REFEREN 


THE 


| AMERICAN TEACHE 


THE ORGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 











REF ERcit 


DO NOT LOA. 


THE SCHOOL 


It is the school, as the creative 
expression of the aim of the com- 
munity, which will some day give 
a new nucleus to the aimless 
sprawl of our present agglomera- 
tions of streets and houses, the 
school in the sma!l town, the uni- 
versity in the great one. In the 
coming cities of America and the 
reconstructed world, schools and 
universities may presently tower 
over the towns as the cathedrals 
do over the older cities of Europe, 
and as the pyramids and colossal 
statue of the god Pharaoh tow- 
ered over the towns of ancient 
Egypt. The university and its 
associated schools should be the 
loveliest and greatest mass of 
architecture in every great town. 
The common school should be 
the center and pride of every vil- 
lage. And such a school should 
not be thought of as merely pre- 
paring children for a way of liv- 
ing already defined and settled; 
it should be thought of as giving 
a direction to the whole life of 
the people—H. G. Wells. 




















| 
sil 
DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 


PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS. CHICAGO 
FEBRUARY, 1930 VOL. XIV. No. 6 





















































fer oeoesesesesesesesase seseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseseS| 
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The American Teacher 


Entered as second class matter Oct. 20, 1926, at the 


ost office at Chicago, Ill., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 


Ac- 


ceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Sec. 110%, Act of Feb. 28, 1925, authorized Nov. 3, 1926. 


Volume XIV, No. 6 


Two Dollars a Year 








— 





FEBRUARY, 1930 


The Public Schools and Our Responsibilty to Them 


By Henry R. Linville, President of Local No. 5, New York 


To one who works in a large public educa- 
tion system, and at the same time keeps in 
touch with the progressive schoel movement, 
there is likely to come the thought that some- 
thing is missing in the administration of pub- 
lic school education which is of fundamental 
importance. This something is the capacity 
to rejuvenate or to revive itself, to rebuild or 
to reorganize itself. There are other human in- 
stitutions just like that, but the absence of 
this capacity in a school system is particu- 
larly unfortunate, because the conceivable pur- 
pose of the public school is to assist the race 
to rebuild itself as the continuing generations 
come upon the scene. In the absence of 
the power to rebuild, the great public school 
system has sunk to a static and ineffective 
condition. 

Perhaps the very heart of the difficulty in 
the administration of public education is the 
prevailing absence of ideas and of a program 
for the rebuilding or the rejuvenating process. 
There may have been ideas and there may 
have been programs, but these ideas and pro- 
grams lapse and are forgotten if the gener- 
alizations or the philosophy are without sup- 
port, and especially if there is no social group 
available to feed its thought into them. 

In the absence of a guiding and compelling 
philosophy which is understood first of all by 
the school administrators themselves, we find 
ourselves busy as machine operatives in a so- 
tial institution which is not fundamentally and 
religiously concerned with education at all, 
but rather with certain by-products or non- 
essentials of the machine operations. Indeed, 
itis not an exaggeration to say that we are not 
even intelligently concerned about the product 
of the machine—the children who pass 
through it. 


As an aid to understanding what the writer 
believes is happening in public school systems 
in general in this country, he desires to call 
attention to some conditions which prevail in 
New York City. The existence of these condi- 
tions inevitably tends to prevent the emerg- 
ence of ideas which might lead to the growth 
of a philosophy and a program without which 
the schools cannot become effective. 

First of all, there is the aggregation of per- 
sonalities and their kind which passes on to 
other personalities in a continuing line, the 
actual control of the machinery of the school 
system. In the City of New York this edu- 
cational bureaucracy is practically identical 
in social and racial character with the 
bureaucracy of the entire municipal govern- 
ment. It is composed largely of first, second 
and third generation of Irish, first and second 
generation of Jews, with very small groups of 
Italians and Nordics. The Irish are in the 
majority. This condition may be due to lack 
of interest in the schools among indigenous 
groups, or to their interest in other fields 
which pay more. 

The intellectual level of the members of 
this bureaucracy is not low by any means. 
Some individuals in it are distinctly above 
the average. The essential intellectual qual- 
ity of the group is one of attitude rather than 
one of pure intelligence. This attitude may 
be better described by the term “loyal,” than 
by any other. Indeed, at the time of the 
World War a charge of “disloyalty” preferred 
against a teacher did not necessarily mean 
that the teacher was primarily a traitor to the 
government of the United States. He might 
be more of a rebel against bureaucracy than 
anything else. The use that is made of the 
spirit of loyalty is to keep the school system 





2 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


moving securely on its course without im- 
portant change, and to maintain the control 
in the group that has possessed it all along. 

It is a mistake to think that the bureaucratic 
group which controls the New York school 
system does not welcome intelligent and alert- 
minded recruits to its ranks. It needs such to 
help solve the many problems of administra- 
tion which all the time confront those who 
have charge of the six hundred schools, the 
thirty-four thousand teachers and the one and 
one-quarter million children. But before the 
recruits are welcomed they must have passed 
the test of observation and trial for years dur- 
ing which time it is ascertained whether they 
are loyal and will not break loose and attempt 
to tear down the bulwarks of the “system.” 

It is natural that there should be many 
more attempts to break into this highly selec- 
tive and economically favored bureaucracy 
than to break out from it on ventures that 
might have small hope of success anyway. The 
great incentive for breaking in is economic. 
In the various bureaus of the Department of 
Education in New York there are one hun- 
dred two jobs which bring yearly salaries of 
$10,000 to $25,000 or a total of over one mil- 
lion dollars. There are some liberal-minded 
politicians who argue that the big jobs in the 
education department are not worth making 
a fight about, and that it would be the part of 
wisdom for Tammany Hall to give up its hold 
on the schools, save itself unfavorable criti- 
cism, and depend on its other rackets. But no, 
the ten thousand dollar jobs are more nu- 
merous in the education department than in any 
other. Why should they give them up? They 
could find no better racket anywhere. 

So Tammany will carry on, and the good 
jobs will be protected for the faithful, if pos- 
sible by preventing the proposed merit bill 
from passing and also by using wisdom in 
making a fair distribution of the spoils, giv- 
ing a job now and then to the Jews and even 
some to the Protestants. But all who receive 
this benefit must be judged to be eligible to 
membership in the politico-religio-educational 
caste which maintains the control of the school 


system. 
The first concern of this caste is of course 
to maintain itself. It cares a great deal about 


the schools, and it is an easy matter to show 
that only those persons who are trustworthy 
and are loyal to the school system should be 
trusted with one of the better paid positions, 
Thus, it is difficult, if not impossible, for teach- 
ers to be promoted to these positions who 
have only the equipment and backing of in- 
telligence and ideas. In fact, the greatest risk 
of all would be to promote such a person, be- 
cause he might tear down some of the bul- 
warks of the system. 

This attitude of antagonism toward poten- 
tial rebels in high educational positions is re- 
flected also’in the official attitude toward 
educational experiments. Inevitably experi- 
ments are promoted by persons who in general 
are unadaptable where the caste system pre- 
vails. They are potentially destructive of the 
status quo in so many ways that an isolating 
fence has to be thrown around them if they are 
allowed in at all. . 

There are concessions made, however, from 
time to time to opinions and researches and 
the pressure of organization. This is shown 
in occasional announcements of revisions in 
the course of study, in announcements of in- 
tention to select candidates for the higher po- 
sitions on the basis of merit alone, in giving 
up evident intention to introduce military 
training in high schools, and in many other 
ways. But these concessions actually give up 
nothing. The same old compulsions and re- 
actionary attitudes are maintained with only 
the veneer of superficial change. 


I have intimated that an important cause of 
the opposition to any substantial modification 
of the status quo in public education is the 
fear of the breaking up of the existing control 
of the system and of the caste system which 
exercises that control.- This fear is obviously 
of economic origin. 

The situation resulting from the caste sys 
tem control of public education has become so 
familiar to teachers that they are inclined to 
accept it as normal or inevitable—so easy is it 
for supposedly intelligent persons to be sep- 
arated from their ideals. Thus, as the result 
of a widespread submissive adaptation to en- 
vironment on the part of teachers the continu- 
ance of the caste system of control in public 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 3 


education would seem to be assured. To the 
writer there appears to be only one way to 
break the caste system of control and to ini- 
tiate the process of creating a new body of 
ideals on which a program for rejuvenating 
public education can be founded. 

The writer views the American Federation 
of Teachers as the agency through which the 
way may be found. But it must be confessed 
that we who constitute the personnel of this 
movement for educational reconstruction have 
not yet won more than inconsiderable success 
in persuading American teachers to join with 
us. This of itself is not a valid cause for dis- 
couragement. Every progressive movement is 
obliged to meet the solid walls of resistance 
or indifference. And every progressive move- 
ment finds its normal objectives postponed or 
thrown into shadow by various “safe and 
sane” organizations. The particular polyanna 
in the field of public education is the National 
Education Association. It is not the purpose 
of the writer to attack this Goliath of educa- 
tional organizations, chiefly because such an 
enterprise would draw us away from the 
needed development of our thought. But we 
do need to realize that the social effect of the 
National Education Association is to post- 


pone the era of reconstruction. In every sense 
of the term it is a company union. Even if it 
does not know it, it blocks the way for the 
emergence of the fundamental ideas concern- 
ing which this article deals. 

In the American Federation of Teachers we 
believe that teachers’ should regard them- 
selves, their work and their thinking as the 
basic factors in the new educational order. 
We are presumably agreed on that. We hold 
our conventions, and there draft our magna 
carta and lay down our program. But are we 
sufficiently functional? Have we shown the 
American people by example in action in our 
national and local fields just how we propose 
to strive for the new order? If we have not, 
or if what we have done has not been effective, 
then we have something to answer for to our 
own understanding of the purpose of the 
movement, and especially to the great systems 
of public education in this country where the 
souls of children are being seared and pressed 
into conformity by the caste system of con- 
trol. 

It is the purpose of the present article to 
call attention to the situation and to formu- 
late the problem. In a later article some lines 
of activity will be suggested for consideration 
by the movement. 


Social Adjustment Through Education 


Address of Mr. Andrew Blackwood, Past President of the Educational Institute 
of Scotland, Delivered by His Son, Mr. Harry Blackwood, at Geneva 
at the Meeting of W. F. E. A. 


Social Adjustment through Education is such 
a wide field that I cannot hope to cover all the 
points or even several of them. I shall therefore 
confine myself to one point only, viz., the posi- 
tion of the teacher, as the main factor in the 
problem. Where does the teacher stand, and 
where should he stand? One class of educational 
politicians assume that he does not stand at all— 
that he merely exists as a machine that can have 
no individuality, while one class among ourselves, 
at the other extreme, hold that the whole manage- 
ment of education should be done by the teacher 
and by him alone. There is a wide stretch be- 
tween these extremes, into which we all fit some- 
where or other, and the problem is, how far 


towards either end of the scale should we be 
placed, and how can we improve our position 
in that placing. 

At a former conference I was astonished 
at the number of representatives, from a nation 
I had been led to believe was the freest in the 
world, who expressed to me their pleasure and 
astonishment at the freedom with which my coun- 
trymen expressed their views. If you will par- 
don my becoming historical, I shall give a short 
account of the rise of the Educational Institute 
of Scotland, as it is probably the oldest pro- 
fessional organization extant. It was formed 
eighty years ago “to further the cause of educa- 
tion,” but right through its existence, it has never 





4 THE AMERICAN 


forgotten on the one hand, that education cannot 
be “furthered” if the cause of the educators be 
not furthered along with it, nor on the other hand, 
that, if the latter point be alone attended to, full 
educational effect cannot be got. 

There can be no doubt that the great changes 
that have come over Scottish Education, includ- 
ing better buildings, extended school age, in- 
creased Secondary Education, and improvement 
of the status and increase of the emoluments of 
the teacher have all been brought about by the 
action of the Institute. 

But this has not been done in a day: it has 
been a genuine case of evolution and slow evolu- 
tion even. By just hinting, in the far past, that 
our voice should be heard, we went on, step by 
step, from hinting to requesting and from re- 
questing ultimately to demanding. 

Let us take a look at one or two only of its 
main activities today. 

A. Parliamentary Action: Very early in our 
work we learned the gentle art of “lobbying,” 
and whenever there has been any educational 
legislation coming, we have had our members in 
London interviewing the members of Parliament 
and showing the position from our point of view, 
and more than once, almost at the last moment 
even, we have been able to change or modify. 
Six months ago there was a great legislative 
change in the management of our schools, and 
we were there in force; this month even there has 
been another proposed change, and to quote a 
phrase from 1793 one Parliamentary Committee 
has been “in permanent session” in London. 


For some years we have had a Member of 
Parliament of our own in the House and instead 
of being looked at askance as a mere representa- 
tive of the teachers, he is always listened to with 
respect as an acknowledged exponent of Educa- 
tion. 

To come to a slightly lower level, we are not 
above throwing in our weight for or against a 
candidate at election times, but never on party 
lines as we have always considered that the 
parliamentary power of the Institute must be 
purely non-party and in this we have been justi- 
fied by the number of friends of all parties we 
have in the House. 

B. Educational changes of a minor nature are 


TEACHER 


in the hands of a permanent official: When he 
proposes making any modification, he intimates 
it to us and is always ready to receive our views 
either in the form of a written memorial or in 
a personal interview. 

C. Management of schools: Scotland is 
divided into Counties, and each County has 
an Education Authority for the management 
of the schools in the County. One Institute 
is likewise divided into County branches, and 
I may say that the relationship between one 
of our branches and the County Authority is 
pretty similar to that between our main body and 
Parliament. 

D. Training of Teachers: Scotland is di- 
vided into four provinces for this purpose and 
there is a “Provincial Committee” of manage- 
ment. Long ago we had no voice in this; later, 
by our insistence, teachers were co-opted to the 
Committees; this only satisfied us for the mo- 
ment and after a few years we got a change by 
which teachers were admitted to each Committee 
in full membership. These were not mere super- 
numeraries ; I had the pleasure of being a mem- 
ber for eight years and I can assure you I was 
not a “homologater.” 

E. Legal: I could go on enumerating our ac- 
tivities, almost ad infinitum: I shall refrain from 
doing so but must mention one other—our legal 
activities. We have a committee purely to look 
after this, and it retains a prominent lawyer. We 
have had many law cases to conserve the interests 
of teachers, nearly always successful, and we have 
saved many more from coming into court by 
merely threatening to act. 

Now how is all this good work brought about? 
By standing shoulder to shoulder. By constantly 
impressing on non-members (these are still about 
five per cent) what the Institute has done in 
trebling the salaries, and in getting ample retir- 
ing allowances, etc. The moral to be drawn from 
our success is that if you come from a country 
where there is no organization, create one, and 
if you come from a country where there is one, 
homologate and strengthen it, not being dismayed 
by one or two failures, but holding doggedly 
on till you ultimately succeed. In this way will 
you create a self-respecting body of teachers, as 
well as one that is respected outside, and it is 
only from such teachers that we can hope for any 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 5 


measure of success in tackling the question of 
Social Adjustments. 

I wish to leave the main arguments to the 
speakers that follow me or I would wander into 
the subjects of Parents’ Committees, school visits, 
school excursions, etc. 

Let me, however, give a warning on one point, 
viz, what we would vulgarly call “freak” edu- 
cationalists. Any scheme of social adjustments 
will bring in a host of people who assume the 
world is to be regenerated in one way only— 
their way, and they will demand that their sub- 
jects be added to the curriculum and even demand 
admittance to the schools to teach the teachers 
how to do it. That is one thing we stubborn 
Scotsmen would not have—the admission of non- 
professionals to do teaching, and we are strong 
enough to resist it. 

I have spoken from one point of view only, and 
that more or less a side one. I shall now be 
silent to let you get on to the main issue. 





CLEAR SIGNS OF DEVELOPING 
LABOR POWER IN DENMARK 

Roskilde, Denmark.—One of the most inter- 
esting forward steps in the Danish workers’ edu- 
cation movement was taken recently when the 
Workers’ Education Union of Denmark, which is 
the joint educational center of the Labor party, 
the trade unions and the cooperative societies, 
purchased for 125,000 kronen, the Peoples’ High 
School at Roskilde. 

This high school, which has been one of the 
notable schools in the folk high school movement 
of Denmark, has enjoyed a continuous existence 
for over a quarter of a century under the leader- 
ship of some of the outstanding educational 
laders of Denmark. Its transformation into a 
residential labor college is an indication not only 
of the growth of industrialism in Denmark, but 
also of the developing power of labor. 

The action taken by the Workers’ Education 
Union of Denmark follows the decision to in- 
crease the physical equipment of the Labor Col- 
lege at Esbjerg and provides for an enrollment 
double the present size. Paul Hanson has been 
appointed warden of the Esbjerg Labor College. 
The warden of the Roskilde Labor College has 
not been selected. The school will be taken over 
formally by the Workers’ Education Union on 
April 1, 1930. 


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 


11. What are the essentials to a profession? 
Adequate compensation for services rendered. 
Tenure during efficiency. Participation in de- 
termining the standards that control teaching 
and teachers. Just as medicine and law were 
made professions chiefly because their own mem- 
bers fixed the standards of their callings, the 
standards of the teaching profession must be de- 
termined by ideals that find favor not merely in 
the eyes of those who control these positions, but 
in the eyes of those who do the actual work. 


12. What prominent “professionals” are mem- 
bers of the American Federation of 
Labor? 

John Dewey, professor of philosophy, Colum- 
bia University; Dr. Franklin Meyer, U. S. Bu- 
reau of Standards; Ethel Barrymore, Vice-Presi- 
dent, Actors Equity; Harry A. Overstreet, pro- 
fessor of philosophy, College of the City of New 
York; Frank Gilmore, President, Actors 
Equity; Ethelbert Stewart, U. S. Bureau of 
Statistics ; Robert Morss Lovett, editor, The New 
Republic; Paul H. Douglas, professor of eco- 
nomics, University of Chicago; Edward F. Keat- 
ing, editor, Labor; John Herman Randall, author 
and professor at Columbia University; John A. 
Brewer, professor of education, Harvard Uni- 
versity ; and hundreds of others. 


13. What Has Dr. John Dewey Said About 
Teachers Affiliating with Labor? 
“Why is it that teachers who have not had 
to live by the labor of their hands, nor suf- 
fered the privations and @ifficulties of many 
of the members of the trade unions have 
found it necessary in time of need and ex- 
tremity to turn for active support, not to 
manufacturers’ associations, nor to bankers’ 
associations and lawyers’ associations, and the 
so-called respectable elements) of the com- 
munity, but have had to turn to these bodies 
of organized labor? I think that it is cause 
for shame and humiliation on the part of the 
so-called respectable classes; but, I think on 
the other hand it is a source of pride and self- 
respect for the members of these labor unions 
and is a reason why every teacher should feel 
proud to be affiliated with labor unions.” 





6 THE AMERICAN 


The American Teacher 











Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 
Published Monthly, except July and August 
Official Organ 
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
Orcanizep Aprit 15, 1916 
Affiliated With the American Federation of Labor 
Editorial Office: 

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FLorENcE Curtis HANsoN, Secretary-Treas. and Editor 


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

Legislative Representative and Vice-President 
Setma M. Borcuarptr, Washington No. 8; 1741 Park 
Road, N. W., Washington, D. C. 
Vice-Presidents 
FiLorENcE Fisu, Minneapolis No. 59; 330] 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 ay 189; Brookwood, Katonah, 


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

Cuartes B. Stmtman, 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. 


I like to see a man proud of the place - in 
which he lives. I like to see a man who lives 
in it so that his place will be proud of him. 
Be honest, but hate no one; overturn a man’s 
wrongdoing, but do not overturn him unless 
it must be done in overturning the wrong. 
Stand with a man while he is right, and part 
with him when he goes wrong. 

—Abraham Lincoln. 





TEACHER 


Teachers’ Strikes 

The American Federation of Teachers has a 
non-strike policy, based on the following beliefs: 

1. That the teacher is the greatest conserver 
of the public interest. 

2. That the teachers’ grievances must not, and 
cannot, be remedied by any method that inflicts 
injury upon the children upon whom the future 
of the nation rests. 

Groups of teachers who have found their situa. 
tion intolerable have struck, but no local of the 
American Federation of Teachers has ever used 
the strike. Far from being a strike producer, 
organization of teachers with the American Fed- 
eration of Labor is the great strike preventive, 
Teachers believe in sane, conservative leadership. 
Through organization the policy of the organized 
teaching body is guided by the most enlightened 
members. Besides, teachers’ grievances are usu- 
ally listened to with respect when presented 
through a union, and can be conveniently and 
justly settled in frank conferences between rep- 
resentatives of the school authorities and officers 
of the teachers’ unions. 

The unorganized workers have no recourse but 
to strike. It is the only way they can express 
their opinions and get an audience. 

This is a costly method, but it is their only 
method to express their resentment against in- 
justice. 

The organized teachers depend for results up- 
on the power of organized numbers, upon the 
support of organized labor, upon political action, 
and upon an aroused and educated public opinion. 
Therefore, teachers’ unions have no need to 
strike. They know a better way. 


What Does Labor Expect from the Teachers? 

What does Labor expect from the teachers 
in return for its admittedly powerful support? 

For one thing, labor believes, rightly or 
wrongly, that the trained intelligence of the 
teachers should be able to make a contribu- 
tion to the solving of vexed social and eco- 
nomic, as well as educational problems. They 
can bring. to the labor struggle intellectual 
balance and penetration. They can help to 
give to those struggles a direction that is ut 
falteringly social. The teachers have the 


heavy responsibility of showing that the 
vaunted value of their education is not ovet- 





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THE AMERICAN 


rated, when faced with the living problems of 
this difficult period. The President of the 
American Association of University Profes- 
sors has said: “It would be little short of a 
calamity if labor’s policy toward the schools 
should receive no help or guidance from 
within the schools.” For the first time the 
teachers have the opportunity not merely to 
teach history, more or less ancient, and indi- 
rectly to influence future history, but actively 
to assist in the making of current history. 

But the chief return that organized labor 
expects is a square educational deal for the 
children of all the people. They are making 
no class request, they ask nothing for their 
own children that they do not demand with 
equal force for all children. They know that 
children are not afforded a square deal and 
equal educational opportunities now. Two of 
the causes they can readily see even as lay- 
men—underpaid teachers, and overcrowded 
asses. But they are not trained to diagnose 
the ills of a school system. And they want 
the teachers to affiliate, primarily, so that 
through delegates of the teachers, local cen- 
tral labor bodies and state and national labor 
conventions can be informed of conditions at 
first hand by classroom teachers on the edu- 
cational firing line. They wish to have teach- 
ers, with their specialized training and knowl- 
edge, and organized labor with its influence 
in the community and the nation, working 
shoulder to shoulder and thus develop a more 
eficient system of public schools from the 
kindergarten through the university. 

Workers Should Awaken to New Industrial 
Revolution 

The significance of pleas by the Department 
of Agriculture, the Federal Farm Board and 
State agricultural colleges for farmers to reduce 
output may well be noted by trade unionists. 

Chairman Legge of the Farm Board states 
that agriculture is the only industry that has not 
ben “stabilized.” 

Industry no longer attempts to conceal its 
policy of “stabilization.” It is, in fact, considered 
‘good business” to limit output to demand. 

Abandonment of unchecked production is 
inked with automatic machinery and scientific 
PMocesses that invade every field. No industry 
calling is immune from the silent revolution- 


TEACHER 7 


ary forces that swell the ranks of unemployed. 

Skill acquired after long years is useless ; semi- 
skill is not necessary and the 40-year-old me- 
chanic is replaced by nimble fingers and a mind 
that can be trained in a few hours, days or weeks. 

Mergers and combinations have the same effect 
on so-called “white collar” workers. 

Far-sighted business men are alert to the new 
system, yet in its infancy, and are suggesting that 
the people’s purchasing power be increased. A 
few business men frankly declare that the present 
low-wage system must be changed if disaster is 
to be averted. 

Organized labor, for years, has claimed that 
high wages is the one guarantee of continued 
prosperity. Only now is this being accepted— 
as a theory. 

Instances are rare where wages are voluntarily 
raised. Higher wages are resisted as stoutly as 
when employers insisted that low wages lessened 
production costs and when communities adver- 
tised their “low-wage, contented labor.” 

Workers can only raise wages by uniting. They 
can only shorten hours by the same policy. The 
present work day must be reduced. There is not 
a basic industry that dare operate 100 per cent 
now or at any time since the end of the World 
War. 

Workers should not be lulled by unsupported 
optimism or by chloroforming economists who 
assure them that this machine era will cause but 
temporary inconvenience. 

These economists are invariably wrong. His- 
tory shows they erred whenever they challenged 
organized labor on a question of fundamentals. 

The present industrial revolution is without 
parallel. 

Never before has government aided business in 
limiting—‘“stabilizing”—output. Never before 
were farmers, dairy producers, cotton growers 
and horticulturists publicly called upon to reduce 
output. 

Men who refuse to see are blind to the new 
revolution. Opiates and helpless hope will not 
affect its onward sweep. 

The trade unions alone will create a new so- 
cial concept that can cope with the new revolution. 

Let organized workers present these facts to 
non-unionists. The unions were born out of grim 
necessity. Never before was their need so 
urgent. 








8 . THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The Chicago Crisis carry out the orders of financial overlords, is ] j.-t¢ 
A receivership, under which bankers will dic- being proposed for Chicago. The receivers will | orasi 
tate every expenditure by governing bodies, and be a group of lawyers and big business men who denl; 


elected representatives of the people will merely are not at all friendly to organized labor, who J i.) 
have never shown any in- Tt 


terest in the schools except still 


An Old Melodrama Re-enacted | ior exploitation, advertising | “>, 


Drawn for LABOR by John M. Baer and propaganda, and who some 
are tied up with the utility Re 


interests, which for years asses 
have financed and controlled Re 
the corrupt political ma- heen 
chines that have helped 000.0 
bankrupt the community. Tt 

A “taxpayers’ pool”, which from 
of course means a combina- piled 
tion of the super-rich, by hoe bh 
this proposition will advance ne 














































E> YOU MADE ME WHAT ~% 





















a =———S = the city and county some- 
_—— Ps 1 AM TODAY -I HOPE ; ; : ness | 
SSS = youre earamnnl thing like $20,000,000, and | | 
Se in i AL GZ receive, in return, absolute pad ‘ 
=| SS ! Y authority to control all ex- 
WAY ° be a: 
Z penditures. 


ZZ The $20,000,000 which | dvid 


Zi, these “taxpayers” propose | jing h 






















- Gi) mine ‘| to advance is less than 10 
7Y// j PLA 2“) per cent of the sums appro- Pros} 
“, YA WU fp 7 A * priated for city, county and Ai 
Hi yy ae schools for the current year. that 
x f/ // Philanthropy or sharp prac- may | 
es tice? ditior 
= Many people in and out of _ 
Chicago think that this m3 ; 
crisis is the result of corrupt a in 
local government, but they 
, schoo 
should realize that the crash a, 
was caused, or at least pre- pl 
cipitated, by something en- Th 
tirely apart from this cor- ' 
to ty 


ruption. pa 
r 
Chicago gets 75 per cent This 


of its revenues from land 





taxes, and everyone agrees Bing 
that real estate assessments nes 
‘ have been viciously unfair. wo 
The State Tax Commission me 
¢ } they ; 
oO ordered a reassessment 0 rade 
JL LI ‘ 
: LTE all real estate in Cook coun- atic 
SEFZFZ "| tty. Until it is finished, real a 





= estate taxes cannot be col- 








dren 














THE AMERICAN TEACHER 9 


lected. That is what has brought the present 
crash. With three-quarters of its income sud- 
denly held up for an indefinite period, any 
institution would be in trouble. 

This work began in December, 1928, and is 
still unfinished. 

Tentative figures of the reassessment show 
some appalling facts. 

Real estate in Chicago has been lowered in 
assessed value more than $400,000,000. 

Real estate in the county outside Chicago has 
been increased in assessed value more than $300,- 
000,000. 

These figures indicate that taxes are being lifted 
from income paying, business real estate, and 
piled on homes. This method of tax “reform” 
has been remorselessly carried out in Chicago. 


Assessments in the Loop, the heart of the busi- 
ness dictrict, have been cut $119,000,000, accord- 
ing to the lowest estimates ; more than $300,000,- 
000 according to others. A safe average would 
be a cut of not less than $200,000,000. All this 
property is owned by super-wealthy banks, in- 
dividuals and corporations, with the utilities show- 
ing high in the list. 


Prosperity 

A release which has come to our desk states 
that “an index of current American prosperity 
may be found in the excellent enrollment con- 
ditions existing in a large and representative 
number of educational institutions, accord- 
ing to the twelfth annual private school re- 
port.” College preparatory institutions show 
an increased enrollment in a large number of 
schools, capacity enrollment, “with consider- 
ably more money to be spent for tuition this 
year than last.” 

The report states also, “Divided according 
to types, military schools lead in reporting 
more favorable conditions this year” and 
‘This year 130 schools increased their rates.” 


These statistics regarding increased attend- 
ance in private schools and increased tuition 
in these schools are doubtless to be accepted 
without question. But the deduction that 
they are “an index of current American pros- 
erity” seems to us utterly fallacious. They will 
indicate that the over four hundred million- 
dollar-income parents are sending their chil- 
dren to these private schools, that the num- 


ber of parents able to send their children to 
such schools has increased, but when the ratio 
of private schools to public schools, the finan- 
cial stringency of a great number of school 
districts, the low salary of teachers and the 
failure to increase teachers’ salaries are con- 
sidered, the conclusion of American prosperity 
appears to be based on a triviality. 

When further we consider the over 6,000,- 
000 unemployed and the financial crises 
through which we are and have been passing, 
we wonder what “107,208 students enrolled in 
470 schools paying $71,169,024 in tuition” has 
to do with “current American prosperity.” 





POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 


The aggressive move upon politics in the 
schools by the New York Teachers Union, 
Local 5, has attracted wide notice in the press, 
both news account and editorial comment. 
The New York Times regarded this position 
of the Union of sufficient importance to carry 
it in electric light display on their building in 
Times Square. 

The following editorial comment appeared 
in the New York Times of December 24, 1929, 
under the heading: 


“Politics in the Schools” 


The Teachers Union has rated as the “major prob- 
lem” in the New York school system “the elimination 
of political and attendant religious influences.” It 
again notifies the public of the “disgraceful practice by 
which political qualifications come to be preferred over 
other qualifications which alone relate to the work of 
the schools and the welfare of the teachers and the 
children.” It does not undertake to prove that such a 
practise exists; it refers to it as a continuing fact which 
it continues to condemn. 

An experience of the Board of Education of Newark 
is cited. In the recent selection of a high school prin- 
cipal the aid of a committee of educational experts 
living outside that city was invoked in listing the edu- 
cational and administrative fitness of those who applied 
under the eligibility requirements. Warning was given 
that any candidate who attempted to influence the choice 
by political means would be promptly dropped. It is 
doubtful if such a plan would be practicable here. The 
Board of Superintendents should be as disinterested as 
outside experts and would have certain advantages in 
being familiar with local conditions. But how are they 
to be protected against such influence as that from 
which an outside committee is free? Even if the list 
of supporters of each candidate were made public, as 
was done by President Hoover in the selection of Fed- 





10 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


eral judges, “influence” is not confined to written 
channels, 

Correction of this evil, which is a menace to the 
integrity of the whole system, must come largely from 
inside the teaching body. The Teachers Union has 
shown courage in its effort to stir the interest of the 
30,000 teachers in the maintenance of professional 
standards. It has canvassed the teachers themselves 
concerning the qualifications of the thirty-five who have 
been selected by the Board of Superintendents for the 
position of principal. That its evaluations differ from 
those of the board does not, of course, prove that the 
board’s are not just, but it does raise a suspicion that 
something else than purely educational factors has en- 
tered to disturb the professional ratings. One must sus- 
pend judgment till Superintendent O’Shea makes 
answer; but the showing presented by the Teachers 
Union report is, to say the least, disquieting. 





CUSTOMS CENSORSHIP STILL TO BE 
FOUGHT 


Reprints of the Senate debate on the censorship 
clause in the new tariff act, brilliantly opposed by 
Senator Bronson Cutting of New Mexico, have just 
been sent throughout the country by the American 
Civil Liberties Union in its campaign to hold the 
partial victory won in the Senate, and to amend the 
bill further by placing the burden of proof upon the 
government and by replacing decisions of customs 
officials by the regular courts. 

In a preface to the abstract of the Senate debate, 
the Civil Liberties Union says: 

“Our position is that all censorship of literature 
by customs officials should be abolished. If cus- 
toms officials find what they regard as really porno- 
graphic literature or other matter they think violates 
the law, they should take it to the prosecuting offi- 
cials of the state. Then the determination of its 
lawfulness would rest with a judge and jury, where 
it belongs, and the burden of proof would be on the 
government, as it is in all criminal cases. We hold 
there is no need whatever of extending the present 
customs censorship of “obscenity’ to ‘seditious’ for- 
eign literature—although, unfortunately, Senator Cut- 
ting had to concede a point or two on this to get 
his amendment adopted.” 

Together with this abstract of the debate, the Civil 
Liberties Union has sent a letter emphasizing the 
importance of supporting Senator Cutting in his 
stand and of getting support for his amendment by 
senators and representatives. The amendment still 
has to run the gauntlet of the conference committee 
of House and Senate. The amendment removes the 
prohibition against the importation of “obscene” 
books and narrows the proposed new censorship of 
“seditious” matter to those works which “advocate 
urging furcible resistance to any law of the United 
States or containing any threat to take the life of 
or inflict bodily harm to any person in the United 
States.” 





THE POWER TRUST 
By Laurence Todd 

WASHINGTON — (FP) — Hearings before 
the Federal Trade Commission on the astound- 
ing profits, stock-watering and other financial 
jugglery of the power trust are about to furnish 
the country a new series of sensations. For 
nearly a year past the accountants and other ex- 
perts for the Commission have been looking into 
such books of the power combine as were not 
withheld from their inspection, either through 
downright defiance or through sleight-of-hand. 
The fundamental question—How much am I be. 
ing robbed by the power company ?—is about 
to be answered for scores of millions of Ameri- 
cans. 

As a prelude to this phase of the probe of 
the power monopoly, members of the Senate com- 
mittee on interstate commerce are reading the 
file of memoranda and letters secured, under 
duress, from the offices of the Federal Power 
Commission, showing how Executive Secretary 
Bonner of that commission has been trying to 
get rid of the legal and accounting divisions of 
the Power Commission staff, thereby covering 
up stock-watering schemes of the power corpo- 
rations to whom valuable federal power sites are 
being granted. A battle that has been staged 
behind the locked doors of a subcommittee of 
the House appropriations committee is to be 
brought into the open before the Senate com- 
mittee on interstate commerce, and perhaps also 
before the Caraway committee on lobby investi- 
gation. For there exists documentary evidence 
that the power trust lobby in Washington is 
highly expensive. 





There is only one cure for evils which newly-acquired 
freedom produces, and that cure is freedom. The blaze 
of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder 
nations which have become half-blind in the house of 
bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be 
able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason, 
and the extreme violence of opinions subsides. The 
scattered elements of truth cease to contend and begin 
to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order 
is educed out of the chaos.—Macaulay. 





What has destroyed the liberty and the rights of man 
in every government which has ever existed under the 
sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and 
powers into one body.—Thomas Jefferson. 








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Experimental Russia 
By Dorothy Gary and John Markey 


Members of the American Federation of 
Teachers, which has long stood for progressive 
experimentation in education, will be interested 
in some of the educational developments in mod- 
ern Russia. 

As the Russians have been reorganizing the 
fundamental basis of their social order, this fact 
alone has necessitated an enormous amount of 
experimental work in new forms of educational 
and social enterprise. In addition to this the ac- 
tive policy has been one of encouragement of the 
scientific and experimental attitude toward eco- 
nomic and social problems. 

There are limits placed upon experimentation 
as well, just as in all experimental effort, and 
these may be briefly indicated. Since Russia is 
organizing a society for the benefit of workers 
(including all types, such as industrial, agricul- 
tural, professional and technical), with its future 
objective the creation of a communistic social 
order, and since this program is based upon co- 
operative ownership of all productive enterprise, 
experimentation goes on under this stricture :—the 
discouragement and even prohibition of some 
phases of experimentation along capitalistic and 
individualistic lines and the encouragement of 
experimentation along socialistic cooperative lines. 
Regardless of one’s political views concerning the 
kind of society being developed, Russia undoubt- 
edly furnishes a most remarkable laboratory for 
the educator, scientist and student of society. 
It is our present purpose to glance into a few 
parts of this laboratory in order to get a begin- 
ning insight into the social experimentation going 
on there. 


The Gosplan 


Not only are the educational efforts seeking 
for new and more adequate ways in which to 
express these principles of social activity, but 
every phase of Russian life presents a like pic- 
ture. In industry new methods, techniques and 
organizations are being tried. One of their latest 
efforts is the Gosplan, a central government bu- 
reau of experts with smaller Gosplans scattered 
Over the union, whose task it is to collect and 
analyze all facts relevant to Russian economic life 
for the whole Republic, in every branch of in- 
dustry and agriculture, such as statistics of pro- 


11 


duction, profits, losses, wage, past and future 
needs of the people, exports and imports, etc. 
On the basis of these facts they budget Russian 
economic developments one, five and fifteen years 
ahead. Stuart Chase has discussed the history 
of this huge experiment in the recent report of 
experts in “Soviet Russia in the Second Decade.” 
He concludes that in spite of many difficulties 
besetting such a task, the Gosplan has been able 
to achieve a notable degree of accuracy in pre- 
diction and manipulation of economic develop- 
ment. 
The Institute of Labor 


A. smaller example in industrial experimenta- 
tion is seen in the Institutes of Labor. At the 
Institute which we visited in Moscow, one of a 
number of similar institutes in different places, 
they were experimenting on efficient and unique 
methods of performing tasks in textile, metal, 
carpentry and other trades based upon a detailed 
analysis of the labor processes involved. This 
was from the standpoint of the worker’s com- 
fort, well-being and reduced fatigue as well .as 
efficiency of production. The worker’s relation 
to the whole industry is a part of his training, 
his tasks representing industry in miniature. 
Blood and other fatigue tests were being made in 
order to discover how fatigue occurs and how it 
can be eliminated. Short preliminary exercises in 
preparation for work were being tried out. Re- 
laxing, resting and ending exercises were being 
perfected in order that the worker might begin, 
perform, and end his work in a fit, healthful 
manner. The Institute of Labor is supported 
by the unions, various industries and other bodies, 
and the results of their findings are being put 
into practice. 

According to the 1928 report of Narkompros, 
Peoples Commissariat of Education, there are 
now 80 scientific and research institutes of differ- 
ent kinds representing an increase of 344% over 
cezarist Russia. This gives some indication of the 
increase of this type of work. 


A Labor Commune 


In the field of criminal procedure they are ex- 
perimenting with self-governing labor communes 
to which the persons convicted of crime may 
come. On our visit to such a commune we found 





12 THE AMERICAN 


no guards or high spiked fences. All persons 
come voluntarily and may leave at any time with- 
out being pursued. A remarkable fact, to us not 
to them, was that very few leave. The group 
forms its own regulations, helps organize its own 
industries, etc. Above all, the members of the 
commune treated themselves as persons and there 
was no atmosphere of degradation, as seen in 
similar groups in other countries. 


Cultural Life 


Experimentation in and development of the 
worker’s and peasant’s social life receives an 
amount of attention most striking. The Unions 
with a membership of 10 million together with 
the Cooperatives with 20 million or more are 
carrying on an enormous amount of activity in- 
cluding experimental work in methods of cultural 
development of their membership. Community 
cultural centers in the villages and in the factories, 
study circles, wall newspapers, Red corners, and 
libraries are some of the methods used. Instead 
of huge country clubs there are huge workers’ 
clubs. We visited several of these. The mem- 
bers pay a very small fee, since the unions main- 
tain these clubs largely out of their cultural funds. 
The larger clubs have such facilities as track, 
tennis, basketball and numerous other sports, 
swimming, sun-bathing, in-door and out-door 
theaters, restaurants, libraries and the like. In 
addition there are many excursion trips, and edu- 
cational and social programs provided by the 
unions. 

New techniques and content in art and the 
theater are probably much better known here 
than many other lines of development. Much 
less known but very interesting is their experi- 
mentation in group games and contests as methods 
of developing group morale and physical vigor. 


Education and Liquidating Illiteracy 


The program for the liquidation of illiteracy 
is a Herculean task in new methods of educational 
practice. The immensity of this task is more 


readily realized when the extent of illiteracy be- 
fore the revolution is considered. Even in large 
centers, such as Moscow and Petrograd, illiter- 
acy was 50 to 60%; in the Baltic provinces it 
reached its lowest being around 25%, but in 
Siberia and the Caucasus it ran as high as 77 
Some outlying sections were almost 


and 87%. 


TEACHER 


totally illiterate. In 1920 nearly 55 million above 
8 years of age were illiterate. Between 1921-7 
5% million were made literate, illiteracy being re. 
duced at the rate of over a million a year. There 
are many agencies utilized in achieving these re. 
sults, such as unions, cooperatives, “Down with I]. 
literacy” clubs, schools, libraries, museums, ete. 
The Red Army, something unique in military 
history in that it is a vast cultural undertaking 
is also being utilized by Narkompros as an im- 
portant means of liquidating illiteracy. 

By 1932 the plan is to have literate at least 
all of the population between early school age 
and thirty-five. 

Space does not permit a discussion of the other 
new methods being used in adult education, or 
of such intensely interesting work as that among 
the minority groups in Russia. New alphabets 
and systems of writing have been made for some 
of these groups who had none before, and many 
schemes are being tried to further their intellec- 
tual development and political understanding. 

Nor does space allow of more than a brief 
reference here to the vast experimental work 
being conducted by Narkompros within the Soviet 
Union’s new public educational system itself. 
We plan to deal further with this aspect in an- 
other article.’ 


“Cheery Life” 


Perhaps a description of some of the work 
which we saw in one of the peasant children’s 
colonies will illustrate the nature of the experi- 
mental work which is going on within the new 
public system. 

Stanislaus Shotsky, one of Russia’s pedagogical 
leaders, a man imprisoned by the Czar for his 
educational pioneering, gave Dewey and his group 
with which we were associated at the time, a 
personal invitation to visit this colony. 

“Cheery Life” as the colony is called, is com- 
posed of an elementary school community and 4 
secondary school community. It is recognized as 
one of the best experimental schools for work 
among the peasant population. Results of the 


1. Readers are also referred to the Dewey articles, 
recently appearing in the New Republic on Russian 
Education, to chapters on education in “Soviet Russia 
in the Second Decade” edited by Chase, Dunn and 
Tugwell, also to Nearing’s “Education in Soviet Russia” 
and Lucy Wilson’s “New Schools in New Russia.” 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 13 


work here are made available through exhibits, 
institutes, and literature to rural teachers through- 
out the Russian Republic. This of course is but 
one of various educational experiment stations 
throughout the Soviet Union for rural as well as 
urban areas. 

This is a brief description of some of the ex- 
perimental work being carried on by groups of 
children. The chairman of the student’s com- 
mittee on agriculture led us to the vegetable 
garden where small plots were laid out and girls 
and boys from 9 to 12 years of age were carry- 
ing on experiments in scientific agriculture. One 
after another explained to us the problem on 
which he or she was working, what methods 
had been used, what results had been obtained 
and their future plans of work. 

The first lad had been experimenting with the 
humble white potato, one of the staples of peasant 
diet. In the first plot he showed us a small runt 
of a plant, grown as the peasant often grows it. 
Right next to it he had a far larger, healthier 
plant, grown under more scientific conditions. 
Others had been carrying on similar experiments 
with the tomato, squash, bean, etc. Soil tempera- 
ture, moisture, time of planting, and the like, had 
been varied separately and together in each case 
and results noted. Other children were work- 
ing with flowers and still others with cattle and 
horses. 

In every case there stood the results side by 
side, those gained by peasants when using primi- 
tive agricultural methods and those achieved from 
experimentation and utilization of scientific tech- 
nique. Peasants of neighboring villages had been 
invited in to see these results and so the com- 
munity and school life were woven together and 
the children’s work given a powerful motivation. 

A boy of fifteen, who had had charge of or- 
ganizing a strawberry exhibit still on display, 
explained te us its meaning. Neat piles of straw- 
berries classified as to type were placed on tables 
around the room. A chart hung over each table 
explaining the type and the conditions under 
which it could be most profitably grown. Peas- 
ants to whom strawberries were almost an un- 
known luxury before the revolution were now 
being introduced into the secrets of strawberry 
culture by their children. 

As this was a colony of peasant children, hav- 
ing as one of its aims serving the life of an 


agricultural region, the main emphasis was natur- 
ally laid on agricultural work. But dramatic, 
artistic and other cultural projects are numerous 
and experimenting in these is along similar lines. 
One significant feature of the work here and 
one which proved to be characteristic of all Rus- 
sian educational work which we saw, was the 
close integration of so-called cultural subjects 
with the every-day life of the pupils and the com- 
munity, the standard being to make all work 
“socially useful” in a broad sense. All school 
programs are grouped around three major sub- 
ject-matters, the world of nature, the world of 
labor and the world of human relations. The 
“complex system” of study, somewhat similar to 
the project method but broader in social orienta- 
tion and more thorough-going in character, is 
used. Further, fundamental to all educational 
activity is the emphasis placed upon the collective 
principle, which, to quote Krupskaya, one of 
Russia’s leading educators, “is both the point of 
departure and the final aim of every educational 
process. This principle runs through it like a 
red thread. It is its base, its essence, 
its content.” The collective principle within the 
school means primarily the organization of volun- 
tary cooperative activities of the children, for 
work, for play and for participation in community 
life. Teachers and leaders are expected to ad- 
vise and participate but not to dominate. It 
means the interweaving and integration of the 
school processes with the rest of social life. Of 
such significance is this regarded by Dewey that 
he says in the New Republic, “The Russian edu- 
cational situation is enough to convert one to the 
idea that only in a society based upon the co- 
operative princple can the ideals of educational 
reformers be adequately carried into operation.” 


Education Workers 


We also saw something of the collective life 
of the teachers. The Education Workers Union, 
which includes over 98% of all of Russia’s 800,- 
000 educational workers, not only promotes the 
economic and cultural well-being of its member- 
ship, but actively participates through its rep- 
resentatives in school curriculum and administra- 
tion affairs, both locally and nationally. Further, 
the teachers and the union are expected to take 
an active part in community and civic matters. 
Both in our talks with the teachers at Cheery 





14 THE AMERICAN 


Life, and in our trips with them to some of the 
villages in the surrounding country, where we 
discussed local affairs with the peasant inhabitants 
we learned at first hand something of what this 
local union of teachers had been contributing 
toward the life of this region. Also we observed 
the comradely relations existing between pupils 
and leaders. All of these served to explain to 
us the enthusiasm and keenmindedness of the 
teachers and the self-reliant alertness in students 
which we found, as well as the marked vitality 
which we sensed in the school community itself. 


While Cheery Life should be said to be above 
the average in the quality of its leadership, it is 
situated in a typical area of central Russia and 
the educational life which we found here was 
similar in outlook and vigor to that of all other 
schools and educational ventures visited. 


In fact one can clearly feel and see in the 
general population a confidence and freedom, not 
of a blustering, but of a buoyant, balanced type. 
This is undoubtedly an important factor in much 
of the experimenting already accomplished. And 
while many problems remain to be worked out, 
instead of being surprised at this, it may be said in 
regard to other aspects of Russian Life, as Dewey 
does concerning the educational system, that, con- 
sidering the difficulties such as famine, war, lack 
of equipment and other handicaps, one is rather 
amazed at the progress already made. 





Miss Perkins of the State Labor Department officially 
states that in rich New York thousands of girls in the 
telephone company, chain stores, etc., earn from $12-15 
a week while the cost of food and shelter alone for girls 
who do not live at home averages $14.69 for the most 
economical! Of course industries paying less than 
enough to feed and shelter their workers are parasites. 





Miss Helen L. Bass of Cranford, N. J., has been 
awarded the prize of $25 offered by the National 
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union for the best 
temperance poster in the contest first opened to 
school art teachers in 1928-29. The offer is renewed 
for the year 1929-30. Details concerning the contest 
may be obtained from the National Director, Miss 
Cora Frances Stoddard, 400 Boylston Street, Boston, 
Mass. 


TEACHER 


A CALIFORNIA PIONEER GONE 

California and the American Federation of 
Teachers has lost a leader and a worker, in 
the death of Miss Olive Wilson of Vallejo. 
She was the outstanding pioneer of the State 
in Federation work. It was largely due to her 
inspiration that Local No. 26 was established 
in 1918, the first in the West. This enthu- 
siasm was characteristic of Miss Wilson. She 
had continually to combat the spirit of indif- 
ference from below and of hostility from 
above, but she struggled resolutely on, hold- 
ing her organization together largely through 
her own indomitable will and firm belief. Not 
satisfied with the organization of the teachers 
she made a great effort to form an adminis- 
trator’s local in 1920. She was continually 
handicapped by having to work in a small 
community where the rapid turn-over of teach- 
ers made the development of an esprit-de- 
corps impossible. 

Miss Wilson’s enthusiasm for the Federa- 
tion was the natural outcome of her profes- 
sional spirit. As long as teaching can claim 
representatives with her spirit, energy and 
ideals, it can lay claim to the title of Profes- 
sion. Miss Wilson began teaching in 1880. 
Aside from two or three years taken to attend 
college, she has taught continuously ever 
since. But continuous teaching was, with 
her, never a synonym for standing still or 
getting into a rut. Every few years she went 
back to Summer School. Even last summer 
she took a course at Miss Swopes’ Normal, a 
school specializing in primary work. Since 
1900 Miss Wilson has taught in Vallejo. Dur- 
ing much of the period she has been principal 
of the Roosevelt Elementary school. 

It has been my privilege to work with Miss 
Wilson in the State Federation during the 
last ten years. During this period she has 
constantly been a vice-president except that 
from 1925-1926 she was State President. She 
was delegate at large from the State in the 
National Convention in 1924 and in 1926. She 
will be remembered by the members for her 
straight-forward support of those policies that 
she favored, but for the cheerful acceptance 
of the result when it proved to be adverse. 

These were the characteristics which made 
her beloved and admired by all who worked 











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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 15 


with her. Entire unselfishness in her objec- 
tives, vision in her plans, courage in their 
prosecution, and an optimism and cheerful- 
ness that carried her through discouragement 
and reverse. She is gone but her work will 
not be soon forgotten. California is the better 
for her life and her memory will be an in- 
spiration to all of us who came in contact 
with her. 
—R. W. Everett. 





TEACHERS SQUIRM UNDER SPEEDUP 
SYSTEM 


By Harold Z. Brown 


Federated Press 


Speedup—The Nemesis of unorganized la- 
bor in factory, mill and mine—has knocked 
professional boundary lines into a cocked hat 
and established itself as the biggest problem 
in life for many thousands of teachers in U. S. 
grade and high schools. 

That is the burden of recent statements by 
responsible officers of the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers, an A. F. of L. international. 
The fact that many of the teachers affected 
are college trained, while nearly all of them 
think themselves salaried professional men 
and women rather than wage workers, does 
not seem to make the situation less acute. The 
bleak truth is that American teachers are be- 
ing given a dose of the same stretchout that 
has provoked even Southern textile workers— 
probably the worst paid, lowest living group 
in U. S. industry—to revolt. 

A lengthened working day, steady increases 
in the size of classes and the number of classes 
each teacher must handle, and a growing num- 
ber of extra-curricular chores assigned to 
overworked pedagogues, are the way it is 
done, according to Pres. Henry R. Linville of 
New York Teachers’ Union, Local 5 of the 
A. F. T. 

“When the high schools were established,” 
Says the Union Teacher, monthly organ of the 
N. Y. local, “teachers taught 5 hours daily, 
arriving at about 8:40 a. m. and quitting at 
1:30 p. m. Later the time was increased to 
2 o’clock, then to 2:30 then to 2:45, and now 
to 3 p. m. or even later.” 


Altogether the teacher’s classroom day has 
been stretched 20 per cent by this process, the 
Union Teacher asserts. But not all of a teach- 
er’s work is done in the classroom. Every 
lengthening of the classroom day multiplies 
itself in additional clerical work, reports, ex- 
aminations, and preparation of classroom ma- 


‘terial which must be done by every teacher. 


These tasks stretched the teacher’s working 
day to eight full hours even when the class- 
room day was five hours, says Pres. Linville. 
Nowadays, he adds, “work every night in the 
week is typical of high school teachers.” The 
speedup tendency—apparent on a _ national 
scale—is actually cutting teachers’ wage rates 
by forcing them to do more and more work 
for the same money, he summed up. And 
now school board politicians, intent on saving 
a larger proportion of tax money for the pork 
barrel, are showing a lively interest in all- 
year-round schools, which if established would 
keep both teachers and pupils at the grind all 
year long. 

Another aspect of speeding up teachers is 
inevitable lowering of their efficiency as edu- 
cators, with accompanying bad effects on the 
children under their care. As long as 12 years 
ago Pres. Linville found 33 per cent of pupils 
from overcrowded high school classes drop- 
ping out during their first year. There is no 
doubt, he says, that the proportion has in- 
creased since that time. As the size of the 
average teacher’s pupil-load continues to 
mount, he now finds 32 per cent to 46 per cent 
of second year high school students taking 
courses “over”’—a second or third time. 

Finally, there is a steady increase in occu- 
pational disease among teachers as a result 
of the speedup system. Heart trouble is rap- 
idly coming to be the characteristic disease of 
teachers, says the American Teacher, monthly 
organ of the American Federation of Teach- 
ers. It quotes Dr. Frank Fischer of Seattle, 
who says: “. . . There is not the slightest 
doubt that this is traceable to the severe ex- 
actions imposed on their physical strength.” 
A Chicago doctor’s dictum that “If it were 
not for teachers, a good many of us doctors 
would have to find another occupation,” is 
also quoted. 








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16 , THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


“CIVILIZED BARBARISM” FOR GIRLS 


Military training in our schools and colleges is 
bad enough for boys, but what are we going to 
say when this abominable discipline is extended 
to girls? A nation would seem to be moving 
fast and far back into the regions of utter bar- 
barism when it takes its young women and at- 
tempts to turn them into a tribe of Amazons. 
And yet this is precisely what this country is 
undertaking to do in not a few of our so-called 
institutions of learning. As an example of what 
we mean, take the following story clipped from 
the Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald for No- 
vember 23, 1929: 

“THE GIRLS ARE IN THE ARMY NOW 
—NORTH HIGH GIRL PUPILS FORM 
CADET BATTALION AND WILL BE 
GIVEN RIFLES—ALL START AS PRI- 
VATES IN THE RANK—FACULTY AP- 
PROVES. 

A girl battalion that hopes to give the boys’ 
battalion at North High School some keen com- 
petition has been organized with 152 girls in the 
ranks, 


As yet no officers have been appointed, nor 
do the girl cadets have uniforms, but plans are 
being made to provide both within the near fu- 
ture. It is the first girl battalion to be organ- 
ized in an Omaha high school, and carries the full 
backing of the faculty. 


The girls plan to hold regular weekly drill 
just as the boys do, although during this semester, 
until the project is a little better organized, it 
will be conducted without rifles. Two cadet cap- 
tains will be in command.” 

This is a lovely exhibition for a civilized com- 
munity, isn’t it? Note how this movement for 
turning girls into soldiers carried “the full back- 
ing of the faculty” of the school in question. 
It had the full backing, also, of the War Depart- 
ment in Washington, we may be sure. Under 
existing law, to be sure, the War Department is 
unable officially to sponsor such a piece of savag- 
ery as this. But Congressman Collins was un- 
doubtedly correct when he said, in a recent speech 
in the House anent this incident, 

“The girls will probably be able to borrow the 
rifles used by the Reserve Officers Training Corps 
boys and occasionally borrow their best looking 
officers. After a few more years of boosting 


the military idea in this country, the ladies may 
receive further consideration.” 

Already they are receiving attention in our 
courts. For is not this arming of our young 
women for service in the next war the real ex- 
planation of the refusal of the courts to grant 
citizenship to such notable pacifist women as 
Rosika Schwimmer and Margaret Dorland 
Webb? Women must fight in this Christian age 
and country of ours, so willingness to fight must 
be a condition of citizenship! The only way to 
stop this villainous thing is to crush military train- 
ing as one would crush a snake. Wipe it out, 
root and branch! 

—Unity. 





POOLED EXPERIENCE 


Recognizing the bigness of a problem is one 
long step toward its solution. “How to Organ- 
ize: A Problem” offers in brief the findings of 
three conferences where men and women of 
knowledge and first-hand experience discussed a 
“new technique” in the organizing of women. 
The best thought of both leaders and rank and 
file has been gathered into this booklet, which 
reflects unsolved problems and encouraging ideas. 
It is put forth to stimulate trade union organizers 
(the wise and the inexperienced, the expert and 
the discouraged), to think about how better to 
do their job. 

Emphasis is laid upon quéstions, not answers: 
How to approach the employer, how to build up 
the best working relationship once the union is 
recognized, how to make the union operate as an 
economic machine for improving conditions— 
these and other questions are given careful con- 
sideration. 

On leadership, the contribution of one who 
knows something of its requirements is included: 
“A leader is one who strives earnestly to inform 
himself on all problems affecting his people, who 
tells them honestly what he sees, who plans and 
shows how to carry out those plans, who guides 
as well as commands.” 

“How to* Organize: A  Problem”—paper 
covered, 74 pages, can be obtained for ten cents 
net from the National Women’s Trade Union 
League of America at 311 South Ashland Boule- 
vard, Chicago, Illinois. 

—Life and Labor Bulletin. 








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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 17 


FEDERATION’S INJUNCTION 
PROPOSAL 


No more difficult or important problem has 
faced the American Federation of Labor during 
the past year than that of drafting a legislative 
proposal to remedy abuses of the injunction as 
ysed in labor disputes. Although it has been 
easy enough to recognize the problem it has been 
much more difficult to determine principles of 
relief. 

A great mass of injunctions have been granted 
under the conspiracy doctrine and the provisions 
of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act have been in- 
voked. In other cases equity powers were mis- 
applied or perverted. 

During the past year a special committee has 
been studying the question of injunction relief. 
The report of this committee, submitted to the 
Toronto Convention, was one of the most im- 
portant matters upon which the convention made 
decision. The committee recommended that a 
legislative proposal to amend or repeal the Sher- 
man, Clayton and other restrictive acts be pre- 
pared and submitted a draft measure dealing 
with the injunction. The proposal recognizes 
the established constitutional jurisdiction of 
equity, but it seeks to limit and prescribe pro- 
cedure for its application. 

Section 2 of the draft bill sets forth a declara- 
tion of public policy recognizing the necessity 
of according to wage-earners full freedom of 
trade-union organization, association, and the 
performance of union functions. 

Section 3 is to nullify yellow-dog contracts. 

Section 4 seeks to make the rights and func- 
tions of union effective by protecting them 
against injunctions. 

Section 5 protects unions against conspiracy 
doctrine. 

Section 6 limits liability for acts of unions or 
union representatives. 

Section 7 limits injunctions to cases in which 
the court finds: 


(a) That unlawful acts have been com- 
mitted and will be continued unless re- 
strained; and 

(b) That substantial and irreparable injury 
to complainant’s property will follow; 
and 

(c) That complainants have no adequate 
remedy at law; and 


(d) That the public officers charged with 
the duty to protect complainant’s prop- 
erty are unable or unwilling to furnish 
adequate protection. 

Procedure is stipulated and jury trial provided. 

The enactment of such a legislative proposal 
would prevent much of the injustice which has 
oppressed wage-earners and would enable them 
to further their interests in orderly ways. 





RADIO OWNED BY FEW; LABOR 
CROWDED OUT 

Radio broadcasting is too great a medium 
of mass communication to be used purely 
for entertainment purposes, Hope Thompson, 
counsel for Station WCFL, told a Senate com- 
mittee in explaining the futile efforts of la- 
bor’s broadcasting station to secure adequate 
radio facilities from the Federal Radio Com- 
mission. 

Station WCFL, owned and operated by 
Chicago Federation of Labor, is restricted to 
daylight operation. 

Mr. Thompson said the Chicago Federation 
of Labor and the A. F. of L. can not obtain a 
cleared channel and high power for this sta- 
tion to be used as the radio spokesman for 
labor, with educational programs the primary 
function. Since the Commission’s last denial 
of its application it has appealed to the Court 
of Appeals of the District of Columbia. The 
case is pending. 

“This field of communication should be kept 
from private domination,” said Mr. Thomp- 
son. “The person or group which controls 
radio broadcasting in the years to come will 
control the nation.” 

The powers that now have the choice fre- 
quencies, continued the witness, “are so in- 
fluential that I doubt that Congress will dare 
meet the situation.” 

“Radio reaches the hearthstones of nearly 
every American home. Why should it be used 
to sing ‘Old Pal’ all the time or pound the air 
with jazz music? This marvelcus power that 
can help the people is being prostituted.” 





The people who have no weaknesses are terrible; 
there is no way of taking advantage of them.—Anatole 
France. 








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il ee Aetna oe gh nek 


18 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


UNEMPLOYMENT 


By John H. Walker, President, Illinois 
State Federation of Labor 


Recently the President of the United States, 
Herbert Hoover said; “There is, to my mind, no 
economic failure so terrible in its import as that 
of a country possessing a surplus of every ne- 
cessity of life with numbers, willing and anxious 
to work, deprived of those necessities. It simply 
cannot be if our moral and economic system is 
to survive.” 


In view of our capacity to produce more than 
we need on the basis of present hours of labor 
per day, and days per week, with the very grave 
situation confronting us because of the large 
amount of unemployment, it should be driven 
home to employers, business men, all citizens, 
that when a legitimate public or private need 
in our country goes unsupplied now, the only 
result that takes place is, that the industries that 
would have supplied it, are thrown, unneces- 
sarily into costly idleness. No one profits by tt. 
The workers lose the employment and wages that 
would come from supplying those needs. The 
owners lose the profits that would come from 
the operation of the industries in producing those 
supplies. The transportation industry loses be- 
cause of their not having the opportunity to trans- 
port the raw materials and finished products; 
the business man loses the profit involved in 
handling those supplies, and the professional man 
loses the opportunity to sell his services to per- 
sons in need of them, but who, because of lack 
of finances, are unable to employ them. Thus, 
not alone the persons in want, suffer unneces- 
sarily, but every one else suffers because of those 
industries lying idle—everyone would have 
profited by supplying that need, besides relieving 
the need itself. 

This is true with reference to aged worthy 
people, widowed mothers with helpless children, 
and other worthy men and women who are dis- 
abled, or sick, as well as those who are seeking 
employment and cannot find it. It is also true 
with reference to public works or functions. 

There is no condition that can be more terrible 
than that of the needy unemployed, who are seek- 
ing in vain for employment. The president of 
the United States does not exaggerate the condi- 
tions in his statement; and for a large number 


of honest men and women with their helpless de. 
pendents to be left in this condition for a lon 
period, not only means suffering beyond descrip 
tion, but a moral breakdown for them, with dis. 
astrous consequences to the rest of society. 

No one can justify this condition in our coun. 
try. There can be no good reason assigned for 
it. It is utterly indefensible. Honest men o 
women seeking the opportunity to earn a living 
for themselves and their dependents by hones 
labor, should not be denied that opportunity, 
This situation is a challenge, particularly to thos 
who have been opposing the organization of 
workers—those folks who are responsible for the 
workers themselves having been prevented from 
working out a solution of this problem. It is, 
or should be, on their conscience. Anti-union 
employers, anti-union business men, professional 
men, and those who, while they may not have 
been actively opposed to the workers’ organiza- 
tion, were indifferent, should all feel a sense of 
responsibility in this matter and should leave 
nothing undone that they can think of, to remedy 
this condition. It is particularly an obligation on 
those who claim to represent the Carpenter of 
Nazareth, to relieve this suffering, because it is 
the helpless and innocent, who are not responsible 
for the conditions that obtain, that are suffering 
the most. 

Every pulpit should be proclaiming the in- 
justice of this condition, the great wrong that 
is being perpetrated on these people, should be 
suggesting remedies for it, urging that those 
remedies be applied, doing everything that lies 
in its power, to bring about a cure for this ter- 
rible evil. 





Without the union all labor would still be the 
victim of the long day, the insufficient wage and 
kindred injustices. Under the present organiza- 
tion of society, labor’s only safeguard against a 
retrogression to former inhuman standards is the 
union.—Commission on Social Justice, Central 
Conference of American Rabbis. 





As long as nations meet on the fields of war—as long 
as they sustain the relations of savages to each other— 
as long as they put the laurel and the oak on the brows 
of those who kill—just so long will citizens resort 1 
violence, and the quarrels be settled by dagger and 
revolver.—Robert G. Ingersoll. 





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THE AMERICAN 


MARION MILL BOSS GETS USURER’S 
PROFITS IN COUPON GRAFT 
AT HIS STORE 
By Gilbert E. Hyatt 

Marion, N. C.—(FP)—A highly interesting 
aftermath of the successful efforts of Pres. 
R. W. Baldwin of the Marion Mfg. Co. to con- 
yict Alfred Hoffmann, United Textile Work- 
ers’ Organizer and three strikers, Lawrence 
Hogan, Wes Fowler and Del Lewis is the 
revelation of a widespread system of discount- 
ing his employes’ credit at the company store. 

Evidence of this system came to light while 
Baldwin’s attorneys, as “assistants” to Solic- 
itor J. Will Pless, were moving heaven and 
earth against Hoffmann and his associates. 
It is carried on with the knowledge of the 
mill supervisors and is so well recognized as 
to have an established discount rate of 25% 
although the needs of the workers occasionally 
makes possible the exaction of an even higher 
usury. 

The system is: After hiring out, a worker 
receives no pay for two weeks. One week’s 
pay is always held back. But those unable to 
support themselves for two weeks, and they 
constitute the great majority, are allowed to 
buy coupon books, against their wages, of 
$1, $2, $4 and $5 good at the company store. 

This store carries supplies of “fatback” 
bread, canned goods, cowfeed and dry goods 
of a quality within the very limited means of 
the workers. 

The coupon books are conspicuously 
marked as nontransferable and bear the name 
of the employe to whom issued and the date. 
The policy is to keep the coupons from being 
used as ready money, so if anything is wanted 
which is not carried in stock, the company 
will buy it from an uptown store and check 
the amount against wages or tear out the sum 
from the coupon book. 

After the workers had repeatedly asserted 
that this traffic existed and that several of the 
mill overseers and bosses practiced it, an in- 
vestigation was made which more than con- 
firmed their charges. This investigation was 
conducted in company with Sec. William 
Smith of the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers. 

A book was purchased by a strikebreaker 
from one of his fellow workers within six feet 


TEACHER 19 


of the cashier’s window for $1.50 and sold to 
us for its face value of $2. This strikebreaker 
said that it was his regular practice to pur- 
chase a sufficient number of books to cover 
his weekly store bill. 

A storekeeper in the mill village was next 
visited. He stated that he did not make a 
regular practice of purchasing books but that, 
in spite of the fact that the company store 
was a formidable rival, he occasionally helped 
mill workers among his customers when in 
dire need of ready money. The prices at the 
company store were, he said, so high that he 
could make no profit by purchasing goods for 
resale, even with the 25% discount. He had, 
however, held as much as $40 worth of cou- 
pons at one time. 

A second storekeeper confirmed these state- 
ments by acknowledging the occasional pur- 
chase of books as an accommodation to pov- 
erty stricken customers. Another merchant, 
a general dealer whose dingy store contained 
a curious collection of odds and ends, exhibited 
a number of books which, he said, he had in- 
duced workers to purchase and turn in for 
bad debts. He only practiced this discount- 
ing, he claimed, as a means of collection be- 
cause of the high prices in the company store. 

A former mill worker, now on strike, vol- 
unteered the information that he had lent his 
“bossmen” money with which to purchase 
these books. A superannuated mill hand was 
the next to furnish information. He had be- 
gun the purchase of books, he said, to augment 
his inadequate income but had drifted into 
it as a regular business after being compelled 
to quit work because of ill health. His regular 
purchases ranged up to as high as $25 or $30 in 
one day. 

CHILD LABOR LAW NEEDED 

“No great economic harm would result if every child 
under 16 yaers of age was withdrawn from the nation’s 
wage-earning class,” declared Wiley H. Swift of the 
National Child Labor Committee. 

“Such withdrawal, in view of the large number of 
unemployed, would do much good,” said Mr. Swift. 
He agreed that this policy would often run counter 
to necessity, but these are exceptions, and must be 
treated as emergencies, he said. 








That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our 
true good and the true reward of its possessor.— 


Da Vinci. 





20 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


SOUTHERN ORGANIZATION 
CAMPAIGN 


In conformity with the action of the Toronto 
Convention of the American Federation of 
Labor, an intensive organization campaign of the 
southern workers was launched in Charlotte, 
North Carolina, on January sixth. 

About 250 people were present, representing 
practically every International Union and State 
Federation of Labor. The serious-minded pur- 
pose with which this organization drive was being 
undertaken was strikingly evident. 

The first session was opened by T. A. Wilson, 
president of the North Carolina State Federa- 
tion of Labor. President Green, in a most elo- 
quent and inspiring address, outlined the policies 
and plans of the Federation, giving a significant 
and straightforward analysis of the philosophy of 
the American Labor Movement. 

He said, 

“We feel that if the people want to organize 
into trade unions of the American Federation of 
Labor their right shall not be denied them. We 
are here in response to the call of the men and 
women in the mills and workshops of the South 
to help them and the community as well. We 
are not preaching revolutionary destruction, but 
we are here to lay down plans not only for the 
benefit of the working men, but for business and 
for every organization that goes to make up the 
life of the community and society.” In closing he 
said, “We want to show this is no mere gesture, 
but a great crusade on behalf of a great move- 
ment.” 

The opening meeting was also addressed by 
Frank Morrison, Secretary, and Matthew Woll, 
Vice-President of the American Federation of 
Labor. 

The afternoon session was addressed by the 
presidents of the Southern State Federations of 
Labor, George L. Googe, president of the Savan- 
nah Trades and Labor Assembly, Matilda Lind- 
say, Southern Representative for the National 
Women’s Trade Union League and Florence 
Curtis Hanson, secretary-treasurer of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers. 

At the evening session many of the organizers 
and officers present pledged the fullest coopera- 
tion and support to the campaign. 

Birmingham, Alabama, was chosen as the head- 


quarters of the southern campaign because it lies 
very near the center of the entire southern sectioy 
and is accessible from all directions of the South 
The Directing Committee to have charge of this 
office and to have the responsibility of carrying 
through the plans consists of the following mem. 
bers: Paul J. Smith of the United Mine Worker; 
of America and an organizer for the American 
Federation of Labor; W. C. Birthright, Vice. 
President of the Journeymen Barbers Interna- 
tional Union and Secretary of the Tennesse 
State Federation of Labor; and Francis J. Gor. 
man, First Vice-President of the United Textile 
Workers of America. After the adjournment 
of the conference, this committee left for Bir. 
mingham immediately to organize the headquar- 
ters and get the work under way. 

The first developments in the campaign in- 
cluded a visit by President Green to a number of 
Southern cities: Birmingham (Alabama), on 
January 20; Memphis (Tennessee), on the 21st, 
then Nashville and Knoxville (Tennessee), Ashe- 
ville (North Carolina), Elizabethton (Tennes- 
see), and Richmond (Virginia). This will com- 
plete the first series, but he will return to the 
South at a later date. 

The textile industry in the South is the major 
consideration in these southern organization 
plans, but all other groups are included. It isa 
general organization drive. The right of the 
worker to belong to a trade union is the leading 
principle in the campaign and for the establish- 
ment of this principle for the workers in every 
industry in the South, all groups of workers are 
striving. 

That Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, 
was a fitting locality for the declaration of an 
industrial independence, since it was the scene of 
America’s first declaration of independence, was 
pertinently pointed out by President Green. 





THE NON-UNIONISTS 


Visitor at lunatic asylum to keeper: 
lunatics have you here?” 


“How many 


Keeper: “About seven hundred and fifty.” 

Visitor: “And how many keepers?” 

Keeper: “Twelve.” 

Visitor: “Are you not afraid that the lunatics will 


organize, and being combined overcome you?” 
Keeper, with a smile: “Lunatics never organize.” 


Told at Teachers Union Banquet in Chicago by T. V. 
Sullivan, Attorney Chicago Board of Education. 








wi 


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_— - = 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 21 


WOMEN AGAIN QUESTION CAUSE 
AND CURE OF WAR 


Three hundred women, delegates and visi- 
tors from eleven national organizations, 
opened their fifth annual conference on The 
Cause and Cure of War at the Washington 
Hotel, Washington, D. C., Jan. 14, under the 
direction of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt. The 
eleven organizations include the Nationai 
League of Woman Voters, the National 
Women’s Trade Union League, the American 
Association of University Women, and vari- 
ous religious, welfare and mission groups. 

Their first action was the adoption of two 
resolutions previously endorsed at many local 
and state gatherings. These were a message to 
the London Naval Conference and an appeal 
to President Hoover and the Senate for ratifi- 
cation of American entry into the World 
Court. 

In the message to the London Conference 
the assertion is made that this conference of 
women speaks for a combined membership 
representing one-fifth of the adult women in 
the United States and that the delegates there- 
fore speak confidently for public opinion. 

“It is our firm belief,” the message runs, 
“that the majority of the population in the 
United States is in steadfast agreement with 
the Paris Pact renouncing war, and they are 
prepared to acclaim and support all acts of 
the Conference which meet with their expec- 
tations. 

“We therefore entreat the honorable dele- 
gates not to stay their deliberations until ef- 
fective means have been found to relieve the 
citizens of the Great Powers from the enor- 
mous and burdensome cost of the building 
and maintenance of naval armament no longer 
required, to reduce naval armament among 
the Great Powers to a point so low that ow 
own and other nations may feel secure against 
attack, to end forever the competition in naval 
building among the Great Powers, and thus 
to bring the relations of these Powers into 
more genuine accord with the principles of 
the General Pact for the Renunciation of 
War.” 

Miss Rose Schneiderman president of the 
National Women’s Trade Union League, pre- 
sided at the final session, Jan. 17, when 


spokesmen for France, Great Britain, Japan, 
Germany and the United States answered 
the questions—How far is the peace question 
woman’s responsibility, and how many women 
be an effective force in the general movement? 





WORLD-MINDEDNESS IN ASSEMBLY 
PROGRAMS 


Two series of programs adapted for high 
school assembly and class room use have been 
prepared by Rachel Davis Du Bois, M.A., 
Columbia University, for the purpose of 
equipping the student with a fuller knowledge 
and appreciation of other races and national- 
ities. These programs were given by the au- 
thor before her own school and are entirely 
practical. 

Series I— THE CONTRIBUTION OF 
DIFFERENT RACIAL AND NATIONAL 
ELEMENTS TO AMERICAN LIFE (price 
10c) takes up a different racial group or coun- 
try for each month, wtih suggestions, includ- 
ing bibliography, for study of its peculiar in- 
fluence on art, literature, music, science, his- 
tory, etc. February, for instance, with Lin- 
coln’s birthday, is selected for emphasis on 
the gifts of the Negro; October, because of 
Columbus Day, for the Italians. 

Series II— EDUCATION IN WORLD- 
MINDEDNESS (price 10c) presents as 
monthly topics various phases of culture, such 
as language, science, the dance, mathematics, 
government, etc., tracing the contribution of 
each to world unity. 

Both Series I and II may be obtained upon 
receipt in stamps of the price stated from 
the Women’s International League, Pennsyl- 
vania Branch, 1924 Chestnut Street Philadel- 
phia, Pa. 





The Committee on Militarism in Education has pub- 
lished the facts on methods used to popularize the war 
idea among students, in.a pamphlet replete with pictures 
and quotations. One such picture shows a natty girl 
officer, dressed in a uniform of cap, jacket, breeches, 
boots, spurs and military cape, ‘presenting arms’ with 
her saber to Maj. Gen. Summerall, while he says: “No 
wonder the Creighton R. O. T. C. is such a well-drilled 
unit,” as he reviews the cadets at the Omaha school. 





—* 
+ 


To have what we want is riches, but to be able to 
do without is power—Ramsay MacDonald. 








22 


PROPOSED PENSION LEGISLATION IN 
NEW YORK 

The teachers of the Retirement Board and 
a cooperating committee of the Pension Del- 
egates have prepared four pension bills to 
protect the rights of the teachers. These bills 
have been introduced into the legislature by 
Senator Samuel H. Hofstadter and Assembly- 
man Abbot L. Moffatt who handled our bill 
to eliminate the Death-bed gamble. The bills 
provide for the following changes and should 
receive the fullest support of our members: 

The first bill amends section 1091l-a and 
empowers the Board of Examiners to grant 
credit not only for professional educational 
experience but also for non-teaching experi- 
ence whether in the industrial or mercantile 
or vocational field. The bill also enables the 
Retirement Board in computing prior service 
to make the following allowances: 

1. For all city service—full credit. 

2. For Present Teachers: (a) For all teach- 
ing and supervising service in schools and 
colleges not run by the city of New York. 

(b) For all service allowed by the Board 
of Examiners whether trade or professional 
under section 1091-a. 

(c) For any service rendered by a regular 
teacher for which the Board of Examiners has 
established an eligible list. 

3. For New Entrants: (a) Credit not to 
exceed fifteen years for service in schools and 
colleges outside of New York City. 

(b) Credit for non-teaching service, as 
above allowed for non-teaching service under 
section 1091-a. 

(c) Credit for teaching and supervising 
service for which the Board of Examiners has 
established an eligible list. 

4. Prior Service: Credit may be given for 
vocational service, for continuous teaching 
service of at least twelve weeks in public 
schools or per annum service allowed by the 
Board of Examiners. The bill further allows 
non-teaching service allowed by the Board of 
Examiners. 

The second bill amends section 1091-b and 
validates all credit allowed by the Board of 
Examiners including credit for non-teaching 
service thus making impossible the removal 
of such credit already allowed in the prior 


THE AMERICAN 


TEACHER 
service certificates and validates most of ty M2" 
prior service certificates already issued exce 
illegal grants, thereby giving stability to th The 
pension law. Associ 
The third bill amends the definition of thAme™ 
words “present teacher” so as to include thog O . 


persons who were in the system on the firgat the 
day of August, 1917, and contributed to th speake 
pension system and subsequently resigneg the W 
from the school system. If such teacher floret 
afterward re-enter the service they may hgthe A 
classified as present teachers with the samq large 
rights and privileges as to rates of deduction} tion 4 
prior service credit, death benefit, etc. Ap 

The fourth bill amends section Y of th under 
Retirement Law giving to public school teach 
ers the same right enjoyed by the teachers oj 
the College of the City of New York; that is 
the right to retire after thirty years on th: 
basis of a fractional instead of an actuarial 
equivalent which is so small as to be useless 
to the teachers. Under this amendment if 2} ec@¥ 
sick or worn out teacher seeks to retire they that 
will receive 30/35, 31/35 etc., of the pension} hour 


HA! 


Ari 
schoo! 
than ! 














they would have been entitled to after thirty- Th 
five years of service—a very substantial in- there 
crease. The 

: Decerr 

THE Union TEacuer, New York City. light 

an em 

The 

DO YOU KNOW of the 

1. That more than a million children in the |} Methc 
United States under 16 years are gainfully em- ‘I 

ployed, and a third of these are 13 years or |} Minin 

under? emplo 
2. That 1,400,000 children between the ages cents 

of 7 and 14 are not attending school? strain 

3. That 11 states do not require a certificate The 

of physical fitness as a condition for employ- |] in 19 

ment? the w 

4. That over 52,000 children are employed in |} of of 

manufacturing in states which still permit them news] 

to work more than 48 hours a week? Decet 

5. That 21 states permit 14-year-old children 

to run elevators, and 15 permit them to oil, wipe “nT, 

and clean machinery in motion. on s] 

“The future of any nation depends upon the we c 

molding of the minds and bodies of the younger phon 

generation.”—Theodore Roosevelt. centa 

— De 

great 

A sound discretion is not so much indicated keep’ 
by never making a mistake as by never repeat J age. 


ing it. 





THE AMERICAN 





of 4) MILWAUKEE VOCATIONAL TEACHERS, 
al LOCAL 212 


0 thy The Milwaukee Vocational School Teachers 
Association affiliated as Local 212 of the 
yf typAmerican Federation of Teachers in January. 
thog On January 25 a luncheon meeting was held 
. firgat the New Randolph Hotel, at which the 
o thyspeakers were Henry Ohl, Jr., president of 
igneg the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor, and 
cher Florence Curtis Hanson, secretary-treasurer of 
y tthe American Federation of Teachers. A 
sam4 large number of teachers joined the Associa- 
‘tionf tion at this meeting. 
A program of remedial legislation is already 
: ; under way. 
ach 
‘sof HARVARD UNIVERSITY OUSTS 37-CENT 
at i WOMEN 


th: Aristocratic Harvard University, the richest 
school in America, with an endowment of more 
Jesq than $90,000,000, discharged 20 cleaning women 
if | because the State Minimum Wage Board asked 
hey| that their wages be increased from 35 cents an 
sion| hour to 37 cents. 

The women were replaced by men for whom 
there are no minimum wage requirements. 

The dismissals, some on November 1 and some on 
December 21, the Saturday before Christmas, came to 
light when two of the women applied for work at 
an employment office. 

“| The discharges were confirmed by President Lowell 
of the university in a letter to Rev. William H. Duvall, 
e || Methodist Episcopal clergyman at East Cambridge. 

. “I find,” said President Lowell, “that the State 
r |f Minimum Wage Board has been complaining of our 
employing women for these purposes at less than 37 
cents an hour and hence the university has felt con- 
strained to replace them with men.” 

) The minimum wage law for women was enacted 
in 1912. The only penalty for failure to comply with 
the wage board’s decisions is publication of the names 
of offending employers in the advertising columns of 
newspapers. The board made the 37-cent rate on 
December 30, 1920, effective the following February. 








“Today we are traveling in high-powered automobiles, 
on speedy trains, by steamboat and even in airplanes; 
we communicate with distant points by telegraph, tele- 
Phone and radio, but only a comparatively small per- 
centage of our schools have made equal progress. 

Despite the fact that the past 25 years have seen a 
great improvement in school practices, education is not 
keeping pace with the scientific developments of our 
age. The result is enormous waste and loss.” 

—Representative Daniel R. Reed of New York. 





Bote 





TEACHER 23 


WHY I AM A MEMBER OF THE 
TEACHER’S UNION 


Joun Dewey, Professor of Philosophy, Colum- 
bia University 
I am a member of the Teachers Union for 
the following reasons, among others: 
(1) I think it essential, in order to develop 
a genuine professional spirit, that every 
teacher have the sense of solidarity with 
other members of his profession. 
(2) Because in the present state of affairs, 
organized cooperation is the most effective 
means for securing the public attention and 
respect, without which the cause of educa- 
tion cannot progress. 
(3) The economic basis of education is so 
marked, and there are so many economic 
interests attempting to employ the schools 
for other ends, that it is important that 
teachers recognize the interest which they 
have in common with workers in all 
branches. 
JosepH K. Hart, Professor of Education, Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin 
I am a member of the Teachers Union 
because the whole domain of education and 
schooling must be re-examined today by 
realistic and critical thinkers who will not 
be afraid of either economic or sentimental 
bugaboos, and who will eventually compel 
the public to listen to what they have to 
say. Such thinkers must, for the most part, 
be in the schools. They must have the sup- 
port of at least some school people, and 
their tenure of position and their right to 
speak must be defended by school people. I 
am, in the Union because I want to do what 
I can to support and defend this critically 
realistic program. I may add that the Union 
is the only organization to which I now 
belong. 
E. C. LinpeMan, Professor of Social Psychol- 
ogy, New York School of Social Work 
I am a member of the Teachers Union 
because I believe thoroughly in collective 
action. In modern communities power re- 
sides in groups, not individuals; the indi- 
vidual becomes significant in proportion to 
his loyal activity in a functional group. The 
Teachers Union is such a group and there- 
fore deserves my loyalty. 








24 





BOOKS 


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











THe New EpbucaTION IN THE GERMAN REPuB- 
Lic: By Thomas Alexander and Beryl 
Parker, published by the John Day Com- 
pany, New York, 1929. 374 pp. Price, 
$4.00. 

As stated in the Preface, this book is not a 
detailed exposition of the entire system of 
Education in the German Republic. But it is 
a replete, attractive view of the spirit of this 
education by authors who are evidently well 
acquainted with Education in Germany both 
before and since the World War. 

The “new” education in Germany is not 
new, not even a graft, but is a growth, an evo- 
lution, which has been progressing since 1880 
or earlier. The two striking German traits, 
idealism and scientific, ponderous exactitude, 
are prominent. 

There are a number of outstanding features 
in the German plan of Education. Among 
some of the more prominent are the following 
First: at the end of the first four years of 
schooling, further work is dependent upon the 
desires of the parents, the abilities of the child 
and the judgments of his teachers. Tests are 
given to determine whether or not the child 
has the ability to profit from further school 
work. If his regular daily education ceases at 
this point he must attend ConrinuATION 
ScHoots until the age of eighteen. (This 
cessation of educational work at the close of 
the first four years, while it doubtless does 
save money for the government, must result 
in a lowering of the general educational equip- 
ment of the masses. It certainly is in strong 
contrast with the system in the United States 
where an eighth grade education is the very 
least that will satisfy.) 

SeconpD: Co-education is not favored. (This 
is a peculiar situation due, doubtless, to 
a persistence of the German attitude toward 
woman as a Hausfrau. In Soviet Russia co- 
education is stressed as one of the means of 
bringing about real equality of the sexes.) 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Tuirp: The training of the teacher, even 
the elementary school teacher, is on the Uni- 
versity level. (This certainly is a step in the 
right direction. There are a number of cities 
in the United States, unfortunately all too few, 
that make such requirements for their teach- 
ers.) 

lourtH: The ideas, practices, and spirit 
of Lichtwark, as he developed them in his 
Hamburg School, are enthusiastically set 
forth by the authors as guides to modern prac- 
tice in German schools. 

l'irtH: Teachers in Germany control the 
schools. There are no principals. Instead, 
teacher groups direct the work and there is 
practically no supervision. This results in 
true individual instruction and in tolerance of 
both the old and the new—both the tried and 
the untried in method. Real experimentation 
is going on. 

StxtH: <A_ system of Country Homes 
for city schools has been developed. What 
were formerly the estates of royalty are now 
being used by the schools of a given district 
much as we employ fresh air farms. In addi- 
tion to fostering the landloving and the 
“Fatherland” sides of German youth these 
schools also afford relaxation from the strife of 
the city. 

At a time when the entire educational sys; 
tem of both the Federal and -local governments 
is being closely scrutinized and criticized it 
certainly is worth while to pause and consider 
some of the new ideas that dominate German 
education. Especially striking is the follow- 
ing quotation: 

“We cannot be indifferent to the state of 
mind of the teacher, especially when it de- 
pends upon him alone whether the school of 
the twentieth century shall continue to be a 
burden in pupils’ lives or whether it shall be loved 
by children and the parents who send their off- 
spring thither. . All school reforms stand 
or fall with the teacher. The best curriculum can- 
not give him wings ;.the worst cannot restrict him 
altogether. The kernel of his success lies in the 
vital force which he develops in his pupils. 
Thus Lichtwark voiced his plea for profes- 
sional equality and a release of the creative 
power of the individual teacher who had been 
stifled by officialdom. Teachers cannot learn 


how t 
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THE AMERICAN 


how to attain the goals by rules and methods. 
One may prepare for instruction day by day 
but not for the exercise of the educative in- 
fluence. All school reforms should begin with 
the selection and education of teachers.” 

This quotation should cause us to think. 
What are we doing in the United States to 
insure that the teachers are being prepared 
properly? Should there be standardized prep- 
aration regardless of the community the 
teacher is planning to serve? What about 
University training for Every teacher? How 
would you, as a teacher, like to take over 
the control of your school and be responsible 
for it—without any principal? Is that a more 
democratic way to operate a school, or should 
we retain principals? A number of other in- 
teresting problems will present themselves to 
the mind of the reader. 

Certainly, in view of the frightened state of 
mind that some Boards of Education take 
pains to create in the minds of their teachers, 
the principles adopted in Germany’s educa- 
tional system might profitably be read—and 
adopted. 

M. L. Gronert. 





LABOR IS SPEAKING ... 
“The vast majority of workers speak of 


Jesus Christ and the Church as two separate 

entities, because they believe in Jesus Christ 

and His teachings, yet find little of the spirit 
of the Brotherhood of Man in actual prac- 
tice in the Church today.” 

These are frank words from Arthur O. Whar- 
ton, President of the American Association of 
Machinists, one of the most intelligent and power- 
ful of American labor organizations. The note 
which he sounds recurs throughout this important 
new book, in which the views and opinions of 
the foremost labor spokesmen of the world today 
are collected. 

LABOR SPEAKS FOR ITSELF ON RELIGION 


A Symposium of Labor Leaders Throughout the 
World, Edited with an Introduction by 
Jerome Davis 


Why is the Church held in such low esteem 
by the men who are guiding labor toward a new 
and better day in the social order? Why do they 
say, almost without exception, the Church needs 
anew social program to be saved? 


TEACHER 25 


That such questions should be asked at all 
ought to make you pause and think—about the 
Church, about your own congregation, about the 
attitude which you now hold. That they should 
be asked in such blunt language by men who 
really represent the voice of millions is enough 
to jar the foundations of religion as it is organized 
and practiced today. 

For this is labor’s coming age. A Labor Gov- 
ernment sits in the seat of the mighty in Great 
Britain. Communist Labor rules Russia. Ma- 
hatma Gandhi organizes the hordes of India. The 
American Labor movement, a bit quiescent since 
the death of Samuel Gompers, shows the begin- 
ning of a new militant regime. Labor everywhere 
is increasing in numbers, power, and influence. 

In consequence, if you, as a spiritual leader of 
this age, ignore what labor leaders are now think- 
ing and saying openly, the Church will be pay- 
ing for your complacency in the face of a mighty 
challenge centuries from now. The New York 
Times, a conservative of conservatives, is con- 
vinced that :— 

“Ministers and church leaders of all sects 
will do well to read what this book has to 
say, for it is very likely that few of them 
have any idea of what has been going on in 
the minds of labor leaders and their followers 
in this matter ° 

“Here they can find out both the what and 
the why of that thinking . . . 

“In short there is, in this little book, 
enough dynamite to give to think furiously, 
not only churchmen, but also sociologists 
and men and women of other ‘ists’ who like 
to think about and build toward the fu- 
ture Pas 
LazBor SPEAKS FOR ITSELF ON RELIGION is a 

book you cannot afford to ignore. Size, 12 mo., 

265 pages, Red cloth binding, Price $2.00. The 

—— Company, 65 Fifth Ave., New York 
ity. 





“Saturday and Sunday—Assets or Liabilities” is the 
topic of the current issue of CHILD STUDY which is 
dated December, 1929. 

Mrs. Zilpha Carruthers Franklin of the Editorial staff 
of CHILD STUDY writes on what to do in the hours 
when one does not “have to do” anything. In this num- 
ber LeRoy E. Bowman, Secretary of the City Recrea- 
tion Committee of New York, contributes an article 
on “The Play World of the City Child.” The resources 








26 


for recreation offer a child challenging opportunities 
for coming to terms with the world he must live in. 
They are becoming increasingly part of the city’s re- 
sources for education, meaning, by education, develop- 
ment in individual abilities and in social adjustment. 
The nursery school, kindergarten and play school may 
prove not only the most wholesome but also, when 
once they are generally understood, the most practicable 
ways of giving children their chance to play in the city. 

Bernard J. Fagan, Chief Probation Officer, Children’s 
Court; School of Social Service, Fordham University, 
writes on “Safeguarding Children’s Leisure.” 

Ethel Puffer Howes, Director of the Institute for the 
Coordination of Women’s Interests, Smith College, 
writes on “Home—A Project.” 

Mrs. Robert E. Simon, President, Horace Mann Par- 
ent-Teacher Association, makes a contribution on 
“Week-Ends to Fit the Family.” There are many other 
features including Parents’ Questions, news notes in the 
field, etc. 

For months the Children’s Book Committee has been 
at work reviewing the 1929 books for children. This 
December number carries an annotated list of a selec- 
tion of the year’s best books for children. There is 
also a department on toys which should be very,helpful 
to parents, friends and relatives in making their selec- 
tion of gifts. The good toy or plaything is one which 
the child will go back to, if not on the same day, on 
another—with renewed interest. There are certain es- 
sentials in well chosen toys. They should be sturdy, 
suitable to the age and ability of the child, adaptable 
for varied play, and attractive in design and color. It 
is through play with toys that the child is stimulated to 
the use of his hands, his body, his imagination and his 
mind. Every child’s toy collection should be varied 
enough to satisfy these possibilities for growth, and to 
that end there should be toys for physical exercise and 
outdoor play; dramatic and imitative play; manipulative 
and creative play, and games for socialization and skill. 
This very useful list has been compiled by Mrs. Edith 
London Boehm. 





FARMER GETS $669 A YEAR FOR HIS 
LABOR 
By Grace Hutchins 


: Federated Press 
Depression that has held the farmers, par- 


ticularly the rain farmers, in its grip for three 
full years hangs black and heavy over the farm 
family, now averaging only $669 a year in dis- 
posable income. Present falling prices of wheat 
bushels in the Chicago market only call attention 
to a steady decline in grain prices from 1925 to 
1929. 

What the decline in purchasing power of farm 
products means even to the moderately prosper- 
ous farm family is explained by an agricultural 
economist, Ellis Lore Kirkpatrick of the U. S. 


THE AMERICAN 


TEACHER 


Department of Agriculture in a book called The 
Farmer’s Standard of Living.* “The farmer's 
cry of the disparity between what he gets and 
what he pays” is analyzed by this government 
expert in every statistical detail, but he politely 
regrets the “general outpouring of gloom over 
the financial side of farming.” 

While this professional optimist talks about 
assisting 6,000,000 farm families engaged in the 
greatest industry of the nation “to find more 
of the real satisfaction of farming and farm 
life,’ another division in the Department of 
Agriculture calculates the reward per family for 
labor and management as $669 for the year 1928- 
29, compared with $691 in 1925-26. 

“The season’s returns represent an average 
income per farm operator available for labor, 
capital and management of $901 compared with 
$896 in 1927-28 and $922 in 1925-26. If a con- 
servative interest allowance is made for the op- 
erator’s net capital investment, there is indicated 
a reward for the operator’s labor and manage- 
ment of $669.” 

Yearly returns for the farmer’s labor, as cal- 
culated by the federal department, were as 
follows: 

Reward, per farm family, for labor and man- 
agement. 

Income 


available for 
capital, labor and on net capital in- 


Interest allowance Reward for 
labor and 


Year management vestment perfarm management 
1925-26 $922 $231 $691 
1926-27 862 226 636 
1927-28 896 228 668 
1928-29 901 232 669 


Another index of. the farmer’s situation is the 
relative purchasing power of his product, when 
the price he receives for his goods is compared 
with the retail price of the commodities he buys. 
The following figures give this index, with the 
average prices of 1910-1914 as a base: 
Relative purchasing 
power of farmer’s 1925 1926 1927 1928 
product. 92 87 85 85 

“Tn some localities,” comments the Hoover re- 
port on Recent Economic Changes, “farmers 
have been constrained to work longer hours and 
use more labor of women and children in the 
hope that a larger output might offset the un- 
satisfactory unit price of their product.” Yet 
overproduction of wheat and other farm prod- 
ucts is one of the causes of falling prices. 


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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 27 


Translated into human terms, these figures 
mean in the words of one farmwoman who 
wrote in to the Department of Agriculture, “we 
have to work 12 to 13 hours a day to make a 
jving. I think I might almost as soon have been 
in jail, because the work is so hard and is never 
done.” 


nl e 


*The Farmer’s Standard of Living, by Ellis Lore 
Kirkpatrick. Century Co., New York, 1929. $2.00. 





THE Quest For Certainty: By John Dewey, 
Minton, Balch & Company, New York. 
318 pp. $4.00. 

“The Quest for Certainty” most certainly is 
a book for teachers. But do not be intrigued 
by this! You will find the reading of ‘t dif- 
fcult—but valuable. Dewey certainly man- 
ages to dress up his ideas in the most abstract 
and technical language that one can imagine. 
Of course, this is necessary in any attempt to 
be exact in language because of the many con- 
notations that our words have come to pos- 
sess. However, it is well worth the time of 
the reader who is willing to make allowance 
for its difficulty. 

John Dewey was recently ranked with Soc- 
rates, Plato, Jesus, and Herbart as one of the 
philosophers who have interested themselves 
in practical education. What does Dewey 
think of Education as it is today? He says of 
it that “inculcations of fixed conclusions rather 
than development of intelligence as a method 
of action still dominates its processes.” Fur- 
thermore, he says of its results, “If men had 
been educated to think about broader humane 
values as they have now learned to think about 
matters which fall within the scope of the 
technical arts, our whole present situation 
would be very different.” 

So much to awaken us, the teachers, to our 
need to quest with him towards certainty in 
our field. But make no mistake—this is no 
text in educational methods. Here are the 
ideas, beliefs, certainties of the Dewey of three 
score and ten, and of international fame and 
honor. 

This review is from the point of view, not 
of the philosopher or the literary critic, but 
from that of a teacher-reader. Forewarned as 
the teachers are in this review it is hoped that 


they may be stimulated to browse through the 
book for further reading and contacts with 
this greatest of educators. With this idea in 
mind it seems proper to use the essay form in 
setting forth some of Dewey’s ideas in this 
book that would be valuable for teachers. 


Or Screntiric Metuops: The quest for 
certainty becomes the search for methods of 
control; that is, regulation of conditions of 
change with respect to their consequences. 
Knowledge consists of the ability to establish 
changed conditions and to be able to predict 
what the results of those changes will be. 
Knowledge thus becomes a method of control. 
Extent of control is dependent upon the capac- 
ity to link connected series of correlatcd 
changes so that each linked pair leads on to 
another. Scientific method is, in reality, a 
technique for making a productive use of 
doubt. 


Or ReEvoLuTION IN THINKING: The re- 
markable difference which accepts objects of 
ordinary perception, use, and enjoyment as 
final, as culminations of natural processes and 
that which takes them as starting points for 
reflection and investigation, is one which 
reaches far beyond the technicalities of sci- 
ence. It marks a revolution in the whole spirit 
of life, in the entire attitude toward whatever 
is found in existence. When the things that 
exist around us are regarded as interrogations 
for which an answer must be sought, nature 
as it already exists ceases to be something 
which must be accepted and submitted to, en- 
dured or enjoyed, just as it is. It is now 
something to be modified—to be intentionally 
controlled. Nature, as it exists at any partic- 
ular time, is a challenge rather than a com- 
pletion. 

Or Sympots: The invention of symbols, 
of which words are an example, is the single 
greatest event in history. They render per- 
formance of experiments possible with results 
so symbolized that we are not committed to 
consequences. Without symbols no intellect: 
ual advance is possible; with them, there is 
no limit set to intellectual development ex- 
cept inherent stupidity. 

Or Ipeas Versus Action: Of all philo- 
sophical problems that which concerns the 








28 


nature and worth of ideas is probably the 
one that most readily appeals to the cultivated 
mind. Men are wont to pay tribute to 
thought and its powers. Materialism is re- 
garded as sordid because of its depression of 
thought, which is treated as an_ illusion. 
Dewey points out that this divorce is unnec- 
essary. Neither alone is fully potent. Ideas 
must be carried over into action before the 
ideas are worth while and action, representing 
materialism, must be guided by the control- 
ling force of ideas.. Only in the harmonious 
working of the two will the greatest control 
of conduct result. Serious minds haye always 
desired a world in which experiences would 
be productive of ideas and of meanings, and 
in which these ideas in turn would regulate 
conduct. Action is the means by which a 
problematic situation is resolved. 


Or Morar Law: It is both astonishing 
and depressing that so much of the energy 
of mankind has gone into fighting for the 
truth of creeds as distinct from what has gone 
into effort to try creeds by putting them to the 
test of acting upon them. A moral law, like 
a law in Physics, is not something to swear 
by and stick to at all hazards; it is a formula 
of the way to respond when specified condi- 
tions present themselves. A moral system that 
ignores economic conditions can be nothing 
other than remote and empty. 


Or Freepom: Freedom is an_ actuality 
when the recognition of relations, the stable 
element, is combined with the uncertain ele- 
ment, in the knowledge which makes foresight 
possible, and secures intentional preparation 
for probable consequences. We are free in 
the degree that we act knowing what we are 
about. The identification of “freedom of will” 
locates contingency in the wrong place. The 
most profound lack in the present age is not 
the will to act upon goods already known but 
the will to know what they are. 


ConcLtusion: The old center was mind 
knowing by means of an equipment of powers 
complete within itself, and merely exercised 
upon an external material equally complete in 
itself. The new center is indefinite interac- 
tions taking place within a course of nature 
which is not fixed and complete, but which is 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


capable of direction to new and different re. 
sults through the mediation of :mtentional op. 
erations. Neither self nor world, neither sou! 
nor nature, is the center any more than either 
earth or sun is the absolute of a single uni- 
versal and necessary frame of reference. Mind 
is no longer a spectator beholding the world 
from without. The-mind is within the world 
as a part of the latter’s on-going process. Jt 
is marked off as mind by the fact that wherever 
it is found, changes take place in a directed 
way. From knowing as an outsider beholding 
to knowing as an active participant in the 
drama of an on-moving world is the historical 
transition whose record we have been follow- 
ing. 

The need for large and generous ideas in the 
direction of life was never more urgent than 
in the confusion of tongues, beliefs, and pur- 
poses that characterize present life. 

M. L. Gronert. 





THE LOST CONTINENT OF ATLANTIS 


Every now and then Atlantis, the supposed lost conti 
nent, comes into the news. Recently a French explorer 
and archaeologist, Dr. Marcel Baudouin, found sculp- 
tured forms on a rock ledge usually submerged but 
which is uncovered, it is reported, by very low tides. 
Dr. Baudouin believes his discoveries to be the work 
of the possible inhabitants of the somewhat legendary 
continent of Atlantis. 

The facts about Atlantis, according to Webster’s New 
International Dictionary, are as follows: 

“A mythical island in the west, beyond the Pillars of 
Hercules, mentioned by Plato, Pliny, and other ancient 
writers, and said to have been sunk beneath the ocean 
by an earthquake. It was possibly an obscure tradition 
of the existence of a western continent.” 

You may have heard, too, of the New Atlantis. This 
is “an allegory by Lord Bacon, and the name of an 
island described in it as being situated, like the Atlantis 
of the ancients, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. 
Bacon represents himself as. wrecked on this island, 
and as finding there an association for the cultivation 
of natural science and improvements in the arts.” 





Instead of such a rivalry with science in the task 
of knowing reality, philosophy and religion may much 
better find their task in making use of the results of 
science as aids in discerning possibilities, and in striving 
intelligently to discover ideals and make them .actual. 
“An idealism of action that is devoted to creation of 
the future instead of to staking itself upon propositions 
of the past, is invincible.” , 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 29 








re CONFERENCE OF NATIONAL VOCATIONAL 
pm GUIDANCE ASSOCIATION Local News 


soulf The annual conference of the National Vocational 
her [Guidance Association will be held in Atlantic City CHICAGO WOMEN, LOCAL 3 


on February 20th, 21st and 22nd. The headquarters The financial crisis in Chicago school affairs 
° of the conference will be the Hotel Chaifonte. Dr. is being reflected in increased membership in 
ind. : ae os ; 
Richard D. Allen, President of the Association, antici Local No. 3. At the regular January meeting an 
orld sates a large attendance. Dr. Morris S. Viteless, of 
unusually large number of new members was 


tld fhe University of Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Pro- ‘ 
It [gram Committee, has arranged a program of unusual voted in. The crowded room and eager atten- 


interest. The conference will open with an address tion proved the interest of the teachers in the 

ply Dr. A. J. Stoddard, Superintendent of Schools at school situation. The Federation is seeking to 

ted Providence, R. I., on “The Role of Guidance in Public : . 7 

: a oe oe - find the truth in the confusing condition and to 

ing Erducation.” A new feature will be a luncheon meet- : mocap 
formulate a program for constructive legislation 


the fing, devoted to publicity for vocational guidance, at ; 
which Dr. Harry D. Kitson of Teachers College will designed to protect the teacher and the educa- 


preside. Dr. Rolf Reynolds, of Columbia will lead the tional fund. 

discussion. we rogue J. eo be tig of — Through the generosity of W. C. F. L., Labor’s 

sylvania, will preside at another luncheon meeting when . Seige er : 

the fDr. Houseman of Switzerland will discuss “Guidance radio, the public ” kept informed of the financial 
problems confronting the superintendent and the 











1ni- 


ver 


cal 
w- 


an PActivities in Europe.” The conference will devote : 
ar. special sessions to such topics as: Organization and Board of Education. 
Development of a Vocational Guidance Department; The January meeting was planned especially 


Placement Problems in Guidance; Guidance Outside of to interest the junior high school teachers. Miss 
the School; Objective Methods in the Personal Inter- Lyons, past president of No. 3, spoke on the 


view in Guidance; Measurement of Interest and of sate ee 
Vocational Traits; Validation of Guidance Procedures; value of labor affiliations to teacher organization, 


_ fand Guidance of the Mentally Defective. There will and Miss Rubovitz, junior high school member 
it! Falso be a joint meeting of the Personnel Research Fed- of the Board of Directors, pointed out the im- 
ret eration and the National Vocational Guidance Associa- portance of unionizing for the junior high school 
Ip- Ftion. Each of these sessions should draw a large at- . ; 
teachers. The music for the afternoon was given 


ut Ftendance, for each topic touches an essential phase 2 : 
€S. Fof guidance, and each will be discussed by leaders who by Miss Gladys Easter, who sang delightfully. 


tk Fyill present the latest findings in their particular field. The committees of No. 3 are working on sev- 
TY [The conference will mark another and a very important eral problems other than the financial. Mrs. Wil- 
milestone in the history of vocational guidance and the liams and the Working Conditions Committee 
W Fresults of such a gathering are sure to be far-reaching. . . . 
are drawing up a systematic and practical plan 
off It is not how great a thing we do, but how well we for beginning and ending semesters; the Educa- 
nt Ti the things we have to do, that puts us in the noble tion Committee, with Miss Clark, are presenting 
 Tbrotherhood of artists —Haliburton. to a committee of the school administration, their 
. findings on teacher load; another committee is 
While volumes have been written on child care working jointly with the other locals on a sick 
and training, by comparison there is practically leave rule; still another on restoration of teachers 








in 
is | othing on the important subject of teasing. councils. Excellent publicity is being carried on 
1. | CHILD STUDY has devoted its January issue by Mrs. Gronert, publicity chairman. 
; to this all absorbing topic. VOORHIS, LOCAL 210 , 
| The editorial statement that cruelty in many The Voorhis Local is keeping in close touch 
instances cleverly disguised, but still essentially with the organization movement among 
pleasure in the discomfort of another, is at the teachers in California and has hopes that 
k | bottom of most such manifestations, can scarcely something of value will develop out of this 
h [be denied. Cruel teasing never comes from the effort. 
. well adjusted and the emotionally poised. Where —§ The Local is very much alive and has voted 
there is tolerance and acceptance of human dif- money to be used for the organizing work of 
f q ‘rence, amusement takes the place of sadism, an the National. Publicity throughout the Los 
s }musement which invites the object himself, if Angeles press is a part of the program. 


te can, to participate in the fun. H. J. Vooruis, Secretary. 








NEW YORK, LOCAL 5 
ARE THE UNION DUES REALLY 
HIGH? 
Points on the Teachers Union 


Every Teacher has Benefited by the Union’s 
Independent Leadership and Outstand- 
ing, Persistent Work. 


How Much Are These Achievements Worth 

to You? 

1. The establishment in 1920 of a $1,500 
minimum salary—brought about by the 
Union at a time when other organizations 
expressed themselves as being satisfied 
with $1,200. 

2. The defeat of the Downing bills of 1923 
which would have turned over teachers’ 
salary legislation to the tender mercies 
of the Board of Estimate. 

3. The repeal of the Lusk school laws (1923) 
which restricted the civil liberty of 
teachers. 

4. The killing of the proposal to exact “vol- 
untary” playground service of elementary 
school teachers (1925). 


5. The defeat of the Farrell-Mandelbaum 
bill (1926) which would have given power 
to the Board of Education to dismiss 
without trial any teacher adjudged by the 
Board of Superintendents to be mentally 
incompetent. 

6. The discipline of the Medical Board 
(1928) with consequent improvements in 
facilities and in courtesy of staff. 

How Much Has it Been Worth to You? 
7 To have the Union stop the extension of 
military training in the high schools? 

8. To belong to an organization whose offi- 
cers do not seek and do not expect per- 
sonal favors, and who are therefore inde- 
pendent and courageous in their relations 

with the school authorities? 

9. To be associated with over three million 

organized workers in the American Fed- 

eration of Labor who stand for union 
ideals? 

To join in a nation-wide social movement 

for the welfare of all children and for the 


professional rights of all teachers? 
CAN YOU AFFORD NOT TO BELONG? 


10. 


THE AMERICAN 


TEACHER 


SAN FRANCISCO, LOCAL 61 

The membership campaign of the San Fran. 
cisco Federation of Teachers, Local 61, under 
the leadership of M. J. Jacobs, is meeting with 
gratifying results. The local membership has 
more than doubled and the campaign is being 
extended out into the state. 

On February 10, a meeting of the Federa- 
tion to which all teachers were invited, was 
held at the High School of Commerce for 
consideration of the Citizens Salary Commit. 
tee Report. 

The speakers were: James W. Mullen, 
Chairman of the Citizens’ Salary Committee; 
Hon. Daniel C. Murphy, Member Board of 
Education; John A. O’Connell, Secretary San 
Francisco Labor Council; Dr. Joseph M. 
Gwinn, Superintendent of Schools ; His Honor, 
Mayor James Rolph, Jr. 





PORTLAND LOCAL ill 

In accord with the movement of the A. F. of 
L. to double membership within the year, the 
Portland Teachers’ Union, No. 111, welcomed 
at the January meeting six new members. There 
will be others—so faith prompts us to believe. 
Unquestionably, there are many among the 
teachers of Portland who have visioned in the 
schools of the future the Union’s ideals. To such 
we are expecting to introduce our organization. 


It is the wish of the chairman of the member- 
ship committee that prospective members be in- 
vited in small groups of five or six to an apart- 
ment “at home” with the avowed purpose of dis- 
cussing very informally the principles and policief 
of the union. In our one such meeting, our 
guests were frankly questioning and willing, too, 
to admit previously formed aversions. The re- 
sult of the gathering was a happy feeling of con- 
geniality and two new members. 

At the last meeting of the local, it was an- 
nounced that plans are being made for the in- 
troduction of study halls in two high schools of 
the city, with a certainty that some teachers are 
to be deprived of, their one free period for the 
purpose of supervision. Gratifying as is the 
advent of study halls, the invasion of the time 
of the teacher, already overcrowded, seems noth- 
ing short of demoralizing. A committee was 
named to discover methods of study supervision 





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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 31 


in other cities which have proved advantageous 


‘an-[t9 both school and teacher. 


Pleasant recognition came to the Union in the 
form of a compliment paid one of our representa- 
tives to the Central Labor Council, Miss Vaughn 
McCormick, who, over an opponent supported by 
rather influential adherents, was elected reader of 
the Council. 

Lucy Bette TENNANT, 
Chairman, Publicity Committee. 


BROOKWOOD, LOCAL 189 

Brookwood, Local 189, has made plans to par- 
ticipate in the American Federation of Teachers’ 
organization campaign. The members, by unani- 
mous vote, assessed themselves for a period of 
two years for the organizing fund. 

Six new members, all engaged in Labor College 
work, have been added to the union. 

John C. Kennedy, formerly of the University 
of Chicago and Seattle, has been added to the 
Brookwood faculty. 

Plans have been made for an educational con- 
ference. 

The officers for the year are Josephine Colby, 
president, Mark Starr, secretary, and K. H. Pol- 
lak, treasurer. 











MANUMIT, LOCAL 191 
Nellie M. Seeds, director of Manumit 
School, has been speaking to interested groups 
as far west as Chicago. She has addressed 
clubs, forums, university and normal college 


groups, central labor unions and other labor 
groups on “Creative Education and its rela- 
tion to the Trade Union Movement,” “Learn- 
ing through Doing” and other progressive 
education topics, illustrating her subjects with 
the work at Manumit. Dr. Seeds has been 
enthusiastically received wherever she has 
spoken. Teachers have been especially inter- 
ested in the proposed teachers’ training school 
at Manumit this coming summer. Those in- 
terested are invited to write to Dr. Seeds, 
Manumit School, Pawling, Dutchess Co., 
New York. 





CHICAGO ELEMENTARY, LOCAL 199 

On Friday, January 31st, Local 199 met in 
the evening at the City Club. The President, 
Miss Clohesy, gave a clear and concise ex- 
planation of the several factors that enter into 
the complicated financial crisis in’ Chicago. 
Mr. James Meade, President of Local No. 2, 
urged that all the Teacher Unions present a 
united front in all their stands on educational 
matters. Mrs. Schacht, President of Local 
No. 3, then explained to the Elementary 
teachers how they could carry the doctrine of 
the Union Teacher to the new appointees as 
they appeared in their respective schools. 
Mrs. Hanson, Secretary-Treasurer of the 
American Federation of Teachers, urged the 
teachers to mobilize their intelligences to the 
end that a real leader from the Union teachers 
might develop from the crisis. 

Rev. J. W. R. Maguire, C. S. V., President 
of St. Viator College was then introduced as 
the speaker of the evening. His topic was, 
“The Teacher as the Guardian of the Future.” 
Father McGuire pointed out that the teacher 
is more deserving of respect and admiration 
than is the greatest artist. While the artist 
employs lifeless materials in his creations, the 
teacher works with the human mind, soul, and 
will. 

One of the most striking statements Father 
McGuire made was, “I have been saying for 
a number of years that, other things being 
equal, given two teachers of equal ability, tal- 
ent, industry, and character, the Union teacher 
is the better teacher. The Union teacher has 
a sense of class—of social—consciousness and 
he is willing to make sacrifices for the general 








32 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


advancement as well as for himself. The non- 
union teacher stands alone.” 

After picturing vividly some of the battles 
Union Labor has had to wage,. Father Mc- 
Guire in conclusion, impressed upon the teach- 
ers the necessity of instructing children in a 
love of real liberty—liberty such as that with 
which the founders of our country were im- 
bued. He stated that the future of our coun- 
try would be secure if only teachers who were 
themselves convinced of the principles of Lib- 
erty, Truth, Beauty, and Justice, would instill 
those same principles into the hearts of the 
children whom they taught. 





One of the most delightful evenings in re- 
cent weeks in Chicago was spent by the com- 
bined executives boards of the four locals in 
entertaining Miss Nellie Seeds, Director of 
Manumit School. Dinner was served at the 
Piccadilly Restaurant. After it Miss Seeds 
gave a glowing description of how things are 
done at Manumit. It made those of us who 
teach enormous classes here in Chicago envy 
her teachers when Miss Seeds disclosed the 
fact that for her fifty-one students she had 
seventeen teachers. What a joy it must be to 
teach in that school. One can really teach. 
And the students show that they can do 
things. Miss Seeds passed ’round samples of 
the decorative and creative work done by the 
children and they were greatly admired. 

Of course, it is an inspiration to have such 
a director as Miss Seeds. Were more principals 
the inspired leaders that Miss Seeds is, there 
would have to be better work done, even under 
the terrific pressure of huge classes and endless 
clerical minutiae. But, it is comforting to know 
that somewhere in this vast educational world 
there are souls courageous enough to have 
the vision and live up to it. 





GRAND FORKS, N. DAK., LOCAL 205 
The Grand Forks Teachers Federation sent 
out in January to all the teachers in the Grand 
Forks school, a circular letter of information 
under the Captions, 1. Why the American 
Federation of Teachers, 2. The Local Fed- 


eration, 3. What has Local 205 done, 4. Ob 
jectives and Objections. 

Under the accomplishments the Federatigy 
lists: 


solidarity and loyalty to the group. 
Second: It asked for, and received, a sub: 
stantial salary increase. 
Third: It had a leading part in defeating 
the Gunderson Bill, threatening a 25 per cen: 


First: It fostered and created the spirit 1 


flat cut in all school levies. This meant, ol 


course, that salaries would be cut 25 per cent 

(a) It collected, printed, and distributed 

data, and propaganda throughout the stat 
opposing the bill. 

(b) Its literature was used by the N. D 

E. A. and other organizations in defeat o 

the bill. 


(c) It was the only educational bod; 
ready with its data when the N. D. E. A 
met in Grand Forks the year when the bill 
was up for a vote. 
The Federation had its part—not a small 

one—in defeating the “ouster” petitions cir- 
culated against some of the oldest and best 
teachers in the city. 
Last spring, Supt. Stebbins told the Feder- 
ation numerous criticisms were reaching the 
Board upon the work being done in the 
schools. In a letter to the Board of Educa. 
tion, the Federation asked that these cri 
ticisms be made specific and definite. On the 
request of Mr. Stebbins, the local gathered 
and tabulated data showing the effective work 
that was being done in the High School 
This data was presented to the Board, and 
the teachers received the reply that the Board 
did not have any criticisms. 
A challenge has been issued to the Junior 
High School Faculty Club, non-affiliated, to 
produce speakers to argue the question, “Re 
solved that the American Federation o 
Teachers is an organization beneficial to the 
teaching body,” in open debate at the general 
meeting on. February 13. 
Miss Florence Rood, A. F. of T. past-presi- 
dent, has been invited to come to Grand Forks 
and address the teachers. 
Viona C. HANSEN, 
Recording Secy. 


— i 


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A non-profit making Corporation—All Policies PARTICIPATING 


All Members Insured Avoid passing the hat 
No Medical Examination 
No Age Limit 

Strengthen your Union with the home folks 


LET EMPLOYER PAY WAGES. BUY YOUR OWN INSURANCE 


ENERGETIC SALESMEN NEEDED 


WRITE FOR INFORMATION TO 
MATTHEW WOLL, President 
THE UNION LABOR LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 


WASHINGTON, D. C. 


New Members Insured for full amount 
as soon as initiated 






































American Federation 
of 


Teachers 


506 South Wabash Avenue 
CHICAGO, ILL. 


i 


The American Federation of Teachers desires to estab 
lish an intimate contact and an effective co-operation be: 
tween the teachers and the other workers of the community. 


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


Groups of seven or more public school teachers are invited 
to affiliate with this National Organization of Classroom 
Teachers, for mutual assistance, improved professional 
standards and the democratization of the schools. 


Our Slogan Is: 


Democracy in Education: Education for Democracy 


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



































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