamated Clothing Workers in New York 
City. These apartments, to house three hundred 
families when completed, are adjudged by con- 
servative banks highest grade loaning security, 
Another interesting feature, already in operation 
in New York City and under advisement in Chi- 
cago, is an investment corporation designed to 
extend to the stall investor through diversified 
investment the same additional protection and 
larger returns which the wealth corporation or 
individual secures by the same method of invest- 
ment. 

Small Loans 

Another feature of purely social rather than 
profit significance is the small loan department 
conducted by our institutions. These loans range 
from $25.00 to $200.00 and are extended on 
“character” endorsement acceptable to the com- 
mittee, usually depositors or union members in 
good standing. Ninety per cent of these loans are 
extended in case of illness or other emergency. 
No “commission” whatsoever is charged on these 
loans, which under the usual loan shark procedure 
bring 24 per cent a year and higher. Thousands 
of these small loans are made each year by the 
two banks with comparatively no losses involved. 


Real Estate Loan and Foreign Exchange 

This element of personal saving assumes evel 
greater importance in the operation of the Real 
Estate Department of the Chicago bank and the 
Foreign Exchange Departments of both. In the 
former case, first mortgage loans on homes and 
small flat buildings are made at commission rates 
lower than those prevailing in the Chicago dis- 
trict. This department has stimulated home 
owning among working men, who constitute 
ninety per cent of the applicants. 

In the Foreign Exchange Departments, the 
Amalgamated banks have not only been pioneers 
in the development of the Dollar Payment Plan 
now in general use over the entire country, but 
have contributed directly to the standardization 
of foreign remittance rates. The Amalgamated 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 21 


Trust & Savings Bank. in Chicago was the first 
bank in the country to introduce the Dollar Pay- 
ment Plan in Russia and for the consecutive years 
1923-1926, inclusive, it has led all other Chicago 
banks in volume of -foreign remittance business. 
It is not strange that the “Amalgamated” has 
become a synonym throughout Europe for rapid 
and accurate foreign exchange service. 

These illustrations are brief glances from dif- 
ferent angles. As indicated, personal service 
thus far has been the key-note of our banks as 
well as of the movement as a whole. With the ad- 
dition of each million dollars of new, labor and 
liberal support, this other question of society’s 
credit power and its use for larger constructive 
ends becomes of greater importance. When our 
larger cities have labor banks of $100,000,000.00 
resources—no idle or visionary dream—we shall 
be able to teach our reactionary dollars tricks to 
which they are now unaccustomed. 





WORKERS’ NURSERY ASSOCIATION 
A New Day for Labor’s Children 


Scientifically speaking, this might welt be called “the 
century of the preschool child.” Psychiatry, psychology 
and education are dealing more intensively with the 
first years of life, while among laymen there is a 
growing recognition that in the conditions which sur- 
round the young child lie the secrets of a better social 
order. Labor, as well as other groups, is becoming 
interested in the new science of child development. 

The Workers’ Nursery Association has been formed 
to establish a labor-owned nursery school and research 
center in Chicago, to be opened in September. The 
school will provide ‘scientific care and training for 
children two to five years of age, demonstrating the 
value of early group life in a free but planned environ- 
ment. Extension services furnished to unions are to 
include periodical news bulletins of scientific discoveries 
in the field of child care, speakers, parent study-group 
leaders, etc. A first appropriation of $50 has been 
made by the Federation of Women High School 
Teachers. 

Dr. Herman Adler, Director of the Institute for 
Juvenile Research, Secretary Florence Curtis Hanson of 
the American Federation of Teachers, and John Eng- 
lish of the Chicago Board of Education were among 
the speakers at a dinner held Friday, June 10, 6:30 p. m., 
at the City Club, 315 Plymouth Court. 

The advisory committee is Dr. Herman Adler, Di- 


tector, Institute for Juvenile Research; Dr. Ellsworth 


Faris, Dept. of Sociology, University of Chicago; 
Florence Curtis Hanson, Secretary-Treasurer The 
American Federation of Teachers; Carl Haessler, Man- 
eging Editor, The Federated Press, Chicago Typo. Union 
No. 16; Mary McEnerney, Vice-President, Illinois State 
Federation of Labor} Sectetary, Bindery. Women’s 


Union, Local 30; Mary E. Murphy, Director, Elizabeth 
McCormick Memorial Fund; Ruth R. Pearson, Amer- 
ican Federation of Teachers, Local 3; and the office is 
at 327 S. La-Salle Street, room 512. 


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22 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








The American Teacher 


Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 
Published monthly, except July and August, by 
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
327 South La Salle Street, Chicago 
Fiorence Curtis Hanson 
Sec.-Treas. and Editor 











At the time of expiration, a bill will be found in the 
copy. Subscribers are requested to give prompt notice 
of changes in address. 


Remittances should be made in postal money-order, 
express order, draft, stamps.or check (Chicago ex- 
change). 

SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, ONE DOLLAR FOR THE 

YEAR—FOREIGN, $1.10—SINGLE COPIES, 15c 


Advertising rates made known on application. 


ES 20 


“This movement they call organized labor is the uni- 
versal, vital problem of the world.” 
—Thomas Carlyle. 





























THE A. F. T. 


The American Federation of Teachers is the 
national professional organization of classroom 
teachers chartered by and affiliated with The 
American Federation of Labor. 

The constituent bodies are groups of teachers 
(not individual teachers) who affiliate and receive 
a charter from the American Federation of 
Teachers. This is the regular trade union method 
of organization. The American Federation of 
Teachers is the only teacher organization of the 
sort that there is in the United States. All other 
organizations stand alone. They have no con- 
necting body, no clearing house. Membership 
in the N. E. A. for instance is individual, Such 
method tends to isolate and localize education ; our 
method tends to unite and to nationalize. The 
national organization is composed of the local 
groups; the lecal groups derive their existence 
from the national. They are one and inseparable. 
Each local is as the name implies a local organiza- 
tion but it is also a vital integral part of the na- 
tional movement. This is tremendously important, 
for education is not just a local affair as we are 
so apt to regard it but is a social problem of the 
whole nation. The American Federation of 
Teachers differs from all other teacher organiza- 
tion not only in its form of organization ‘but as 
a result of this form and method, it differs in 
its educational and social outlook. That is, it is 
interested not merely in schooling, in one phase 


of education, but in education as a whole cross 
section of society. The American Federation of 
Teachers is two things, a national trade union 
and a national educational organization. The 
combination should be invincible. 

Teachers’ organizations have proved futile, 
both in cultivating solidarity within the profession 
and in obtaining for the rank and file, more 
satisfactory conditions of work and a better eco- 
nomic status. It seems clear that the forms of 
association likely to succeed are the fighting units 
which assert themselves and which are able to 
develop leadership among the teachers of the line 
rather than among the administrative officers set 
over teachers by extraneous authority. The 
American Federation of Teachers is better able to 
develop: in the teaching group as a whole, the 
qualities needed for resistance to repression in 
the freedom of teaching than is any other or- 
ganization now in the field because it has origi- 
nated among classroom teachers and because it 
recognizes the distinction between the “staff and 
the line.” 

When teachers in the ranks can unite and 
present a collective front to their official super- 
visors, think of the power their union and una- 
nimity will afford them. 

Will teachers ever realize their amazing po 
tential power for effecting social changes? 





THE NEW TEACHERS’ CONTRACTS 


We have been “editorializing’ for some time about 
the proposed anti-yellow dog contract bills which of- 
ganized labor has been trying to have passed in Ohio, 
Illinois and California, bills which would make untram- 
meled the freedom of the workers. 

Now we are faced with a situation in Superior which 
resembles in a good many points the situation of the 
workers in these three and many other states. 

Superior has its own “yellow dog contract” in the 
new contract proposed by Superintendent Paul R. 
Spencer and so ignominiously concurred in by the board 
of education at its famous all-day session Monday. 

Mr. Spencer is going to make sure, once and for all, 
that he is not going to be talked about next year and 
that his policies and actions’.receive no criticism, @ 
least on the part of the teachers at the Central High 
School. We wonder why this special reference tothe 
teachers at the high school? Is it because he is so suf 
about the other teachers and principals? 

Anyone attending the board meeting Monday night 
will be convinced of the latter, in hearing the principal 
making their testimonials as to the good faith of th 
superintendent. 

The proposal, as accepted by the board, is this: A 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 23 


special form of contract, containing the following 
clauses in addition to the usual terms of contract, shall 
be used in the case of all senior high school teachers 
who have been stationed at the Central High School 
this past year: 

“I, the undersigned, in my éapacity as a high school 
teacher in the public schools of Superior, do hereby 
promise that during the year 1927-28 I will, to the best 
of my ability, co-operate in a loyal and professional 
manner with the board of education, the superintendent 
of schools, and the principal of the Central High School 
in carrying out the policies of the school system. 

“I further recognize and subscribe to the principle 
that criticism of the policies of the board of education, 
the superintendent of schools, or the principal of the 
high school, should be made only in a professional man- 
ner and through the approved professional channels.” 

To the casual observer this may seem to be a per- 
fectly innocent agreement, but upon second reading and 
more careful consideration, its real dangers may be 
observed. 

Who is_to decide whether a teacher has been guilty 
of “unprofessional conduct” or “failure to co-operate?” 
If the board sees fit it may dismiss anyone on charges 
like these, in perfect right, and the accused will have 
no chance of redress. Who is there who can im- 
partially sit in judgment on such intangible charges of 
failure to co-operate and being guilty of, unprofessional 
conduct, without letting prejudice, rather than reason, 
be the deciding power? If charged with these two 
breaches of contract, how can one go about to “prove” 
loyalty ? 

In the final analysis it is nothing but a disreputable 
scheme to give full and free power of discharge to the 
board at the whim or wish of the superintendent. 

Does this seem worthy of our modern civilization? 
Rather is it reminiscent of the Middle Ages, or pre- 
war Russia, of Fascist Italty, where the great -masses 
of common people are nothing but» so many sheep to 
be driven hither and thither at the fancy of those in 
power, with little or no voice in what shall happen to 
them. 

The board’s action is to be condemned as a step back- 
wards, an attempt to Prussianize our schools and apply 
the “gag rule” on our teachers, principals and edu- 
cators.—Superior Labor Journal. 


BIG SCHOOLS FOUND TO LACK 
EFFICIENCY 


Investigators Report to Institute of Architects 

Washington, May 14 (A. P.)—The American Insti- 
tute of Architects doubts that erection of large school 
buildings serves the best interests of education. 

In a report submitted yesterday to the annual con- 
vention of the institute a committee stated that while 
Mass education may lower per capita expense, many 
teachers are protesting that “modern drift toward 
jumbomania tends to nullify their efforts.” 

“The situation is not without humor,” said the report. 
“In the larger schools, at least, it is clear that as its 
business organization approaches perfection there is a 
Noticeable slump in the quality of the aan b 4 
World, May 14, 1927. 


ELEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION, AMER- 
ae FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
June 27-July 1, 1927 
PROGRAM 
Monpay, JuNE 27 

10. A. M.—Executive Council Meeting. 

Office, American Federation of Teachers, Room 512, 
327 S. La Salle Street, Chicago. 
8 P. M.—Open Meeting—For delegates and public. 
Subject—Academic Freedom. 
Speaker—-SENATOR WILLIAM E. BORAH, 
Ashland Auditorium, 328 S. Ashland Blvd. 

TuEspaAy, JUNE 28 
Webster Hotel, 2150 Lincoln Parkway, 
Twelfth Floor. 
10,A. M.—President’s Address. 

Miss Barker. 

Addresses of Welcome to: Delegates. 
Dr. John A. Lapp, Liberal Club. 
John H. Walker, President Illinois State Federa- 

tion of Labor. 

11 A. M.—Address—Needs and Tendencies of Demo- 

cratic Education. 
J. E. Kirkpatrick. 

11:30 A. M.—Appointment of Convention Committees. 
Report of Credential Committee. 

2 P. M.—Address—Social Idealism. 

Arthur James Todd, Northwestern University. 

3 P. M.—Committee Meetings. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29 

9 A. M.—Reports of Standing Committees. 

R. W, Everett—Academic Freedom and Tenure. 

Lucie W. Allen—Education. 

Mabel Colter—Legislation. 

W. J. Scott—Professional Improvement. 

H. R. Linville, Promotion and Organization. 

Talk on Nursery Schools—Ruth Pearson. 

2 P. M.—Reports of Convention Committees. 

6:30 P. M.—Dinner—Webster Hotel. 

Speakers—Dr. Theodore G. Soares, University of 
Chicago. William J. Bogan, Asst. Supt. of Schools, 
Chicago. 

Subject—Educational Ideals and Practices. 

TuHurspAy, JUNE 30 

9 A. M.—Reports of Convention Committees. 

10:30 A. M.—Experience Meeting. 

2 P. M.—Election of Officers. 

Reports of Convention Committees. 

5 P. M.—Entertainment by Chicago Locals. 

Fray, Jury 1 

9 A. M.—Conclusion of Reports. 


“What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and in- 


dependence? It is not our frowning battlements, our 
bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy. Our reli- 
ance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in 
us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as 
the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere. Destroy 
this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism 
at your own doors.”—Abraham Lincoln. 


Are you a good union man? Do you bank with 
your union bank? If not, why not? 





24 THE AMERICAN TEACHER ~ 


CONFERENCE WITH TWIN CITY LOCALS 
E. Dudley Parsons, Local 59 

On Saturday morning, May 7, groups of St. Paul 
and Minneapolis federationists held a very inspiring 
conference with our National Secretary, Mrs. Florence 
Hanson. Three propositions had been propounded for 
consideration: How the locals of the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers may serve the National; Whether 
or not there ought to be a National; and; Whether or 
not the Federation should concern itself with matters 
not essentially educational. E. Dudley Parsons, of 
Minneapolis, declared that the logic of the situation de- 
manded growth on the part of each local in order that 
more money might go to the National, that each local 
ought to inform its immediate community as to the 
status of teachers so as to arouse the proper sympathy 
with its aims and inform the National as to its peculiar 
difficulties. Above all, he thought, each local should 
be a center of organization. He made the concrete 
proposal that Minneapolis and St. Paul Unions form 
the chairmen of their membership committees into an 
extension committee to visit such cities, especially 
Duluth, as are easily accessible, hold conferences with 
interested teachers and organize unions wherever it 
seemed to the committee advisable to do so. It was 
suggested that teachers in places where unions cannot 
now flourish may be invited to join the Twin City 
locals. 

Concerning the National itself, Mr. Edwards, of St. 
Paul, believed that there could be no strength in locals 
without it. He pointed out how the nationals of labor 
unions constantly stimulated their movement by bring- 
ing the entire force to bear at one point when necessary. 
He wanted to make the National as effective as possible. 
Mr. Tingle, of St. Paul, emphasized the need of a 
national employment burcau to obtain positions for 
teachers turned out of their positions for their views. 
He was confident that if such a bureau could operate 
the Federation would immediaicly be braced against 
the natural fear that makes its members loth to act in- 
dependently. He felt that the national bureau of em- 
ployment could nearly always find a superintendent 
somewhere in the country brave enough to employ a 
teacher discharged for union activity in a town where 
reactionary pressure was severe. This suggestion was 
very warmly received. 

Miss Isabel Williams, as usual, spoke energetically 
in favor of the wide interests of teachers that though 
seeming to be outside the field of education, are still 
’ vital to their success. Labor, always a supporter of 
schools, had problems that teachers must understand; 
and if teachers expected to be viewed aright by the 
people among whom they moved, then teachers must 
assert their right of citizenship as well as maintain 
their efficiency in the classroom. 

The conference was addressed by Mrs. Hanson on 
the general good of the Federation. She told how she 
had been able to reduce the indebtedness of the Na- 
tional, how she had been cheered by constant letters 
asking for organization and individual memberships, 
how she had been able to observe the teacher move- 


ment in various cities and how she had given encourage- 
ment to the fearful. On this point she was especially 
urgent, asserting that with the bold front comes victory, 
often without contest, that if teachers would only be 
more independent they would obtain a respectful hearing 
much more easily than they could ever anticipate doing 
under the present reign of terror that makes them 
futile servants. Mrs. Hanson gave great hope to all 
the members of the conference that their individual and 
collective efforts to propagate the faith of the Federa- 
tion would bear much richer fruit in days to come than 
they have dared to dream of in the past few years, 
She left the unions of the Twin Cities more alert and 
purposeful to keep the flag flying than they have ever 
been; and it is safe to prophesy that Minnesota will 
give a good account of itself before another year has 
passed. 


WHERE ARE YOU GOING THIS SUMMER? 

Resorts and Playgrounds of America, New York, 
has put out recently a Traveler’s Edition of Pictur- 
esque America, John Francis Kane, Editor. For those 
who want to “see America first,” it is a delightful 
companion. Two hundred writers including the Park 
and Forest Services of the United States and Canada 
have co-operated to make a lover of the out of doors, 
of mountains and plains, of the pack horse, bonfire, 
and the campfire, long to hit the trail—Quote from 
“The True Fiesta,” p. 145. 


The employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; 
they are in terror of a time to think—Chesterton. 











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Meeting of the Académy of Political and 


Social Sciences 
Report of A. F. T. Delegate, Selma M. Borchardt 


The 3lst annual meeting of the Academy of 
Political and Social Sciences was held. in. Phila- 
delphia, April 22 and April 23. At the first ses- 
sion at which Dr. Marion E. Park presided, the 
topic was “ The United States and Russia.” 

Russia, There was a varied array of speakers. 
The first, Pierrepont Noyes, a business man, him- 
self adverse to socialism and communism told of 
what he termed his surprises about Russia: first, 
there is now no communism in Russia ; second, the 
government is one of the stable governments in 
Europe, as it is supported by a large portion of 
the population; third, the communist party is 
“exclusive,” and quite limited in its membership ; 
fourth, they have decided to stop spending money 
for propaganda outside of Russia, as they feel 
that that money should be kept at home . Mr. 
Noyes pointed out, also, how in the intense de- 
sire to effect a complete change, peculiar con- 
ditions and reactions occur. 

Dr. Jerome Davis, of Yale University pre- 
sented an historical review of our relations with 
Jacob Billikopf, pointed out the differ- 


Russia. 


ence between the Russian peasant who, he claims, 
has gained through communism, and the com- 
munist in America who, because of his destruc- 
tive tactics, is such a menace to the American 


labor movement. Mr. Billikopf pointed out the 
numerous evils still prevailing in Russia, men- 
tioning particularly the suppression of free speech 
and free press, espionage, and the general ten- 
dency to suppress the political minority. 

William S. Wasserman, a banker, stated that 
in general, conditions in life have been improved 
and that as a banker, he would feel safe to in- 
vest money in Russia now. ! 

Mr. Louis Fisher, journalist, claimed that “aid 
diplomacy” played an important role in our re- 
lations with Russia. In the discussion which fol- 
lowed, objection was raised to his point by Rev- 
erend Dr. Walsh of Georgetown University, and 
lively argument. followed. 

CuInA, The afternoon and evening sessions 
of the first day were given over to a considera- 
tion of our relations with China. Dr. Stanley 
K. Hornbeck of Harvard University and Mr. 
Henry K,. Norton, who had acted as chairman 
of the round table on China and the Williams- 


town Institute on Politics defended intervention 
in China, pointing out why the United States ‘is 
justified not only in sending troops to China now, 
but also in continuing to maintain them there. Mr. 
Nathaniel Peffer, journalist, raised the importa: t 
question of what are we going to do now. Are 
we dangerously near war, and if so, is what we 
are after worth fighting for?, Mr. Charles 
Hodges of New York University contended that 
the problem in China is the adjustment of a 
changing order, a medieval culture and philosophy 
to a modern civilization, with the economic status 
of China in a poor state. Dr. P, T. Lau of 
Philadelphia claimed that the see-Reds have done 
more damage than the Reds themselves becaus:: 
they have driven the Moderates to the Reds. 
Dr. T. T. Lew, of National Universities in Pe- 
king spoke on the AND between United States 
and China. This word he said meant to him, 
first, appreciation, referring to what we had done 
for China in the past, second regret, because of 
injury done to some of our people in Nanking ; 
third, patience, pointing out that it took us seven 
years to fight our Revolution, several years more 
to get our Constitution, many more years to get 
settled the actual functioning of our government 
in the relation of the federal government to the 
states, and that with all that we weren’t 100% 
American until 1918; and last, will, the will to 
act, to be reserved for both parties. He plead 
that we should not find ourselves lending post- 
mortem first aid. Other speakers at this sessio1 
included Dr. Sidney L. Gulick, Mr. Donald M. 


Brodie and Dr. T. Z.Koo. 


25 


Centrat America. Saturday morning’s ses- 
sion centered around our relations with Central 
America. Mr. Weitzell, at one time American 
Minister to Nicaragua, explained that our policy 
in Latin America is one of national security 
without the slightest desire for acquisition of 
further territory. He presented an_ historical 
statement of the development of our present 
Latin American policy showing the particular 
relation of Knox “Constitutionalism.” He stated 
that because of the uncertain political conditions, 
it was at first very difficult to interest the Ameri- 
can bankers in those countries, and he further 





26 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


claimed that Secretary Knox won their suppert 
finally by appealing to their sense of patriotism. 


Dr. Shepard, who followed Mr. Weitzell, stated 
that there never had been a. policy of the United 
States to Latin America. He stated that the 
Monroe Doctrine, once an instrument put forth 
by a feeble nation against foreign aggression, 
had since been used to mean almost anything 
else. He humorously said that the M. D. had 
been taken to mean Monroe Doctrine, manifest 
destiny, money, diplomacy, masterful domination, 
much deception, and mainly duties. 


Dr. Dodd raised the question as to whether 
it is our place to maintain constitutional govern- 
ment in Latin America. Dr. Harring stressed the 
cultural points which Latin American had with 
Europe rather than with us, and mentioned the 
tendency manifesting itself more and more for 
Latin America to establish bonds both political 
and cultural with Europe rather than with us. 


Mexico. In the afternoon session over which 
presided James Beck, former solicitor general 
of the United States, our relations with Mexico 
were discussed. The first speaker, Mr. Stevens, 
emphasized the flagrant manner in which he 
claimed Mexico was infringing on the rights of 
American citizens in confiscating their private 
property. 

Following him, Dr. Rippey raised the question 
as to why it is a crime for Mexico to have as- 
piration in Central America, while for us it is 
a virtue, 


Frank Tannenbaum gave the people’s quota- 
tien side of the question. Norman Hapgood 
discussed, not only the policy of our relation with 
Mexico, but quite as much the general attitude 
of the American people in facing this issue. The 
technical, legal aspects were presented and dis- 
cussed by the solicitor general of the United 
States. 


The evening session was given over to the 
discussion on some means for formulating a 
more peaceable method of dealing with inter- 


national problems. The speakers were Mrs. 
Carry Chapman Catt, who asked that the United 
States formulate some sort of a foreign policy, 
James MacDonald of the foreign policy associa- 
tion, Reverend Dr. Walsh of Georgetown Uni- 
versity, and Miss Wong, a chinese student at 
Columbia. © 


THE BRYN MAWR SUMMER SCHOOL 


Plans for the 1927 summer session of the Bryn 
Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Indus- 
try are now well under way. 

For the past six years there has been conducted each 
summer, at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsyl- 
vania, for a period of two months, this resident School 
for women who work in industry. 

The Bryn Mawr Summer School this year continues 
its work under the direction of a reorganized commit- 
tee including a group of women workers elected by 
the students of the School and an equal number of col- 
lege alumnae from several women’s colleges, with rep- 
resentatives of the Summer School Faculty. It is 
hoped that it may be possible to expand this whole 
movement, and in time to interest other colleges in 
opening schools for workers similar to the one at Bryn 
Mawr. 

Students come from all parts of the country, and are 
representative of many nationalities and trades. Last 
year there were 18 states and Canada, 12 nationalities 
and 22 trades represented in the student body of 102. 

By women workers in industry we mean women 
working with the tools of their trades and not in a 
supervisory capacity. For the present, saleswomen, 
clerical workers, and teachers are not included in the 
group admitted. Women workers in all of the trades 
are eligible but we are especially anxious to recruit a 
larger number of students for the coming year from 
the various branches of the Textile industry. 

In order that an applicant be eligible it is necessary 
for her to be between the age of 20 and 35; to have 
been a wage earner for at least three years, two of 
which must have been in industry; to have completed 
at least the sixth grade in school and have supple- 
mented this by further study ; and to be able to read and 
write English. It is hoped that in addition to these 
qualifications the students applying will have a serious 
interest in industry and its problems and in Workers’ 
Education. 

The courses offered are as follows: Economics; 
English Composition and Public Speaking; Literature; 
Social History; Science and Psychology. There is 
also a course in Appreciation of Music which is 
optional for all students. The classes are all held in 
small groups and are followed by tutoring periods. 
The teaching is carried on by instructors who have an 
understanding of the students’ practical experience in 
industry and of the labor movement. It is conducted 
in a spirit of impartial inquiry with freedom of discus- 
sion and of teaching. 

Scholarships covering cost of tuition, room and 
board are available for accepted candidates. The 
School carries on its work through local committees 
that are organized in the various localities for the put- 
pose of recruiting students, organizing local study 
classes, and helping raise the scholarships. 

Further information about the Summer School for 
those interested can be secured by writing to the office 
at 218 Madison Avenue, New York City, which will 
refer you to the local chairman of your district. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 27 


THE BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD CO. 
Office of Centenary Director 
Baltimore, Md. 
May 24, 1927. 

The Editor, The American Teacher, 
327 S. La Salle Street, 
Chicago, Illinois. 
My dear Sir :— 

The Fair of the Iron Horse—an indoor-and-outdoor 
Exhibition and Pageant of Transportation—a distinc- 
tively new and unique educational project, for both old 
and young, the like of which never before has been 
attempted—will be the crowning feature of the celebra- 
tion of the one hundredth anniversary of the Baltimore 
and Ohio Railroad at Baltimore from September 24 to 
October 8, 1927. 

This occasion will commemorate the rounding out of 
an unmatched achievement in the annals of American 
transportation—the Baltimore and Ohio being the 
pionéer railroad in the United States to operate its 
road for the public handling of passengers and freight. 

On a thousand-acre tract the oldest railroad station 
in America will be reproduced, a grandstand 800 feet 
long erected, an old-time tavern and eating-house put 
up, a Hall of Transportation 502 feet long, constructed, 
a motion-picture house and other necessary buildings 
provided. There will be room to accommodate more 
than 50,000 visitors and parking space for 3,000 auto- 
mobiles. 

A moving drama of transport five miles long will 
portray the unfolding and development of the full 
scheme of inland transport in the United States. Be- 
ginning with the pack-horse of the Indian, the pre-Iron- 
Horse section will show the gradual evolution of the 
American highway through the. trail blazing, prairie 
schooner and stage coach eras, to the modernly-de- 
veloped motor highway. The circuit rider will plod his 
lonely path. Henry Clay will ride in a coach over the 
National Road and on to Washington, The famous 
Baltimore clipper ship, the canal boat and the historic 
tiver steamboat will move upon the scene. 

And then the tiny Tom Thumb—the first American- 
built locomotive (1829), the great, great, great grand- 
father of the American branch of the locomotive fam- 


ily and its quaint coach—its passengers and crew garbed 
in the approved fashion of the period, and continuing 
similarly, through the curious “grasshoppers” of the 
"thirties, the strange-looking “camels” of the ‘forties, 
engines of the Civil War period with real fighting 
records and on up to the fleet and aristocratic passenger 
and ponderous freight haulers of today, these various 
generations of the Iron Horse family will parade around 
this plaza—many with their trains—all under their own 
steam. 

Interposed in this long, slow-moving line will be a 
goodly number of self-propelled floats showing the in- 
ception of the railroad, Lincoln’s arrival over it in 
Washington and other dramatic episodes in the colorful 
life of the hundred-year-old Baltimore and Ohio. 

There will be also models of early and modern 
European engines—amongst these an actual 120-ton 
British passenger hauler of the latest type. Motor 
vehicles, as they correlate with rail transportation, will 
also be shown, in their proper relationship to it. 

The Hall of Transportation will be a museum of 
exhibits illustrating the development of the modern 
railroad—rails, bridges, signals—the first sleeping car 
and the latest—the bed-room car, models of ship-loading 
and coal-handling machinery and what not. In other 
words, rail transport from the slowness and crudeness 
of the very beginning to all its superb luxuriousness 
and rapid efficiency of today—all in one vital and 
dramatic picture. 

In another building the film will show some of the 
less tangible, but vitally necessary and highly important 
activities of this almost-human wonder—the Iron Horse 
and its world with which we continually rub elbows. 

In truth, the Fair of the Iron Horse, in Baltimore, 
September 24 to October 8, will be a miniature World's 
Fair of Transportation—throbbing with action, life 
and energy—instructive—entertaining—educational 

No admission is to be charged. Reserved seats will 
be free. Cordially, 

EDWARD HUNGERFORD, Centenary Director. 


Predominance of the few over the many is the surest 
and most fatal sign of a race incorrigibly savage.— 
Lytton, 








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28 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


MORE OF OUR MEMBERS PRODUCE 
TEXTBOOKS 


In keeping with the purpose of the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers, the democratization of education and 
the affording of the opportunity to the classroom 
teacher for participation in formation of classroom 
policies, we can view with real joy and gratification 
the increasing number of classroom teachers who have 
come into the field of textbook writing and have made 
notable contributions thereto. 


One of the.latest books produced by classroom teach- 
ers is “Our Language,” by Dr. James P. Kinard of 
Winthrop College, Miss Mary Brown, and Mrs. Flor- 
ence Rogers, teachers in the Wilson Normal School of 
Washington, D. C. A three-volume book, which seeks 
to satisfy the several levels of a child’s interest in real 
situations and express them through language, is the 
general plan and aim of this book. 


The first book, by means of simple conversation and 
dramatization, affords the child an opportunity to 
acquire certain new information and to use that which 
he has previously acquired with it. The questions, the 
poems, the pictures, the whole treatment, gets away 
from the “I see an apple’ type of elementary reader 
and instead becomes a life-like and lively discussion. 
Directions and concrete instructions for the correct use 
of language are given by the stories, however they are 
implied rather than dogmatically given. “Wise owl” 
can so much better than a teacher help the child under- 
stand health hints, and poems, and the correct use of 
words, and even later on how to write a letter and 
how to accent a word. 


In the second volume where children are doing, and 
doing by themselves, an opportunity is given them to 
get somewhat more involved information; situations 
more complex are treated; self-government is discussed ; 
and simple theme writing just naturally occurs. 


And in the third volume, the child grows up. His 
civic and moral responsibilities are given an opportunity 
to express themselves. He’s not told that “it is”; he 
has some material and is asked, “what is.” The treat- 
ment of more difficult grammatical structures is his 
problem, and in the discussion of certain situations and 
conditions he develops an ease in using his tools. 


To be sure there are many language books; there are 
many very good lahguage books, but after all it, does 
take a classroom teacher to realize the situations and 
opportunities that confront a classroom teacher in using 
a textbook, and hence we welcome “Our Language” as 
a contribution to teaching by teachers, valuable because 
they are teachers. 

SELMA BORCHARDT. 


Thank God every morning whefi you get up that you 
have something to do that day which must be done, 
whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and 
forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and 
self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness 
and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle never 
know.—Charles Kingsley. 


Laws for the protection of working men and women 
are clearly explained in the little book, LABOR PROB. 
LEMS AND LABOR LEGISLATION, by John B. 
Andrews. The third edition, completely revised and 
brought up to date, is just out. 

This illustrated volume of 135 pages gives in every- 
day language, an accurate account of the development 
and present status of labor laws. In the words of a 
prominent representative of labor, “It contains a wealth 
of information in the most available form” on such vital 
topics as regulation of hours of work, wages, rest 
periods, stabilization of employment, industrial accident 
and disease prevention and insurance, and problems of 
administration. 

The fifty pictures and drawings help to tell the story, 
and to clinch the points made in the text. 

A Connecticut trades union official writes: “To me 
and to our association it has been a boon, as few 
working men have the time to read and study large 
volumes, while this book is pithy and to the point—the 
subjects discussed therein are invaluable for those who 
wish to keep in touch with problems. affecting labor.” 

LABOR PROBLEMS AND LABOR LEGISLA- 
TION, in tough paper binding, can be supplied for 0 
cents a copy; or in, lots of 10 or more, at but 25 cents 
each. This rock-bottom price will give organizations 
an opportunity to distribute the book widely among 
their working committees. Cloth bound copies are 75 
cents each. We pay the postage. 


God intends no man to live in this world without 
working, but he intends every man to be happy in his 
work.—Ruskin. 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 29 


Negro Labor in the United States, by Charles H. 
Wesley. 343 pages. Published by Vanguard Press, 
Inc., 80 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 50 cents. 

The American Negro has undoubtedly been one of 


the most important elements in American economic: 


life as well as one of the most disturbing. His slave 
labor, as Professor Wesley points out in NEGRO 
LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES, “created the 
basis of southern wealth,” and at the same time sowed 
the seeds of decadence that not only dissipated that 
wealth but also emasculated the country that produced 
it. Moreover the Negroes’ post civil war infiltration 
into industrial fields created as many problems as it 
served purposes. The result has been a tragic social 
debacle. There have been conflicts where there should 
have been cooperation, and inter-racial feuds attributal 
to industrial friction where the energy expended should 
have been utilized in eliminating economic difficulties. 

It is inevitable that such a work as NEGRO 
LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES should have 
been written, and it is regrettable that the need for its 
being written was not felt years ago. Professor Wes- 
ley had a tedious task before him. In the light of 
recent developments there were many paths he could 
have taken. He could have been super-ecstatic as most 
Negroes and whites have been during this era of “New 
Negroes,” “he could have been tearful and wailed a Jer- 
emiad in the manner of most Negro Labor writers. 
Instead his approach to the subject is historical, his 
attitude scientific. He starts dut “to present a survey 
of the development and transition of Negro Labor in 
the United States from the period of slavery to the 
period of entrance of Negroes into industrial occupa- 
tions in large numbers,” and his monograph is “not 
only the study of the tabor movement, but it is the 
story of economic progress and the spread of indus- 
trialism among Negro-Americans.” 

Consequently, the author begins his survey during 
the period when slavery and industrialism, represented 
by the south and north, clashed, attempted to merge, 
and finally realizing their incompatibility became 
frankly hostile. From there he sketches in detail the 
economic status of the free Negro and the ante-bellum 
attitude of: white labor towards Negro labor. The 
trend, aided of course by racial prejudice, was to keep 
the Negro a toiler in the field rather than a worker in 
the factory, and the supposition was that Negroes were 
not capable of skilled labor although experiments along 
this line had already proved the contrary “to be true. 
Then came the Civil War, fought not so much to free 
the slaves as to free our present day industrial Colos- 
sus from social and constitutional impedimenta; the 
chaotic transition of Negroes from chattels into theo- 
tetical freedom; the feeble attempts to organize the 
black worker along with the white worker which were 
frustrated by “politics, racial barriers, and misguided 
leadership”; the mass movement of Negroes from 
Menial positions to those requiring skill; the World 
War, and, following that, northward migration with 
its attendant crises and conflicts. 

This book is the first one of its kind and more than 


adequate as a precursor to present day conditions and 
probable developments. Negro Labor is just awaken- 
ing, and white labor is just becoming receptive enough 
to acknowledge this awakening and assist in its fulfill- 
ment. Anyone approaching the subject of Negro 
Labor in America will undoubtedly utilize the present 
volume as a source book, and will find the appended 
notes, bibliography and index invaluable. This volume 
is published by the Vanguard Press in their fifty cent 
series of well-printed, clothbound books. 


The much heralded Catalog of the American Library 
Association for 1926 has made its appearance : 


In it is a list of 10,000 books for the general 
library, a basic list of 1,000 books for children and sec- 
tions devoted to literature, history, biography, art, 
applied science, natural science etc., in each of which 
500 to 1,000 books are described. There is also a sepa- 
rate list of fiction. In the education section are listed 
more than 200 book titles; on child study, there are 
some 30 titles. 


This book is much more than a list. As its title 
indicates, it is a catalog. The school librarian will find 
here the correct catalog entry for each book listed, the 
different subjects under which the same book should be 
entered in the school library catalog, the correct classi- 
fication number according to the generally-accepted 
Decimal system, the L. C. card number; which enables 
the librarian to order printed cards for the book from 
the Library of Congress and thus save herself the 
time and trouble of doing the cataloging herself. She 
will also find publishers and prices for all books listed 
and full descriptive notes that will help in making com- 
parisons of books on the same subject or of works of 
the same author. A complete index by subject, author 
and title indicates that nothing seems to have been 
spared to make the book an extremely useful tool. 

The American Library Association, 86 East Ran- 
dolph St., Chicago, is the publisher. 1296 pages: cloth, 
$6.00. 


TWO BOOKS ON CIVIL LIBERTY 
“Facing the Chair,” by John Dos Passos, novelist 
and playwright, tells the story of the Sacco-Vanzetti 


trial. It is sub-titled “The Story of the Americaniza- 
tion of Two Foreign-born Workmen.” It has been 
published by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Comfnittee of 
Boston and may be had from the American Civil Lib- 
erties Union, 100 Fifth Ave., New York City, tor 50 
cents postpaid. 

“Cwil Liberty,” a reference shelf handbook compiled 
by Edith M. Phelps, has been published by the H. W. 
Wilson Company of New York City. It is prefaced 
by an introduction by Zechariah Chafee, Jr., professor 
of law of Harvard University. Arguments and 
excerpts from authors and- statesmen are quoted both 
for and against the limitation of civil rights. The 
book may be ordered from the American Civil Liber- 
ties Union, 100 Fifth Avenue, New York City, for 
$1.25 postpaid. 





30 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


To the Labor Press: 

The Union Labor Life Insurance Company wishes to 
express its appreciation for the helpful co-operation 
heretofore manifested. We hope shortly to promote 
our insurance policies in every state in the Union and 
in every province in Canada. Our pclicies are submitted 
to the several states and provincial authorities. As soon 
as these legal steps are fulfilled The Union Labor Life 
Insurance Company will be in practical operation. 

In preparing our literature it is deemed desirable to 
adopt a slogan carrying the message of The Union 
Labor Life Insurance Company. It has been suggested 
that all labor publications conduct a slogan contest call- 
ing upon their readers to submit suggestions. It is 
believed that such a contest will arouse great interest 
among the readers of labor publications as well as 
further advance the interest that has been aroused. 

We request and urge therefore that you immediately 
undertake such a slogan contest in your publication, 
and submit to us the slogans that will come as a result. 

Slogans received through your publication and ac- 
cepted by the company will be not only credited to the 
person suggesting the slogan, but likewise to your pub- 
lication in having promoted this contest. In addition 


the person suggesting the slogan will receive from the 
company a cash prize of twenty dollars in gold. Slogans 
must not exceed six words. { 
We sincerely hope that you will act upon this sug- 
gestion and enter into this slogan contest. 
Fraternally yours, 
MATTHEW WOLL, President. 


TORONTO CONFERENCE, WORLD FEDERA- 
TION OF EDUCATION ASSOCIATIONS 


From present indications. there will be in the neigh- 
borhood of five thousand in attendance at the Toronto 
meeting of the World Federation of Educational As- 
sociations, August 7-12, 1927. Adequate accommoda- 
tions are being provided for all and the welfare of none 
will be lost sight of. The program will be varied 
enough and rich enough to warrant this attendance 
and definite, purposeful agenda will guarantee that 
many issues vital to the educational interests of the 
family of nations will be considered. 

Men and women widely known for their views and 
accomplishments will address the Convention. Reports 
will be made on the several committees set up in the 
Herman-Jordan Plan, together with a definite program 
of what may be done by education to allay national 
jealousies and racial and religious hatreds. It is ex- 
pected that a definite, sane and effective program will 
be evolved. While discussion groups may deal with 
almost all phases of education, it is the purpose of the 
Federation to confine itself first of all to a few essentials 
such as may be set up in the plan above mentioned. 

One of the direct benefits which will accrue from 
such a meeting is the bringing together of groups of 
educators from different countries who may become 
acquainted with each other, discuss educational prob- 
lems in all parts of the world, thus broadening the 
viewpoint and conception of teachers everywhere. There 
is no attempt to standardize education in the different 
countries but to use the racial and national traits and 


characteristics. traditions and backgrounds such as they 
are, to weave them together with a more sympathetic 
understanding into a great cause, world-wide. A pro- 
gram of education is essential to international under- 
standing. 

War is the result of misunderstanding. Misunder- 
standing and national hatreds are the result of ignor- 
ance, and ignorance is a direct problem of education. 
One need not be a delegate to enjoy the group dis- 
cussions and the general programs. We believe that 
persons who attend the Convention will receive inspira- 
tion and information which will be beneficial in uniting 
the five million teachers of the world who are teaching 
the three hundred million children into bonds of fellow- 
ship and sympathy which will make of education a 
cause and a vital force in directing the trend of civili- 
zation to a higher plane. 


To the Members of the Educational Association: 

To the formal invitation of the World Federation of 
Education Associations to meet in Toronto, August 
7-12, 1927, we wish to add our special invitation. The 
Canadian Teachers’ Federation, acting on behalf of 
twenty thousand Canadian teachers, is to be the official 
host of this great Conference, and as such, the Cana- 
dian Teachers’ Federation would welcome the largest 
possible attendance of members of your organization 
and of the other teachers’ organizations throughout 
the world. 

The teachers of Canada believe that this Conference 
should be a distinct step in human progress. The 
intermingling of thousands of teachers from all parts 
of the world must prove of inestimable influence. So 
strongly do they believe this, that they have assumed 
the full responsibility for alt the Canadian arrange- 
ments and acting in their name the Canadian Teachers’ 
Federation cordially invites every member of your 
organization to Toronto in 1927 who can possibly 
attend. d 

The Canadian Committee will gladly do everything 
in its power to make everyone feel at! home im 
Toronto during the Conference. Expert assistance 
will be provided in billeting, meals, excursions, and 
post-conference trips. Social functions will be pro- 
vided for all delegates, official and unofficial, though of 
course certain meetings and functions must be confined 
strictly to official delegates. 

Canada is a vast country of infinite resources and 
charm. Toronto is her second largest city, a city of 
homes and churches, a great centre of education and 
art, of commerce, industry and finance, and the seat 
of Government for the Province of Ontario. The 
teachers of Toronto join with the other teachers in the 
nine provinces of Canada in sending you a most cof- 
dial welcome. 

M. J. COLDWELL, President, Canadian Teachers’ 

Fed. 

GEO. I. ELLIOTT, Secretary, Canadian Teachers 

Fed, 

E. A. HARDY, Chairman, Canadian Committee of 

Arrangements. 

CHARLES G. FRASER, Secretary, Canadian Com- 
mittee of Arrangements. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 31 


Our Locals 


PAUL FEDERATION OF WOMEN 
TO CLOSING OF 


ST. 
TEACHERS OPPOSED 
LIBRARIES 
The following resolution was adopted at the regular 

meeting of the Federation of Women Teachers Mon- 

day afternoon: 

“WHEREAS, Branch libraries in the schools are 
being closed for the reported reason of lack of funds 
with which to maintain them; and 

“WHEREAS, The location of libraries in places 
easy of access to young children makes it possible for 
them to become trained in the use of libraries, forming 
a habit of value increasing with each year of life; be it 

“RESOLVED, That the Federation of Women 
Teachers deplores such a move for any reason whatso- 
ever and urges all organizations interested in the wel- 
fare of children to unite for the purpose of carrying 
forward an intelligent inquiry into the matter with the 
view of cooperating in the removal of the cause or 
causes of the proposed action of the Department of 
Education; and be it 

“FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Professional 
Committee be instructed to make every effort to bring 
about the intent of the Federation as expressed in these 
resolutions, with full authority to act.” 

The closing of the school libraries has greater sig- 
nificance for the school teacher than any other element, 
and the action taken’ is an expression of their concern 
and an index to their attitude —St. Paul, Minn., Union 
Advocate. 


A. E. CROFT IS TEACHERS’ HEAD 

A. E. Croft was elected president of the Madison Fed- 
eration of Teachers for the year 1927-28 at its meeting 
Thursday night in the Y. W. C. A. Miss Marguerite 
Baker was elected treasurer and Miss Caroline V. Eddy, 
secretary. 

The organization voted to print a professional paper 
to be distributed to members of the group next Sep- 
tember. Mr. Croft heads the committee to edit the 
publication. Miss Florence Hardgrave was appointed 
chairman of a committee to revise the constitution and 
a committee of nine was selected to conduct a member- 
ship drive. The first meeting of the next school year 
will be held the third Thursday in September.—Capital 
Times, Madison, Wis. 


The usual monthly noon luncheon of the Portland 
Teachers’ Union took place at the Grey Cottage Tea 
Room, 362% Alder St., Saturday, May 14th. Dr. E. B. 
Mittelman of the Economics Department of Oregon 
Agricultural College was the speaker of the day. Dr. 
Mittelman was one of the first teachers in the Portland 
Labor College. He has always taken a great interest 
in the labor movement and is an authority on the his- 
tory of the American trade union movement. 

The April number (Chicago Special) of the American 
Teacher is full of excellent material. It is a number 
well worth getting into the hands of your friends.— 
Portland Teachers’ Union News Letter. 


LOCAL NO. 31 

Since Local No. 31 is located at the state capital its 
history in the yearswhen the state legislature meets, is 
little more than the story of the work of the Legislative 
Committee. The work of this committee, found on 
another page of the number, shows what has been ac- 
complished for California. Local No. 31 always feels 
confident that all that can be accomplished at the legis- 
lature will be done under the able leadership of R. W. 
Everett, who is chairman of the State Committee on 
Legislation, as well. 


The close of the year’s work of the labor college 
brings with it also the close of Mr. H. Aaron Director’s 
services to workers’ education in- Portland. Mr. Di- 
rector is resigning as director of the college in order 
to do\graduate work at Chicago University next winter 
It is with sincere regret that we announce this with- 
drawal from our midst. of one who has been a con- 
stant stimulus to us teachers and to the workers at the 
labor college. None need prodding so much as teachers 
and Mr. Director has the faculty for doing that sort 
of thing. Some of us are capable of doing such prod- 
ding perhaps, but we are too careful of the feelings of 
the victim. Mr. Director spares no one, with the re- 
sult that he often goads some of us to the point of 
angrily cussing him under our breaths, at least. But 
it’s a safe venture that none of us so prodded have 
come off any the worse for it, but have really been 
forced to do a little re-measuring of our former stand- 
ards of value. Certain it is we shall all miss him in 
this city of almost deadly uniformity of thought. The 
fate of most of us high school teachers is that we mill 
around endlessly in a little circle of petty ideas. We 
need to be shaken out of them from time to time and 
who will do the shaking when Mr. Director leaves us? 
In any case we wish Mr. Director well in whatever 
work the years bring to him.—News Letter, Portland 
Teachers’ Union. 


RESOLUTION 

At the annual executive meeting of the California 
State Teachers’ Federation on April 23, 1927, the case 
of Dr. Kerlin and Prof. Kinpeman of the West Chester 
Normal of Pennsylvania, as an example of the violation 
of academic freedom, was discussed and the following 
resolution was adopted: 

Whereas, The children of America are entifled to 
the leadership of men and women who are not afraid 
to express their honest beliefs; and this cannot be ob- 
tained, especially in the secondary schools, if .teachers 
are to be dismissed without chance for a hearing; and 

Whereas, Freedom of discussion and of thought is 
one of the most cherished of American’ traditions ; 
therefore be it 

Resolved, That the California State Federation of 
Teachers, through its Executive Committee, expréss its 
disapproval of the action of the trustees of the West 
Chester Normal in dismissing Dr. Kerlin and Mr. 
Kinneman from the school as apparently a violation 
of academic freedom. 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


—— 
— 








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