AMERICAN 
TEACHER 


IN THIS ISSUE 








Senator Walter F. George 
Professor John Dewey 
Mary C. Barker 
Dr. Abraham Lefkowitz 
E. E. Schwarztrauber 
Charles B. Stillman 
































i eg 7 
NOY 
ANY 


APRIL, 1933 
VOLUME XVII No. 4 


RGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 























We stand for no curtail- 
ment of public education. sand dollar minimum for 


[ean stand for a two thou- 
teachers. 








eAnnouncement 


Teachers in the public schools, normals, col- 
leges and universities who desire to have 


THE UNION MOVEMENT AMONG 
TEACHERS 

explained at institutes, regular association 

meetings, or special meetings called for the 


purpose should write to 


American Federation of 
Teachers 


FLORENCE CURTIS HANSON, 
Secretary-Treasurer 
506 S. Wabash Ave. 

Chicago, Ill. 


Henry R. LINVILLE, 
President 
70 Fifth Ave. 
New York, N. Y. 





While some teachers may not be worth two thousand 
dollars, every child is worth at least a two 
thousand dollar teacher. 








The H. G. ADAIR 
PRINTING CO. 


A. R. BALFANZ, President 
W. T. FISHER, Treasurer 


CONSTRUCTIVE 


PRINTERS 








Telephones: 
FRAnklin 8124-5-6 








107 No. Wacker Drive, Chicago 



































Table of Contents 


Page 
Come Out of the Classroom, Teacher...................0-- 3 


The Teachers Must Help Save the Schools................. 
A SN Te. nee Senator Walter F. George 4 


The Crisis in Education.............. Professor John Dewey 5 
SO tbs cewceess Charles B. Stillman 10 
The Tax Reduction Hysteria........... EE. Schwarstrauber 12 
ec... ccccccceueceececeeeccece 15 
EE SL 16 


Who Are Your Friends? 
Educational Association 
Must Education Alone Pay? 


” 


“Investigated 


peas bi-monthly by the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers, 506 South Wabash Ave., 
Chicago, Ill. Entered as second class matter Oc- 
tober 27, 1926, at the post office of Chicago, IIl., 
under the Act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance for 
mailing at special rate of postage provided for 
in Sec. 1103, Act of Feb. 28, 1925, authorized 
Nov. 3, 1926. 


Editorial Office 
506 South Wabash Ave., 
Chicago, Illinois. 


> 


Page 

Thrift Can Go Too Far 

“Depression Will Aid the Schools” 

Blind and Dumb 

Tenure in California 
Pennsylvania Labor Speaks for the Schools.............++- 20 
Tee Saterday EON FOG, osc cccccnvccsccteeneeweesoas 20 
The Citizens’ Conference on the Crisis in Education........ 21 
Schools and the A. F. of L. Convention.................++. 22 
etiam Gr CORIIIOING, ok. occdccciesccscsssaunneneneeuenl 24 
Books CO SOSSC OES ECHO CHEE HCOSESE OSES ° eoecereeecees eee Sees eesese 26 
ek La nr nerre Te 29 


S UBSCRIPTION $1.00 for the year—Foreign $1.10 
—Single copies, 25c. At the time of expira- 

tion, a bill will be found in the copy. Sub- 
scribers are requested to give prompt notice of 
changes of address. Remittances should be made 
in postal money-order, express order, draft, 
stamps or check. 














BRKRRKLSS 


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vi THE AMERICAN TEACHER 














Come Out of the Classroom, Teacher 


EVER has that advice been as timely as it is now. 
While the teacher is busier than ever with his 
overcrowded classes, lack of books and equipment 

and in his attempts to make both ends meet on a reduced 
salary, the enemies of the public school are busily trying 
to do away with his job and destroy a large part of the 
public school system. 

The teacher has been too content with letting some 
one else look after his interests and the interests of the 
schools. The some one else has been getting by with the 
job, though not any too well, for the teacher has not 
given much cooperation. 

The school and the teacher have always had enemies, 
not such open and vociferous enemies who called the 
public school an expensive luxury consisting mostly of 
“fads and frills’ and the teacher a “‘tax-eater,” but the 
same enemies who yesterday referred to the teacher 
as the self sacrificing embodiment of all the virtues 
and the school as that “bulwark of democracy,” but 
who voted against all increases in school taxes and op- 
posed all physical and curricular extensions of public 
education. These enemies are the wealthier citizens who 
do not need the public schools for their own children 
and are too shortsighted to realize the advantages to 
themselves of an educated citizenry. 

These persons of wealth are in a much stronger posi- 
tion relatively than they have ever been. Although many 
of them are disconsolate over smaller incomes, by con- 
trast with other social groups which are very nearly 
insolvent, they have grown great. Through their wealth 
and their organization, they have control of practically 
all the facilities by which information is spread to the 
people. They own the newspapers, magazines, radio 
broadcasting stations, and other advertising facilities. 
And are they using them? Read your evening news- 
paper, look over the Saturday Evening Post, and then 
turn on the radio, You have your answer. 

In a period of economic chaos such as we are passing 
through, each economic group is bound to suffer. It is 
entirely natural that each group endeavors to suffer as 
little as possible and pass on as many depression losses 
as it can to others. One thing the big business group 
is trying to pass on is its share of the tax burden, This 
it is doing in two ways. 

First, the substitution of the sales tax for the 
income tax. The sales tax is a progressive income tax 
inverted. The progressive income tax collects a pro- 
gressively higher proportion of the income for taxes as 
the income increases. The sales tax collects a progress- 
ively higher proportion of the income for taxes as the in- 
come decreases. 

Second, the curtailment of governmental activities for 
which taxes are raised. The propaganda against gov- 
ernment has reached hysterical proportions. Public em- 
ployees are parasites, taxeaters, and public enemies. No 
government institution has suffered more than the pub- 
lic school. There are probably several reasons for this. 
One is undoubtedly because the schools have no strong 
political organization supporting them. Another that the 
opponents feel less personal need of the schools than of 


the police departments. A third may be that the “best” 
people genuinely feel that it would not be well for their 
continued power and influence for the masses of the 
people to be educated. 

The schools have always had friends as well as ene- 
mies, These outside friends have done more to estab- 
lish, maintain, and expand the idea of public education 
than the educators themselves. True, the ideas have 
been from the educators, but the power to put them into 
effect has come from the outside. Who are the friends 
and why may we not rely upon them at the present 
time as in the past? 

The friends of the public schools are the great masses 
of the people. They far outnumber the enemies, but 
they are not as well organized and they do not have the 
wealth. They do not own the propaganda machine to 
fight for the schools, They cannot be as effective at the 
present time as they have been in the past because they 
have many troubles of their own. Twelve million of 
them are unemployed and cannot fight for anything ex- 
cept food for themselves and their families. A like 
number of farmers are, with the exception of the food 
supply, as destitute as the unemployed, They cannot 
pay their taxes or their debts. They are about to lose 
their homes, means of livelihood, and everything they 
have. How can we expect these people to take the lead 
in fighting for education, especially if the teachers 
themselves are not interested enough to join them? 

The enemies of the schools are magnificently organ- 
ized, The manufacturer, the great merchant, wi.ole- 
saler, all have organizations of their occupations. Then 
they have organizations of organizations, topped off by 
the United States Chamber of Commerce, which is on 
record favoring the curtailment of education all along 
the line—lower salaries, shorter school year, elimination 
of valuable courses of instruction, closing of kindergar- 
tens, tuition for secondary education, increase in class 
size, etc. This organization influences hundreds of or- 
ganizations, which include practically every business 
organization in the United States. 

The largest economic organization in the United 
States has always been a staunch friend of the public 
school and the teacher of the public school. That or- 
ganization is the American Federation of Labor, From 
its beginning more than fifty years ago, it has had an 
educational program second to no organization, purely 
educational or otherwise. At its last convention, a few 
months ago, it declared for no curtailment but rather 
extension of public education during the depression be- 
cause the need for education is greater during a de- 
pression. It declared for no cuts in salaries for teachers. 

The American Federation of Labor consists of vari- 
ous craft organizations of wage earners, including teach- 
ers. The great mass of the teachers have not seen fit 
to join the organization of classroom teachers which 
is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, 

Teachers are wage earners, and of the purest type. 
They do not own the equipment or the tools with which 
they work. As individuals, they have no control over the 

(Turn to bottom of page 4) 








4 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The Teachers Must Help Save the Schools 


Senator Walter F. George 


Editor’s Note: Senator Walter F. George of Georgia who has 
contributed this article for us is the sponsor of the George Bill 
through which the schools of the nation hope to get some relief. 
The George Bill would authorize the Reconstruction Finance Cor- 
poration to lend money to states and municipalities, and the 
properly constituted school authorities for the maintenance of the 
public schools. It would extend to public enterprise the privilege 
now held by private business. The teachers are pleased that the 
sponsor of this bill is Senator George. We know that we can 
trust him. We rely on his intelligent poet of the subject; we 
have faith in his abflity. A man who has by merit and honesty 
won the respect of his colleagues in both parties, Senator George 
will, we are confident, secure the passage during the special session 
of Congress of his school relief bill. 


in the schools, a broad social interest, as well as 

an intimate economic interest. To analyze either 
of these interests for a highly professional body of 
educators such as the American Federation of Teachers 
is obviously unnecessary, but to focus the attention of 
this body on the political philosophy and the political 
practices, broadly speaking, of our government in serv- 
ing the social and economic interests of our people, is 
highly pertinent. 

First of all, teachers are citizens; not simply in a 
technical legal sense, but in a broad social sense. Good 
citizenship demands a sensitive responsibility to the 
community needs. This responsibility to be properly 
discharged requires that they in whom it reposes de- 
velop a truly social concept of regulated freedom. The 
well-organized democratic state then must afford to its 
citizens that training through which there is to be de- 
veloped the highest social ideals. In America we recog- 
nize the free public school as the medium through which 
good citizenship in its finest sense is to be developed. 

The economic depression is threatening the very ex- 
istence of our free public schools. Hence the immediate 
and pressing problem confronting you and me, as citi- 
zens, is the preservation of our schools. Local com- 
munities simply can not meet their financial and social 
obligations. As a result the very institutions on which 
we have prided ourselves are passing. It is no longer 
simply a question of what will happen; it has already 
become a matter of what has happened. You know the 
facts so far as the schools are concerned. Hundreds 
of schools have closed; thousands more are closing; 
the school year is being shortened; essential and vital 
parts of the school system are being eliminated; classes 
have been so enlarged that teaching has been devitalized 
and mechanized. That the problem is serious is not 
debatable; that the results incident to the closing of the 
schools are bound to have a tragic effect on the children 
and on the community is obviously a fact. 


T= teachers have an immediate and vital interest 


The only question open to debate is, if the problem is 
purely a local one or if it is one which properly con- 
cerns the federal government also. To me the answer 
is clear. We are confronted with an emergency. The 
states simply cannot meet their obligations. Hence the 
nation must act. Act, not by taking anything from any 
one of the states, but by giving to them in this crisis. 
The federal government must minister to the needs of 
its people, and yet must preserve the political autonomy 
of the states. That the administration of educational 
laws is distinctly a state function is not to be disputed. 
Least of all by me. However, I feel that there is a 
definite distinction between a piece of legislation which 
would take from the states any power, rights, or privi- 
leges which they now possess, and a law which would 
further enrich the opportunities of a state. I fail to 
see wherein the extension of the credit of the United 
States to any state robs that state of any of its inherent 
powers or privileges. On the contrary, it is the state 
which gains directly, the federal government being only 
incidentally benefited insofar as it has an interest in the 
welfare of all the people of all the states. 

It is my belief that our dual system of government is 
to a great degree predicated on the fact that the federal 
government has not only the right, but that it has a duty, 
to give aid to any one of the states during any serious 
emergency. It has in fact been the policy and the prac- 
tice of our government to render succor to any state or 
any city at a time of great need or peril. Surely the 
threatened collapse of the public school system presents 
a peril. The future of our children is at stake. 

It is my firm belief that the purpose of government 
is to serve those who institute and constitute it. “We 
the people of the United States” are the government; 
we, the people, are determined “to promote the general 
welfare.” The credit of the United States is sound in 
spite of the heavy indebtedness with which our gov- 
ernment is burdened. That credit must be extended to 
the states, to the people, in the interest of the promotion 
of true popular government. To that end I have spon-: 
sored the relief bill for the public schools as one of 
several forms of relief now sorely needed. 

I rejoice in the hearty interest and active support 
which the American Federation of Teachers has mani- 
fested in the promotion of a philosophy of government 
such as I have here enunciated, government within the 
true purpose of our Constitution, government in the 
interest of all of our people. 

















Come Out of the Classroom, Teacher 

(Continued from page 3) 
conditions under which they work or the salaries they 
receive. There is no logical reason why the teachers 
should not be organized as are other skilled workers. 
Furthermore, they should all be affiliated with the great 
federation of workers, This is particularly true when 
that federation is the natural friend and ally of the 
public school. 

The enemies of the public school system, the owners 
of big business, have shown clearly where they stand. 
Organized labor shows where it is standing, as it has 
always stood. The public school system of America, in 


this crisis, needs every friend it has, and needs them 
organized in the most effective way to fight for free 
education. 

Teachers, come out of the classroom and fight for 
that classroom. 





“Education has thus now become the chief problem 
of the world, its one holy cause. The nations that 
see this will survive, and those that fail to do so will 
slowly perish. There must be re-education 
of the will and of the heart as well as of the intellect, 
and the ideals of service must supplant those of sel- 
fishness and greed. Nothing else can save us.” 








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AprIL, 1933 


The Crisis in Education 


Professor John Dewey 


is always an inestimable pleasure to me to meet 

with a group of fellow teachers. Whatever I 
have done or tried to do in life, the thing that I prize 
the most of all is the fact that I have been for many 
years—more years than perhaps I would want to admit 
—a teacher, and it is a particular pleasure to me that I 
am speaking to a body of teachers under the auspices 
of the local union of the American Federation of Teach- 
ers, for in my career as a teacher there is nothing which 
] prize more than the fact that ever since there has been 
a teachers union in New York City I have been a 
member of that union and entitled to carry my union 
card. 


M: CHAIRMAN, Friends, Fellow Teachers: It 


Extra-Legal Committees 


The two largest cities in this country, New York and 
Chicago, have recently witnessed the spectacle of extra- 
legal bodies arrogating to themselves some such responsi- 
bility as is implied in the title “Citizens’ Committee,” 
who are dictating civic policies, including matters that 
directly affect public schools. These committees are 
composed mostly of bankers, of industrialists, and of 
real estate dealers, the groups in fact which more than 
any other special groups in this country have helped 
bring on the present economic and financial crisis. 

According to their own statements, these groups in 
these cities (typical of what is going on all over the 
country) intervene in the interest of economy. But how 
do they conceive of economy? What does economy 
mean to them? What do they think it is? Is it basic 
reform of municipal administration in order to cut out 
waste, graft, unnecessary duplication of units, official 
favoritism, the sacrifice of public to private interests? 
Are they attacking this problem of economy in any 
fundamental way? No, and for one reason, many of 
these organizations are themselves too closely linked up 
with the sources of waste, too dependent upon favors 
dealt to them by politicians to undertake anything so 
needed and so fundamental. By economy they mean a 
reduction of wages and of salaries of all persons on the 
municipal pay roll. Experience all over the country 
shows that the teaching body of the country is the group 
of public employees upon whom and against whom this 
kind of economy is most regularly applied. 


Banker Control 


It happened, as I came up this morning, I bought a 
paper, the Herald-Tribune, to read and | found some- 
thing from an address of Professor Goldrick of the 
Department of Public Administration of Columbia Uni- 
versity, an address to the bankers themselves in their 
State convention. The heading is “Bankers Told They 
Shirk City Responsibility.” Here you have an authority 
in the field of public administration, talking to an audi- 
ence of bankers, and using more definite and harsh 
words than I have used. He shows how all the economy 
measures have been pointed in the direction of reduc- 
tion of salaries of public employees, and that this fact 
means still greater deflation of the purchasing power of 
the community, actually damaging the economic condi- 





Address before Yale Local No. 204 of The American Federation 
of Teachers and The New Haven Teachers Association, at Hotel 
Taft, New Haven, January 29, 1933. 


tion of the city itself, certain to be reflected in the gen- 
eral volume of business, and likely to be reflected even 
in rents. And furthermore this group did not accom- 
pany the demand with one for a balanced budget. They 
did not show any way a balanced budget could be brought 
about. They asked merely and wholly for a reduction 
of expenses. The speaker ends by saying, “The banks 
are the most important agency for control under our 
present arrangement. This is not an opportunity but a 
responsibility. It is a responsibility to be exercised with 
consideration of the best interests of the investing and 
general public. There is little room for pride in the 
way these responsibilities were exercised in the last 
decade. I think we can confidently predict that if the 
bankers do not show that they are now prepared to act 
with a greater regard to general well-being in the next 
decade, they will be superseded by some other form of 
social control.” Those are the words of an expert in 
the field from the standpoint of his expert knowledge, 
not of a radical or a sensational speaker. 

I shall not here go into the question of whether or 
not further deflation of salaries and wages with its cor- 
responding reduction of an already depleted purchasing 
power is any way to get out of the present crisis. I con- 
tent myself with recording the practically unanimous 
conclusion of the economists of the country to the con- 
trary. I do point out that this organized drive against 
the public school system of the country, typified in the 
action of representatives of concentrated wealth in the 
two largest cities of the country, and being taken up all 
over the country is against the public welfare and that 
it comes from those who have the least amount of per- 
sonal concern with public education. Their children for 
the most part do not attend the public schools. The 
cultural life of their own families would hardly suffer 
at all if public schools should be completely closed in- 
stead of as at present having their activities curtailed. 
They are the ones who have steadily fought from the 
start all enrichment of the curriculum, calling art, music, 
physical education, handicrafts, etc-——the things which 
they demand as a matter of course for their own chil- 
dren, in their own homes—fads and frills when they 
are to be made a part of the educational facilities for 
the poor and for the masses. Their plea for economy 
is part of their effort to protect the tax bills of the con- 
centrated wealth of the country, the element which is 
most able to pay taxes, and moreover the element which 
has profited the most, both directly and indirectly, from 
the results of the spread of knowledge and skill through 
our public school system of education. 

It is slight wonder that an ex-president of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers at a public meeting in Chi- 
cago asked whether this movement was not one, “under 
cover of the depression, ruthlessly to slash selected pub- 
lic services and costs in the interest of the big taxpayers 
with little regard for the needs of the masses of the 
people and their children.” It is no wonder that he pro- 
tested against “surrendering the control of the school to 
organized large tax payers who are not dependent upon 
the public schools for an education of their children as 
the mass of the people are.” It is no cause for surprise 
that the legislative representative of the New York 
Teachers Union, a part of the American Federation of 





6 


Teachers, pointed out in a public address recently that 
twenty-one of the fifty-one directors of the so-called 
Citizens’ Budget Commission of the City of New York 
are affiliated with the twenty-five leading banks of the 
city, and that a large part of the others are representa- 
tives of the speculative real estate agencies of the city, 
and showed that their policy regarding cuts in salaries 
of public servants, which came before the special session 
of the legislature in Albany recently, was dictated and 
controlled by the heads of the two biggest banks of New 
York City and of the nation. And he went on to show 
that the average rate of dividends declared by these 
banks last year has been 20%, some of them running to 
60%. These bankers are holding up New York City for 
the money they loan for five times the rate of interest 
which they are charging the Federal Government. He 
then went on to raise the question whether we are al- 
ready in process of having a dictatorship of banking and 
financial interests superimposed upon the nominal gov- 
ernment of this country. 

Again returning to what the first speaker to whom / 
referred said, He said that in view of the concentrated 
attack upon public education in many places, “a nation- 
wide conspiracy against the public schools is not too 
strong a description of the facts.” 

We are a tolerant and a good-humored people in this 
country. Certainly the mass of the teaching body is, 
and I suppose there are many who will regard this state- 
ment as too strong and will hesitate to endorse it. In- 
cidentally, I should like to call attention to the leading 
article in the issue of the Saturday Evening Post, which 
bears the date of the meeting here today, January 28. 
1 hate to advertise this because I am afraid somebody 
will go out and buy the Post, and I would much rather 
u.ge something in quite the opposite direction. 

The social and economic position of this writer and 
the general humaneness of his point of view are suff- 
ciently indicated by the fact that he states that the in- 
come tax is communistic and is the beginning of com- 
munism in this country, and then goes on to say that 
taxes ought to be levied per capita irrespective of dif- 
ference of income and not per dollar on the dollars of 
the taxpayers. But he then goes on—and this is the 
thing in which I am particularly interested—and picks 
out the public schools of the country and the wages of 
the public schools teachers as the chief topic in his plea 
for reduced taxation. The entire tone of the article 
1s to create the feeling that the public school teacher 
is a pampered, petted creature living at the expense of 
the hard working and hard pressed tax payers. This is 
one of the many points where a group representing large 
financial interests—you have already heard about the 
United States Chamber of Commerce—is already organ- 
izing a campaign, using the depression not in order to 
secure legitimate and desirable changes in the internal 
workings and administration of a government devoted in 
undue measure to serving privilege not to secure a 
new method of tax revision in the whole system and 
method of taxation, but to make public servants and 
especially school teachers the goat. The very same per- 
sons who on every other occasion deprecate every refer- 
ence to “classes” as an effort to create discord among our 
citizens are now deliberately appealing to envy and 
jealousy in order to carry through a so-called economy 
which in fact is only reduction of wages in the interest 
of big taxpayers—that element of society best able to 
stand the burden of taxation. 

As the campaign is already actively waging and week 
by week is going to become more acute, teachers should 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


not permit themselves to be put on the defensive. They 
should be in possession of the facts and be active in mak- 
ing these facts known. I am not going to apologize for 
presenting some of these facts even in statistical form, 
although figures are not very interesting nor easy to 
listen to and carry in the mind, These facts all come 
from the most efficient and authoritative sources that 
are available, 
Teachers’ Salaries 


In the first place, the total amount raised by taxes 
for school purposes in this country has never been more 
than four per cent of the total annual income of the 
country. 1930 is the last date for which figures are 
available. It was then three and one-third per cent of 
the total national income. Because of the depreciation 
of income since then the ratio has now probably become 
somewhat larger. As for salaries, there are large sec- 
tions of the country, located for the most part in the 
southeastern section, in which the average rural and ele- 
mentary school teacher’s salary is less than $621 per 
year. The average salary in what is in the total probably 
the largest single group of sections scattered over the 
country is less than $787 a year, that is of the elementary 
and rural groups. There is a portion, about as large 
roughly speaking as the lowest section, situated mainly 
in the states just across the Mississippi in which the 
salaries of this group are between $788 and $952. There 
is another group, mainly in New York and New Eng- | 
land in the east and in the Rocky Mountain states in the 
west, where the average salary is between $953 and 
$1167, and there is a portion, including Connecticut, 
New Jersey, and parts of New York in the east and | 
California, Nevada, Arizona, parts of Wyoming and 
Washington State in the west in which the salary of 
this group averages over $1167. 

These figures are taken from the report of the com- 
mittee authorized first by Congress with an appropriation 
from Congress; then, during the economy drive, the ap- 
propriation was not continued and the General Educa- 
tion Board financed the continuation of the study. A 
group of experts, college men, and men not merely in 
education but in public finance and business men, con- 
ducted a survey that was extended into every county of 
every state in the United States. This map, which may 
be obtained by addressing the American Council of Edu- 
cation in Washington or by addressing the Bureau of 
Educational Service, Teachers College, New York City, 
shows by the different markings these five groups and 
their distribution. Teachers ought to be in possession of 
these facts and this graphic presentation of them. 

It is doubtless significant that the author of the Sat- 
urday Evening Post article picked out one of the states 
where teachers are paid the highest rates, namely New 
Jersey, as an example of how petted and pampered the 
school teacher is and how he is fattened at the expense 
of the tax payer. Anybody who thinks that from $3 
to $4 a day, which is the average in the rural and ele 
mentary school, is an adequate wage in the richest coun 
try of the world, is a wage that will call educated men 
and women to the teaching profession and hold them | 
there, that it is a wage which will enable the teachers 
to care for the education of their own children and mait- 
tain a decent status in the community, is past all argu 
ment. 

Comparative School Costs 


Of the total amount of money raised by taxation 
in the entire country, federal, state and local, for all | 
purposes, a little less than one-fifth goes to the public 





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1933 


APRIL, 


schools. I think we would all agree that the part that 
goes to the public schools is the part which the ordinary 
tax payer pays most willingly, and yet of the whole 
tax bill of the country only one-fifth goes to the support 
of the public school system. This is slightly less than 
the total amount spent for redemption of and interest 
on debts of the branches of government in this country. 
It is only one-fifth of the amount which the American 
people spend annually for the purchase and upkeep 
of automobiles; more than one-third more than the 
whole tax paid for the school bill of the country goes 
to the purchase of premiums on life insurance. It is 
less than half of the annual bill that is spent for phys- 
ical construction, the construction of buildings ; and again 
] think that the American people will agree that the 
building of the youth and citizenship of the country 
approaches in importance the building of skyscrapers, 
or of highways, etc, 

For one I do not believe that the average American 
citizen, parent and tax payer, wants to see the gains 
which have been made eliminated. The task is to make 
the people of the country realize the facts amid the 
cloud of misrepresentation, of the screen of poison gas 
which is emitted from selfish quarters. One of the stock 
items in the concerted attack upon the public school 
and the school teacher is the rise in the total cost of 
education. There is no doubt about this rise. There 
has been an increase of a little over 300% since 1914—- 
just before the war. Statistical study by economic ex- 
perts, whose figures have not been challenged, shows, 
however, that over 48% of this increase, almost one-half 
that is, is due to the depreciation of the purchasing 
power of the dollar. During the war and for years 
afterwards teachers’ wages remained practically station- 
ary, while the cost of living increased, as we know, 
enormously. During the twenties hard work secured, at 
least in the more prosperous and enlightened parts of 
the country, a definite gross increase in salaries, but by 
1930 the salary measured in purchasing power was 
hardly equal to that of 1914. 

In the second place there has been a very great in- 
crease in school attendance since 1914, a total increase 
of a little over one-third in the number of those to 
whom schools are required to give instruction. In addi- 
tion attendance has become much more regular and the 
school year up to 1930 was lengthened so that from these 
two causes there was an actual increase of school days 
of 60%. In this increase of student attendance, much 
the greater part took place in the more expensive part 
of the school system, the high school. In these 16 years 
the number of high school students increased from 1,- 
200,000 to 4,300,000, a marvelous increase unprecedented 
in the whole history of education, of 261%; while the 
days of schooling in high schools increased 340%. These 
various increases take care of 27% more of the increase 
in school expenses, the two items together, 75%. This 
leaves about one-quarter of the total amount of the in- 
crease chargeable to extension in the quantity and quality 
of service rendered by the public school in the years 
between 1914 and 1930. Let the reactionaries, especially 
those who do not utilize in any way the service of the 
public school system or believe in the service of the 
public school teacher for the children, do their clamor- 
ing for the elimination of these improvements. Again 
I cannot believe that the American public, if the facts 
can be got before them, will support this campaign. 


Breakdown of School System 


This is one side of the picture—that which most in- 
telligent people will regard as the bright side of the 


7 


picture—in this increase of the number going to school 
and of school facilities. This is the bright side, I say, 
in spite of the efforts of the hired Hessians of big 
financial interests to make American people ashamed of 
what they have done for public education in the United 
States. There was a dark side, even before the de- 
pression came on. I will quote again from the findings 
of this official committee, headed by Professor Paul 
Mort. According to this report, nine and one-half mil- 
lion American children, about 40% of those in schools, 
are deprived of essential schooling because of a break- 
down in the traditional methods of financing the schools. 
It is not surprising perhaps that this committee, which 
has studied the matter impartially, does not follow the 
chorus of bankers and industrialists and financiers in 
urging that the support of the schools be cut down still 
further. It deals with causes, not with effects. It 
states “that drastic tax revision in virtually all of the 
48 states is indicated by the survey as immediately nec- 
essary if the poorer local communities are to be relieved 
of present crushing burdens and if a minimum program 
of care and education is to be set up for the children 
of those communities.” We are not questioning the 
need of revision of methods of taxation and distribution 
of taxation. We are pleading for going back to the 
causes to get real economy in these ways instead of be- 
ginning merely by slashing. What is needed is the re- 
vision of the methods of the tax system itself, not merely 
reduction of wages—a revision which is imperative if 
bad conditions are not to grow worse. 

It is difficult to secure up to date figures as to the 
exact effect of the depression upon the schools, but be- 
tween the report of this committee and that of the Citi- 
zens’ Conference on the Crisis in Education called by 
President Hoover, presided over by Secretary Wilbur, 
we have the beginnings of the facts. The Mort Commit- 
tee reports that “thousands of communities throughout 
the country find themselves unable, under present methods 
of taxation, to make even elemental provision for the 
care and education of their children and youth. Scores 
of thousands of youth of high school age are wandering 
through the country; an even larger number, including 
hosts of younger children are suffering from malnutri- 
tion and inadequate care in both rural and urban sec- 
tions. So serious are the dangers to American children 
that immediate steps should be taken by state legislatures 
to prevent the deepening of the disaster.” These are 
not statements from radicals or sensationalists but from 
an official body of investigating experts. And the answer 
of the self-constituted extra-legal bodies who have taken 
it upon themselves to regulate civic finance is to reduce 
school facilities and school expenses still more! 





Conference on the Crisis in Education 


The title of the conference called by President Hoover 
is also significant. It is a Conference on the Crisis in 
Education. The title is sufficiently striking in itself 
to save one from being called upon to be sensational 
in what he says about the menace to public education. 
Secretary Wilbur who presided at the conference and 
who has not been accused either of radicalism or sensa- 
tionalism, closed the conference by saying, “If you are 
going to pay school teachers, you have got to get the 
money, and that money now is going to be sought for 
from a dozen sources. So we must take an aggressive 
attitude for the schools if we are going to see our chil- 
dren through, It is not a matter of passing resolutions ; 
it is a matter of fighting, and there is no better thing 
to fight for than the American school child, and I want 





8 


to leave with you as you go that challenge. Fight 
through for these American school children. Fight the 
highways, fight the politicians, fight all the groups—it’s 
worth while.” That from Secretary Wilbur regarding 
the present crisis, 

To the honor of President Hoover, not only for call- 
ing the meeting but for what he said when he opened 
the Conference, let it be recorded that he stated, “Our 
Nation faces the acute responsibility of proyiding a 
right of way for the American child, In spite of eco- 
nomic, social, and governmental difficulties, our future 
citizenry must be built up now.” The contrast between 
building it up and cutting down the school facilities of 
the country need not be dwelt upon here. 

The Conference itself brought out clearly the reason 
for calling the present situation a crisis. The agenda 
prepared in advance called attention to the fact the 
situation might be put in four words: “Increasing re- 
sponsibilities, decreasing resources.” The depression has 
actually led to an increase in school enrollment and the 
schools have many problems to meet due to the effect 
of unemployment on home life. Teachers are themselves 
voluntarily supplying clothes and at least one free meal 
a day to children. The public school teachers of New 
York have given, according to official records, over two 
million and a quarter dollars out of their salaries to 
relief funds in the city of New York, and we may 
safely challenge every group in the community to show 
a record of voluntary service in the present crisis equal 
of that of the teaching group in the public schools. 

But the schools are having to deal with this situation 
with reduced funds. School revenues last year were cut 
down at least six per cent throughout the country, and 
there is no doubt the reduction will be much greater 
when the returns for the current year are in. In some 
large cities even last year reductions ran to 25% and 
30%. Teachers’ salaries were reduced to a slightly less 
extent. In city school systems it amounted however to 
10% and over, In one state of the Union the wage of 
the rural school teacher has declined 40% in three years, 
and in three other states it amounts to 25% for the same 
time, Capital outlay, that for grounds, buildings, equip- 
ment, went down in the cities which reported 28% year 
before last and 40% last year, evidently at the expense 
of increase in school population. In other words build- 
ings are not being kept up, equipment is not being pro- 
vided to meet even the normal increase in the schools. 
To meet the decrease in funds, the size of classes, al- 
ready too large per teacher, which teachers organiza- 
tions have been working to cut down, have been in- 
creased; many teachers have been dismissed; graduates 
of training and normal schools, trained to go into teach- 
ing, are put upon the waiting list (New York City alone 
is said to have 5,000 such persons) ; the length of the 
school year is cut, in some cases by a month or more; 
some schools have been closed entirely and a larger 
number threatened with having to shut their doors; in 
many places payment of salaries is long in arrears; and, 
as already indicated, building activities have been ar- 
rested and needed repairs postponed, while many schools 
are reported operating with an abnormal lack of equip- 
ment. 

In many respects the curtailment and impoverishment 
of the curriculum, the elimination of important modes 
of service, are even more serious than the points men- 
tioned. Art and manual training, home economics and 
physical training, are crippled; special classes for crip- 
pled and backward children are eliminated; night classes 
and evening schools are dropped; many cities have given 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


up kindergarten and sub-primary classes. In New York 
City, the richest city in the world, there has been cur- 
tailment of continuation classes, playground facilities, 
and provision for adult education, in addition to other 
eliminations. It is not exaggerating to say that the en- 
richment of educational services, which is the outstand- 
ing gain of American public education during the last 
forty years, is today seriously and fundamentally 
threatened. There is no doubt about the reality of the 
crisis and it is foolish for both teachers and the public 
interested in the public schools to conceal from them- 
selves the seriousness of the condition. 


Meeting the Crisis 

And yet once more, the sole method of meeting the 
crisis which is put forward from powerful sources, prob- 
ably as things stand today the most powerful in the Na- 
tion, backed by an influential press. catered to by poli- 
ticians who owe their power and often their income to 
dealings with the invisible government of the country, is 
to cripple the schools still more. Every single day de- 
liberate efforts are put forth to represent the teacher 
as a petted and semi-parasitic element in the commun- 
ity, unwilling to share with the rest of the community 
a fair portion of the burden of the depression. I have 
read, | think, all of the important utterances made by 
representatives of the American Federation of Teachers. 
They all point out the fact to which I called attention 
earlier, the deliberate false conception of economy which 
is put forth and is being implanted in the public mind, | 
They have been concrete and definite in suggesting meth- 
ods by which waste and extravagance could have been 


| eliminated and a system of taxation made more effective 


and more just, And they have all ended with express- 
ing the willingness of teachers to stand their share of 
whatever is then shown to be needed after these re- 
forms have been undertaken in good faith. I agree com- 
pletely with them in saying that if the teaching body 
yields without a fight to show the difference between 
true and false economy, without an effort to show up 
the motives of organized finance, the teachers will not 
only harm themselves and the cause of education, but 
will also become the accomplices of politicians in con- 
tinuing to do business in the old way at the old stand. 
Above all, it behooves the teachers in behalf of the 
community, of the educational function which they serve, | 
and not merely because of their personal interest in a 
fit wage for what they do—self respecting and honorable 
as is that motive—to make clear beyond a peradventure 
that public education is not a business carried on for 
pecuniary profit, that it is not therefore an occupation 
to be measured by the standards which the bankers and 
real estate men and the big industrialists seek for them- | 
selves in working for personal gain and measuring suc- 
cess and failure by the ledger balance, but that money 
spent on education is a social investment—an invest- 
ment in future well being, moral, economic, physical, and 
intellectual, of the country. Teachers are simply means, 
agents in this social work. They are performing the 
most important public duty now performed by any one 
group in society. Any claims which they can rightfully | 
make are not made in behalf of themselves as private 
persons, but in behalf of society and the nation. These 
will be what they are and are not in the future largely 
because of what is done and not done in this day and 
generation in the schools of the country. | 


How Shall Teachers Meet the Crisis? 


Why have I brought coals to Newcastle in calling | 
these familiar facts to the attention of those engaged im 


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APRIL, 1933 


teaching, many of whom are already suffering and likely 
to suffer more? Fundamentally I have done so for one 
reason only. As I see it the great question before the 
teachers is the question of How. By what method shall 
teachers make clear to a confused public, a public de- 
liberately misled by powerful agencies, the rightful 
claims of public schools in this time of crisis? I know 
of but one basic answer. It is found in the old saying 
of Benjamin Franklin, “We must hang together or we 
will all hang separately.” Organization, union, com- 
bined and concerted thought and action, is the answer, 
and the only answer I can see to the adequate solution 
of the problem of the crisis. There is a militant or- 
anization serving as the organ and instrument of this 
effort already in existence. It is the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers, affiliated with the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. Some years ago, I wrote a little docu- 
ment which was printed by the Union as to why I was 
a member of the Union. I am going to take the liberty 
of quoting briefly from one part of it that bears upon 
a difficulty (which to my mind is wholly gratuitous) 
in the minds of many teachers, namely, the affiliation 
with the American Federation of Labor. That statement 
was made years before the present depression and it is 
milder than I should make now. “Our whole educational 
system suffers from the divorce between head and hand, 
between work and books, between action and ideas, a 
divorce which symbolizes the segregation of teachers 
from the rest of the workers who form the great mass 
of the community. If all teachers were within the 
teachers unions and if they were in active contact with 
the working men and women of the country and their 
problems, | am sure more would be done to reform and 
improve our education and to put into execution the 
ideas and ideals written about and talked about by pro- 
gressive educators than by any other one cause whatso- 
ever, if not more than by all other causes together.” 

Then we have the present crisis. I have referred to 
that conference held in Washington. It is altogether 
likely, though I cannot prove this statement, that it was 
first intended to make this conference a further agent 
of the forces that wish to put through the program of 
reduction of teachers’ salaries and curtailment of the 
services rendered by the public school. It did not do 
that. On the whole it came out on the opposite side, 
and the reason, more than any other, for the position 
finally taken at Washington was the efforts of the 
American Federation of Labor, which called into con- 
sultation Dr. Linville, the president of the American 
Federation of Teachers, Mrs. Hanson and others, and 
got their view of the situation and presented it actively 
to the meeting. They prepared an emergency program 
on the crisis in education. ; 

Again I cannot read it all, but I will read part of 
Labor’s statement to emphasize this conflict between the 
forces of organized labor and of organized finance to 
show who are our friends and upon whom we shall rely 
and with whom we shall unite in this present crisis. 

“We believe that public welfare demands and should 
be insistent on standards of education, no curtailment 
of activities, or employment of teachers of lower stand- 
ards. That is going on all over the country—curtail- 
ment in length of school year, unduly increasing the 
size of classes, lowering the standard of teachers,” etc. 

These people are at least sufficiently educated to know 
there is a difference between cuts in wages and economy. 
I should like to read: “Cities have had to face the prob- 
lem of rapidly mounting demands for relief of the un- 


9 


employed. There isn’t a city in the country that isn’t 
suffering and isn’t urging some kind of reduction of 
expense because of appropriations for relief. Instead 
of recognizing that responsibility for relief is a govern- 
ment responsibility to be shared by all, nation, state, 
homes, the major responsibility has been shifted to the 
local unit.” 


Friends of the Public Schools 


Now if the teachers organizations, through the Amer- 
ican Federation of Teachers, can join the movement to 
make the federal government do its share, there will be 
a relief of local funds which will take away a large 
part of this pressure for the reduction of the salary of 
the public servants of the community. Get this program 
of organized labor and contrast it with the program of 
the representative of the National Manufacturers Asso- 
ciation at the Washington conference, Contrast it with 
the twenty suggestions of the United States Chamber of 
Commerce, and then ask: Who are the friends of the 
teachers and of the public school in the present crisis? 
Are not public school teachers paying too high a price 
for ‘maintaining a kind of intellectual and social ex- 
clusiveness, an academic snobbery, in keeping aloof from 
any contact with organized labor in this country? 

It was through the agency of the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers that a bill has already been introduced 
in Congress authorizing the Reconstruction Finance Cor- 
poration to make loans to the various units of the coun- 
try in charge of the schools for school purposes, 

Some teachers have the idea that the sole object of a 
teachers union and the American Federation of Teachers 
is to protect teachers’ wages. I have no apologies to 
make for that phase. I don’t see why any workers 
should not have an organization to secure a decent living 
standard. The laborer is worthy of his hire. But the 
foundations of the teachers unions of the American 
Federation of Teachers are very much wider and I 
should like to have you study together the history of 
unions representing even a minority of teachers, often 
a small minority, in such cities as Chicago, New York, 
Minneapolis, Atlanta, and others, to see that they have 
stood in the van of all movements calculated to improve 
public education, to introduce the principles and ideals 
of progressive education into the schools attended by 
the mass of the children; that they have been the most 
active instrument there is, not merely in protecting 
teachers from individual abuse, but in standing against 
the efforts of politicians to use the public school system 
for their own purposes. I should like to assure any 
doubting Thomases on this point that if they investigate 
the actual records of the unions already in existence 
they will find good reason to be proud to be associated 
with the teachers who have already organized and com- 
bined in these unions. 


In closing I want to say that all of these other teacher 
organizations are very valuable. They raise the stand- 
ard of teaching in the field of scholarship and improved 
methods of teaching. But there is none of them that 
I know of except the American Federation of Teachers 
that stands constantly, openly, and aggressively for the 
realization of the social function of the profession and 
for raising the moral, the intellectual, and the social 
level of the profession as a profession on the basis of 
the social rights and the social responsibilities of the 
group of teachers as a professional group in the com- 
munity. 








10 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Financial Fascism 


Charles B. Stillman 


the people over their governmental agencies often 

come quietly and insidiously. This is particularly 
true during a period of depression when citizens are 
necessarily engrossed in their own acute private troubles. 
There recently appeared in a prominent periodical a 
significant article under the title, ““The Taxpayer Takes 
Charge,” by Mr. Fred Sargent, President of the Chicago 
and Northwestern Railroad, and Chairman of the Citi- 
zens’ Committee on Public Expenditures. This able ar- 
ticle demands careful analysis from the standpoint of 
the theory and practice of popular government, and of 
the actual effects of the Committee’s activities upon the 
people and children of Chicago. 

No one questions that Mr. Sargent’s Committee has 
taken charge and is in charge. But in the interest of 
accuracy he should have made his title read, “The Big 
Taxpayer Takes Charge.” When an admittedly self- 
appointed, extra-legal group “takes charge,” the member- 
ship of that group becomes a matter of legitimate public 
interest. The only names vouchsafed the public are 
the twenty-nine member of the executive committee. 
Without exception they are representatives of what is 
known as “big business.” There is not a small home 
owner or citizen-in-ordinary among them. Since they 
have concentrated a considerable part of their attack 
on the public schools, it is a pertinent fact that there 
is scarcely a patron of the public schools among them. 

Such facts merely furnish personal background, and 
alone do not constitute an indictment. Emergencies 
call for emergency measures. Chicago is in the direct 
emergency, only partly caused, but greatly intensified by 
private and public extravagance, waste and graft. Big 
business and politics have both been guilty on all three 
counts, This voluntary committee, although not a cross- 
section of Chicago’s citizenship, but exclusively repre- 
sentative of great aggregates of private wealth, had an 
opportunity to show that in a great civic emergency 
they could rise above their narrow, selfish individual 
and group interests, could rise above the short-sighted 
blundering which has characterized so much of private 
business management, and give to the city intelligent, 
devoted service. And they likewise could seize the op- 
portunity under cover of the depression to establish a 
fascist dictatorship, determined not only and perhaps 
not chiefly, to eliminate waste and extravagance, but 
ruthlessly and undiscriminatingly to slash selected public 
services in the interest of big taxpayers, with little re- 
gard for the needs of the masses of the people and their 
children. 

How has the committee risen to its opportunity? 
Should it be necessary to go behind the obvious fact 
that the committee through its dictation of tax-levy limits 
to the various governmental bodies has drastically re- 
duced the tax-bills? Many citizens are so grateful for 
tax reduction that they do not question the price paid 
for it, or whether the same relief could have been se- 
cured with less injustice and to greater social advantage. 
But surely even these grateful taxpayers will admit that 
both the methods and objectives of any extra-legal group 
usurping the lawful functions of duly elected and ap- 
pointed officials should be carefully scrutinized. 


Men Teachers Union of Chicago, Radio Series, KYW. Every 
Monday, 7 p.m. 


Te most important developments in the control of 


What has been the outstanding method used by the 
Citizens’ Committee? The dictation of a rigorous limi- 
tation of the total tax levies of each of the governmental 
bodies, except for bonds and interest on bonds, which are 
excluded from the limitations. The Committee does not 
focus its attention or the public attention on the detec- 
tion and elimination of waste, but on the undiscriminat- 
ing blanket reduction of tax bills. 

With what weapon does it enforce its dictation of 
these tax limitations? The only weapon openly avowed 
is phrased very mildly in Mr. Sargent’s article: ‘Our 
committee found its power in the genuine eagerness of 
most of the officials to co-operate plus the fact that 
the banks had decided that our committee’s judgment 
could be trusted. They (the banks) have shown 
that they positively will not lend money for any muni- 
cipal function which does not have our active support.” 
In that quotation, the phrase, “genuine eagerness” in- 
vites one to linger, but the crux of the matter lies in 
Mr. Sargent’s frank claim that his committee exercises 
a veto power over the financing of public functions by 
the banks, This claim, though privately denied by some 
bankers, seems verified by the record of the past year, 
as well as by the number of bank directors on the com- 
mittee. And since the American people have permitted 
private banks to become practically the sole custodian 
of credit for public as well as for private purposes, veto 
power over the extension of that credit becomes as ef- 
fective a weapon of dictatorship as would the control 
of any military force. And note that it is only the 
negative veto power they exercise. The Committee has 
not, and does not assure extension of credit to finance 
reduced public service even when all their demands are 
met. The bargain runs all one way. 

The effectiveness of the weapon of the veto power 
over financial assistance from the banks has been testi- 
fied to by statements of public officials who have said in 
effect, ‘““we are sitting here with a gun in our hands,” 
It was frankly and dramatically illustrated at the public 
budget hearing of the Board of Education, when a mem- 
ber of the Board said to several hundred representatives 
of organized parents who were protesting against fur- 
ther school slashes, “You are in the wrong forum. We 
are the Board of Education, but the Citizens’ Committee 
is determining the extent of our expenditures, and you 
should be presenting your arguments to them.” 

Surely power of this arbitrary and absolute character 
must carry with it commensurate responsibility. But 
does it? Legally this Citizens’ Committee is completely 
irresponsible, The responsibility for the results of its 
acts falls solely upon the legally constituted public bodies 
who do its bidding, though they may be acting under 
duress. But if legally irresponsible, then certainly the 
load of moral responsibility must be all the heavier. 
How have they faced that moral and civic responsibility? 

The first test, even more than the degree of total 
tax slash demanded, would be the allocation to the vari- 
ous public services of such tax revenues as they per- 
mitted to be levied. That allocation of public revenues 
is one of the powers which the American people have 
guarded most jealously, Such measures must originate 
in the legislative branch closest to the people. Did the 
Citizen’s Committee base its allocations on the compara 
tive importance of the various public services as shown 


' 





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1933 


APRIL, 


by the tax rates authorized by the state legislature, 
elected by the people? No, even though those rates had 
been established by the legislature in 1930 on the rec- 
ommendation of another Citizens’ Committee under the 
chairmanship of Mr. Silas Strawn, Mr. Sargent’s com- 
mittee demanded that the Board of Education’s legally 
authorized levy be slashed 33% in contrast to 11% for 
the city. In addition, while granting the city $1,600,000 
for pension purposes, above its $50,000,000 limitation, 
it has so far refused to permit the Board of Education 
to remove $1,300,000 for pension purposes from its limi- 
tation of $48,000,000. We are not contending that the 
city is receiving too much, but why this persistent and 
cumulative discrimination against the schools? 

An obvious reason is that the education of a half 
million children is inevitably among the most expensive 
of public services. A possible reason is that they con- 
sider the schools more helpless and safer to attack. But 
a powerful reason is indicated in Mr. Sargent’s own 
words, “first on the list of essentials comes police, fire, 
and health protection in the order named.” And there 
is nothing following in his article to indicate whether 
he considers public education a bad fourth or four- 
teenth. This is in vivid contrast to Governor Horner’s 
statement in his inaugural message that “the first claim 
upon the funds and concern of the state should be for 
welfare work and education.” The President of the 
United States just last week included in an address the 
statement that “in the rigid governmental economies that 
are requisite everywhere, let us not encroach upon the 
schools or reduce the opportunity of the child through 
the school to develop adequate citizenship.” And also 
“the proper care and training of our children is more 
important than any other process that is carried on by 
our government.” I am giving these quotations not 
because the teachers desire to claim favored treatment 
for the schools above all other public service, but they 
do submit that the schools should be considered among 
the most essential of such services, and should not be 
victimized by discrimination. 

Mr. Sargent later, in the same article, stresses the 
payroll of the schools of one million dollars a week 
during the school year. He fails to mention that that 
one million dollars a week provides educational oppor- 
tunities for over a half million children, or $2.00 per 
week per pupil. He also does not mention that Chicago 
ranks nineteenth among the large cities of the country 
in per capita costs of its schools, and that it ranks first 
in the excessive pupil load imposed upon its teachers. 
It might be pertinent to ask whether anyone secures in 
either public or private expenditures more genuine value 
received than the community receives for that $2.00 per 
week per pupil during the school year. That expendi- 
ture is based on a teacher’s salary schedule of 1922 
which was not increased during the boom period, which 
has already been slashed during the past year from 10 
to 30%, and which, according to all reports, is about to 
receive an additional slash of from 5 to 20%. That ad- 
ditional slash is to be the teacher’s reward for keeping 
the schools open without payment since the middle of 
last May at a cost of the loss of thousands of their 
homes and insurance policies, and of interest charges 
ranging up to 40%. This additional reduction in salary 
will be imposed without any payment on long over-due 
back salaries, and the reduced salary will have to be 
paid very largely in tax anticipation warrants whose dis- 
count would alone constitute a disastrous salary slash. 
It is made necessary only by the insistence of the rep- 
resentatives of the Citizens’ Committee that the loss and 


11 


cost of collections of taxes for the years 1928 to 1932 
shall be estimated at 11% instead of 10%. This is in 
no way involved in the pledge of the Board of Educa- 
tion to accept the Citizen’s Committee’s limitation of 
the tax levy of 1933 to $48,000,000, but is an additional 
demand made after the granting of their original re- 
quest, apparently after it was found that their original 
request might not necessitate an additional salary cut. 
It should be added that the Federal Commission of Edu- 
cation reports that the average cut in teachers’ salaries 
for the country as a whole during the depression has 
been 15%. 

The director of the Citizens’ Committee recently made 
a public admission that the allocation of public funds 
to the various public functions had not been based on a 
careful survey of the comparative needs of the various 
public services, Such a survey would inevitably reveal 
the tremendously increased load placed upon the schools 
by the depression as well as the increased importance of 
the contribution of the schools to social stability and 
good citizenship during these abnormal times of stress. 

No, the crucial test of scientific, disinterested public 
spirit has not been met in the dictated distribution of 
revenues, It has rather been again demonstrated that 
the power to determine the allocation of tax revenue to 
the various public services is a power the people can- 
not afford to surrender. And they certainly cannot 
contemplate surrendering the control of the amount of 
school revenue to organized large tax payers who are 
not dependent upon the public schools for the education 
of their children as the mass of the people are, and who 
are subjected to the constant pull of their narrow spe- 
cial interests in the matter which lie in a reduction of 
tax bills for themselves and their corporations. 

In view of the record, there are highly significant 
implications in one of Mr. Sargent’s concluding sen- 
tences, “since we (the Citizens’ Committee) are keeping 
our minds strictly on the matter of immediate reductions 
in expenditures we have not yet decided how we shall 
work out the matter of future control.” Future control! 
Is financial fascism to be permanently in the saddle? 
How are we teachers to teach civics under present cir- 
cumstances? Are we to admit that popular government 
has collapsed, as well as private industry? We are given 
to understand as teachers that we are further to be 
offered up as a sacrifice to the financial powers. The 
schools are easy to attack, though we have found it des- 
perately hard to keep them open through eight long 
payless months. Do the people, the common people, 
really want their schools? If they do, they must find a 
way, and quickly, to let city and school officials and Citi- 
zens’ Committee know their decision in no uncertain 
terms, 


This article deals primarily with Chicago, but substitute Stone 
Committee, Tax Payers’ League, Municipal Research Bureau, or 
some similar title of a local citizens’ committee for the Sargent 
Committee of Chicago and the subject matter applies equally well 
to every American city as to Chicago.—lHditor’s Note. 





“There is not an existing institution in the world 
of civilized humanity which cannot be profoundly 
modified or altered, or abolished in a generation. 
There is no form or order of government or of the 
dominion of force which cannot be removed out of 
the world within a generation. There is no ideal in 
conformity with the principles of civilization dreamed 
of by any dreamer or idealist which cannot be realized 
within the lifetime of those around him.”—Benjamin 
Kidd. 





12 


THe AMERICAN TEACHER 


The Tax Reduction Hysteria 


E. E. Schwarztrauber 


Editor’s Note: The following article, though written with re- 
gard to a local situation, should be of interest to readers of THE 
AMERICAN TEACHER because of the recently organized movement 
in Milwaukee directed against attacks on essential governmental 
services. This movement, known as the Community Service 
League, is made up of the educational and social service forces of 
the city of Milwaukee and all those public spirited citizens of the 
city who see the dangers inherent in the indiscriminate attacks 
now being launched by selfish interests upon city government. A 
counter-offensive, led by the Community Service League, was 
opened by a mass meeting, Wednesday evening, February 165. 
Dr. Charles H. Judd, of the Department of Education of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, was the speaker of the evening. A vigorous 
campaign of education is planned for the coming months and the 
expectation is that the organization will find a field for permanent 
functioning. Its purposes as outlined in the preamble to its con- 
stitution are as follows: 

1—To study the conditions surrounding all forms of public service 
such as the schools, libraries, museums, health and safety 
agencies, public works, and other social and educational 
services. 

2—To place the facts concerning public services before the people, 
and to promote a better understanding through the dissemina- 
tion of the facts, of the value of the services rendered by 

P pu ublic agencies. 


o make appearances before governmental bodies and civic 
organizations in support of necessary and valuable public 
4—To ‘studiy the problems of government with the purpose of 
making constructive recommendations for desirable changes in 
the structure and scope of governmental functions. 
56—-To ally itself with or to secure the alliances of any and all 
organizations that are working for the betterment of public 
and social services. 
6—To assist the constituent organizations in meeting the prob- 
lems which may need attention in their own particular situa- 
tions and in promoting their general welfare. 
HE American public is being stampeded into an 
attitude toward governmental economy approach- 
ing an hysteria comparable to that experienced 
during the World War. Witch-hunting for pro-Ger- 
mans, slackers, and bolsheviks of war years has given 
place to a hue and cry today about public service and 
servants which threatens to reverse patriotism into a 
duty to believe that those who cast greatest aspersions 
upon government, local, state, and national, are the real 
benefactors of society, The chief danger in such a situa- 
tion lies in the stupid and irreparable damage which may 
be done through ill-advised action. The world has been 
trying, rather feebly, these past fifteen years to repair 
the damage done during one great hysteria. The re- 
turn to some degree of sanity has been a slow and pain- 
ful process. But now, in the midst of an economic catas- 
trophe more serious in its potentialities perhaps than 
war, sanity again faces dethronement. This time the 
enemy of the people is not the war system: it is, we 
are told, a voracious tax-eating monster, our own gov- 
ernment, national. state, and local. 

That such a picture is being painted, that there is no 
exaggeration in the above statement, is evident through 
a perusal of the cartoons in our newspapers the past few 
months. The damage done today by such cartoons 
alone, in a poisoning of the public mind is extremely 
serious in its undermining influence upon the faith of 
our citizenry in government. Tax reduction may even- 
tually be secured and services of government cut to the 
bone, but along with an inevitably indiscriminate slash- 
ing at government costs that an economy hysteria makes 
possible, there may develop evils which even the most 
ardent economy advocates do not anticipate or desire. 

For the citizens of Milwaukee who place human and 
ultimate values above immediate and selfish interests 
there is, therefore, a service to be rendered in setting 
down some pertinent facts relative to the present situa- 
tion. For upon such citizens devolves the responsibility 
of staying the tide of blind smashing of valuable social 
institutions. This responsibility they can fulfill only 


on the basis of a calm survey of facts. In the follow- 
ing brief outline are therefore presented some matters 
which, though preliminary in form and needing later 
and greater amplification, point to rather definite con- 
clusions. 


Sources of Attack on Government and Governmental 
Costs 


It should first be noted that the loudest and most per- 
sistent attack on government comes from groups almost 
entirely of the same color, viz., business interests and 
entrenched wealth. They group themselves as follows: 


I— Nationa (See Milwaukee Journal, Jan, 22, 1933) 


a—National Organization to Reduce Public Expenditure. 
Organized in June, 1932, at Chicago under the auspices 
of the Chicago Association of Commerce and the Illincis 
Manufacturing Association with 648 organizations repre- 
sented, including a score of taxpayers’ leagues, grain and 
trade associations, and local and state chambers of com- 
merce. 

b—Naticnal Economy League. 
Established in New York City, July 26, 1932. Director 
of activities is Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, chairman. 
Directors are Al Smith, Elihu Root, Newton D. Baker, 
General Pershing, and Admiral Sims. 

c—National Committee for Economy in Government. Organ- 
ized during the summer of 1932. Represents some 70 
trade associations and crganized under the auspices of 
the National Association of Manufacturers. 

d—United States Chamber of Commerce with headquarters 
in Washington, D. C., and representing state and local 
chambers of commerce. 


II — State anv Loca. 

a—Wisconsin Taxpayers’ Alliance. 
Organized early in 1932 and having as its officers, Di- 
rectors and General Council representatives of business 
and industrial interests cf the state with a sprinkling of 
lawyers and one lone college president. 

b—Milwaukee Real Estate Board, Leonard A. Grass, promi- 
nent realtor, president. 

c—Milwaukee Home Owners’ Association. 

d—Milwaukee Building and Loan League. 
This organization represents interests heavily involved, as 
building and loan associations, in mertgages on tax de- 
linquent properties and therefore tempted to a stand for 
lower taxes as a way of protecting many otherwise in- 
secure investments. 

e—The Citizens’ Bureau, John C. Davis, Director. 
An organization, stating as its aim that of being a fact 
finding body cn municipal questions. Its name implies 
an organization widely representative of all classes. In 
actual fact its control is vested in officers and trustees 
of the big business interests of the city. 

f—The Milwaukee Association of Commerce. 

g—The Milwaukee Taxpayers’ Advisory Council. 
Organized early in 1932. Largely through the instru- 
mentality of Lecnard A. Grass, it consists of representa- 
tives of the five above- mentioned city organizations. Its 
president, Henry H. Otjen, is a prominent Milwaukee 
realtor. This organization is the spearhead, with the Real 
Estate Board for a close-fitting socket, of the shafts 
thrust at city costs and services. 


Nature of the Attack 


With such an array as the above, it is to be expected 
that property interests would precede in emphasis the 
human values involved in governmental activities, The 
attack of all economy organizations is characterized by 
charges that governmental extravagance is a sort of 


Ow- 
ters 
ater 
>on- 


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per- 
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and 
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ed by 
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APRIL, 1933 


drunken sailor spree unparalleled in history. The good 
public is expected to forget the orgy ending in 1929. 

Closely allied with this line of attack is the studied 
attempt to place the blame of our present depression ills 
upon increasing taxes and “bureaucratic waste.” In- 
sulls, Kreugers, and banker betrayals of the people’s 
trust are ignored or discounted. 

But most inexcusable and deliberately misleading is 
the charge that tax money is “money poured into a rat- 
hole,” wasted and gone forever with the tax collector 
represented as the grasping withered hand of a deadly 
scourge. 


Aims of the Attack 


There are unquestionably mixed motives in the pres- 
ent attack on governmental costs. An honest alarm at 
increasing costs is held by many both within the tax- 
payers’ organizations and without. Elimination of ac- 
tual waste and outworn services all socially-minded citi- 
zens desire. The demands of such citizens can result 
only in good. But the efforts of such a class become 
submerged by the noise and clamor of that group which 
holds to subtler aims under the guise of “saving the 
poor taxpayer.’’ Milwaukee’s organizations for tax re- 
duction but reflect, consciously or unconsciously, the 
purposes striven for nationally. Those purposes are 
(a) to place the blame for the present depression upon 
the broad shoulders of government; (b) with general 
property taxes drying up as sources of revenue, to de- 
mand reductions thereon in order to forestall the logical 
shifting of taxes to incomes and inheritances, (The 
phrase, “soak the rich,” implies the fear inherent in the 
uneasy minds of protected privilege); (c) to stop ex- 
tension of government services. A few years ago the 
common slogan of chambers of commerce, manufac- 
turers’ associations, etc., was “less government in busi- 
ness, more business in government.” To the layman 
suffering keenly the wiping out of savings in banks, in 
Insull stocks, or smarting under high costs of public 
utility services, the slogan was not convincing. A change 
in slogan to “cut government costs” was a much more 
effective one. It directed the layman’s resentments into 
safe channels—for big business. The smoke screen is 
excellent, If taxes can only be cut enough, governments 
will have to retire to the bare services of a more primi- 
tive day. The game preserves for private interests and 
private profits will thereby be correspondingly enlarged. 


Some Facts on Government Costs and Services 


Tax reductionists lay great emphasis on tax money 
leaving the citizen’s pocket, implying just that much 
dead loss. Thirty-three cents out of every dollar of the 
citizen’s income, the National Economy League charges, 
is absorbed by government, national, state, and local. 
But this completely ignores the obvious fact that tax 
money returns, in fact must return, to the citizen’s 
pocket as interest on bonds, or payments for services 
and supplies. 

For instance, in the total budget of the city of Mil- 
waukee for 1933, there are three large items of expendi- 
ture, viz., for (a) personal services (salaries and 
wages) ; (b) supplies and equipment purchased by school 
board, city purchasing agent and sewerage commission ; 
(c) fixed charges, principally on bonded indebtedness 
The first of these items amounts to a total of $17,902,422, 
paid to city employees of which $4,311,005 goes for 
police and fire protection and $8,307,473 for education 
of our children. The monthly checks to these employees 
alone are, we can safely assert, not hoarded in the man- 


13 


ner of R. F. C. funds to banks but go immediately into 
circulation in payment of rent, clothing, groceries, gas, 
electric, telephone, and street car services, and a host of 
other personal needs. In like manner the purchases of 
supplies and equipment by the city, running into several 
millions, afford a potential market to Milwaukee busi- 
ness men for the sale of their products while the last 
item, that for fixed charges totaling $6,013,002, is largely 
absorbed in payments on interest and principal of the 
city’s bonded indebtedness. Milwaukee bankers and 
bondholders benefit directly in this last item. 

At this point it should be noted in passing that city 
budget cuts of four, five, or six million dollars and similar 
proportionate cuts in every city, village, and hamlet in 
the state, duplicated in every state in the union and 
by state and national governments as well is urged by 
the “economy” advocates. What will this mean if car- 
ried out? Obviously, it will reduce the dangers to en- 
trenched wealth of the imposition of increased income 
and inheritance taxes. But just as obviously, lower pay 
checks will be issued since private business itself is doing 
nothing to increase them. Consequently, less in rents, 
grocery bills, utility service bills, etc., will be paid and 
relief demands will grow. Governments will ultimately 
be forced to increase appropriations for relief and the 
only source of wealth still remaining saved from in- 
creased taxes in the first instance will have to pay for 
its folly by providing relief in order to forestall danger- 
ous social unrest. 

In addition to the advantage of the immediate return 
of the tax dollar to the pockets of Milwaukee citizens 
there is the value, not calculable in monetary terms, of 
the services rendered by these same city employees and 
departments. Health department employees have reduced 
the death rate of children from 145 in 1910 to 46 in 
1932; they have decreased deaths from typhoid, diph- 
theria, and tuberculosis, to mention these only, in the 
same period in the same astonishing degree—in typhoid 
alone from 45 in 1910 to 0 in 1932. All this has come 
about through such methods as careful inspection of 
milk and water supply, inspection of meats and other 
foods, through clinical service in schools and health 
centers, through education of mothers in proper health 
measures in the home, and through numberless other 
measures. 

Teachers, librarians, and museum employees have built 
up for the city’s youth that moral and mental environ- 
ment which is, in the final analysis, a bulwark against 
the onslaughts of criminal tendencies. In this depression 
period all three institutions, the schools, the library, and 
the museum, with their ally the recreation centers under 
public management, are crowded with young and old 
driven by enforced leisure to seek outlets. The alter- 
native is the public dance hall, pool rooms, and other 
questionable places of entertainment run for private gain. 
The costs on the one hand are the taxpayers’ money in- 
vested in character building, or, on the other hand, that 
same money multiplied many times over (for the United 
States as a whole, five times), engaged in attempted 
salvaging of wreckage in juvenile and criminal courts 
and penal institutions. 

The total costs of the above services, plus all those not 
mentioned but in many respects equally essential in a 
complex urban community, will be for the year 1933, 
$31,483,292. Does the Taxpayers’ Advisory Council 
forget that the costs to Milwaukee citizens for four util- 
ity services only, namely, telephone, gas, light and power, 
and transportation, as estimated by utility officials them- 
selves, totals approximately $31,000,000? It is apparent 








14 


which set of costs is the greater burden to the people 
yet we hear no suggestion from the Taxpayers’ Advisory 
Council or its affiliated guardians of the people for a 
reduction of utility rates. It would be a nice mathe- 
matical problem to calculate the probable burden if the 
city returned to private enterprise those functions it has 
taken over the past half century or more. Fee systems 
in high schools, fees for use of library books and maga- 
zines, fees for use of recreational facilities, abandonment 
of all school and hospital clinical services of the health 
department to private practice, and charges for a score 
of other municipal services to the people would force 
standards of living for the masses to a costly low level. 
Yet, despite protestations to the contrary from “cut cost” 
advocates in Milwaukee, the abandonment of vital muni- 
cipal functions is inevitable if they have their way. 
Only families of the upper income groups will escape. 
The process of reduction in services is already in con- 
summation in an alarming number of American muni- 
cipalities. 


Some Sources of Milwaukee’s Financial Burden 


Milwaukee’s present financial difficulties would be con- 
siderably reduced, to say the least, but for the following 
conditions : 

I—Permanent improvements benefiting special interests 
and properties and not yet paid for. 

The Kilbourn Avenue street widening project cost the 
city $4,916,361. Because of litigation in the courts the 
city has been able to recover none of this huge cost 
though abutting properties have benefited enormously 
in enhanced values. 

In this same project, the city under pressure of realty 
and vested interests was forced to pay $740,250 for a 
50 foot strip of land on the south side of Kilbourn Avenue 
at Milwaukee River from the Mariner block, the whole 
of which had been offered the city by the estate for 
$700,000. Had the city been allowed to acquire the 
block and thus secure the 50 feet for street-widening 
purposes, it could have sold the remainder for more than 
the entire original cost. 

Furthermore, street improvements such as drainage, 
sewerage, etc., assessed against properties but not paid 
for to date amount to a total of $4,000,000. Part of 
this total is due to the fact that realtors brought pres- 
sure to bear upon the city to improve their new sub- 
divisions which thereafter were placed upon the market 
in the boom days before 1930. Some of these sub- 
divisions, because of difficult topography, particularly 
one such as the Grasslyn Manor subdivision, required 
more than the usual cost in improvements. Today, many 
of these speculative real estate ventures are as yet mainly 
vacant lot properties. Much of the $4,000,000 is tied 
up in these misplaced ventures. 


I1—Delinquent taxes. 

To date the tax delinquency in the city approximates 
some $12,000,000 of which $2,000,000 is delinquency on 
property improvements in subdivisions as discussed 
above. 

Some of Milwaukee’s citizens most prominent in de- 
mands for tax reduction are among those heavily de- 
linquent, not only for the depression years but also in 
the boom years before 1930 when income tax records 
show undoubted ability to pay. 

Added to the delinquency due to subdivisions is an- 
other 30% of the total $12,000,000 due to individual 
home owners. As will be explained later there is every 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


reason to believe that this type of delinquency has its 
cause, not in the amount of the tax itself, but in heavy 
payments home owners must make to avoid mortgage 
foreclosures, Foreclosure on account of tax delinquency 
has in no case been practiced by the city. 

A study of the tax burden by districts is revealing, 
particularly as to the real cause for demands for drastic 
cuts in taxes. The forty-two properties in the city as- 
sessed for 1932 taxes at values of $1,000,000 or more 
total $99,690,010. City taxes to be paid by these prop- 
erties amount to $2,230,056.22. Properties located on 
Wisconsin Avenue between the Milwaukee River and 
8th Street are assessed at $22,663,000. On this down- 
town area city taxes to be paid total $507,651.20. A 
$2.00 additional reduction in the tax rate as the Tax- 
payers’ Advisory Council now demands for next year, 
would save, for the million dollar properties, assuming 
present assessed valuation, $199,380.02; for the Wis- 
consin Avenue properties which of course include sev- 
eral of the million dollar properties, a saving of $45,- 
326.00. To take some single instances, the Plankinton 
Arcade property alone would save $10,330.00; and the 
Schroeder Hotel would save $6,910.00. On the other 
hand a typical small home assessed at $5,000, pays to 
the city this year, $112.00 and a $2.00 reduction in the 
tax rate would mean a saving of only $10.00. But if the 
$2.00 reduction involved private garbage disposal, for 
instance, twenty-five cents per week would run up a 
yearly bill of $13.00. Tax reduction to small home 
owners means eventually greater costs than savings. 
The question may well be raised, with whose interests 
is the Taxpayers’ Advisory Council most concerned, 
vested property interests or small home owners? 


Summary 


America is in the grip of an hysteria fostered, it 
would seem, by an organized group of business interests 
who would deflect, if they could, the onus for the 
present depression from their own shoulders to that of 
their own governments, national, state, and local. By 
this method, skillfully employing every means of prop- 
aganda at their disposal, they hope to accomplish a 
double purpose, namely, escape from retribution for 
their reckless betrayal of the people’s trust during the 
past years and elimination of the government as an 
agency for wider social service to the people. 

A calm survey of the facts will reveal that the smoke 
screen employed by selfish business interests is making 
possible the wreckage of valuable social institutions 
which years of painful effort have built up. People’s 
minds are being turned toward programs of economy 
presumably in the interests of “the poor taxpayer” 
though in fact those programs are to prove costly in the 
end. The real burdens of the individual and the indi- 
vidual’s government are in large part the result of vic- 
timization by those who would use individuals and gov- 
ernments to their own private selfish ends. 

An aroused public conscience is the only safeguard for 
those lasting values upon which a durable society can | 
build. The task of reconstruction which a great war, 
a reckless period of speculation, and the ravages of a 
depression following bring to a people can not be left 
in the hands of those whose aims are unsocial or lack- 
ing in vision. The immediate future calls for the 
marshalling of all those socially-minded citizens who | 
will challenge the ones crying, “Wolf! wolf!” and who | 
will thus help restore sane thinking and avoid thereby 
stupid acting. 





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1933 


APRIL, 


15 


The President’s Page 


What Will Become of Us? 

There is a great stir now among 
educators. Recalling the warning of 
Mr. H. G. Wells that we are to wit- 
ness “a race between Education and 
Disaster,’ some of our leaders are 
getting busy. Meanwhile, economists, 
social engineers, publicists, politicians 
and even bankers are beginning to 
think toward a way out of the tragic 
situation in which the world finds 
itself. The process of social thinking 
is new to most of us, and we are mak- 
ing a good many false starts, We are 
involved also in much confusion be- 
cause of the very complexity of the 
problem. With simple finite minds 
we undertake a job the range of 
which is infinitely great, 


What Comes First? 

For us in the field of education the 
task of thinking through to the con- 
nections of our range of activities and 
responsibilities to the social problem 
facing us all is especially difficult. 
There is a movement under way 
through which leading educators are 
informing themselves concerning the 
nature of the economic and social fac- 
tors in the world crisis. Intellectual 
bystanders would say they should 
have done this before. That is true 
enough, but we have all been too busy 
to think, 

The examination of the social and 
economic situation has already led 
some educators to give their views on 
what education should do about it all. 
It seems to me that these early pub- 
lications betray the element of in- 
completeness of thinking that is char- 
acteristic of much “new” thought. 
Education has a method and a phil- 
osophy of its own, although we may 
not agree on what they are. Never- 
theless, those educators who even 
temporarily forget their own philoso- 
phy to accept another in some other 
field may start us all to guessing. 
There are ideas that come to apparent 
completion in other fields than edu- 
cation. In our study in these other 
fields, especially in economics, govern- 
ment and in the problems of society 
in general, the most satisfactory in- 
tellectual results come from the effort 
to tie in and relate social ideas to 
those that seem to belong more espe- 
cially to our own field of education. 
If we did this generally, perhaps we 
should see less of the manifestation 


Dr. Henry R. Linville 


of enthusiasms among educators, now 
for this, and now for that. 

The application of this method to 
my sub-topic is that nothing comes 
first, but all must be considered to- 
gether. If anyone wants to make the 
point that education itself should in- 
volve that kind of thinking, let him 
have it that way. 


I Would Even Go Further 

I would go further, perhaps in two 
parallel lines, side by side, or maybe 
one above the other. 

In the first place, I would say that 
we in the field of education ought not 
to limit our thinking to finding out 
how far other minds have gone in 
other fields, and then striking a bal- 
ance that fits in with the intellectual 
adjustments we may already have 
made. The “easy chair” or bystander 
thinkers have done a lot of this. They 
are a smug, exasperating crew. Even 
those who regard themselves as lib- 
eral may fail to realize that in the 
fulless of social thinking our minds 
tend to break down the barriers which 
previous restricted thinking may have 
set up. I think that is why funda- 
mental thinking often shows up as 
radical thinking in personalities that 
bear none of the trade marks of the 
kind of person who is termed “radi- 
cal” by casual observers. Such think- 
ing cannot be restrained by the bound- 
aries established in our political life 
for those who have to move and vote 
in crowds, Nor does it yield accep- 
tance to the formulae and the pro- 
cedures of the existing social order. 
We cannot suppress this kind of 
thinking; least of all should we at- 
tempt to do so in the field of educa- 
tion. The strongest light we obtain 
will come from that source. 


And the Other Line 


We, together with the parents and 
old Grandma Society, have done our 
best to shape the children after our 
own images. We have meant well, 
but we have done the job with little 
planning and with no fundamental 
thinking at all, I am not saying now 
how the collective “we” should have 
striven to meet our responsibility, be- 
cause I don’t know. But I do be- 


lieve we have not done more than to 
play with the problem. Objectively, 
we can stand off and see that family 
life is not up to an ideal mark any- 
where. The public school system for 


the most part “keeps school,” and 
keeps the children out from under 
the heels of overwrought parents and 
out of the streets. What we do for 
them in the classroom is the best we 
know, but it is not much. We cannot 
accept seriously any responsibility for 
what happens to them after they have 
grown too big for our teachings and 
warnings, and have gone in for “suc- 
cess” in business or in crime, If some 
win applause and emoluments in adult 
life, we may claim our share of credit, 
but they may have won what they got 
anyway. Any educational cad can 
talk this way, and many do. 


But What About I]t? 


There is a superintendent in New 
York with a background of experi- 
ence and point of view as conserva- 
tive as any I know. But this super- 
intendent has been doing some 
interesting thinking which | believe 
has fundamental quality. He accepts 
as valid the claim of educators that 
the educative process develops intel- 
ligence. How much it has succeeded 
in being effective is not a matter for 
consideration just now. Intelligence 
can be developed through education! 
We are pretty sure of it. 

This superintendent insists first of 
all that we all put our minds on the 
task of working out the most effective 
methods of developing the intelli- 
gence, especially at the high school 
age levels, the area with which this 
superintendent is especially dealing. 
It is granted, perhaps, that we shall 
have to remake our conception of 
what intelligence really is, a process 
of redefining in which the connotation 
of the Intelligence Quotient may go 
by the board. 


What Would He Have Intelligence 
Do? 

For a conservative superintendent, 
I think his idea of what he would 
have the collective intelligence of our 
oncoming generations do is the most 
challenging part of his thinking, He 
holds that our worries about how to 
bring about a better social order 
would disappear when the schools 
have turned out a really intelligent 
body of young citizens. They would 
be intelligent enough to handle the 
job. 

But I want to know what we could 
do with the hang-over generation that 
would interfere? 





16 


Democracy 








American Federation of Teachers 
Organized April 15, 1916 


Affiliated with the pen Federation of 
or 


506 South Wabash Ave., Chicago, IIl. 
President 
Henry R. Linvitte, New York Local 5; 
70 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. 





Secretary-Treasurer 
Frorence Curtis Hanson, Chicago Local 3; 
506 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago, IIl. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 
Official Organ 
Apvisory Eprrori1at Boarp 
Lucre W. ALLEN Ruts GILLetTe Harpy 
Chicago Local 3 New York Local 6 
Mary C. Barker Henry R. LINVILLE 
Atlanta Local 89 New York Local 5 
Se_ma M. Borcuarpt A. D. SHEFFIELD 
Washington Local 8 Wellesley College 
Joun M.Graysrer Cuarzes B. STILLMAN 
San Francisco Local 61 Chicago Local 2 
FLorENcE Curtis HANSON 
Executive Editor 
Publisher 
H. G. Apa Printinc Co. 
107 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago, IIl. 
EP 10 











Educational Association 


“Investigated” 


The House of Representatives of 
the State of Washington, by an over- 
whelming vote, recently voted to in- 
vestigate the Washington Educational 
Association. 

While the motive behind the in- 
vestigation is perhaps the legislative 
activity of the Association, one of the 
charges is that teachers were coerced 
into joining it by the fear of losing 
their positions or of not obtaining 
positions. 

There have been many complaints 
from teachers in all parts of the 
United States that administrative 
pressure was used to force their af- 
filiation with one professional organ- 
ization and to prevent their joining 
others. It is generally known among 
teachers that this practice is common 
in some states, but as far as we know, 
this is the first time the practice has 
been so flagrant as to cause legisla- 
tive action, 

In the case referred to there was a 
further charge that the association 
was conducted as a “racket” by the 
executive officers to keep themselves 
in power. 

We advise officers of associations 
where one hundred per cent member- 
ships are boasted about to follow the 
course of this investigation. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


in Education 


Who Are Your Friends? 
Two Programs—Choose 


The United States Chamber of 
Commerce has sent out to local 
chambers of commerce twenty sug- 
gestions for reduction of school costs, 
It is significant that the letter of this 
body of organized business interests 
referred only to the possible saving in 
school costs. No mention was made 
of other governmental expenses, as 
building of highways, police and fire 
departments, health departments, city 
buildings, number of municipal de- 
partments, number of local office 
holders, etc. Only the cost of the 
schools occupied the attention of this 
group of super-businessmen. 

The twenty recommendations fol- 
low : 


Possible Fields of Economy in 
School Retrenchment 


— 


Purchase of supplies. 

2. Operation of physical plant. 

3. Reduction in cost of collecting 
school funds and of debt service 
by consolidation and refunding 


of outstanding indebtedness 
where possible. 
4. Postponement of new capital 


outlay for buildings and replace- 
ments. 

5. Transfer supervisors to class- 
rooms. 

6. Simplify curricula. 

7. Simplify overhead administra- 
tion and centralize responsibility. 

8. Shorten school day one hour. 

9. Increase size of classes. 

10. Increase teaching hours. 

11. Repairs and maintenance of 
physical plant. 

12. Suspend automatic increases of 
salaries. 

13. Reduction in teachers’ 
not to exceed 10%. 

14. Shorten school year not to ex- 
ceed 12%. 

15. Discontinue evening classes. 

16. Discontinue kindergartens. 

17. Reduce elementary school curri- 
culums by consolidation from 8 
to 7 years. 

18. Reduce high school curriculums 
by consolidation from 4 to 3 
years. 

19. Transfer 1/3 of cost of all in- 
struction above high school level 
from taxpayer to pupil. 

20. Impose fee on high school stu- 
dents. 


salaries 


The American Federation of 
Labor, of whom it has been said 
that it has a program of liberal pro- 
gressive education second to none, has 
also a program for the present crisis. 
Refusing to be stampeded by the wild 
cry for economy and the prevailing 
budgetary hysteria, it repeats its posi- 
tion for the protection of teachers, 
children, schools, and the nation. 

1. Waste and extravagance must 

be determined by careful study, 
the responsibility placed where 


it belongs and no economies 
which harm the children per- 
mitted, 


2. No curtailment or elimination of 
any school activity necessary to 
maintain and improve educa- 
tional standards. 

3. Raising the top-age of compul- 
sory school attendance. 

4. No reduction in teachers’ 

aries. 

No increase in the size of classes. 

6. Noshortening of the school year. 

7. No lengthening of the school 
day. 

8. No elimination of valuable sub- 
ject matter, 

9. Free text books for all. 

10. Widest extension of the 
gram of adult education . 

11. Tenure laws for teachers. 

12 Maintenance and improvement 
of teaching standards. 

13. Adequate school buildings 
adapted to the needs of modern 
education. 

14. Increased revenues to maintain 
and develop public education. 

More money for public educa- 
tion, not less. Our complex social 
order, the complications of our 
economic system, call for widen- 
ing the scope and influence of 
our public schools and require 
larger instead of restricted ap- 
propriations. 

15. Equal educational opportunities 
for all children. 


The teachers of America have the 
two programs from which to choose. 
It is for them to say where they be- 
long. They cannot stand alone be 
tween the two, forever at the cross 
roads! If they are not with, they are 
against. They should join where they 
belong to help forward the program 
in which they believe. 


sal- 


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Aprit, 1933 


17 


Education for Democracy 


Must Education Alone Pay? 


The Chase National Bank, under 
the leadership of Mr. Albert H. Wig- 
gin, the chairman of its board of di- 
rectors, has inaugurated a nation-wide 
campaign to deflate wages. Aided by 
the dominant ideas of an era of scarc- 
ity economics as well as by the hys- 
terical cries for economy by those 
who put profits above national or 
community welfare, the bankers are 
forcing budgets to be slashed with 
little regard for the social conse- 
quences of such forced and haphazard 
economy. 

In the midst of the bankers’ desper- 
ate scramble to restore a decaying 
capitalism to a semblance of its 
former vitality, we must ask our- 
selves whether economy necessarily 
means curtailment and especially cur- 
tailment in education as in business, 
or whether economy means the full- 
est and most intelligent utilization of 
available resources. Mere blind lop- 
ping off of budgetary items, mere 
curtailment of educational activity 
hardly constitute a wise policy at a 
time when clear thinking and long 
range planning are the vital factors 
in economic recovery. 

The first question we face is this: 
Are the resources of America so 
scanty that unwise and dangerous 
economy—as represented by deflation 
and curtailment—must be pursued? 
Technocrats tell us that if the mate- 
rial resources of America are har- 
nessed to modern machinery and 
available man power and then used 
to capacity, they could produce at 
least a $10,000 yearly income for 
every family in place of the starva- 
tion which now faces 30,000,000 of 
our citizens in the midst of potential 
plenty. How greatly productive are 
modern machines is evidenced by the 
fact that one man and a modern brick 
machine can produce 400,000 bricks 
a day as against 450 bricks of a 
decade or two ago. With such pro- 
ductive possibilities in the offing, even 
on a five hour day or less, hope and 
courage rather than despair and 
timidity should guide our thinking in 
this crisis. 

Sound economic thinking requires 
an expansion of construction at this 
time. Nevertheless, if money is lack- 
ing or unobtainable, localities may 
curtail bridge or subway building 
without serious social damage since, 
in periods of prosperity, construction 
may be hastened and the loss re- 
gained. However, an interruption of 
education cannot be made up because 
the productive educational period 


comes at a specified time and cannot 
be recovered. A curtailment of edu- 
cational opportunity for the young 
means an irreparable injury to our 
future citizens as well as to the so- 
ciety of which they are a part. 

Even from a purely narrow busi- 
ness viewpoint, society must not re- 
trench in education. When a business 
begins to grow, increased expendi- 
tures are inevitable. Unlike business, 
education is not declining. On the 
contrary, education is expanding at 
an unprecedented rate and hence edu- 
cational appropriations must likewise 
expand rather than be curtailed. 
Thousands of children and adults, de- 
prived of opportunities to work, have 
been driven back to school. Take our 
high schools. Enrollment has in- 
creased 99.97% between 1920 and 
1930. In New York City alone the 
high school population more than 
doubled, jumping from 59,000 to al- 
most 200,000. During the same dec- 
ade, the public school population be- 
tween the ages of 5 to 17 years rose 
from 27.8% to 81.3%. 

Not only has school enrollment in- 
creased at an unprecented rate, but 
each child in school has received 10.8 
days more instruction in 1930 than in 
1920. Of every 100 children, only 
75 attended school in 1920, whereas 
in 1930 out of every one hundred, 83 
attended regularly. In the light of 
this increase in enrollment, as well 
as in attendance, why should not edu- 
cational expenditures increase? Why 
should not the real problem be the 
careful scrutinizing of educational ex- 
penditures to ascertain if they are be- 
ing wisely spent? Does not in- 
telligent economy demand that the 
community must insist upon the full- 
est possible value for every dollar 
expended ? 

Educational appropriations should 
not be regarded as expenditures to 
which economy should be applied. On 
the contrary, educational expendi- 
tures should be looked upon as in- 
vestments that will yield rich divi- 
dends to the communities which have 
the courage to make them, An ex- 
amination of educational expenditures 
of states will show the close relation- 
ship existing between productivity, 
wealth, great men of science, art and 
educational expenditures. Ignorant 
citizens are not only poor producers 
of wealth, but limited consumers, So- 
called fads and frills mean an expan- 
sion of wants with a conseqr ent in- 
crease in demand and production. 
Those who, because of the economy 
hysteria, curtail educational expendi- 
ture to eliminate so-called frills are 


guilty of killing the goose that lays 
the golden eggs. 

To listen to the bankers and other 
economy “howlers” one would think 
that America was wildly extravagant 
in its educational expenditures. at 
are the facts? For the education of 
26,500,000 pupils, America spends an- 
nually less than $3,000,000,000. An 
additional two or three cents a day 
for the voting population finances 
private education at a small additional 
cost of $500,000,000 for 3,500,000 stu- 
dents, This small cost stands between 
the perpetuation of American demo- 
cratic ideals and recovery, or dictator- 
ship and failure. When added mil- 
lions are demanding education, can 
the schools afford to limit their serv- 
ice? Can we afford to deny educa- 
tional opportunity when no other so- 
cially constructive activity is possible? 
Shall we let people be gripped by de- 
spair? Let those who advocate un- 
wise and unnecessary educational 
economy weigh well the possible con- 
sequences of their folly, 

In the State of New York, the out- 
standing enemies of our public schools 
are the bankers. At a time when the 
schools are called upon to render the 
greatest services to society and should 
receive the fullest support of socially- 
minded citizens, our bankers forced 
an $80,000,000 reduction in the bud- 
get. After that demand had been 
met, they threatened to throw the city 
into bankruptcy unless another $20,- 
000,000 was deducted from city de- 
partments and an additional $20,009,- 
000 from salaries. Of this sum, the 
teachers are to give $9,000,000 yearly. 
To these arbitrary demands of the 
bankers, both city and state govern- 
ments yielded. 

Were the heads of the National 
City and Chase National Banks satis- 
fied with the unwise curtailment their 
acts forced upon the various construc- 
tive activities of the respective city 
departments? No. They and their 
economy allies—the real estate and 
utility groups—are demanding an un- 
precedented reduction in State Aid 
amounting to $22,000,000 of which 
New York City would lose $10,000,- 
000. Such a reduction in State Aid 
at this time, will weaken the efforts 
of the state to equalize educational 
opportunity and throw an undue bur- 
den upon real estate, It will do more. 
It will necessitate a radical curtail- 
ment in or elimination of evening 
schools, summer schools, continuation 
schools, playgrounds and recreation 
centers, and training schools. It will 
mean increased pupil loads, already 
dangerously heavy, a curtailment of 








18 


needed supplies, and possibly another 
cut in salaries with its consequent 
break in teacher morale and _ total 
cessation of the relief given to save 
our children from want. 

Those of us who have faith in our 
country, those who believe that 
largely through education can we de- 
velop a type of citizen prepared to 
function in a co-operatively planned 
and managed society, using the find- 
ings of technocracy and science for 
the benefit of all, are determined to 
resist the unwise economy pressure 
of the bankers to the utmost. 

The power of the bankers to dom- 
inate the economic life of the nation, 
to capitalize human misery, to shift 
currents of trade, to bring prosperity 
to one community and misery to an- 
other, and even to dictate the details 
of governmental policy as the Chase 
National and National City did in 
New York, must be terminated. 
Hence we teachers must wage an in- 
cessant struggle for the nationaliza- 
tion of credit. Only thus can our 
local and state governments be liber- 
ated from the control of the ineffi- 
cient, anti-social, power-mad leaders 
of finance and help the people usher 
in a planned society dominated by the 
service rather than the profit ideal. 

ABRAHAM LEFKOWITz. 





Thrift Can Go Too Far 


All classes of society have suffered 
loss of income as a result of the great 
economic crisis which is upon the na- 
tion. A few individuals, due to the 
peculiar nature of their occupations, 
have been able to reap extra profits. 
The larger New York banks for in- 
stance because of the conditions of 
the money market have been able to 
pay higher dividends in 1930, 1931, 
and 1932 than they were able to pay 
in the boom year of 1929. They, how- 
ever, may be compared to the under- 
takers with whom business is good 
during an epidemic which paralyzes 
other forms of business activity. 

The reduced collections of income 
taxes even in the highest levels proves 
that the wealthiest class has taken 
losses. The thousands of vacant busi- 
ness buildings in our towns and cities 
speak eloquently of losses that have 
come to the small merchant. The 
millions living from public charity 
show how the workers have been hit. 
The plight of the farmers can be 
imagined from reading the market 
page and the increased number of 
mortgage foreclosures, 

The depression was a little slower 


in reaching the class of workers em- 
ployed by the governments but these 
public employees, including teachers, 
are being reached in no small way 
now. Loss of position, wage cuts, ir- 
regular pay days, and general insecur- 
ity have become their lot. 

In an almost hysterical effort to 
save their fortunes intact, the wealthi- 
er groups, powerful through their 
possession of the wealth of the coun- 
try, their better organization, and 
their control of information dissemin- 
ating facilities, may be going too far 
even for their own good to say noth- 
ing of the national welfare. 

They have opposed adequate relief 
measures for the unemployed either 
by great projects of public work or 
by appropriations for direct support. 
They have opposed all measures for 
the relief of agriculture whether the 
proposal was one for enough inflation 
of the currency to make it possible 
for the farmers to pay their mort- 
gages and other obligations or one for 
granting the farmers the same sub- 
sidy which has long been granted to 
manufacturers through the protective 
tariff. 

In order to lower their tax pay- 
ments they have attacked essential 


governmental activities even those 
which become even more necessary 
during times like the present. They 


are even unwilling to continue to pay 
the same proportion of the costs of 
government they have been paying. 
They are desperately attempting to 
substitute a sales tax for an income 
tax, or at least to use a sales tax 
rather than have the income tax rates 
increased. The greatest part of the 
sales tax would be paid by those peo- 
ple with the lowest incomes, those 
who have been the hardest hit by 
the depression. A very large part of 
it would have to be assumed by the 
millions of unemployed who would 
receive a little less food. Most of the 
rest would be met by farmers who 
are already receiving less than the 
cost of production for what they are 
able to sell, and by the workers who 
are barely making both ends meet 
with part time employment at less 
than a living wage. 

These wealthy and powerful indi- 
viduals who resent an increase in 
their income taxes should remember 
that a very large part, probably half, 
of the American people have had all 
their incomes or, at best, all but enough 
to give them the barest necessities, 
destroyed absolutely by the depress- 
ion. They should remember, also, 
that in times of great national dis- 
asters such as wars, not only all the 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


property but even the lives of all 
the citizens are at the disposal of the 
government. The fact that in past 
wars the rich have been influentia] 
enough in government to force con- 
scription only of lives while property 
was merely loaned at a good rate of 
interest does not necessarily mean 
that this will always be the case, 

The owners of great fortunes 
should not forget that these fortunes 
were built up because of the compara- 
tive prosperity of the masses of the 
people from which they were drawn, 
Some of them seem to believe that 
the people may prosper only because 
of great masses of wealth concen- 
trated in a few hands. Another case 
of the cart before the horse logic, 

These people, especially when ac- 
tive in their “citizens committees” to 
reduce public expenditures, should 
bear in mind that now is a most in- 
opportune time to deprive the people 
of free public schools, public libraries, 
parks, playgrounds, and the like. 
These things have never been so much 
needed. 

And above all, these powerful 
groups should remember that, after 
all, they constitute a very small mi- 
nority and are powerful because of 
closer and better organization, and 
that it will be possible for the other 
groups to organize against them if 
they go too far, or worse yet, to show 
resentment in unorganized, unintelli- 
gent, extra-legal ways which are more 
destructive. Incidentally, the actions 
of certain citizens’ committees are no 
more legal and no less destructive 
than farmers’ groups stopping fore- 
closure sales or unemployed groups 
demanding more food. 

The people of America are an or- 
derly, patient, and, when necessary, a 
long suffering people who have not 
only permitted but have helped to 
build up many sizable fortunes for 
the more prosperous citizens, They 
have no desire to destroy these for- 
tunes or even have them reduced in 
size unless public welfare demands 
the reduction, Nor does the average 
American blame the owner of any 
property for any decent effort he 
makes to save it or to increase it 
But will they calmly sit by when the 
owners of great wealth insist on not 
bearing their fair share of depression 
losses even to the extent of destroy- 
ing American agriculture, depressing 
beyond measure the standard of liv- 
ing of the American working-man 


and tearing down a most cherished | 
institution, the American Public 


School ? 


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1933 


APRIL, 


“Depression Will Aid 
the Schools” 


Some months ago newspapers Ccar- 
ried the head lines, “Depression Will 
Aid Schools.” Probably the eleven 
superintendents who answered the 
question, “What dividends are the 
schools deriving from adversity? 
were themselves surprised that such 
a bold and crass interpretation should 
have been given to their statements 
as to what the schools were learning 
through the depression. ‘ 

To say that “the schools will 
weather the crisis and emerge better 
and stronger for the experience” is 
to speak with as much wisdom and 
truth as would characterize a state- 
ment that the world in general, so- 
ciety at large, would be better and 
stronger for the experience of the 
depression. 

This is not exactly the same idea 
perhaps which the pastor of a large 
city church enunciated last winter 
when he said that the suffering 1n- 
cident to the depression was a good 
thing because it gave the more for- 
tunate people an opportunity to ex- 
ercise the Christian (?) graces of 
charity and brotherly kindness! That 
idea reminds us of some of the argu- 
ments for war as an institution: war 
inculcates bravery and patriotism. It 
is a good thing because it provides a 
means for insuring a hardy genera- 
tion of men! 

What can be said for a generation 
of leaders that can envision no ad- 
venture for man beyond the fire with 
which he has already played? 

In regard to the schools we should 
like to ask the superintendents who 
took part in the Journal of Educa- 
tion symposium another question. If 
it required an economic storm to lift 
a curtain that blinded us before “‘the 
depression” what reason have we to 
believe that when the catastrophe is 
over (whenever and however that 
may be) we shall not immediately be- 
gin all over again the process of build- 
ing upon false premises, promoting 
unnecessary departments, and mak- 
ing unwise expenditures? 

By what measuring rod is it de- 
termined that the schools have spent 
unwisely? Have we at last a true 
yard stick by which to measure our 
program and objectives? Will these 
same instruments be adequate for de- 
termining procedure under the con- 
ditions in which the schools will find 
themselves when they emerge from 
the present ordeal? 

Who knows what those conditions 
are to be? More to the point, what 
do we as educators want the condi- 


tions to be? How many of the 
teachers in your school system, Mr. 
Superintendent, have any intelligent 
idea about what a social order should 
be? Herein lies the condemnation of 
the schools: the large majority of the 
workers in the institution of educa- 
tion has no appreciable understand- 
ing of the social structure in which 
the institution functions. How then 
can our objectives articulate with the 
conditions in a changing world? How 
can we discriminate among progress, 
stagnation, and retrogression? 

The cry of the world, “Re-educate 
the educators,” is the most arresting 
challenge to the schools. 

No. The schools cannot emerge 
from the depression any stronger or 
any better than they were before. To 
counterbalance anything that we may 
have learned there will be many new 
problems arising out of the physical, 
mental, and moral derangements of a 
world that has been on an economic 
debauch. Perhaps we shall have 
learned nothing that we could not 
have learned through voluntary ap- 
plication in normal times had we 
willed to know. There will be much 
more to learn and we shall wade 
through unhappy experiences to learn 
it. 

We shall stumble through new 
problems just as we have done in the 
past unless we set ourselves con- 
sciously to the task of developing so- 
cial intelligence among ourselves, the 
teachers of the youth of the world 
and in some degree the potential 
leaders of thought in our communi- 
ties. Marked progress here would 
give the world reason to hope that 
in a generation or so man might en- 
joy the benefits of a really new and 
better social order. 

Mary C. BARKER. 


Blind and Dumb 


In Seattle, where the unemployed 
have been rather better organized to 
care for their problems than in other 
cities, there has been a struggle for 
the past six months between the un- 
employed who wished to maintain 
their organizations and the reaction- 
ary citizens of that far western city 
who wished to break up the organiza- 
tion. 

Through the self-help activities and 
the distribution of public relief with- 
out the overhead cost of social agen- 
cies, the unemployed organizations of 
Seattle have furnished relief to the 
unemployed of that city at about half 
the cost to the taxpayers that would 
have accrued under the methods used 
in most cities where there are no real 
organizations of the unemployed. 


19 


The saving in self-respect both to the 
unemployed and to the citizens gen- 
erally is incalculable. 

There seem to have been two chief 
objections to the unemployed organ- 
izations, First, the organizations were 
buying their supplies at wholesale or 
from producers without giving the 
retailers a chance to get their cut. 
Second, the unemployed organizations 
had the nerve to use their political 
power, 

The culmination of the struggle 
came when several thousand of the 
unemployed spent several days in the 
County-City building waiting for a 
governmental committee which had 
been created to handle relief matters. 
There seems to have been no violence 
or disorder during the time three or 
four thousand unemployed men and 
women spent three days in the build- 
ing. Imagine several thousand hun- 
gry men who have no organization 
spending three days in the public 
buildings of an eastern city. The 
time will come when the conservative 
citizens of Seattle will give thanks 
for the organization of the unem- 
ployed, if they do not in the mean- 
time succeed in breaking it up. 

The unemployed were finally driven 
from the building, fifteen hundred re- 
tailers in the city were put on the 
dole, and relief will cost the people of 
Seattle about double what it has been 
costing them, or the unemployed will 
get about half as much to eat, in 
which case, the cost to Seattle will be 
much more than double. 

If the depression continues to get 
worse with an increase in the cost 
of supporting the unemployed, the 
time will come when all money raised 
by taxes will be necessary for that 
purpose. Even that may not be 
enough to support all those who can- 
not get work. On that day, many a 
city will regret that its unemployed 
do not have a good, strong organiza- 
tion, 


Tenure in California 


On February 4, the Legislative 
Committee of the California Teachers 
Association met in San Francisco and 
by a vote of 29 to 22 decided it would 
not support the present tenure law. 

The administrators who put over 
this program seemed so anxious to 
please the school trustees of some 
parts of the state that they boldly 
stated there should be some sort of 
compromise whereby the trustees 
would be satisfied. It is generally 
believed that a five-year contract will 
take the place of tenure, if they have 
their way in the matter. 

The Teachers Association of San 








20 


Francisco is up in arms and thorough- 
ly aroused. The prettiest bit of fire- 
works ever seen in educational circles 
in California is anticipated. Now 
that the C. T. A. has at last come out 
in the open there should be no argu- 
ments possible that would induce the 
classroom people to renew their mem- 
bership in the C, T. A. 

Dr. Gwinn, Superintendent of 
Schools, San Francisco, has prepared 
a bill which has the approval of the 
school board, abolishing the section 
of the school code which gives to 
cities the right to incorporate tenure 
in their city charters. He evidently is 
bent on making a thorough job of it. 

It is a sorry mess the C, T. A. is 
seeking to get the teachers into, but 
there are still hopes that there will 
be sufficient strength shown by other 
organizations to prevent any drastic 
changes in the tenure law. 


Pennsylvania Labor Speaks for 
the Schools 

Harrisburg, Pa.—It is admitted that 
the future of civilization depends to 
a great extent on the quality of 
present day primary education but 
meanwhile politicians want to create 
sweatshop and speed-up conditions in 
the Pennsylvania school system. 

This charge was made by John 
Phillips, President of the State Fed- 
eration of Labor testifying against 
proposed reduction in the $100 a 
month minimum pay scale for rural 
teachers. A flat ten per cent cut in 
all minimum rates for teachers is 
proposed in revisions to the Educa- 
tional code. 

“Better salaries for teachers raised 
standards of public education in this 
state to the level of other modern 
states”, Phillips said. “We now want 
to destroy educational standards 
along with economic standards. 
Teachers are not in a competitive 
industry. 

“Today, no one with any economic 
intelligence could cut wages except to 
meet an immediate competitive situa- 
tion. 

“The school teachers have been 
better police for young people in this 
depression than the police. Never- 
theless, thousands of young people 
are roaming hungry and desparate 
throughout Pennsylvania as in other 
states. A wise state would provide 
better educational facilities, to occupy 
the idle jobless child. Cut teachers’ 
salaries and you will inevitably affect 
the morale of the educational system 
so that thousands of youngsters who 
now stay in school because they have 
no work, will drift out and swell the 
army of the unemployed.” 





The Saturday Evening Post 


Many teachers and friends of pub- 
lic education have been disturbed by 
an article in the January 28 issue of 
the Saturday Evening Post. The 
article which was written by one 
Edwin LeFevre ‘is a bitter attack 
upon the American system of taxa- 
tion and upon expenditures for certain 
governmental purposes. The Ameri- 
can teacher is chosen as the typical 
“tax-eater” and is characterized as 
an unsocial pampered parasite un- 
willing to cooperate with other citi- 
zens during an economic crisis. 

Due to the prominence of the 
article, which occupied the leading 
position in the issue, and to the wide 
circulation of the Post, the American 
Federation of Teachers believed that 
an article prepared by a nationally 
known writer with a different point 
of view would be welcomed by the 
Post which has presumed to be at 
least fair in its attitude toward public 
education and teachers. 

The following letter and the reply 
speak for themselves: 


February 15, 1933. 


Mr. George Horace Lorimer, Editor, 
Saturday Evening Post, 

Independence Square, Philadelphia, Pa. 
Dear Mr. Lorimer: 

In the January 28 issue of the Saturday 
Evening Post there appeared an article 
by Edwin LeFevre titled “Tax Blindness”, 
which has been unfavorably received by 
teachers all over the United States. They 
feel that this article of Mr. LeFevre’s 
gives a wrong impression of the teachers’ 
status and his relation to society as well 
as the place and responsibility of public 
schools in our complex social order. 

You will wish, I am sure, in the interest 
of fairness to present the educator’s point 
of view, regardless of the fact that it 
would be good business so to do. 

President Robert Maynard Hutchins of 
the University of Chicago will prepare an 
article for publication in the Saturday 
Evening Post showing the value of public 
education and that the teacher of America 
is anything but the pampered parasite of 
society, if you wish him to do so. 

I shall hope to hear from you that this 
article by President Hutchins is desired. 

Faithfully yours, 


Fiorence Curtiss Hansen, Sec.,Treas., 
American Federation of Teachers: 


Editorial Rooms, The Saturday 
Evening Post 
February 23, 1933. 


Dear Mrs. Hanson: 

Thank you for your letter of the fifteenth. 
Mr. LeFevre did not offer his school 
teacher as typical of school teachers, but 
as typical of the tax blindness he was 
about to discuss, and the obliviousness of 
a citizen of the better sort to the financial 
crisis in her community. 

Nothing we have said has been a 
criticism of teachers or of teaching, nor 
have we singled out the public school sys- 
tem for attack. It scarcely should be neces~ 


THE AMERICAN TEACHE, 


sary for The Saturday Evening Post to 
protest its belief in public education and 
its respect for teaching as a calling and 
for teachers as a class. 

We should like to make our position on 
some of these matters a little clearer op 
our editorial page, but in recent weeks we 
have received a very large number of 
abusive and threatening letters from school 
teachers and officials. This correspondence 
has not been a natural protest against oy, 
attitude, but has been inspired. Let ys 
quote a sentence from a circular letter sen, 
to the presidents of local branches by Mr 
J. Herbert Kelley, Executive Secretary 
of the Pennsylvania State Education Asso. 
ciation: 

“May I mention a third matter, namely 
the attitude of The Saturday Evening 
Post toward education. Recent editorials 
and articles have been distinctly unfavyor. 
able. Would it not be a good plan fo 
you and your associates to bombard Mr 
George Horace Lorimer, the editor, with 
protests against this editorial policy and 
threaten him with the elimination of the 
publication from your own reading list and 
from the reading list of the high school 
library? I am sure that such protests 
would give the editor pause. His attitude 
is most unfair toward the schools and um. 
fair toward school children salesmen.” 


We feel that we must postpone any 
further comment or clarification of oy 
position until this series of letters has 


stopped and their writers are in a different 
frame of mind. 

Yours very truly, 

Tue Eprror. 

We publish this correspondence not 

so much to show the attitude of the 

Post as to clear ourselves of any 

charge that may be made of having 


written “abusive and _ threatening 
letters.” 
If the Post, which within two 


weeks published two feature articles 
decidedly unfriendly to teachers and 
public schools, closes its columns to 
the other side of the question, it wil 
indeed “scarcely be necessary for The 
Saturday Evening Post to protest its 
belief in public education and its re 
spect for teaching as a calling and for 
teachers as a class.” 


Memphis, Tenn. 
January 22, 1933 
Dear Mrs. Hanson: 

Congratulations on the especially 
fine issue of the AMERICAN TEACHER 
this month, 

I am enclosing one dollar for fou 
extra copies which I wish to pass 
to some friends and other people that 
need to be enlightened. 

VivIAN POINDEXTER. 
Send for extra copies if you can us 
them.—Editor. 





A. F. T. Convention 


The 17th Annual Convention ¢ 
the American Federation of Teach 
ers will be held in Milwaukee, Wit 
consin, June 26-30, 1933. 


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1933 


APRIL, 


The Citizens’ Conference on the Crisis in 
Education 


HE Citizens’ Conference on the Crisis in Educa- 

tion, called by President Hoover to meet in Wash- 

ington, January 5th, was planned by the American 
Federation of Labor and The American Council on 
Education. 

The American Federation of Labor sent ten delegates 
headed by Frank Morrison, Secretary of the Federation. 
Dr. Henry Linville, President of the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers, was one of the delegates. 

The American Federation of Labor presented its 
position in the following strong statement: 


Labor’s Emergency Education Program 


The American Federation of Labor believes our public school 
system is a national institution of permanent importance in 
achieving those purposes for which society is organized. The 
whole of national progress is conditioned by the intellectual 
and moral development of its citizens. To keep progress sus- 
tained we must constantly guard the welfare of our children. 
Development of each succeeding generation must take precedence 
over other responsibilities. While this emergency calls for 
economies everywhere and retrenchments in many fields, we 
must guard against retrenchment which reduces the educational 
opportunities of children. Any curtailment in educational op- 
portunities reduces our chances for having a trained citizenry, 
conscious of their capacities and able to use their human re- 
sources to greatest advanutage. We believe that educational 
services must develop progressively with the increasing com- 
plexity and inter-relationship in social life. We cannot curtail 
essential governmental services even in a depression. 

We believe that public welfare demands there should be no 
lowering of standards of education or curtailment of services 
or activities. Salary cuts, employment of teachers with lower 
standards, curtailment of the school year, or unduly increasing 
the standard teacher load are incompatible with this social 
policy. 

We recognize that the decline in national income makes 
economies essential and forces inquiries into methods of financ- 
ing. We believe that the unit costs of education can be lowered 
by wise economies. This should be done by economies and not 
cuts in salary scales. The morale of the teaching force is 
essential to maintenance of educational standards. Economies 
come from elimination of wastes and better administrative 
methods. Services essential to social progress must not fluctu- 
ate with the business cycles, but must be assured a permanent 
basis. 

While emergency conditions do not form the basis for de- 
veloping permanent governmental policies, yet we cannot de- 
velop emergency policies without reference to our permanent 
social and political philosophy. Nor can we plan our educational 
financial program without reference to expenditures for other 
services. Approximately 25% of local tax coliections are ex- 
pended for education. Local tax provisions have had to face 
the problem of declining national income and rapidly mounting 
demands for relief for the unemployed. Although responsibility 
for unemployment relief is a fundamental governmental re- 
sponsibility to be shared by all units—national, state, and local— 
major responsibility has been shifted to the local unit. When 
the state and national governments assume their proportional 
responsibilities, there will not be such a heavy drain on local 
resources and the school emergency will be somewhat relieved. 
We urge the formulation of a national unemployment relief 
program together with necessary appropriations. The immediate 
enactment of such legislation would make it possible for local 
governments to carry on their essential services and assume 
their share of the emergency load. 

Provisions to meet the depression needs must be borne by 
the federal government. This should be done before local 
resources are further diverted from their proper purposes. 
The present policy of loans from the Reconstruction Finance 
Orporation only after all resources are exhausted is unwise. 
_We urge further that the Reconstruction Finance Corpora- 
tion be empowered to make loans at a low rate to states for 
educational purposes, including loans, equal to that part of de- 
linquent taxes that would be allocated to educational purposes. 
Such loans would be amply secured by the property upon which 
the taxes were assessed. The loan would provide a tax mora- 
torium for our own citizens. 

We suggest as an additional source that a percentage of 





21 


gasoline taxes collected in the various states be allocated to 
educational purposes. 

We recommend the principle of state aid, so that state rev- 
enues may assist the weaker sections within several states. 

We recognize this is not a time to recommend new taxes, 
but we believe that judicious use of resources available and 
use of federal credit will enable us to weather the emergency 
without such injury to our children as would result from 
lowered educational standards. The ultimate purpose in educa- 
tion and in all other public services is development and con- 
servation of social values. 

In this great emergency the banking institutions should do 
their work for our public schools. They can do this by supply- 
ing funds adequately secured at rates of interest which repre- 
sent a patriotic sacrifice during this period of the nation’s great- 
est need, and perhaps emergency. 


(Signed) Witttam Green, President 
American Federation of Labor. 


The Citizens’ Conference after much discussion 
adopted forty recommendations aiming at the protec- 
tion of public education which include the following: 


Educational service should be accorded a high degree of 
priority in determining the purposes and services which shall 
be supported by the states during an economic depression. 

The major wastes should be eliminated through the elimina- 
tion of control and interference by politicians, of political ap- 
pointments and of political corruption. 

Local governments and local school districts should be reor- 
ganized and consolidated. 

Administrative control of the schools must be centralized in 
the superintendent. 

State administrative organization of education must be reor- 
ganized through the creation of a nonpolitical and professional 
agency for the administration of the educational policies of 
the state. 

The state must assume the responsibility within its means 
of assuring adequate public education to all local communities, 
irrespective of their financial condition. 

Education is related inseparably to economic conditions and 
to the future as well as the present social health of the nation. 
The present status of the nation’s finances requires rigid 
economy in public education. At the same time the education 
of the present generation of school children, bound up as it is 
with proper functioning of our institutions in years to come, 
must not be sacrificed to temporary economic needs. 

The teaching load should not be increased beyond the ability 
of the individual teacher to offer a reasonable standard of in- 
struction to each pupil. 

The size of classes in art, music, shop work, home economics 
and other special subjects should be made as large as that of 
the average academic class. 

The amount of time given to the laboratory sciences should 
be the same as that given to other academic subjects. 

The amount of credit for all vocational subjects should be 
equal to the number of teacher hours required, provided that 
provision be made for a proper amount of extra class work to 
be done by each pupil. 

Accrediting agencies should be urged to modify their stand- 
ards for those schools which can carry a higher pupil-teacher 
ratio without detriment to the welfare of the children. 

The requirements of the Federal Board for Vocational Edu- 
cation should be revised. 

Building construction should be postponed if, when and where 
practicable. 

Business departments should be studied and if possible re- 
organized. 

Definite and comparable information on school costs being 
needed and not now available, the U. S. Office of Education 
is requested to resume this important and timely study. 

The records of the U. S. Office of Education show that re- 
ductions in school budgets already range from 15 to 100 per 
cent. Over 4,500 school districts have closed their schools 
entirely. Nor is this the worst. There is a demand that school 
budgets be further reduced though they have already been 
cut to a point.where the schools cannot be operated efficiently. 
We go on record as opposed to this unwise and unsound pro- 
cedure. 

The immediate harm to school children arising from insuffi- 
cient educational supplies, overcrowded classes, poorly prepared 
teachers, and shortened school terms is obvious. The ultimate 


evils may not appear for a decade, but it is certain that the 
nation will pay heavily in the future if our educational ma- 
owed to break down today. 


chinery is al 





22 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Schools and the A. F. of L. Convention 


(Continued from February issue 


Education Committee 


Four of the resolutions referred to the Education 
Committee were combined into one substitute motion 
dealing in the main with the same topic, adequate finan- 
cial support of public schools. 


School Support in the Period of Retrenchment 


Wuereas, During the past two years, due to the industrial 
depression, a tremendous increase in school membership has 
shown itself largely in the junior and senior high schools; and 

Wuereas, The education of those workers, forced out of 
employment by industrial conditions over which they have no 
"pate is a proper responsibility for the community to assume; 
an 

Wuenreas, A decrease in public revenue due to economic con- 
ditions has been general throughout the country during the last 
few years; and 

Wuereas, The retrenchment thus necessitated in public ex- 
penditures has in many communities been expressed in drastic 
cuts in appropriations for public schools; and 

Wuereas, These reductions must inevitably lessen the effi- 
ciency of this great institution of service at a period when its 
stabilizing force is most needed, and when its resources are 
most heavily taxed by the increased school population; and 

Wuereas, The public schools are universally admitted to be 
necessary for social stability and progress, which are effectively 
served only in proportion as the services of the schools are 
maintained and extended; therefore be it 

Resotvep, That the American Federation of Labor protest 
against the false economy of curtailing the services of the 
schools and of reducing the income of the educational staff of 
these schools; and be it further 

Resotvep: That the American Federation of Labor first urge 
its Central Labor Bodies, State Federations of Labor, National 
and International Organizations and Affiliated Unions that they 
recognize their responsibility for awakening in their communities 
anew the tradition of American devotion to the public schools; 
that it call, second, upon all organizations and individuals to 
whom the well-being of our nation is sacred to throw the whole 
weight of their power and influence into the protection of our 
public schools; and that it call, third, upon the people of 
America to take heed to the danger to which this policy of 
retrenchment in public school support is exposing the nation, 
since democratic government is founded on public education, 
and that they put squarely before their fellow citizens the 
danger in which reduction of school revenues will place their 
schools, to the end that the sentiment of the community shall 
demand of public officials that crippling retrenchments be not 
made in that public service most vital to the welfare of the 
community and of the nation; and be it further 

Resotvep, That in order to counteract the propaganda of 
taxpayers’ associations and Chambers of Commerce designed 
to curtail school expenditures, the American Federation of 
Labor will undertake during the coming year a publicity cam- 
paign for the purpose of presenting to the public the real 
effect upon the rising generation of injury to the public school 
system in order to build up an alert public opinion on school 
questions. 

A substitute motion combining the resolutions dealing 
respectively with protesting against curtailment of public 
school educational facilities and protecting the school 


year was adopted. 
Economy Programs and School Support 


Wuereas, In time of financial stress and disturbance, among 
the most serious steps in so-cailed economy is the curtailment 
of school activity; and 

Wuenreas, These curtailments take forms deleterious to the 
children for all time and therefore to the future of the nation, 
such curtailments being shortening of the school year; elim- 
ination of skills and arts necessary to meet our modern complex 
civilization; lengthening of the school day; increase in the size 
of classes, thereby defeating the purpose of education; such 
consolidation of schools as leads to an increase in the size of 
schools such as to make humanly impossible the inspired leader- 
ship which the head of the schools should give; unwise, unjust 
and dangerous reduction in teachers’ salaries; therefore be it 

Resotvep: That the American Federation of Labor take all 


steps to inform the public of the dangers inherent in these 
retrenchments; and be it further 

ReEsoLvep: That the American Federation of Labor take 
vigorous action to guard against curtailment or elimination of 
any school activity necessary to maintain and improve educa- 
tional standards. 

A resolution reaffirming the position of the American 


Federation of Labor in favor of compulsory full-time 
education to the age of sixteen and part-time education 
to the age of eighteen for all children of every state was 
introduced jointly by Robert J. Watt of the Massa- 
chusetts State Federation of Labor and the delegate of 
the A. F. of T., and adopted by the Convention. 

The Education Committee submitted the following re- 
port on “Our Public School System” and “Child Wel- 
fare”. Your attention is particularly called to the recom- 
mendations made and accepted by the delegates. 


Our Public School System 


Under the above caption the Executive Council’s re- 
port gives an account showing commendable interest in 
the public school situation. This account indicates the 
steadily increasing services rendered by the public 
schools, With the increasing complexities of modern 
society the schools have grown to meet that complexity. 
At this time of financial stress, when the need of sym- 


pathetic interest and support of schools is greater than § 


ever before, when the responsibility of the schools due 
to our terrific unemployment situation has been increas- 
ing, when these added responsibilities call for added 
financial resources not curtailment, all those interested 
in safeguarding public education must arouse themselves 
to that end. Our public schools are experiencing an 
attack upon their very existence as an institution provid- 
ing for the needs of the children of all the people, to 
say nothing of their functions as the bulwark of 
democracy. 

Organized Labor adheres to its traditional stand and 
as its predecessors established through their efforts free 
and general education and have sponsored and originated 
practically every progressive movement in the public 
school system, free text books, compulsory education 
laws, vocational education, continuation schools, evening 
schools, tenure for teachers, retirement systems, work- 
men’s compensation laws applicable to teachers, in- 
creased compensation for teachers—it is now ready to 
defend to the utmost our public school system against 
the attacks of financiers, industrialists and tax associa- 
tions seeking to destroy it. As public education owes 
almost its whole being to the interest and support of 
organized labor, so will organized labor’s continued in- 
terest and support preserve our free, tax-supported 
schools and see that they are maintained and developed, 
not only kept as good as they are but made better and 
better in spite of the depression, yes, because of the 
depression. 

The schools are the subject of attack in the name of 
economy. These so-called economies take the following 
forms: 

Reducing teachers’ salaries—the favorite economy. 
Employing fewer teachers. 

Employing teachers of little training and exper- 
ience at lowest salary levels. 

Shortening the school year. 

Increasing the size of classes. 

Postponing erection of new buildings. 


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APRIL, 1933 


7. Postponing purchase of equipment and supplies. 

8. Eliminating subject matter, as health education, 
vocational education, music, art, dramatics, kinder- 
gartens, child guidance, special classes for the 
handicapped, etc. 

9. Eliminating free text books. 

10. Eliminating top age limit of compulsory school 
attendance. 

11. Repealing teacher tenure laws not in order to get 
better teachers but in order to get cheaper teachers. 

12. Eliminating sick leave pay. 

13. Repealing minimum wage law. 

14. Advertising for bids, teaching positions to go to 
the lowest bidder. 

15. Eliminating dental clinics, medical inspection and 
attendance officers. 

These are the fads and frills of which we hear so 
much and with which it is proposed to do away in the 
name of economy. And the children pay and they pay 
for all time. It cannot be made up to them or to the 
nation. The school is the greatest institution for the 
training of sound citizenship. It is inextricably bound 
up. with social welfare. 

The first industrial revolution changed standards and 
practices and sent the children into the factories, The 
trade unionists of that day rose in protest and estab- 
lished the free, tax-supported public schools, which we 
have longed regarded as our most cherished and most 
characteristic American institution. This has grown into 
our present great system rendering a tremendous social 
service. 

Where will the second industrial revolution send our 
children? We are appalled at the increase in vice and 
crime in the last three years among our very young. 

Reliable authority tells us that there are thousands of 
boys and girls of high school and college age now wan- 
dering the highways of the country. The press frequently 
informs us of tragedies that have befallen some of these 
homeless children through fatal accidents and temptation 
into crime, 

No less a distinguished educator than 
Hutchins has said: 

“Undoubtedly in the hysteria of inflation the schools, like 
the colleges and universities, did some things that they can 
now do without. But the things that communities propose to 
do to them in the hysteria of economy far surpass the wildest 
aberrations of bull-market days. The plain tact is that the 
schools are under attack because it is easier to get money from 
them than it is to correct the fundamental iniquities and anti- 
quities of local government. Only a people that had no con- 
ception of the place of education in its national life could 
contemplate the ruin of the next generation as the best remedy 
for governmental insolvency.” 

The Executive Council’s report gives statistics to show 
the increase in school expenditures, showing that the 
increase went for longer terms and increased attendance, 
improvements in educational service and to cover de- 
preciation of the dollar. However, the percentage of 
national income spent for this purpose remained practi- 
cally constant in the decade ending in 1929. 

Much propaganda that the schools cost too much 
is being spread. Actually if a tax of 10c per day were 
collected from each person of 21 years of age and over 
in the United States the total amount so collected would 
pay the present public education expense for almost 
26,500,000 pupils. In 1930, the average expense per 
adult for public education was $36.42, the total cost of 
which was something over $2,500,000.000. 

The American Federation of Labor stands for more 
money for public education, not less. It reaffirms its 


President 


23 


position of increased revenues to maintain and develop 
our public schools. 

It is true we are in a depression, but neither the schools 
nor the children are in any way accountable for it. It 
is not the schools that have failed. 

Organized Labor is interested in locating waste and 
extravagance in government and in schools but wishes 
to see the responsibility for them placed where it belongs 
and to see that economy programs do not harm our 
children. 

There is much talk to the effect that what was good 
enough for us is good enough for our children, Organ- 
ized Labor says that what was good enough for us is 
not good enough for our children. Our ethical standards 
have not fallen so low as that, Social progress has been 
made because parents have demanded a better, fuller life 
for their children than they had for themselves. The 
day of the three—R type of education has long passed. 
We have long left behind the day when the children 
needed from the school only the three R’s, when they re- 
ceived in the home apprentice training, amusement and 
major training for living and livelihood. Our schools 
give a broader, more complex training to fit the child to 
meet the problems of our more complex modern world. 

Our schools are worth saving. The task calls for com- 
plete unity of action among our common people. The 
American Federation of Labor pledges itself to conserve 
our public school system, for the maintenance and de- 
velopment of our civilization and for the perpetuity of 
our institutions. 

Sa 2K * 

Your committee desires to emphasize in the minds of 
the delegates the relation of education to economic re- 
covery. Not only is the maintenance of the wages of 
over a million workers in this social industry important 
in the work of stabilization, but also education increases 
consumption, since it raises the standard of living of the 
people. Educated people desire more and better things; 
the luxuries of a generation ago have become the neces- 
sities of today. With the increased consumption created 
by education comes increased production, which fur- 
nishes employment to more workers, who themselves cre- 
ate an endless chain demanding increased consumption 
stimulating production in a constantly widening circle. 

*” * * 


Your committee recommends that the officers of the 
American Federation of Labor be directed to prepare 
and introduce into the next Congress a resolution pro- 
viding for the undertaking of a nation-wide investigation 
into school financing, urban and rural, to ascertain and 
publicize how school finances are raised, how disbursed, 
what portion goes into instruction, what portion into 
physical equipment, maintenance and other labor costs 
and what portion is intentionally diverted from its proper 
uses, this canvass to include the relations of the public 
school to public welfare, to discover how the public 
schools today function in our national economy and what 
is their worth as a social institution. 





The state makes a free gift to its citizens of what is 
known as elementary or primary education, regarding 
money spent in this way as a kind of premium of 
national insurance. An ignorant nation is a nation 
ready to be roused to riot and fury on very small prov- 
ocation as our history proves again and again; and an 
ignorant nation may assuredly look forward to becom- 
ing the servant of a nation better educated than itself.— 
Richard Wilson, in The Complete Citizen. 








24 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Education or Catastrophe 


Children Begin to Show Effects of Depression.—Sta- 
tistics showing a favorable state of public health since 
the depression began are not telling the whole story, 
a report of the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities indicates. 

In reporting that the bureau gave more relief in 
December than in any previous month of the bureau’s 
existence of 53 years, Douglas P. Falconer, general 
secretary said: 

“Whatever may be the favorable health statistics 
given out by the city, the children are beginning to 
show the results of privation. Records kept by our 
health examination dispensary of 2,982 children exam- 
ined in the last ten months show a little more than 
twice as many undernourished as in the same period 
in 1931.” 

Indiana House Bans “Yellow Dog” Pacts.—Legisla- 
tion forbids issue of injunctions unless life and prop- 
erty are in danger. 

Without a dissenting votee—88 to 0—the Indiana 
House of Representatives has approved the Black- 
Eshelman Anti-Injunction and “Yellow Dog”’ bill. 

The measure forbids the issuance of injunctions in 
any labor dispute unless it is shown by testimony in 
open court that there is danger to life or property. 

It also outlaws any contract contingent on an em- 
ploye’s agreement not to become a member of a labor 
organization. 
3-Month School Terms Forecast.—School terms in 
Tulsa, Oklahoma, must be reduced to three months 
unless some other way of financing the school system 
is found, Clay W. Kerr. president of the State Teach- 
ers’ Association, warned at the annual convention. 

Big business, particularly the oil industry, in the 
state is bitterly resisting a program of income and 
inheritance taxation, and a drive to put over a sales 
tax so as to “soak the poor” is starting. 

Students Organize Against War.—Program of mili- 
tant struggle against imperialist war is adopted by 
National Student Congress Against War in Chicago, 
with 680 delegates in attendance. 

School Book Trust Exposed.—Ontario furnishes fig- 
urges which show how Americans are gouged; good 
place to enforce economy in educational costs. 

In most, if not all, states of the Union, a combina- 
tion of publishers dictates the textbooks used in public 
schools. This so-called “School Book Trust” charges 
high prices, and that it may continue to charge them, 
is constantly spending large sums to control school 
board elections and to put its friends in key positions 
in our educational system. 

One of the Trust’s favorite “rackets” is to change 
textbooks at frequent intervals, thus boosting sales. 

West Virginia pays from two to nine times as much 
per book as Ontario, and takes the added chance of 
propaganda creeping into the books laid before chil- 
dren in their most impressionable years. And the On- 
tario prices given are the maximum; by buying direct 
from the publisher, the parents get a 20 per cent 
discount. 

If in these times of depression, the American peo- 
ple want to save money on their schools without taking 
it out of the children, a good place to start would be 
on the School Book Trust. 

Pan American Day, April 14, will be observed widely 
in our schools and civic organizations again this year 


in accord with the proclamation of President Hoover 


of three years ago which read in part: 

I, Herbert Hoover, President of the United States of 
America, do hereby proclaim April 14 as “Pan American 
Day,” and do hereby order that the flag of the United 
States be displayed on all Government buildings on that 
date, and do invite the schools, civic associations, and 
people of the United States generally to observe the day 
with appropriate ceremonies, thereby giving expression to 
the spirit of the Continental solidarity and other senti- 
ments of cordiality and friendly feeling which the Govern- 
ment and people of the United States entertain toward 
the Peoples and Governments of other Republics of the 
American Continent. 

Send to the Pan American Union, Washington, D. 
C., for literature covering the various phases of In- 
ter-American relations and designed to serve as the 


basis of appropriate observances of the day. 


Conscientious Objector Is Granted Citizenship.—John 


P. Klassen, 44, professor of arts, Bluffton College, was 
admitted to citizenship in Common Pleas Court here 
today, despite his refusal to take the full oath of 
allegiance. 

Klassen, a Russian who came to America in 1924, 
declined to swear he would bear arms in defense of 
the country, although willing to do noncombatant duty, 
He said such an oath would vitiate his religious prin- 
ciples. 

He was upheld by Judge Everett, who granted the 
citizenship papers over the protest of Edward J. Ken- 
nedy, Federal naturalization inspector. The Judge 
admitted his action conflicted with Supreme Court de- 
cisions, but said he was willing to risk reversal rather 
than rule contrary to his convictions. 


Maryland University Restores Coale to Classes.— 


Ennis Coale, student at the University of Maryland, 
who was suspended last September for refusal to take 
military training, registered at the university for the 
second semester yesterday. 

The Baltimore Superior Court issued a writ of 
mandamus several weeks ago for his reinstatement. 
This decision has been appealed to the Court of Ap- 
peals of Maryland by the university and is scheduled 
to come up for review in April. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Raymond A. Pearson, president of 
the university, ruled that Coale may re-enter college 
and will not have to take military training. 


Childhood Education Convention Will Be Held in 


Denver.—The Association for Childhood Education 
will hold its annual convention in Denver, June 27 to 
July 1. More than one thousand teachers from all 
parts of the United States are expected to attend the 
gathering. Convention headquarters will be main- 
tained at the Brown Palace Hotel. 

The five-day program will be headed by educators 
of national and international importance. 


Progressive Education Group Met in Chicago— 


The Progressive Education Association held its an- 
nual convention in Chicago, at the Palmer House, 
March 2, 3 and 4. The theme of the convention was 
“Educational Implications of the Changing Social 
Order.” 

The conference called on teachers and educators 
to exert a more vigorous leadership in schools and 
communities, and to face honestly and sincerely the 
economic and social crisis which is seriously affecting 
the program of the schools. 








[ER | 


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ing 





1933 


APRIL, 


Teacher Wins Fight for Job, Court Orders Santa 
Monica to Reinstate Employee.—The Board of Edu- 
cation of the city of Santa Monica must reinstate 
Nellie M. Laycock as a permanent health and develop- 
ment teacher, Superior Judge Moore ordered in a de- 
cision handed down yesterday wherein he discussed 
at length the paramount importance of retaining in the 
public service employees of proven competency. 

“No art or craft conceived by human ingenuity is 
superior in importance to the fine art of conducting 
our schools with the utmost skill and humanity,” 
Judge Moore stated, “Surely this could not be done if 
every school board that is elected biennially, from lay- 
men who are required to have no special qualifications 
for office, could exercise the prerogative of expelling 
efficient and faithful teachers without substantiating 
charges formally filed against them and into their 
places importing a coterie of favorities, possessed of 
much, little or no experience.” 

Oregon Adopts Federal Child Labor Amendment.— 
Both houses of the Oregon Legislature approved the 
Child Labor Amendment to the Federal Constitution. 

Oregon is the seventh State to adopt the amend- 
ment. The campaign in favor of the amendment was 
conducted by the Oregon State Federation of Labor 
under the direction of Ben T. Osborne, secretary of 
the Federation. 

Utah State Boards Refuse Pay Cut Urged by Gov. 
Dern.—The State university and the State insanity 
Board of Utah refused to cut the wages of their em- 
ployes in accordance with the suggestion of Governor 
Dern, who recommended that all State departments 
slash their pay rolls, Those familiar with the situa- 
tion believe the proposed wage slash will be a failure. 
It is claimed the wages paid by Utah are even now too 
low, and are in fact less than the average in other 
Western States. 

Prevent Eviction of Penniless Farmer.—Several hun- 
dred farmers organize to prevent sheriff sale on farm 
in Bucks County, Pa.; keep bids down to $1.18 for 
entire farm and equipment, which they return to 
farmer, 

Iowa Farmers Fight Foreclosures.—With movement 
of resistance to evictions and foreclosures spreading 
like wild-fire through farm belt, 800 farmers gather at 
LeMars, Ia., and prevent foreclosure sale after over- 
powering sheriff. 

Propose Unionists’ Taxpayers’ Group.—A proposal to 
establish a taxpayers’ association, made up of union- 
ists, working men, working farmers and others was 
discussed at Sunday’s meeting of the San Joaquin 
Valley Labor Conference in Fresno. 

Delegates to the conference expressed themselves 
very emphatically in no complimentary terms concern- 
ing grand jury and public officials who seem to have 
united in a concerted drive on wages of public em- 
ployes. 

It was pointed out that many times representatives 
of some taxpayers’ group took it upon themselves to 
represent all taxpayers. The delegates pointed out 
that organized labor and other workers constituted a 
very large taxpaying group, with interests not neces- 
sarily the same as taxpayers’ associations made up 
of a membership of corporate interests, large land 
owners or owners of rental and income property. 

A committee representative of all cities in the valley 
in which union organizations are active, was set up to 
Study the matter of establishing a taxpayers’ group 
which should represent the small taxpayer. 


25 


Conference on Business Education Will Be Held in 
Chicago.—A conference on business education will 
be held at the University of Chicago on June 29 and 
30, under the auspices of the school of business. The 
general theme of the conference will be “The Recon- 
struction of Business Education in Secondary 
Schools.” 

The Department of Business Education of the Na- 
tional Education Association and the National Asso- 
ciation of Commercial Teacher Training Institutions 
plan to hold meetings in Chicago at the time of the 
University of Chicago conference. 

Three Teacher Training Colleges Closed in New York. 
—The three teacher training colleges of New York 
City—the New York Teachers Training College, the 
Maxwell Teachers Training College and the Jamaica 
Teachers Training College—were closed on February 
3. The 1,931 students in the three colleges were trans- 
ferred to teacher training classes in the three city 
colleges—the College of the City of New York, Brook- 
lyn College and Hunter College. 

The change is expected to effect a saving of $250,000 
annually. The personnel of the closed teacher train- 
ing colleges has been transferred to vacant places in 
high schools, and the three buildings formerly used 
by the institutions will be used to accommodate high 
school pupils. 


Raid on Schools Balked by Labor 


Prevent Juggling of Funds by Bankers Who 
Demanded Payment of Bond Interest 

Detroit, Jan, 26.—Organized labor in Detroit has pre- 
vented a group of greedy bankers from crippling the 
public school system. 

The city government, hard-pressed for funds, has been 
unable to meet payments on certain loans it secured at 
high interest rates from the banks, 

When the financiers discovered that the Board of 
Education had $2,000,000 in its treasury they demanded 
that it be transferred to the city’s general fund so the 
loans could be paid—even though it meant closing down 
many of the schools. 

This scheme was all set to go through when President 
Frank X. Martel of the Detroit Federation of Labor 
secured an injunction restraining the deal. 

Judge Clyde L. Webster, who issued the restraining 
order, said he believed the contemplated action of the 

Soard of Education was clearly illegal. 


William E. McEwen 


The teachers have lost one of their best friends and 
the schools an able and devoted defender in the death 
of William E. McEwen, outstanding labor leader of 
the Northwest. 

Since 1900 he had been publisher and editor of the 
Duluth “Labor World” and was nationally known for 
his writings on labor and economic subjects. 

Mr. McEwen was one of the first trade unionists 
to utilize the radio to combat “open shop” propaganda. 
For a number of years he conducted a regular program 
of broadcasts on various phases of the labor movement. 
He was a brilliant and forceful speaker, 

For 18 years he was secretary and treasurer of the 
Minnesota Federation of Labor, resigning in 1914 wher 
President Wilson appointed him postmaster of Duluth. 

He was also State Labor Commissioner under the 
famous Governor John A. Johnson. In 1910 he served 
on a commission that visited Europe to study workmen’s 
compensation laws. 




















BOOKS 


“There is no frigate like a book 
To bear us lands away.” 














—Emily Dickinson. 








Wor tp History. By Carlton J. H. 
Hayes, Parker Thomas Moon and 
John W. Wayland. Macmillan, 
1932. $2.20. 


Those who know Modern History 
by the two Columbia University pro- 
fessors, Hayes and Moon, the studies 
of French nationalism by Dr. Hayes, 
and Dr. Parker T. Moon’s Jmperial- 
ism and World Politics (to mention 
no other of their joint and separate 
works), will be favorably predisposed 
toward this new world history text. 
It is a saddening thought that while 
the writers and scholars led by H. G. 
Wells have more than ever before 
shown that world history can be told 
truthfully only when told as a whole, 
the trend in political practice is to- 
ward reviving the insularity of na- 
tionalism and the fragmentation of 
the world into sections ringed round 
by towering tariff walls; that while 
the best historians have smashed the 
“corridor” nationalist history of the 
past, the politicians are denying the 
facts of economic interdependence. 

To avoid the dangers of this folly, 
which if unchecked will write itself 
in the suicide of mankind, educators 
everywhere should try to build up a 
world outlook based on the facts of 
history so well related and illustrated 
with clear maps and a copious index 
in this volume. One envies the mod- 
ern child blessed with such texts 
which ignore no portion of the earth’s 
inhabitants. In few histories do the 
authors show the connection between 
the downfall of the ancient civiliza- 
tions and their basis of chattel slavery. 
At first the references to this in 
World History are casual but on p. 
109 they become more pointed. Speak- 
ing of the changes in Greece in the 
fourth century the authors write of 
the “constant growth of slavery” and 
state that in Athens considerably more 
than half the population were then 
slaves. They recognize that the pres- 
ence of this cheap labor prevented the 
application of inventions to industry. 
The connection between the debauch- 
ery by luxury of the slave-exploiting 
ruling class and the decay of Rome 
is also made clear or at least so well 
implied that the intelligent teacher 
need only cross the t’s and dot the i’s. 
(See pages 124, 147, 183, 221.) The 
authors obviously favor international 
co-operation but their approach is that 
of enlightened and scholarly Cath- 


olics. Their bias toward Christianity 
and the Catholic Church comes out 
in their references to the alleged 
founder of the Christian religion. 
Then too in the same vein the Ref- 
ormation is renamed the Protestant 
Revolt. There is an easy optimism 
expressed on p. 475 that Christians 
no longer fight each other and “that 
real Christian charity is growing.” 
We see little grounds for this if we 
remember the harnessing of the vari- 
ous religious bodies to the respective 
nationalist war chariots in the world 
war, 1914-18, or the treatment given 
to bonus seekers and unemployed 
demonstrations in more recent years. 
However, this touches upon larger 
themes than can be dealt with here. 
While World History gives a sum- 
mary of events in Soviet Russia 
which is a model of fairness com- 
pared to some of the texts we have 
read, it does not explain when record- 
ing the opposition of the Bolshevists 
to the Orthodox Church why the 
Church merited such treatment be- 
cause of its part in exploiting the 
peasants and in plotting counter- 
revolution. 

Despite the ground covered in the 
summary of world history from The 
Age of the Hunters to the League of 
Nations, errors are few and far be- 
tween. However, it is not exact to 
say the Labor Party in Britain was 
organized in 1901 for that title was 
adopted only in 1906 when enough 
representatives secured places in the 
House of Commons to act as an in- 
dependent parliamentary party. 

Mark STARR. 





ENVIRONMENTAL Basis OF SOCIAL 
GeocRaPHy. By C. C. Hunting- 
don and F. A. Carlson. Prentice 
Hall. $. 


The same emphasis upon the ne- 
cessity of international co-operation 
is found in this geography text de- 
signed for college and university stu- 
dents, as in the “World History” by 
Hayes and others. Although here 
the co-operation especially advocated 
is that between Britain and the United 
States with a view to preserving the 
world’s oil resources. This book is 
more concerned with the scientific 
classification of “social geography’”’ 
and with the mechanics of geographi- 
cal influences than are such books as 
Fairgreve’s Geography and World 
Power, Fleure’s Human Geography 
and Newbiggin’s Modern Geography. 
It does not, like Eckel’s Coal, /ron 
and War, follow the clue of the lo- 
cation of raw materials to explain 
imperialist rivalries over certain areas, 


THE 


It lacks the distinctive maps and the 
bold generalizations concerning world 
interdependence and the need for po- 
litical unity by co-operation between 
workers’ governments which mark 
Horrabin’s Outline of Economic Ge- 
ography which, having been trans- 


AMERICAN TEACHER | 


lated into Russian, German and Ital- | 


ian for workers’ education classes, 
has now been brought up-to-date in a 
new edition. But to those teachers 
who can draw conclusions and make 
deductions from the wealth of detail 
herein presented this book is an en- 
richment of the new geography which 


was so stimulated by Miss Semple’s © 


Influences of Geographic Environ- 
ment away back in 1911, This col- 
lege text shows how far the schools 
have progressed away from the old 
grind of memorizing the details of 
“sailor geography” and made geog- 
raphy a study of the fascinating in- 
terplay of natural and social forces. 
Instead of dates and descriptions the 
new geography deals with the dy- 
namics of past and present and fu- 
ture society. 

Dr. Huntingdon and Dr. Carlson 
are not environmental determinists. 


They do not go as far as Miss Semple | 
in quoting with approval that “His- | 


tory is geography set in motion.” 


Their organization of the material of | 
geography is based upon the follow- | 


ing assumptions: 
(1) That geography is concerned 
with man and his environment. 


(2) That while environment _in- 
fluences society, the latter modi- | 
fies environment, 

(3) That both environment and so- 


ciety are continually changing 

and must be studied as a proc- 

ess. 
These simple propositions pave the 
way to an explanation of many his- 
torical riddles, to questions of racial 
distribution, location of various civ- 
ilizations and the present utilization 
of natural resources. 
tions on maps and their interpreta- 
tion which teachers will find useful, 


and also a plentiful supply of maps, | 


diagrams and pictures mostly de- 
voted to the United States. 


product of the chapter on weather 


and man and the treatment of forest | 


lands is the conviction that without 
the intervention of the State and the 
help of the Weather Bureau _ vast 
areas would be denuded and ruined, 
and many industries professing rug- 
ged individualism would be unable 
to meet the vagaries of nature if the 
two hundred official observation sta- 
tions provided by the taxpayer did not 
constantly provide information and 
advice. MAarK STARR. 





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1933 


APRIL, 


EDUCATING FoR CITIZENSHIP, By 
George A. Coe. Scribners, New 
York, 1932, 205 pp. $1.50. 


“In spite of the fact that for a cen- 
tury and a half we have intended to 
separate ourselves from the monarch- 
ical system, the prevalent American 
view of patriotism has remained es- 
sentially monarchical.” Many if not 
most of us still speak of teaching 
“respect for government” and “obedi- 
ence” as though we were preparing 
boys and girls to be “good subjects” 
of an authoritarian sovereign, ‘But 
when sovereignty inheres in the peo- 
ple—in the very procession that is 
moving into and out of the schools— 
then the teacher and the taught, the 
ruler and the ruled, are not two but 
one, and education becomes a part of 
the process whereby the ruler-teacher 
makes up his mind and changes it.” 
“The public schools are society accus- 
ing itself (examining its faults and 
its possibilities), and explicitly seek- 
ing to transcend itself.” ‘The sover- 
eignty of the people can and should 
advance from government by consent 
to government by creative self-asser- 
tion.” “Citizens have no duties to 
the state; rather, acting as the state 
they have duties to persons.” 

“What is it to be good? Is it not 
to fulfill some (definite and specific) 
relationship (or task) as parent or 
child ; as teacher or pupil; as employer 
or employee; as seller or buyer, as 
physician or patient, and so on? When 
the virtues are conceived in blank 
generality, apart from issues that 
arise, decisions that have to be made, 
and acts that are required in concrete 
situations, they are entirely abstract.” 
“Surely one of the most tantalizing 
of civic situations is that in which 
‘good men’ are the bulwark of evil 
policies. When training for citizen- 
ship takes the form of inculcating 
generalized virtues, it simply leaves 
to chance nearly all, if not quite all, 
the issues upon which the fate of the 
state depends.” “To be patriotic, to 
reverence the flag, to obey the laws, 
to vote regularly, to be for honesty 
and against dishonesty in public off- 
cials, even to be willing to die in de- 
fense of the country—one can be and 
do all this and yet be on either the 
right or wrong side of the most vital 
questions of public welfare and of 
State policy.” 

Life today is so complex and so 
new when compared to the traditions 
which govern our civic conduct that 
much new, detailed analysis of the 
new situations is required for intelli- 
gent service. The depression shows 
that even “our most astute guides in 
industry and finance are helpless in 


the presence of the most rudimentary 
questions in their own field.” “. 

our ideal (educational) system will 
initiate our young citizens into our 
unsolved problems—yes, into our con- 
flicts and defects also. Schools 
are the very place where we should 
make sure that our faults and con- 
troverted questions of social weal and 
of state politics are habitually dis- 
cussed.” 

When we recognize our boys and 
girls as the young citizens they really 
are, their rights, duties, powers, tasks, 
responsibilities and training will in- 
clude not only practice and develop- 
ment of self-government within the 
school community, not merely de- 
tached analysis of the problems of the 
outside community, but actually shar- 
ing the burdens of developing this 
outside community. “A pupil who 
acquires abilities to analyze problems 
of state without actually analyzing 
them when they are crying aloud in 
the community is acquiring a habit 
of not attending to political actuali- 
ties, but of letting them slip along 

' if we are to have adequate 
character education, the pupil must 
deal, while he is a pupil, with the sub- 
stance of adult experience and duty 
beyond the school.” 

Dodging controversial issues in the 
interest or guise of “non-partisan- 
ship” usually results in actually sus- 
taining the status quo, allowing the 
old traditions to rule. “Is it not clear 
that the school situation, if it is to be 
socially dynamic, must not hold itself 
aloof from the dynamics of the social 
conflicts that are going on outside the 
school? And does it not follow that 
true non-partisanship never can be 
had by splicing together a set of 
silences?” 

“The teacher’s political convictions 
must have free scope outside the 
school (as well as active expression 
within the discussions of the class- 
room). . How else can teach- 
ers develop in themselves a patriotism 
that is more than a detached and 
therefore a weak sentiment?” “The 
fact is not only that teachers are not 
distinguished for active good citizen- 
ship, but they meet coldness, unfavor- 
able discrimination and obstruction 
when they attempt it.” “Education 
for citizenship, accordingly, must be 
recognized as a competition in teach- 
ing, a contest with ‘powers behind the 
throne’ that continually mask the 
creditable actualities and the glorious 
possibilities of our political state.” 

As for patriotism and service, “/t 
is easier to accept the risks of battle 
for oneself, and even for one’s own 
son, than it is to subordinate the de- 


27 


sire for profits to love of country. 
This is a terrible assertion, but ex- 
perience shows that it is true. The 
supreme test of the patriot does not 
come when he faces his own neigh- 
bors—Jack, Mike and the rest—as 
persons possessed of the same final 
worth that he claims for himself. 
The supreme sacrifice is not the giv- 
ing of one’s blood, but the giving up 
of opportunity for power over per- 
sons by reasons of possessions, The 
stern call to patriotism today is a call 
repentantly to identify ourselves, as 
citizens, with the existing economic 
injustice and futility, and then to 
form a co-operative industrial com- 
monwealth that shall express, as the 
political finality, the value of per- 
sons.” 

With the full maturity of his seven- 
ty active years, and the enthusiasm 
and vigor of a young man (who spent 
this summer vacation building a camp 
in the woods), Dr. Coe has written 
a highly readable, profound, timely 
analysis of the methods and objec- 
tives of citizenship training for a 
democracy that finds itself in diffi- 
culty. There are valuable chapters, 
not suggested in the random quota- 
tions used above, on propaganda, the 
role of the Federal government in 
education (including the abuses of 
the War Department), the new social 


studies, political control of the 
schools, and pedagogical methods 
suited to democratic training. We 


commend this book to every teacher, 
minister, parent or other student of 
education. 


From Breaking the War Habit, Committee 
on Militarism in Education 


Bioop oF THE Lams. By Matthew 

Mark. Mohawk Press. $2.00, 

The post-war breaking down of so- 
cial controls, so slowly and laborious- 
ly evolved, challenges church, state 
and school, How feeble and spurious 
were our efforts toward peace educa- 
tion! To re-elevate, to indoctrinate 
with more real concepts is a gigantic 
task calling for mental effort, emo- 
tional strain and more time than we 
have at our command. 

The horrendous tale, with its caus- 
al factors and calamitous conse- 
quences, has been unfolded for us in 
graphic, comprehensive and _ vitriolic 
form by Matthew Mark in Broop 
OF THE Lams. The author, a Chi- 
cago newspaper man, traces his an- 
cestry to the Pilgrims and proclaims 
himself a veteran of the World War. 

The narrator, also a journalist, 
early falls under the spell of the hero, 
Minus. During the administration of 
Robust (Roosevelt), Minus is elected 
to Congress. 











28 


With swift-moving, cinema-like 
flashes, we are taken through the in- 
ception of the war under Wisdom 
and are given a terrific closeup of the 
uncivilized treatment of conscientious 
objectors, the brutalization of our 
“heroes” and the general back-wash 
of the war. There is unfolded the 
now historic aftermath—political cor- 
ruption under Goodfellow; the silent 
inaction of Doolittle and the prosper- 
ity ballyhoo of Superman. Too, we 
have a satiric portrayal of the more 
contemporaneous quadrennial bom- 
bast of the evasive two-ring Donkey 
and Elephant circus. 

That which is most portentous is 
the recording of the next war, It is 
against this that Minus, as ever, 
protests. 

He is answered by the reminiscent 
cry for the blood of the lamb. 

Enlightened peoples can no longer 
shrink from acknowledgment of our 
past failure and of our future prob- 
lem. This novel, which Clarence Dar- 
row calls “amazing”—‘tremendous 
theme”—“‘terrific stuff”, should be 
read by all college students as well 
as everyone who deigns to call him- 
self an educator. Boop oF THE 
LaMB would serve a purpose if only 
in arousing educators. In his novel, 
Matthew Mark exposes the institution 
of war with a courageous daring and 
a rare intensity of feeling which can- 
not help but energize and inspire us 
weary and disillusioned pedagogues. 

FRANCES Raye. 





BOOK NOTES 


Horace M. Kallen in his pamphlet 
CoLtLEce Protoncs INFANCY, one of 
the 25 cent series published by John 
Day, makes the latest and perhaps the 
most devastating of the many attacks 
that have been made upon college 
education: He says: 


“Though education is customarily des- 
cribed as ‘preparation for life’, the ways 
and works of high schools and colleges are 
so irrevalent to ‘life’ that their prime 
achievement remains perforce the prolonga- 


tion of infancy. They make adulthood 
harder to reach, not easier.” 
ee 


Waldo Frank makes the following 
comment on the recent pamphlet For 
RevoLuTION by V. F. Calverton: 

“A superb piece of work: it seems to 
me by far the best job in the field that I 
have seen in our country. It is sound, 
through and through; it is amazingly broad 
in scope; it is intense in power.” 

* * * 

What may be a new economic rally- 
ing cry, “Scientific Capitalism,” is of- 
fered by William Kay Wallace in his 
book Our OssoLete CONSTITUTION 
published by John Day. Mr. Wallace 


Says: 


ite 


“Capitalism has outgrown the narrow 
individualist implications that still cluster 
about the term, It has become a social 
motive if we would but take into account 
the new aspects of industrialism. What is 
needed is that we recognize the true nature 
of the new economy of Scientific Capital- 
ism which is essentially American. 

“Scientific Capitalism is as important a 
social theory as Scientific Socialism, which 
is the name given by Karl Marx to his 
doctrine. What we see taking place in 
Russia today is a desperate effort to amal- 
gamate Scientific Capitalism and its tech- 
nique of efficiency with Scientific Socialism. 
Without it the Marxist theory is an empty 
formula neither vital nor viable. 

“The constructive elements of the new 
society are to be looked for in what I have 
called Scientific Capitalism. Here we find 
the nucleus of the new industrialism as 
contained in the doctrine of efficiency. We 
in the United States have contributed to 
the world the practical framework of this 
doctrine.” 

oa x * 

A striking challenge to education 
is made by Leal A. Headley, Profes- 
sor of Education at Carleton College, 
Minnesota, in MAKING THE Most OF 
Books, just published by the Ameri- 
can Library Association. “If in the 
primary school, or secondary school, 
or anywhere else,” he says, “you have 
learned to read efficiently col- 
leges and universities—aside from the 
human contacts they offer—have little 
in store for you that you cannot get, 
or will not get, for yourself. The 
sad fact is,” he continues, “that near- 
ly all students enter college, and not 
a few leave college, without having 
mastered the art of reading.” 

Educators agree that intelligent 
reading is the bed rock of learning. 
To them, anything that will help stu- 
dents master this art is a step in the 
right direction. 

Professor Headley’s book is sure 
to arouse comment, perhaps criticism. 
Nevertheless it is an honest effort to 
give college students an insight into 
the significance and rewards of read- 
ing and to help them improve reading 
techniques. The chapters on compre- 
hension, concentration, and rate of 
reading are exceedingly practical. 
Whether or not some of these tech- 
niques can be introduced successfully 
into high schools and the grades is an 
interesting topic for speculation. 

* * * 


You are advised to read The De- 
pression-Demagogue at School by Dr. 
Arthur B. Moehlman in the December 
issue of the New Ovuttoox. Dr. 
Moehlman is professor of school ad- 
ministration, University of Michigan. 

The article discusses the present 
taxation system and public education, 
the need of understanding of the 
educational situation and of support 
of public schools if they are to be 
maintained and improved. 








THE 


The first cumulated volume of The 
Education Index, just published, con- 


AMERICAN TEACHER! 


tains a complete index to the contents | 


of AMERICAN TEACHER for the past 
three and a half years. 


To locate immediately any articles | 


you may have read in this periodical 
or to locate the best current literature 
of the educational world, you have 
only to consult The Education Index 
in your nearest library. 

The function of The Education In- 
dex is to render the current literature 
of the educational field readily access- 
ible—through indexing—to libraries, 
research departments and interested 
individuals. 
of the cooperative services of The H. 
W. Wilson Company, it has rapidly 
become one of the most popular. 

The Education Index follows the 
school year and is published on the 
cumulative plan in nine monthly is- 
sues, from September through May, 
with a cloth-bound cumulated volume 
each June. Every third year a per- 
manent bound cumulation is_ pub- 
lished, covering three years of index- 
ing (the first permanent volume is un- 
usually large and covers 3% years). 

* * * 


A lovely new Alice in Wonderland, 
one of the Jacket Library Series, 
has come to visit us with an intro- 
duction by Mrs, Franklin D. Roose- 
velt. 

The Jacket Library Series of 
World Classics is sponsored by the 
National Home Library Foundation, 
a non-profit making, cultural organ- 
ization. 

The Jacket Library was created to 
place within the reach of everyone 
books of substance that have become 
the epics of generations of critical 
readers. It brings you the World’s 
3est Books for only 15 cents a vol- 
ume. 

This is the first time that complete, 
unabridged editions of these Classic 
300ks have been offered at so low 
a price. They are all printed in large, 
easy-to-read types, of uniform size 
(434x6% inches) and with unusually 
attractive bindings of colored Fabri- 
koid, 

New titles will be added to the Li- 
brary at frequent intervals, and like 
those already numbered in the Jacket 
Library, will be complete and un- 
abridged, and have the same attractive 
bindings. 

The Foundation extends special 
prices to schools, colleges and institu- 
tions for library and instruction use. 

The address is National Home Li- 
brary Foundation, 1518 K Street, N. 
W., Washington, D. C. 


Though next-to-newest | 


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APRIL, 1933 











News from the 
Field 














New Locals 


The American Federation of Teachers 
welcomes this month five new locals. She- 
boygan, Wisc. Local 248, Charlotte, N. C., 
Local 249, Toledo, Ohio Local 250, Spring- 
field, Ill., Local 251 and Milwaukee, Local 
252. 

Whenever a group of teachers comes to 
a realization that the American Federation 
of Labor is the only outstanding organiza- 
tion which has stood four-square in defense 
of education, yielding not one iota against 
the combined attacks of reactionaries tak- 
ing advantage of economic conditions in 
an attempt to destroy the nation’s schools 
and thus escape paying their proportionate 
share of taxes necessary to educate the 
children of America, and decides to for- 
sake their enemies and join with their 
friends, it is a matter of rejoicing to the 
American Federation of Teachers, and 
should be, also, to all teachers and to all 
those interested in public education. 

It means that we are one step nearer our 
goal, The Preservation of Public Educa- 
tion. 


Chicago Locals 2, 3, 199, 209, 
224 and 237 


The major problem for the Chicago 
teachers has been the effort to secure 
salaries. Teachers’ salaries for the first 
half cf June, 1932, were not paid until 
February 25, 1933, and then only in tax 
anticipation warrants. Salaries are now 
6% months in arrears and no payment has 
been made for any part of the first sem- 
ester of 1932-33, although the second 
semester is already a month old. Innum- 
erable meetings have been held with city 
and board of education officials, members 
of the Citizens’ Ccmmittee, bankers, and 
officials of the Reconstruction Finance Cor- 
poration since September, 1932. The net 
result to date has been 6 weeks’ payment 
in cash, two weeks’ in October, two weeks’ 
immediately preceding the elections in No- 
vember, and two weeks’ just before Christ- 
mas. In addition there has been 17 days’ 
pay in tax warrants. Since December, 
1929, Chicago teachers have had ecnly 5 
months’ pay on time. 

At the present time, the Citizens’ Com- 
mittee has undertaken the task of selling 
enough tax warrants to pay the remainder 
of the 1932 salaries, but so far their ef- 
forts have not been consummated with 
success. 

On January 13, 1933, the Board of Edu- 
cation held public hearings on the budget 
and the entire day was spent in hearing a 
flood cf citizens protest against cuts in the 
education system frem all types of organi- 
zations and citizens’ groups in the city. 

Finally, on January 30, 1933, the 1933 
budget was adopted. The 34.2% cut in 
the educational levy demanded by the Citi- 
zens’ Committee was put into effect. This 
was accomplished by a 15% pay cut for 
all employees receiving salaries of over 
$1000. Hewever some slight gains were 
made: the 10 month school year was re- 
stored; pay for holidays (eliminated in 
1932) was resumed; and the Board has 
agreed that the salary cut was an emer- 


gency measure applicable for 1933 only, 
and that the basic salary schedule woul 
not be permanently affected by this 
measure. 

Various methods of payment other than 
tax warrants and cash have been dis- 
cussed by the teacher organizations, but 
to date none has been adopted. Plans 
under discussion include coupon books 
issued by stores and companies for mer- 
chandise, self-liquidating currency, and the 
pledging of future pay checks for credit 
from local stores. 

With the passage of the 1933 budget 
on January 30, budget activity came to a 
temporary lull. 

Preceding the passage of the budget, a 
drive to educate the community to the 
value of the public schools was carried 
on. This is particularly necessary in Chi- 
cago because of the dictatorial powers 
which the Citizens’ Committee on Public 
Expenditures has assumed over the bud- 
get-making processes cf all local govern- 
ments. The Committee set an arbitrary 
limit for the 1933 school budget which 
was 34.2% below the legal maximum. 
Great pressure was exerted through some 
of the newspapers and among certain 
groups of citizens for the elimination of 
the so-called “fads and frills” in the school 
system, and te bring about a drastic re- 
duction in teachers’ salaries. The local 
banks said they would lend money only 
to those governmental units whose budgets 
were approved by the Committee on Public 
Expenditures. 

Every effort is being made to secure a 
loan from the R.F.C. The legislative com- 
mittees have been active in cooperating with 
the American Federation of Teachers in 
support of the George Bill. 

Local legislation has required our at- 
tention also. A bill now pending in the 
Illinois legislature prohibiting the employ- 
ment of married women in public office 
constitutes a real menace te our tenure 
and has been vigorously opposed by all 
teachers. 





Chicago Women, Local 3 


The two primary objectives of the Fed- 
eration of Wemen High School Teachers 
all this year, in co-operation with all other 
Chicago teacher organizaticns, have been 
first, the securing of some form of pay- 
ment for our salaries, and second, resist- 
ance to drastic curtailments in the 1933 
budget. 

Through the Federation of Women High 
School Teachers’ Speakers’ Bureau, the 
Women’s Clubs were reached. Practically 
every unit of the Illincis Federation of 
Women’s Clubs adopted resolutions pro- 
testing the proposed cuts in the educa- 
tional fund. In many of the high schools, 
local committees were organized to con- 
tact the local clubs and keep them informed 
of developments. Miss Weil, President, and 
Miss Herrick, Vice-president, spoke before 
a number of downtown clubs including 
the Y.W.C.A., the Women’s Bar Associa- 
tion and various smaller groups. There 
was already a strong bond of understand- 
ing between the Parent-Teacher organi- 
zations and the Federation cf Women 
High School Teachers. Representatives 
of all P.T.A’s in the city passed resolu- 
tions against the proposed cuts, and called 
on the Mayor and the members of the 
school board to give the schocls a square 
deal in any economy measures proposed. 

In connection with our program of edu- 
cating the community, the Federation of 
Wemen High School Teachers has carried 


29 


on a radio program for almost two years. 
We are now putting on two programs a 
week over station WCFL, Saturdays at 
7:30 P.M. and Wednesdays at 4:30 P.M. 

On February 28, the city council election 
was held. Prior to this aedien the Civics 
Cemmittee of the Federation of Women 
High School Teachers interviewed the 
candidates in each of the fifty wards in 
the city on their attitude on school ques- 
tions. Results of these interviews were 
tabulated and sent out te the schools to 
serve as a guide in voting. 

The community has also been arcused 
to the need for supervision of school-board 
appointees. Many civic groups have sent 
in lists of citizens from which desirable 
members could be selected. At the present 
time, there are two appointments pending, 
and three other vacancies can be filled in 
May. 
in all, the Chicage scene furnishes 
plenty of need for constructive activity, 
and the Federation of Women High School 
Teachers has contributed its share. 


Dorotuy Wel, President. 


Washington Local 8 


The Washington Teachers Union is con- 
tinuing its aggressive campaign against re- 
duction of salaries and of school activities. 
It is cooperating with federal employees 
and the teachers unions of the Canal Zone 
in a legislative program of protection of 
the interests of teachers, postal and other 
federal employees. 

The Local has organized a plan of help 
for needy children. Money for clothes, 
food, carfare, etc., is being contributed gen- 
erously by teachers and their friends. 


Washington Local 27 


Teachers Spurn Plan to Measure 
Emotions 

The Washington Elementary Teachers 
Union, Local 27, has objected to a proposed 
graphic rating scale submitted to the school 
administration by efficiency experts. The 
scale would rate teachers on “sincerity, 
emotional stability, sense of humor, whole- 
some outlook on life, and cultural back- 
ground.” 

The Teachers Union, returning the 
challenge, suggests that all rating officers 
be required to qualify as expert psychi- 
atrists. 








—The Washington Times 


Sacramento Local 31 


The situation in Sacramento is dupli- 
cated all over the United States. Salary 
cuts, larger classes, lessening of sick leave 
and curtailment of adult education have 
a familiar echo throughout the land. In 
Sacramento, as elsewhere, the enemies of 
public education are doing their uttermost 
to cripple and hamstring it. I am inclined 
to think they will succeed as in Chicago 
and recently in New York. Perhaps this 
prophecy is unduly pessimistic. 

We suffered a reduction of salary of 5% 
this year, perhaps small in comparison with 
cities of similar size. Owing te the vig- 
orous campaign of a group of teachers 
who worked even throughout the summer 
this cut might have been avoided had not 
the announcement by the governor cf a 
greater cut for state employees stampeded 
the local situation at the critical moment. 
It may be of interest to note that the state 
employees’ reduction was to of the 
familiar “vcluntary” type. Just the other 











30 


day these reductions were returned to the 
employees because the fellows whose sal- 
aries are fixed in the constitution refused 
to contribute “voluntarily.” But there is 
little hope of avoiding a legislative cut 
next year. 

The state legislature convened in Janu- 
ary. No cne knows what may happen to 
education. Naturally the big taxpayers 
and public utilities want to slash indis- 
criminately. There is much talk of repeal- 
ing ne the teachers’ tenure act which 
is practically repealed in rural areas. Even 
more significant is the agitation for the 
repeal of the constitutional amendment 
whereby a certain amount of support from 
state and county fer education is manda- 
tory. If this is repealed all the charges 
will be thrown upon real property which 
is already grossly overburdened. Educa- 
tion will revert to the status of twenty 
years ago. 

All these things may easily occur. One 
need only point out the recent acticn of 
the New York legislature with respect to 
the mandatory salary schedules in New 
York City. It doesn’t take long for action 
when the bankers want reductions. As 
long as we tolerate a conditicn of society 
in which a mere handful control it eco- 
nomically for their own enrichment, I see 
no hope for public education as a real 
instrument of social betterment. The last 
electicn definitely showed that few yet care 
for a significant change. Therefore, I am 
pessimistic with regard to education. 


HERMAN LEApeR, President. 


St. Paul Locals and The National 
Secretary 


St. Paul locals had a busy week, be- 
ginning with Friday, February 24. With 
Mrs. Hanson in the city to give first-hand 
reports on conditions with which the public 
schools are confronted, the Joint Council 
of the Federations launched a campaign 
of education from which it looks to see 
positive results. 

The response by the public to her story 
of the situation was gratifying. More than 
one school patron said, “This is the in- 
formation we do not get elsewhere and 
exactly what we must have if we are to 
handle the problem.” A group of three 
hundred citizens, invited to attend an open 
meeting conducted by the Joint Council, 
with Mrs. Hanson as the guest-speaker, 
was satisfied to leave after a two hour 
session only on the assurance that a fol- 
low-up meeting would take place in the 
near future at which there would be a full 
discussion of the local state of affairs. 

In her week in St. Paul Mrs. Hanson 
spoke before a group representing parent- 
teacher organizations, auxiliaries to trade 
unions, club women, and the school board 
advisory to the Commissioner of Educa- 
tion; a joint meeting of Locals 28 and 43; 
the Ramsey County Farmer-Labor Wom- 
en’s club; and the St. Paul Trades and 
Labor Assembly. She was given a hearing 
by the City Council and invited to broad- 
cast by the educational director of KSTP, 
the local station of the National Broad- 
casting Company. The opening meeting of 
the series was addressed by Mr. Irving C. 
Pearce, Commissioner of Education and a 
member of the City Council. Mr. William 
Mahoney, mayor of the city, a labor leaders 
a liberal of many years’ standing, and 
firm friend of the schools and the teachers, 
cooperated cordially in giving Mrs. Hanson 
opportunities to get her message before 
the people of St. Paul. 





On Sunday evening the Federation of 
Women Teachers entertained in its club- 
rooms for the executive boards of the 
four Twin City locals. This was the one 
event of the week which might be termed 
slightly social in nature. Mrs. Hanson 
came to St. Paul with a definite purpose, 
to arouse the public to the inroads already 
made by the enemies of public education 
and the probable outcome if they are not 
checked; and the Sunday evening program 
was largely devoted to a discussion of 
means to that end. The teachers of the 
Twin Cities, as represented by the Federa- 
tions, are fully aware that their present 
duty to the children is to keep public at- 
tention centered on the school situation. 
They know the task will not be easy but 
they have the courage to go forward. 

On Saturday morning Mrs. Hanson spoke 
before the National Council of Education, 
meeting in Minneapolis. A guest speaker 
on the program of the council, press re- 
ports of her statement of the crisis in 
education were appreciative of her ability 
to handle her subject. 


FLorENCE Roop, Vice President, 


A. F. T. 





Memphis Local 52 
“Citizens’ Committee” has recom- 
mended another pay cut for Memphis 
Teachers, The Board of Education has not 
yet acted—or rather has not made public 
whatever action it expects to take. 

If all our teachers would stand together, 
we might make a dent in public opinion, 
but unfortunately there is an opposing fac- 
tion. These “loyalists” are doing about as 
much harm as the Taxpayers’ Association. 

The George bill was endorsed and pre- 
sented to P. T. A.’s and other organiza- 
tions, some of which passed resolutions in 
favor of it. 


The 





Minneapolis Local 59 


Vol. 1, No. 1 of the Federation News 
published by Local 59 tells the story of 
the activities of that local. 

The Local is co-operating with the Cen- 
tral Council of Teachers in an ambiticus 
radio program the object of which is to 
inform the public of what is going on and 
what should be going on educationally. 
Miss Alice Henry cf 59 is Publicity Chair- 
man of the Central Council. 

The Local is demanding that candidates 
for election to The Minneapolis Board of 
Education be pledged to support tenure 
and to utilize sufficient millage as provided 
under the charter for the efficient opera- 
tion cf the schools in all their branches. 

No. 59 is conducting a vigorous mem- 
bership campaign. 


Brookwood Local 189 


Brookwood Local 189 held its annual 
Washington’s Birthday Conference at the 
College, February 25-26. The topic of the 
Conference was Workers’ EpucatTion Ac- 
TIVITIES DURING THE DEPRESSION, 

The first day was given over to round 
table discussions by those actively engaged 
in workers’ education, led by A. J. Muste, 

C. Kennedy, Ernestine Friedman, and 
David Saposs. 

Dramatics under the direction of Joseph- 
ine Colby were given in the evening. 

The Conference was largely attended and 
much valuable material, which will be 
published later, was presented. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


San Francisco Local 61 


San Francisco Federation is in the 
There are some 


The S 
midst of its biggest fight. 
nineteen bills before the state legislature 
dealing with tenure, aiming to do away 
with it entirely, or to modify the present 
law so that it will be without value for 
the security of teachers. The Unions with 
Organized Labor are fighting almost a 
lone fight on this issue. 

The Credit Union of Locals 61, 215, and 
241 is organized and ready for business. 

The radio programs are being continued 
and are well received. 


ee Locals 


A joint meeting of all the teachers unions 
of Milwaukee County, Locals 79, 212, 235, 
242, and 252, was held at the Milwaukee 
State Teachers College on March 8. Secre- 
tary Hanson spoke on Education in a 
Changing World. 

The meeting was preceded by a dinner. 

Arrangements are being pushed for the 
convention of the American Federation of 
Teachers, June 26-30. The Wisconsin locals 
are planning to make this an outstanding 
convention. 


Portland Local 111 


The Portland Teachers Union sends this 
hopeful note: 

“Thus far we have come off very well 
at the legislature. The bill to repeal the 
law requiring that men and women teachers 
be paid the same salary for the same work 
went down to ignominious defeat. The 
attempt to repeal the tenure law was also 
unsuccessful although it gave us consider- 
able concern. The Union is largely re- 
sponsible for this happy outcome. 

“An affiliated council consisting of repre- 
sentatives of all teachers organizations has 
been formed, The legislative representative 
for the Council is Kelley Loe, an active 
labor man and formerly associate editor 
of Labor Press. To his able management 
is due our legislative success. 

“We have taken in a number of new 
members.” 


Grand Forks, N. D., Local 205 


The January meeting was addressed by 
Dean Bek of the University of North Da- 
kota and Mr. Lillo of Larimore who pre- 
sented the various measures that are being 
considered in the Legislature with a view 
to solving the State’s educational problems. 

In every way possible the Legislative 
Committee is using its influence through 
the local Trades and Labor Assembly in 
attempting to have sane and sensible edu- 
cational measures placed on the statute 
books of North Dakota by the present 
Legislature. We have protested against 
bills affecting delinquent tax penalties 
which would tend to increase delinquency. 
We have supported measures introduced 
by the Grand Forks Labor Assembly seek- 
ing to raise the legal mill levy limit for 
schools, and also, their bill to reduce the 
60% requirement to a majority in the case 
of carrying special elections for excess 
levies. 

We have backed Labor’s measure for 4 
30-hour week at 50 cents per hour for 
State road work. 

Local 205 is carrying on and deserves the 
support of every teacher in Grand Forks. 











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APRIL, 1933 


Yale and New Haven Local 204 


Yale Local No. 204 of the American 
Federation of Teachers met with the New 
Haven Teachers Associaticn at the Hotel 
Taft, New Haven, on January 28th. The 

est of the afternoon was Professor John 

ewey. Two hundred and forty-one sat 

down at the luncheon. Mrs. Hanson, sec- 
retary-treasurer of the American Federa- 
tien of Teachers, welcomed Professor 
Dewey in the name of the national organi- 
zation and told of the struggles which the 
teachers throughout the country were 
making against wage cuts and otuer at- 
tacks against their freedom. After a bril- 
liant address by Dr. Dewey the teachers 
were invited to sign their names to slips 
if they were interested in the American 
Federation of Teachers. Sc many signed 
these slips that the Yale Local decided at 
their next meeting to change their name 
to Yale and New Haven Local. 

All in all the meeting has been a great 
stimulus to activity for the Yale Local. 
Since the very day on which the meeting 
occurred the teachers of New Haven were 
asked to accept a second 10 per cent cut. 
It was timed very opportunely. 





Detroit Local 231 


These are hectic days in Detroit I assure 
you. It needed something like the bank 
collapse to convince some people, espe- 
cially teachers, of our economic insecurity. 
There were no checks for the teachers this 
month and many have not been able to 
cash the previous one. We hope now to 
make more headway with our teachers 
union, 

The Detroit News made quite an attack 
on teachers getting into politics,—being 
political busy-bodies: 

The “frills” in education are again up 
for their regular annual attack. 


Lawrence Local 244 


The budget war is on in Lawrence, 
Mass., also. The teachers have not been 
paid since December 24, and it looks as 
though 20% waivers will be insisted on, 
as a prerequisite to loans on tax anticipa- 
tion warrants by the New York and Boston 
bankers. 

The Lawrence Federation is actively 
promoting organization not only in Law- 
rence but also in nearby cities. 





British Columbia Teachers Con- 
sider Affiliation with Labor 
The High School Teachers Asso- 

ciation of the Lower Mainland, B. C. 

declared in a resolution at a meeting 

in Vancouver in January that the 

British Columbia Teachers Federa- 

tion, of which the Association is a 

part, should seek affiliation with Or- 

ganized Labor. 

This is assuredly a wise procedure. 
The sooner teachers recognize their 
friends and join them the sooner we 
may hope to get started on the road 
to recovery. 

We shall welcome most heartily 
our Canadian fellow teachers into the 
American Federation of Teachers 
and the cooperation and fellowship 
of the labor movement. 


Chattanooga Local 246 


The Chattanooga- Hamilton County 
Teachers Association Local 246 held a 
series of meetings on February 11, the 
regular meeting at the University of 
Chattanooga in the morning, attended by 
some 500 members, a luncheon at the Hotel 
Read of approximately 200 teachers, city 
and county officials, and officers and mem- 
bers of Chattanooga Trades and Labor 
Council, and the executive board of the 
Local in the evening. Secretary Hanson 
addressed each of these meetings on the 
crisis in education and the teachers’ re- 
sponsibilitity in this crisis, urging the 
teachers to decide who their friends are 
and to act accordingly. She said, “It is 
only by the union of those interested in 
safeguarding education which means organ- 
ized teachers and organized labor, that we 
can hope to save our schools.” 

J. B. Brown presided as toastmaster at 
the luncheon and introduced for short 
talks B. R. Payne, president of Peabody 
College; Stanton E. Smith, president of 
Local 246: A, L. Rankin, county superin- 
tendent; Mrs. Anna B. Lacey, chairman of 
the county school board; Judge W. E. 
Wilkerson, new commissioner of education; 
W. C. Robinson, city superintendent; Paul 
J. Aymon, president of the Tennessee Fed- 
eration of Labor; George Forbes; and R. 


M. Cooke, editor Chattanooga Labor 
World. 
President and Mrs. Smith entertained 


Mrs, Hanson at dinner also. 


Well, Why Not? 

In the welter of plans and pro- 
posals for “ending the depression” 
and “abolishing unemployment,” there 
comes to The Survey from Bain- 
bridge, Georgia, a plan that stands by 
itself for its brevity, its simplicity and 
its daring. It is put forward by two 
sisters, Mary and Mildred Hicks, one 
of them a teacher, the other a home- 
maker. We shall leave experts to 
point out why their plan could never 
be enacted into law and why it would- 
n’t work if it were. Its provisions are 
well-worth recording here. It is 
called “The Five-Day Plan”, because 
Congress could make it a law in five 
days. It has three parts: a 100 per- 
cent tax on inheritances above $100,- 
000 to each dependent; a 100 percent 
tax on incomes above $50,000; the 
use of these taxes for social insur- 
ance, public works and _ education. 
The sisters present their plan on a 
one-page leaflet, tens of thousands of 
which have been distributed since 
they drew up the scheme, late in 
1931. On their leaflets, the Misses 
Hicks point out that what they pro- 
pose is as brief in outline and swift 
in action as violent revolution—yet 
it is as peaceful and law-abiding as 
the Ten Commandments. They add, 
“We don’t need a five-year produc- 
tion plan—we need a five-day dis- 
tribution plan.” 


(The above extract can be found on page 
692, The Survey, Dec. 15, 1932.) 


31 


College Professor Dismissed 


Professor George M’Lean, depart- 
ment of economics, Southwestern 
University, Memphis, Tenn, has re- 
ceived notice from Dr. C. E. Diehl, 
Southwestern’s president, that his 
services will not be required next 
year. 

Professor M’Lean is a member of 
the advisory committee of the Unem- 
ployed Citizens League, against 
which unsupported charges of Com- 
munism have been hurled. He stands 
firm upon his right to his beliefs, 
which he staunchly declares to be in 
“true democracy”, “that educated 
men should practice brotherhood, re- 
ligion, and good politics as well as 
talking it among themselves. Teach- 
ers should lead as well as exhort. My 
only purpose has been to aid the 
poor.” 

Professor M’Lean is carrying on 
his work undaunted as assistant pro- 
fessor of sociology and education at 
Southwestern, 





| Who's Who in this Issue 








Charles B. Stillman, Chicago Men 
Local 2, is a vice-president of the 
American Federation of Teachers 
and president of the Joint Confer- 
ence of Principals and Teachers, 
Chicago. 

Dr. John Dewey, New York Local 5, 
is America’s foremost philospher 
and educator, professor emeritus of 
philosophy, Columbia University, 
and author of many famous works 
on philosophy, psychology, and 
education. 

E. E. Schwarztrauber, University of 

' Wisconsin Local 223, is a vice- 
president of the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers, instructor in Eco- 
nomics at the University of Wis- 
consin, and director of the Milwau- 
kee Community Service League. 

Senator Walter F, George is U. S. 
Senator from Georgia and the 
author of the George Bill (S.5263) 
which seeks to amend the R. F. C. 
Act so that states, municipalities, 
and school districts may borrow 
needed funds from the R. F. C. 
for the support of public schools. 

Mark Starr, leader of Workers’ Edu- 
cation movement in England, auth- 
or, lecturer, now visiting America 
as student of social and economic 
conditions. 


“Time is money; but, leisure is 
wealth,” 
—Tagore. 


























hz 


American Federation 


of Teachers 


506 South Wabash Avenue 


CHICAGO, ILL. 








oat 





The American Federation of Teachers 


desires to establish an intimate contact and an effective co-oper- 
ation between the teachers and the other workers of the com- 


munity. 
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 stand- 
ards and the democratization of the schools. 


Our Slogan Is: 
Democracy in Education: Education for Democracy 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 
is published bimonthly by The American Federation of Teachers. 
Membership dues carry subscription to the magazine. To all others the 
subscription price is $1.00 per year, 25 cents per copy.