|: = | REFERENCE Ne 
| ER, 1929 DO NOT LOAN VOL. XIV—No. 1 
r Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 


k The ; 
American Teacher 


THE ORGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 


























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uh. HONESTY, AND,TRUTH |. 


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Office of Publication Editorial Office 
Leader Building Recep: 99 506 South Wabash Ave. 
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Single Copy 250 early Subscription $2.00 
C13 1948 





Sa TS BY SS SS IS SB SS SSA SS SS SS SS SB SS SS SS 


The Schoolhouse 


I am the schoolhouse—I am of many-storied stone, 
soaring above busy city thoroughfares, or 1 am a 
mere cluster of weatherbeaten boards in a wilderness 
that is trackless save for the path leading to my door. 
I am the guardian of the hopes of every generation, 
and I am true to my trust. In me all things are 
equal; in me are no distinctions among those who 
come to me except the paramount distinctions be- 
tween those who are proud to serve and those who 
seek only to be served. It is my duty not alone to 
teach, but equally to learn; to keep perpetually a 
light upon my altars, kindling them forever afresh 
from the inextinguishable flame that burns in every 
young heart, the sacred fires of love of knowledge, 
and love of freedom, and love of country, for as I 
succeed, America succeeds. I am _ the true democ- 
racy. I am the schoolhouse. 

—Anonymous. 


SANSA SSSA 


THE MASTER JOY 


We shall not travel by the road we make: 
Ere day by day the sound of many feet 
Is heard upon the stones that now we break, 
We shall be come to where the cross-roads 
meet. 


For us the heat by day, the cold by night, 
The inch-slow progress, and the heavy load, 
And death at last to end the long, grim fight 
With man and beast and stone; for them the 
Road. 


For them the shade of trees that now we plant, 
The safe, smooth journey and the final goal, 
Yea, birthright in the land of covenant— 
For us day labor, travail of 
the soul. 


And yet the road is ours as never theirs; 
Is not one joy on us alone bestowed? 
For us the Master-Joy, O Pioneers— 
We shall not travel, but we make the 
Road. 
—Friedlander. 





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superior : H-round scholar.” A better test than this 
of the value of dictionary work could not be found. 
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CONTENTS 


The Open Mind 
O. Myking Mehus 


Mental Hygiene In the Schools 
Marian McBee 


EDITORIALS 


What the American Federation of Teachers 
Is Doing and Attempting To Do 


Adam Coaldigger 
Thrift Habits in School System 
Electricity for the Home 


Mass Education in China 


P. W. Kuo 


Fascism in American Education 
Myra Page 
Education of Our Children 


Jerome Jones 


Napoleon and Education 
l.. C. Breed 














LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY 


The American Teacher 


entered as second class matter Oct. 1, 1927, at the post office at Oklahoma City, Okla., under the Act of March 3, 1879 
acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Sec. 1103, Act of Feb. 28, 1925, authorized Nov. 3, 1926. 





Volume XIV, No. 1 


SEPTEMBER, 1929 


Two Dollars a Year 





[_——__ a 


The Open Mind 


By O. Mykinc Menus, 


Department of Social Sciences, Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, Maryville, Missouri 


It was Thomas Henry Huxley who said, “Sit 
down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to 
give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly 


wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or 
you shall learn nothing.” This is the spirit we need 
to inculcate in our schools today. Unfortunately, 
however, instead of conscientiously trying to teach 
the truth we too often teach the prejudices of the 
particular community in which we happen to live. 
And students come to us, not to find out the truth, 
but in all too many instances their chief concern 
ems to be to secure arguments for their own par- 
ticular prejudices and preconceived ideas. 

Whenever anyone does advance a new idea it is 
rarely accepted in an open-minded attitude, for we 
ae by training afraid of anything new. We dislike 
New things ge 


changes. We shy at new gates. 


against our grain. Most of us are like the man who 
would not look at the new moon out of respect 
of that “ancient institution,” the old moon. We 
resemble the man who, seeing a camel for the first 
time, gazed at it for a long time and then, turning 
away with an air of positive conviction, said: “There 
ain't no such beast.” 
“THE Goop OLp Days” 

We cling stubbornly to the past and we are ruled 
by its hidebound customs. We worship things that 
ae old and still believe that the golden age is in the 
distant past instead of in the present or in the fu- 
ture. We dream about the “good old days.” We be- 
leve that everything worthwhile has been accom- 
plished. We are like the government clerk in the 
patent office in Washington in 1837 who resigned 
ieeause he believed that everything had been patented 
ind he desired to secure another position before he 
vould be asked to resign. 

A story is told of an old woman who went down 
othe railroad track to see the first steam engine in 


that part of the country. As she looked at it from 
all sides she shook her head and said, “It will never 
run. It will never run.” When 
the engineer opened the throttle and the engine 
started down the track and rapidly gained speed, the 
old woman said, as she slowly shook her head ,“‘It will 


It will never run. 


never stop. It will never stop. It will never stop.” 

In the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture Dean 
Davenport mentions that a valuable cart was allowed 
to rot on a certain South American estate for the 
simple reason that the native laborers refused to use 
it because it did not squeak like their old wooden 
But it is not only in South America that 
people are afraid of new “squeaks,” for right in our 


carts. 


own country we have an abundance of illustrative 
material to draw from. 


First SEWING MACHINE SMASHED 

The first man who wore a silk hat was pelted 
with rocks, arrested for disturbing the peace and 
inciting a riot—and heavily fined. Hardly a fitting 
recognition for the inventor of headgear that has 
crowned civilization’s grandest fetes. The first sew- 
ing machine Howe put on exhibition was smashed to 
pieces by a mob. Almost every engineer in the 
country called Westinghouse a fool because he in- 
sisted that his air brake could stop a train with 
wind. Thomas Jefferson was hated and berated for 
maintaining that something might be made out of 
the country west of the Mississippi River. Seward 
was ridiculed for advocating the purchase of Alaska 
and it was in derision called ‘“‘Seward’s ice box.” 

Parmentier was called a pig because he asserted 
that potatoes were fit for human beings. There is a 
famous cartoon of Napoleon in the nursery beside 
the cradle of his son and heir, the King of Rome. 
The emperor is squeezing the juice of a beet into 
the mouth of the infant king. Underneath are these 
words: “Suck, dear, suck! Your father says ’tis 








2 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


sugar.” The people who first tried to tell us that 
there was such a thing as beet sugar had a rather 
discouraging time of it. 

Bathing in a tub was condemned as late as 1842 
as a corrupting luxury and was denounced by the 
medical fraternity. William Harvey, who discovered 
the circulation of the blood, enjoyed a lucrative prac- 
tice before he announced his discovery, but after that 
he was called “crack-brained,” and his trade fell off. 
The Bavarian Royal College of Physicians claimed 
that railroads would ruin the health of the people, 
because the rapid motion would give the travelers 
brain disease. 

OuM THOUGHT To BE INSANE 

Galileo’s bitterest enemies were his associates in 
science on the faculty of the University of Pisa. 
When Galileo proposed to drop two weights from 
the top of the leaning tower of Pisa to test the 
doctrine of Aristotle that the heavier one would 
fall faster than the light’ one, his colleagues were 
violently opposed to having any facts brought to 
light which might discredit Aristotle and jeopardize 
When Copernicus declared that 
the earth revolved around the sun he escaped burn- 


their own prestige. 


ing at the stake only by dying prematurely. 

The Royal Society of England did not consider 
Benjamin Franklin’s account of his experience in elec- 
tricity of sufficient importance to be printed in the 
Society’s transactions. Luigi Galvini, who experi- 
mented on frogs and discovered galvanic electricity, 
was ridiculed as the ‘frogs’ dancing master.” George 
Ohm, formulator of a basic method of measuring 
electricity, was thought to be insane. 

Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype, was put 
in an asylum for saying he could transfer the like- 
ness of human beings to a “tin plate.” Napoleon re- 
fused to consider Fulton’s steamboat, and later when 
the first steamboat did cross the ocean, as a result 
of Fulton’s invention, it carried aboard an essay 
proving the impossibility of the undertaking. Pro- 
fessor Lovering of Harvard University demonstrated 
mathematically the impossibility of telegraphing 
3,000 miles under the ocean. 
also “proved” that the long-range gun was an im- 
possibility at the very time that Paris was being 
bombarded. 


And several scientists 


“A Device oF SATAN” 

In 1828 the school board of Lancaster, Ohio, re- 
fused to permit the school house to be used for the 
discussion of whether or not railroads were practical. 
The matter was recently called to mind by an old 


document which reads in part as follows: “You ap 
welcome to use the school house to debate all propy 
questions in, but such things as railroads and tek. 
graphs are impossibilities and rank infidelity. They 
is nothing in the word of God about them. If Go 
had designed that his intelligent creatures shoulj 
travel at the frightful speed of fifteen miles an hour 
by steam, He would have clearly foretold it through 
his holy prophets. It is a device of Satan to led 
immortal souls down to hell.” 

Unfortunately, it is not only in Ohio that th 
followers of the teachings of Holy Writ have shown 
an attitude that was not as open-minded as om 
might wish. Throughout the Middle Ages and even 
at the present time we find many who stand agains 
We need thinkers 2 
This plea is made 
effectively by Joseph Ernest McAfee, who says in 
“Our Thinking”: 


modern scientific discoveries. 
the present time as never before. 


“The most atrocious crimes in history 

Were perpetrated by “good men, cock-sure 
That they obeyed divine injunctions, laws 

Laid down by a fiat, which ’twere sacrilege 
To question. Bloody Marys, Torquenads, 

The whole vile crew inquisatorial, 

Were pious to a turn, were sure they served 
A holy God while butchering fellow men. 
They stubbornly refused to think, or raise 

A question of the right or wrong of deeds 
That shook high heaven and made of earth a hel. 
A race of thinkers is the only hope 

Of progress, justice, peace, security. 

A code of laws contrived to stifle thought, 
And rob men of their freedom to speak out 
What they may think is wicked, monstrous, rank, 
Unutterable crime, and measureless, 
Unpardonable sin against mankind. 

To think is universal human right, 

The indefeasible inheritance 

Of every human soul. Nor that alone. 

To think is duty, highest, fiirst and last.” 


However, it is not only in scientific and religious 


matters that men are afraid of new ideas, but we} 


find this attitude manifest when new political, eco- 
nomic and social theories are advocated. ‘The poet 
Goethe must have experienced this opposition, for he 
said: “If anyone advance anything new, which con- 
tradicts, perhaps threatens to overturn, the creed 
which we for years respected and have handed down 


to others, all passions are raised against him, and 





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every effort is made to crush him. People resist him 
with all their might; they act as if they never heard 
por could comprehend; they speak of the new view 
with contempt, as if it were not worth the trouble 
of even as much as an investigation or a regard; 
and thus a new truth may await a long time before 
it can make its way.” 

In reading our own United States history we often 
come across instances to bear out this contention. 
When Civil Service reform was advocated in Con- 
giess in the eighties, one of the United States sena- 
tors characterized the reformers as “‘a sickly, senti- 
mental, Sunday-school, Goody-Two-Shoes party, 
which appears desirous of ruling the world not as 
God has made it, but as they would have it.” As if 
the spoils system were a divine ordinance! When 
the farmers demanded justice in the nineties they 
were called “calamity howlers,” “political rainmak- 
ers” and “leather-lunged orators.” Instead of study- 
ing their grievances with an open mind, the op- 
ponents resorted to ridicule and the hurling of epi- 
thets. One of the leaders of the farmers’ movement 
was called “rattlepated idiot,” “hoax,” “ 
“blasphemer,” “lunatic” and “‘a mouthing, slobbering 
demagogue, whose patriotism is all in his jawbone.” 
And still that same leader lived to see nearly all his 
theories adopted by Congress within a generation 
and become a part of the law of the land. 

“ProvE ALL THINGS” 
It is not necessary to call to your attention the 


anarchist,” 


numberless instances in the past few years when 
men have been unwilling to face problems with an 
open mind, but have decided them on the basis of 
bias and prejudice. 
there are still men who advocate that we solve them 
on the basis of what Washington said 150 years ago 


In our international relations 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





3 


rather than on what modern statesmen are advocat- 
ing. They forget that in Washington’s time it took 
longer to travel from Maine to Florida than it takes 
today to go around the world. The world is chang- 
We cannot close 


ing and we must change with it. 
our minds to modern conditions. It is idle to say 
that we must not enter into any entangling alliances 
when we already are entangled through our billions 
of dollars of foreign investments and trade with 
every country in the world. 

Our schools must train our young people to think 
in terms of modern conditions. We must acquaint 
our students with modern social, economic and politi- 
cal questions. If our country is to continue to be a 
“land of the free,”’ we must send out students who 
can face the world with an open mind and not be 
bound by the traditions of the past.’ Eternal vigi- 
lance is still the price of liberty. And the great need 
today is to have leaders who will follow the Truth 
wherever it may lead. As Lowell says: 


‘And I honor the man who is willing to sink 

Half his present repute for the freedom to 
think, 

And when he has thought, be his cause strong 
or weak, 

Will risk ’tother half for the freedom to speak, 

Caring naught for the verdict the mob has in 
store, 

Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or 
lower.” 


We are not saying that we should accept every- 
thing simply because it is new, but we are asking 
that we approach modern questions with an open- 
minded attitude. Let our watchword be: 

“Prove all things; cleave to that which is good.” 





Mental Hygiene In the Schools 


By Martian McBEE 
Psychiatric Social Worker, Illinois Society for Mental Hygiene 


With the spread of the Mental Hygiene move- 
ment, it is to be expected that progressive educa- 
tional institutions should make an effort to adapt the 
methods and principles of mental hygiene to educa- 
tional systems. Early experiments were made in the 
la Salle-Peru Township High School and the Lake 
View High School, Chicago. Both units were pri- 
ately financed but an integral part of the school sys- 
tm. The Bureau of Educational Counsel, as the 


unit in La Salle was called, was established in 1923 
and the Advisory Council for Students at Lake View 
was established in 1925. Since then various schools 
throughout the country have adopted some form of 
mental hygiene clinics in conjunction with the 
school. Notable examples are the Child Guidance 
Department of the Newark Board of Education and 
the Department of Education Council of the Win- 


netka schools. Los Angeles and Minneapolis have 




















4 


Child Guidance Clinics in conjunction with the 
schools. Although differing somewhat in organiza- 
tion, the function of these various units is similar. 
The study of personality, the application of mental 
hygiene principles as to the normal child and the co- 
ordination of pedagogical methods with the psy- 
chology of mental hygiene are goals of all such units. 


As a concrete illustration the organization and 
functioning of the demonstration clinic at the Lake 
View High School will be described. This clinic is 
sponsored and financed by the Illinois Society for 
Mental Hygiene and was established in 1925 when 
Dr. McMillan of the Child Study Department of the 
Board of Education of Chicago asked that organiza- 
tion to help in the handling of certain behavior prob- 
lems in the schools. This particular school was 
chosen because: it was thought that it represented a 
good average Americanized community in which 
gross social problems did not exist and would there- 
fore lend itself more readily for purposes of demon- 
stration. 


STUDENT CouNcIL FoRMED 


The name chosen for the unit was the Advisory 
Council for Students, so that children coming to the 
unit for study might feel that they were receiving 
advice, not being considered as problem children. 
This name has proved satisfactory and has been re- 
tained. The staff, which at first consisted of a psy- 
chiatric social worker, clinic secretary and part time 
psychologist and psychiatrist, has been expanded to 
two full-time psychiatric social workers, known as 
student counselors at the school, a visiting teacher 
who is now under the Board of Education, a clinic 
secretary, and the part time psychiatrist and psychol- 
ogist. 

Functioning as any regulation child guidance 
clinic, the Council takes cases for study which are 
referred by teachers or principals, other social agen- 
cies, parents and occasionally the children themselves. 
The first contact, after referral, is with the student, 
the counselor talking with him about his school 
work, his plans, his interests and recreation, his 
health and social contacts. Teachers are talked with 
in order to get a picture of the child’s behavior in 
class and the type of school work that he is doing. 
The social worker visits the home and gets a more 
complete history from the parents. The work of the 
Council is also explained to them. If additional his- 
tory is necessary from employers, recreational lead- 
ers or other sources, it is obtained. The purpose of 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 









the history is to get as complete a picture of th 
child as possible. 
Tests DETERMINE ABILITY 

Usually the child is given psychological tests y 
determine his general ability and any special ability 
or disability that he may have. The tests usually 
given are the Stanford revision of the Binet-Simo 
general intelligence tests, the Healy Completion Teg 
Number 4, the Otis Arithmetic Reasoning Test and 
the Stenquist Assembling Test for boys and the I. £, 
R., a sewing and handwork test, for girls. These may 
be supplemented with special achievement tests or 
other more specialized tests if it is thought necessary, 
The purpose of the tests is to determine the ability of 
the student and to ascertain in what type of activity 
he does his best work. 

Although at first all the students were seen by the 
psychiatrist, as the work became more familiar to th 
teachers and in a less experimental stage, it was 
found that many children who were referred did not 
have emotional or personality problems which would 
necessitate a psychiatric interview. The counselor 
now makes the decision as to whether or not th 
child shall be seen by the psychiatrist, discussing 
questionable cases with him. In general, if there is 
a social or academic maladjustment which can bk 
easily remedied, the social worker does this without 
the child seeing the psychiatrist, but if there are emo- 
tional problems which do not seem to be explained 
by the social situation, the phychiatrist interviews the 
child. There are, therefore, different types of cases, 
classified as: full study, social service, and advisory, 
depending upon the type of service given 

After the study has been completed and recom- 
mendations for treatment formulated, the teacher 
and parents are given the results of the study and 
the recommendations. The type of treatment de 
pends upon the problem, thus a child who would 
be more suited to a technical course may be ad- 
vised to change his course. Another child who 
may need recreational opportunities is connected with 
some recreational group. In many instances a better 
understanding of the child by his parents and teach- 
ers may be effected. The Council keeps in contact 
with the child as long as he is in school and follows 
up children as they leave school to go to work or t 
college. Periodic follow-up contacts are made for 
the purpose of studying what the adjustment of the 
child has been. If a child leaves school and is 


need of further study and supervision, a contact 


made between him and an appropriate social agency: 











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THE AMERICAN TEACHER | 5 


The type of cases studied have fallen in general 
(1) 
Scholarship, including students who are not scholas- 
tically adjusted, either because they are in courses 
for which they are not suited or because of lack of 
interest and incentive in their work: (2) truancy, 


under one of the following classifications: 


includes those students who are truant and who do 
not yield to the routine follow-up of the truant of- 
fcer; (3) delinquency, students who have done 
smething which would bring them under court su- 
pervision whether or not they have been brought to 
the attention of the juvenile court; (4) personality 
problems, includes problems of social attitudes, either 
toward the school or classmates, attitudes affecting 
school behavior and problems of individual adjust- 
ment; (5) special problems, such as health affecting 
school work and other special problems in which the 
service of the Council would be beneficial. It has 
been gratifying to the Council to notice the change 
in emphasis as the school has become more familiar 
with the work from scholastic and disciplinary prob- 
lems to problems of personality. The teachers who 
used to refer children because they were difficult to 
manage refer them now saying, “Can you help this 
student in making a better adjustment?” Although 
the problem may be the same, the emphasis on the 
personality of the child by the teacher is important. 

An analysis of the reasons for referral show that 
personality problems are referred more frequently, 
the percentage of all other types of problems cor- 
respondingly decreasing. Delinquency has never been 
alarge group in this school. The percentage of tru- 
ancy cases referred has been slightly less this year 
than previously. The principal has stated that he 
finds that truancy has decreased as the work of the 
Council progressed. 

The usual clinic work is greatly simplified, due to 
the facilities for obtaining history and carrying out 
treatment within the school itself. Information ob- 
tained from teachers, recreational leaders and athletic 
directors in the school is valuable in understanding 
the child. In carrying on treatment, the facilities of 
the school are very helpful. Deans, vocational ad- 
visors, recreational leaders and athletic instructors 
ate found to be interested and co-operative. If the 
child needs special attention in any of the school 
activities this is easily arranged and the child may 
be quite unaware of any unusual attention. Music 
and dramatic work in the school curriculum are 
lo utilized in treatment. 

As an example of the attitude of the student’s 


family affecting school behavior, the case of Roger 
is interesting. Roger was referred to the Council 
as a scholarship problem. The study showed that he 
had average intellectual ability and good mechanical 
ability in spite of the fact that he had never passed 
in four subjects since he entered high school. The 
family situation was interesting in trying to under- 
stand why there was this discrepancy between his 
ability and his achievement. The parents were sepa- 
rated, Roger was an only child, living with his 
mother. She was so eager to have him succeed and 
go to college that she was constantly checking up on 
him. She really gave him no encouragement and did 
not allow him to take any responsibility because she 
was afraid he would fail. As a result of this atti- 
tude Roger had become convinced that he could not 
do the work required of him and, since this kept 
him from participating in school athletics, he was 
completely discouraged. An effort was made to help 
the mother understand that he needed to be encou- 
raged and given responsibility. He was asked to 
join a boys’ club, the leader of which had been seen 
In this club 
he was given an office and a position of responsi- 


by the counselor and Roger discussed. 


bility. He was encouraged whenever possible. Roger 
responded to the position he had in the club and 
became a popular and well-liked leader in the group. 
As a result he was able to do much better academic 
work and for the next two semesters he carried his 
subjects, passing in all of them. 


The effect on children of the attitude of the par- 
ents and brothers and sisters is always important in 
understanding their attitude toward school. The 
child who is rebelling because of over-strict parental 
authority at home usually is rebellious toward any 
authority and this shows in his attitude toward 
school. We are also familiar with the over-pam- 
pered, protected child who is unable to make his ad- 
justment at school on his own responsibility because 
he has always had everything done for him and has 
not been allowed to grow and develop as other chil- 
dren have. Although we do not have statistics com- 
piled on the number of cases in which the attitude 
of the family is the main factor im the child’s mal- 
adjustment, we are convinced that it is necessary 
to know what the attitude of the family is if we 
are to understand and help the child. 

The part that social adjustments play in a child’s 
life is also important. Louise was-a girl who had 
been born in the South and had lived there all her 

(Continued on Page 13) 








6 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The American Teacher 


Education for Democracy 





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FLorENCE Roop, St. Paul No. 28; 328 Cedar Street, St. Paul, 
Minnesota. 

W. B. Satrertuwarte, Local No. 200; 1837 12th Ave., West 
Seattle, Washington. 

W. J. Scorr, Atlanta No. 89; 212 Kings Highway, Decatur, 
Georgia. 

F, G. Strecker, Chicago No. 2; 1618 Lake Avenue, Wilmette, 
Illinois. 

Cares B, StmLMan, Chicago No. 2; 827 Ridge Avenue, 
Evanston, Illinois. 


1803 Livingston 


Western Organizer 
E. E. ScHwarTzTRAuBER, Portland No. 111; 
Box 68, Portland, Oregon. 
Secretary-T reasurer 
FLORENCE Curtis Hanson, Chicago Women No. 3; 506 South 
Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois—-Telephone Harrison 2950. 
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
ORGANIZED APRIL 15, 1916 
Affiliated With the American Federation of Labor. 


R. F. D. 5, 





WHY BE PROUD? 


The American Federation of Teachers is proud. 
And why? First, it is affiliated with the American 
Federation of Labor, and is a part of America’s great 
To be affiliated with organized 
labor means to be connected with that group which 


labor movement. 


stands for a better life for every man, for the better. 
ing of human conditions, for the achievement o 


Labor be. 


higher levels of excellence for all groups. 


lieves in brotherhood, in democracy, in humanity, 


Labor is the relentless foe of all forms of oppression 
and human degradation and is seeking to achiey 
We are proud to be a part of 


a movement with this valiant spirit of social ideal. 


social justice for all. 


ism. 

Again we are proud of the educational program 
Dr. John Dewe 
says: “A few years ago I went over a good many 


and history of organized labor. 


documents in that field, and I say without any fex 
of contradiction that there is no organization in th 
United States—I do not care what its nature is— 
that has such a fine record in the program of liber 
progressive education as will be found in the printed 
records of the American Federation of Labor.” If 
Dr. Dewey does not know, who does? 

In this program we find: for teachers’ tenure of 
position during efficiency; increased revenues to 
maintain and develop the public schools; revision of 
salary schedules upward; clean, sanitary, non-institut- 
tionalized buildings of not more than 2,000; a five. 
hour day; classes of thirty pupils to a class, so tha 
each pupil may have some individual attention; equa 
educational opportunity for all. 

We are proud that we are building a true profes 
sion. The teaching profession must be built as othe 
professions have been built, on an economic basis of 
adequate comyensation, on sound tenure of position 
of the participation of its members in determininy 
its standards, qualifications and membership. 

We contradiction of th 
statement that every salary increase in the United 
States in the last ten years has been due to either th 
direct or reflective influence of the American Feder- 
ation of Teachers. Where teachers’ unions are organ- 
ized strongly and effectively, the highest salary 


invite authoritative 


schedules are operative. 

No other group of organized citizenry than th 
American Federation of Labor is on record for tet- 
ure of position during efficiency. Eleven states now 
have some form of tenure law. It is no mere Co 
incidence that these states have within them strong 
teachers’ unions. 

Teacher participation in school administration— 
the release of the voice of the teacher—not only 
makes for the development of freedom and self- 
respect on the part of the teacher, but is essential 
the building of a profession. We are proud of out 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


forts in this direction and in the near future we'll 
te even prouder of our accomplishment. 


The American Federation of Teachers has opposed 
rigorously and many times alone propaganda in the 
ghools arid now results of that opposition seem to 
be appearing. 

In spite of mistakes which we acknowledge and 
regret, we are proud of our record as the protector 
of the individual teacher from injustice and even 
more as the protector of the ideals of education. 


The social idealism of the labor movement is our 
inspiration and every step forward toward social jus- 
tice which we are making answers again the question, 


“Why Be Proud?” 





A FRIENDLY GREETING 


Adelaide, South Australia., 
April 11, 1929. 
The Editor, 
THE AMERICAN TEACHER, 
Chicago, Ill., U. S. A. 
Dear Madam: 


Iam forwarding by same post as this note copies 


of our Education Gazette and Educational Regula- 
tions operating in the State of South Australia. They 
may interest you and your fellow Teachers. 

I cannot write you without again thanking you 
for the copies of THE AMERICAN TEACHER. I look 
forward for them every month and count myself 
fortunate indeed in being kept well informed as to 
the progress of your Union and its attitude, and that 
of your leaders, in regard to the application of broad 
principles of democracy in connection with the 
teaching profession. Your Union must surely have 
agreat army of supporters throughout America when 
it fights for the purity of the fountains of learning 
and knowledge. 

Iam not a teacher, but my sincere sympathy goes 
to them in their work. I assist on the school com- 
mittees of my own State and cannot help being inter- 
ested in the good work of your Union. 


With best wishes, 
Yours very truly, 
ARcHD. McINNEs. 





That country is the richest which nourishes the 


sfeatest number of noble and happy human beings.-— 
Ruskin, 


SO THIS IS WAR! 


Before people can understand the problem of mil- 
itarism in education they must understand that 
“wanting war” and “liking war” are not the dangers 
we must avoid. Wars do not come because people 
“want war’—for no considerable number of people 
If we seek to explain human be- 
havior in terms of deliberate badness we shall never 
discover the real causes of war. We must look deeper 


ever want war. 


for hidden, unconscious, non-deliberate attitudes— 
beliefs and feelings. These are the dangers. 


These habits, of which we may not be conscious, 
are the factors which predispose us to war-like con- 
duct in an emergency. They are the forces that 
produce actions which we later “rationalize” by at- 
tributing the blame to the other fellow, and by dis- 
covering and proclaiming moral reasons for our own 
conduct. These unconscious habits are the most 
dangerous product of the “popularized” military 
training discussed in the pamphlet, “So This Is War.” 
Boys and girls enlisted in the R. O. T. C. by appeals 
to their ambitions will later find many high-sounding 
phrases to justify their enjoying these rewards. They 
will become enthusiasts for the military program, 


without giving any thought to its consequences. 


We are most anxious to push this pamphlet and to 
expose the practices outlined therein. The public 
must know how fatal this playing at soldiering will 
be if allowed to continue. Will you not help us by 
trying to get church groups, clubs and individuals 


to buy copies for circulation? 


Study the pamphlet so you can sell it to your 
friends. We feel this popularized training is one of 
the most dangerous and yet most vulnerable aspects 
of present-day militarism. Copies of this pamphlet 
will be furnished at cost: One copy, 15 cents; twelve 
copies, $1.25; fifty copies, $4; 100 copies, $7; 1,000 
copies, $50. 

Tucker R. Smith, executive secretary, Committee 
on Militarism in Education, 387 Bible House, Astor 
Place, New York City. 





Were half the power that fills the world with 
terror, 
Were half the wealth bestowed in camps and 
courts, 
Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
There were no need of arsenals or forts. 
—Longfellow. 








8 . THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


THE PROGRESSIVES—A NEW WHITE HOPE? 


The survival of the fittest marks the steps of so- 
ciety. The fittest are those who are best able to 
meet new situations. Size, strength and agility mean 
nothing if they cannot be applied to ever-changing 
conditions. At certain points in the development of 
nations or movements, former events have set the 
stage so that change is not only inevitable but accel- 
erated. 

During such, periods in the labor movement, lead- 
ers are compelled to act in one of three ways: (1) 
(2) to 
scrap them and substitute revolutionary forms; (3) 
to draw upon the best of the old and the new and 
so evolve a movement that has at once stability and 


to preserve existing organizations intact; 


energy. 

The French Revolution destroyed the aristocrats 
and brought to the top, not the workers and peas- 
ants, but the bourgeoisie. In the Russian Revolution 
the champions of the workers and the peasants over- 
threw not only the aristocrats but the bourgeoisie as 
well. Now the Stalinites who are in power are faced 
with the opposition of the Trotskyites calling for an 
extended revolutionary movement for the entire 


world. 


In the United States there are those who at the 
present time are trying to maintain the present status 
even though it is antiquated, and on the other side, 
those who are for the complete overthrow of every- 
thing. Between these two, there are the vast major- 
ity of workers without leadership and without phil- 
osophy. Neither of these groups has any appeal for 
them. 


If Labor is to advance, this ‘““No Man’s Land” must 
be converted from the scrapping ground of the best 
of both fighting forces into a power station from 
which the tremendous energy now spent in destruc- 
tion will be transformed and directed into channels 
of progress. 

Recently a group who call themselves the ‘‘Pro- 
gressives” have arisen with this purpose in mind. 
Their program includes: (1) the organization of the 
unskilled and semi-skilled; (2) appeals directed pri- 
marily to workers instead of to employers in organ- 
izing efforts; (3) exposing and fighting the National 
Civic Federation’s influence in the labor movement; 
(4) insistence that union membership shall not be 
denied because of radical, social, political, economic 
or religious views or affiliations; (5) the right of a 
minority or opposition to exist in the movement; (6) 


fighting injunctions and yellow-dog contracts; (7) 
a campaign for social insurance; (8) encouragemen, 
of co-operative enterprises; (9) emphasis on a soci) 
order controlled by workers as labor’s goal; (10) th 
working out of effective methods of collective bg. 
gaining and of union control without sacrificing th 
union’s independence; (11) a continued struggle fo 
the five-day week, higher wages and better condj- 
tions; (12) the recognition of Soviet Russia by the 
United States; (13) making the American Labor 
movement anti-imperialistic and anti-militaristic; 
(14) assertion of the principle that Labor must kk 
international in its spirit and activities; (15) deve 
opment of a labor party based on mass production 
of industrial workers, and (16) the support of ; 
broad workers’ education movement based on pro- 
gressive concepts. 

In short, they want action on lines that are both 
possible and practicable. 

The Progressivés are not attached to either of the 
fanatical extremes who think they are unalterably 
right and the other fellow is unalterably wrong be. 
cause of connections with Moscow or Wall Street, a 
the case may be. If a working base can be reached 
before either of the extremist groups has spent or 
killed itself, progress will be assured. Power is now 
in the hands of the conservatives and if physical 
force will suffice they will ferret out the last bit 
of rebel spirit and the whole movement will enter 
a period of unprecedented reaction. 

The ‘unanimity of the attack on the Progressives 
by both the A. F. of L. and the Communists is sig- 
nificant proof of its potential power. Such a move- 
ment should have the allegiance of all those who are 
brave enough to withstand attacks from both side 
and back up their real beliefs. 

CHARLES P, DRAKE. 





THE POET’S PRAYER 
By Covami 
In the far, mysterious mountains, 
Whence the dream gods rule the world, 
Where abideth hope and beauty, 
Where love’s flags are never furled, 


There come prayers of the poets, 


Pleading in whatever tongue, 
Asking only understanding 
Of the songs that must be sung. 





“Remember the steam kettle—though up to its 
neck in hot water, it continues to sing.” 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 9 


LESS FOOD CONSUMED 


Startling disclosures of the decrease in the amount 
of food consumed in the average American working 
man’s home during the past 25 years have been 

ced in evidence by the Brotherhood of Locomo- 
tive Firemen and Enginemen before the Federal Ar- 
bitration Board meeting at Chicago in the Western 


Wage case. 

These statistics, compiled from official sources, 
show that the average American worker’s family 
is buying less than half as much meat and much less 
of the other principal articles of food than it con- 
sumed a generation ago. 

This exhibit indicates that because of the present 
high cost of living American wage earners have had 
to cut down on their expenditures for food in order 
to secure the money to pay rent and buy cloth- 
ing, fuel, light and the hundred other items that 
must be purchased at high prices under modern con- 
ditions. 

These startling facts are shown by a comparison 
of the amounts of food found to be consumed in the 
average working man’s home by the United States 
Bureau of Labor Statistics in the two nation-wide 
investigations which it conducted in 1901 and 1919. 


The following table shows this comparison for the 
principal articles of food: 


1919 
186.2 
7.3 
40.5 
46.9 
85.3 
26.5 
49.8 
61.2 
326.0 
67.5 
147.5 
374.1 
464.4 
762.7 


1901 
349.7 
48.6 
114.2 
110.5 
_ 77.7 
_. 67.7 
-~ 79.9 
85.2 
354.5 
— fe 
268.2 
680.8 
252.7 
__882.0 


Fresh beef (pounds) 

Salt and corned beef (pounds) 
Fresh hog products (pounds) —_- 
Salt hog products (pounds) 
Other meat (pounds) ___~ 
Poultry (pounds) —_~~- 
OE — 
Eggs (pounds) _____~ 
Milk (fresh) (quarts) 
Butter (pounds) ____- 
Sugar (pounds) ___. 

Flour and meal (pounds) - 
Bread (pounds) —__~~~- 
ETT ‘ 


This table shows that whereas the average Amer- 
ican worker’s family ate 340 pounds of fresh beef 
in 1901, they had only 186 pounds in 1919. They 
ate 224 pounds of fresh and salt pork products in 
1901, as compared with only 87 pounds in 1919. 
They ate 67 pounds of poultry in 1901 as compared 
with 26 pounds in 1919. 

Altogether they had 848 pounds of all kinds of 
meat, poultry and fish in 1901 as compared with 
only 442 pounds in 1919. 

Nor was this shortage confined wholly to meats. 
They had 117 pounds of butter in 1901 as com- 


pared with 67 pounds in 1919. It is true that at the 
latter date they used 21 pounds of oleomargarine 
and other butter substitutes in an attempt to make 
up the deficit, but this by no means gave them the 
equivalent food value. 


Converting the bread into equivalent terms of 
flour we find that in 1901 the worker’s family con- 
sumed 849 pounds of flour and meal as compared 


with 683 pounds in 1919. They also had 120 pounds 
less of potatoes. 


This startling decrease in food consumption in 
American wage earners’ homes may explain why Am- 
erican agriculture has such huge surpluses of its 
staple products and why American farmers are go- 
ing bankrupt. If the ten million families of Amer- 
ican industrial workers were consuming as much 
food as they did 25 years ago, they would require an 
increase of four billion pounds of meat, five hundred 


million pounds of butter and nearly three billion 
loaves of bread. 


This indicates that the only way to restore the 
American farmer to a condition of permanent pros- 
perity is to increase the wages of American workers 


so that they can purchase as much food as they 
consumed a generation ago. 





MILITARY ORGANIZATION WOULD 
SILENCE PROFESSOR 

Aroused by criticism of the intolerance of the Ku 
Klux Klan and the American Legion, made by Dr. 
Thomas Woody, a professor of the University of 
Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia County Council of 
the Veterans of Foreign Wars has adopted a fiery 
resolution demanding that the doctor be “silenced.” 

The resolution, after declaring that it “is meant 
in no manner whatsoever as a restriction of free 
speech” provides that copies be sent to the Governor 
of Pennsylvania and to the provost of the University 
of Pennsylvania and “that these authorities be 
requested to take such measures as will prevent a 
continuance of such evils.” 

In an address made recently in Philadelphia, Dr. 
Woody described both the Legion and the Klan as 
“American moristrosities” in so far as they threaten 
teachers of history. Dz. Woody pointed out that the 
teaching of history is following modern lines of 
original research and is more concerned with the 
discovery of truth than with “furnishing national- 
istic propaganda for the warping of youthful minds.” 





Patience is a remedy for every sorrow.—Publius 
Syrus. 














10 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Union Report Shows More 
Intolerance 


Americans enjoy freedom of speech—except when 
there’s a serious difference of opinion, summarizes the 
American Civil Liberties Union in its annual report, 
just issued. Less active repression but more settled 
intolerance marks the America of 1928, is its verdict. 

As evidence it cites the release of all political pris- 
oners but one, no new prosecutions under criminal 
syndicalism or sedition laws except in Pennsylvania, 
failure of all repressive laws introduced in Congress 
and state legislatures, and the lowest number of cases 
of mob violence and police interference with meetings 
in years. 

The reason for the decrease in repression, says the 
Union, is that “there is little to repress. Militancy in 
the labor movement has declined, and radical politi- 
cal movements are not strong enough to arouse fear.” 

PENNSYLVANIA THE WORST 

Exceptions to generally lessened repression are noted 
in places of acute industrial conflict (Colorado, Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio and West Virginia coal fields; New 
England textile centers) and in a number of cities— 
particularly Newark, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and 
Boston—where the police adopt lawless tactics in pre- 
venting or breaking up radical meetings. Strikers 
are objects of attack anywhere, and the Workers’ 
Party, as the most active radical political organiza- 
tion, gets the brunt of repression. “Pennsylvania is 
today the worst state in the Union for wholesale vic- 
lations of civil rights,” the report concludes. 

Contrasting active repression with intolerance, 
which the Union says has increased, the report states 
that “it is a matter of common observation that the 
general public attitude is one of indifference and intol- 
erance, more settled and more apathetic than at any 
time since the war.” 


DEPORTATION OF Rapica.s Easy 

As proof it points out that the Espionage Act sec- 
tions authorizing Post Office censorship are still in 
force; that 34 states have criminal syndicalism or 
sedition laws—though only Pennsylvania now ac- 
tively uses them; that sweeping injunctions against 
strikers are the rule; that movies, plays, books, and 
periodicals are censored in many localities; that anti- 
evolution laws are on the books of two states, while 
evolution teaching is outlawed by regulation in many 
others; that United States colonies are still ruled by 
the Navy or War Department; that aliens no longer 
enjoy the right of political asylum in the United 


States; that deportation for radical political views ;, 
easy and naturalization of radicals and pacifists diff. 
cult; that professional patriots and mnilitarists ay 
active in suppressing pacifist and even mildly progres. 
sive activities; and that the Klan, though dying, stij 
mobilizes racial and religious prejudice. 

Although no new laws restricting freedom of 
speech, press, and ‘assemblage have been passed, crim. 
nal syndicalism or sedition laws existing in 34 state 
were clinched during the year by Supreme Court deci. 
sions upholding the right of states to pass laws penal. 
izing language, or membership in organizations teach. 
ing doctrines declared criminal. The absence of ney 
repressive measures, the report suggests, is probably 
due to the fact that “it would be difficult to sugges 
any.” “The code is complete,” it adds, “except for: 
Federal sedition law.” 


None of the gag laws put on statute books since 
1917 have been repealed, and it is not likely that any 
will be, says the Union, noting that the Suprem 
Court has passed adversely upon most of the issue 
affecting civil liberty. An exception was the Supreme 
Court decision which overruled the Texas law forbid. 
ding Negroes to vote at primary elections, called by 
the highest United States tribunal “‘a direct and obvi. 
ous infringement of the Fourteenth Amendment.” 

TEACHERS SimpLy Not RE-EMPLOYED 

Surveying the restrictions on teaching in schools 
and colleges during the last year, the Union says that 
fewer cases of dismissals of teachers for their views 
were reported than in recent years—“probably because 
the authorities have learned how to handle such is- 
sues without arousing controversy. Teachers’ appoint- 
ments are just not renewed.” Of the teachers dis- 
missed—three, all from public schools—one in Ten- 
nessee was forced to resign because he gave a defini- 
tion of the word “evolution,” and two in Pennsylva- 
nia were forced out of the State Normal School be- 
cause of their sponsorship of a student liberal club 
opposed by the local post of the American Legion. 
Cases are cited of the dismissal of students for oppos- 
ing compulsory military drill, together with those of 
several student editors dismissed for articles which the 
authorities regarded as “improper.” 


As the outstanding event of the past year in the 
field of civil liberty, the Union lists the execution of 
Sacco and Vanzetti in Massachusetts, “who were 
prosecuted primarily because of their radical views 
and activities.” The struggle for civil rights in the 
coal fields is listed as the second important feature of 
the year. 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 11 


LATEST FIGURES ON CHILD LABOR. 


Year by year the arc light of statistics illumines 
more and more of our child workers. In the last 
Annual Report of the Chief of the Federal Children’s 
Bureau, it is estimated that reports were received 
during 1927 of more than half the work permits 
jsued throughout the country to children 14 and 15 


years of age. This much has the Bureau accom- 


plished through an educational campaign which in- 


creased the number of states reporting from twelve 
to sixteen and the number of cities from twenty- 
sx in twelve additional states to sixty-nine in 
eighteen additional states. 

Reports were received for 107,395 children 14 
and 15 years of age of whom 954 were children in 
cities with a population of less than 50,000. These 
figures include only children receiving work per- 
mits for the first time—in other words they in- 
dicate (with very slight exceptions) the number of 
14 and 15 year old children leaving school and start- 
ing full-time work during the year, but do not 
indicate the total number of children at work. 

Moreover, it must be borne in mind that these 
figures do not include the large number of children 
employed in domestic service and in farm work, as 
most states do not require work permits for such 
employment, nor children engaged in other miscel- 
laneous occupations for which permits are not al- 
ways required nor children working illegally with- 
out permits. 

One state and five cities reported an increase in 
the number of permits granted. On the other hand, 
decreases ranging from 2 to 61 per cent were re- 
ported in eleven states and seventeen cities. The 
helpfulness with which we view this decline, how- 
ever, is somewhat dampened by the Chief’s qualify- 
“It is generally believed that unem- 
ployment during 1927 is largely responsible for the 
decreases, although in periods of unemployment 
children who would otherwise be kept in school are 
often compelled to seek employment and are some- 


ing statement: 


times able to obtain work when their parents can- 
not do so.” 

Perhaps the most valuable bit of analysis in the 
report, so far as child labor is concerned, lies in the 
direct relationship shown between the educational 
provisions of the child labor laws and the age at 
which children received permits. Where the grade 
fequirement is low a large proportion of 14 year 
old children are found receiving permits. As the 


grade requirement is strengthened, the tendency is 
for them to stay in school until 15 years. In the 
states and cities requiring without exception the 
completion of the eighth grade before children of 
14 may receive work permits, 24 per cent only were 
14 years of age. In those states having an eighth 
grade requirement but permitting exemptions or al- 
Re- 
ports from the larger group of states requiring less 
than completion of the eighth grade for children 
14 years of age, show that 43 per cent of the per- 
mits were issued to 14 year old children. This 
shows very clearly the influence of the educational 
standards of child labor and school attendance laws 
on the proportion of children receiving permits at 
14 instead of at 15 years of age. 


ternatives, 29 per cent were 14 years of age. 


The number of part-time and vacation permits 
issued is considered to depend partly upon the avail- 
ability of short-time jobs for inexperienced young 
workers, but also “upon the extent to which local 
issuing officers encourage temporary vacation certi- 
ficates for children qualified for regular work per- 
mits in the hope that they will return to school 
in the fall.” The number of such part-time and 
vacation permits issued exceeded the number of 
full-time working permits during 1927 in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, Indiana, Maine, Vermont and 
Wisconsin, and in Lynn, Grand Rapids, Lincoln and 
Chattanooga. 

This in itself constitutes a serious problem. It is 
not only necessary to determine that children work- 
ing during vacation periods are employed in suit- 
able and non-hazardous occupations, but to see 
that children working before and after school hours 
are not putting in too long a working day in their 
combination of school and employment, or are not 
failing in their school work as a result of their em- 
ployment. Recent studies of the National Child 
Labor Committee in several states indicate that many 
children so employed are carrying a load far too 
heavy for immature shoulders—The American 


Child. 





Our country has definitely relinquished the old 
standard of dealing with other countries by terror 
and force and is definitely committed to the new 
standard of dealing with them through friendship 
and understanding—I shall resist any attempt to re- 
sort to the old methods and the old standards,— 
Calvin Coolidge. 














12 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


What the American Federation of Teachers Is Doing 
and Attempting to Do 


(Adam Coaldigger, in The Illinois Miner.) 

Are you one of those who haven’t heard about 
the up-and-going American Federation of Teachers? 
And is your community one of those not blessed by 
one of their locals? In that case, folks, better 
wake up. 

I came in contact with them first last summer, 
and since then have been trying to keep such an eye 
on them as my cabbage plantation and this column 
would permit. And my admiration increases with 
my knowledge of what they are doing—and at- 
tempting to do. 

And what a flood of memories of my own school 
days are unloosed! I always had a high and perhaps 
even an exaggerated opinion regarding the value of 
education, due to the fact that I never had much of 
an education myself. My mater was a 
parochial bauernschule in a part of Germany where, 
at that time, at least, disbelief in witches, spooks 
and the potentiality of comets as war-makers was 
regarded as prima facie evidence of sinful aufklae- 
rung if not downright heresy. 

My teachers, all able-bodied men, with high 
muscular development, were devout believers in the 
infallibility of the hazel rod as a pedagogic instru- 
ment, and called the day lost in which said imple- 
ment of education was not applied either on my 
hands or on that part of my anatomy with which I 
polished the school benches when not standing in the 


corner with a foolscap on my noble brow. 
cg % 


alma 


And yet I was far from being a fool, as any one 
will realize who has read this column for any length 
of time. (Thank you.) To start with, I was a 
voracious reader, devouring anything printed from 
Indianer and Raeuber Geschichten to Goethe’s Faust 
and Heine’s songs. 

The only books I objected to were the ones we 
had in school. They were so unspeakably dry as 
compared to all the other books I read on the sly. 
History, of which I became very fond in later days, 
was a collection of meaningless dates. King So-and- 

.So was born on such and such a date. A great 
general marched up the hill on the morning of June 
the second, A. D. 1659, and marched down again 
that evening. And what I learned from this sort 
of history is all summed up in the old doggerel: 


The grand old Duke of York 

He had ten thousand men. 

He marched them up a hill one day 

Then he marched them down again. 
CHORUS. 

And when they were up they were up! 

And when they were down they were down! 

But when they were only half way up, 

They were neither up nor down! 

For a while I also took very kindly to the Bible, 
or rather to the Bible stories as taught in our school, 
due perhaps to the fact that they contained few 
dates and that if some of these old Hebrew generals 
in the stories marched up a hill, they usually came 
down with the bacon to show that the battle for 
the Lord wasn’t all for glory. 

I am still of the opinion that the Bible is greater 
history than nine-tenths of the late-illuminated fairy 
tales that have been written since, and had it not 
been that at a certain point in my _ educational 
career, the memorizing of Bible pages was added to 
the hazel-rod as a means of punishment, I might 
have become a great Bible student. 

+ : a 

Besides history and primitive theology, I had a 
fondness for composition—essay writing, they called 
it. But here, wide reading, for one so young, and a 
very vivid imagination became serious obstacles. 
I couldn’t stick to the narrow text of themes as 
prescribed by my hazelrod pedagogues. Try as | 
would, I would drag in my Aufsaetze ideas and 
material I had discovered in forbidden books, Every 
literary effort was followed by increased application 
of the hazel-rod until they finally succeeded in 
beating me into literary regularity and dullness. 

Drawing was another one of my gifts from nature. 
By the time I was 10 years old I could draw any 
animal I had ever seen in any position desired. 

I could draw a cartoon of red-headed and red- 
nosed Carl Schmied,: one of my worst teachers, s0 
even he could recognize it in the drunken stupor 
which was his normal condition, and break, in ap- 
preciation, three fresh hazel-rods on my back. Be- 
sides, free-hand drawing was clearly out of my 
sphere. Father was a Moebel Schreiner (cabinet 
maker) and what a prospective cabinet maker like 





mysel 
hated 
soul. 
Th 
stran§ 
of en 
sixtee 
and ¢ 
teach 
dance 
and 1 
finge 
note- 
He 
drawi 
guide 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 13 


myself needed was mechanical drawing, which I 


hated with every ounce of my young and artistic 
soul. 

Then there was a decided talent for music, 
srangled, mangled, and almost killed, in the playing 
of endless scales in whole, half, quarter, eighth, 
ixteenth and thirty-second notes, in staccato, legato, 
and every phrasing that my _ militaerkapellmeister 
teacher could think of; with never a song, melody, 
dance, march, or even an explanation of the why 
ind wherefore of the damned scales, arpeggios and 
finger exercises, until I hated the very sight of a 
note-book or musical instrument. 

Here then were my talents: Composition, history, 
drawing and music. Real pedagogues would have 
guided me along those lines. But being vicious 
ases, they did all in their might to cramp, warp and 
beat me out of my natural bents in the holy name 
of conformity to class and curriculum. 


Had it not been for my teachers, I might have 
become a famous 
musician, and made that confounded Bauernest in 
Schwaben celebrated. As it is, I remained a talented 


amateur in these arts in spite of the fact that after 


author, historian, painter or 


my escape from school, I spent the remainder of my 
youth in a heart-breaking struggle to undo the work 
of my teachers. So if I don’t know much about 
pedagogy, I have some well-defined notions of what 
it should not be. 
ce re ob o 

There 
is considerably more sympathy and understanding 
on the part of teachers today. And yet I think that 
noend of talent is crushed by present day factory 
methods in the school room. 


Of course, times have changed since then. 


All in all, the most hopeful sign to me is this 
union of the teachers, proudly affiliated with the 
American Federation of Labor, the delegates taking 
their places in every city and state labor body where 
they are organized. Here is an organization which, 
like all labor unions, aims to raise wages, improve 
conditions and bring into the lives of the teachers 
that most precious heritage of mankind—liberty. 
Here is tolerance, vision, sympathy with the labor 
movement. 

The organization is not yet as large as it should 
be—and as proper co-operation on the part of other 
union men and women would help to make it. But 
they are blessed with splendid vision and courage. 


They see war in all its hideousness, the exploitation 
of labor for the unholy thing it is. 

And this understanding and vision they bring to 
the boys and girls whose opinions they so greatly in- 
fluence. How could poor Carl Schmied influence 
me in the direction of things beautiful and good? 
He had no vision. His heart had not been touched, 
his soul never stirred, by a great cause. To accom- 
plish great things men and women must be inspired. 
And this is one reason why the American Federation 
of Teachers will one day be a large and powerful 
union. : 





MENTAL HYGIENE IN THE SCHOOLS 


(Continued from Page 5) 
life. When she entered high school in Chicago she 
did not know any other students and, being rather 
shy, did not make acquaintances easily. She was 
doing poor school work and was very unhappy here, 
talking always of the South and her desire to go 
back. The Council made some social contacts for 
her and helped her to get into a girl’s club. Since 
then she has changed her attitude, likes school and 
has done excellent academic work. 
WorKING WITH STUDENTS 

Not all of the problems which come to the Coun- 
cil are solved so easily. Some have deep-seated bases 
which do not yield readily to treatment, others are 
the result of family and social conditions which are 
difficult to treat. In any case, however, an evalua- 
tion of the student’s ability and the possibilities of 
treatment are made and in all instances this is help- 
ful in working with the student. 

Although this description has been of only one 
unit doing mental hygiene work in schools, it is 
typical of the child guidance clinics in school. The 
emphasis in all the clinics is on the child as an en- 
tity, not just as a student Study and treatment are 
carzied on considering the total personality of the 
child. Only by such a consideration can we begin 
to understand a child. 

The outlook for mental hygiene in the schools is 
good. The growing school curriculum could hardly 
fail to take in this increasingly important phase of 
education and, judging by the number of mental 
hygiene centers in schools, both public and private, 
and all types from nursery schools to colleges, this 
expansion has begun. 





A sound discretion is net so much indicated by 
never making a mistake as by never repeating it. 





14 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Attack Teaching of Thrift Habits In School System 


Believers In “New Theory” Would Urge Child to Spend Everything Rather Than Save; “Poor Richard” 
Old-Fashioned Now, They Contend. 


A revolt against the present teaching of thrift in 
the common schools of the country is being nurtured 
by educational economists who have been making 
studies of such teaching in the light of the modern 
industrial system. 

Professor Harold F. Clark of Teachers College, 
Columbia University, is firmly convinced that the 
principles of thrift as inculcated into youths by 
teachers and text books has had much to do with 
economic depressions in the past and with the in- 
tensifying of the industrial system will have more 
to do with such depressions in the future unless a 
change is made. 

Professor Clark is an expert in educational eco- 
nomics and for several years has been collecting data 
from all parts of the country for the barrage he ex- 
pects to lay down on the heads of those who persist 
in holding to the philosophy of Benjamin Franklin in 
that reward as a model. 


‘More HarM THAN Goon.” 


Poor Richard’s ideas of thrift have been excellent 
in the less complicated society of his day, but it has 
no place in the scheme of things in 1929. In fact, 
it has done more harm than good and it is time to 
begin giving sounder principles of economics. 


““We take too narrow a view of thrift,” says Pro- 
fessor Clark. 
we stopped talking about saving and began to ex- 


“We could do our society a service if 


plain in a sensible way the intricacies of our present 
It is silly to think that we 
His was the method 
of a primitive society. The ordinary person thinks 


industrialized structure. 
can save in the Franklin way. 


of saving by actually holding on to nickles and 
dimes. The children are so taught. A dime put into 
a bank is not ‘saved,’ but it is put into production 
goods by the bank, and present-day teaching which 
does not point that out is tragic and bound to lead 
to trouble. 

“When every one is running to the bank with 
money, the result is more production goods than can 
As 
soon as the depression comes there is a greater ten- 


be consumed and we have a business depression. 


dency to ‘save’ even more, and thus the trouble is 
Depressions would end sooner than 
otherwise if every one would spend money du-in7 


intensified. 


Depressions, of 
course, are not wholly caused by this faulty concep. 
tion, but they are accentuated by it.” 


bad times instead of ‘saving’ it. 


His first step would be to cast all existing books 
on economics for the grade schools into the discard 
and call for a complete new supply. 


WouLp Scrape SCHOOL Books. 


“I do not know of a single text book on economics 
which has kept pace with our modern life,” the pro- 
“They all have the same fundamental 
principles. They are nothing short of vicious, 
Many books on the subject begin by making excellent 
declarations, but before they finish with their exph- 
nations they are basing their ideas on out-worn prin- 


fessor says. 


ciples. Borrowing a slightly exaggerated statement 
from a fellow economist, ‘modern’ text books are in 
no sense modern and they fail to grasp the fact tha 
if the working world would stop for two weeks every 
one would starve, even though he were a million- 
aire.” 

Henry Ford, who is quoted in class-rooms chiefly 
for his dislike for history, had a recent tiff with the 
Boy Scout chiefs and representative bankers when he 
told an eager young questioner that the way to suc- 
cess was to spend and not to save. In this Professor 
Clark upholds the Detroit manufacturer. 


“SAVING” 1s TAUGHT. 


Public school systems throughout the United States 
teach “saving” as a part of the regular list of sub- 
jects. Banking days are set aside on the schod 
calendars and in many cities time off from school 
hours is allowed the children for the purpose of 
taking their savings to the grills. Slogans of various 
kinds have been adopted and sayings of prominent 
men on the subject of economy are placed on walls 
A book, School Savings Banking, published by the 
American Bankers Association, is widely circulated, 
Professor Clark says, and in it are quotations from 
famous men “which, when made, were probably true 
in a limited. way.” 

The quotations are these: 

“Economy makes kappy homes and sound na- 
tions: instill it deep.”—George Washington. 

““Texch economy; that is one of the first virtues 


"~ beeing with saving money.”—Abraham Lincoln. 





“If 
to save 

“Th 
ket; it 
frugal: 

Sche 
clean. 
the sa: 
taught 
what ' 
conter 
saving 


tes 


RBBSBEFRE RSET 


1a- 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER: 


“lf you are sure you are beginning right, begin 
to save.” —T heodore Roosevelt. 

“The way to wealth is as plain as the way to mar- 
ket; it chiefly depends on two words—industry and 
frugality.” —Benjamin Franklin. 

School children are taught to keep their tecth 
dean. Samples of tooth paste are distributed, just 
the same as the bankers’ propaganda, but they are 
taught why teeth should be in good condition and 
what will result if they fail, whereas, Professor Clark 
contends, they are not being taught the facts about 


saving. 





Electricity for the Home 


When the average American worker, earning his 
twenty-five dollars a week or less, comes home from 
his day’s toil and sits down to his evening meal, he 
does not realize that for the use of his 110-watt 
light overhead he pays tribute to the $10,000,000 
corporation which may employ him during the day. 
For so is the electrical business arranged at pres- 
ent that the small home consumer of electricity pays 
part of the cost for keeping industry running. As a 
matter of fact, the worker in his little flat, out of 


his meager earnings, pays about five and one-half 


times as much for a unit of “juice” as does his 
employer. ‘This startling state of affairs is revealed 
ina remarkable booklet on “The Cost of Distribu- 
tion of Electricity to Domestic Consumers,” pub- 
lished as a sequel to ““What Price Electricity for the 
Home,” by the same author, Mr. Morris L. Cooke, 
consulting engineer, former director of Pennsylvania 
Giant Power Survey and past president of the Taylor 
Society. 

The facts in this pamphlet are directed to the at- 
tention of all home users of electricity and especially 
to the Federal Power Commission and the several 
State Public Service Commissions. It is published 
an open letter. 

“MILKED” BY PowER TRUST 

According to Mr. Cooke’s survey, if the domestic 
consumer—that is, the home user of electricity, 
whether for lighting, for ironing, washing, etc.— 
pays more than 5 cents per kilowatt hour for his 
dectricity, he is being milked splendidly by the power 
trust. Examine your next electric bill and see how 
tlose you are to this figure. 

Even then the 5 cents includes items that do not 
«tually represent necessary elements in pzoduction 
ind distribution of electricity. As the pamphlet 


warns: “In the calculation of this study, no attempt 
has been made to distribute any share of the general 
equipment investment or general and miscellaneous 
expenses to transmission and distribution. Neither 
has the item appearing in some reports, ‘Unfinished 
Construction,’ been included. In those general ex- 
penses are often hidden unnecessary fees and ex- 
penses to insiders, to holding companies, for propa- 
ganda, etc.” Evidently this is where the three-mil- 
lion-dollar slush fund, unearthed by the Federal 
Trade Commission, comes from to subsidize schools, 
colleges, professors and newspapers to favor high 
rates for the power interests. 
Tora ActuaL Cost Low 

The pamphlet analyzes in detail what the actual 
costs of bringing electricity to the home really are. 
Generating or producing one kilowatt hour of elec- 
tricity costs no more than between one-half to one 
cent. This cost includes taxes, depreciation, interest 
on the investment, as well as operating costs. And 
it doesn’t cost even a fraction of a cent more to 
generate electricity to be used in the home than 
that consumed in the largest industrial plant. The 
entire cost of transmission; that is, getting the 
electricity from the power house to the sub-station 
for distribution, is no more than three-tenths of 
To it may be added the cost of distrib- 
uting this electricity, which includes charges on 


one cent. 


fixed investments in wires, poles, meters, transform- 
ers, etc., amounting to $7.50 a year per consumer. 
Figured on a basis of a kilowatt hour, it means that 
another cent and one-half should be added. For good 
measure allowances are made for loss of current in 
transmission, cost of handling consumers’ accounts 
and the general costs that cannot be itemized. With 
all these liberal allowances the total expense incurred 
by power companies, according to this investigation, 
for generating, transmitting and distributing elec- 
tricity to the home reaches a maximum total of be- 
tween 3.9 and 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour. What 
are you paying for yours? 

Yet in the face of these facts a list of present 
rates prevailing in cities of New York State and 
printed in the pamphlet shows a range all the way 
from 4.5 cents enjoyed by only one city to 17 cents 
per kilowatt hour! And this in a state where water 
power for the generation of electricity is present in 
abundance. 

MunicipaL PLANts’ Rates LOWER 

One statement especially is significant. Mr. Cooke 

in his investigation found that those electric plants 





16 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


owned and operated by the municipality show a 
transmission and distribution cost of 20 per cent 
lower than those privately run. Is it because public 
power stations don’t pad their costs by including 
propaganda expense? 

“The Cost of Distribution of Electricity to Do- 
mestic Consumers” is an eye-opener to those who al- 
ways regarded present high electric rates as beyond 
The facts are there and the power interests 
certainly will have to think up new stunts to dis- 
prove them. The pamphlet is not an irresponsible 


reason. 


diatribe against the present practices of the electric 
light and power industry. It is a conservative analy- 
sis backed by thorough investigation and professional 
understanding of the industry. Every staterment is 
substantiated and verified by close examination of 
costs of many existing power companies as supplied 
by them to the various public service commissions. 


It is a story “out of their own mouths.” 


The conclusions are startling only because of the 
carefree manner in which the small or domestic con- 
sumer is being mulcted by the power interests. They 
should cause a revolution in the method of rate set- 
ting. As far as the average householder is concerned 
Mr. Cooke’s analysis of the rate problem is the best 
thing that could have happened. Like the Roman 
gladiator, we who suffer from outrageous electric 
bills salute him. 





When one hears a person say that organized labor 
is always right it sounds rather ridiculous, but while 
the workers set up no claim of infallibility, there is 
still a lot of truth in what William E. Gladstone 
said a half a century ago when he declared: “I pain- 
fully reflect that in almost every political contro- 
versy of the last fifty years the leisure classes, the 
educated classes, the wealthy classes, have been in 
the wrong. The cemmon people—the toilers, the men 
of uncommon sense—these have been responsible for 
nearly all of the social reform measures which the 
world accepts today.” In our own United States 
during the past fifty years the same thing has been 
true. Practically every humane law that we have on 
our statute books came about through the efforts of 
the organized workers, and many of them required 
years of determined fighting under most discourag- 
ing conditions, but in looking back over the years 
the toilers can feel that their labor and their sac- 


rifices were well worth while. 


TENNIS AN INTERNATIONAL SPORT 


Lawn Tennis the One Game In Which Many 
Countries Engage 


Baseball is decidedly an American sport, just a 
opposite it, cricket is commonly associated _ with 
everything British. Golf, even, is American anj 
British almost exclusively, when the famous match 
are remembered. 

Tennis, however, comes near to being a genuine 
international sport. In recent tennis matches, it js 
pointed out, not only Americans and Englishmen have 
taken part, but French, Italian, Australian, Germay, 
Japanese, Spanish, Argentine, and Dutch players have 
all had their places. 

Nor is tennis a new sport. On the contrary, it is 
quite respectably an old game, for Webster’s New In. 
ternational Dictionary begins its definition with the 
words “an ancient and complicated game.” The older 
game of tennis was, properly speaking, “court ten- 
nis,” being played in an inclosed court, usually a 
covered building. The walls and a wall projectio 
besides the marked floor and net, with various open- 
ings, were all used in the play. 

Such an inclosed court once figured very promi- 
nently in history. It was at the very beginning of 
the French Revolution when, the representatives of 
the common people finding themselves locked out of 
the regular assembly hall by the King’s sentries, ad- 
journed to a nearby tennis court and there took the 
famous oath “never to separate until they had estab- 
lished the constitution on a firm foundation.” 

Tennis as we know it today is, strictly, “lawn ten- 


nis.” But the word itself is the same, from Middle 
English “teneis, tenetz,” though otherwise of uncer- 
tain origin. Perhaps it is related to the French, 
“tenez,” to hold or take it, putting it in the well- 
known family of “hold” words which include ten- 
ant, tenable, tenacious, etc. 

The use of the word “love” in counting the score, 
when there are no points on one side, is common t0 
other games also. It is perhaps akin to the phrase 
playing “for love,” when a game is played without 
stakes. That is to say, if a player makes no points, he 
gains nothing, and his score is therefore simply “love.” 
This origin is not specifically given, it should b 
added, by any authority. 





Remember what Simonides said—that he never 
repented that he had held his tongue, but often that 
he had spoken.—Plutarch. 





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years 
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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 17 


Mass Education In China 
By P. W. Kuo 


Director, China Institute in America, and member 
of the Board of Directors of the W. F. E. A. 


Rapid political changes in China during recent 
years have attracted much attention of the world. 


Very few, however, are aware that a gigantic educa- 
tional movement is taking place there—an under- 
taking destined to be larger in scale and more sig- 
nificant in its influence on the future civilization of 
mankind than any movement hitherto attempted. 
The Mass Education Movement, originating in the 
educational work in the Chinese labor camps in 
France during the Great War, and passing through a 
stage of experimentation in various centres, has now 
attained a nation-wide scale. It has already reached 
five million people, young and old, men and women, 
who have been taught out of illiteracy by one 
hundred thousand volunteer teachers. 

The success of the movement is in a large measure 
due to the introduction, so much advocated by Dr. 
Hu Shih and others, of the Pai Hua, or colloquial 
style, in writing. For thousands of years the edu- 
tated Chinese have been accustomed to the classical 
style in their writing, which, far removed from 
ordinary speech both in vocabulary and in syntax, 
isas unintelligible to the common people in China as 
latin is to the average European or American. With 
the use of colloquial style in writing, however, the 
problem of illiteracy is reduced from teaching an un- 
known language to teaching written symbols of the 
language used in every day life. This latter problem 
is further simplified by the scientific selection of a 
vocabulary of about thirteen hundred most fre- 
quently used words which are sufficient for simple 
tading and ordinary correspondence. These are 
taught in a course of ninety-six lessons which can 
be completed in sixteen weeks if one spends an hour 
ach evening on week days. 

Expenses Kept Low. 

Aside from the simplification and popularization 
of the written Chinese language, the movement was 
capable of rapid progress because expenses were kept 
ta minimum. The series of readers for the com- 
plete course costs only twelve cents Chinese money, 
vhich is little more than « nickel, and the teaching is 
fntirely done by volunteers who, except for small 
taveling expenses in certain cases, receive no pay 
whatsoever. 


The organization and supervision of the work is 
carried on by a national organization under private 
auspices, known as the Chinese National Association 
for the Mass Education Movement. When the office 
opened in Peking, Mr. Y. C. James Yen, promoter of 
the movement and general director of the Associa- 
tion, had only two half-time clerks. Now the As- 
sociation has acquired a staff of unusually strong 
personnel. Men who are classical Confucian scholars, 
men who have received their training in the best 
universities abroad, men who have been college presi- 
dents, all find the cause worthy of their best efforts, 
in spite of drawbacks in financial return and personal 
comfort. These men have been able to steer the 
movement clear of political entanglement and to 
make steady progress amidst flood, famine, and civil 
strife. 

Mopet COMMUNITY PLANNED. 

The movement is by no means limited to an ex- 
tensive project of teaching, reading and writing. An 
intensive experimental program is carried on in a 
restricted area, the district of Ting Hsien, to discover 
the most efficient means of educating the people. 
The district is to be made a model community, 
demonstrating to other parts of China the value of 
and the necessity for work of the kind. Such sub- 
jects as civics and sanitation are given much em- 
phasis. But perhaps the most important as well as 
the most interesting part of the program is raising 
the economic level of the people by the development 
and demonstration of improved agricultural methods, 
improvements which do not involve any radical re- 
organization but which can be easily incorporated 
in existing methods. As an illustration of the inter- 
est and enthusiasm of the farmers, forty thousand 
came from all neighboring villages to see an agricul- 
tural fair recently held in the district, where im- 
proved methods were demonstrated, new implements 
exhibited, and competitions held for the best products 
of all kinds. They were very much astonished to 
find, for instance, that a new water-wheel which 
does more work than the old model actually costs 
less money, and returned with a progressive vision 
as well as concrete practical ideas. 

The far-reaching influence of such work cannot 
be over-estimated. Considering, side by side, the 
rapid progress of the movement and the handicap 
China has had during the last several years, no one 
will doubt that for the next few years it will meet 
with still greater success. It cannot be long before 
the Association will have attained its object of 








18 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


eliminating illiteracy and making new citizens for 
China. And in making new citizens for China, it is 
at the same time making new citizens for the world. 





“A GREAT NATIONAL EVENT”—WHAT 
Is IT? 

W ASHINGTON.— (FP) —Everyone is used to seeing 
special stamps, issued by the Postoffice De- 
partment to celebrate anniversaries of great events, 
and incidentally to please the stamp collectors, Also, 
Americans are used to being exhorted, by special 
cancellation stamps on their letters, to go to military 
training camps. But not until January 19 of this 
year did anyone try to get the Postoffice to celebrate 
an anti-war step by the government. 

On that day Dorothy Detzer, executive secretary 
of the American branch of the Women’s Inter- 
national League for Peace and Freedom, wrote a let- 
ter to Postmaster General Harry New. She said: 
“May we respectfully ask if the Postoffice Depart- 
ment would consider the possibility of issuing a 
Peace Pact stamp to commemorate the signing and 
ratification of the Briand-Kellogg Treaty? We be- 
lieve that the American public would welcome such 


a stamp.” 
% 


Three days later New replied that “Although the 
cause of world peace is deserving of every possible 


encouragement, the Department is not in a position 
to issue such a special stamp as you suggest.” He 
gave no special reason for this inability, except that 
the Department had been called upon to issue an un- 
usually large number of stamps, both regular and 
commemorative. 

This reply did not discourage the W. I. L. secre- 
tary. On February 6 she again wrote, forwarding 
a resolution adopted by her national board on Jan- 
uary 29, asking that the special stamp be issued. 
“We ask this,” said the resolution, “because we be- 
lieve that the ratification of this Pact is a great 
achievement of American diplomacy and marks the 
beginning of a new era in the history of the world 
and it should be so commemorated.” 


he ne % % 


But neither was the Postmaster General—who is 
generally held to be the political weather-gauge of 
his administration—converted by a mere resolution. 
Back came his response on February 9: “Special 
stamps are issued only in commemoration of some 
great national event or some deceased individual 
whose achievements appear to entitle him to it.” 


What was more, New said, special stamps are more 
expensive than the regular ones to print. 


Still trying to win the Coolidge-Kellogg adminis. 
tration to see the Kellogg treaty as a worthy achieve. 
ment, Miss Detzer replied: “It has been my con- 
viction and I am sure it is shared with thousands 
of other citizens of this country that the signing and 
ratification of the Peace Pact was not only a great 
national event of first importance, but certainly the 
most outstanding undertaking of the Administration 
It would seem that the 
issuance of such a stamp would be a most fitting 


of which you are a part. 


recognition of this great event, and a fine tribute— 
not to someone who is deceased, but to a fellow 
member of the president’s cabinet. 


“You inform me that there is considerable expense 
Therefore may I suggest 
that if it is impossible to issue the special postage 


in issuing special stamps. 


stamp, could there not be a special cancellation 
stamp which would carry the statement of the event 
and the translation of the now famous Latin phrase 
engraved on the gold pen given to Secretary Kellogg 
by the city of Havre—‘The Peace Pact is Signed and 


Ratified. If you want Peace, prepare for Peace. 


% + + 


Harry New, veteran Indiana politician, stood his 
ground. He would not tolerate any of this peace 
propaganda, either in postage or in cancellation. 
From a sickbed, a year before, he had ordered the 
suppression of the sticker-stamp issued by the Anti- 
Imperialist League which called attention to the 
conquest of Nicaragua by American marines. He 
would not permit the Jane Addams organization to 
spoil the effect of his training camp propaganda by 
means of any cancellation stamp now. Peace was 4 
worthy cause—if not taken too seriously. New was 
a lifelong political jobholder and flag waver. 


Now the Women’s International League will try 
again, with Herbert Hoover, Quaker, in the White 
House, and Walter Brown, former war-relief admin- 
istrator, in New’s job. But they are not confident. 





The equipment of two railway cars as an expefi- 
mental “school on wheels” to meet the needs of chil- 
dren in outlying settlements of northern Ontario 
has proved a decided success. The cars visit six 
eight settlements a month, stopping at each place 


for three to six days’ instruction, the children being 


provided with home-work for the intervals. 





ae RSet t 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 19 


Fascism in American 
Education 


(A Foreign Impression of the American Federation 
of Teachers and the Seattle Case) 


Has a school board the right of dictating to an 
American teacher the organizations to which he may 
or may not belong? Or would this cause an in- 
fringment on the already scanty or much praised 
civil rights of teachers? 

These were the issues in the recent fight which 
took place in Seattle, Washington, between that 
city’s school board and its teaching body, organized 
into a local union of the American Federation of 
Teachers. 

Some months ago the high school teachers of 
Seattle took the initiative in forming this new local 
of the American Federation of Teachers (affiliated 
to the American Federation of Labor) with a mem- 
bership of more than one half of the teaching body. 
The new union became active at once, both in the 
Central Labor Union and in matters of school 
policy. In the school board election a ticket of 
progressives, sympathetic with the aims of organized 
hbor and its educational program, was sponsored by 
the teachers’ union to replace the conservative 
superintendent of education and business men’s 
school board then in office. While the Babbitts i.e. 
ultra-bourgeois were re-elected, their margin was so 
narrow as to make them fear for their fate at the 
next annual election. 


FouGHt Power TRusT 

Then the organized teachers took up the fight 
against the Power Trust’s propaganda in the schools, 
It was at this point that the counter attack began. 

American public school teachers, except in the 
eleven states which have a tenure law, have no ten- 
we of office but receive a yearly contract. This 
spring, at the time when Seattle teachers were to re- 
ceive their contracts they received instead what 
labor terms a “Yellow Dog Contract.” This docu- 
ment pledges the signer not to join any union affili- 
ated to organized labor, while in the employ of this 
particular organization. The “Yellow Dog Contract” 


has long been employed by American employers 
against unions of industrial workers and has been 
beld legal by the courts, but this is one of the first 
instances in which it has been utilized in the educa- 
tional realm. 

The Seattle teachers were given to understand 


that only those teachers who signed the Yellow Dog 
Contract would receive their reappointments for 
next year’s work. 

Indignation and protest were immediate, for this 
involved approximately one half of the teaching 
body. Protest meetings were held not only in 
Seattle but in various parts of the country, and de- 
mands in the name of “Democracy”, “Civil Liber- 
ties”, etc. were made on the Seattle Board that it 
withdraw its action. 

FIGHT TO CourRTs. 

Acting on advice given by the national offices 
of the American Federation of Labor and American 
Federation of Teachers, the Seattle union decided to 
take their fight to the courts. A temporary injunc- 
tion was obtained by the union against the school 
board’s action, pending a decision of the case in the 
courts, 
school boards and _ teachers 
throughout the United States watched for the out- 
come. 

In May the court handed down its decision, up- 
holding the legal right of the Seattle School Board 
to force such a contract on the teachers! The union, 
of course, had lost. 

Strangely enough, the teachers had expected to 
win. 

What, now, was to be done? 
to William Green, president of the American Feder- 
ation of Labor, “Shall we sign or not”? Green wired 
back words to the effect, ““Use your own judgment!” 

The teachers, with a somewhat shaken, but still 
remarkable faith in the justice of capitalist courts, 
decided to appeal the case. In the meantime they 
signed the Yellow Dog Contract. 

As a body these teachers renounced their elemen- 
tary rights of trade unionism. One may well ask, 
“What price a job?” 

FouND CONFUSION 

In fairness to the Seattle teachers it must be said 
that they were but following out the implications of 
the counsel given them by their national union ad- 
visers. Where they looked for leadership, they only 
found confusion. 

What is the situation in Seattle today? The 
teachers are thoroughly humiliated and frightened 
and, above all, confused. This is not a consequence 
so much of their defeat, but rather the result of the 
fight not having been conducted in a sufficiently 
clear and militant manner. 


In the meantime, 


The union wired 


The local union is being kept alive by those two or 





20 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


three teachers who were discharged for refusing to 
sign the notorious contract, together with a small 
number of professors from neighboring colleges. The 
bulk of the union membership is gone. 

Some advance the forlorn hope that “if” the 
union wins its case against the Seattle school board 
in the higher courts, the former membership will 
then be “free” to re-join! 

What are some of the lessons which American 
union teachers may draw from this Seattle ex- 
perience? 

Must PREPARE. 


(1) We must prepare ourselves to meet such 
fascist methods in education. Seattle promises to be 
no isolated instance. We must become realists, re- 
orientating ourselves to the school situation in 
America today. For belief in Democracy in Educa- 
tion and in politics has proven a costly illusion. We 
must recognize business control of state and school 
for what it is, and plan our organizational cam- 
paigns and general methods of work accordingly. 

(2) 
to appeal to the courts for “Justice” for the same 
business interests which are fighting us in the 
Rather, union labor 


should rely on its own power to win its battles, and 


It is an essentially incorrect policy for labor 


schools control the courts. 


concentrate its energies on a militant clean struggle. 
Resort to the courts means expense, delay of action, 
confusion among membership, and, most important 
of all, liquidation of labor’s fighting force through 
its direction into a blind alley. 


(3) What the American Federation of Teachers 
needs is not less but more militancy. Criticism has 
been made by some unionists that the Seattle teachers 
made a mistake in becoming so “militant” so early 
If they only had not at- 
tacked the power trust propaganda in the schools so 


in their union history. 


vigorously or entered the school board elections so 
openly perhaps the authorities would have let the 
new union be, for a while, etc. 

CHOosE WRONG TACTICs. 

The mistake of the Seattle teachers lay not here, 
for such activity aroused the teaching body to the 
true value of unionism as evidenced by the organiza- 
tion’s substantial growth in membership during this 
period. Rather their mistake lay in the main tactics 
which they chose for the climax of their fight. It 
is significant that these tactics are the accepted 
policy of the American Federation of Teachers, and 


in general of all A. F. of L. unions. A. F. of T. 


locals do not use the strike since “teachers are pub. 
lic officials.” Instead of direct action, the union 
uses “‘persuasive” methods of ‘“‘pressure of public 
opinion,” appeals to “Fairplay” and “Democracy” and 
finally, resort to the courts. The support of organ. 
ized labor is naturally invoked, but this takes the 
form of “protests,” declarations and meetings. Under 
these circumstances, defeat is almost inevitable. 

If, when the crux of the struggle came, there had 
been a general strike in Seattle of all organized 
workers, including the teachers, the outcome might 
have been quite different. In any case the solidarity 
and morale of the teaching body would be much bet. 
ter than it is today. 

(4) The final lesson which Seattle points is the 
urgency of extensive and militant organization of 
American industrial workers and teachers. Barely 
one per cent of the teachers are unionized, and a 
scant 12% of all workers. Such unionism as exists 
is quite out of line with the times, both in form and 
in ideology. 

But unless the masses of the American working 
class, including the teachers, do organize an effective 
union movement, what is to pfevent the onward 
march of fascist imperialism in American schools 
and general political life? 

Myra Pace. 

Reprint from The Teachers’ International. 





SAFETY FIRST IN LIFE INSURANCE 


By G. W. PERKINS 


Vice President, Western Representative, The Union 
Labor Life Insurance Company 


We sometimes meet with the statement by trade 


unionists and trade union officials that they have 
been offered group insurance that also includes health 
and accident insurance in one group policy; that 
some companies will sell a group policy covering only 
fifty members where the membership is three hun- 
dred or more; and we are asked if The Union Labor 
Life Insurance Company will issue a like kind of 
policy. 

Our rules, and so far as I know the rules of prac- 
tically all regular life insurance companies, prohibit 
a group of less than fifty or less than seventy-five 
per cent of the entire membership. Moreover, I know 
of no old line insurance company that would sell 4 
group policy covering death, disability, double 
indemnity and health and accident insurance. There 


are concerns, however, that do. A certain large 





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THE AMERICA NTEACHER 21 


organization about six months ago was persuaded to 
take out such a policy. After contributing premiums 
for five months, the agency faded out of the picture 
ind the union lost all that it had paid in. 

As a trade unionist, I am giving you this informa- 
tion for what it is worth. I should dislike to see a 
local or international union become involved in an 
impossible scheme that ultimately would not work 
gut to its advantage in any kind of an insurance 
company. Our company can do anything that any 
other straight life insurance company can do and keep 
on safe ground. Our premium rates for group 
insurance and individual insurance are predicated 
upon American Men Ultimate Table of Mortality, 
which makes them absolutely safe. The line of 


policy we pursue is predicated upon experience, hence 


we know it is safe and sound. 

I always say to every trade union group that I 
address that I would not sell them any kind of a 
policy that wasn’t safe and sound. Any form of 
contract that would be hurtful to the union would 
iso discredit The Union Labor Life Insurance Com- 
pany. As a trade unionist -holding a paid up card 
and as a representative of The Union Labor Life 
Insurance Company my interest works both ways, 
and I fully realize that that which hurts one hurts 
the other. I will not knowingly hurt the trade 
union Cause. 

We ask Labor to carefully scrutinize Labor’s own 
insurance company, and then invite and urge you to 
favor The Union Labor Life Insurance Company 
with your insurance. 





“OLD AGE PENSIONS” 
By Reinhold Niebuhr 
Former Minister Bethel Evangelical Church, Detroit, 
now of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 
New York Local 5 
(Detroit Times) 

Mr. B. C. Forbes, financial the 
Hearst newspapers, can hardly be regarded as an ir- 
tesponsible radical. Perhaps that is why a recent ar- 
ticle of his on the ruthlessness of many industrial 
concerns in dropping old men from their payroll 
vithout making any provisions for pensions has 
caused so much interesting comment from all kinds 
of people. The fact is that industry is more heed- 
kss at this point than at any other. 

The modern machine gives every advantage to 
youth over age. No great skill is required to operate 
But a strong back is neces- 


expert of 


® automatic machine. 


sary. Consequently the old man is always being 
pushed out by the pressure of young men seeking 
employment. The system is called “weeding out the 
inefficient.” A man over 55 is becoming increas- 
ingly insecure in his job and once a job is lost, a man 
over 45 has little chance of finding one in competi- 
tion against younger men. 

The industries which are most ruthless in this 
matter (not so much because of malice, but because 
of the nature of modern machine industry) are also 
the most prosperous industries in America. The 
same machine which junks old men creates tremen- 
dous wealth for those who own it. Ought not some 
of that wealth be used to give protection to the men 
whose lives are spent in the service of the machine? 
Ought the community be called upon to support 
philanthropically those used up by industry? 

The automobile industry is fairly young. It has 
just about run the span of one generation of work- 
ers. That is why it has not been forced to face this 
problem as seriously as it has been faced in other 
parts of the country and more particularly in Europe. 
But it is a problem in human justice which can not 
be evaded. If it is it will ultimately bring revenge 
upon those who are indifferent to it. 

A great many men who are altogether indifferent 
to this problem profess to live by the principle of 
the golden rule. Let them grant to others what they 
desire most for themselves, security, particularly se- 
curity in old age. We justify most of our business 
activity in terms of our desire to protect our own 


That is a 


universal desire and one sufficiently justified to de- 


and our children’s future. Very well. 


mand the attention of society. 

If we withhold the gratification of a desire from 
others which we indulge ourselves we build our com- 
mon life upon insincerity. Here is a contemporary 
problem in justice that every one interested in the 
better life must face. Why do not the churches give 
it more serious attenion? It would be much more 
interesting than many of the issues which we tradi- 
tionally discuss in our men’s classes. 





CHILD WORKERS DISCHARGED 


PAWTUCKET, R. I.—(FP)—Fifty child work- 
ers at the J. & P. Coates thread mills who have been 
working 10 hours a day are being discharged. A new 
state law prohibits employment of children under 
16 more than nine hours a day. The mill decided 
there were no profits in nine-hour child labor. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


EDUCATION OF OUR CHILDREN 

The evident indifference toward the education of 
our children and the avowed determination to thwart 
at all costs those who seek to champion its cause in 
our city, judged by a lengthy article in last Sun- 
day’s papers signed by a certain committee of prop- 
erty holders and tax payers, make it almost impos- 
sible to speak with moderation. When those who 
during the past few years have given their lives 
unselfishly to the development of a system of train- 
ing that will meet the needs of every child, when 
those at the head of our school system show a per- 
sonal interest in the life and well being of every 
child regardless of section and of station in life, have 
their motive publicly impugned and the work of 
their life misrepresented and ridiculed we can scarcely 
answer them and maintain our reserve. Readiny this 
lengthy article we were reminded of an alleged mot- 
to of a class of lawyers without the confines of the 
bar association which is, ““when you have a _ poor 
case abuse the witness; when you have a poorer case 
abuse the witness some more.” 

AcTIvVE MANY YEARS 

For many years we have watched the activities of 
a certain group who have immediately sought tv dis- 
credit anyone who dares even ask for a square deal 
for our children. Apparently unmindful of the spirit 
of the government which protects them and heed- 
less of the sources of their own personal wealth, well 
being and prosperity, at the least provocation they 
rush into public print and hurl bitter invectives 
against those who would offer to the children of the 
masses that type of training the sons and daughters 
of wealth have long been given. 

And all this in the name of tax payers and prop- 
erty owners. As if there is a definite line of cleav- 
age between these and the patrons and the bene- 
ficiaries of our public schools. Who are the tax 
payers, anyway—but the fathers and mothers of our 
children? Who are the property holders but the 
patrons of our schools? Who are the beneficiaries 


of our system of education but the boys and girls, 


the men and women who serve us and serve with us 
in the building of a great nation, the perpetuation 
of democratic institutions and the promotion of the 
common welfare of all our citizens? Who are these 
who seek to divide the city into two antagonistic 
classes, the tax payers and the parents of the children 
of this city? Who is it who would seek thus to 
array the one against the other and to save the one 
by destroying the other; who would seek to build 


4 


‘believe in public schools. 


up the one by denying the other? Who is it wh 
would seek to put any material consideration aboy 
the welfare of our children? Who is it who woul 
seek to have us to become so circumspect in oy 
thinking that the two lines that convert the littk 
“§” into the dollar mark shall constitute bars acros 
our vision of common welfare, social progress and 
simple justice? 
SHOULD SEE NEED 

Even material considerations alone should le 
even the wealthiest to recognize the need of public 
education. The signers of the article refer to tw 
outstanding philanthropic foundations, the Rocke. 
Is it not true tha 
the work of these foundations is at once an admission 
of the need of general education and the failure of 
the state to provide it? Had the state discharged it 
obligations these funds for public education would 
never have been necessary. The very authority 
therefore which they quote against general education 
is an outstanding admission of what they seek w 
thwart and throttle. The answer of these is doubt. 
less that they are interested in education, that they 


feller and Carnegie foundations. 


Our response is “By their 
fruits ye shall know them.” 


We do not propose to set ourselves up as a 
authority on the modern school system and what it 
should teach and as much as we respect the honor- 
able gentlemen who signed this article we must in- 
terpose this as to their capacity either to say wha 
should be taught or, judging-by their quotations, to 
select those who might be qualified to speak. We 
hold no preference for any special scheme of edv- 
cation. We do insist that the only adequate system 
of education is one that will educate every boy and 
girl, not simply the privileged few, to take his or her 
place in the economic and social order. Anyont, 
any expert who seeks to install or justify any scheme 
of education that for one reason or another acts # 
an instrument of selection and dooms to ignorance 
or comparative illiteracy 80 per cent of our children 
has no right to determine a school system for the 
city of Atlanta. 

Is CLass APPEAL 

For a quarter of a century our life has been de 
voted to the promotion of friendly and peaceful re 
lations between capital and labor in this city and 
country. Although we do not claim for ourselves 
even a small portion of the credit we do rejoice that 
the City of Atlanta has for a number of years et 


joyed comparative industrial and social peace. The 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 23 


apparent wiping out of class distinctions in industry 
and specially through our public school system and 
through the industrial relations development of the 
Federation of Trades and the Chamber of Com- 
merce has been a subject of comment throughout the 
country. The laboring man has come to feel that 
the man of wealth, the great capital owner, is his 
friend and ally. It will be a sad day when this 
laboring man shall be moved to suspect that men of 


wealth are seeking to pull away from the worker and 
by a system of education admittedly illfitted to the 


needs of thousands of our children confine them to 
the bottom rung of the ladder. However, we can see 
in this clever appeal dangers of that very thing. 

We have never advocated the needless expenditure 
of public funds and we stand ready to join hands 
with anyone who demands efficiency and economy 
Even tho this city be wealthy be- 
yond the dreams of avarice our public officials 
would not be justified in wasting money or spending 
it for purposes that would not fulfill the demands 


in government. 


of a public need. Nevertheless we have never sought 
to picture tax paying as an evil within itself or as a 
necessary burden to our people. 

If our friends would protect the property holders 
and taxpayers whom they presume to represent they 
would surely join with us in seeking dispassionately 
and without prejudice not only the best school sys- 
tem but the best form of city government. We 
challenge them to join us in such a move. Further- 
more they should take the lead in decrying excessive 
burdens upon our tax payers and property holders, 
wealthy or poor, no matter by whom imposed. Can. 


this group show a clean record in this respect? 


The above editorial by Mr. Jerome Jones appeared in The 
Journal of Labor of Friday, March 8. 

We trust that you will pass it on to others as it is one of 
the finest statements of the real purpose of education which 
we have seen.—Atlanta Public School Teachers’ Association, by 
James P. Barron. 





STATISTICS OF NEGRO ELEMENTARY AND 
SECONDARY EDUCATION 

Negro elementary and secondary education in 
public and private schools has made more progress 
in the past nine years than in any like period of our 
history. 

According to Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1928, 
No. 19, United States Department of the Interior, 
2,218,312 negro pupils were reported in public 
schools in 18 southern states in 1926. Of this num- 
ber 1,055,674 were boys and 1,162,638 were girls. 
The average daily attendance was 1,563,975. 


To instruct these children 47,594 teachers were 
employed, 38,942 women, and 8,652 men. 

While the large majority of colored schools re- 
porting were public, there were 168 private schools 
with 3,722 teachers and 61,509 pupils. 


The libraries of the private secondary and higher 
schools for negroes in 1925-26 contained 630,892 
bound volumes; the grounds and buildings were 
valued at $41,044,777 as against $17,323,108 in 
1916. 

In the 425 public high schools for colored pupils 
only, there were 2,566 teachers, and 98,705 colored 
pupils were enrolled in these and in other schools at- 
tended by colored pupils. 

The teacher-training institutions for negro stu- 
dents numbered 29, located in 17 southern states and 
Pennsylvania. 

The increasing growth of schools has made a cor- 
responding demand for more and better trained 
teachers. This demand has caused increases in sal- 
aries, which, however, do not yet equal the average 
of $1,277 paid both colored and white teachers 
throughout the United States. 





MILLIONS FOR SCHOOLS 
New York City spent $125,258,403.22 on its 
school system last year, according to the Board of 
This was $10,000,000 
more than in the previous year but less than the 
totals for 1924 and 1925 by $32,000,000 and $18,- 
000,000 respectively. 


Education’s annual report. 





CANADIAN TEACHERS TALK 
WINNIPEG, Man.—(FP)—Meeting in Winnipeg 
July 24 to 27, the Canadian Teachers’ Federation dis- 


cussed overcrowding of class rooms, job conditions, 


legislative matters, pensions, high school and univer- 
The federation has 
over 50 per cent of the teaching force in Canada out- 
side parochial and French-language schools. This 
compares with less than one per cent in the American 
Federation of Teachers in the United States. 


sities, as well as routine business. 





The Kalamazoo school authorities have dismissed a 
woman teacher for smoking. Where there’s smoke 
they fire, you see. 





Union musicians in New York City theatres win 
pay increases of from $8 to $15 by the new three- 
year agreement effective Labor Day. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


NAPOLEON AND EDUCATION 
L. C. BREED 


The student of the career of Napoleon will not fail 
to be impressed by the interest that he displayed for 
the education of young men. He established schools 
and he paid visits to them. It is related that on some 
occasions he availed himself of the opportunities thus 
afforded to ask questions of the scholars in much the 
same way as a teacher would do. 

When speaking on this subject, he always laid great 
stress upon the re-reading of worthwhile books. He 
proceeded, in some instances, to dwell at some length 
about it, and drew upon his own youthful experience 
to illustrate and enforce his comments. He pointed 
out that in order to remember what one reads, it is 
absolutely essential to understand what one reads, and, 
furthermore, reading is of no practical value unless 
what is read is remembered. Arriving at manhood, he 
employed the mnemonic system as an aid even to 
his marvelous natural capacity for storing up in his 
mind the knowledge he had acquired, and by the act 
of association he was assisted in recalling a fact when 
occasion required its use. 

INCESSANT MEDITATION 

Meditation was another factor in education that 
Napoleon often inculcated in connection with study. 
It is a bad practice to read incessantly, even if the 
books that are used deal with the subject selected for 
study. Knowledge like food must be digested and 
assimilated. Furthermore, in the case of men charged 
with the conduct of affairs, oftentimes during the 
solitude seized upon for this express purpose, sugges- 
tions arise and plans are formed. In Napoleon’s case 
there was incessant meditation until the plan took 
definite and entire shape in his brain and he thus was 
able to utilize the data that he had by prodigious 
labor and an indomitable determination investigated 
and collected for the purpose of attaining the object 
that he had in view. 

Students that have a competent teacher are en- 
abled to arrive more quickly at familiarity with a 


given profession or calling than in case of the solitary 


student. The opportunity thus afforded to ask ques- 
tions for the elucidation of statements in text-books 
that are not thoroughly understood is of great service 
to the scholar. Of even more value is the privilege, 
which sometimes is accorded to a student, of discus- 
sion of a subject with the teacher out of school hours. 
At some schools important results are secured through 
the formation of debating societies on the part of 
students. 


Napoleon all through his career made a practice of 
making notations on the margins of the books which 
he read. During the time that he was Emperor }j; 
private library was comprised of upwards of 5,009 
carefully selected works on a variety of topics, and 
he was in the habit during his reading to make record 
in the books that he was consulting. This practice 
was employed while examining reports of his minis. 
ters, and also in place of dictating, in many instances, 
he made notations on letters and turned them over 
to his secretaries for attention and replies. 

Another of his methods, suggested by his orderly 
cast of mind, and in which he anticipated even the 
elaborate systems now in use, was that of compiling 
catalogues and using filing cabinets. He was a rigorous 
and exacting master, and every clerk realized that he 
was expected to emulate his example. The use of maps 
with pins of different colors to show the location of 
divisions of the army in the field, now a familiar sight 
in the offices of large business houses to show the oper- 
ations of salesmen or the localities where they have 
customers, was early adopted by Napoleon in connec. 
tion with his military campaigns. 

The study of mathematics to which in his school 
days he gave such thorough attention as to have 
brought the praise of his teachers, is the foundation 
on which to build a knowledge of the sciences. This 
leads to the mention of the fact that among other 
studies he gave considerable time and attention to 
acquiring a working knowledge of astronomy. 





NEW EVOLUTION ISSUE RAISED IN 
TENNESSEE 

Court action in behalf of Elmore Gentry, princi- 
pal of Fentress County High School at Clark Range, 
Tennessee, charged with violation of the state anti- 
evolution act by the fathers of two expelled boys, it 
being considered by the American Civil Liberties 
Union in case the County Board of Education finds 
him guilty. 

The fathers of the expelled youths, F. O. Dixon 
and Bart Jones, charged Gentry with using text 
books banned by the anti-evolution statute. The 
case came before the board, but the principal’s expul- 
sion of the students was upheld. The board decided 
later, however, to reconsider the evolution charge. 





God’s sweet dews and showers of grace slide off 
the mountains of pride, and fall on the low valleys 
of humble hearts, and make them pleasant and fertile. 
—Leighton. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 25 


THE PLACE OF INDIAN SUMMER ON THE 
CALENDAR 


People speak glibly of “Indian summer” without 
knowing when that season should occur, if it does. 
While everybody knows that it comes in autumn, 
arely will you find agreement as to any specific 
date. , 
As precise a statement as can be made respecting 
the date is that in Webster’s New International Dic- 
tionary, as follows: 

“A period of warm or mild weather late in au- 
tumn or in early winter, usually characterized by a 
dear or cloudless sky, and by a hazy or smoky ap- 
pearance of the atmosphere, especially near the hori- 


mn. The term is commonly applied to such a period - 


curring in October or more commonly in Novem- 
br. The name is of American origin, the reason 
for it being unknown; it is now also used in Eng- 
land.” 

When Indian summer comes in November in Eng- 
land it is also called St. Martin’s summer, since St. 
Martin’s Day falls on November 11. If in October, 
the period is called St. Luke’s summer or the little 
summer of St. Luke, since St. Luke’s Day comes on 
October 18. And since All Saints’ Day is Novem- 
ber 1, the period has also been known as Allhallown, 
or Allhallow, summer. 





BOSTON ADVANCES REQUIREMENTS 
All candidates for high school positions in Boston 


must have a master’s degree, and candidates for inter- 
mediate or junior high schools must be college grad- 
uates beginning January 1, 1928, according to the 
annual report of Supt. Jeremiah E. Burke. Dr. 
burke says in his report that: 

This raising of academic standards for higher 
grades of certificates is one of the most progressive 
and forward looking achievements in recent years. 
It is a long step in the direction of elevating the 
teaching profession to a height and a degree com- 
mensurate with that of other great professions. We 
make no fetish of degrees, we believe there are essen- 
tial qualities in the teacher quite apart from the 
purely academic influence. A high standard of 
scholarship always has been and always should be con- 
sidered a prerequisite for teaching. Manifestly the 
time has come when we may reasonably require a 
master’s degree of all teachers applying for service in 
our teachers colleges or in our high schools. This is 
fot imposing an impossible condition upon pros- 
pective teachers.—Am. Ed. Digest. 


THE TEN MARKS OF AN EDUCATED MAN 
ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM 
He keeps his mind open on every question until 
the evidence is all in. 
He always listens to the man who knows. 
He never laughs at new ideas, 
He cross-examines his day-dreams. 
He knows his strong point and plays it. 
He knows the value of good habits and how to 
form them. 
He knows when not to think and when to call in 
the expert to think for him. 
You can’t sell him magic. 
He lives the forward-looking, outward-looking life. 
He cultivates a love of the beautiful. 
—From The American Magazine. 





“That man, I think, has a liberal education who 
has been so trained in his youth that his body is the 
ready servant of his will and does with ease and 
pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism it is capa- 
ble of; whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine, 
with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth 
working order, ready like a steam engine, to spin 
the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the 
mind, whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the 
great and fundamental truths of nature and the laws 
of her operations, one who, no stinted ascetic, is full 
of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to 
come to heat by a vigorous will, the servant of a 
tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty 
whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and 
to respect others as human.”—Thomas Huxley, ad- 
dress to a Workingmen’s College. 





INTELLIGENCE TESTS ARE NOT SUCCESSFUL 


PHILADELPHIA—Intelligence tests were con- 
demned by Prof. Andre Morize of Harvard Uni- 
versity in an address to the Pennsylvania League of 
Women Voters. 

“IT have never seen an intelligence test that actual- 
ly tested intelligence,” said the educator. “I make 
this statement after completing a survey of three 
of our best known institutions of higher education. 
We are losing sight of good, old-fashioned common 
sense.” . 

Outside activities, over-emphasis on memory work 
and the “cramming process” were cited as the out- 
standing evils of the American system of education 


today. 








26 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


AUDUBON BIRD PICTURES AND LEAFLETS 
FOR BIRD-STUDY 


The Audubon Bird Pictures Are 5%2x8Y2, All in 
Natural Colors; Thirty Thousand Dollars Avail- 
able To Help Children in Bird-Study. 


The National Association of Audubon Societies 
again renews its offer to furnish bird pictures and 
It is 
through the generosity of some of its members that 


literature describing birds and their habits. 


it is made possible for us to supply teachers and 
pupils with this material at one-half the actual cost 
of publication and distribution. 

The plan is very simple. The teacher may expla:n 
to the pupils that they are going to form a Junior 
Audubon Club, and have a few lessons from time to 
The 
teacher will also explain that each child wishing to 
be enrolled must bring a fee of ten cents in return 
for which he will receive a set of six beautifully 
colored pictures of our common birds, made by the 


time about common North American birds. 


leading artists of America. Accompanying these 
pictures, also, there will be six leaflets written by 
well known authorities on bird life. telling about 
the nesting habits of birds, their food, their winter 
and summer homes, their travels, their enemies and 
many other facts of interest. There is furnished, too, 
with each leaflet a drawing of the bird in outline 
which the child may fill in by copying from the 
colored plate. Each child receives in addition, a 
beautiful Audubon button of some favorite bird in 
color, which is a badge of membership in the club. 
A new set of pictures, leaflets and buttons is fur- 
nished each year to those who wish to repeat this 
bird-study plan. 

Each teacher who is successful in forming a club 
of twenty-five or more receives a year’s free sub- 
scription ‘to the magazine, Bird-Lore, which is 
regarded as the leading popular journal on birds pub- 
lished in the world. Where a teacher is unable to 
form a club of as many as twenty-five a subscription 
to Bird-Lore is not given, but material is supplied 
the children where as many as ten are enrolled. This 
undertaking costs the National Association of Audu- 
bon Societies twenty-cents for every child enrolled, 
and the material is therefore’ furnished at just half 
the cost of publication and distribution. 

The Junior Club work has become very popular 


in many of the schools throughout the United States 
and Canada, and altogether nearly four million mem- 


bers have been enrolled in bird-study under this 
arrangement. Many teachers look forward to reney. 


ing the work each year, as they have found that by 


giving it a continuity far better results are obtained, 
For instance, a child who each year, for five years, 
has brought his fee of ten cents has had the oppor. 
tunity of studying thirty birds and if properly 
instructed has saved all his leaflets which have been 
bound together in a little book. 

Last year 355,486 boys and girls were members of 
Junior Audubon Clubs. In the State of Illinois 322 
Clubs and 13,209 members were enrolled. 

This year due to the continued generosity of mem. 
bers and friends, the association is enabled to supply 
400,000 children with sets of leaflets. When these 
are exhausted it will be impossible to supply others 
this year, unless additional funds should be con- 
tributed by those who support the work. 

All the teacher needs to do is to explain this bird- 
study plan to the pupils, collect their ten-cent fees 
and send them in, and the material will be forwarded 
If preferred, however, our circular of 
to Teachers,” 


immediately. 
explanation, “An Announcement 
together with sample leaflet will be sent to any 


teacher making request. 
T. Gitpert Pearson, President, 


National Association of Audubon Societies, 
1974 Broadway, New York City. 





LABOR WOMAN WINS SEAT IN 
PARLIAMENT 


A wireless dispatch from London to The New 
York Times under date of March 22 said: 

“Jenny Lee, 26-year-old school teacher, won 4 
seat in Parliament today by winning the North Lan- 
arkshire division from the 
Lee, who is the pretty, dark-eyed daughter of 4 
miner, overwhelmed Lord Scone, her Conservative 
opponent, by a majority of 6,578. The figures were: 
Miss Lee, 15,711, and Lord Scone, 9,133. 

“With Miss Lee’s advent into the House of Com- 
mons, England will have a new political personality 
to talk about. Her father, it is said, never earned 


Conservatives. 


“more than $15 a week. The girl had a good board 


school education, and then went to Edinburgh Uni- 
versity, where she took a degree in arts with honors. 
She won a two years’ traveling scholarship on the 
Continent and was graduated as a qualified lawyer, 
but has not practiced. She was teaching school ia 
Fifeshire when she was nominated.” 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 27 


NEW YORK BOARD OF EDUCATION LIFTS 
BAN ON UNION 

Action of the Board of Education of New York 
City in stating its willingness to grant permission to 
the American Civil Liberties Union to hold a meet- 
ing in the auditorium of Stuyvesant High School to 
discuss free speech ends a controversy of over two 
years’ standing. The Union’s battle against what it 
ermed “unfair discrimination” in the Board’s refu- 
al to grant the use of public school forums either 
to the Union or to other organizations using its 
speakers was at different times waged before the 
Commissioner of Education at Albany, carried into 
the courts and before a special committee. 

An application originally filed by the Union to 
hold an “old-fashioned free speech meeting” at the 
high school was denied by unanimous vote of the 
Board on May 21, 1926, after Eugene C. Gibney, 
Director of Extension Activities for the Board of 
Education, had refused to permit Arthur Garfield 
Hayes and James Weldon Johnson to speak at the 
Morris High School under the auspices of the League 
of Neighbors and the Union of East and West. The 
Union appealed to the Commissioner of Education 
at Albany. The Commissioner stated that the 
school authorities did not object to the speakers or 
the organization they represented but that the sub- 
ject “Old Fashioned Free Speech” was controversial 
and could not be discussed in school halls. 

The Union then petitioned for a writ of man- 
damus to compel the Board to grant the use of the 
auditorium. Judge Gavegan of the State Supreme 
Court denied the writ, but required the Board to 
give the applicant a full hearing. The Board com- 
plied, finally granting permission for a meeting un- 
der Civil Liberties Union auspices in June, 1927, to 
discuss the “Growth of New York Since 1900.” The 
meeting was held, the principal speakers being Dean 
Charles N. Lathrop, Congressman La Guardia and 
Nelson S. Spencer. 

Following this meeting, the Union again applied 
for permission to hold the free-speech meeting. The 


Board declined to act, appointing a special com- 


mittee to go into the whole matter. When the 
committee, after careful deliberation and further 
hearings, in which Mr. Louis Marshall appeared as 
counsel for the Union, was unable to reach a deci- 
ion satisfactory to both sides to the contorversy, 
the Union withdrew the application at issue and 
filed a new one identical in terms in order to bring 
the question again direct to the Board. The recent 


favorable decision of the Board is on this last appli- 
cation. ‘ 

Forrest Bailey, a director of the Union, comment- 
ing on the Board’s action, states: 

“The American Civil Liberties Union is gratified 
at the conclusion of this long controversy. The de- 
cision means that the Board of Education will main- 
tain a broad-minded attitude in the exercise of its dis- 
cretionary power over the use of public school for- 
ums—that speakers and organizations applying for 
permits to hold meetings will all be treated alike 
within the requirements of the law and of good 
taste. This is all that the Union has asked for at 
any time. We are convinced that the Board would 
have granted our application long ago had not a 
misunderstanding been created by the false repre- 
sentations of certain groups opposed to our prin- 
ciples.” 





WHY PICK ON CHICAGO? 
Petty PoLitics AND OUR PROFESSION 

A well-known city superintendent writing to the 
editor in regard to the politico-educational circus 
being performed in Chicago says that, in proportion 
to their size, many downstate cities are just as badly 
afflicted by politics. He says that in his own little 
city politics forced into his own corps of teachers a 
person without a single credit above the eighth grade 
and without an earned certificate, although there 
are in the same community and looking for positions 
six normal school graduates and several others with 
good qualifications who could have been hired for 
He adds that the State 


must provide a remedy for this condition, since 


practically the same salary. 


“local communities cannot work it out on account 
of petty politics.” 

All this reminds us that we tried to remedy this 
condition by the “certificating bill” introduced in 
the 55th General Assembly as Senate Bill No. 180; 
but this bill was lost because it was delayed by the 
opposition until it was impossible to bring it to a 
final roll call, and some of the opposition came from 
prominent people in our own ranks. During the next 
eighteen months we must make strenuous and united 
efforts to raise the requirements for certification and 
to improve the qualifications of teachers. Let us 
look to our Committee on Teacher Training for 
advice.—lIllinois Teacher. 





Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion 
has no hold on the mind.—Plato. 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


“INTELLECTUAL IMMORALITIES” 

Twenty-five kinds of “intellectual immoralities’ 
have been enumerated by Milton Fairchild, director of 
the Character Education Institution of Washington, 
D. C., in an effort to constitute a verification of plans 
for human welfare. A method to determine those in 
the individual has been worked out on scientific lines 
by the institution. Among these “intelligent im- 
moralities” are the following: 

Carelessness in observations, “sloppy work.” 

Slovenliness in logic, fantastic explanations. 

Confusing opinions with knowledge. 

Contentment with “discussion.” 

Wavering interest, flitting attention, attracted by 
peculiar superficialities. 

Opposition to proof of another’s theories because of 


jealousy. , 
Impatience, unwillingness to proceed step by step 


through a research. 

Indulgence in dense verbiage for the sake of appear- 
ing superlearned. 

Popularizing tentative generalizations for the sake 
of personal publicity. 

Resort to the authorities, or to sarcasm and ridi- 
cule, against data, arguments and verifications. 


CHARACTER URGES 

Mr. Fairchild lists the following under the above 
heading: 

Adjustments with environment—the normal child 
wants to find out how to get satisfaction out of life 
and to avoid dangers. 

Abilities to do things—wants to learn to do the 
things others are seen doing. 

Activities in organizations and teams—wants to 
take part in all that is going on. 

Associations in clubs and societies—wants to join, 
and to organize socially with others. 

Appreciation of beauty and art—seeks pleasure 
through the discovery of beauty. 

Friendships and loves—craves intimate friends and 
wants to express personal affection. 

Knowledge—likes to learn new facts about people 
and events and things. 

Power and influence—wants a chance to be the 
boss. 

Personal qualities and manners—at heart desires to 
become a gentleman, a lady. 





The National Federation of Teachers of the Phil- 
ippine Islands has been admitted to full member- 
ship in the W. F. E. A. 


SPEND $10,000,000 TO HELP YOUTH Ayop 
ITS MISTAKES 

On the campus of the University of Pittsburg, 
the foundation and steel construction work fo, , 
$10,000,000 Cathedral of Learning, to be 50 storig 
high and to be dedicated to modern education, hy 
been completed. 

Its completion will mark realization of a dream 
John G. Bowman, Chancellor of the University, wh 
for years has held that increase of mistakes on th 
part of American youth, crime, and disrespect fog 
learning can be blamed partly on the methods of dis. 
pensing education in this country. Funds for his edv. 
cational monument were raised partly by populs 
subscription and the campaign was based on an appel 
that education in the United States had the same right 
to consideration in the matter of inspiring building 
as has business. 


Material wealth and material progress were partly 
to blame in Pittsburgh for relegating what he called 
“the vital thing” to the cellar, Bowman told Th 
American Magazine. 

“But in this Pittsburgh did not stand alone,” said 
Dr. Bowman. “On the contrary this attitude reflected 
a national state of mind, a national failure. 

“In literature a really serious book that sells 100; 
000 copies is a phenomenon in this nation of 120, 
000,000 people; but a heavyweight championship 
fight draws 150,000 in a night, while millions listen 
in by radio. Our young folks yawn in classroom 
but go wild over a football game.” 

Dr. Bowman’s edifice is looked upon first as: 
school laboratory and second as a challenge to th 
American people to awake to the value of education 
Strange as it may seem he intends the work to be dom 
in the new structure to challenge in appeal the lure 
held for young people by a circus. 

“When I say circus I mean any competitor of the 
school, for youth’s interest—the dance, the theatre, 
football, society, and in a larger sense, business, indus- 
try, and getting rich,” says Dr. Bowman. “The 
school’s rivals have forged ahead and taken more than 
is their right, while the school has lagged behind and 
taken less.” . 

Acting on the assumption that some school build- 
ings are repellent he has caused this new temple of 
education to be erected. 





Bad men spring from bad things; hence let us 
correct the things.—Victor Hugo. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


MILITARISM IN COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS 


Now that the United States has ratified the Kel- 
ogg Pact for the renunciation of war, the people 
ould guarantee the significance of this action by 
renouncing new additions to our instruments of war 
ind by removing the germs of militarism from our 
public educational institutions. 


Secretary Kellogg has said: “We are all determined 
that the curse of war shall not again devastate na- 
tions. The most certain insurance against this is the 
training of the thoughts of men in the way of 


” 


peace. 

But in contrast to this, President Morgan of An- 
tioch College states: “The battle for war or peace 
is being fought today in our schools and colleges. 
The War Department, through government appro- 
priation, has millions of dollars at its disposal to build 
the war spirit in the minds of our youth.” 


The Committee on Militarism in Education, which 
isa member-organization of the National Council for 
the Prevention of War, is (1) opposing compulsory 
military training in civil educational institutions, and 
(2) urging the abolition from all public high schools of 
military drill. The position of the committee is that 
the War Department does not belong in American 
colleges and schools in time of peace, and that its 
presence there will tend to nullify what the State 
Department hopes to accomplish by the multilateral 
treaties and peaceful negotiation. 

The Committee on Militarism in Education is act- 
ing as a research and resource bureau in its special 
field for the peace organizations and others who are 
opposed to putting educational armor plate on im- 
mature minds. As it tries to avoid financial com- 
petition with the organizations which co-operate, it 
has restricted its budget for 1929 to the minimum 
of $16,000. It asks for co-operation now in one or 
more of the following ways: 

(1) That organizations pass resolutions con- 
demning compulsory military training and military 
training in high schools. 

(2) That press clippings and other information 
pertaining to militarism in education in any locality 
be sent promptly to the committee. 

(3) That individuals or organizations who can 
afford it, make a financial contribution. - 

Dr. George A. Coe is chairman of the committee. 
The address ‘is 383 Bible House, Astor Place, New 
York. 


ON MAKING WHOOPEE 

The slang phrase is always in disrepute among 
good writers and speakers, but sometimes slang, makes 
its way into more respectable circles. There is a 
phrase current today which is widely used, in the 
newspapers, in the movies, over the radio; and that 
phrase is “to make whoopee.” 

“Whoop” is a good old English word; it has 
also been spelled “hoop,” and it is still pronounced 
as though spelled without the initial “w.” Of par- 
ticular interest is the phrase which grew out of this 
word, “to whoop it up” or “to whoop her up,” 
which Webster’s New International Dictionary de- 
fines as follows: 

“To raise a disturbance with or as if with whoops, 
or shouts; hence, in general, to urge matters on in 
an excited obstreperous manner; as, a drunken cow- 
boy whooped it up in town.” This phrase is marked 
“slang” in the dictionary. 

The unprofessional etymologist can relate the 
phrase “to make whoopee” to that earlier slang ex- 
pression. 





WHAT IS CALLED “BADNESS” IN MOST BOYS 
USUALLY MERELY MISDIRECTED ENERGY 


By CHares W. BEECHING, St. Louis. 


There is no such thing as a bad boy. Most of the 
so-called badness is misdirected energy. 

We all know the type of boy called a “bully.” 
Many persons feel that a bully is headed straight for 


a criminal career, but this is not necessarily so. 


Bullying, so-called, is really a form of leadership. 
The bully of a gang is its leader. Bullying is a 
natural tendency easily developed by the majority of 
the boys, and they usually exercise it if they can 
get away with it. 

Another tendency possessed by all boys before the 
age of twelve is lying. Boys of early age will usually 
lie to escape punishment. A boy will not generally 
lie to those he loves, likes, respects or admires, his 
friends. ‘Therefore, if a boy is made to feel he is 
surrounded by friends, that he is in a friendly world, 
the apparent necessity for lying will disappear. 





Inasmuch as all of my private interests are on the 
side of Capitalism, I am honestly in favor of Capi- 
talism. What delights me is the sight of imbeciles 
whooping for it, whose interests are all on the other 
side. It is as if rats should form a bodyguard to pro- 
tect cats.—Mencken. 








30 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


ON THE ROBBING OF CRIPPLED CHILDREN 
(From The Illinois Miner) 

(BLES) —Here is a case of child robbery reported 
by Florence Kelley, secretary of the National Con- 
sumers’ League, to bring the blush of shame to the 
cheek of every decent citizen of the State in which 
it took place. 

Joe K——-, 15 years old and working in a Con- 
necticut factory, had both arms crushed so that they 
had to be amputated at the shoulders, while doing, 
at the bidding of a superior, work which no one had 
a legal right to let him do. 

His wages were $13 per week. As compensation, 
he gets half that sum—$6.50 per week—for ten 
years, and then nothing! At 25 years of age, he is 
turned out on the world helpless, mutilated, to live 
on charity the rest of his life. 

However, let us not be too hard on Connecticut. 
If Joe had lost his two arms while illegally employed 
in 16 other states he could not have collected a red 
penny. Illinois is one of these states. Six out of the 
nine child slaves killed or permanently injured during 
the month of August in Illinois industries were 
illegally employed and therefore could not collect a 
cent of indemnity. 

Having been illegally employed, their compensation 
in states like New York and New Jersey would have 
been doubled and in Wisconsin it would have been 
trebled. Incidentally, the penalizing of employers by 
this method is an excellent means of enforcing child 
labor laws. 

Let us hope that the coming legislature will follow 
in the footsteps of New York, New Jersey and Wis- 
consin and thereby place the state of Illinois in the 
community of civilized commonwealths. 





CLASSROOMS—ENGLISH LEISURE 
The of English education 
impressed a young American woman “somewhat 


leisurely manner 


jangled by six hysterical years of American college 
existence,” according to The Vassar Miscellany News. 
A letter published in that paper shows how forcibly 
this quality strikes the visiting Yankee. 

The letters avers that she was, after a few days, 
taken into the sanctum of one of the professors of 
a great university and given a little fatherly advice. 
The scene of the interview was a masculine setting 
in which pipes, tobacco ashes, (shag tobacco), a 
small coal fire, three or four comfortable chairs and 
a great jumble of books provided the setting. 


“What you need to do,” said the professor, “is tg 
learn how to take it easy, and get a rest from the 
barbarous habits of ten hours a day activities ang 
lectures. Get up about nine-thirty, eat a big break. 
fast and go to hear some music in the afternoon, two 
or three times a week we shall meet here about fiye 
o’clock, have some tea, smoke, and discuss some 
matters in English. history that have a bearing on 
the course. After you get to know something about 
London and feel a bit at home, you can start in 
your work at the British Museum with some of the 
tutors who will show you how to use the museums 
and tell you something about the source materials 
of English history. After a while, you can begin 
to think about your thesis. Then you can live in 
the eighteenth century, read letters, and read the 
books and communications of people of that era 
until you begin to know them. After that, about 
the middle of the year, you can begin to write your 
thesis.” After that, “tea was had.” 

“. . . looking at the pulpits in our many class. 
rooms with the formal and rigid rows of chairs 
where so many facts are droned with all day, the 
vision of leisure, tea, time to think and be oneself 


might cause us to pause and think. . .”—The New 
Student. 





TEN WAYS TO KILL AN ORGANIZATION 

1. Don’t come to any of the meetings. 

2. But if you do, come late. 

3. If the weather doesn’t suit you don’t think 
of coming. 

4. If you do attend a meeting, find fault with 
the work of the officers and the members. 

5. Never accept an office, it is easier to criticis 
than to do things. 

6. Nevertheless, get sore if you are not appointed 
on a committee; but if you are, do not attend the 
meetings. 

7. If asked by the chairman to give your opinion 
on some important matter, tell him you have nothing 
to say. After the meeting tell every one how things 
should be done. 

8. Do nothing more than is absolutely necessary; 
when other mémbers roll up their sleeves, and will- 
ingly and unselfishly use their ability to help matters 
along, howl that the organization is run by a clique. 

9. Hold back your dues as long as possible, of 
den’t pay them at all. 

10. Don’t bother about gettting new members. 
Let George do it.—The Office Worker. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


WHAT THE NEW EDUCATION BILL IS 

The New Education Bill was introduced into the 
Senate on December 8, 1925, by Senator Charles 
Curtis, of Kansas, and into the House of Represen- 
utives on December 11, 1925, by Congressman 
Daniel A. Reed, of New York. It contains the fol- 
lowing proposals: 

Section 1 Creates a Department of Education with 
Secretary in the President’s Cabinet. 

Section 2 Authorizes an Assistant Secretary of Edu- 
cation and other necessary assistants. 

Section 3 Provides for the transfer to the Depart- 
ment of Education, the Federal Board for Vocational 
Education, and of such control as is now exercised 
over the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and 
Howard University. 

Sections 4, § and 6 Define the powers and duties 
of the Secretary of Education. 

Section 7 Provides for a federal conference on edu- 
cation consisting of one representative from each of 
the Executive Departments. 

Section 8 Provides that the Department of Educa- 
tion shall conduct researches covering the whole field 
of education, and for the distribution of the results 
of such researches to educational officials in the sev- 
eral states and to other persons interested in education. 

Section 9 Provides appropriations for the support 
of the work of the Department. 

Section 10 Provides that the Secretary of Educa- 
tion shall make an annual report to Congress. 

Section 11 Is an enacting clause. 





B.C. TEACHERS WIN PENSION PROTECTION 


Teachers of British Columbia have successfully 
lobbied a pension bill through the legislature. They 
are to pay a minimum of four per cent of their 
wages into the treasury, on which the government is 
to pay five per cent interest. When the pension 
comes due, the government is to double the amount, 
giving the pensioner several forms of annuity. 

The qualifying age is 60 for women and 65 for 
men, after at least fifteen years of service. Teachers 
who quit the profession have their payments re- 
funded. 

Under a law passed last year, public servants 
may be protected by public pensions if 75 per cent 
The municipalities assume 


of any group approve. 
the employer’s portion. Private employers are per- 
mitted to use this public pension system for their 


workers, but not one has yet agreed to. Labor is 
Waging a campaign to force them to do so. 


KENOSHA STRIKE SITUATION— 
GRAND JURY 

Desperate at the public condemnation of the 
Allen-A Hosiery Company, all over the country, for 
its refusal to arbitrate with its workers, the man- 
agement of that company and its anti-union allies 
are attempting to secure unlimited funds for a Grand 
Jury investigation in Kenosha County. This bill, 
known as 47-S, was introduced with great secrecy 
in the State Legislature at Madison by State Senator 
Conrad Shearer, secretary of the Kenosha Manufac- 
turers’ Association. 

The Wisconsin State Federation of Labor and other 
liberal organizations and individuals, including emi- 
nent members of the bar, have condemned this bill, 
because it will allow the unlimited use of private 
detectives in the Kenosha situation. Attorney Gen- 
eral John M. Reynolds of Wisconsin has denounced 
it as a “vicious bill.” 

Just what this measure means can be seen from 
the use similar moneys were put to in a Grand Jury 
in Kenosha County some years ago. Large sums 
of money were then expended for the anti-union R. 
Russell Detective Agency and for prostitutes and 
the purchase of illicit liquor. The county actually 
put professional prostitutes on its pay roll at $15.00 
per day, to get evidence out of young men decoyed 
to hotel rooms. It is for similar purposes that the 
present funds would be used, as there are ample funds 
provided for an ordinary and legitimate investigation. 

But we are opposed to putting unlimited sums of 
money in the hands of private detectives after 
$7,000.00 has: already been expended illegally and 
without result by former District Attorney Lewis 
W. Powell, for Pinkertons. It was because of Mr. 
Powell’s failure to go after detectives employed by 
the Allen-A Company, in violation of Wisconsin 
law, that we assisted in defeating him for office. 
Now the Manufacturers’ Association has sought to 
make the new district attorney a mere office boy, 
so far as prosecutions are concerned, by appointing 
a special prosecutor. The Allen-A lawyers framed 
bill 47-S in order to allow private detectives and 
their prostitute allies to run amuck in Kenosha. But 
we are opposed to such methods—particularly as it 
will open the way for the legal sanctioning of gossip, 
slander and frame-up. 

Despite the attacks made on them by anti-union 
forces of Wisconsin, the Kenosha locked-out workers 
stand solid in this thirteenth month of the lockout. 
The indignation of the public everywhere, at the 











32 


company’s refusal to arbitrate, has led to a tremen- 
dous fall in the Allen-A’s sales, both in hosiery and 
underwear. The shipping room is now working only 
three hours a day, whereas, this should be a rush 
season. 





CHILD WELFARE SURVEY IN RIO DE 
JANEIRO 


Since the time of the famous sanitarian Oswaldo 
Cruz and his successful campaign to rid Rio de 
Janeiro of yellow fever, the Brazilian capital has 
enjoyed an enviable reputation for health and clean- 
liness as well as for the unsurpassed beauty of its 
famous bay. One of the phases of public health 
which is attracting more and more attention in 
Brazil, as throughout all Latin America, is that of 
infancy and childhood. It is therefore of special 
interest to note that the Brazilian Government has 
recently requested Dr. Fernandes Figueria, a well- 
known official of the National Public Health Bureau, 
assisted by Dr. Israel Franca, to make a survey of the 
present child-welfare agencies in Rio de Janeiro, not 
only reporting present conditions but making sug- 
gestions for possible improvement. The juvenile 
court, the other sections of the Public Health Bureau, 
and hospital officials will co-operate in the study. 





Beneath me flows the Rhine, and, like the stream 
of Time, it flows amid the ruins of the past. I see 
myself therein, and know that I am old. Thou, too, 
shalt be old. Be wise in season. Like the stream of 
thy life runs the stream beneath us. Down from 
the distant Alps, out into the wide world, it bursts 
away, like a youth from the house of his fathers. 
Broad breasted and strong, and with earnest endeavor, 
like manhood, it makes itself a way through these 
difficult mountain passes. And at length in old age 
it falters, and its steps are weary and slow, and it 
sinks into the sand, and through its grave passes 
into the great ocean, which is its eternity.—Long- 


fellow. 





The idea of the Teachers’ Interchange System, un- 
der which 149 British teachers have gone on ex- 
change during the present year to various parts of the 
empire, originated with three Manitoba, Canada, 
teachers during the winter of 1912-13, according to 


the Manitoba Teachers’ Magazine. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








BRITISH WIN DEBATE; UPHOLD PACIFIsy 


“Resolved, That the only effective attitude toward 
war is an uncompromising pacifism.” This question 
was warmly debated last month by a team of three 
students from the National Students’ Union in Eng. 
land, which met another from George Washington 
University in the capital city. The British team, tak. 
ing the affirmative, won by a vote of the audience, 
While in this country, the Britishers are debating the 
same subject with teams from other American uni- 
versities; among them, Harvard, which also won 
with the affirmative side of the question—News 
Bulletin, National Council for Prevention of War. 





THROUGH AIR BY DAY; IN PULLMAN 
BY NIGHT 


The latest reports of plans for transcontinental 
travel at high speed include routes which permit 
passengers to travel in Pullmans at night, while 
sleeping, and, during the day, to cover great dis- 
tances in the shortest possible time by airplanes, 
Perhaps a few people recall, when reading the name 
of the Pullman car, how this word came to be ap- 
plied to it. 

The Pullman car was named, according to Web- 
ster’s New International Dictionary, after George M. 
Pullman, born in 1831, died in 1897, who intro- 
duced this form of sleeping car into railroad use. 
Pullman is thus another of the many words which 
have come into the language from proper names. 
These words include mackintosh (after Charles 
Macintosh, the inventor), maverick (after Samuel 
Maverick, cattleman), fuchsia (after Leonhard 
Fuchs, botanist), volt (after Alessandro Volta, 
electrician), blucher (after the Prussian general, 
Blucher), etc. 





TOMMY AND NERO 


The teacher had worked that morning explaining 
the injustices done by Nero and believed he had 
made an impression on the boys. Then he asked 
questions. 

“Now, boys, what do you think of Nero? Do 


you think he was a good man?” 

No one answered. 

Then the teacher singled out a boy. “Tommy, 
what do you think? Do you think he was straight?” 

“Well,” returned the boy, after a long wait, “he 
never done nuthin’ to me.” 


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BE A SPORT 


"ISM ‘ou may call yourself dull in a fit of despair, PROGRESSIVES ARE READING 


ward |, drop all your pep, and say you don’t care, ° 
eStion put I'll tell you, my friend, that’s a habit to break, LABO R S NEWS 
three |), planning this world not a single mistake 


Eng- ‘w,s made in the building. So when you complain 
wgton Tyke stock of yourself. You’re the chap that’s to The factual news weekly of the labor 








“tak. blame. movement. Trained correspondents 
ence, Just right about face; it may hurt some, it’s true. and staff writers of The Federated 
> h 4 Id d Press report and interpret week by 
§ the But that’s just the way any good sport would do. week the significant events and trends 
uni- in economics, finance, politics and 
Won When you wake in the morning don’t look for a social change as they bear upon the 
Vews | deal labor and progressive movement. 
J 
i, , i it. ing in the 
You know what’s behind it Just swi 5 Labor’s News is an expansion and improvement of the 
crowd. Federated Press Labor Letter and its predecessor the 
"i Be one of them, cheerfully, singing along. Federated Press Bulletin. 





You may get a bump, but don’t stop your song, 
tal Perhaps one will hear it who needs just a bit 
Of encouragement now. Your song may be it. 


TWO DOLLARS A YEAR 


dis. |What matter if yesterday’s failures were big? 
‘oday is your day, so get in and dig. The 























nes, 
if you meet any trouble, why just change its name, 
Ps tad call it a ladder. They oft lead to fame. Fede ra ted Press 
But whatever you do, be quick and begin it; 
ob You never can tell just how much there is in it. 799 Broadway New York City 
.M. —Jane Bates, in Forbes Magazine (N. Y.) 
tro- : 
use, 
Lich | 
nes, e 
<| Duy Union Stamped Shoes 
wuel 
ard a —s 
Ita 


al, We ask all members of organized labor to 
purchase shoes bearing our Union Stamp on 
the sole, inner-sole or lining of the shoe. We 
ng ask you not to buy any shves unless you 
. actually see this Union Stamp. 


“11 Boot & Shoe Workers’ Union 


Affiliated with the American Federation of Labor 


246 SUMMER STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 


« COLLIS LOVELY CHARLES L. BAINE 
General Secretary-Treasurer 














be General President 











<—_ Ds 8 ee te te 

















American Federation 
of 


‘Teachers 


506 S. Wabash Ave., 
CHICAGO, ILL. 


0 9G 8 


The American Federation of Teachers desires to 
establish an intimate contact and an effective co-opera- 
tion between the teachers and the other workers of the 
community. 


The American Federation of Teachers desires to 
co-operate with all civic organizations for improved 
civic life. 

Groups of seven or more public school teachers are 
invited to affiliate with this National Organization of 
Classroom Teachers, for mutual assistance, improved 


professional stanaards and the demucratization of the 
schools. 


Our Slogan Is: 
Democracy in Education: Education for Democracy 


“The American Teacher” is published monthly by the 
American Federation of Teachers. Membership dues 
carry subscription to the magazine. To all others the 
subscription price is $2.00 per year, 25 cents per copy. 

















: 











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