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AMERICAN TEACHER 


THE ORGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
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[DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 














i PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS. CHICAGO 
| DECEMBER, 1929 VOL. XIV. No. 4 





























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CONTENTS 


The Press as an Educational Influence 
Edward Keating 


Does Your Local Need an Office? 
Florence Rood 

Editorials 

School News 


A Worker’s School and Organized Labor.. 
Louise Leonard 


Methuselah at Forty-Five.. 
Merrill Bishop 


Secondary and Higher Education in India.. 
D. K. Karve 


An Open Letter from President Green. 
Teacher Tenure .. 
Books 


Local News .. 








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The American Teacher 


econd class matter Oct. 20, 1926, at the post office at Chicago, Ill., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
batered or Pied for in Sec. 1103, Act of Feb. 28, 1925, authorized Nov. 3, 1926. 


ceptance for mailing at special rate of postage prov 


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Volume XIV, No. 4 


DECEMBER, 1929 - 


Two Dollars " Year 











The Press as an Educational Influence 
An Address to the Washington Teachers Union, Local 198 


By Mr. Edward Keating, Editor of “Labor” 


Mr. Harvey—Friends, 

Mr. Harvey was telling a story about the irate 
gidier who returned to his home to find that a 
sory had been written to the effect that he had 
hen hanged. ‘This reminds me of an experience 
that another newspaper man had. He printed 
wm item in his paper to the effect that the most 
prominent citizen of the city who had been away 
fom home for a long time had returned, and in 
making the announcement he said that Colonel 
jim Smith, the battle-scarred veteran of this city, 
had returned, dnd the printer making a mistake 
changed the A to O making it read the bottle- 
sarred veteran of the community, Colonel Jim 
Smith, had returned. Jim went down, very 
angry about the matter. The printer corrected 
the error in the next edition but left one of the 
R's out of the word scarred making it read the 
tattle-scared veteran of the community had re- 
tumed. Then the printer left town. 

On an occasion of this kind it is customary, 
of course, for the toastmaster to speak kindly 
ofthe press. As a rule he says that the news- 
papers of the country are perhaps the greatest 
tducational influence in the country, and then 
te hesitates and says, “Well, of course, I might 
«cept the schools and probably the churches.” 

Ihave been in the newspaper business, after 
amanner, about forty years and I am fond of 
the profession. I believe that, if I have the op- 
fortunity to return to the earth again, I will 
mee more go into a newspaper office. I have 
avery high opinion of my craft, or calling, or 
profe. sion or whatever you want to call it, and 
lam very fond of all those engaged in it, and 
(tI cannot agree with the verdict that the news- 
pers of the country are a great educational 





miuence. Some newspapers, only a few how- 
‘er, may be, but when you consider the oppor- 
‘uuties afforded the newspapers of this country, 


and then when we examine the columns of the 
daily newspapers as they come into our homes, 
I think we should appreciate how far the mem- 
bers of my profession have fallen from the 
standard they might have taken. 

Publicity or News 

For example, just ask yourself these ques- 
tions: When have you seen a book review in 
a newspaper that was worth reading? When 
have you read an article on Art that was worth 
reading? Do you know a newspaper in the city 
of Washington which prints a dramatic criticism 
that is worth reading? Most of us go to the 
theater and we find that column after column 
of its notices are this press agent stuff, that is, 
exactly the material turned over by the press 
agent for release, and yet the people of this 
town are tremendously interested in dramatics 
of all kinds. And those that are interested in 
science, when did they encounter a scientific fact 
clearly stated in the newspaper? As I say there 
are exceptions but on the whole this lack is 
not confined simply to the items that might ap- 
peal as a matter of education. Why, not even 
in the sporting columns does the newspaper tend 
to educate its readers! For instance, when a 
prize fight is promoted the press prints what 
the promoters or press agents give them, that 
particular ballyhoo, in order to get an audience 
to come out to the fight. 

Now, on the other hand, of course the news- 
papers can’t be constantly preaching to its read- 
ers. The newspaper can’t be running a univer- 
sity in its columns. 

The Function of a Newspaper 

My own notion of the function of a news- 
paper is something like this: I believe that a 
newspaper contracts with its readers to sell the 
news—the news of the world just as a grocer 
may arrange with you to sell you flour and 








2 





So the news- 


sugar, a butcher sell you beef. 
paper’s first duty is to give its readers the news 
of the world and to state that news clearly and 
accurately. 

I think the newspaper has a right on the edi- 
torial page to undertake to interpret the news 
and to state the opinions of the editor, and the 
reader may read the facts, may reach his own 
conclusions, and if he so desires may turn to the 
editorial page and find what the editor thinks 
about it. 

To me news in this country is often not clearly 
and accurately stated by the papers. There are 
a few newspapers in this country that adhere 
to the rule of giving only accurate informa- 
tion as rigidly as may humanly be expected, but 
these papers could be easily numbered on the 
fingers of two hands, even perhaps on the fin- 
gers of one hand. 

As a rule a news item is filled with propa- 
ganda. Now let me just illustrate what I have 
in mind on this subject. For instance, the stock 
market. What has been happening in the stock 
market? Now remember the newspapers are 
expected to deliver the news to their readers. 
For years or since the middle of Mr. Coolidge’s 
first term until a few weeks ago, practically 
every newspaper has given the impression that 
there was no end to this boom, although stocks 
were selling in many instances on a basis that 
did not pay more than two per cent on the mar- 
ket price. Nevertheless, you will search the files 
of the newspapers in vain for the slightest in- 
formation that the people were facing a dan- 
gerous situation. Then when the break did come, 
day after day the papers announced that the 
end had been reached, and that now the danger 
was over. 

Propaganda 

Finally, they printed a statement that some- 
one had offered to buy a million shares of Stand- 
ard Oil stock at $50.00 a share. Now, if truly 
presented that was a very important item, but 
did you notice that no name was given. There 
is a rule in the newspaper office that every cub 
reporter is supposed to know, to understand, 
and follow; that there should be some author- 
ity for the statements made. Where did the 
papers get the statement that someone had of- 
fered to buy a million shares of Standard Oil 
stock at $50.00 a share? It was handed out by 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








some Wall Street press agent. No one assumfh ma 
responsibility for it. Then in order to make tienat 
statement strong the press started making gy[Mebat 
mises as to who the man was. It was believe m 
to be Mr. Rockefeller. Mr. Rockefeller did pyfhill « 
say he made the offer, and so far as the fifyierest 
million dollars was concerned, where was it? The Sot 
whole object it seems was to boost the marke You 
and make a lot of people who were getting ne. fhe 1 
vous come back and buy more. equi 
We might ask who is responsible for all og 
this. Well, in the first place we must considerfis ad 
the question of the ownership of the paper an(ff kn 
its backers. Very often there is a great pressur 
brought upon the editor to have him give a pares 
ticular slant to a particular question. However 
the ownership of a paper and the pressure o 
the editor is never, I feel, an excuse for distor-[0 se 
ing or even for editorializing news. ma 
I believe when you back up a newspaper yougutsi 
should get what the name indicates, the newsusin 
of the world in an understandakle fashion, anifpews 
this is particularly true of a foreign newspaper. $m 1 
The next time you pick up a daily newspaperfi 
and you read the details considered foreign injtas 
this country, unless you have been a student often 
foreign affairs, try to understand what it is aljiamil 
about. Take for instance the cabinet crisis inf*Y 
France. Naturally you will want to know wha !' 
caused the crisis, to understand what it is algjuior 
about. And I think that the newspapers are ob- fiom 
liged to give you that story of what happenedg™tp 
in such a way that you may know why Briand’ 
cabinet fell. You will find it extremely difficult] | | 
to find out what it is all about. I think, quite fvhat 
frequently that news presented in this fashionfupp 
is so presented with no desire to misinform the Jrartn 
readers, but simply because the newspapers have fad ; 
not paid enough to get first-class writers wh0Jtyper 
can give the news accurately. vent 
A Sweated Industry tito 

A great deal of the responsibility is to befve y 
placed upon the fact that the newspaper pio jl w 
fession is somewhat like the teaching profession Jad 
in many places. It is a sweated industry. The}ad 
wages paid in the average newspaper office att ftey 
entirely insufficient to attract to the mewspapt §? we 
business the kind of men who should be eat fteir 
ployed in the news business, if you are going ' Jmin 
raise this business to such a standard as to havegret 
it have an educational influence. What kind off ure 































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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 3 


man is required to sit in the gallery of the 
mate eight or ten hours and listen to a runnin; 
Lhate, and then write a two-column story for 
be morning paper, on the day following, which 
] convey to the readers a vivid, accurate, in- 
westing picture of what took place there? 
Some of you here may be teaching English. 
‘u will perhaps appreciate the difficulties of 
. man who tackles that particular job. It 
auires a man of education. It requires a man 
ho has very considerable skill as a writer, and 
, addition a fine sense of news values, so as 
»know what to play up and what not to play 
». I think this work requires a man of as 
reat capacity, and as broad a knowledge of 
hings in general as is required of a man to take 
are of a law suit or to serve as a physician or 
yserve in any other profession. What is such 
,man worth? The fact of the matter is that 
wtside of the so-called stars of the newspaper 
usiness the rank and file of men working in 
ewspaper offices of this country are not draw- 
ng much, more than the paltry sum they did fif- 
en or sixteen years ago, despite the great in- 
mease in the cost of living. Even fifteen or six- 
ten years ago no one who expected to rear a 
family could get along on the wages of the ordi- 
mary newspaper man of the editorial department. 
I remember what first started me along trade 
mion lines. You know, of course, that I came 
om a trade union family, but that alone did 
wt put me into the movement. 


White Collar Workers 
I secured my first job on the newspaper in 
tat is known as the proof room. We were 
upposed to be connected with the editorial de- 
yrtment. We were white collar workers. We 
ad a social status higher than printers and lino- 
pers. They were a greasy, dirty lot. But we 
vet with the men who wrote editorials, the city 
‘lito. We worked seven nights a week, and 
"e worked just as long as the boss wanted us 
“work. He told us when we should show up 
md when we could quit. He fixed our wages, 
al we got less than those grimy fellows and 
ey would get a night off, on the paper, once 
‘week. They could wash up and go out with 





ieir girls, but the white collar workers re- 
mined. There was. no vacation for us unless 
® book it at our own expense, and we didn’t 
“4 money enough to lay off. We were kept in 


a stuffy room. We protested but we didn’t get 
anywhere. Although the boss-man was a 
Christian, he paid no attention to us. 

Finally, one day, the typographical union met 
and without consulting us told us they had 
adopted a resolution that after a certain time 
each man must belong to a typographical union, 
and any member working must not work more 
than eight hours. So of course I was delighted 
to join; not only must we join the union but 
we must have a day off each week, and we must 
have $6.25 more a week in our pay envelopes. 
Well, workers with a social status so-called were 
delighted to join with the grimy fellows. 


A Reporters Union 

So after that I wandered along until I had 
become managing editor of that same daily paper. 
When the reporters decided that they would 
join a union, and managing editors would not 
be permitted to join, a man came to me and asked 
if the reporters were organizing a union. 

He said, “You know you can’t organize 
brains.” 

And I said to him, “Have the reporters brains 
enough to organize?” 

But they didn’t have brains enough to stick 
together, and today you can go through the 
newspaper offices of the country and you will 
find these men have hung on without a union, 
and hence are working for less than they should 
get. One of the serious facts is that the news- 
paper men who should be getting the higher in- 
comes in the newspaper profession as such have 
gone into another field which pays a very high 
income. You will find the tendency among some 
of the fine men in the game is to get into this 
dreadful thing called Publicity. 

The thing is they can get more time and more 
money in the publicity end of the game. And 
so in this extremely important end, the news 
writing work, the part which serves us, we have 
only these over-worked and under-paid men. 
The next time you pick up a newspaper just re- 
member that you, perhaps, are getting the kind 
of news items that these over-worked and un- 
der-paid men are writing. 

This lack of well-paid and hence well-qualified 
news writers is one reason why the newspapers 
are not taking advantage of this tremendous 
opportunity; that is, making the newspaper of 

(Continued on page 5) 








Does Your Local Need an Office? 


By Florence Rood 
St. Paul Women, Local 28 


Whenever teachers, representing progressive 
groups, discuss ways in which they may improve 
their organizations, a comment heard is, “What 
we need is an office, if we can’t have more, where 
we can centralize our activities; but we can’t 
afford it.” Perhaps the ten years’ experience of 
the St. Paul Federation of Women Teachers in 
keeping up headquarters may suggest a plan to 
those who hesitate to make the attempt. 

The first venture, advisedly, was a modest one. 
Two inexpensive rooms in a small office building 
were secured and here, with what it could use of 
equipment left from Red Cross work during the 
war, the Federation “set up housekeeping.” 

Somewhat later, space was offered in a build- 
ing which it was hoped might be occupied only 
by women’s organizations. Without a penny in 

















the treasury with which to furnish larger quar- 
ters, a committee was appointed to consider the 
situation. The recommendation of the committee 
was that loans should be asked of members of 
the Federation, of not less than $5 nor more than 
$50, for periods of one, two, or three years, 
without interest. It was decided that the indebt- 
edness could be paid from dues in that length of 
time if no other means could be devised. Inci- 
dentally, it was paid at the end of the first year 
from the proceeds of a lecture course. The plan 
was approved and the response from the mem- 
bers so prompt that the amount necessary to 


furnish the space leased was quickly over-s. 
scribed. The larger number of the loans yw 
in small amounts. 

The job of the purchasing committee was ng 
an easy one but, in the vernacular, it was lots of 
fun. Every penny had to do the work of two, 
sometimes of ten. In part the furnishings wer 
new ; but shortly, committee members were hai- 
fellow with every second-hand furniture deal 
at the north end of St. Peter Street. Of th 
bargains found in dusty corners and lofts, nox 
could be bought from us except at a price! Th 
results of the thrift, energy, and taste of the 
committee, it was told, were the most attractive 
club rooms for women in the city. Within the 
past year, the Federation moved to its present 
quarters, an improvement in location as well a 
in other ways. 











“Why should a teachers’ organization need 4 
business office?” is a question often asked. The 
old style teachers’ association did not; it had no 
business. But locals of the American Federation 
have programs of action. The St. Paul Federa- 
tion of Women Teachers believes a place devoted 
to its activities is a help to greater efficiency and, 
therefore, greater service. 

Here the board and committees gather and 
work without interruption. Reference material 
can be collected and filed where it is available 
when reports are to be prepared. Officers have 





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THE AMERICAN 


proper places in which to keep their records. 
The parlor, with its air of homelike hospitality, 
and the kitchenette, offer opportunities for social 
times which are liberally used. Outside groups 
can be invited in for conferences. Teachers’ or- 
ganizations fail to take advantage of the help 
they could get, not alone by enlisting the services 
of friends but by converting critics into support- 
ers, through an explanation of what they pro- 
pose to do. There is a tactical advantage in 
debating on one’s own field. The invitations 
which come to share in civic enterprises, in part 
because the Federation is permanently located 
and accessible, are surprisingly numerous. Every 
such request, within the bounds of possibility, is 
met as a part of the policy of Local No. 28. 

Aside from the fact that the efficiency of the 
organization is increased by centralizing its work, 
there is a dignity in paying one’s way which is 
enjoyable. Why should not a group of teachers 
be responsible for its rent bill instead of joining 
the overly large numbers of clubs and associa- 
tions which are housed through the courtesy and 
at the expense of other people? 


A GOOD WORD 

A letter from Frank Morrison, secretary of 
the American Federation of Labor, says: “I ex- 
press the hope that in the coming year you will 
add another increase to your membership. There 
is a great field for the American Federation 
of Teachers. There are so many thousand 
teachers unorganized. They should be organ- 
ied and they can be organized. I am sure that 
the coming year is going to be a good one for or- 
ganization among the teachers.” 











The Press as an Educational Influence 
(Continued from page 3) 

this country the greatest educational factor in 
this land. And I believe that if some newspapers 
were only wise enough to follow this course they 
would procure a large public following. I think 
that the New York Times and the Baltimore 
Sun are examples of those papers that employ 
these more socially profitable policies. I believe 
that if the thing were taken up through the en- 
tire land the people would follow. And I look 
forward to having the enlightened people of this 
‘ountry support the high-minded men of my pro- 
ftssion in a joint effort to make the press a great 
tducational force in this country. 


TEACHER 5 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 


1. What is the 
Teachers? 


The national professional oranization of class- 
room teachers affiliated with the American Fed- 
eration of Labor. 


2. When was it organized? 

It was organized April 15, 1916, and affiliated 
with the American Federation of Labor, May 9, 
1916. 


3. How was this organization effected? 

A few locals, directly affiliated with the A. F. 
of L., under the leadership of a few teachers of 
vision who were thinking in terms of community 
interest and social progress, met in Chicago, drew 
up a constitution and applied to the A. F. of L. 
for a charter as an international union of that 
body. 

4. What is the system of organization? 

The A. F. of T. is organized on the local sys- 
tem. Any group of seven or more professionally 
qualified teachers, upon application to the Execu- 
tive Council, and the payment of a fee of $10.00, 
may be granted a charter. 


5. Why did the A. F. of T. affiliate with the 
A. F. of L. 

Because it recognized that organized labor was 
the major instrumentality in establishing our sys- 
tem of free tax-supported schools, has been 
their constant and consistent protector and de- 
fender, and has an advanced educational pro- 
gram second to none. 


6. What is the educational program of the 
American Federation of Labor? 

Better enforcement of the educational laws; 
wider use of the school plant; reduction in the 
size of classes; revision of teachers’ salary sched- 
ules upward; increase of school revenues to 
maintain and develop public schools ; co-operation 
between boards of education and superintendents 
and committees representing the teaching body 
in all cases of controversy between school author- 
ities and teachers ; tenure of position for teachers 
during efficiency; sound pension laws; protec- 
tion of the schools from propaganda and all 
forms of exploitation; labor representation on 
school boards; compulsory attendance laws; free 
text books ; opportunity for every child to receive 
adequate educational advantages. 


American Federation of 








6 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


e 
The American Teacher 
Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 
Published Monthly, except July and August 
Official Organ 
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
ORGANIZED Aprit 15, 1916 
Affiliated With the American Federation of Labor 
Editorial Office: 
506 South Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois 
FLorence Curtis Hanson, Secretary-Treas. and Editor 











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





Remittances should be made in postal money-order, 
express order, draft, stamps or check. 


SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, TWO DOLLARS FOR 
THE YEAR—FOREIGN $2.20—SINGLE 
COPIES, 25¢ 

aan, Sas Tes Sean on Sayliettion 


=~ 


EXECUTIVE COUNCIL 


President 
Mary C. Barker, Atlanta No. 89; 685 Myrtle Street, 
N. E., Atlanta, Georgia. 

Legislative Representative and Vice-President 
SetMA M. Borcuarpt, Washington No. 8; 1741 Park 
Road, N. W., Washington, D. C. 
Vice-Presidents 
FLoreNce Fisx, Minneapolis No. 59; ‘3301 First Ave., S., 
Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

ABRAHAM LeFKow1Tz, New York No. 5; 10414 27th 
Avenue, East Elmhurst, Corona, New York, N. Y. 
Henry R. Linvitte, New York No. 5; 70 Fifth Ave., 
New York, N. Y. 

A. J. Muste, Brookwood No. 189; Brookwood, Katonah, 











N. Y. 
CarLotta Pitrman, Memphis No. 52; 151 Clark Place, 
Memphis, Tenn. 
W. B. SatrertHwalite, Local No. 200; 1837 12th Ave., 
West, Seattle, Washington. 
Lucte H. Scuacut, Chicago Women No. 3; 6714 S. 
Union Ave., Chicago, Illinois. 
E. E. Schwarzrrauser, Portland No. 111, R. F. D. 5, 
Box 68, Portland, Oregon. 
W. J. Scorr, Atlanta No. 89; 212 Kings Highway, 
Decatur, Georgia. 

Cuartes B. Stmitman, Chicago No. 2; 827 Ridge 
Avenue, Evanston, Illinois. 
Secretary-Treasurer 
Fiorence Curtis Hanson, Chicago Women No. 3; 506 
South Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois, 
Telephone Harrison 2950. 





























Occupational Disease of Teachers 

When a teacher is asked what condition he 
feels calls most for remedy, he will say nothing 
about salary, but almost without exception a 
once reply, “Overcrowded classes, overcrowded 
schools, speed-up system.” 

The speed-up system as applied to teachers 
needs no explanation to them. They know only 
too well the pressure put upon them with its con- 
sequent nervous exhaustion. No moment in the 
day is free from duty, even the recess periods 
being employed in play-supervision.  (Pitiable 
teachers but more pitiable children.) At the 
close of the school day comes the required uni- 
versity extension work. Vacations are only op- 
portunities for further pursuit of formal studies. 
Otherwise the teacher’s place is vacant for some- 
one who can keep the speed-up pace. 

When you ask a physician in any city among 
which class he finds the greater proportion of 
his patients, will he not agree with the Chicago 
doctor who said, “If it were not for the teachers, 
a good many of us doctors would have to find 
another occupation.” 

And between these two answers there is the 
direct relation of cause and effect. 

A third question is, “What is the occupational 
disease of teachers? What disease do over- 
crowded classes, overcrowded schools, the speed- 
up system develop?” Dr. Frank Fischer, Seattle, 
says, “It is a significant fact that heart trouble is 
becoming exceedingly common among school 
teachers ; and there is not the slightest doubt that 
this is traceable to the severe exactions imposed 
on their physical strength. 

And as a last, question, “Who will protect the 
teachers from this occupational hazard?” The 
teachers themselves must realize the situation. 
They must be alert to means for their own pro- 
tection, They must recognize their own respon- 
sibility to devise measures against this particular 
form of exploitation. 


Loan Sharks 

Following Mr. Schwarztrauber’s letter in the 
October American Teacher on the exploitation 
of teachers by loan agencies, we find a number 
of press statements on the subject. 

The Nation’s Schools for November has 4 
forceful editorial in the advertising for thes 
loan agencies which appears in some of the pub- 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 7 


ications Of teachers’ organizations. It says: 
“It would seem as a matter of ethics that publi- 
ations going to teachers should not carry adver- 
isements of this kind. A straight narcotic ad- 
vertisement urging teachers ‘to form the habit’ 


’ 99 


yould not be more devastating’. 
A special protest comes from Iowa. 


“Money lenders carry on their lucrative trade 
under the Iowa pawn brokers’ act, charging a 
monthly interest of 314%. 3% extra is charged for 
office expenses, a registration fee, or whatever it is 
alled. This brings total interest up to 45% per 
yar. Evidently the business is successful. 

“One firm has been in business for 40 years, an- 
other one is doing such a thriving business that the 
steps leading to the office were worn out in less 
thn a year’s time. And, the surest indication of 
sound profit, a third firm has appeared on the scene, 
appealing to the public by offering loans at only 
24% a month None of these three firms operates 
wih the customary three golden balls over the 
entrances of their places. 

“Bankers, feeling the competition, have called into 
life a ‘thrift company’ operating under the Iowa 
banking act, which sets interest at a maximum of 
8%. In order to get a loan the borrower must relate 
al his debts and his home economics. If his rent 
is too high he must consent to move into cheaper 
quarters, if his grocery bill is too large he is ex- 
pected to cut down on his fare. 

“All the sharks are doing well and apparently the 
market is far from the saturation point. What with 
the auto, the radio, and other necessary luxuries 
which can be pawned and still enjoyed, they need 
have no fear who have no qualms at squeezing a 
lving from the poorest of the poor.” 

The American Federation of Teachers has or- 
ganized a committee to make a study of this 
situation. A questionnaire is being sent to affil- 
ated locals to determine whether their members 
ae being solicited, by whom, what rates and 
what terms. It is hoped that prompt response 
will enable an early report to be made. 


Organizing the South 

Every organization affiliated with the Amer- 
ican Federation of Labor is vitally interested in 
the campaign of organization in the South and 
tone more so than the A. F. of T. 

Secretary Frank Morrison reports that there 
are 6,300 unions now in the south. Among these 
#e some of our largest and most effective locals. 
The most interested and promising field for or- 
fatization of teachers that we have is in this 
ction. 


It is a matter of great regret that the A. F. of 
T. cannot respond to President Green’s request 
that every international place an organizer in 
the field. Not because it is the best field for 
ourselves, but because it is a call of humanity 
and social justice to which we long to respond. 

You are urged to read with care the letter of 
President Green on page —— and to respond “in 
a most generous and noble way.” 

If you need anything else to stir your minds 
and hearts, read “Organized Labor Answers the 
Call of the South” by Ethel M. Smith in the 
Life and Labor Bulletin of the National Women’s 
Trade Union League. In, fact read everything 
on this southern situation. 





DEATH OF JAMES P. NOONAN 
It is with deep regret that we announce the 
sudden tragic death of James P. Noonan, Fifth 
Vice-President of the American Federation of 
Labor and president of the International Broth- 
erhood of Electrical Workers, which occurred at 
Washington, D. C., on December 4, as a result of 


_burns received in a fire in his apartment. 


Noonan was a member of the American com- 
mittee at the world power conference held in 
London in 1924, and has served on the St. Law- 
rence waterway commission and the United States 
committee on seasonal, employment in the build- 
ing industry in 1924, of which President Hoover 
was a member. 

He was third vice president of the Building 
Trades Council, A. F. of L.; member executive 
council Railway Employes’ Department A. F. of 
L. ; president Union Co-operative Insurance Asso- 
ciation and member editorial-policy board of 
“Labor,” weekly newspaper owned by the stand- 
ard railroad organizations. 

He was one of the most popular and best- 
known men in the labor movement and was 
prominent in every trade union activity. Under 
his leadership the Brotherhood of Electrical 
Workers has become one of the most powerful 
and influential trade unions in the world. He 
leaves a widow and two sons. The funeral was 
held in St. Louis. 

Mr. Noonan had been for several years chair- 
man of the Convention Education Committee of 
the American Federation of Labor and was a 
warm friend of the American Federation of 
Teachers and we feel his loss very keenly. 








8 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


KEY POSITION PRINCIPALS AND PRINCIPLES 


An Interesting Letter on an Interesting Situation with Some Comments 


This letter has been sent to all the principals in 
the United States and with it membership applica- 
tion blanks for every teacher in the building. No 
scarcity of organizers for the N. E. A., shall we say 
conscripted rather than volunteer. 20,000 free or- 
ganizers! Where was this method learned? Is it 
in line with school practice? 


And not of teachers? 


But the classroom teachers did show an interest 
in the development of a profession and organized 
the American Federation of Teachers to that end 
in 1916, 


The American Federation of Teachers realized the 
value of organization thirteen years ago. 


“They held key positions.” 
And not the teacher!! 


Three-fourths of the correspondence with prin- 
cipals and one-fourth with other officers and per- 
haps an occasional teacher. 

We have always said so but we never thought 
the N. E. A. would admit it. 


We hold the teachers should promote their own 
welfare. In what way does conscription promote 
the welfare of teachers? 


The principal is rechristened. He is now “key 
position.” 


Sounds very much like the 13 year old program of 
the A. F. T. Has it just been discovered? 


THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATI0y 
OF THE UNITED STATES 


Washington, D. C. 


E. Ruth Pyrtle Bancroft Schoo 
President Lincoln, Neb, 


To the Principals of America: 


Ever since my election as President of the Nz. 
tional Education Association I have had a desire tp 
write a special letter to principals, not only becausy 
of my being a principal myself, but because the ee. 
mentary and high school principals hold key pog. 
tions in professional advancement. On visiting head. 
quarters today and on learning that the second men.- 
bership broadcast will be made soon I have decided 
to write the letter so that it can be included with the 
other material to be sent out to principals. 

It pleases me to hear what the headquarters office 
has to say about the growth of professional interest 
on the part of principals. Ten years ago compar 
tively few principals showed any special interest in 
the development of a profession. The superintend- 
ents were almost alone in this work. The fact was 
that principals were unaware of what a well or- 
ganized profession would mean to the cause of edu- 
cation. They realized what it meant to lawyers and 
physicians, but they never dreamed that within ten 
years their own profession would be organized and 
put on a par with that of the legal profession or that 
of the medical profession. But as they became inter- 
ested themselves and as superintendents and others 
impressed them with the fact that they held key 
positions in the profession they gradually assumed 
the responsibility of leadership until more than three- 
fourths of the correspondence of the central office 
on membership and on problems of organization is 
now with the principals. 

There is now an army of not less than 20,000 
principals working in a large way to promote the 
welfare of teachers. I feel all the more proud of the 
group to which I belong as I get what the records 
of the office reveal. 

I have the honor of serving a year as President 
of the Association. It is an honor that carries with 
it a responsibility which I could not meet were ! 
not to have without asking for it the fullest support 
of those who hold the key positions. Wish you 
would write making any suggestions that come to 
your mind for the success of the year. Are we 
placing enough emphasis on salary needs, retirement 
allowances, and: tenure? What matters should we 
feature in the next program? Your reaction on 
these matters and your advice will be of inspiration 
and help to me during the year. 

Your friend, 
E. RUTH PYRTLE, 
President. 


SCH 


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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


SCHOOL NEWS 
BUTTE COURT DECIDES TEACHER IS 
LABORER 

Butte, Mont., Nov. 23.—District Court Judge 
William E. Carroll ruled that the term “labor” 
should not be narrowed down to only those who 
toil with physical effort, but includes those whose 
mental effort and service are employed for pay 
for useful ends other than personal recreation. 

The decision was made in the case of a school 
acher who sued for wages under a State law 
that protects laborers’ wages. 

The decision, said to be the first made in Mon- 
tana and probably the first in the nation classify- 
ing a teacher as a laborer, will enable the com- 
slainant to collect wages and in addition a 5 per 
ent penalty and a $500 attorney fee. 


SHOOL BOARDS HELD WITHOUT AU- 

THORITY TO BAN MARRIED WOMEN 

TEACHERS 

Louisiana parish school boards are without au- 
thority to establish a policy whereby married 
women are not to be employed as school teachers 
and for the dismissal of those who are married 
during the school term, according to an opinion 
ty Peyton Sandoz, assistant attorney-general. 
The attorney-general ruled that the parish boards 
ae vested with plenary authority in the matter 
of selecting and employing teachers in the public 
chools of their respective parishes, but the power 
prescribing the qualifications and their eligibility 
is specifically vested in the State board of educa- 
tion by the constitution. 


TEACHER’S PAY LOW 

New Haven, Conn., Nov. 16.—The salary con- 
iition in public schools of this city is a disgrace, 
Prof. Henry Turner Bailey, head of the Cleve- 
and Art Institute, told a group of church women. 
He cited the cost per capita of school mainte- 
tance in New Haven as the lowest of 10 similar 
New England cities. Prof. Bailey said that a 
god teacher is beyond price and that teachers 
vho are underpaid can not do their best work. 
The New Haven teachers have been invited for 
tveral years to join the A. F. of T. and put them- 
tlves and the New Haven schools in a position to 
which Professor Bailey’s statements could not be 
‘plied. But they think—what do they think? Cer- 
anly not that the schools are the teachers’ business. 





TEACHERS WIN WEEK’S STRIKE 

Wilkes-Barre, Pa.—After being on strike for 
a week and two days, the 143 school teachers of 
Plains township, a suburb, returned to their class- 
rooms and the unscheduled vacation of more than 
2,000 pupils came to an end. 

Accustomed as the coal regions are to long 
drawn out labor disputes, this is the first time 
in history that school teachers have resorted to 
the strike to enforce their demands and while a 
majority of the people of the township sympa- 
thized with the teachers in their grievances, par- 
ents in general were up in arms because of the 
walkout. 

The strike occurred when the School Board 
failed to meet the demands of the teachers that 
five months’ salaries in arrears be paid. The 
Board said that the action of the court in cutting 
in half the school tax assessment on coal lands, 
left it without funds to pay the salaries. 

The school board threatened to declare the 
places of the striking teachers vacant unless they 
returned to their posts. The teachers replied 
with a mandamus proceedings to compel the 
board to pay the back salaries. A committee of 
citizens, however, succeeded in reaching a com- 
promise. 





EDUCATION MACHINE HARMFUL 
TO TEACHERS 


New York—“We are in grave danger of building 
up an enormous education-political hierarchy,” Dr. 
Benjamin B. Kendrick, professor of history North 
Carolina College for Women, told a group of alum- 
nae of that institution at a meeting in this city. 

Dr. Kendrick took a position identical with the 
American Federation of Teachers, affiliated to A. 
F. of L., which insists that teachers be free from 
these machines. 

“In practically every city,” said the speaker, “we 
have highly paid executives who are engineering the 
thing, building up more and more chambers of com- 
merce, Rotary and Kiwanis clubs and other civic 
or political groups. 

“If we are to cure the ills of society the only hope 
is in the schools, schools where the teachers are 
kept free from such influences as threaten them 
through this hierarchy.” 





“If the rich met to reduce wages, that’s a con- 
ference; if the poor resist the reduction, that’s a 
conspiracy.”—Robert G. Ingersoll. 





Small is the use of those people who mean well, 
but who mean well feebly.—Roosevelt. 








A Worker’s School and Organized Labor 


By Louise 


Leonard 


Director Southern Summer School for Women Workers in Industry 


The Story of the Southern Summer School 
for Women Workers in Industry might be writ- 
ten in 1929 to read like a repetition of the story 
of this school in 1928. Again the session was 
held at Burnsville, North Carolina, surrounded 
by beautiful mountain peaks, Mt. Mitchell being 
among those to be seen from the campus of the 
college rented by the Summer School for six 
weeks. Although there were one-third more stu- 
dents than in the two poowons yoann, again they 
came from _ pi % 
seven South- ; 
ern states and 
from eleven 
typical grow- 
ing industries 
of the south- 
east; workers 
intextiles 
predominated, 
including not 
only workers 
in cotton but 
in real silk 
and rayon 
factories, and 
there were ge 
also tobacco 
workers, mak- 
ers of gar- 
ments, candy, 
boxes, tin 











plays, and health education. Recreation, too, in. 
cludes nothing new—hiking, tennis, swimming 
baseball, singing,—trips on free days to the most 
famed beauty spots in the mountains. To 
sure, a whole paper might be written on the ¢- 
forts of a united faculty to improve method 
of teaching so as to give each student a chance 
to get the most out of the six weeks. For ex. 
ample, the health education, which has been 


— by the same well-trained physical direc- 


tor from the 
¢ first, shows 
“ah. ' improvement 
from year to 
year. The 
: o: aoe £ course is es- 
«Sean OF 9 Ge pecially adapt- 
ee a ; ed to indus- 
trial workers, 
including in- 
dividual cor- 
rective work 
recommended 
by the physi- 
cian who ex- 
amined each 
student, as 
well as an 
Pees hour of exer- 
cise for the 
whole group 
each day. The 





foil, etc. The .. same physi 
students were [ ee cian examin- 
between the OLLIE ELLEN 8882 ee sonseunnsn eases ed the girls 
ages of eigh- Students and Teachers at Burnsville at the close 


teen and thir- 

ty-five, and each one had worked at least two 
years at some industrial process, no clerical 
workers or saleswomen included. 

To readers of The American Teacher the 
courses of a worker’s summer school must have 
a familiar sound—economics, including labor 
problems and solutions, industrial history and a 
minimum of economic theory; English composi- 
tion, public speaking, writing and producing 


10 


of school and 

wrote “One hundred per cent showed improve 

ment; eighty-four per cent were markedly 

better,” etc., etc. But the bare outline of the 

six weeks’ experience might be used for an ac- 

count of the 1927 session or the 1928 session, and 

if there were no differences beneath the surface 
the reader might finish with this paragraph. 

Industrial Upheaval in South 
As all the world knows, however, industrial 





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The 
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strial 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


history has been in the making in the South 
during the past twelve months, and it is of espe- 
cial interest to trade unionists everywhere. In 
the experiences of these thirty-five outstanding 
southern industrial women, the whole picture of 
the present, industrial upheaval was reflected, 
hence the contrast between the tone of the class 
discussions in 1929 and those of the first session 
of the school in 1927. While the six members 
of the United Garment Workers of America 
among the students that year urged the claims 
of trade unions upon their fellow students, it 
was still an academic question to the textile and 
tobacco workers, and if they thought of organ- 
ization in their industries at all they looked upon 
itas far in the future. This past summer there 
were at Burnsville leaders of the strike at the 
Bemberg and Glanzstoff plants at Elizabethton, 
one girl an officer in the local of the U. T. W., 
who had sat around the conference table with 
“the Germans.” There were seven young women 
fresh from the first strike at Marion, North 
Carolina, which started the week the school 
opened. Two of them were named in the blan- 
ket injunction case against picketers, and these 
names were struck off when lawyers had to ad- 
mit they were not in Marion, but attending the 
Southern Summer School on the date specified. 
One student came out of that part of South 
Carolina where the “leaderless” strikes occurred 
last spring against the “stretch-out” system and 
where the second struggle was then going on— 
this time for recognition of the union now affili- 
ated with the A. F. of L. Not only more strategic 
industrial history, but a wider trade union ex- 
perience was represented. With two exceptions, 
all trade unionists in the two previous years had 
been members of the United Garment Workers, 
while in 1929 there were members of this union 
but also a member of the Pocketbook Workers 
Organization in Maryland, and a hair dresser 
from Georgia, who belongs to the Barbers’ In- 
ternational, besides thirteen girls who belong to 
the United Textile Workers, and to locals that 
were not even in existence in 1928. 


Students’ Autobiographies 
In the autobiographies written by the students 
as a part of the course in English, girl after 
girl referred to her childhgod as spent on the 
farm. “My father worked at a sawmill and my 
mother toiled hard, raising little truck patches 


11 


around our log cabin back in the mountains of 
North Carolina.” “I never had to work much 
in the field because I had four brothers, two 
older and two younger than myself.” “I was 
born on a farm in western North Carolina. We 
raised corn, potatoes, cane and tobacco. We 
also had lots of hay to take care of. We 
got up at three-thirty or four o’clock every morn- 
ing to get the housework done, the cows milked, 
the chickens fed, to get to the field early. We 
would hoe corn all day.” “After I was old 
enough, I had to work on the farm. I had to 
hoe corn and cotton, help tie and grade tobacco, 
and after cotton opened, to -pick cotton.” 

Many of them came directly from the moun- 
tains—the first generation of industrial workers, 
and the language of the campus was enriched 
by their pure Elizabethan expressions, the sub- 
ject of current books and magazine articles. They 
spoke of “getting shet” of the stretch-out system 
and “whupping” the boss in the strike. That 
these odd expressions indicated no lack of in- 
telligence was gradually borne in upon little city 
ladies at first prone to feel superior to the coun- 
try workers; girls proud of their city life, and 
perhaps of a few more years’ schooling, found 
that students with the queer mountain expres- 
sions outwitted them in class, and began to re- 
spect and admire them. Previously proud of 
welfare work in their plants and conditions bet- 
ter than in most mill villages, and satisfied with 
a wage rate of $18 to $20 a week—even though 
they admitted that work was irregular in most 
cases—they began to find common cause with 
mill village workers where exploitation is not 
so subtle. Thus the school was a kind of melt- 
ing pot. The singing of “Solidarity Forever” 
gained a ring of sincerity as they discovered 
their common cause beneath surface non-essen- 
tials. Judging from personal conversations, dis- 
cussions and themes, very few girls came away 
without a sincere belief in the necessity of col- 
lective action in the South, and in the inevitabil- 
ity of workers solving their own problems to a 
very great extent. In a very real sense the stu- 
dents had educated each other. 

“Solidarity Forever” 

Growth of understanding between women 
workers in mill villages and city factories is 
fundamental to the interests of the labor move- 
ment in the South. Their brothers have been 








12 


an excellent example to them as their city or- 
ganizations of skilled craftsmen have given the 
recent textile strikes moral and financial aid. The 
writer was in Marion the day plans for a Labor 
Day parade were knocked in the head by muni- 
cipal and county ordinances. Spirits of strikers 
were at low ebb when trucks began to arrive, 
driven by men from Central labor unions, from 
cities of North Carolina, carrying food to their 
brother-workers. The next day no municipal 
authority attempted to prevent the parade of 
visiting automobiles from all over the state. Be- 
fore that at Elizabethton the delegates to the 
Convention of the Tennessee State Federation of 
Labor adjourned their meeting from Knoxville to 
the tabernacle at Elizabethton, and gave encour- 
agement to the hundreds of strikers who assem- 
bled there. Back of these spectacular events 
was cooperation between state and central labor 
union officials with the strike leaders. Unorgan- 
ized women must learn to give the same sacri- 
ficial support to workers in other industries and 
circumstances throughout the South. 

To return to the Story of the Southern Sum- 
mer School, it was a curious coincidence that 
the industrial struggle heretofore concentrated 
in the lowlands, but now breaking out in the 
mountains, came to its very door and offered 
laboratory material to the economics classes. 
Marion, N. C., is forty miles from the school, 
and the hearing of the injunction case against 
the picketers there was held at the old county 
court house in Burnsville. The forty-two mem- 
bers of the school, students and faculty, at- 
tended in a body, note books in hand, and thus 
acquired more vivid knowledge of this method 
of the opposition which, along with the boycott, 
they had been studying in class. About eighteen 
of the students drove one night to Marion to at- 
tend a strike meeting, and enlivened the routine 
by singing labor songs, a number of the students 
making speeches. One shy tobacco worker from 
a North Carolina city said she had never before 
wanted to make a speech, but the sight of these 
courageous men and women and children gath- 
ered on the mountain-side, there being no build- 
ing large enough to hold them, impressed her so 
greatly and inspired her to want to speak and 
act. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Labor’s Aims 
Since the larger interests of the labor move. 
ment in the South would be furthered by an 
understanding of its aims on the part of liberal 


_southern college students, a conference includ- 


ing young men and women undergraduates, and 
those who have recently graduated from south- 
ern colleges or universities, was held at the 
School over the week-end of July 28th. As 
speakers, outstanding leaders with actual expe- 
rience in different methods of solving indus- 
trial problems, were invited, including A. J, 
Muste, on Workers Education, W. C. Birth- 
right, on labor organization, and Mrs. Mary 0. 
Cowper on labor legislation. Over another 
week-end a labor conference was held under the 
auspices of the North Carolina Federation of 
Labor, at the invitation of their President, Mr. 
T. A. Wilson. The Labor World, Chattagooga, 
Tenn., whose editor was present at the con- 
ference, writes as follows: 


“Reports of organization work in the south; sug- 
gestions for co-ordinating the campaign being car- 
ried on in various sections to relieve southern men 
and women from the iron grip of industrial barons 
who have come to this section in the belief that 
“cheap, docile labor” would add to their enormous 
profits; discussion of the movement for workers’ 
education, which has made rapid strides in the south 
during the past few months, and a general exchange 
of opinions covering the present situation south of 
the Mason and Dixon line, featured the Interstate 
Labor Conference called by the North Carolina State 
Federation of Labor and held at Burnsville, N. C, 
last Saturday and Sunday. W. C. Birth- 
right, a member of the advisory board of the Sum- 
mer School for Women Workers in Industry, called 
the conference to order, and shared the honor of 
presiding with Miss Mary C. Barker, president of 
the American Federation of Teachers. Among the 
forty-three guests in attendance were many outstand- 
ing labor representatives of the south, including 
Dowell E. Paterson, president of the South Carolina 
State Federation of Labor; Louie P. Marquardt, 
secretary of the Georgia State Federation of Labor; 
W. C. Birthright, Secretary of the Tennessee Fed- 
eration of Labor; Miss Mary Barker, president of 
the American Federation of Teachers, Atlanta, Ga.; 
David Hanly, legislative chairman for the Tennessee 
State Federation of Labor; A. S. Nance, chairman of 
the Central Labor Union, Atlanta, Ga.; and Miss 
Alice Carmichael, member of the executive council 
of the Virginia State Federation of Labor. R. M. 
Cooke, editor of The Labor World, represented 
Chattanooga Trades and Labor council.” 


The committee of ten, sponsoring the South- 





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move- 
by an 
liberal 
nclud- 
S, and 
south- 
it the 
. As 
expe- 
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A. J. 
Birth- 
ry O, 
other 
r the 
m of 


, Mr. 


oOoga, 
con- 


sug- 
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arons 
that 
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an Summer School, one-half of whose members 
ye trade unionists, aims to make the school a 
jscussion center for those who are concerned 
yout the solution of problems of southern 
yorkers; it is an independent committee, believ- 
ing that to date its greatest service to southern 
workers lies in remaining independent of all 
wher schools or organizations. It cooperates 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





13 


with organized labor in the South, and while not 
affliated with it and not sponsoring any pro- 
gram of propaganda, or any set social philosophy, 
the committee and faculty make no secret of 
their belief in collective action as a need of south- 
ern workers nor of their sympathy with the 
ideals of the labor movement. — 





Methuselah at Forty-five 


By Merrill Bishop Asst. Director of Education, San Antonio, Texas 


When is a man considered old, does anybody 
know? Some have put it when experience makes 
0 impression on him, then he is beginning to 
fil to function and that is old age. Osler, I 
believe, put it at sixty-five and then qualified it 
by saying that at that time man would begin to 
show that he was not useful. Perhaps, it does 
not interest or make any difference to you and 
you are not concerned with it. 

It came home to me the other day in such a 
way that I thought others might begin to think on 
the question, or rather be forced to think on it 
just as I was, unwittingly, unknowingly, unsym- 
pathetically. The reaction to such an experience 
may depend on whether you are a believer in the 
Volstead Act or in the adage that old wine serves 
better than new. 

The experience I had was a real one, a live 
wire one. It shocked me and gave me such a 
kick that I am going to pass it on to those who 
have a sense of humor. I wasn’t prepared for 
itany more than Alice in Wonderland was pre- 
pared to take tea with a mad hatter and a March 
hare. It was thrust on me and I could not help 
tt. 

It came about this way. For many years I 
tave been a teacher of teachers and consequently 
tave had my eyes on the letters of the alphabet 
which denote erudition and annual income. So 
ldecided to go after a Doctorate. But before 
plunging into the matter I deemed it wise to con- 
tt with some of the leaders in my profession, 
men who had already received the degree and 
iad profited by gaining it. 

One morning I arose, as usual, and decided to 
mke the fatal plunge of finding if the water 
vere too deep for me to swim. I dressed myself 
with exceptional care, matching shirt, tie and 
wks, a symphony in blue. I thought I might 








make an impression, a color impression, if no 
other. My wife remarked that I looked just like 
my son. It is that way in my house, father like 
son, not son like father. I received the compli- 
ment, considering that he hardly counts six in 
years. I wanted these professors to appreciate 


that I was mature even if I did look young. I 


wonder why it is that young looking people want 
to look old, and old—just the opposite. I never 
had found the answer but on this day I found 
it, much to my disgust. 

On the drive over to the University I felt a 
certain sense of adventure. Tackling anything 
new is an adventure and uncertainty always 
makes me feel a little nervous. None of my 
ancestors had ever tried to master a doctor’s 
degree and for a good reason, none of them 
were teachers and so did not have to fight the 
economic question with the alphabet for a 
weapon. I was filled with a feeling of awe. I 
thought of the learned men I had met and had 
addressed as “doctor,” even those whom I was 
adventuring over to see were addressed by that 
name. They were men, most of them, whose 
age would demand respect and reverence. Of 
course there were some who were younger, but 
not many. I thought of my last college reunion 
in which we had celebrated our twenty-fifth. A 
great deal of water had flowed beneath the bridge 
since our graduation day; a World’s War had 
changed the color scheme of most of the maps 
and at the same time had changed the hearts of 
men, at least I thought so. I reviewed it all as 
I drove over to the seat of learning. Omitting 
the first lines of Matthew Arnold’s, “Let the 
long contention cease” I chose the more invigor- 
ating, “Charge once more then and be dumb.” 

Two places have always changed my blood 
from hot to cold. One is a commanding officer’s 





14 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


room and the other is the office of a registrar. 
They have an advantage over each and every 
one who faces them. There is no answering 
back; you are assigned. I passed through the 
registrar’s office, received my credits on a card 
and went on to see the head of the department. 

To my “Good morning” he replied, “Hello, 
Groton.” I knew right then that he did not know 
me but did know where I came from. 

“TI have come over to talk about taking a Doc- 
tor’s Degree.” I paused and waited for him to 
say something complimentary. When he failed 
me, I went on hurriedly, “It seems necessary in 
these days to have one, if you want to advance, 
that is to become a professor.” 

“Yes,” he murmured, “they have placed a 
monetary value on it. Let me see, you received 
your Master’s from this University some two 
years ago.” 

I nodded and. waited for him to proceed. He 
sat there in a dazed condition, as though he were 
reviewing in his mind the long journey which he 
had taken. 

“You came from some eastern college, didn’t 
you?” 

“Yes,” I replied, “some twenty-five years ago I 
received my first degree. Does that make any 
difference? I never have believed in these hasty 
graduate degrees. I think a man should have 
some years of experience back of him. Every- 
thing is not learned from books. Life teaches 
some things which books cannot teach.” 

“That is true,” he replied, “but the question 
of age is a very important one. Most colleges 
hesitate to employ men after they are forty or 
so. You must be over that if you left your alma 
mater twenty-five years ago. Colleges begin to 
discount after forty.” 

The current passed through me. I received the 
shock. Perhaps that is the way men feel who 
are electrocuted, a terrible stun and then death. 
At least they die. I thought of my learned father 
who never won fame as a lawyer until he was in 
the fifties and who went on to greater fame as 
he passed into the sixties. I thought of the many 
distinguished surgeons who never received rec- 
ognition until they were over forty-five. In fact 
all my life I had been brought up to believe that 
a man never felt the earth until he became forty 
odd. I do not mean the spectacular man who 
flies across an ocean in youth. I mean the aver- 









age business, professional man. Osler had my 
the rash statement that men were useless af; 
sixty-five, but the difference bewteen forty-f; 
and sixty-five is twenty full years and the bed 
years of a man’s life. I looked at the man bef, 
me and saw there the lines of age clearly oy 
lined on his face. He was not ossified, he yx 
supposed to be in his prime. Some years ago! 
had heard another professor make the stateme 
that in order to be placed in the teaching prof. 
sion a man must not be over forty. 

“You mean to say,” I faltered, “that a man af 


the prime of his life, in the forties, is too old sf » 
be employed by a college?” ™ 

“No,” he answered, “I wouldn’t say that ex. th 
actly. I mean to say that if you applied for; 5 
position and some younger man applied for the - 
same position, nine times out of ten the college . 
would take the younger man. I am simply rais. . 
ing the economic question. You would have ti ; 


spend money to receive this degree and havin 
spent it, would you receive value in return? | 
doubt it.” 

I was stunned, dazed, nerveless. This pro- 
fession which I had chosen considered me too olf 
at forty-five to progress. I was a Methuselah 
and ready to be disposed of as the gods saw fit. ' 
I, in all my life, had never been told that. 

Inwardly I do not believe it. I feel that a man : 
just begins to feel his strength at forty. He has | 
become stable. He knows his mind. Especially | 
in the teaching world he becomes a life giving 
force and what else is teaching but the direction 
of others toward certain goals. How can ont 
direct if he is getting his bearings? The prepar- 
atory time must be lived, experience getting must 
be had. Life must take on some sign of prog- 
ress. Is this all done in the teaching world be 
fore forty? 

There is a great deal of moralizing that boils 
out of this experience—I am no moralist. The 
only satisfaction that I had was to see the humor 
in it and laugh. I laughed as I pictured myself 
with long whiskers like the pictures I had seen 
of Methuselah. I laughed and laughed all the 
way home and received my reward. 

As I drove up to my front door my wife re 
marked, “How young you look. I wager they 
turned you down because they thought you wert 
a kid.” She laughed to. 

“Righto,” I cried, “a great big senile kid.” 
















had may 
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forty-fj 
d the De 
nan bef; 
learly Or 
d, he Wa 
Pars ago] 
Stateme 
ng prof. 


a man 2 
too old 


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ied for ; 
d for the 
1 college 
iply rais- 
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d having 
turn? | 


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thuselah 
saw fit. 
at. 
it a man 
He has 
specially 
> giving 
irection 
‘an one 
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f prog- 
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The 
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myself 
d seen 
all the 


fe re- 





r they 
| were 


Secondary and Higher Education of Women 
in India 
By Professor D. K. Karve 


Poona, 


The unnatural and consequently artificial sys- 
em of secondary and higher education, necessi- 
tated by foreign rule, on the one hand, and social 
obstacles and prejudices coming in the way of 
women’s education on the other, have produced 
a highly undesirable result which is a great im- 
pediment in the general progress of the country. 
No doubt the system of education was devised 
with the best of motives and in the beginning 
there was no other alternative. But the system 
could later have been greatly modified so as to 
suit the needs of the country. Necessity, real or 
imaginary, compels boys to take advantage of 
that system, unnatural though it is, while girls 
are kept away from it. The result is the marked 
difference in the intellectual equipment or boys 
and girls in the same family and in the same 
station of life. Even a superficial observer can 
notice a wide gulf between men and women of 
the middle and upper classes so far as their 
general information and moral and religious ideas 
are concerned. The intellectual atmosphere in 
which men live is quite different from that in 
which women move about. Though physically 
they are near, mentally they live as it were in 
two water-tight compartments. Barring a few 
exceptions there is very little exchange of 
thought and feeling even among men and women 
of the same family. That there should exist such 
disparity between men and women in the same 
station of life, in their thoughts and emotions, is 
ruinous to the nation. How to get rid of this 
disparity is a vital question, to solve which no 
serious effort is being made either by people or 
by the government. 

Mere spread of primary education among the 
women concerned will not help us in the solution 
of this momentous question. Something is better 
than nothing and we may have primary education 
on as large a scale as possible. But the real solu- 
tion of the problem is to spread secondary and 
higher education among women far and wide. 1: 
this possible under the present system of second- 
ary and higher education devised by chartered 
universities in India to any appreciable extent? 
I, for one, think that it is not. If women have to 


India 


take advantage of secondary and higher educa- 
tion they have to go through the same system. 
What are the facilities provided for by the Gov- 
ernment or the people? Government is main- 
taining a few girls’ high schools and private 
bodies are running a few more, but these cannot 
supply the need of the people. What is the use 
of starting more schools that would give educa- 
tion on the lines laid down by this unnatural 
system? Is it not possible to devise an alterna- 
tive parallel system of secondary and higher edu- 
cation suited to the needs of the generality of 
women and supplement the work that is being 
done at present? If such a system is backed up 
and substantially financed by the government it 
is sure to produce a far more satisfactory re- 
sult. ° 
Japan’s Policy 

Let us see what Japan did under similar cir- 
cumstances. Universities were started in Japan 
and courses of studies were adapted to Japanese 
conditions. But even then women could not 
keep pace with men in education and a wide 
gulf between men and women became marked. 
To bridge over the gulf efforts were made to 
devise courses of studies for secondary and 
higher education to suit the needs of the general- 
ity of woman and to bring education within their 
reach. Some leading Japanese people thought 
it desirable to have a separate university for 
women the object of which was rather to reach 
large numbers than to compete with men’s uni- 
versities, but at the same time to give them 
enough education that would bear some compari- 
son with that at men’s universities though sub- 
jects studied were different. That university was 
founded in 1900 and by 1912 they produced 1,243 
women graduates out of that university. Be- 
fore 1900 there were only 12 girls’ high schools 
in the whole of Japan, but in 1922 there were 
182. And all this was achieved by a university 
started and worked by private people without 
state aid. 

But we Indians have lost all initiative and are 
dead even to self-interest. We see the multipli- 
cation of high schools and colleges for men that 


15 








16 THE AMERICAN 


give the same literary education to produce thou- 
sands of graduates who become beggarly appli- 
cants for the few vacancies in the clerical and 
educational lines. No bold and vigorous efforts 
to chalk out new lines are made. The Japanese 
people were active agents who conscientiously 
brought western education and western reform 
into their country and adapted these to their 
requirements by making changes when and where 
necessary; while we Indians have been passive 
unconscious recipients of whatever is given us 
by our rulers and we have been slavishly trudg- 
ing along grooves in which we were unconsciously 
placed, waiting for all reforms to be introduced 
by Government. If India is to take her place 
with other nations, the level of general knowledge, 
thought and feeling of a large number of our 
women must be raised and this can only be done 
by giving education through the media of Indian 
languages with or without English as a subject 
of study. 
India’s Need 

To achieve this end there must be produced 
on a large scale an awakening, among the mid- 
dle class people, of the urgent need of giving 
secondary and higher education to their girls. It 
must be forcefully brought to their minds that 
it is an immense loss to the nation, when the 
higher education of men is making daily progress 
that women who are to be men’s partners are 
ignored and left lacking in intelligence enough 
to show sympathy with men’s enterprises and 
are unable to partake in the progress of the na- 
tion or the reform of society. 

What we want is a scheme of secondary and 
higher education in which the mother tongue of 
the student will be the medium of instruction 
and English a second language optional in the 
secondary but compulsory in the higher stage 
and ample choice of subjects to be studied ac- 
cording to the liking of the student. The clear 
object of this education should be to raise the 
level of general culture, of thought and feel- 
ing. It is not a question whether woreen are 
to be considered intellectual equals of men or 
inferior. The question is whether most women 
are not handicapped by social surroundings and 
the unnaturalness of the system which, however 
unsuited it may be even for men, has to be 
helplessly faced by them. In this scheme the 
examination evil must be minimized. The Cal- 


TEACHER 


cutta University Commission has strongly crit. 
icized the present examination system. While 
speaking about secondary schools for girls of the 
non-purdah type, they say “But we feel that the 
schools must be saved from the desolating domi- 
nation of the examination system which now mis 
chievously influences their work.” In anothe: 
place they say: “The examination machine of 
Bengal tells on them (wémen) with yet worse 
effects than on the boys.” In summing up, the 
Commission says, “Secondary education of girls 
thus labours under exceptional circumstances in 
Bengal, it is distorted more unnaturally than the 
education of boys, by the malign influence of the 
examination fetish.’ What is true of Bengal 
is true of other provinces as well. Should women 
of ordinary intelligence, most of whom are to 
enter married life and to manage homes, be sub- 
jected to the crushing machinery of examina- 
tions? Foreign language as medium of instruc- 
tion and examinations, undue predominance given 
to the study of the English language and com- 
pulsion to earn a certain percentage of marks 
in subjects like mathematics make examinations 
unnecessarily difficult. 
Progressive Education 

Shreemati Nathibai Damodher Thackersey 
Indian Women’s University has been trying to 
avoid these pitfalls as much as possible and to 
bring secondary and higher education within 
the reach of our women. I have been the prin- 
cipal actor in this movement. It was uncon- 
sciously begun in 1896 when my wife and I 
founded a small Widow’s Home in Poona to 
maintain and educate poor, young, promising 
widows so that they may become teachers and 
midwives and nurses and thus be useful to them- 
selves and to society. We started a boarding 
school for married and unmarried girls in 1907 
and these institutions were combined in 1915 into 
a big establishment for the education of girls 
and women. In 1916 we started the Indian 
Women’s University which is a unique instance 
of a university started without funds. For the 
first four years there was a great struggle for 
funds and students, after which there came a 
windfall. Our attempt was based on the model 
of the Japan Women’s University. A Bom- 
bay merchant, while going round the world, saw 
the Japan Women’s University in Tokio by which 
he was very much influenced and after returning 


tt 


ee te 





ly crit. 
While 
of the 
hat the 
* domi- 
W mis- 
nothe: 
ine of 
Worse 
Ip, the 
f girls 
Ices in 
an the 
of the 
3engal 
vomen 
are to 
e sub- 
mina- 
struc- 
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com- 
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ations 


ersey 
ng to 
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saw 
hich 
ning 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 17 


to India set apart one hundred thousand pounds 
in the three and one-half per cent Government 
paper, for our University. The interest, 3,500 
pounds, is available for current expenses year 
after year. Our annual expenses are now 4,600 
pounds. Sixty women have graduated so far 
and sixty are taking their higher education in 
the three colleges of Poona, Baroda and Ahmeda- 
bad. We have not yet been able to attract a 
sufficiently large number of students because we 
are working independently of Government and 
other universities, and our certificates and degrees 
have no market value. Our graduates, however, 
are turning out excellent work. About twenty-five 
of them are settled in married life and they 
are influencing the society in which they live, 
while the remaining are working as teachers, 
most of them in high schools affiliated to the 
Women’s University. We have ten high schools 
and six middle schools in which 1,500 girls are 
being educated. Three of our graduates are en- 
gaged in post-graduate studies. We have schools 
and colleges for two Indiam languages—Marathi 
and Gujrathi—while for four others, namely, 
Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Sindhi, we have Boards 
of studies that recommend text-books and stu- 
dents study privately and appear for Women’s 
University examinations. I had to spend nine 
months every year in going from one end of 
India to the other to educate public opinion and 
to persuade people to work on similar lines and 
to get funds. At the age of seventy-one I have 
taken the risk of going around the world to see 
women’s schools and colleges and to get some 
pecuniary help if possible. I may not be able 
todo much now; however I hope, by the grace 
of God, to devote a decade more to this work. 
I have faith in the righteousness of the cause 
and we have a band of devoted workers who 
will see that my dream of having a separate 
university for each linguistic province and a net- 
work of schools and colleges of this type all 
over the country is realized. If there is truth 
im the theory of rebirth I would like to be born 
again and again in India to see my dreams ma- 
terialized. 





The right education of the world’s children 
to the end that national distrust and fear, 
facial animosities and religious prejudices may 
disappear —The objective of the World Federation 

of Education Associations. 


AN OPEN LETTER FROM PRESIDENT 
GREEN 
Washington, D. C., Nov. 18, 1929. 


TO ALL ORGANIZED LABOR: 
Greetings: 

Through the American Federation of Labor 
Weekly News Service you have already been 
furnished with a summary or synopsis of the 
work of the Toronto Convention of the Amer- 
ican Federation of Labor. Therefore it is not 
necessary in this communication to you to com- 
ment upon any action of the convention except 
the resolutions on subjects which the convention 
specifically directed should be brought to the at- 
tention of organized labor through a special com- 
munication from headquarters. 

Resolution No. 37 was unanimously adopted. 
It reads: 

“WHEREAS, Two thousand members of the 
United Textile Workers of America, in Salem, 
Massachusetts, are seriously handicapped, and threat- 
ened with unemployment owing to the competition 
of non-union mills making the same product at a 
lesser cost, with longer hours to work and lower 
wages; and 

“WHEREAS, This local union and the Interna- 
tional Union are making every effort to convince the 
membership of the American Federation of Labor 
of the importance of this question to the trade union 
movement, and suggesting a means whereby our 
organization can be protected against the attack of 
those who would destroy our union and place this 
mill in the same class as the other low-paid mills 
which drive their workers with the speed-up or 
stretch-out plan, in order to secure mass production 
at low cost, with the inevitable glutting of the mar- 
ket; be it therefore 

“RESOLVED, That this convention of the Amer- 
ican Federation of Labor reiterate its former action 
to urge the delegates to keep in mind PEQUOT 
Sheets and Pillow Cases, in order to assist the 
United Textile Workers of America in promoting 
their patronage throughout the country; and, be it 
further 

“RESOLVED, That this Convention reiterate the 
previous action of the American Federation of Labor 
in authorizing the promotion of PEQUOT Sheets 
and Pillow Cases, and again urge all delegates to 
take a personal interest in assisting the United Tex- 
tile Workers of America to resist the attack of non- 
union sheeting mills; and be it still further 

“RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution be 
sent to all affiliated organizations of the American 
Federation of Labor.” 

Resolution No. 42 adopted by the Convention 


declared: 
“WHEREAS, The 1928 Convention of the Amer- 








18 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


ican Federation of Labor adopted a resolution re- 
questing that a circular letter be sent to all State 
Federations of Labor, to all City Central Labor 
Unions, and to all organizers of the American Fed- 
eration of Labor calling to their attention the unor- 
ganized condition of the Laundry Workers; and 

“WHEREAS, As a result of the said letter being 
sent to the State Federations of Labor, the City 
Central Labor Unions, and the Organizers of the 
American Federation of Labor, the Laundry Work- 
ers’ International Union has received many letters 
from State Federations of Labor, City Central Labor 
Unions and from Organizers of the American Fed- 
eration of Labor requesting information and organ- 
izing literature, and several campaigns are now being 
carried on to organize Laundry Workers; therefore, 
be it 

“RESOLVED, That the American Federation of 
Labor he respectfully requested to forward a similar 
letter during the coming year, to all State Federa- 
tions of Labor, City Central Labor Unions and to 
all Organizers of the American Federation of Labor 
requesting them to make all possible efforts to 
establish Local Unions of Laundry Workers in their 
respective localities.” 

Resolution No. 65 which was also approved by 
the Convention is as follows: 

“WHEREAS, The International Jewelry Workers’ 
Union of the United States and Canada, due to a 
secession movement, is at the present poorly or- 
ganized; and 

“WHEREAS, Due to this secession movement the 
finances of the International Jewelry Workers’ Union 
will not permit placing organizers in the large num- 
ber of cities to organize the unorganized Jewelry 
Workers; therefore, be it 

“RESOLVED, That the American Federation of 
Labor communicate with all State Federations of 
Labor, Central Labor Councils, and Organizers of 
the American Federation of Labor, requesting them 
to use their influence by making an effort to organize 
Jewelry Workers in their respective localities.” 

Resolution No. 77 which met with favor by 
the Convention, makes this special request of the 
State and City Central Bodies: 

“WHEREAS, The International Allied Printing 
Trades Association is conducting an extensive cam- 
paign to have text books used in public schools 
produced under conditions which recognize proper 
standards for the men and women engaged in pro- 
duction of such text books; and 

“WHEREAS, Adoption and use of text books pro- 
duced under non-union conditions do not give such 
guarantee; and 

“WHEREAS, Concerns whose text books are pro- 
duced under non-union conditions use high-powered 
and expensive sales methods to have their text books 
adopted, the cost of which is ultimately borne by the 
public; therefore, be it 

“RESOLVED, That the American Federation of 


Labor calls upon state, city and central bodies t, 
enter upon active campaigns to secure representa. 
tion upon commissions or other agencies empowered 
to approve and adopt text books for use in the pub. 
lic schools.” 

These various matters above quoted are very 
specially laid before you with the earnest request 
that you do all within your power to assist jn 
bringing to a realization the declarations of the 
Convention. 

I thank you in advance for whatever you may 
be able to do. 

I realize you are busy but it is the busy man 
or woman who can always find time for yet 
another task. 

We want to make 1929-30 the banner years of 
the American Federation of Labor. We can do 
this if each of us will heartily and determinedly 
put his shoulder to the wheel. 

Will you not make it your slogan and will you 
not urge the same upon every member of your 
organization, to pledge himself or herself to se- 
cure a new member for the union and a new 
subscription to the AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST? 

Sincerely hoping for the steady growth and 
progress of the organized labor movement dur- 
ing the coming year and trusting that I may hear 
from you regarding the several matters dealt 
with in this letter, I am, 

Fraternally yours, 
Wo. GreeEN, President, 
American Federation of Labor. 





AN IMPORTANT LETTER 
November, 1929. 
To Organized Labor, Greeting: 
The daily press has recently been carrying 
stories to the effect that about one billion dollars 
will be spent for the holiday season, which is 


. approaching rapidly. 


This is a vast amount of money and should 
cause trade unionists to wonder how much of 
it will be spent for the products and service of 
members of trade unions. 

We can not hope nor expect the wealthy nor 
those outside of our movement to give much 
thought to thé spending of this great sum, but 
we are justified in believing that our own mem 
bers will give it serious consideration. 

A gift should be a source of pleasure to the 
receiver and a source of satisfaction to the giver, 
yet this condition would seem impossible to trade 





Odies to 
resenta- 
Powered 
the pub. 


re very 
request 
Ssist in 
of the 


OU may 


sy man 
for yet 


ears of 
can do 
ninedly 


vill you 
f your 
to se- 
a new 
NIST? 

th and 
it dur- 
iy hear 
; dealt 


it, 
tbor. 


929. 


rrying 
dollars 
ich is 


should 
ich of 
rice of 


ry nor 
much 
n, but 
mem- 


to the 
giver, 
trade 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 19 


unionists if they fail to demand and secure the 
Union Label on every gift they make, this includ- 
ing the least of any gift—a card of greeting. 

Of course, this is the duty of all trade union- 
ists at any time, but it would seem to be partic- 
ularly fitting during the time of “Peace on earth, 
good will to men.” 

Let the true trade union spirit guide you in all 
of your holiday purchases and gifts this year. 
Let the thought that here is a time you can do 
something really worth while for your fellow 
trade unionists, as well as your friends to whom 
you make gifts, by spending “Union-earned 
money for Union-made goods or service.” 

Fraternally yours, 


Joun J. MANNING, 
Secretary-Treasurer, 
Union Label Trades Department. 





THE STRENGTH OF TRADE UNION 
GROUP INSURANCE 


By Matthew Woll, President 
The Union Labor Life Insurance Company 


With the passing of each month the labor 
movement becomes more deeply interested in the 
protection of its membership against the vicissi- 
tudes of life. 

More and more our movement as a whole reg- 
isters its opposition to forms of so-called pro- 
tection offered by employers as a means of seek- 
ing for themselves a good will and loyalty which 
they do not earn. 

As trade unionists we are bound to give to 
employers only that good will and loyalty which 
are honestly and fairly earned. 

Employers turned to the group insurance idea 
as a means of securing for themselves not only 
a volume of good will earned by their solicitude, 
but a loyalty not earned by them in any sense of 
the word. Their thought was and is to see to it 
that the employe was given a seeming benefit 
that would cease upon stoppage or change of 
employment. 

Labor realizes more and more the shallowness 
of that proposition and more and more rejects 
it as unsound, unfair and deceptive. The worker 
who is “protected” by a group policy contracted 
for by the employer is NOT getting something 
for nothing. He is earning for the employer the 
money that pays for the insurance. If we are 


going to get something from our employers let 
it be in every case in the form of wages. We 
can do what we like with wages. We earn what 
we get and when it passes to our hands the 
money is definitely and finally ours. When the 
employer puts money into group insurance he 
does it in the hope of earning a loyalty that he 
feels he cannot get otherwise. He hopes men 
will be slower to quit their jobs, slower to stand 
up for their rights, more docile in every way. 
And usually he is right. 

To a certain extent that was the thought back 
of organization by labor of the Union Labor Life 
Insurance Company—Labor’s own insurance 
company. In addition, labor saw that the time 
had come to put an end to benefit svstems. There 
is not a benefit system in existence among trade 
unions that is not unsound; there is not one that 
can be assured that its assessments will not have 
to be changed; not one, in reality, that can pos- 
sibly be sure of going on to the end of the lives 
of those who now pay to its maintenance. All 
experience proves that. Experience has shown 
the weakness of benefit systems and the foolish- 
ness of employer group insurance. 

But experience has shown the soundness of 
life insurance. Life insurance rests upon a scien- 
tific foundation. There is a fixed and scientific- 
ally developed relation between money paid in 
and benefits paid out. The resources of the 
whole company stand back of every individual 
policy and the state stands constantly on guard 
with rigid rules and restrictions. In this partic- 
ular the state protects the people adequately and 
expertly. 

Ten years ago trade unions were not thinking 
about group insurance. They were worrying 
along—and worrying a great deal—with their 
benefit systems, wondering, many of them, 
whether the assessments would have to be in- 
creased next year or whether they could wait 
two years, but knowing, as many know today, 
that increases must come. 

Many unions still have benefit systems, but 
every one of them knows that the day of the 
benefit system has gone, just as the day of horses 
and buggies has gone. Trade union group insur- 
ance has come to take its place and labor has 
organized a magnificent institution of its own— 
the Union Labor Life Insurance Company—to 
furnish this modern and scientific protection. 








Teacher Tenure 
Report of the Permanent Committee to the A. F. T. 1929 Convention 


This year the Committee on Teacher Tenure 
has limited its activities to the assembling of 
material which it hopes may be useful to states 
struggling to pass tenure laws. The methods 
used to oppose tenure are so similar in different 
parts of the country that it seems as if the 
teachers might well be fortified to meet such 
difficulties. The reports that were obtained by 
the committee were so much in duplicate that I 
am going to quote quite largely from the help- 
fully complete paper written for this committee 
by Mrs. Albee Ladd of Minneapolis, whose ser- 
vices were engaged by the Twin City and Duluth 
teachers to promote the passage of a state tenure 
law for Minnesota, and later to watch for legis- 
lation aimed against its effectiveness. Mrs. Ladd 
has had much political experience, and her ser- 
vices have been invaluable. The quotation marks 
used in this report, unless otherwise specified, 
indicate extracts from Mrs. Ladd’s report. 

Seemingly one of the first serious difficulties 
encountered everywhere by a teacher tenure bill 
is the prevailing impression that it “is suggested 
by radicals, is sponsored by radicals, and would 
benefit radicals.” This is a situation that must 
be met quickly and decisively if the bill is to 
succeed. “Quite unconsciously members of a 
conservative house or senate are likely to present 
an unbroken front to what they consider a purely 
radical measure, no matter how worthy that 
measure may be.” In Minnesota Mrs. Ladd met 
this difficulty, first, by seeing that the bill was 
drawn by a well-known conservative judge, and 
second, by going to a group of conservative 
people, both men and women, to whom she read 
and explained the bill. Then she asked them if 
they would support the bill on the face of it, 
especially with the consideration of the history 
of the N. E. A. survey behind it, and they agreed 
to do so. Thus with a recognized conservative 
author of the bill, a man ranking high in one of 
the conservative major parties, and with the 
backing of a prominent group of conservatives, 
the sponsors of the bill were able to refute the 
charges of radicalism. 

The objection of radicalism was also met by 
“the unselfishness of the Progressive and Labor 
workers, who willingly sacrificed any prestige 


20 


which public acknowledgment of their support 
of the measure might have given them, but who 
quietly and steadily pushed for its success with- 
out recognition.” 

Another serious threat to the success of a 
tenure bill is the combination of small-minded 
members of country school boards and men who 
employ large numbers of people, both of which 
groups say they will “hire and fire” people who 
work for them. This is an attitude that is 
especially difficult to meet. The answer to these 
people, whether or not it is convincing, is that 
men on public boards, even though they may 
claim the god-like right to rule over others, are 
after all only servants of the public and have 
no inherent right to dismiss other servants of 
the public except for proved ineffectiveness in 
their work. They have less right to exercise 
authority in dismissals than they have in their 
own businesses. “The large employer as a rule 
does not believe in Civil Service and is frank to 
say so. In his opinion this bill has all the ear- 
marks of the Civil Service system.” 

Another criticism of the bill offered virtuously 
both by country school boards and by city ad- 
ministrators is to the effect that “this measure 
makes an easy life for the fossilized teacher, and 
that once the bill is passed, no teacher will ever 
make any further effort to keep up with her 
work.” The facts prove the falsity of this con- 
tention. The 1928 report of the Tenure Com- 
mittee of One Hundred of the N. E. A. states 
that in Massachusetts, which has had a tenure 
law in operation since 1914, applicable to the 
entire state except the city of Boston, the per- 
cent of teachers in service who were university 
or college graduates was in 


EE cinwinatedeneonwe 15.9 percent 
EE vbsdesevveccosves 31.3 percent. 


and the percent of teachers in service who were 

graduates of no institution of higher education 

was in 
1912-13 
1926-27 


California has had an indefinite tenure law in 
operation since 1921. In the 1928 study of the 
Oakland public schools it was found that 


- ykebeoseeanean 30.9 percent 
padweceoenibuwees 12.6 percent 


—_— “~~ wa wa 









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in 1919, 10% of the teachers enrolled in 
summer session courses 
in 1927, 71% of the teachers enrolled in 
summer session courses 
in 1919, 5% of the teachers took ex- 
tension courses 
in 1927, 65% of the teachers took ex- 
tension course. 
Since 1913, Oregon has had permanent tenure 
for teachers in school districts with a population 
of 20,000 or more. To quote again from the 
1928 N. E. A. Tenure Bulletin: “Statement by 
Charles A. Rice, superintendent of the Portland 
shoolsh—Approximately twenty-five percent of 
our teachers did professional work prior to tenure 
law; now sixty percent. Increase due in part to 
platoon schools requiring teachers to specialize; 
also to single salary schedule which pays maxi- 
mum salary with Bachelor’s Degree regardless 
of grade taught. We believe tenure stabilizes 
the profession and stimulates growth of teachers.’ 

“A review of the movement toward profes- 
sional improvement shown by the cities of Oak- 
land, California, and Portland, Oregon, indicates 
that other factors than tenure have entered. 
However, there certainly has been no deteriora- 
tion. On the other hand, a manifest movement 
toward professional improvement by the mem- 
bers of the teaching staff is apparent in both 
tities. It is fair to reason that stability in each 
of the above cities has been one of the factors 
operating in conjunction with others to bring 
about this tendency toward professional improve- 
ment.” 

These facts seem to indicate that tenure, in- 
stead of fossilizing teachers, gives them a rea- 
sonable security, which makes them feel that 
they can afford to devote their attention to pro- 
fessional improvement. 

Another opposition offered to tenure is that 
teachers are so overpaid and work so little that 
they are entitled to no further consideration. It 
is “the commonly accepted impression that teach- 
‘ts work at most only six hours a day and never 
on Saturday, and that they are over-paid for the 
‘mall amount of work they do. This, of course, 
sounds like an untrue statement to teachers in 
the city schools, but it is unfortunately accepted 
% fact by the many members who come from 
our country districts, several of whom scarcely 
‘yer handle as much actual money per month as 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








21 


is paid into the hands of the average teacher, 
except, of course, during the session. It is im- 
possible to argue with such a person.” 

An objection that must be met if a state tenure 
bill is applicable only to cities of the first rank 
is that after the bill has become a law an effort 
will be made “to thrust it down the throats of 
the country.” In Minnesota, “when this point 
was brought out during a fight on the floor, 
it was deliberately done by a member whose 
name was upon the bill as co-author. That made 
it, of course, a question of veracity as to whether 
or not the members saying that no such attempt 
would be made were telling the truth, or whether 
the member whose name appeared upon the bill 
was telling the truth.” 

Another argument against such a bill is that 
only a few of the weak, incompetent, unprofes- 
sional teachers, whose positions are already in 
jeopardy, really want the law. A statement sup- 
porting the bill signed by a large majority of 
the teachers affected answers that argument. 

An intangible but very real difficulty often 
encountered is the under-cover opposition of the 
few people, sometimes teachers, or possibly peo- 
ple connected with the administrative office in 
some city, who feel that they are perhaps curry- 
ing favor by opposing a measure which they feel 
is not popular with the authority over them. In 
Minnesota this situation “was about as dignified 
as an anonymous letter, but equally difficult to 
meet. We did meet it through publicity. In fact 
recognition by the newspapers as to the merits 
of a bill and something about the people sponsor- 
ing it is one of the strongest arguments for it. 
If it were not important, the newspaper would 
pay no attention to it. If the people opposing 
it felt absolutely certain that they were right, 
they would not object to newspapers calling at- 
tention to their stand upon the measure. For in- 
stance, whether or not it were true, it was an ac- 
cepted fact during the fight of the 1925 session, 
that the superintendent of the Minneapolis 
schools was not in favor of the Tenure Bill, al- 
though the three changes which he requested 
had been made in it. After considerable public- 
ity following the death of one of the city’s prin- 
cipals, the superintendent, over his own sig- 
nature, came out in public press in support of 
this measure. He reiterated this support, fol- 
lowing further publicity in the columns of all 











22 THE AMERICAN 


three papers, after the Board of Education had 
turned down the report recommending the bill.” 

One deterrent to the growth of friendliness 
for the bill may be found in “the obstinacy of 
mankind. Not infrequently a member without 
good reason has taken a stand against the bill, 
perhaps because someone sitting near him seri- 
ously objects to it. After he is well informed, 
he changes his mind, but he is on record in op- 
position to the measure, and he is unwilling to 
permit his change to become known.” 

Again there are “members who will never com- 
mit themselves, and who do not vote when their 
names are called, but after they see that a bill 
is lost or won and they feel that they want to be 
recognized in connection with it, they will arise 
and say, ‘Anderson votes “aye” or “nay”,’ as the 
case may be, as the voter wants to curry favor 
with important members on the floor who have 
already voted. 

“At the public hearings, all of these objec- 
tions and many more were brought out. They 
were answered by proof, by the judge who drew 
the bill, by well informed teachers, and by mem- 
bers in the House or Senate who had either 
been school men or were closely enough in touch 
with school affairs to have weight. It does not 
follow, however, that because the arguments 
have been satisfactorily answered, the bill will 
then be voted upon affirmatively. The constitu- 
ents of a member have to be taken into con- 
sideration, which is where our educational pro- 
gram bears effect. 

“The trading member has to be taken into con- 
sideration. He may have promised in good faith 
to support the bill and be absolutely committed 
to it, but if it be a question between this measure 
and something which will get him more recogni- 
tion from the business men in his home town, or 
if they have been approached to ‘call him off,’ he 
will trade at the last minute. It is practically 
impossible to meet this difficulty except by offer- 
ing a counter-trade, and if the fight is very close, 
it is sometimes necessary to do that.” 

The blocking of legislation in favor of teacher 
tenure is another difficulty that usually must be 
met. The chairman of the educational com- 
mittee may steadfastly refuse to permit the bill 
to be called up in his committee, or the bill 
may not be allowed to reach the floor. In Min- 
nesota when the chairman of the educational 


TEACHER 


committee in the senate refused to permit t 
bill to be called up in his committee, and refyg; 
to call his committee meeting in the usual wa 
by posting a notice at the speaker’s desk, i. 
situation was met by Mrs. Ladd in the following , 
way: “I told the senator that when he was y» 
for re-election I should go out against him; } 
came up for re-election and I did go out again 
him. Due to the co-operation of certain othe | | 
groups whom he had likewise treated athe 
rough-shod, he was defeated. Had Senator — 
had more faith in the strength of the organize: 
effort of the teachers, he would during the kg 
session have traded with them for their suppor 
at the recent election in return for helping th 
bill out of his committee. I am frank to sy 
that I tentatively suggested such a plan, He 
turned it down. 


“I feel that a trade such as that is entire) 
legitimate, when a bill which is of value to; 
great number of people is in jeopardy, and whe 
a senator is in many ways a valuable member.” 

The present Tenure Committee of the A. F. 
of T. thinks that a pertinent study might now 
be made of the recurring attempts to pass laws 
that frustrate or nullify teachers’ tenure, the pur- 
pose of such a study being to help teachers pro- 
tect the tenure laws already obtained. 


Mary Byrnes, 
DaGNy DIETRICHSON, 
ApA ZARBELL, 
Amy Fox, Chairman. 


The following resolution was also passed by 
the convention: 


WHEREAS, Efforts have been made and are cor 
stantly being made by interested groups to use the 
schools for their own ends rather than for social 
purposes; and 

WHEREAS, The schools can be made to function 
efficiently as social agencies only when the teachefs 
are free to teach in ‘accordance with their ideas o 
truth; and 


WHEREAS, It has been established that teachers 
generally find it almost impossible to remain true t0 
the ideals of their profession and to truth when they 
are afraid of being removed by boards of education, 
or whem they ‘are on an annual contract basis, which 
makes it possible for them to be dropped from the 
rolls at the end of each year of service; and 

WHEREAS, An increasing number of cases of 
abuse of annual contract is evident; therefore be tt 

RESOLVED, That the American Federation of 
Teachers request all locals to use their influence 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 23 


secure legislative action for sound tenure laws and 
the elimination of the annual contract system. 
In this connection we reprint from The Fed- 


eration Bulletin of Sacramento, Local 31, this 
editorial : 
Teacher Tenure 

A problem before the teachers of California at the 
present time is the subject of tenure. There was a 
law in California for some time providing for tenure 
in schools of a certain size; but, owing to the doubt- 
ful constitutionality of the law—though it was finally 
sustained by the supreme court—it was amended to 
include all schools of any size. This has focused at- 
tention anew upon the law and has aroused a great 
deal of opposition. It has many enemies. More 
friends must be found for it. 

There seems to be an idea abroad that tenure is 
an unusual thing and that California is unique in the 
matter, and, further, that tenure tends to cause a 
reduction in teaching efficiency. 

In reply to the first objection, there are ten other 
states that have teacher tenure provisions and, in 
addition, a number of cities. Still further, teacher 
tenure is the usual thing in Europe. Administrators 
are also included. The replies to a questionnaire 
sent to the embassies at Washington, D. C., of the 
various European countries show that there is no 
such thing in Europe as the annual hire-and-fire 
method that is so prevalent in these United States. 
The teachers have a real tenure. They may, how- 
ever, be dismissed for cause. The causes are similar 
to the grounds upon which teachers may be dis- 
missed in California. Also, it seems, the grounds 
for dismissal must be proved as facts, as is the case 
in California. 





THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT CHILD 
LABOR 


Child labor is indicted as a national menace 
from a health standpoint in the most compre- 
hensive symposium of medical opinion on the 
health hazards involved, compiled by the Na- 
tional Child Labor Committee and made public 
in connection with its twenty-fifth anniversary 
to be celebrated at the annual conference in the 
Hotel Roosevelt, New York, on December 16-17. 

Fifteen physicians of national reputation, from 
Various sections of the country, branded pre- 
mature labor not only as a major cause of phy- 
sical unfitness among children, but as the foun- 
dation for much illness, maladjustment, and in- 
eficiency among adults. 

Dr. C. E. A. Winslow, of New Haven, Conn., 
Professor of Public Health in the School of 
Medicine of Yale University, declared that “a 


civilization which permits the energies of its 
younger generation to be sapped before their 
period of maximum production is wasting its 
most valuable asset.” 


The Price Children Pay 

The symposium is being published under the 
title, “The Doctor Looks at Child Labor.” 
Listed among the most serious results of child 
labor from a health standpoint are nervous dis- 
eases, heart defects, tuberculosis, toxic poison- 
ing, catarrhal affections, curvature of the spine 
and permanent injury to bones and muscles. The 
chronic fatigue from unregulated labor by young 
children was held responsible for lowered re- 
sistance to disease, for malnutrition, and for 
failure to attain normal growth. 


Mind and Body Stunted 

Some of the physicians stated that the harmful 
effects of child labor upon children were, in 
large measure, responsible for the physical unfit- 
ness revealed by the draft during the war, when 
from 30 to 50 per cent of the drafted men were 
rejected as physically unfit. Mental specialists 
stated that the child’s personality, as well as his 
body, is often warped and stunted from prema- 
ture employment. 


Striking Statements 

Among the many striking opinions of the 
physicians are the following: 

“A child under fourteen should not be allowed 
to engage in gainful work.” 

“Tuberculous infection may be con- 
verted into grave disease when children are sub- 
jected to the enforced strain of occupations to 
which they are not adapted.” 

“There are more individuals who are suffering 
from nervous diseases today than from all other 
diseases combined.’ 

“A laborious occupation is harmful for any 
growing child, but for the cardiacs its effect may 
be disastrous.” 

“There is no work so devitalizing to our school 
children as selling papers on the streets.” 

“A society which permits child labor is one 
which thus feeds the future ranks of a social 
and anti social individuals.” 

“The msidious thing about child labor is that 
its effects manifest themselves at most unex- 
pected times in later life and often in a disas- 
trous manner.” 








24 THE AMERICAN 


OFFICE OF EDUCATION 


William John Cooper, Commissioner of Ed- 
ucation, after six months study, has worked out 
a scheme of reorganization for the Office of Ed- 
ucation which has been approved by Secretary 
Wilbur, his chief, and which is immediately to 
become effective. 

The fundamental principle upon which the re- 
organization has been based is a conception of 
the Office of Education as a research organiza- 
tion rather than an administrative agency. Under 
the new organization its policy will be to abandon 
as far as possible whatever it has been doing in 
an administrative way and to concentrate upon 
fact finding, surveys and research in the many 
fields of education. 

The chief of its administrative functions of 
the past has been the supervision of the educa- 
tional system of Alaska, in so far as it applied to 
the natives. The Office will, in so far as it can, 
transfer those administrative functions to other 
agencies. 

The set-up of the Office work, under the re- 
organization will be as follows: An administra- 
tive division under a chief clerk, a division of 
educational research and investigations under an 
assistant commissioner, a division of publications 
under an editor-in-chief, a library division under 
a librarian, an educational service division under 
a service chief, and a division of major educa- 
tional surveys under the Commissioner himself. 

“The Office of Education,” said Commissioner 
Cooper, in explaining the reorganization, “was 
created for the particular purpose of ascertaining 
facts about education in the United States, or- 
ganizing and disseminating these data and con- 
ducting researches of value to American schools 
and colleges. 

“The Office has never been provided with an 
adequate staff, and additions frequently have 
been made upon demand of organized groups of 
educators. This system appears to me to have 
certain disadvantages which ought not to be over- 
looked. It encourages organized groups to be- 
come active in demanding service of the Office 
and the addition of specialists to render this 
service; to look upon these specialists once ap- 
pointed as the peculiar agents and perhaps even 
propagandists of the interests of such groups. 
It encourages other groups to organize and urge 
appointment of representatives of their interest 


TEACHER 


to the Office staff. It tends to develop a per. 
sonnel in the Office of Education which reflects 
current organization in the school world rather 
than an organization designed to carry out the 
specific purposes for which the Office of Edy. 
cation exists. 

“The first step in the development of a new 
organization has. been already taken by the Sec. 
retary of the Interior. The Personnel Classifica- 
tion Board has reclassified the office of commis- 
sioner and the Secretary has created the office 
of assistant commissioner. The first appointee 
to this assistant commissionership reported for 
duty on October 1. 

“Two other positions of very great importance 
to the work of the Office of Education should 
be reclassified. These are the librarian and the 
editor-in-chief. 

_ “During the month of July the office of editor- 
in-chief became vacant through the sudden illness 
and death of James C. Boykin. He served this 
office for a salary which was entirely inadequate 
for the responsibilities devolving upon an editor- 
in-chief in a technical establishment. I believe 
that the position of editor-in-chief should be re- 
classified and should rank in salary and in dig- 
nity with the position of librarian. 

“Every position in the Office of Education is 
important. Some positions, however, are of such 
a key character that the carrying on of the 
responsibilities connected - with, them should not 
depend upon the health, tenure, or life of any 
human being. Positions of this character are; 
The Chief Clerk, the Editor-in-Chief, the Librar- 
ian, the Chief of the Division of Higher Edu- 
cation. In the past but one of these, the editor- 
in-chief, has had an assistant. It is my recom- 
mendation that there be assistant chiefs for all 
of these offices. 

“The need of a larger fund for printing is 
pressing. 

“Funds are needed for the study of foreign 
school systems and for such researches in Amer- 
ican education as in the judgment of the Secre- 
tary of the Interior should be undertaken. Dur- 
ing the last few years comparatively little has 
been presented to the American school people 
along these lines. Changes of far-reaching im- 
portance in the school systems of other nations 
have come about since the Great War. At 
home the need for special study sometimes be- 


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THE AMERICAN 


comes imperative without much advance notice. 

“The library of the Office of Education is one 
of the world’s great libraries in a narrow field— 
that of education and administration of schools 
and colleges. Here is a great depository of orig- 
inal reports, catalogs, and textbooks without 


- access to which the history of American educa- 


tion can not be written. 

“In addition there is a remarkable collection 
of textbooks used in American schools; 7,295 of 
these have been cataloged. There are approxi- 
mately 8,500 on the shelves which have never 
been cataloged. One of the most important pieces 
of work which should be done is to catalog these 
books and to issue for the use of students of 
education bibliographies in the various school 
curriculum, fields such as reading, spelling, and 
arithmetic. We should have in the library now 
three or four additional members of the staff to 
do this work and to carry on the usual functions 
of our library. New demands for library service 
are being made upon the library. 

“IT have recommended in this connection that 
a bulletin on statistics of libraries be printed 
every four years and that there be incorporated 
into it a directory of librarians. A special com- 
mittee representing the American Library Asso- 
ciation is co-operating with the Offices of Edu- 
cation in determining what information should 
be incorporated in such bulletin.” 

The “conception of the office of Education as a 
research organization rather than an administration 
agency” is in line with the position taken by the 
A. F. of T. and is accordingly welcomed by it. 
The A. F. of T. is on record for “a national autono- 
mous department of education for research. 





“TEXT BOOK” MIND IS WORLD’S PERIL 

South Hadley, Mass.—Accepting everything one 
teads is “a peril of our age,” declared Hon. Vincent 
Massey, Canadian minister to the United States, in 
an address at Mount Holyoke College. 

The speaker referred to this acceptance as the 
“text book” mind. 

“The modern printing press sometimes seems to 

have abrogated its duty of stimulating thought in 
order to address itself to the task of making thought 
unnecessary,” he said. 
“One of the major tasks performed by the college 
S surely to give first, the desire; secondly, the capac- 
ty to distinguish real feeling from sentimentality, 
the noble from the merely florid, the tragic from the 
sordid, the dramatic from the theatrical.” 


-a course of action. 


TEACHER 25 


POINTS ON THE TEACHERS’ UNION 
NEW YORK, LOCAL 5 
The New York Teachers Union is issuing 
weekly a brief statement on the Union’s program 
and accomplishments. The first two follow: 


November 15, 1929 


I 

1. At the quarterly meeting of the High School 
Teachers Association held Saturday, No- 
vember 2, 1929, at the Hotel Astor; Dr. John 
L. Tildsley, District Superintendent assigned 
to high schools, said, “The only organization 
that is doing important constructive educa- 
tional work is the Teachers Union.” 


2. Question: Why was there so much intelli- 
gent discussion of educational issues in 
the recent political campaign ? 

Answer: Because the work of the Union 
creates vital issues which the public 
quickly comprehends. 


3. Question: Is the Union a political organiza- 
tion? 

Answer: No, but for many years it has 
raised educational issues which are like- 
ly to become political. Recall the Lusk 
laws’ jssue which Governor Smith ac- 
aa as a political issue in 1922, and 
in part made his campaign on it. Re- 
sult, the Lusk laws were repealed in 
1923. 

THE UNION IS ALIVE 
AND 
WILL HELP YOU MAKE 
YOUR JOB A RESPECTABLE ONE 





“Bertrand Russell, who combines in a marked de- 
gree those qualities of culture which Mathew Arnold 
called ‘sweetness and light,’ sums it all up in his 
‘Icarus,’ where he says: ‘Science has not given men 
more self-control, more kindlines, or more more 
power of discounting their passions in deciding upon 
It has given communities more 
power to indulge their collective passions .... The 
heart is as important as the head. By the ‘heart’ 
I mean for the moment, the sum-total of kindly 
impulses. Where they exist, science helps them to 
be effective; where they are absent, science only 
makes men more cleverly diabolic . . . And so we 
come back to the old solution; only kindliness can 
save the world.” 

World Unity. 








26 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





BOOKS 


“There is no frigate like a book 
To bear us lands away.” 
—Emily, Dickinson. 











THE AMAZING BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

“The friend and founder of libraries” is the 
title given to Benjamin Franklin by Asa Don 
Dickinson, librarian of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, in one of a collection of essays called 
“The Amazing Benjamin Franklin,”’* recently 
published by Stokes. Through Mr. Dickinson, 
the American Library Association pays tribute, 
with more than two score organizations, gov- 
ernment officials, and distinguished men of af- 
fairs, to the social genius of the man whose first 
project of a public nature was the establishment 
of a subscription library. 

Franklin was actually librarian of the Library 
Company of Philadelphia for three months and 
was, for more than a quarter of a century, on 
the board of directors. He was also the founder 
of a library in Franklin, Massachusetts, a place 
named after him, and gave books to Harvard, 
Yale, Pennsylvania and other universities. 

In addition to honoring him as a friend of 
libraries, these new essays pay tribute to Frank- 
lin as statesman, philosopher, printer, scientist, 
inventor, economist, “patron saint of the music 
industries,” athlete and humorist. The book, 
issued under the auspices of the Philadelphia 
chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, 
is printed by the Franklin Printing Company, 
founded by Franklin in 1728, and bears a fore- 
word by President Hoover. 





*The Amazing Benjamin Franklin; ed. by J. Henry 
Smythe, Jr. Frederick A. Stokes, 1929. 





DIVINE POINTS WITH PRIDE 
By Carl Haessler 

James Myers, an industrial secretary for a 
federated church welfare body, has undertaken 
in his studies of churches in social action* to 
show by “good work” that the church is really 
much less hostile to organized labor than the 
facts of American industrial conflict indicate. 

He tells of instances where preachers have 
brought workers and their oppressors together. 
He cites Christian students singing Christmas 


carols in the hunger-bitten mining towns of the 
Hocking Valley, He recalls how “even on be. 
half of the I. W. W.” a pastor was decently 
liberal. 

The divine raises the question whether com. 
fortable followers of Christ should take diyj- 
dends from industries “where women toil for 10 
hours a day in the heat and noise of a factory 
for $13 a week.” If the women worked only 
eight hours and made $20 a week the exploitation 
of parasitic groups would presumably be Chris- 
tian enough. 

Myers praises God because certain Cleveland 
youngsters (white) said that if it weren't for 
the parents, certain student teachers (colored) 
might practice in their school rooms. He comes 
out of an interracial mass meeting in a church 
undefiled : “yet there we were, on a basis of per- 
fect decorum and self-respect.” 

He got through a trip to the Anarchist, I. W. 
W. and Communist headquarters in New York 
without losing his soul. No doubt it was because 
he had taken the proper sanitary precautions. 
“One needs to prepare for each trip,” his minis- 
terial guide had told him, “by quiet and prayer.” 

The book is full of incredible gobs of con- 
descension and it is surprising that the Federal 
Council of Churches of Christ permitted Myers 
to put it out. But then, he is the fellow who, 
standing before the open graves of the massacred 
union textile workers of Marion, N. C., piously 
called upon the survivors to forgive the murder- 
ers—a mouthing so typically out of place at the 
memorial service that Tom Tippet passionately 
rebuked him. 





*Religion Lends a Hand, by James Myers; Harper 
and Brothers, New York, $1.50. 





SCHOOL TEXTS BREEDERS OF 
HATRED, WAR 
By Helen G. Norton 
Federated Press 

An astounding revelation of the extent to 
which national and class bias enter into public 
education is contained in Lies and Hate in Edu- 
cation* by Mark Starr. 

When German children are being taught con- 
cerning the treaty of Versailles that “in its pro 
vision was to be found no trace of justice, but 
only fury, hate and fear”; while French children 
learn that the treaty is “lovely, noble. 


It 


=: oo ff 





5 Of the 
on be- 
Jecently 


-r com- 
re diyi- 
for 10 
factory 
d only 
oitation 
Chris- 


veland 
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lored) 

comes 
church 


of per- 


I. W. 
- York 
ecause 
utions, 
minis- 
ayer.” 
F con- 
ederal 
Myers 

who, 
sacred 
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irder- 
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[arper 


it to 
ublic 
Edu- 


con- 
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THE AMERICAN 


tis a healing, and, let us hope, a final peace,” 
ind simultaneously that Germany is the “heredi- 
tary enemy,” we have certainly the inflammables 
jor another world war. 

When such superficial blah as “farm laborers 
we very happy with what they get and really 
jon’'t want any more,” or “aristocrats are best 
wited for politics; they move in society where 
litics is greatly talked” are accepted as satis- 
fctory answers in university economics exam- 
inations, we have class bias in its most insidious 
form. 

“The classical readers are monopolized by the 
doings of warriors and armies,” writes Starr. 
“Children in arithmetic usually work out costs 
of pounds of sugar and meat in a fictitious world 
in which food trusts do not interfere with prices. 
The rate of interest paid by capital and not its 
source constitutes the problems set. 

“Why not proportion sums on how the present 
revenue of the country is spent relative to the 
respective costs of war preparation, health, and 
education? If the teacher brought the arithmetic 
dass near to real life by working out what a 
comparable fraction the, wage of the worker is 
to the salary of the director opposing a wage 
increase, arithmetic would become as contentious 
as economics.” 

Workers’ movements are neglected and some- 
times slandered and even workers’ children are 
being dangerously miseducated, Starr finds. 

“Lies and Hate in Education” deals principally 
with literature, history and geography textbooks 
and teaching in England, France, Germany and 
Russia. A companion volume on American 
education may be forthcoming in the course of 
the year. The recent exposure of power trust 
propaganda in American textbooks indicates a 
need of such an investigation. 


‘Lies and Hate in Education, by Mark Starr. 
Hogarth Press, Ltd., London, or Brookwood Labor 
College, Katonah, N. Y., $1.25. 





THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE 
UNITED STATES, 1860-1895* 

This is a history of the American labor move- 
ment during the crucial formative period follow- 
ing the Civil War. It outlines the earlier efforts 
of the wage earners to form a coherent national 
organization for protection of their rights, traces 
the rise and decline of the once powerful Knights 


TEACHER 27 


of Labor, and closes with tha establishment of 
the American Federation of Labor as the pre- 
dominant factor in the labor movement in the 
United States. 


The period it covers was filled with dramatic’ 
episodes and picturesque personalities. It was 
the period of the Molly Maguires, of great rail- 
road strikes, of labor riots, of anarchist agitation 
and the Haymarket bomb affair, and of the emer- 
gence of labor leaders like Powderly and Gom- 
pers. The material throughout the book is treated 
in vivid and arresting style and with constant 
emphasis on the personalities of the dominant 
characters. 

The author, who is Professor of Economics in 
Wesleyan University, has an established reputa- 
tion through his brilliant study of “The Indus- 
trial Worker, 1840-1860” which won the Hart, 
Schaffner and Marx Prize. Mr. Ware has been 
active in labor arbitrations and has lectured on 
labor problems at the New School for Social 
Research. 


The Knights of Labor was the first powerful 
and coherent national trades and labor society. 
For fifteen years it grew slowly, disentangling 
the labor movement from the visionary schemes 
of the old-style reformers. By 1885 it had a 
membership of about 90,000, which within a 
year jumped to about 600,000. Then occurred 
the series of victories in four great railroad 
strikes which for the first time demonstrated the 
power of organized labor. For the whole period 
of the eighties the Knights was predominant in 
the labor movement. 

The Order, however, was doomed to practical 
extinction by forces within the working class 
itself. The aims of the Knights were idealistic, 
humanitarian and practical; it was neither a rev- 
olutionary nor a class organization; it accepted 
the existing social and industrial order of things 
and conceived measures for the benefit of the 
whole people. Its failure was fundamentally a 
failure to recognize the reality created by modern 
industrial forces. Machinery was forcing a ma- 
terialistic contest, not between the “money 
power” and the people, but between the employ- 
ers and the workers. Alongside the Knights of 
Labor the great craft unions like the Typograph- 
ical and the Cigar Makers were growing in 
strength. The Order was blamed for the failure 
of the Southwest railroad strike of 1886, for the 








28 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


failure of the eight-hour movement, and for the 
anarchist excesses which culminated in the Hay- 
market bomb affair. In December, 1886, the 
American Federation of Labor was organized 
and proceeded to attack the Knights by word and 
deed until the Order was practically destroyed 
by the panic of 1893. Thereafter the Federation 
assumed the leadership in the American labor 
movement which it still holds. 


This in broad outline is the story Mr. Ware 
tells. It is a narrative of the efforts of the wage- 
earning class to combine for the purpose of ward- 
ing off encroachments on their status and stand- 
ards caused by the development of the factory 
and corporation systems of production. The 
problem involved the discarding of outworn ideas 
and leaders, the suppression of socialistic and 
anarchistic agitators, and the creation of a form 
of organization through which working men 
might work together for common and practicable 
objects. This problem the Knights of Labor for 
various reasons was not able to solve, and it was 
left for the American Federation of Labor, by 
confining its personnel to members of the skilled 
crafts, its organization to a loose federation of 
trade unions, and its purposes to better wages, 
shorter hours, and improved working conditions, 
to achieve an incomplete but after 1894 a homo- 
geneous labor movement. 


Mr. Ware’s compact and orderly narrative is 
the first to open for the general reader this im- 
portant and dramatic chapter of our social his- 
tory. 


*The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860- 
1895. By Norman J. Ware. D. Appleton and Com- 
pany 35 West 32nd Street, New York City. Price, 
$3.15. 





SOME WORTHWHILE BOOKS ABOUT 
WAR 

After the naval conference should certainly 
come a conference on the far more potentially 
dangerous aerial armament. True enough, that 
can be rapidly improvised in a modern nation. All 
the more reason to avoid elaborate preparation. 
Nations which have to hestitate to prepare have 
time to listen to the voice of reason. Nations 
fully armed and militarized as Emil Ludwig 
points out in his “July 14” do not. 


Ludwig’s book (published by Putnam) is only 


one of a notable group of war books that hay 
recently come to my desk. Ludwig’s account ¢j 
the immediate events of July, 1914, leading t, 
war draws on his imagination for local color aj 
leaves out some thing, e.g., direct evidence ¢j 
the Serbian government’s complicity in the x 
sassination at Sarajevo. Yet that great authority 
Professor Fay, calls it at least nine-tenths try 
and it brilliantly sets forth the thesis that th 
blunders of statesmen and the existence of th: 
military mind and military machinery made pox. 
sible a tragic crime which the people neither 
understood nor denied. 

C. Hartley Gratten in “Why We Fought’ 
(Vanguard Press) seems to me to answer the 
question fairly and realistically in terms tha 
in 1918 might have led him to share Gene Debs 
prison. No one else has given so comprehensive 
a statement of facts including facts on prop: 
aganda, economic interest, etc. 

Very different are these books all published by 
Dutton. “Bourru, Soldier of France” by Jean 
des Vigues Rouges, translated by Ernest Hunter 
Wight is, as Coly Taylor says in his introduction, 
a book “contemporary with the Unknown Solt- 
ier”, written with rich understanding during the 
war itself though only now translated. It almost 
deserves to rank with Barbusse’s “Under Fire’. 
“The German Students’ War Letters”, edited by 
Philipp Witkop and translated by A. F. Wedd 
are also contemporaneous documents from young 
Germans, all of whom died in the war, for whose 
loss the world is infinitely poorer. How like were 
these boys we once called Huns to our own 
finest youth in their patriotism, their hopes, their 
fears, their disillusionment with war! 

That same disillusionment which yet remem- 
bers the heroism of simple men breathes through 
Henry Williamson’s “The Wet Flander’s Plain” 
wherein an English soldier relives war days on 
a trip to Flanders amidst surroundings in which 
the commercialization of war memories and the 
persistent survival of outworn shiboleths warn 
us how far the spirit of understanding must g0 
before we aré sure of peace. Dutton deserves 
great credit for publishing simultaneously these 
war books of three nations which in different 
languages bring home to our hearts the great 
resolve on which civilization depends: Neve 
again must there be World War. 


a=. aj sts om™ 3 Circ 


—_— ea ac Gra 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





a Local News 








CHICAGO MEN, LOCAL 2 

The Chicago Federation of Men Teachers have 
done a number of things for the protection of its 
members and for the benefit of all teachers in 
Chicago and out of it. It has, however, done one 
thing recently so outstanding that it must have 
attention by itself and not be merely listed among 
the Federation’s many other accomplishments, 
and its importance, perhaps, obscured. 

The Chicago Federation of Men Teachers 
established during the past year the precedent 
of granting to teachers, the same as to other 
workers, all the benefits and privileges of the 
Workmen’s Compensation Act. 

Teachers from coast to coast and from Can- 
ada to the Gulf are indebted to Chicago Men, 
Local 2, for this extraordinary benefit. The 
National office or the Chicago Local’s officers 
will gladly give information to other teachers 
to assist them in establishing a like application 
of Workmen’s Compensation Laws in their 
states. 





CHICAGO, LOCAL 3 

On December 2nd the three locals Nos. 2, 3 
and 199 welcomed the new Chicago Local No. 
209, The Playground Teachers Union at a most 
delightful banquet of about 1000 teachers and 
friends of public education at the Palmer House. 
The main speaker was President Robert May- 
nard Hutchins of the University of Chicago. 
President Hutchins’ address will be published in 
a later issue, as we feel that these sound educa- 
tional and union principles should have a wide 
distribution. Other speakers who contributed to 
the program were Superintendent Bogan, Presi- 
dent Caldwell of the Board of Education, Mr. 
John H. Walker, President of the Illinois State 
Federation of Labor and Thomas V. Sullivan, 
Attorney of the Board of Education. The wel- 
come extended to this new local was a hearty 
one. President Caldwell emphasized the fact 
that had not the Chicago locals assisted the board 
in putting through Bill 633, the public schools of 
Chicago would have been closed in September. 

Under the head of “Working Conditions” 
efforts are being made to make uniform, as far 
a possible, the clerical work at the beginning 
and the ending of semesters. 


29 


On October 19th at the Conference of Adult 
Education held at the Palmer House, Superin- 
tendent Bogan, President Hutchins of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, Dean Martin and Miss Lillian 
Herstein, of Crane Junior College and Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin Summer School, spoke on 
various phases of Adult Education. President 
Hutchins stated that he would pledge the uni- 
versity’s support in this cause and Superinten- 
dent Bogan told of what the Board of Educa- 
tion was doing for adults in Chicago. Dean Mar- 
tin gave a series of three lectures under the aus- 
pices of the Adult Education Council at 100 N. 
La Salle Street. The trend seems general 
throughout the country to acceptance of the 
principle that education does not stcp with grad- 
uation but continues throughout life. 


The following members of Local 3 were pro- 
moted to principalships: Mrs. Hope W. Graham, 
Miss Mary Reynolds, and Mrs. Mildred Duggan. 


In April, 1927, the Federation of Women 
High School Teachers offered its members a 
group plan of health and accident insurance. By 
this plan women could secure a wider coverage 
at a lower premium than that offered by any in- 
dividual policy. 

Over one hundred members of Local No. 3 
have taken advantage of this opportunity and 
without any high pressure salesmanship have 
succeeded in stabilizing their group to which 
more than six thousand dollars have been paid in 
sick benefits. Because of this success we can 
invite other locals to investigate the opportunities 


of group insurance. 
M. B. NIELAND. 





NEW YORK, LOCAL 5 

At the present time the Teachers Union is 
particularly developing three lines of activity; 
character education, mental hygiene, and a study 
of conditions in the schools which affect the ef- 
ficiency of teaching. 

The Committee on Character Education on 
November 23 will hold a luncheon conference 
for secondary school teachers on “The Re- 
sources of the Teaching of English for Character 
Education.” The Union’s Committee believes 


that the soundest education for character de- 
velopment comes from the careful study and use 
of the materials of experience as the basis of 








30 


ethical and social standards of conduct. There- 
fore, it is practical to inquire in what detail and 
scope is the teaching of English basic as mate- 
rial in relation to the experience of the race that 
is comprehensible to children. 

Two other committees are studying the prob- 
lem of the applications of mental hygiene to the 
happiness and success of children and teachers. 
Children have their personality problems, and 
so have teachers. A Union of teachers may 
properly assist in formulating plans to look after 
both children and teachers. 

The environment of teachers is so vast in de- 
tail as well as in extent as to constitute a prob- 
lem that is well nigh overwhelming. Usually, 
teachers as well as officials submit to what ap- 
pears to be inevitable and accept the situation. 
But the Union believes that the factors in the 
environment should be subject to analysis, and 
put under control so as to be made adjustable to 
educational needs. A large committee of the 
Union is organizing its plans to undertake the 
work of collecting facts relating to this prob- 
lem. Later, recommendations for changes will 
be made to the educational authorities. 

Henry R. Linville, 
President. 





WASHINGTON, LOCAL 8 
The Washington Teachers Union, Local 8, has 
circulated a very attractive bulletin. One page 
is given to a few pertinent facts about the Amer- 
ican Federation of Teachers. 
The Union Program for the year includes: 
1. Continuation of work on the problem of 
extra-curricular activities. 
2. Introduction of a bill to secure a Sabbatical 
Year. 
3. A bulletin on the provisions of the pension 
law. 
4. An effort to establish equitable adjustments 
in the matter of tests. 
5. A follow-up study of the special teacher situ- 
ation. 
6. A card party at the home of a distinguished 
social leader. 
. 7. Creation of a committee to study the status 
of school librarians. 
The membership committee under the chair- 
manship of Elizabeth Hawxhurst is carrying on 
an agressive campaign with good success. Some 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


of the statements which have been effective in 
interesting members and non-members are here 
quoted. 

“There has been an awakened interest in unionism 
all over the United States. Our own union in the 
last two years has gained 150 members. We realize 
that the success of our organization depends almost 
entirely on your efforts. 

The union last year took action on all of the mat- 
ters which were brought before it. These included 
subjects of vital interest to departments from the 
kindergarten through the normal school. An equally 
important program which will help all teachers js 
under way for the coming year. Tell our members 
that they are free to bring their problems to the union 
for help. 

Remember many teachers who have not yet joined 
the union are interested in our work. 

Try to make them realize that the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers is a project developed and sup- 
ported entirely by class-room teachers. It is there- 
fore one of the biggest factors in raising teaching 
to a professional basis, and its growth will be in 
proportion to our own contributions, our sacrifices, 
and our enthusiasm.” 

ELIZABETH DRaPER, 





ST. PAUL LOCALS 28 AND 43 

Last spring a movement was set afoot for a 
change in the city charter of St. Paul, which 
has been under the commission form since 1914. 
One effort was made some time since to return 
to the old form of council and appointive non- 
salaried boards of every description. The latest 
attempt was for a so-called city manager plan. 
The two Federations have had a joint charter 
committee at work for about two years study- 
ing the charter question in preparation for some 
such change. When the proposed plan appeared 
the committee was much dissatisfied with the 
school section. It made every effort to persuade 
the drafters of the plan to make the changes it 
thought proper, but without success. After care- 
ful consideration of the committee’s report, both 
Federations took a stand against the charter. 
The committee sent out excellent campaign ma- 
terial which was given wide distribution. Mem- 
bers of the committee spoke at public meetings 
all over the city. This was particularly gratify- 
ing as there was some effort made to silence 
the teachers on the subject of the charter. It 1s 
equally gratifying to report that there was severe 
criticism of the attempt to shut the teachers out 
of the campaign even on the part of many who 
supported the proposed charter. With all papers 








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ionism 
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ER, 


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1914. 
turn 
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arter 
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for the charter, except the weekly labor paper, 
and with a well-organized group back of it, it 
was defeated by a satisfactory margin. We feel 
certain that the activity of the teachers was one 
of the factors in the decision against it. 

The Federations were among fifteen local 
groups which cooperated in the movement for 
peace on Armistice Day. Coming close on the 
charter campaign, there was not much time to 
make plans for peace demonstrations. The best 
that could be done was to secure a vacant build- 
ing, the end of a flat-iron structure, with ten 
large windows in which to display everything 
that could be assembled by the cooperating or- 
ganizations. We hope to keep the display up 
until the building is occupied for some other 
purpose. 

In almost all public matters the two Federa- 
tions appear as a unit. The plan seems to work 
out very well. There are occasions where we 
fel we can work more effectively separately, 
however ; but this is in most cases in minor mat- 
ters. 





FLORENCE Roop, 
For the Committee on Federation 
Welfare. 

The National Office wishes to acknowledge its 
indebtedness to St. Paul Men, Local 43, for the 
excellent research work done by its committee 
for the A. F. of T. This committee has com- 
piled a comparative table of teachers’ salaries 
according to population and location and has 
evaluated them as far as possible on the basis 
of organization. 





ATLANTA LOCAL NO. 89 

The work of the Atlanta Public School Teach- 
ers’ Association is in full swing for the year, the 
committees hard at work on their various prob- 
lems with zeal and efficiency. 

At the suggestion of Miss Allie B. Mann, 
President of the Association, the executive 
committee adopted a new undertaking in 
the organization of a large citizenship com- 
mittee, which is designed to stimulate Asso- 
tiation members to increased interest and 
activity in political affairs. Their work has 
gone forward under the chairmanship of W. 
J. Scott, a vice-president of the Teachers’ 
| Association. A sub-committee has worked on 
_ the problem of getting teachers to register and 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 31 


vote in the coming election on December 4, and 
information regarding elections and relative fit- 
ness of candidates has been sent to all members 
of the Association. 

The Bill referred to in the last report, pro- 
viding for a merger of city schools with Fulton 
County schools, has never been brought to a 
referendum. At a recent hearing, held in the 
Court House, the Teachers’ Association was 
represented by Miss Allie B. Mann, Presi- 
dent of the Association. Her speech set forth 
the views of the Association, stating that such a 
“cataclysmic merger” as proposed could never 
be to the fine interests of all concerned, but that 
a careful investigation and articulation of all 
factors would be necessary before the problem 
could be satisfactorily solved. 

Two issues of “The Atlanta Teacher” have 
come off the press. This monthly magazine, as 
planned, promised to inform teachers of the As- 
sociation’s work and, further, to cover news of 
general interest to the educational world. Under 
the able direction of Miss Perle Bokritzky, edi- 
tor, the paper is fulfilling the promise admirably. 

Six delegates from the Atlanta Teachers’ As- 
sociation are sent to the bi-monthly meetings of 
the Atlanta Federation of Trades. The delegates 
are greatly interested in the work and plans of 
the Federation as outlined in the meeting, and 
plan to keep in close touch with this organization. 

M. Loutse SMITH. 





BROOKWOOD, LOCAL 189 

John C. Kennedy, educational director of the 
Seattle Labor College since it was founded in 
1919, will join the staff of Brookwood Labor 
College, Jan. 1, as director of studies and in- 
structor in economics. Kennedy, a graduate of 
the University of Chicago, and later instructor 
in economics there, directed the survey of the 
Chicago stock yards and packing houses in 1900. 
He was a Socialist member of the Chicago city 
council, and later secretary of the Farmer-League 
Party of Washington. He and his wife, who has 
been associated with him in the Seattle Labor 
College, have just returned from a summer spent 
in Europe and the Orient. 





PHILADELPHIA, LOCAL 192 
The First “Talkie” in Esperanto 


During the Congress of the Esperanto Asso- 








32 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


ciation of North America in New York last 
summer, at the request of the “Paramount-Fa- 
mous-Lasky Co.,” Mr. Henry W. Hetzel, West 
Philadelphia High School, secretary-treasurer of 
Philadelphia, Local 192, and president of the 
Association, delivered a speech and salutation to 
the peoples of all nations entirely in Esperanto,— 
the first use of the International language in the 
“parolanta filmo.” The Paramount Co. is now 
exhibiting this film on the continent of Europe 
and in other non-English-speaking places all over 
the world. 


COMMONWEALTH COLLEGE, LOCAL 194 

Dr. William Edward Zeuch, principal founder 
and educational director of Commonwealth, in- 
ternational educational community for workers, 
is completing plans for a speaking tour of the 
principal cities of the North and East in the in- 
terest of the college during January, February, 
and March. 

Although the announcement of the lecture trip 
was issued but a short time ago, many have 
written in asking dates. Dr. Zeuch will follow 
the following route: Kansas City, Jan. 5-8; St. 
Louis, Jan. 9-15; Cincinnati, Jan. 16-20; Pitts- 
burgh, Jan. 21-22, Washington, Baltimore, Phil- 
adelphia, Jan. 23-29; New York City, Jan. 30- 
Feb. 12; Boston, Feb. 13-19; Cleveland, Feb. 
20-26 ; Detroit, Feb. 27-March 6; Chicago, March 
7-17. 

This speaking tour will be the first that Dr. 
Zeuch has madé since the establishment of Com- 
monwealth seven years ago. To general and labor 
audiences he will talk on “The Story of Common- 
wealth.” To college and university groups he 
will give one series of three lectures on “Prob- 
lems of Cooperative Living” and another series 
of two lectures on “Power Economics,” which 
is his own labor approach to the field of economic 
theory. 

Although Dr. Zeuch will make the above- 
named cities his principal stops, he will also talk 
to groups in towns and cities in their vicinity. 








GRAND FORKS, LOCAL 205 
Our Council meetings have been very live 
meetings and I think that we all feel that we 
have “started things’—at least have presented 
important problems for serious consideration. 
We are working on Tenure, Cumulative Sick 
Leave and Insurance. 


Our membership is steadfastly increasing, and 
we are happy to have succeeded in drawing into 
our organization some members of the Junior 
High School faculty. 


Members of the Council prepared the “News 
Sheet” which was sent to all members of oyr 
Federation, and seemed to meet with much ap- 
proval. We plan to put out another one in the 
near future. 

Viona C. Hansen, 
Recording Secretary. 


This News Sheet of Local 205 is one of the best 
we have seen and we congratulate the Federation 
on its successful undertaking. We believe the prac- 
tice of sending frequent bulletins and news letters 
is most helpful in promoting growth and solidarity. 
—The Editor. 





SAN DIMAS, CALIF., LOCAL 210 

Local 210 is meeting with a considerable meas- 
ure of success in its efforts to interest the teachers 
of Southern California in organization. Response 
to its efforts are very encouraging. 

The Local has affiliated with the California 
State Federation of Labor. 

H. J. Vooruis, 
Secretary-Treasurer. 





WILKES-BARRE TOWNSHIP, LOCAL 211 

The latest addition to the family of locals of 
the American Federation of Teachers is Wilkes- 
Barre, Pennsylvania, Township, Local 211. The 
organization was brought about through the in- 
terest and efforts of Charles Kutz, editor of the 
Pennsylvania Labor Press, Harrisburg, Penn. 

A large number of teachers have joined as 
charter members and an increasing number have 
expressed their interest and intention of coming 
along in this movement for the protection and 
advancement of the schools of their community. 

The publicity on this action of the Wilkes- 
Barre teachers has been intelligent and satisfac- 
tory. The local newspapers have carried a num- 
ber of good stories. 

Miss Barbara C. McGlynn is the secretary. 

The American Federation of Teachers and its 
Locals welcome heartily this new group to work 
with them for better salaries, better teaching 
conditions, better schools, better communities and 
a true profession. 


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