ERE AS BRAK MAY 2 4 1934 


UNITY. v* 


AMERICAN 
TEAC 











IN THIS ISSUE 


James C. Adell 
Myrtle Heard Higley 
Arnold Levitas 


Henry Craig Seasholes 
Freeland G. Stecker 





























JUNE, 1934 
VOLUME XVIill. No. 5 











IGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
































i8th ANNUAL 


CONVENTION 


OF THE 


AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
Medinah Michigan Avenue Club 


505 N. Michigan Avenue 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 


June 25 to June 29, 1934 


Theme 
EDUCATIONAL RECOVERY 


Keynote—The Challenge to the School Teachers 
in the Plight of the Schools 


Executive Council Meeting 
June 24, 1934 














After the Chicago Convention 


Visit the World’s Fair 


‘Rooms to ‘Kent 


Clean, Large, Comfortable 
All Twin Beds 
Hot and Cold Running Water 


Per Person—$1.00—Per Day 





| 323 So. Ashland Boulevard 


| Miss Agnes A. Smyth 
| 
| 





AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 


Chicago Local 3 


























Page 
EEN SS Oe 3 
The Blue Eagle Over the School..... Henry Craig Seasholes 4 


The Trained Woman and Her Position..Myrtle Heard Higley 5 
At the End of a Century of Progress...Freeland G. Stecker 7 


RIE GS ETE eee ere ry eee g 
Methods of Education and Training in the U. S. 5S. R... 

Ss Se oe ped adhe dente ss sees aeed Arnold Levitas 11 
eT id baie dbesaecsecsace 14 
eo inced nceseseceween Henry R. Linville 17 
EN OSES Se Pe oe ed 18 

Why Join the American Federation of Teachers 

Why Not the Teachers 

18th Annual Convention : 

An Appeal to Teachers—A. Lefkowitz 

Basic Factors in Academic Freedom—Joseph Jablonower. 

What Milk Prices Mean 
A Brainstorm 
Taxes and Tax Dodgers 
? 


Discrimination Against Women Workers................... 22 


UBLISHED bi-monthly, except August, by the 

American Federation of Teachers, 506 South 
Wabash Ave., Chicago, Ill. Entered as second 
class matter October 18, 1933, at the post offce 
at Chicago, Ill., 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. 





Page 
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Sub- 
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made 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 











Vot. XVIII 


June, 1934 No. 5 











Rejoicing! 


The American Federation of Teachers is rejoicing as 
it has not had occasion to rejoice in a long time. 
Twenty-five local unions have been formed in the state of 
Arkansas. 
of the hardest hit in this onslaught on public education 


The state that was one of the first and one 


has turned to organized labor, to the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers and the American Federation of Labor, 
and is giving them the opportunity for service which 
they stand ready, willing, and able to give. 

Last year 756 schools in Arkansas were closed and 
more than a thousand this year. One-third of the white 
population and a much larger proportion of the negro 
are without schooling. This means that in Arkansas 
156,143 white children and many more than that number 
of negro children are without the minimum essentials 
of education. Teachers’ salaries have been reduced. 
white teachers 14%, colored teachers 21%. This means 
a reduction in the median salary from $621 to $523 for 
the white teachers; from $370 to $291 for the negro 
teachers. The high school situation is not quite so bad, 
the reduction there being for white teachers 11%, from 
$1035 to $915; for negro teachers from $809 to $733. 
These figures for Arkansas show that the poorest and 
weakest are the ones that suffer most, that “to him that 
hath shall be given and from him that hath not, even 
that which he hath shall be taken away.” 

But these teachers are no longer “the poorest and the 
weakest.” They have behind them the combined strength 
of the workers of America, They have joined with 
that great movement for human betterment, the Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor. The schools of Arkansas have 
needed friends. They have known where to look for 
them. Public education owes almost its whole being 
to the interest and support of Labor. The schools, 
therefore, look to Organized Labor for protection. It 
has already manifested its concern in this educational 
crisis and will respond valiantly to this crucial need, for 
nothing less is to be expected from that body of workers 
which was the first social group to give its whole-hearted 
support to public schools in their infancy 100 years ago. 

The teachers of other states will do well to follow 
the example of Arkansas and organize themselves in 
strength together with their fellow workers to rebuild 
the schools of America on so firm a social foundation 
that this which has been done to public education can 
never be done again. 

The American Federation of Labor has in conven- 
tion and through repeated pronouncements of President 


Green declared against reduction of teachers’ salaries, 
against increase in size of classes, against elimination 
of valuable subjects, against shortening the school year, 
against dismissal of qualified teachers, against the ex 
tinction of teacher tenure, against lowering of stand- 
ards, against this false economy of cutting school costs 
A 12 


point program of education which certainly must find 


at a terrible price to the children of the nation. 


support from; every teacher was adopted at the last 
convention. It declares that there must be increased 
revenue for the maintenance and development of pub- 
lic education; not less money but more money for the 
support of public schools, in spite of the depression— 
yes, because of the depression, It declares for the 
elimination of waste and corruption, not the lessening of 
educational opportunities for the children of the work- 
ers. It says, “Our complex social order calls for widen- 
ing the scope and influence of our public schools and 
requires larger instead of restricted appropriations.” 
For the teachers the American Federation of Teachers 
and the American Federation of Labor are asking for 


1. A living wage 


2. Security of tenure 

3. Decent working conditions 

4. Right to establish teachers unions and to affiliate 
with labor 

5. Opportunity for culture and professional study 


6. Maintenance of standards 

7. Provision for old age 

8. Opportunity to participate in formulating educa- 
tional policy. 


It is imperative that the Federal Government take ac- 
tion to save our schools, It is necessary to restore pros- 
perity that our more than 300,000 unemployed teachers 
be employed; it is necessary to social security that our 
children be cared for in schools, not jails and penal 
institutions. The teachers will not sink without a 
struggle. If now the teachers of America will organize 
themselves nationally together with their friends and 
fellow workers something can be done to save our 
schools. 

There is hope now in Arkansas. There is more than 
hope; there is the buoyant assurance of a better condi- 
tion which comes from militant activity. 

The Union movement is born of hope in a better 
world and cannot be stopped. It is to this fellowship 
of optimism the teachers are invited, 

















THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The Blue Eagle Over the School 


Henry Craig Seasholes 


HE teaching profession is highly socialized and in 

that respect it differs from other professions where 

rugged ragged individualism still exists and runs 
rampant. Because teaching has arrived at the place our 
best minds feel other professions soon will be, it is 
possible for Boards of Education to assist materially in 
the program of the N.R. A. 

Before showing how a Board of Education can merit 
a Blue Eagle, let us review the circumstances which 
necessitated this nation-wide campaign. We must keep 
the basic philosophy of the New Deal clear in our minds 
if we are to inconvenience ourselves and make the neces- 
sary adjustments without complaint. 

Mirabile dictu, we were in want because of surpluses. 
The amount of currency in circulation reached an all- 
time peak last February,.yet everyone was short of 
money, estates and other forms of accumulated wealth 
had vanished, many old reliable firms were bankrupt, 
and all our banks closed because of lack of cash. 
Farmers had produced 180 kernels of wheat where be- 
fore only 60 grew, etc., etc., to the point that foodstuffs 
were a drug on the market and yet we heard about 
human beings eating out of garbage pails, and many a 
good American family knew nothing but soup week in 
and week out. Manufacturers had enough stock on 
hand to last them a year at the rate they were doing 
business, yet many a farmer still is driving a Model T. 
We had more means for exchanging goods than we 
knew what to do with. We had trucks, trains, and 
boats galore. How many have seen long lines of idle 
locomotives just outside of Chicago, or the groups of 
ships rusting in the Hudson River? Too much money 
and everybody broke, too much foodstuffs and people 
going hungry, too many manufactured products and peo- 
ple in want of them, too much transportation and yet 
goods were not being exchanged. 

We got ourselves in this dilemma because we went to 
seed on individual efficiency and lost sight of social effi- 
ciency. We became good producers but relatively poor 
consumers. We were on a love-of-gold basis. If one 
person didn’t own his own home, had no radio, no auto- 
mobile, no leisure, no electric conveniences about his 
home, but had a large bank account, or a large amount 
invested in stocks, he was considered rich. If another 
owned his own home, a radio, an automobile, had all 
modern conveniences with which to enjoy lite, and yet 
had no money, he was considered poor. For the firm 
or corporation this love-of-gold, this desire to show huge 
profits, was gratified by charging as much as possible 
for the product and paying the employees as little as 
possible. To obtain super-efficiency a company was ex- 
pected to lay off half the force and produce more than 
they did before. This worked fine for the individual 
organization until everybody became super-efficient. We 
soon found ourselves in this situation. One man would 
be working 55 or 60 hours a week and his neighbor 
would be unemployed. Perhaps the unemployed man 
was just as willing and just as skilful a worker, but 
unlucky in his selection of an employer 15 or 20 years 
ago. In many cases the standard of living of the man 








working 60 hours a week was not much higher than that 
of his neighbor who was living on charity. Neither was 
able to buy more than the bare necessities of life, and 
our super-efficient concerns had lost their market. The 
farmer passed, the manufacturer passed, the merchant 
passed, and the consumer, being fourth hand and scared 
to death, had to pass. “’Tis better to play and lose, if 
necessary, than not to play at all,” so we called for a 
new deal. It is a little difficult to get some organizations 
to give up their quick tricks. They want to hold them 
for the next hand, but if they insist on that the game is 
all off. 

Personally I was glad to see the New Deal because | 
think it will give the young people a chance in society 
as it is now organized. I like young people. I wouldn’t 
be a teacher if I didn’t. Offhand I can name several 
boys who were in my homeroom, who have since grad- 
uated from college and are prepared professionally to 
teach. Their education was obtained at greater sacrifice 
than we had to offer for our education. These young 
people who were in college during the depression did 
not graduate with the same conceited notions we had 
when we graduated. They ring true, and I am willing 
to fight to help them get an opportunity to make good. 

Then, too, I fear the young people. I know that if. 
we do not give them a place in society as it is now or- 
ganized that they will make places for themselves, and 
their method might not be to our liking. Do you find 
any graybeards among the followers of Hitler and Mus- 
solini? It stands to reason that if we allow an increas- 
ing number of young people each year to join the ranks 
of the unemployed, this dynamic force will break thru 
some way or other. I proudly claim the rank and title 
of captain of infantry in the American Army and I feel 
that I have a more personal and genuine interest in 
world peace than has any pacifist. If my friends, the 
pacifists, desire to do something really constructive 
t6ward world peace, they will back the N.R. A. with 
all their eloquence, and will see to it that positions are 
created for young people. 

There are many young people who have selected teach- 
ing as a vocation, and there are many qualified unem- 
ployed teachers. Codes for industry are made for the 
nation, then the application is made to individual con- 
cerns. Let us reverse this and first discuss the appli- 
cation of a code to an individual school. In high school 
the usual load is equivalent to six classes daily per 
teacher. If each teacher accepted a reduction to five 
classes daily with an accompanying one-sixth reduction 
in base pay, additional positions would be created for 
young teachers. In John Adams High School where I 
teach there are more than one hundred teachers. If this 
plan were applied it would create positions for twenty 
additional teachers. Most of the young teachers not 
employed would be glad to work on a half-time basis 
rather than be idle. Half-time would extend the period 
of apprenticeship, but a longer professional apprentice- 
ship is desirable. In this one building the application of 
the half-time plan for new teachers would permit thirty- 
four neophytes to get their start in the teaching pro- 














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JUNE, 1934 


fession. It would be difficult to administer. The new 
teachers could not be expected to do as good a job as 
the experienced teachers. There would be some educa- 
tional waste and some educational inefficiency, but we 
must go through the fire to get to economic safety. At 
the worst only one-sixth of the classes will be affected 
and the young teachers will bring to the protession new 
ideas and an added enthusiasm that may offset the dis- 
advantage of inexperience. It is assumed, of course, 
that in the selection of these new teachers only the best 
candidates will be accepted. It has long been the recom- 
mendation of the North Central Association that teach- 
ers teach only five classes. If that recommendation be 
based upon grounds of efficiency, the teachers now in 
the school will teach better if they teach fewer classes. 
This plan shows a saving to the taxpayer, because the 
class given up by each teacher higher on the salary scale 
would be taken by a beginner. In John Adams High 
School the operation of this plan would reduce the cost 
of instruction by about nine per cent. This reduction 
should be figured after salary cuts and automatic in- 
creases have been restored. It should be figured from 
the base scale. For some of the high schools in Cleve- 
land having an older faculty, the saving will amount to 
more than nine per cent. For the elementary schools 
a reduction of one-sixth in the pupil-teacher ratio would 
be necessary. A maximum class size could be estab- 
lished, but a maximum average class size for each build- 
ing would be much more practical. 

For the city of Cleveland proper, the application of 
the N. R. A. principle would create positions for upward 


of one thousand teachers. The reader can easily see 
the number of teaching positions which would be created 
in the nation by national application of a code. If the 
Cleveland Board of Education were to make out a model 
code for the United States it would include: 

1. Restoration of the salary scale, less 1/6. This 
means that the individual teacher‘s pay cuts and the 
automatic increases of the younger teachers which have 
been withheld would be restored, and then one-sixth of 
this amount deducted. The cut in pay for the majority 
of teachers amounts to about 50% now. Some relief, 
especially for teachers low on the salary scale, should be 
effected immediately. 

2. Of the 1624% taken from the base pay of each 
teacher about 10% would represent a saving to the tax- 
payer and about 7% would be used to put nearly a 
thousand young teachers to work in the Cleveland dis- 
trict. 

The voters of Cleveland can be counted upon to tax 
themselves to support this code because: 

1. The Cleveland Board of Education reduced its 
debt from 33 million dollars to less than 21 million right 
through the depression. 

2. Cleveland used to spend nearly 20 millions yearly 
on her schools, and now through rigid economy spends 
about 13 million. A slight loosening of the purse strings 
at this time is in line with the aims of the N. R. A. 

3. The people of Cleveland have faith in America 
and faith in the Recovery Program of our President, 
Mr. Roosevelt. 


The Trained Woman and Her Position 


Myrtle Heard Higley 


UPPOSE you were that American school teacher who 

had studied twelve years in a public school, who 

had graduated from an accredited state normal 
school and from one of the nation’s leading universities, 
and, in addition, had traveled and studied abroad. Sup- 
pose you were that teacher who had been rated publicly 
as one of the superior teachers in a large urban com- 
munity. Then, suppose you had married and the board 
of education demanded immediately your resignation on 
the basis only of your marriage. Ability and success 
counted as naught; returns from investment in educa- 
tion taken from you just as surely as in the days of 
piracy; and the opportunity for service in your chosen 
profession wrested from you. An American picture— 
with these interesting questions attached: How do you 
think you would react to such an experience? Are we 
returning to the days of Constantine when women must 
choose either celibacy or a professional career? How 
will the NRA affect such a situation? 

The effects of the business and industrial depression 
have concentrated upon women in all business and pro- 
fessional activities. The popular remedy for ending the 
depression has been to discharge all married women who 
work outside the home. Yet, the depression has not been 
remedied by such means in any way. If the depression 
had been remedied, it would not seem so unjust to lose 
the opportunity for service in one’s chosen profession; 
neither would it be such a bitter experience to be de- 
prived of financial returns on one’s investment in higher 
education. 

In the first place the majority of married women are 


working because their wages are necessary. The loss of 
their jobs has meant the foreclosure of mortgages on 
their homes and the inability to finish their children’s 
education. Furthermore, many of these women are 
taxpayers. Is it a square deal to deny American citi- 
zens, who are taxpayers, the opportunity and right to 
earn an income if they so desire? 

Mrs. Helen Z. Rodgers, a lawyer practicing at Buf- 
falo, New York, justified these views both economically 
and socially when she said: 

“Any compulsory limitation of their earning powers amounts 
to arbitrary income reduction of a kind. The attack on married 
women workers is essentially an attack on all women in business 
and professions. If a woman must cease work on marriage 
without regard to circumstances, ability, or desire, then all wom- 
en are thrown into the class of casual, temporary, makeshift 
workers with corresponding recognition and compensation. 
Under such conditions it is scarcely worth any woman's while 
to spend years preparing for a profession.” 


Not only is the attitude against married women work- 
ers unfair and unjust in its implications against all em- 
ployed women; the presence of women in industry has 
not cut down the number of employed men and boys. 
Let me quote verbatim from the official bulletin of the 
United States Department of Labor. 

“The wider distribution of women over the field of industry 
and commerce and their advancement into better occupations 
have not, on the whole, reduced the number nor impaired the 
quality of the employment opportunities of men. The numbers 
of both man and boy wage earners have increased more than 
the number of women and girl wage earners during the decade 
represented by the last population census. This fact should not 
convey the idea that occupations have not shifted from men to 
women, from women to men, and from both to machines, as a 











6 


result of applied research; it is only to show that the net in- 
crease in the number of women’s employment opportunities re- 
sulting from applied research has not been accompanied by a 
net decrease in the employment opportunities for men.” 


Again, the wholesale discharge of women, married or 


single, in industry, business, and the professions has not 
alleviated the sufferings resulting from this depression. 
At the most it has only shifted the burden of agony 
from the backs of one group to the shoulders of another. 
However, suppose that all employed women would re- 
main at home and give up their positions to men and 
boys. What would be the result? In the first place, 
there would be less income in the home. Second, there 
would be more labor for the manual arts. With a 
reduced family income and a greater amount of labor 
supply in the home, women would again do their wash- 
ing on a washboard, their ironing without the use of a 
mangle, and their own canning, baking, and sewing. 
What, then, would become of those men and boys now 
actively engaged in the manufacture of washers and 
mangles? What would become of those men now ac- 
tively engaged in our canneries, bakeries, and clothing 
industries? In a recent number of a popular magazine 
we read that the 

“Homecraft League is very enthusiastic over reviving the ancient 
art of spinning, and is sponsoring classes in one of the public 
schools in New York.” 

We read further that the 


“mountain girls of Kentucky and Georgia are not only taught 
to clothe their families by spinning cloth but also to produce 
something that is artistic as well as useful.” 

A chance for idle women, but what will happen to those 
men and boys employed in the clothing manufactures? 
It seems to me that women leaving industrial activities 
and remaining at home would result in fewer jobs i 
industry for anyone. 

Furthermore, the NRA Program does not call for the 

removal of women, married or single, from industry, 
from business, or from the professions. It does call for 
“manufacturers, merchants, and other business groups to sub- 
scribe to fair competition codes. It does plan to adjust pur- 
chasing power to production and prices. It does demand a 
balanced budget and a patriotic nationalism to wedge this 
nation out of the bogs of depression.” 
It does permit the appointment of married women to 
positions of trust and responsibility; for example, 
Frances Perkins, Secretary of the Department of Labor, 
and Mrs. Blair Banister, wife of a New York Insurance 
man, as the Assistant Treasurer of the United States. 
Is there anyone who can fill the position of Secretary 
of Labor any more effectively than Miss Perkins? Her 
appointment has been heralded as the one great achieve- 
ment of woman since the adoption of the Nineteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 
Yet, Miss Perkins is a married woman. 

Why, then, is there so much agitation against the em- 
ployment of women, especially if they be married wom- 
en? Tradition—customs which have prevailed from 
generation to generation—are blocking the progress of 
women in the fields of their profession or occupation. 
This fact can be readily proved by citing the following 
brief quotations taken from Careers for Women, com- 
piled and edited by Doris E. Fleishman. These quota- 
tions are taken from the writings of women who speak 
from the knowledge of their experience. 

In the legal profession I shall quote from Judge Hor- 
tense Norris, the first woman to sit on the bench with 
the presiding judges at the International Mixed Court 
in Shanghai, China; the Native Court of Cairo, Egypt; 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


the High Courts in Calcutta and Bombay, India; Ran- 
goon, burma; Singapore, Straits Settlements; who also 
visited the courts in Japan and other parts of the world, 
Judge Norris says, 

“It is still a difficult matter for women lawyers to secure 
positions in the best firms. While the doors are being gradu- 
ally opened, men still refuse to countenance the idea of women 
on their legal staffs.” 

In the field of banking, Mary Vail Andress, Assistant 
Cashier, Chase National Bank, says, 

“As a general rule, the goal of the woman who adopts bank- 
ing as her career is an officership In large city banks, 
it is, of course, more difficult to win such posts, and rarely 
does a woman hold a higher office in a large bank than assistant 
cashier or assistant secretary. ‘Finance in the financial centers 
of the country is still the citadel of the men, and to the inner- 
most precincts women have not yet penetrated.” 

She believes that the 
“extent to which women will find opportunities in banking 
depends on the extent of women’s activity in general business.” 

Miss Elsie Eaves, holding the degree of Civil Engi- 
neer from the University of Colorado, says: 

“Civil Engineering is one of the few remaining fields where 
women have still to pioneer and demonstrate what they can do. 

. Field work is organized for a masculine staff. Woman's 
ability could be recognized by engineers with whom she works, 
but it would require a large amount of education to pass this 
on to the outsiders with whom she would have to deal. Office 
responsibility is a more practical means by which women can 
win first spurs in the profession.” 

The above are but a few examples showing the pre- 
vailing thought about women in business and in pro- 
fessions. From theta it can be seen that women will 
have no easy time entering the professions or occupa- 
tional fields which men regard as exclusively their own. 

What do women want? Women of America want 
the right for every normal woman of equal opportunity 
for equal capacity. Women themselves must take the 
lead in bringing this about, or the American woman will 
return to those mediaeval days when it was asserted 
that her place was within the confines of the four walls 
of the place she called home. For when the married 
woman has been safely shelved from all activities out- 
side the home, then forces will concentrate on the re- 
moval of all women from business, industrial, and pro- 
fessional activities. All women, married or single, must 
unite to protect the married woman in her right to hold 
a job, or all women will eventually pay the price for 
being born a woman. 


Stand off by yourself in your dreaming, 
And all of your dreams are vain; 

No grandeur of soul or spirit 

Can man by himself attain. 

It is willed we shall dwell as brothers; 
As brothers then we must toil; 

We must act with a common purpose 
As we work in a common soil. 

And each who would see accomplished 
The dreams that he’s proud to own, 
Must strive for the goal with his fellows, 
For no man can do it alone. 


He that wrongs his friend 

Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about 

A silent court of justice in his breast. 
—TENNYSON. 








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June, 1934 


At the End of A Century of Progress 


Freeland G. Stecker 


HE last one hundred years have truly constituted 
a century Of progress. 


Steam, electricity, chemistry, science in its 
myriad forms, and labor-saving devices have so altered 
our manner of living that the conditions which existed 
then in that prescientific era seem to us a closed book. 
In this transformation the City of Chicago played no 
small part. From a hamlet to one of the world’s chief 
cities, its growth is an emblem of the century’s marvel- 
ous achievements. Here the development of transpor- 
tation, industry, commerce, finance, and culture has out- 
run imagination. Its attainments in music, art, and 
architecture make it one of the foremost urban attrac- 
tions, while in civic activities it has set an example in 
city planning, parks, museums, and health and recrea- 
tional facilities. 

But a storm may gather most unexpectedly. And a 
storm it is—one which threatens to undo much of the 
boasted progress of this unusual century. The nature 
and destructiveness of this storm will receive much at- 
tention for years to come. We shall want to know 
whether it was natural or man-made and how far it 
must be taken into consideration in future planning. 
What value shall we give to the mass of arguments pre- 
sented to show that Chicago must drop many of its 
civic activities, that it is bankrupt, that its obligations 
are impaired, that its paper is far below par because 
much can never be redeemed? Are these repeated state- 
ments based upon facts or intended to shake the confi- 
dence of citizens and cause changes in political policies? 

Who does not know that municipal governments 
learned long months ago that tax-anticipation warrants 
do not constitute acceptable security for loans either by 
those governments or by individual holders. Employees 
of the Board of Education enter upon the New Year 
with 1933 salaries paid for the first half of April, and 
a full five and a half months in arrears. Was it inevit- 
able that much of the payment for preceding months, 
long deferred, should be in paper not recognized in 
financial circles, adding heavy discounts to long delays? 
This is not something merely for employees to worry 
about, if it is true evidence of Chicago’s having set a 
pace in civic undertakings which it can not hope to 
continue. Are we really bankrupt? Is Chicago really 
only a poor city trying to get along? It is heartening 
to know that in 1927 Chicago was valued for tax pur- 
poses at four and a fourth billion dollars. The reassess- 
ment of 1928 wrote off $600,000,000. In 1930 the value 
of taxable property was placed at three and three-fourths 
billions, and in 1931 at $3,147,614,842. This does not 
include untaxable property. We do not know how much 
personal property escaped taxation or how effective the 
self-boasted “‘tax-fixers” were. These conditions should 
be included in any consideration of impoverished Chi- 
cago. Bank deposits, which had shrunk 40% from the 
high level of 1928, stood, June 30 last, at $1,704,141,000. 
One would infer that Chicago’s I O U’s compare well 
with that of the proverbial ‘man on the street”. 

At the end of the century run we seem to have arrived 
at a crossroads without markers. Which road leads 
where we want to go? Shall we continue on in about 
the general direction we have been following? Or shall 
we heed the instructions of those who point out with 
suspicious eagerness the road that seems to circle back? 


The real question back of all the smoke screen of 
taxes and budgets and government costs is the amount 
and kind of education and all other governmental serv- 
ices the people want. What they really want they will 
find a way to finance. Have we had too much educa- 
tion? Can we afford to retrench? How well educated 
are the American people? Nothing to brag about. 
Suppose we find that they average about fourth grade 
in school and have an intelligence quotient of a fair 
twelve-year-old child. With more certainty we can say 
that the United States has four and a quarter million 
illiterate inhabitants, ten years old and over. They form 
four and a third per cent of our population. In other 
words, one among every 23 persons more than ten years 
old can not read or write. Being literate does not indi- 
cate ability to read a newspaper intelligently. In Illinois 
the record is much better. Our 150,000 illiterates form 
more than two and a quarter per cent of the population 
or one person in 41. Four million people live in Cook 
County. Of the three and a third million who are ten 
years old or more, there are more than one hundred 
thousand illiterates, more than three per cent; in 1920, 
it was 4.4 per cent. [Illiteracy in Cook County was re- 
duced aboot 30% in the decade from 1920 to 1930. But 
we have a foreign-born population of well over 900,000, 
Many of these had scant educational advantages, if any, 
in the homeland. In 1930 more than 90,000 were 
illiterate, 9.5%. 

Citizenship in a democracy where all adults except 
unnaturalized foreign born may vote requires a far 
higher standard than mere literacy. A fair education 
is a necessary preliminary to most skilled trades. The 
desired standard of living in America can not be reached 
by those who have not the training to acquire the skill 
or knowledge essential for earning the necessary amount 
to reach that standard. 

As war preparations got well under way in 1917-18, 
the youth of the entire country were told to stay in 
school until the age of 18, that they could best serve 
their country by getting qualified to do something well 
when their time came should the war drag on. The 
longer span of peace years can demand no less. The 
effect was amazing. High school attendance increased 
beyond expectation, beyond any facilities that could be 
provided for adequate service. Furthermore the at- 
tendance held up and is still increasing. This fact not 
only forcefully demonstrates popular faith in the need 
and value of high school education as an accepted 
standard of training, but has increased school costs. Is 
Chicago afraid to face this fact? Can anyone suggest 
any other procedure which will result in less cost to 
the public? Economy does not lie in the direction of 
decreased school attendance and neglect of youth. The 
duty of organized society to protect and train those 
children especially who are deprived of the care and dis- 
cipline of the normal home, is not merely humanitarian 
—it is the premium that insures our public safety and 
welfare. That premium in 1931-32 was $116.57 per 
student, a cost that placed Chicago fifteenth from the 
maximum among cities of 100,000 population or more. 

The greatest of all factors in an analysis of a business 
situation is the character of the people concerned, the 
spirit of the community. It has been the spirit of the 
people of Chicago that has converted the miles of swamp 



























8 


and prairie into busy streets of homes and marts and 
productive enterprises, that from a valueless tract has 
created a four billion dollar city. Where has that “I 
Will” spirit been hiding during these recent turbulent 
months? Where is the leadership that after a century 
of progress went into retirement just as the celebration 
was about to begin? Does Chicago no longer produce 
men and women of action and courage and vision and 
civic ideals? 

These questions are not framed in a cynical spirit. I 
am not a cynic. No teacher is. With as much confi- 
dence as I place in the power of electro-magnetic waves 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


to carry my voice to such as care to be listening, I state 
that though that spirit has met with discouragements it 
is not broken. It is momentarily confused and dis- 
ordered. It has listened to false prophets and cleverly 
misleading slogans and arguments. But these conditions 
cannot last. We shall go forward. Public opinion will 
concern itself, not with how to avoid public costs but 
with how to get better results. When Mr. and Mrs. 
Chicago realize that unnecessary insurance rates against 
theft cost as much as they are hoping to save in school 
tax reductions, they will be on their way to thinking 
themselves out of the muddle. 


Sales Tax 


Editor's Note: The following editorial is reproduced from 
the Oregon Daily Journal, Portiand, Oregon, April 11, 1934, 
together with the study of the sales tax by the Portland 
Teachers Union Local 11l. It is given here as an able state- 
ment of the pernicious character of the sales tax and as an aid 
in fortifying the teachers and the public against the insidious 
propaganda for this type of taxation with which they are 
constantly beset. 


Their Findings 


tax appears on this page. 

It is a report of a committee of teachers, to the 
Portland Teachers’ Union. It is exhaustive in char- 
acter, clear and incisive in its discussion, and is a most 
effective exposure of the fallacies of the sales tax prin- 
ciple. It is well worthy of study in the reassurance it 
will be of the intelligence, balance, and courage of Ore- 
gon teachers, particularly the many teachers who are in 
revolt against the effort of Oregon tax-spenders to use 
the schools as a pretext, as Senator Strayer says, for 
getting more tax money to spend. 

An example of the intelligence with which the teach- 
ers’ committee discusses the subject is the following: 

Sales tax advocates claim that more than 50 per cent 
of the people of Oregon pay no taxes, They thereupon 
set up a howl, calling for all to pay taxes, through the 
sales tax. The reply of the teachers’ committee is 
illuminating and telling. Here it is: 

Practically everyone does pay taxes, EITHER ON THE 
PROPERTY HE OWNS OR IN THE FORM OF RENT. IT IS AN 
ACCEPTED ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE THAT THE RENTER PAYS 
THE TAX ON THE PROPERTY HE USES, FROM NO OTHER 
SOURCE CAN THE LANDLORD OBTAIN HIS TAXES. IF DUR- 
ING DEPRESSIONS RENTS ARE NOT SUFFICIENT TO PAY 
TAXES, THE OWNER PAYS THE TAXES EITHER FROM PREVI- 
OUS PROFITS, OR BORROWS ON FUTURE EARNINGS. WHEN 
A HOUSEWIFE BUYS A POUND OF SUGAR SHE PAYS A TAX; 
THAT IS, SHE PAYS THE TARIFF ON THE SUGAR. PERSONS 
WHO USE COSMETICS AND TOBACCO PAY TAXES ON THESE 
ARTICLES, PUBLIC UTILITIES PASS THEIR TAX ON TO THE 
CONSUMERS, INCLUDING THEM AS A PART OF THEIR EX- 
PENSES ON WHICH RATES ARE BASED. ALMOST NO PERSON 
ESCAPES TAXATION. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE 
SALES TAX AND OTHER FORMS OF TAXATION IS THAT THE 
SALES TAX IS A TAX ON CONSUMPTION, WHILE A PART OF 
THE TAXES IN OTHER FORMS IS ON PROFITS. 

This statement by the teachers, that the rent-payer is 
a taxpayer in that his rent pays the tax on the house he 
rents from his landlord, is emphatically true. Sales-tax 
spenders cannot refute it. And in the same way this 
committee of teachers annihilates the arguments of the 


A MASTERLY presentation of objections to the sales 


tax-spenders and shows the insincerity and false pre- 
tense in the sales tax propaganda. 

Members of this committee are a true representation 
of the American school. As Lincoln said at Gettys- 
burg, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived 
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
are created equal.” And establishment of the free 
school was one of the first acts of those fathers, in 
order, as Lincoln said in the same immortal address, 
“That these dead shall not have died in vain, that this 
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, 
and that government of the people, by the people, for 
the people, shall not perish from the earth.” 

The stamina and fine intelligence of this teachers’ 
committee accentuates the fact that the schoolhouses of 
America are the fortresses of freedom, and that true 
teachers are the defenders and heralds of “government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people.” 


Teachers Make Study of Sales Tax 








Committee of the Portland Teachers’ Union Reports on 
a Survey of That Tax-Raising System in Respect of 
Both Principle and Practice and Finds it Altogether 
Pernicious — Gain, if Any, Exceeded by Loss — Pro- 
posed and Pushed by Those Interests Naturally Con- 
cerned with Tax-Shifting— A Tax on Necessity, Not 
on Ability — Tending to Lower Living Standards — 
Opposed to NRA— Teachers Themselves Who Have 
a Sense of Sound Justice Will Reject It — Proponents’ 
—— Answered, and High Opposing Authorities 

uoted. 





Here appears the report of a committee appointed by an organi- 
zation of teachers in the schools of Portland to make a study of 
the proposed Oregon sales tax law. The report bears date of 
March 31 and is signed by Ward Walker and May Darling, 
committee. 


The special committee authorized by the Portland 
Teachers’ Union to make a study of the sales tax here- 
with submits its findings’ to the members of that organ- 
ization. 

The sales tax was used in ancient Egypt and Rome, 
in medieval Spain, and in France previous to the French 
Revolution. In each case it marked the decline of an 
empire or the end of a dynasty. 

A number of attempts have been made in the United 
States to pass a federal sales tax, but always without 
success. Before the inauguration of President Roose- 
velt, Democratic leaders suggested that a sales tax be 
made a part of the financial program of the present ad- 
ministration, but when Roosevelt denounced the scheme 
in positive terms it was dropped. 














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JUNE, 1934 


In recent years a number of states have enacted sales 
tax laws, but in no state has such a law been passed 
when the people have had no opportunity to vote on the 
measure. 

The following table shows some of the heavy con- 
tributors to the campaign for the sales tax that was 
defeated last July. It also shows the amount of taxes 
for each corporation last year and the amount each 
would save by the passage of the sales tax now under 
consideration. These figures are for Multnomah county 
only. The savings for some of these corporations for 
their assessments throughout the entire state would, of 
course, be much greater. 





Estimated 
Amount amount to 
Taxes contributed be saved 
Firm or Corporation paid to by pro- 
for1933 campaign posed law 


S., P. & S. Railroad Company... .$192,000 $500 $ 15,360 
Southern Pacific Railroad Company 92,000 500 7,360 
O-W. R. & N. Railroad Company. 202,450 500 16,200 





Corbett Investment Company..... 145,623 500 11,649 
I I. on ce ecen be bmed 43,473 250 3,477 
a os wee kgubcon & . 94,395 250 7,551 





It is estimated by those who are supporting the sales 
tax that it will reduce property levies by about 4 mills. 
This is perhaps too large an amount, but is accepted in 
making the following calculations: 

The present levy in Portland is 50 mills; therefore if 
the sales tax brings in the amount of revenue estimated 
by its advocates it would reduce property taxes four- 
fiftieths, or 8 per cent. A citizen who now pays $100 in 
property tax would have it reduced $8. But if he 
spends $1000 on food, clothing, and other taxable com- 
modities, he will pay in sales taxes $15; thus his taxes 
will be increased $7. 

On the other hand, the sales tax would mean large 
savings for persons and corporations with large property 
holdings. The Pacific Telephone Company recently paid 
taxes amounting to $791,238. Computed on the basis 
of the levy in Multnomah county, the proposed sales 
tax would save this corporation $63,299, and the tele- 
phone company would pay very little in sales taxes, for 
it buys only a small amount of taxable articles in the 
state of Oregon. 

» * * 

The fact that the tax would be a percentage of what 
an individual spends does not mean that it falls equally 
on individuals with the same income. For example, a 
single person with no dependents, and receiving a sal- 
ary of $2000, might not spend more than $600 or $700 
on taxable commodities, but a man receiving the samc 
salary and having four or five children would doubtless 
be taxed on at least $1500 of his income. 

Money is paid in sales taxes that would otherwise be 
spent for food, clothing, and other necessaries. Alfred 
D. Buehler, associate professor of economics, University 
of Vermont, writes: 

“The general sales tax, because it tends to be ab- 
sorbed by wage-earners, tends to lower standards of 
living. Production is also affected by the gen- 
eral sales tax, which reduces the demand for various 
articles and services.” 

Dr. John Dewey of Columbia University, in a letter 
published in the Oregonian, March 21, writes: 

“It is true that the property tax has broken down as a 
method of supporting schools, but there are much better 
alternatives than the adoption of the sales tax, which 


9 


is but another way of burdening the already over- 
burdened consumer and thus retarding measures for 
economic recovery.” 

On small purchases an increase of 1 cent in the pur- 
chase price will amount to 4 or 5 per cent tax. For ex- 
ample, if the sale price of an article is 25 cents the 
addition of 1 cent would amount to a tax of 4 per cent. 
The additional 2% per cent could be retained by the 
merchant. 

Competent tax authorities assert that the cost of col- 
lecting the sales tax will be greater than that of any 
other kind of tax, due to the great amount of super- 
vision and inspection necessary to prevent evasion of 
the law. 

* ba *” 

That the sales tax may be an offset for the merchant's 
income tax is a controversial point and will not be 
definitely decided until the supreme court passes upon 
it—if the bill should be adopted. However, it is the 
opinion of some eminent lawyers that the law permits 
merchants, in computing their net incomes, to deduct 
the amount paid in sales taxes to the state. The Oregon 
state income tax law exempts from taxation all taxes 
paid in the state during the year, with certain specified 
exceptions, as, for example, the gasoline tax. The sales 
tax is not one of these exceptions. If it had been the 
intention of the authors of the sales tax that it be in 
the same class as the gasoline tax, why was it not so 
stated in the law? It is generally conceded that the 
amount of the sales tax paid by merchants to the state 
will be exempt from federal income tax. 

If the amount paid in sales taxes may be deducted 
from the taxable incomes of merchants, it will be greatly 
to the advantage of large merchants who pay heavy 
state income taxes. Furthermore, the state general rev- 
enue will be greatly reduced, for, with the reduction of 
the property tax on the same amount as is realized from 
the sales tax, there will be no offset for the loss in in- 
come taxes. 

The defeat of the sales tax last July by a vote of 
nearly 4 to 1 indicates that the tax now proposed would 
be extremely unpopular, even though it might be 
adopted. The schools will be blamed for the enact- 
ment of a tax law for school revenues if the law is con- 
sidered unjust and economically unsound and is un- 
popular. Many people are already asking whether 
teachers are supporting the sales tax for the sake of 
the children, or because the teachers wish to insure the 
payment of their own salaries. 

It would seem to be the duty of the public schools to 
do their share in attempting to secure social and eco- 
nomic justice for the mass of the people. The question 
arises as to how teachers can have this objective in view 
and at the same time consistently support a tax that is 
admittedly as unjust as the sales tax. 

a 2a 


Answers to arguments for the sales tax: 

1. That real property is overtaxed. 

This is doubtless true, especially as regards non-in- 
come-bearing property, but there is nothing to be gained 
by adding another bad tax. 


* * * 


2. That there is an emergency and that the sales 
tax is needed to save the schools. 

It would have been possible to devise other and more 
just methods of raising the needed revenue. 


At the 






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10 


special session of the legislature last winter a number 
of bills were introduced or suggested that, if they had 
been adopted, would have secured the necessary rev- 
enues for the schools. Among them were measures for 
stimulating payment of delinquent property taxes, in- 
crease in the income tax rate in the higher brackets, 
and diversion of part of the income and intangibles 
taxes to school uses. It is interesting to note that no 
support was given to these measures by most of the 
persons who are now wailing most loudly about the 
plight of the schools. Professor Groves of Wisconsin 
University, in a series of articles published in the New 
Republic, discusses a number of ways by which the states 
and federal government could raise money to support 
the schools. 

Recent improvement in the payment of property taxes, 
together with the promise of the federal government to 
aid the smaller school districts that are in distress, in- 
dicates that the emergency in the schools of Oregon is 
not so great as the advocates of the sales tax would 
have one believe. The same people who argue that the 
sales tax is necessary because there is an emergency in 
the schools, also state that one of the reasons for the 
sales tax is that it will rélieve property taxes. If the 
tax is only an emergency measure, and therefore but 
temporary, how can it permanently affect property 
taxes? 

im  * 

3. That everyone should pay taxes. 

Practically everyone does pay taxes, either on the 
property he owns or in the form of rent. It is an ac- 
cepted economic principle that the renter pays the taxes 
on the property he uses. From no other source can the 
landlord obtain his taxes. If, during depressions, rents 
are not sufficient to pay taxes, the owner of the prop- 
erty pays the taxes either from previous profits or bor- 
rows on future earnings. 

When a housewife buys a pound of sugar she pays a 
tax; that is, she pays the tariff on the sugar. Persons 
who use cosmetics and tobacco pay taxes oun these 
articles. Public utilities pass their taxes on to the con- 
sumers, including them as part of their expenses on 
which rates are based. Almost no person escapes taxa- 
tion. The difference between the sales tax and other 
forms of taxation is that the sales tax is wholly a tax 
on consumption, while a part of the taxes in other forms 
is on profits. 

* * * 

4. That the poor should pay for the government in 
the same proportion as the rich; for the poor receive as 
much benefit from it as do the rich. 

The fallacy of this argument lies in the fact that one 
of the chief functions of government is the protection of 
property, and he who owns the most property receives 
the greatest benefit from government. 

* * * 

5. That the children of the poor receive as much 
benefit from the public school as the children of the 
rich, and therefore the poor should pay for the support 
of the schools. 

This argument implies that the schools are established 
and maintained for the benefit of the individuals who 
attend them, whereas they are primarily for the benefit 
of society as a whole. The burden of supporting the 
schools, as well as other social institutions, should rest 
upon those who receive most from our social and eco- 
nomic organization, namely, the wealthy class. 











TEACHER 


THE AMERICAN 


Following are quotations from prominent persons who 
oppose the sales tax: 

Harold M. Groves, professor of public finance, Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin: “To use the sales tax as a sup- 
plement to the property tax is to add a second re- 
gressive tax and a further burden to those already stag- 
gering under the load of the property tax.” 

Dr. John Dewey of Columbia University: “I was 
opposed to the bill for a federal manufacturers’ sales 
tax when it was introduced in Congress and am even 
more strongly opposed to a sales tax in the various 
states of the Union. It is true that the property tax 
has broken down as a method of supporting the schools, 
but there are much better alternatives than the adop- 
tion of the sales tax, which is but another way of bur- 
dening the already over-burdened consumer and thus 
retarding economic recovery.”—From a letter published 
in the Oregonian, March 21, 1934. 

“I congratulate the people of Oregon on having voted 
down the sales tax passed by the legislature. I hope 
they will do so again in May.’’—From a letter received 
from Dr. Dewey by a member of your committee, dated 
March 14, 1934. 

A group of professors from Columbia University in a 
survey of the sales tax made for the Rockefeller Foun- 
dation state that the sales tax “marks an unnecessary 
aud backward step in taxation” and that “on the whole, 
experience with this form of taxation to date offers 
little support to those who contend that the sales tax 
should form a permanent element in the state tax sys- 
tem.” 

Professor E. R. A. Seligman, one of the foremost 
economists in the United States, writes: ‘When you 
come to consider a general sales tax you are dealing 
with a tax on necessaries, inasmuch as the great mass 
of sales are of necessaries. Naturally so, since the 
great majority of the people are in modest circum- 
stances. Therefore, as the French writers in the middle 
ages pointed out, a general sales tax is a sort of upside- 
down income tax. Instead of taxing a man with a 
higher income a little more or much more, as we do, 
you tax the man with the smaller income not only re- 
latively as much but relatively more, It is this instinctive 
reaction of the common man to the proposal of a sales 
tax that is responsible for the opposition to it mani- 
fested from the time of the Romans under Tiberius all 
the way down through the middle ages, when riots took 
place, down to modern times, as in this country, where 
the laboring classes are now up in arms against it. No 
civilized country before the World War had ever suc- 
ceeded in maintaining a general sales tax. The sales tax 
constitutes the last resort of those countries tnat find 
themselves in such difficulties that they must subordinate 
all other principles of taxation to the one principle of 
adequacy.” , 

In conclusion, your committee wishes to state that 
space did not permit a complete development of the 
arguments herein suggested. We call your attention to 
the following references, which may be of assistance 
to those of you who wish to make a further study of 
the sales tax. 

Buehler, Alfred C., “General Sales Taxation.’ 

Groves, Harold M., “A Tax Policy for the United 
States” (a series of four articles published in the New 
Republic, starting January 24, 1934). 

Congressional Record, Vol. 77, No. 60, May 26, 1933, 
page 441. 








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June, 1934 


11 


Methods of Education and Training in 
the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics 


Arnold Levitas, LL.B., M.A. 


A General Description of Soviet Education 
HE great task of the Soviet Government is to edu- 
cate the millions of people who were entirely 
neglected in the former regimes and to provide a 
systematic form of inclusive education for the new gen- 
erations. How well these problems are handled may be 
evidenced from the results accomplished. 

In the comparatively short space of time since the 
new regime came into power a vast network of edu- 
cative processes has been established, which makes it 
possible and easy for everyone who is willing to take 
advantage of the many opportunities offered. 

The Soviet Government has made education the prop- 
erty of the great masses. The entire system of public 
education has been revised. A uniform system of 
schools and other educational institutions for children 
have been established. Private schools are prohibited. 
The educational work is conducted by the State itself 
and by local organs (Soviets), as well as by trade un- 
ions, the Communist Party, the Communist League, the 
Young Pioneers Organizations, and by special societies 
such as, “Down with Illiteracy,” “Friends of the Chil- 
dren,” etc. The entire education of the younger gen- 
eration, the organization of day nurseries, kindergartens, 
and schools represents the exclusive function of the So- 
viet Government and local Soviets. The trade unions 
have developed considerable educational activities among 
their membership, and have organized schools for adults, 
clubs, reading-rooms, palaces of culture, theaters, etc.; 
but these are all, finally, under the centralized control 
of the Soviet Government. 

The masses seem to be hungry for education and 
enlightenment, and the supply is always ready to meet 
the demand—often, the supply even anticipates the de- 
mand. 

The Nursery 

Education in the Soviet Union begins from the cradle. 
The first educational institution is the Public Nursery. 
Since mothers are usually engaged in some form of 
work, the Nursery has become a necessity, and under 
the circumstances, it is a far better place for the rearing 
of children than the home. 

The Public Nursery employs practical people who are 
trained, from every point of view, to take care of the 
nurture, instruction, and physical needs of the children 
under their care. Every child is under the supervision 
of a nurse and a teacher. 

Connected with these nurseries are Medical Consult- 
ing Stations, which help the young, inexperienced moth- 
ers in the proper care of the child during the early period 
before the child is entrusted to the nursery and as long 
after that period as necessary. Since every working 
woman receives two months leave, with full pay, before 
confinement, and two months leave after confinement, 
these women take this opportunity of attending private 
and public instruction at the Medical Consulting Sta- 
tions. 

After the early period of child-rearing, which usually 
lasts two months, the child may be brought to the Day 





Nursery, where its care is based on strict scientific med- 
ical principles. Nursing mothers get leave from their 
work every day from 2% to 3 hours, to suckle their 
infants. The result of these measures is evidenced in 
the great decrease of infant mortality since the pre- 
revolutionary period, which during the past fifteen years 
has been about fifty per cent. 

The youngsters at the nursery which we, a party of 
Americans, visited recently seemed quite cheerful and 
happy, and they had good reason to be. There were all 
kinds of games and toys to keep them in good spirits, 
besides sufficient food. The children looked healthy and 
wholesome, and the nurses seemed interested in their 
charges and did their work well. 

We learned that, during the summer months, the chil- 
dren are sent to a camp in the country, where the air is 
good and they can play in the green. 

The matter of cos. depends upon the financial ability 
of the parents, their earning power, and the charge is 
always reasonable, just enough to cover the actual out- 
lay of the State. Medical care, in case of sickness, re- 
quires no extra charge. 

There are some parents who prefer to keep their chil- 
dren at home rather than send them to the Nursery. 
This, of course, is a matter within the discretion of the 
parents. Where parents can afford and desire, they hire 
a private maid or nurse. Such procedure, however, is 
rare, because the service at the Public Nursery is far 
superior to any private attention and much less costly. 


Scientific Institute for the Protection of Mothers 
and Children 


Another institution which is worthy of note is the so- 
called ‘““Mother-and-Child House.” Our university group 
visited an institute of this type in Leningrad, the “Sci- 
entific Institute for the Protection of Mothers and Chil- 
dren.” 

The Institute takes care of children from infancy to 
four years of age, and it includes mental, physical, and 
medical attention. The special objects of this establish- 
ment is to serve the children of unmarried mothers and 
also these mothers. Besides children’s care it devotes 
much attention to the matter of teaching the mother 
proper hygiene, physical and mental rules for the care of 
the child, and how to keep herself in good condition. 

Regular lectures are held for the purpose of educat- 
ing mothers in the various phases of child-rearing. 
Private instruction is also given to mothers wherever 
that is necessary; and good results have been obtained, 
judging by the achievements in the development of 
healthy children. 

The institution has both nurses and teachers, the 
nurses to take care of the physical and physiological 
needs of the children, and the teachers for the purpose 
of developing the mentality of these youngsters. The 
work of the latter consists, to a great extent, of kinder- 
garten methods. For that purpose, the Institute is well 
equipped with up-to-date devices. 

The Institute has another purpose. 


It has a lying-in 








eR TTS 


ng Sy Sr. 





12 


hospital division where any woman about to become a 
mother may get the care and attention necessary under 
the circumstances. While this service is open to all 
without charge, most of the women who come there are 
unmarried mothers. The clinic has 800 beds, 500 beds 
for mothers and 300 for children. The staff consists 
of about 120 people. 

There is a medical consultation-room for mothers to 
take care of their needs before and after children are 
born. There is also a legal department, which is for the 
purpose of advising women as to their rights in case of 
any domestic difficulties, particularly, where the child is 
born out of wedlock. 

In case of children abandoned by both parents, the 
Institute takes care of the child until it can find some- 
one to adopt it. There is never a question about prose- 
cuting a parent under such circumstances. A father, 
of course, and also a mother, may be held responsible 
for the support of the child, if they have the means. 
But where there are not sufficient means, the child will 
be well cared for at public cost. 

All in all, this is a most inclusive organization, ad- 
ministering, as it does, to the needs of the mothers and 
infants, from the very earliest moment of motherhood, 
until the child has reached a more-or-less reasonable 
state of lesser helplessness, until the fourth year, or 
even longer when that becomes necessary. 

From what could be learned, much has been achieved 
in the matter of reducing infant mortality. In the case 
of illegitimate children, the record of accomplishment 
stands higher than in any other country in the world. 
Many mothers have been saved in abortions, which are 
not illegal in the Soviet Union, the most scientific meth- 
ods being used for the prevention of any ill effects. 
It has also been statistically proven that much progress 
has been made with regard to the health of mothers and 
children in the modern U. S. S. R., because secrecy 
and stealth in such case were entirely absent and the 
stain of illegitimacy had been done away with. 


A Russian Camp for Children 

Camp-life in the summer is quite common in Soviet 
Russia. The new Russian regime takes advantage of 
every available space to give children an opportunity 
for this healthful recreation. 

Many of the activities in camp are probably similar 
to the ones in the United States; but they do a good 
deal more and they take advantage of every possible 
opportunity for outdoor life. The children do all the 
work in the camp—waiting on table, washing up, clean- 
ing their rooms, etc. 

On rainy days the children usually stay in the so- 
called “Lenin Corner,” which has a small library of 
books, toys, games, and sometimes a piano. The most 
interesting discussions on human welfare, politics, and 
government affairs and policies take place in the “Lenin 
Corner.” 

The programs of the camp are decided by the children 
themselves—a self-governing affair, generally. Around 
a big stone barbecue fire-place, the Pioneers (young 
communists) gather, and discuss their future plans, pro- 
grams, and disciplinary measures. 

Each camp usually undertakes some special task to 
carry out during the month, such as helping on farms, 
teaching the peasants to read and write, organizing a 
traveling library, or taking charge of little children on a 
kolkhoz (collective farm), so that the women will be 
free to go to work. 








TEACHER 


THE AMERICAN 


The children form a detachment, which is in charge 
of one of their number elected by them. The super- 
visors of the camp merely aid with their advice and 
suggestions from time to time. Nurses and teachers are 
in constant attendance to take care of the physical and 
mental needs of the young people in the camp. 

Parents come to visit the youngsters about five times 
a month; and, like parents all over the world, they 
usually are a great bother in upsetting the discipline, 
As a rule discipline presents no great problem, since 
the children are all trained to think seriously. If there 
are any disciplinary problems, the supervisors have a 
unique way of taking care of them, hardly any punish- 
ment, just gentle suasion and diplomacy. As an illus- 
tration, the most responsible tasks are given to the most 
difficult boys; and, usually, the responsibility has a good 
effect. 

The children of Soviet Russia are wide-awake and 
alert to modern problems. They are usually well in- 
formed and pass judgment on current events, which 
they constantly discuss. They have been told of the 
danger of church and religion, and have been taught the 
value of fairness and equality among people. All this 
has been made to appeal to their reason, not merely as 
conventional truth, and it has taken firm hold. They 
are brought up with military training, to become well- 
disciplined citizens and good and faithful defenders of 
the fatherland in time of need. 

So important is the education and enlightenment of 
the citizens that it is considered necessary for people 
never to stop learning. Little persuasion is required, 
however, since the men and women, young and old, are 
always anxious to take advantage of every educational 
opportunity. In that field there is provision for every- 
one; and I feel that it is a very wise thing. To my mind, 
nothing is so important as this great educational move- 
ment on the part of the Soviet authorities. The hope 
of success of the great undertaking of modern Russia 
lies in making people see and understand, so that they 
may be convinced of the importance and usefulness of 
the task. 

It seems to me that the reai achievements will come 
when the new generation will have reached sufficient 
maturity to be effective. The young can be properly 
trained and prepared for the many tasks before them; 
while, with the older people, it becomes a far more 
difficult undertaking, perhaps even a hopeless one. The 
whole psychology of attitude and thinking must be 
changed for the new Russia, and that requires a new 
birth, new habits, a new inculcation of youth. Remak- 
ing of the old and training him to the new thought is 
rarely successful. The most that can be hoped for from 
the old generation is temporary cooperation. 


Child Welfare 
Children are the flower of society, the coming citizens 
and defenders of the fatherland. Therefore, everything 
is being done for them to make them fit. The Soviet 
Union is interested in every child, whether born in or 
out of wedlock. Children born out of wedlock have 
exactly the same rights as the others. In fact, no dis- 
tinction is being made which might affect either the 
parent or child. A human being is not changed in 
nature by any conventional law, and the Soviet Union 

does not try to improve on nature. 
In case of cruelty by a parent, the court may decide 
to take the child away and give it State care and the 
obligation for support of the child rests equally on both 














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JUNE, 1934 


parents, no matter whether they are legitimately mar- 
ried or not. 

There are laws for compulsory education and regard- 
ing the employment of minors below 16 years of age. 
Special provision is made in the case of farm work, in 
which children are allowed to participate even below 


16 under certain conditions. All students over 16 are 
allowed to work from four to six hours per day; and 
all children below 18 must get at least one month’s vaca- 
tion each year. 

In pre-war Russia child mortality reached 26 per 
cent. The protection of children then was negligible. 
Now there is a special protection for mothers and chil- 
dren, and every precaution is taken against decreasing 
the health or life of these. Consequently, the mortality 
has been reduced as follows: 


DE saunas ee. geened 10 per cent 
OO err 5 per cent 
Agragarian Centers...... 12 per cent 


At the present time, physicians make regular visits to 
the homes. There are frequent consultations with moth- 
ers, free legal advice, and social and medical care. 
Kindergartens are increasing constantly. 

There is a People’s Commissariat of Health in charge 
of children’s welfare. Sanitariums of all kinds are pro- 
vided which are equipped with electro-therapeutic and 
psycho-therapeutic facilities. The are now 7,695 such 
sanitariums; and it is expected, when the second Pia- 
tiletke (Five-Year Plan) is completed, to have 129,000 
sanitariums. There was, at the beginning of the second 
Five-Year Plan, one physician to each 2,000 children; 
at the end of this Five-Year Plan, it is hoped to have a 
physician for each 750 children. 

Compulsory Education 

The government under the Czar did everything to dis- 
courage education, so that the great majority of the 
people lived in ignorance and darkness. This suited the 
policy of the old regime. The present government not 
only encourages education, but it has actually intro- 
duced compulsory regulations for its enforcement. 

The school system for the younger generation con- 
sists of three grades: (a) The Four-Year Primary 
School (for children of 8 to 11 years of age); (b) The 
Second Grade—a Three-Year School (for children of 
12 to 14 years); and (c) Senior, a Third Grade—a 
Three-Year School (for children 15 to 17 years). In 
the cities, a substantial correction has already been in- 
troduced by practice itself, and a so-called “Zero” Group 
(for 7-year-old children) has been established in the 
primary school. The school-system in the National Re- 
publics (there are seven in the Russian Soviet System) 
has a five-year primary school, because of the necessity 
of teaching the two languages—their mother tongue and 
the basic language spoken in the given Republic 
(Ukrainian, Georgian, etc.). 

The development of primary and secondary educa- 
tion in the schools of the U. S. S. R. is shown by the 
following table (taken from the Voks Magazine, 1933) : 

Number of Pupils Attending 


Years First Grade Second Grade 
Sr 7,800,601 (both grades together) 
DG bs 0.0 te 408 9,870,680 1,255,986 
aa» bases ses 15,447,216 1,980,951 
Se 18,000,126 2,901,601 
myee-1933........ . . 19,001,600 4,350,000 

In the U. S. S. R., every nationality which has its own 


language has schools where this language is used. The 
policy of the Soviet State, which actually enforces the 








13 


right of each nationality to self-determination down to 
separation, creates a full opportunity for the develop- 
ment of national culture. This, coupled with the So- 
cialist reconstruction of the economic life of the coun- 
try, created the conditions for the unparalleled cultural 
growth which has taken place during the new regime. 

In the U. S. S. R., universal compulsory education 
extends to the higher stages of the schools as well as to 
the primary grades. In cities and factory towns, seven 
years of compulsory education has been fully introduced. 
Many agricultural regions have also introduced 7-year 
compulsory schooling in the village for all children. The 
task of the Second Five-Year Plan consists of introduc- 
ing compulsory 7-year school education everywhere and 
developing the 10-year polytechnical school. 

Higher Education 


It seems that no country puts so much emphasis on 
higher education as does the Soviet Union today. 
Higher education in the U. S. S. R. is provided in the 
universities and special institutes and academies. The 
universities train scientific workers in theoretical sub- 
jects, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, 
etc. The institutes and academies prepare highly-trained 
specialists for the various fields of economic and cul- 
tural construction. 

The course of study in the higher schools depends 
upon the complexity of the specialty studied. The fol- 
lowing table shows the development of higher educa- 
tion in the U. S. S. R. The table was prepared by 
Voks, Society for the Development of Cultural Rela- 
tions with Foreign Countries. 


Number Number 
Year of Schools of Students 

1914-15... batt aide we 91 124,652 
adie. 4 Gt deke's planned 129 159,774 
RS . vis vba ceeots es 166,824 
Nad Gare wi Sa ahs 191,055 
| Pe ore . 57 272,125 
a eee event 390,970 
SOL iaalek oe cbekes 500,000 


The unparalleled growth of higher schools during the 
First Five-Year Plan was determined by the tempo of 
industrial and cultural development of the country. 
Hundreds of thousands of highly skilled specialists were 
required for the new factories, new mines, and new 
schools that have been built. Although the Soviet has 
invited many foreign specialists to work in their in- 
dustries and teach in their schools, the main aim is to 
train specialists of its own and to create a new in- 
telligentsia to meet the demand for its new achievements 
in every line of endeavor. 


Scientific Institutions 

In conformity with the aims of the Soviet Union, the 
development of science has become not only essential, 
but an absolute necessity. The U. S. S. R. is a center of 
the most extensive scientific research. Figures prepared 
by the Voks organization give an idea as to to the scope 
of its scientific work. 

Appropriations for scientific research have grown 
every year. In 1930, the appropriations for scientific in- 
stitutions amounted to 306 million rubles; in 1932, to 
495 million rubles: and, in 1933, to 646 million rubles. 
This is an index of the general growth of industry and 
the demands of trained specialists in every field. The 
Soviet Union has realized the importance of education 
and has applied it, most advantageously, for the welfare 
of the land. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


So This Is America! 


Night School Teachers Cut.—Teachers in the Yonkers 
night school conducted by the State Education Depart- 
ment will receive $18 a week instead of $20 for the 
next two weeks as the result of a curtailment in hours, 
it has been announced. 

528 Teachers on Part-Time Quit April 20.—Elemen- 
tary teachers, numbering 528 in 42 counties of Mis- 
sissippi, went off the federal emergency rolls April 20. 
The 163 remaining on the rolls at that time also are 
likely to cease their work although their schools still 
are operating. 

Teachers Are Paid, Cops Are Worrying.—Secaucus, 
New Jersey, public school teachers received one week’s 
pay this week, the first since the first week in January, 
The money used to pay them was from a State allot- 
ment, it is understood. 

But the cops are wondering when pay day will ar- 
rive for them, They have not received any cash i 
the last twelve weeks, and the bills with the butcher, 
baker, groceryman are growing to quite a sizable 
amount. 

Not that the cops are kicking, literally speaking, but 

the gas company, electric company, and telephone 
company have reminded them that service may be 
abruptly discontinued unless bills are paid. There are 
also little matters such as milk bills, clothing bills, bar- 
ber bills, and rent for those who do not own their 
own home. 
Everett, Mass., Teachers Lash Out At Mayor.— 
Mayor James A. Roche, by withholding the salaries 
of school teachers, is guilty of a “persecution that is 
daily growing more inhuman, more cruel and more 
unjustifiable,” representatives of the teachers asserted 
tonight in a statement explaining the position of the 
teachers in the salary controversy. 

The salaries were withheld when teachers refused to 
contribute 10 per cent of their yearly salary unless the 
Mayor showed that the financial condition of the city 
necessitated such a contribution. When the teachers 
offered to contribute 10 per cent for half a year, pend- 
ing a presentation of the facts on the financial situa- 
tion, Mayor Roche refused, insisting that the contribu- 
tion be for the full year. 

Lee County, Miss., Teachers Receive Their Checks 
for $30,000 Back Pay.—Lee county school teachers 
have received $35,000 in back pay. County teachers 
received checks for $30,000 representing two months’ 
pay. The city teachers received approximately $5,500 
for the seven months of the school year. 

Syracuse City School Staff Is Reduced.—Twenty-six 
teachers have been reduced from full-time to part- 
time work and four have been dismissed outright. 


“Present Teacher’ Amendment Teachers’ Pension 


Law for New York City Enacted.—The New York 
Legislature on April 2 completed the enactment of 
Senator Crawford’s bill, Int. No. 123, which amends 
section 1092 of the Greater New York Charter, by ex- 
tending definition of “present teacher” for retirement 
purposes, to include certain teachers serving on tem- 
porary license and certain teacher-clerks or clerical 
assistants. This bill was endorsed by the Teachers 
Union of New York City and by the Central Trades 
and Labor Council of Greater New York. 





Harrisburg, Pa., to Close Night Schools.—The Har- 


risburg School Board has closed the night schools 
and dropped the five married women on the faculty, 
It is now considering the best way to proceed to re- 
duce teachers’ salaries. 

Blanket faculty dismissals of past years will be 
avoided. Instead of abrogating all teachers’ con- 
tracts, the board will notify all teachers they will be 
re-elected but may have to take a pay slash. 

The blanket dismissals, frowned on by the State 
Department of Public Instruction as a violation of the 
continuing contract clause of the State School Code, 
was defended in the past on the grounds that dis- 
missal was necessary to allow a salary reduction. 

The board is also considering the possibilities of 
abandoning the kindergartens. 


High School Head Faces Ouster Over Instruction on 


Sex.—Ouster of Henry Snavely as high school prin- 
cipal, because he believes students should be given sex 
instruction, has the citizens of Newcastle, Pa., at odds 
with the school board. 

Three members of the four man board have an- 
nounced they would not reappoint the principal be- 
cause he takes the stand that students should be given 
education in sex matters. The citizens at two mass 
meeting demanded his reappointment. 


Pupils Strike Against Dismissal of Teachers.—Pro- 


testing against the proposed dismissal of four teach- 
ers, 170 students quit their classes at the Karn City 
high school, Butler, Pa. Behind the school band they 
paraded about town. They protested the school 
board’s failure to renew the contracts of Robt. Stim- 
son, athletic coach and instructor, and teachers J. 
Morgan, L. Taylor, and C. Ray. 


Athletic Coach Asserts Rights of Citizenship.—Maj. 


John L. Griffith, Big Ten athletic commissioner, as- 
serted that ‘there is no public office to which I aspire 
and I have never held public office.” 

His statement was in reply to one by Gov. Herring, 
who did not attend a Drake relays coaches’ dinner 
because of Griffith’s recent criticism of the Roosevelt 
administration. 

“If I understand Gov Herring’s thought as ex- 
pressed in the newspapers,” Griffith said, “it is this: 

3ecause I worked three years at Morningside col- 
lege, ten years at Drake University, two years in the 
army and since that time for ten midwest universi- 
ties; therefore, I should not be permitted to hold or 
express opinions concerning questions of public policy. 

“Apparently it is Gov. Herring’s view that if a man 
spends the best part of his life working for an elee- 
mosynary institution, he thereby forfeits his rights of 
citizenship.” 


Pacifists Denied Use of Building at U. of Illinois.— 


Refusal by the senate committee on student affairs at 
the University of Illinois to allow the sponsors of an 
anti-war conference to hold a meeting in a university 
building will not prevent the meeting, according to 
student leaders of the group. They declare the meet- 
ing will be held as scheduled in a building remote 
from the university campus. 











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JUNE, 1934 


Town Pays All Expenses, Without Incurring Debt.— 
Bourne, a Massachusetts town with a population of 
about 3,000, and a property valuation of less than 
$10,000,000, met every expenditure last year without 
borrowing a cent and will do the same this year. It 
collected most of its outstanding taxes, spent $20,000 
for a new public building out of current revenue and 
started this year with a balance in the bank. The 
affairs of the town appear to have been well managed. 

New Jersey Tries Junior Colleges.—Five were created 
last fall to aid jobless instructors and high school 
graduates. 1,700 students enrolled. Federal funds 
supported them but it is not known whether these will 
continue. 


New Jersey Cuts School Support.—One estimate has 
it that tax levies for school purposes in New Jersey 
were decreased 19.4 per cent from the 1932-33 to the 
1933-34 school year. 


Castle Rock, Wash., Teachers to Get Increase.—Sal- 
ary increases of 10% were given the teachers of 
Castle Rock at April meeting of the school board. 
One extra teacher was added to the staff. 


Putnam County, Tenn., Gets Federal Funds.—More 
than $12,000 has been received by Supt. Wesley Flatt 
for February salaries of school teachers, and about 
$39,000 will come to Putnam county under the FERA 
for March, April, and May. 

The money will enable the Cookeville C ity school to 
operate its usual term of nine months, which had been 
cut to eight months under this year’s budget. The 
federal money was given to operate schools on their 
normal terms of 1931 and 1932. All other county 
schools will operate eight months. 


New Orleans Teachers to Get Only Nine Checks.— 
In former years teachers in New Orleans were given 
10 salary checks, and last year were paid on a 9% 
month basis, whereas this year nine checks will be 
paid. Earlier in the year the school board announced 
it could promise payment for only 7% months. 


Beacon Falls, Conn., to Get Pay Raise——Teachers in 
the Beacon Falls schools will receive an increase in 
pay. The increase will go in effect at the commence- 
ment of the September term. An increase of $100 a 
year for the principal and $50 for each teacher was 
decided upon. 

The board were unanimous in their vote, all feeling 
that with the increase in commodities and the fact 
that salaries were for the next school year, they 
should go along with the country in general and restore 
some of the cuts made during the past yew years. 


Antiunion Textbooks Barred from Hannibal High 
School.—The geometry published by the anti-union 
John C. Winston Publishing Company of Philadelphia 
will soon be barred from the public schools of Han- 
nibal, Mo. 

When the label committee of the Hannibal Trades 
and Labor Assembly and the Hannibal Typographical 
Union was informed by Philadelphia Typographical 
Union that the Winston concern had locked out its 
union employes and expressed its determination to 
operate a scab concern, the committee through J. H. 
Abrams, secretary of Typographical Union No. 88, 
urged the Board of Education to stop purchasing 
Winston's textbooks. 


15 





Students Strike, Damage School in Dismissal Protest. 


—Turmoil reigned in Bloomsburg in protest over 
dismissal of 25 teachers by the school board of the 
town. Three hundred and fifty students went on 
strike, refusing to attend the regular classes. Vandals 
smashed eight windows in the high school building. 
George J. Vanderslice, president of the school board, 
called upon the city police to patrol the grounds about 
his home when his property was threatened with dam- 
age as a result of the board action. 

W. Clair Hower, music supervisor in Bloomsburg 
schools for the past 11 years abruptly resigned his 
position. He said he is unwilling to accept a $540 
salary cut which the board forced upon him. 

The Bloomsburg school board ousted 25 of its 29 
teachers at its last meeting and reduced all salaries to 
the minimum permitted by the school code. Resent- 
ment over this action has since flared throughout the 
town, One official today said he feared the National 
Guard might have to be summoned before the confu- 
sion is ended. 

Officials of the school board said the action was 
taken as an economy measure in an effort to cut down 
expenses of the school district. 

Four of the ousted teachers required only a few 
more years of work before becoming eligible for re- 
tirement. 

The shakeup is the most drastic ever undertaken in 
Bloomsburg or Columbia County and it is said it is 
one of the most extensive changes undertaken at one 
sweep at any time in the Commonwealth. 


Legal Victory Scored in Fight on R. O. T. C—A de- 


cisive legal victory in the fight against compulsory 
military training has been scored by John Beardsley, 
chairman of the Southern California Branch of the 
Civil Liberties Union. For the first time, the Su- 
preme Court of the United States has consented to 
accept jurisdiction in a case involving the right of 
students at state universities to refuse drill in peace- 
time. 

The appeal was made on a new theory developed 
by the California attorney that the R. O. T. C. is a 
federal agency, that in peacetime not even the federal 
government can compel service in any branch of its 
military, and that, therefore, freedom from com- 
pulsory military service is a privilege and immunity 
of a citizen that may not be abridged by any state. 
The case will be argued in the fall. 


Newspaper Workers to Have Union.—The “rugged 


individualism” which has been the characteristic of 
newspaper writers in the United States has suc- 
cumbed to the overwhelming influence of economic 
conditions, and the necessity of combining and acting 
collectively for the common good, long the funda- 
mental basis of trade union organization, has made 
itself felt in newspaper offices from the editors to the 
reporters. 


Maine Teachers Urge Elimination of Graft and Petty 


Politics.—A call for forceful action to “eliminate the 
graft and dirty, petty politics that lure us into road- 
building instead of school-building” and to fight for 
more adequate school appropriations was sounded by 
a joint committee of the Maine Teachers’ Associa- 
tion and Maine Congress of Parents and Teachers in 
a request to parent-teacher associations throughout 
the State. 





16 


De Pauw Trustees Vote to Abolish R. O. T. C.—The 
Board of Trustees of De Pauw Universiy voted at its 
annual meeting on January 23 to request the War De- 
partment to withdraw the R. O. T. C. unit from the 
De Pauw curriculum at the close of the present school 
year. Only two of the thirty-five members of the 
Board of Trustees voting on the question dissented 
from the action taken. 

President Oxnam has been the object of severe 
criticism by the professional militarists, but supported 
by students and trustees he has stood firm and a bat- 
tle for true education has been gloriously won. 


Teacher Loses Court Suit to Compel Reinstatement.— 
In a ruling of state-wide interest regarding the man- 
ner in which school boards may dismiss teachers, 
Superior Judge A. B. McKenzie denied Miss Frances 
E. Morrow’s petition for a writ of mandate to com- 
pel the trustees of Walnut Creek, Calif., to reinstate 
her as a member of the faculty. 

The court ruled that Miss Morrow had been notified 
officially of her dismissal in the following specific 
terms: 

“We have seen fit to notify you that your contract 
will not be renewed.” 

Miss Morrow contended that she had been led to 
believe she would be retained if the trustees continued 
the kindergarten at the grammar school. 


Dr. Kathryn McHale, Professor of Education, Goucher 
College: 

“I should like to write an editorial that would go 
straight across the country, possibly captioned ‘Is Your 

Child’s Head on the Educational Block?” Children 
come through this way but once, some things can be 
postponed ten years, but not so their education. If 
citizens in communities knew what was happening, they 
would not tolerate it. Educational leadership must con- 
cern itself with budget policies at this time. Irrational 
budget-making is current. It is imperative that economy 
in public expenditures be brought about in town, state 
and country. I insist only that such economy be wrought 
with statesmanlike foresight for the future of the com- 
munity, be it town, state or nation. We can be as short- 
sighted in allowing some economies as in allowing some 
extravagances.” 


C. E. Hinshaw, principal of the Kokomo, Ind., High 
School: 

“The economy wave which is sweeping the country 
is making it extremely difficult for the schools to func- 
tion efficiently. 

“What can be done to arrest this wave of false econ- 
omy, so that the boys and girls of today may not be 
deprived of their educational opportunities?” 

“First, there is need for strictest economy in all school 
expenditures. These economies must fall most heavily 
upon those items which interfere least with the progress 
of the child’s education. 

“Second, we must resell the educational program to 
the public. 

“Third, there must be a revamping of our entire tax 
system. Local communities can no longer support their 
schools.” 

She’s After the Slums.—Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt 
has made a personal inspection of the alleys and slums 
of Washington, and is helping draw plans to get rid 
of them through construction by the Public Works 
Administration. 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Movies Assailed as “Mess” for Children.—A professor 
of education at Ohio State University, Wr. W. W. 
Charters, thinks “commercial movies provide an un. 
balanced mess for children” and has a suggestion to 
make along that line: 

“I should like to see children’s departments in the 
moving picture industry,” he said at a meeting of the 
visual education department of the Northeastern Ohio 
Teachers’ Association. 

The moving picture, “One of the most powerful in- 
struments for education in the world, is in the hands 
of people who are not interested in childhood,” he as- 
serted. 


School Legislation in West Virginia.—Resolution to 
make every effort to solve present tax crisis, so that 
boys and girls shall not be deprived of adequate school 
term; amended to include thanks to loyal teachers and 
officials for help. 


South Carolina Schools.—Bill to abolish free tuition 
in all tax supported institutions. (Carried over from 
1933 session. ) 


Opposes Ouster of Student Who Refused to Drill.— 
The League of Women Voters of St. Louis has writ- 
ten President Walter Williams of the University of 
Missouri protesting against the recent dismissal of 
Eugene Ringo, a 20-year-old freshman in the Col- 
lege of Agriculture, for refusing to participate in 
military training. 

“We believe that freedom of conscience will be 
held inviolate by you,” the letter said, “and that Mis- 
souri will not follow the sorry example of other 
universities that have failed to measure up to the 
ideal of freedom which this country safeguards by 
its Constitution.” 


Right to Organize.—A resolution by Director Peter 
T. Schoemann of the Milwaukee school board de- 
claring the right of teachers to belong to any or- 
ganization and mentioning specifically the American 
Federation of Teachers, affiliated with the Amer- 
ican Federation of Labor, was indefinitely post- 
poned by the instruction committee. 


Aims of Teachers Union Explained.—Purposes of the 
American Federation of Teachers were explained to 
more than 500 Akron public school teachers Thurs- 
day, May 3, at Central high school at an open meet- 
ing of the newly-formed local unit affiliated with the 
American Federation of Labor. 

The speakers were Mrs. Florence Curtis Hanson 
of Chicago, national secretary, and James C. Adell, 
Cleveland teacher. 


A Profit of $6,000,000 was realized on radio by the 
British government last year. In Great Britain there 
is no commercialized radiocasting, and the govern- 
ment taxes all owners of radio sets. The proceeds 
go toward the maintaining of studios, stations, pro- 
grams, etc. 


Peace Education Should Begin in Nursery Schools, 
according to Miss Alida Shinn, chairman of the Pre- 
School Department of the World Educational As- 
sociation. Miss Shinn, who teaches at Mills Col- 
lege, Oakland, California, is preparing a series of 
illustrated booklets for children two to four years 
old, with the emphasis on peace and international 
understanding. 





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On Recognition 

Members of the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers who may be un- 
familiar with the development of the 
labor movement in this country, 
should be aware of the significance 
of the recent action of the Cleveland 
Board of Education in relation to our 
Local 279 in that city. The Asso- 
ciated Press reports that on April 
24th the Cleveland Board gave unani- 
mous recognition to our local union. 

A statement of principles presented 
to the school board at this time con- 
tained nine clauses dealing with 
wages and working conditions, ending 
with this one :— 

“It has always been a fact that in 
any economic recovery public serv- 
ants depending upon public funds, are 
the last to feel the effects of such 
recovery. Prices rise and at the same 
time their compensations decline. 

“In view of the fact that railroads, 
banks, farmers, and many other 
groups are a deep concern to the fed- 
eral government, it would seem rea- 
sonable and fair that urgent repre- 
sentation be made to make federal 
aid available to the backbone of 
American civilization, the public 
schools. 

“The failure of banks and rail- 
roads can only be described as major 
catastrophe. There are no words to 
depict the hopelessness of our people 
were the schools to collapse.” 

The despatch further states that 
the local asked the continuance of the 
1920 salary schedule without cuts. 
The local even pointed out the fact 
that about a million dollars had been 
diverted from the city’s operating 
fund for debt service. Although the 
news is meager, it is enough to show 
that the new local has strong ele- 
ments of character and has made a 
good start on a constructive career. 


The Battle for Recognition 


I wonder if our members are aware 
of the fact that the battle for the 
recognition of trade unions has been 
one of the most important the Amer- 
ican labor movement has fought. The 
battle is not yet won on all fronts, 
but it had hardly begun to be suc- 


The President’s Page 


Henry R. Linville 


cessfully waged until the World War 
period and the past-war years gave 
the labor movement its strategic op- 
portunity. The dramatic story is told 
in “The American Federation of La- 
bor” (1933, Publisher, Brookings In- 
stitution) ,an excellent work written 
by our distinguished member, Dr. 
Lewis L. Lorwin of Brookings Insti- 
tution, Washington, D, C. 


The Reason Recognition Is 
Important 

The reason the fight for recogni- 
tion is important is that the principle 
of collective bargaining for a living 
wage, for 1edress of grievances, and 
for decent working conditions de- 
pends on formal or tacit recognition. 
If members have been following the 
controversies that have raged about 
the interpretation of Section 7a of 
the National Industrial Recovery Act 
and the setting up of the Automobile 
Arbitration Board, they will under- 
stand how far labor has come on its 
way to social and industrial author- 
ity in two decades, and yet how much 
remains to be accomplished. Bitter 
though this fight has been between 
labor and the employers, we hear 
sometimes of “intellectuals,” who 
ought to know better, joining with 
the Communists in denouncing as 
“labor fakers,” and “betrayers of 
labor” the official leaders of the 
American Federation of Labor. In 
this agitation as in the understanding 
of the evolutionary process by which 
our labor movement must work out 
its destiny, we of the A. F. T. must 
be alert to the swiftly changing scene. 


Recognition Tactics 

Thus, the battle to win recogni- 
tion for teachers’ unions is essential 
to the attainment of our wwn ob- 
jectives. Those school officials who 
endeavor to avoid the logic of dealing 
with teachers’ unions in the least sig- 
nificant of “grievances” do so in -the 
full understanding of what even tacit 
recognition may entail. But indi- 


vidual grievance cases of teachers 
offer one of the simplest approaches 
to the winning of recognition. Those 
school officials who “shy off” from 


dealing with our locals in these cases 
have but one alternative, and that is 
to open the way for retaliation on the 
part of the school official, principal, 
or department head. A complaint 
made by a teacher against a superior 
is generally referred to the same of- 
ficial for consideration. In the ab- 
sence of a union or its grievance 
committee, the entire shock of pos- 
sible counter attack comes back on 
the complaining teacher. Without a 
union to intercede, few complaints 
are made, repression grows, fear in- 
creases, and character wanes. 


A Program Aids Recognition 


One of the things which the Cleve- 
land local has done that aids tre- 
mendously in the task of winning 
recognition is the presentation of a 
program. If this program is tied up 
with the welfare of the community 
as well as with the promotion of the 
interests of public education, the press 
and possibly other agencies will recog- 
nize its importance, and thus build 
up public opinion which the school 
officials cannot ignore. 


Leadership Leads to Recognition 

Perhaps one of the most sound and 
far-reaching in its effects of the ways 
in which recognition for a union may 
be won is through the development of 
able and active union leadership to 
be made available to all groups of 
teachers, whether members of the 
union or not. It is true certain groups 
of teachers prefer to assume a para- 
sitical relationship where strong un- 
ion leadership does develop. But the 
by-product of strong union leader- 
ship is the social education of teach- 
ers in general. Moreover, our own 
leaders develop their best powers in 
the larger activities of the entire body 
of teachers, and especially is this done 
where community relationships are 
involved. 

One of the most significant by- 
products of activity in the labor 
movement is seen again and again in 
the fact that social standards are set 
up as incidents in a wide range of 
work. On this secure foundation 
labor has built its temple. 








18 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Education for Democracy 


Why Join the American Federation of Teachers? 





American Federation of Teachers 
Organized April 15, 1916 
Affiliated with the American Federation of 
Labor 


506 South Wabash Ave., Chicago, IIl. 
President 


Henry R. Liyvitte, New York Local 5; 
70 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. 





Secretary-Treasurer 


Fiorence Curtis Hanson, Chicago Local 3; 
506 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago, IIl. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 
Official Organ 
Apvisory Eprror1aL Boarp 

Lucie W. ALLEN RutH GrLletre Harpy 

Chicago Local 3 New York Local 6 
Mary C. Barker Henry R. LINVILLE 

Atlanta Local 89 New York Local 6 
Se_ma M. Borcuarpt A. D. SHEFFIELD 

Washington Local 8 Weliesley College 
Joun M.Graysie. Cartes B. STILLMAN 

San Francisco Local 61 Chicago Local 2 

FLoreENce Curtis HANSON 
Executive Editor 


Publisher 
H. G. Apair Printinc Co. 
107 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago, IIl. 
toe 








The Objectives of the 
American Federation 
of Teachers 


1. To bring associations of teach- 
ers into relations of mutual assist- 
ance and co-operation. 

2. To obtain for them all the rights 
to which they are entitied. 

3. To raise the standard of the 
teaching profession by securing the 
conditions essential to the best pro- 
fessional service. 

4. To promote such a democratiza- 
tion of the schools as will enable 
them better to equip their pupils to 
take their places in the industrial, 
social, and political life of the com- 
munity. 











If you permit yourself to be a 
worm, do not complain if you 
are trod upon. 


KANT. 














sditor’'s Note: The following statement 
appeared in the Cleveland News and sets 
forth succinctly and incontrovertibly why 
one teacher has joined the American 
Federation of Teachers and why all 
teachers should. 

Why did I join the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers, which is affiliated 
with the American Federation of 
Labor? 

1—Organized labor is largely if not 
entirely responsible for our public 
school system. The Newark (N. J.) 
Village Chronicle in May, 1830, re- 
ported: “Within a few months past, 
we discern symptoms of a revolution 
second to none save that of ’76—uni- 
versal education and equal advantage 
at the polls are the leading objects for 
which workingmen are contending.” 

The A. F. of L. has carried on the 
fight for public schools since its first 
convention in 1881, when it went on 
record for compulsory education: 
“We are in favor of the passage of 
such legislative enactments as will en- 
force, by compulsion, the education 
of the children.” Since that time the 
A. F. of L. has always strongly sup- 
ported the public schools. As a 
teacher in the public schools, | feel 
indebted to the A. F. of L. for its 
long years of constructive work for 
education. 

2—The schools will more ade- 
quately serve the needs of the chil- 
dren when the fathers and mothers 
and teachers are working together to 
raise the standard of living for all. 

3—When teachers come out of the 
classrooms and have first-hand con- 
tacts with life, they will acquire 
greater understanding and have a 
broadened outlook on social-economic 
problems. 

4—I believe in the document which 
is the cornerstone of American 
patriotism. the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, which states: “We hold 
these truths to be self-evident, that 
all men are created equal, that they 
are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights, that among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness. That to secure these 
rights, governments are _ instituted 
among men, deriving their just pow- 
ers from the consent of the governed, 
that whenever any form of govern- 
ment becomes destructive to these 
ends, it is the right of the people to 
alter or to abolish it, and to institute 
new government, laying its founda- 





tion on such principles and organiz- 
ing its powers in such form, as to 
them, shall seem most likely to effect 
their safety and happiness. 

The “pursuit of happiness,” or to 
use the words of Clyde R. Miller, 
making “life worth living,” involves: 
(a) security of employment; (b) liv- 
ing in abundance; (c) freedom; and 
(d) leisure for doing the things which 
appeal most to the individual. No 
one can argue that the rights set forth 
in the Declaration of Independence 
have not been seriously curtailed for 
98 per cent of the people. It is the 
obligation of organized labor to re- 
store these fundamental American 
rights to every one and it is my hope 
that the organized teachers may help 
in this patriotic educational work. 

5—Our present situation is not an 
“act of God.” It is the result of 
cause and effect relationships in eco- 
nomic laws which are not understood 
by many people. In A B C’s the sit- 
uation is this: (a) Men without in- 
comes cannot buy. (b) All factories 
must run to give jobs of 25 hours a 
week to men who want to work. (c) 
To keep the factories going all the 
goods must be sold. When goods pile 
up the factories close. (d) To buy 
all of the goods produced the pur- 
chasing power of the 98 per cent 
must be doubled or trebled. Every- 
one must have wages with which they 
can buy two to three times as much 
as they could buy when they were 
employed in 1929. This applies to 
office workers, farmers, teachers, 
factory workers, firemen, policemen, 
postmen, railroad workers—to the 98 
per cent who do—or want to do—the 
useful work of the community. (e) 
The greater part of very large in- 
comes can not be spent or even wasted 
on farm products, manufactured 
goods, or services. This excess in- 
come which the recipients cannot 
spend in making themselves or their 
families happy must be heavily taxed: 
(1) to prevent its investment in fac- 
tories, office buildings, etc., for which 
there is no social use; and (2) to 
make larger amounts of tax money 
available for better public parks, 
swimming pools, public golf courses, 
recreational centers, health services, 
other services, and schools. (f) As 
a creditor nation cannot export more 
than it imports, our foreign trade 
must be an exchange of goods for 





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JUNE, 1934 


Democracy 


goods—not goods for gold, (g) This 
country must produce all that it can 
to give everyone a job—and everyone 
must have an abundance of every- 
thing, or it will not be possible to 
use up all that is produced—and the 
depression will start in again. 

One way that organized teachers 
can help is to spread the understand- 
ing (1) that the economic salvation 
of the country depends upon organiz- 
ing all workers—skilled and unskilled, 
farmers and office workers—into 
unions; and (2) it is an economic 
necessity and patriotic duty to make 
a success of the New Deal by increas- 
ing the purchasing power of all. 

6—The public schools must offer 
educational opportunities and advan- 
tages at all age levels, including the 
kindergarten and opportunity schools 
for adults, equal in every particular to 
the educational opportunities and 
advantages now enjoyed by the lim- 
ited few in the best private schools. 
This advance in education can be se- 
cured by the cooperation of the A. F. 
of T. and the A. F. of L. 

James C. ADELL. 





Why Not the Teachers 


While teachers are fighting for 
jobs, decent conditions, payment of 
salary, while they are fighting to save 
the very school system of America, 
their leaders are attempting to change 
the world. And the confusion of 
thought, the paucity of workable sug- 
gestion, the naive idealism of these 
leaders daily manifests itself more 
strongly. 

Read almost any current book on 
education, attend any of the various 
educational association conventions, 
particularly read the current issue— 
January-February — of Progressive 
Education, and you will come in con- 
tact with glaring examples of the 
confusion and paucity of ideas reign- 
ing in the vanguard of education. 

Probably the best expression in 
one volume of the thought processes 
of the vanguard is to be found in the 
current issue of Progressive Educa- 
tion. 

It is all there: “The Educator and 
the Scientific Study of Society,” 
“The Educator, the New Deal, and 
Revolution,” “Dare Society Deny Its 
Teachers Freedom?” “The Social 
Ideals of American Educators,” 
“Realistic Education,” and so forth 


and so on. These articles, in fact the 
entire issue, unite in pointing out the 
social necessity of education, the 
tasks of education, the question of 
the school and its loyalty to the State, 
the school as a social force against 
revolution and economic chaos, tech- 
niques for social education, and other 
items almost too numerous to men- 
tion. 

As one reads this magazine he is 
consciously aware of two major mat- 
ters on which our educational lead- 
ers constantly neglect to express 
themselves, 

The first is the serious plight of 
education in our country today. In 
fact, the reports sent out from the 
Department of Education at Wash- 
ington are much more revealing than 
anything one reads in the words of 
our professional vanguard. Almost 
two and one-half million children in 
America without any schooling at all. 
One out of every three teachers re- 
ceiving less than seven hundred and 
fifty dollars this year. An increase 
of over one million pupils since 1930, 
to be taken care of with an educa- 
tional budget decreased by over three 
hundred and fifty million dollars. 
This is a very slight indication of 
what is happening to American edu- 
caion right under our very eyes. But 
these gentlemen are too interested in 
re-making the world. They overlook 
what is happening while they are talk- 
ing, and indeed one wonders if they 
will not wake up some fine morning 
to find themselves finally in posses- 
sion of a panacea for education but 
with no schools to practice it in. 

The second matter almost con- 
stantly neglected by the wise men of 
education is that of how to bring 
about all the changes they advocate. 
One article informs us that there is 
no freedom in education and suggests 
seven ways by which we might have 
it. But the seven guarantees of free- 
dom we ought to have do not help 
the harassed teacher who is always 
aware of the limitations put upon 
him by the jealous guardians of so- 
called education. And the gentleman 
who writes the article doesn’t tell us 
how to get these guarantees we ought 
to have either. Another writer tells 
us that the teacher must free himself 
from sitting on the fence if he is to 
be taken seriously. He knows we are 
on the fence; so do we. But how to 


get off ?—and this leader either does 


19 


in Education 


not know the answer, or he doesn’t 
care. One could go on for many 
pages on this score. Article after 
article tells us what is wrong, and 
what we should do. But never a 
word of how to do it. These are the 
leaders of educational thought. 

What are we—the rank and file of 
classroom teachers of America—go- 
ing to do? The answer is simple— 
unite with that group in our popula- 
tion whose interests are our interests. 
Organize into a_ strong, effective 
teachers’ union. Do what our lead- 
ers, educational and political, have 
failed to do in so many instances. 
Take control of the schools away 
from those interested in wrecking 
them, and see to it, by our organized 
strength, that every capable teacher 
has a job, and that every child goes 
to school. It is only thus that Amer- 
ican education can ever be the force 
for which it was designed. 

Teachers! Your Union stands 
ready. Join the American Federa- 
tion of Teachers today. 








18th Annual Convention 


The Eighteenth Annual Conven- 
tion of the American Federation of 
Teachers will be held at the Michigan 
Avenue Medinah Club, 505 North 
Michigan Avenue, Chicago, June 25 
to June 29. 

The theme of the Convention is 
EpucATIONAL Recovery. The key- 
note which will be emphasized at the 
opening and throughout the meeting 
is, The Challenge to the School 
Teachers in the Plight of the Schools. 
Distinguished educators and_ labor 
leaders will be in attendance. 

We are in the midst of a crucial 
period in the history of public edu- 
cation in America. We are facing the 
passing of the public schools. The 
teachers’ responsibility is plain. Their 
opportunity is greater than ever be- 
fore. At this Convention of the 
American Federation of Teachers, 
assuming their responsibility and 
making the most of their opportunity, 
the assembled teachers will work out 
a program and policy for school pro- 
tection and united action, 

It is fully expected that this annual 
meeting will be the largest the Amer- 
ican Federation of Teachers has held, 
in part because the organization has 
trebled its membership, but chiefly be- 
cause the teachers are alert to the 
compelling necessity that they take an 





20 


active part in the political, economic, 
and social life of the country, as well 
as an interest in school welfare; 
moreover, that they come out of the 
classroom into the arena of politics 
and economics because of their in- 
terest in education. They are con- 
scious of the need of economic 
change and a better social order. 
They regard the school as a social in- 
stitution, and moreover a social insti- 
tution upon which our democratic so- 
ciety and modern civilization depend. 
They propose to see it not only main- 
tained but improved. Their watch- 
word is, The School Shall Go For- 
ward. 

We will see you in Chicago at the 
Medinah Club on June 25, working 
in unity and solidarity to bring about 
a condition in which that which has 
been done to the public schools can 
not be done again. 





An Appeal to Teachers 
Teachers must organize if they are 
to be effective in building a new so- 
cial order, declared Dr. Abraham 
Lefkowitz, vice-president of the 
American Federation of Teachers, in 
speaking before an audience of edu- 
cators in New York City a few days 
ago. “Under the old era, individ- 
ualism made for greed, selfishness, 
anti-social conduct, and war, and en- 
hanced the welfare of the few at the 
expense of the many,” Dr. Lefkowitz 
said. “The old era built its schools 
around the competitive ideal and 
turned out hewers of wood rather 
than constructive socially minded 
citizens. Hence our financial joy ride, 
the stock crash and the depression. 
For this state of affairs teachers must 
shoulder their share of the blame.” 
In the future, he declared, they 
must organize into a militant union 
and work for a tax system “built 
upon the principle of ability to pay.” 
This system, he continued, “must be 
developed around exclusive national 
taxes levied upon income, inheritance 
and luxuries. The income from these 
taxes should be allocated, in part, to 
the states, especially for the equaliza- 
tion of educational opportunity by 
making it possible to keep the schools 
open for adults and children without 
any limitation and with full oppor- 
tunities for education, for the enjoy- 
ment of increasing leisure produced 
by our technological civilization.” 
American Observer. 








Restoration of Salary Levels 


Philadelphia Local 192 has the 
right idea about salaries and about 
how to get a proper adjustment. It 
has no illusions about why cuts in 
salaries are made nor about how sal- 
aries are to be improved. It says 
that the way to get a thing is to go 
after it. 

Restoration of salaries of Phila- 
delphia teachers to 1933 levels is 
asked in a resolution adopted by the 
Philadelphia Teachers Union, Local 
192, of the A. F. T., and presented 
to the Philadelphia School Board. 

Reasons why pay cuts should be 
restored are, the union believes, the 
asserted fact that commodity prices 
have risen 20 per cent, making the 
cut 30 per cent; that Philadelphia 
teachers are over-burdened with 
crowded classes and heavy clerical 
work; that tax collections for 1934 


show a substantial increase over 
1933: that salaries of teachers in 
New York, Newark, Los Angeles, 


Pittsburgh, and other cities are higher 
than those in Philadelphia, and that 
the only road to economic recovery 
lies along the path of increased pur 
chasing power. 





Basic Factors in Academic 
Freedom 

The rights of teachers in respect 
to academic freedom are not uncondi- 
tional. The authority of administra- 
tors and the government which they 
represent for the time being are not 
sovereign. Persons and organizations 
whose purpose it is to protect the 
rights of teachers and to extend these 
rights must keep in mind at least 
three criteria when they seek to ar- 
rive at a judgment concerning the be- 
havior of a teacher or an administra- 
tor in any given situation that seems 
to involve the issue of academic free- 
dom : 

The first, the criterion of relevance 
is so obvious as to need no elabora- 
tion. The teacher is reasonably to be 
expected to have due regard for the 
pertinence of the political or eco- 
nomic interpretation or view which he 
is moved to express to a child or to 
a group of children. 

The second, the criterion of respect 
for the personality of the child, is one 
that is generally admitted in principle 
but that is almost with equal fre- 
quency violated in practice. Propo- 
nents of the status quo, and corpo- 
rate states and utilities corporations, 
see in the schools an instrument with 
which to perpetuate the life that they 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


deem good. Proponents of change of 
every hue see in the schools a pos- 
sible instrument wherewith to effect 
the kind of change which they favor. 
Both are ready, almost always, to ex- 
ploit the child for purposes which 
may or may not be pious enough in 
their origin, but which, when they in- 
volve violence to the personality of 
the child, are themselves suspect. 

In the nature of the case, the social] 
and economic questions in connection 
with which the issue of academic 
freedom is likely to arise are ques- 
tions for which the data are in the 
hands of no one person or group. The 
interpretation of the data will vary 
with individuals and groups. Honest 
differences of opinion arise from these 
two factors. It is robbing the pupil 
of his rights for an adult to take ad- 
vantage of the pupil-teacher relation 
in order to blind the pupil to the ex- 
istence of other data, or to the possi- 
bilities of interpretation of the data 
other than the one to which the 
teacher inclines. The fact of the ex- 
istence of additional data and of other 
interpretations is alone reason enough 
for having on school staffs teachers of 
all shades of political and economic 
persuasions. 

The first and second criteria are 
concerned with the pupil-teacher re- 
lation. The third, that of respect for 
the personality of the teacher is one 
that is concerned with supervisor- 
teacher relation. The supervisor is 
rare who will frankly avow it as his 
policy to limit the political activities 
of the teachers with whom he is as- 
sociated. Less rare is the supervisor 
who has no desire to do so. Not dar- 
ing openly to denounce and to punish 
teachers for views which they deem 
unacceptable, such supervisors label 
as administrative for the good of the 
service acts of oppression which are 
designed to intimidate the teaching 
force which, in extreme cases serve 
to deprive of their means of liveli- 
hood persons who have been guilty of 
no crime other than the exercise of 
their rights as citizens. The public, 
including the courts, are often not in 
a position to discriminate between 
acts that are designed to improve the 
quality of the service of the teachers 
and acts that tend to reduce to base 
servility men and women who should 
be to their pupils aspirations to cour- 
ageous and imaginative enterprise. 

It is the function of a committee 
on academic freedom to analyze all 
instances of seeming violation of the 
admitted right of teachers in this re- 
spect, to apply the criteria of relev- 








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JUNE, 1934 

ance and of respect for the rights of 
the students in judging of the acts 
of the teachers concerned, and to ex- 
amine with greatest care acts of su- 
pervisors in those instances in order 
to see whether or no they are steps 
taken by way of reprisal for political 
and economic views or behaviors of 
the teachers. 

Cases of dismissal or other disci- 
plinary treatment of teachers are not 
to be classified indiscriminately as 
violations of rights of teachers to aca- 
demic freedom or as administrative 
acts for the good of the service. Each 
instance should be studied by a com- 
mittee charged with the work, and 
can be made the occasion for clari- 
fying for the lay public and for 
teacher alike, the important profes- 
sional and social issue which it in- 
volves. 

JosEPH JABLONOWER. 
From The Union Teacher. 





What Milk Prices Mean 


Just what are we doing when we 
raise milk prices and reduce milk 
production? 

Every agricultural expert can esti- 
mate how many fewer cows it will 
mean, how much it will change the 
average farmer’s income, how much 
of the increased retail price will actu- 
ally go to the farmer. 

But it would never occur to the 
experts to make up a table of how 
a price increase might affect the chil- 
dren in our cities, who depend on 
milk for their health and their future. 

It has been left to the disinterested 
efforts of the American Federation of 
Teachers to make the beginnings of 
such a survey in Philadelphia. Be- 
cause they are not organized for ac- 
tivities of that kind, the teachers 
made no attempt at a comprehensive 
study. 

But the sample figures they present 
throw more real light on the subject 
of milk control than a dozen reports 
by agricultural experts. 

The teachers’ figures show that in 
families totaling 4137 persons, in- 
cluding 2199 children, the daily con- 
sumption of milk is three-tenths of 
a quart, instead of a quart, as it 
should be. This includes canned 
milk and charity milk. 

Now do you understand why Phila- 
delphia’s ratio of undernourished 
children is increasing more rapidly 
than that for the rest of the country? 

The national figure for undernour- 
ished pre-school children rose from 
13.5 per cent in 1927-29 to 21.1 per 
cent in 1931-32. The Philadelphia 


pre-school undernourishment 
went from 11 to 25 per cent. 

The survey made by the teachers 
indicates that the amount of milk 
bought by families depends not on 
appetite or “health education,” but on 
income and price. There is no other 
explanation for the fact that children 
in large families got less milk than 
those in small families. 

Families have just so much that 
can be spent for milk. When they 
have more children to feed they sim- 
ply divide the same amount. When 
the price goes up they buy less. 

Philadelphia children thus are in 
very real danger from the proposed 
milk reduction scheme. Let us dis- 
cover the extent of that danger be- 
fore we plunge ahead. 

The Board of Education, as gov- 
ernmental guardian of the children’s 
well-being, is the agency best equipped 
to investigate conditions. And as it 
is a big purchaser of milk, it has a 
technical access into the controversy, 
if any were needed. 

Let the board assign its research 
division, which now potters around 
with meaningless promotion rates, to 
make a comprehensive survey of 
child health and milk prices in this 


city. —Philadelphia Record. 


figure 





A Brainstorm 


Former United States Senator James 
A. Reed of Missouri in criticizing the 
New Deal declares that “the Govern- 
ment is interfering with every man’s 
business, assuming that the business 
of the United States can best be con- 
ducted by a group of gentlemen who 
have never transacted any business in 
their lives.” 

Evidently Mr. Reed has forgotten 
that business men, whose business 
had been managing industries all 
their lives, were in complete control 
of industry during 1930, 1931, 1932, 
and for a few months at least in 1933. 
On the question of unemployment 
alone, here is the record of these su- 
perb managers: In January, 1930, 
there were 3,216,000 unemployed. By 
August, 1930, the number had risen 
to 4,101,000, and by December to 
5,541,000. In January, 1931, there 
were 7,160,000 jobless hammering the 
pavements looking for work, and in 
December of that year the idle 
reached 8,908,000. January, 1932, 
started off with 10,197,000 unem- 
ployed, reaching 12,124,000 in De- 
cember. In March, 1933, there were 
13,689,000 persons out of work, the 
largest number ever recorded in the 
United States. 





21 


This is the record of business men 
in meeting the problem of unemploy 
ment—a record of complete bank- 
ruptcy of both permanent policies and 
emergency measures. Other aspects 
of our industrial life, all in control 
of business men, reveal similar bank- 
ruptcy. 

With the advent of the Roosevelt 
Administration and the principles of 
the New Deal in industry, accom- 
panied with legislation designed to 
make those principles effective, the 
army of the unemployed decreased by 
leaps and bounds until recently, when 
the civic work project was inaugu- 
rated, the number was around 6,000,- 
000, a decrease of over 7,000,000 
since March. 

In the light of the plainly visible 
inability of business men to meet 
practically all the crises connected 
with the depression, and the achieve- 
ments of the first few months of the 
New Deal administration, the criti- 
cism by Senator Reed is not only un- 
founded, but absurd, Evidently like 
the traditional ostrich, he has kept his 
head in the sand for the last three 
years and been deaf, dumb, and blind 
to current events in our industrial 
life. 





Taxes and Tax Dodgers 


If teachers desire a lucid statement 
on Taxes and Tax Dodgers, they 
should send ten cents to the office of 
The AMERICAN TEACHER, and secure 
the pamphlet on that topic by Daniel 
W. Hoan, Mayor of Milwaukee. 

Mayor Hoan was an honored guest 
at the last convention of the American 
Federation of Teachers and has since 
addressed our locals in St. Paul and 
Detroit. 

Mayor Hoan opens his discussion 
with this statement of his position, 
“Civilization may be judged by the 
amount of service that the people in 
a community demand, and what they 
can afford to pay for, and not by how 
low a tax rate they have.” 

The topics treated include, Purpose 
of Taxation, Taxpayers’ Leagues, 
Loss of Homes, Taxes Cause Depres- 
sion?, Duplication of Government, 
Graft, Cheap Government, Cost of 
City Government, Efficiency and 
Economy, Debt Burden in Cities, 
Land Taxes, The Suburb Problem, 
State Taxes, Interstate Tax Dodg- 
ers, Income Tax, State, Federal, and 
Local Taxes, Inheritance and Gift 
Taxes, and Our Program, 

A few excerpts should convince 
you of the value and vigor of Mr. 
Hoan’s book. 

“Some of these Taxpayers’ Leagues. 





22 


such as the one in Chicago, are merely 
personal rackets for their promoters 
who collect huge fees and then van- 
ish.” 

“When a government levies an ex- 
tra dollar of taxes on each thousand 
of valuation to expand city services, 
it may cause the home owner who is 
assessed $5,000 to pay (if he has the 
money), $5.00 more in taxes; but to 
men who possess huge estates or office 
buildings assessed at several millions 
of dollars, this extra dollar a thou- 
sand will mean a huge sum. 

Here in Milwaukee, for instance, 
a 1 per cent reduction in the mort- 
gage rate would save the small home 
owners $5,000,000 per year. I once 
challenged the officers of the Mil- 
waukee Taxpayers’ League to prove 
that a single home could be saved by 
reducing taxes. They were unable to 
do so.” ; 

“Much has been made of the argu- 
ment that excessive taxation caused 
the depression. When business men 
began to fail because of their col- 
lective stupidity, they looked about 
for a goat upon which to heap the 
blame, and they chose the govern- 
ment. The argument is absolutely 
ridiculous. It is advanced by the 4 
per cent of our population who own 
80 per cent of the national wealth, in 
the hope that it will detract attention 
from the real cause of the depression. 

“The very men who profited most 
by governmental subsidies at the top 
were most active and instrumental in 
organizing the ‘cut cost of govern- 
ment’ leagues throughout the country. 
It is the bigger interests in all com- 
munities that lead the assault on gov- 
ernmental services.” 

“Do we really want cheap govern- 
ment at any cost? Do we want to 
send our children to the cheapest 
school that employs the cheapest 
school teachers? Do we want fire- 
men and policemen paid such low 
salaries that we may expect none but 
grafters and ignoramuses to man 
these departments? Do we want our 
public health services operated so 
cheaply that contagion and epidemics 
rage throughout our communities or 
that there is neglect in inspecting our 
food products resulting in the poison- 
ing of ourselves and our families? 
Do we want dangerous and broken 
streets, defective lighting, inadequate 
sewage disposal, no garbage collec- 
tion?” 

“The salary paid to the president 
of our local street railway and light 
company in 1931 was $96,000. This 
sum is more than the combined sal- 
aries of the Mayor and 32 heads of 





departments in the government of the 
city of Milwaukee.” 

“The per capita cost of sending a 
child to the public school is usually 
about one-half the cost of the same 
service in a private school.” 

“When the truth is told it will be 
said that the public has not taken on 
any new function until private initia- 
tive has failed to meet the needs of 
the community.” 

“There is one policy that govern- 
ments can and should pursue with 
greater enthusiasm that is not gen- 
erally understood. We have been too 
much in the habit of borrowing money 
on bonds and interest-bearing securi- 
ties in order to put off on other gen- 
erations the problem of paying the 
bill.” 

“The rich residential suburb just 
outside the taxing limits of each in- 
dustrial center is a familiar sight. 
Pleasant tree-lined streets, clean 
homes, well-dressed people, they seem 
very virtuous and worthy. One of 
the reasons for building these sub- 
urbs was to dodge taxes. , 

“Even where the factory itself is 
outside the city limits, the problem 
is the same. Take the famous Ford 
plant in Dearborn, Mich., for ex- 
ample.” 

“The worst feature of present day 
state taxation is the increasing use of 
the sales tax to make up for the de- 
cline in property tax revenues. This 
tax violates the most fundamental 
precept of American taxation, taxa- 
tion according to ability to pay. The 
sales tax is automatically levied on 
the entire income of working men 
and farmers, but only on a small frac- 
tion of the income of those who live 
on profits. The sales tax has well 
been described as an ‘upside down 
income tax,’ and should be abolished 
everywhere.” 

“The income tax is an equitable tax 
which can be levied under the proftt 
system. Individuals and corporations 
benefit from the activities of their 
governments in fairly direct propor- 
tion to their yearly income. They 
are able to pay taxes.” 

“Tf you believe that government ex- 
ists primarily for the purpose of en- 
couraging the accumulation of private 
.property in the hands of a small num- 
ber of people, then you will favor the 
taxes which fall on small people, as 
most of our taxes do in this country.” 


“NOT LOWER TAXES, BUT 
FAIRER TAXES, should be our 
watchword, in the fight for a better 
distribution of the good things of 
life, and a decent living for all.” 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Sales Tax Most Obnoxious 


The sales tax is the most obnoxious 
of all taxes according to Grover A, 
Whalen, chairman of the New York 
city retail code, in a letter to Seabury 
C. Mastick, chairman of the New 
York state tax commission. ‘For 
the consumer the sales tax is an in- 
come tax,” wrote Mr. Whalen. “Jt 
takes, not according to ability to pay, 
which is the underlying principle of 
the income tax, but according to the 
people’s consumptive requirements,” 


Discrimination Against Women 
Workers Condemned By 
President Green 


Emphatic condemnation of paying 
women workers less than men for 
doing the same work was given by 
William Green, president of the 
American Federation of Labor, in an 
address at a dinner given by the New 
York Women’s Trade Union League 
in honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roose- 
velt. The meeting initiated a drive 
for intensifying union organization 
among women workers. 

“The industrial revolution which 
began when mechanical processes in 
production were substituted for hand 
labor, called for the services of work- 
ing women,” Mr. Green said. “The 
number has increased every year. 
They are now employed in practically 
every line of industry. Industrial 
traditions have been broken down and 
as a result women workers have 
taken their place with men in the in- 
dustrial production field. It was in- 
evitable that new economic and in- 
dustrial problems would grow out of 
such a change in industrial develop- 
ment. 

Unions Improve Work Conditions 

“In many lines of industry, partic- 
ularly the needle trades, the women 
workers have realized their helpless- 
ness and, as a result, have organized 
into trade unions for mutual helpful- 
ness and protection. It has been most 
gratifying to observe the growing un- 
derstanding, on the part of women 
workers, of the value of economic 
solidarity brought about through 
trade union affiliation. 

“Asa result, their. wages have been 
protected to a very large extent. Im- 
proved sanitary and humane condi 
tions of employment have been estab- 
lished and maintained. Hours of la- 
bor and work periods have been re 
duced and conditions of employment 
have been made more tolerable. 

“These economic and industrial im- 





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JUNE, 1934 


have 
workers just in proportion as they 
have organized into trade unions and 
thus become united in a definite, di- 
rect, and concrete effort to promote 
their social and economic welfare. 


provements come to women 


Mrs. Roosevelt Is Union Member 

“As an outstanding example of or- 
ganized achievement, I refer to the 
definite progress which has been made 
by the International Ladies’ Garment 
Workers’ Union. Women workers 
predominate in this industry. They 
have united and organized with their 
fellow-workers so completely as to 
bring about definite and unquestion- 
able improvement in their wages and 
conditions of employment. The mem- 
bership of this splendid organization 
has grown from a few thousand to 
approximately two hundred thousand. 

“Undoubtedly these workers 
achieved such a large degree of suc- 
cess through the help of your organ- 
ization and others and through the 
inspiration which those associated 
with it have given them in all their 
struggles for the enjoyment of a 
more abundant life. 

“I am happy to know that our dis- 
tinguished guest of the evening is an 
honorary member of this progressive, 
militant organization. We, united 
with the great international trade un- 
ion movement, are extremely proud 
of this fact. 

Unions Necessary for Women 

Workers 

“I know I but echo the feelings 
and desires of the membership of the 
National Women’s Trade Union 
League when | express the hope that 
the campaign of organization may 
successfully continue and that through 
such organization higher wages and 
improved conditions of employment 
may be enjoyed by the milfions of 
women workers employed in the pub- 
lic school room, in offices, in counting 
rooms, and in service industries. 

“There is a great need for economic 
and social betterment among those 
commonly classified as white-collar 
workers. Along with thinking, sym- 
pathetic people, I have been deeply 
concerned over the economic status of 
this very important part of our work- 
ing population. 

“I know the National Women’s 
Trade Union League is interested in 
this problem and that its officers and 
members will gladly extend all as- 
sistance possible in order to bring 
about a correct solution. 


Attacks Wage Discrimination 
“Then, we have ever present that 


indefensible standard which, through 
the traditions of centuries, has been 
maintained. It has always seemed 
unjust to me that women workers 
should receive less pay for doing the 
same work and rendering the same 
service as that performed by men. 
We of the trade union movement have 
always vigorously contended that 
equal rates of pay should be paid 
women workers when they did the 
same work performed by men. We 
must continue the fight against this 
injustice until we win. 

“There is another economic policy 
pursued in the development of indus- 
trial codes of fair practice which 
seems unjust to me. That is that 
different rates of pay should be main- 
tained in different sections of the Na- 
tion for workers who perform the 
same character of work. 

Economic Problem Is Difficult 

“All of us who are engaged in so- 
cial and economic work,” Mr. Green 
concluded, “fully realize the very 
great difficulties which are in the way 
and which we constantly meet. We 
know that progress can only be made 
step by step. There is no problem 
which yields to solution more slowly 
than an economic problem. 

“History shows that the human 
race has made progress slowly. Some- 
times during periods when the masses 
were aroused until their activities ap- 
proximated a crusade they forged 
ahead and at other times because of 
indifference they moved slowly. But 
those who have led and those who 
have served in this economic move- 
ment have done so because they were 
inspired by a great ideal, by faith 
in the justice of their cause. They 
were inspired to do their best because 
they knew there were associated with 
them in a common endeavor such un- 
selfish, patriotic, and noble women 
as those who are identified in an of- 
ficial and membership capacity with 
the National Women’s Trade Union 
League.” 


Labor’s Rights Nullified by 
Delay in Enforcing Section 
7-A, AFL Says 

Entirely unnecessary delays by the 
National Recovery Administration in 
enforcing Section 7-A of the National 
Industrial Recovery Act, which is an 
integral part of every NRA code of 
fair competition, ‘have nullified 
workers’ rights under the law and 
blocked the mechanism for collective 
bargaining,” declared the Monthly 
Survey of Business of the American 





23 





Federation of Labor, in discussing 
President Roosevelt’s settlement of 
the threatened strike of the automo- 
bile workers. 

“Labor’s protest against the effort 
to deprive them of union organiza- 
tion,” the survey said, “is a more far 
reaching and powerful factor in the 
business situation than most people 
realize. The millions of workers who 
have come through this depression 
have a new understanding of their 
individual helplessness in business 
situations. They know that union or- 
ganization is fundamental for their 
protection. The intensity of their 
feeling has been shown in the way 
they flocked into unions when the Re- 
covery Act was signed anu in the 
series of strikes this winter and 
spring, 75 per cent of which were 
for recognition of the union. 


Union Workers Victimized 


“Workers’ resentment came to a 
focus in the automobile situation. 
Several hundred automobile workers 
had been unlawfully laid off for un- 
ion activity; their cases were dragged 
on through months of indecision in 
Regional Labor Boards; employers 
deliberately defied the boards. In 
cases where unlawful lay off was 
proved workers were not reinstated. 
Workers felt that their only means 
of securing their rights was to strike 
and their strike vote compelled con- 
sideration by Washington. They ac- 
cepted the President’s settlement and 
order because of their faith in him. 
He took responsibility to carry out 
an agreement which pledged workers 
freedom to join the organization of 
their choice and to be represented 
through it in collective bargaining. 
An impartial board was set up to 
carry out this agreement. 


Job Insecurity Destroys Freedom 


“There can be no freedom of choice 
where a worker feels his job is in 
danger if he joins a union. Workers 
the country over have their eyes on 
the automobile board. Decisions and 
speed in operation are essential in 
carrying out the spirit and purpose 
of the President’s agreement. Delay 
is the employers’ way of destroying 
the union; for while the board delays 
workers may be intimidated by 
threats to take away their jobs and 
forced out of the A. F. of L. union 
into the company union. Delays in 


enforcing Section 7-A in the last six 
months have nullified workers rights 
under the law and blocked the mech- 
anism for collective bargaining.” 


School Crisis Facts 


Three hundred and eighty-four thou- 
sand more students in elementary and 
high schools this year than last. 

14,000 fewer teachers employed. 


Less Money for Schools 
$112,800,000 estimated reduction in 


current expenditures this year. 
$108,000,000 less estimated spent 
this year on school buildings. 

Teachers’ salaries slashed as much 
as 28 per cent in one State and 50 
per cent in whole counties. 

City school budgets 6.75 per cent 
below last year. 

Rural school budgets 5.23 per cent 
below last year. 

Capital outlay budgets: New 
grounds, buildings, equipment slashed 
more than 40 per cent. 

Further decreases expected in 
above percentages if taxes are not 
collected, 

Voluntary return of a percentage 
of teachers’ salaries to school boards 
common. 


Lower School Cost 

Cost per pupil in cities from 10,000 
to 100,000 population 9 per cent less 
than it was in 1929-1930. 

Cost per pupils in cities 2,500 to 
10,000 population reduced 7 per cent 
in two years. 

Further reductions have taken place 
this school year. 

Daily cost per child in school de- 
creased 14.1 cents, nearly one-fourth, 
since 1929-30. 

Per pupil cost now only about 48.7 
cents per day—in 1929 it was 62.8 
cents. 

Schools Close—Terms Shortened 

According to Office of Education 
records, most schools are doing their 
utmost to maintain service. They 
have decreased teachers’ salaries, have 
cut expenditures for supplies, equip- 
ment, and buildings, but service has 
been maintained wherever possible. 
Reports indicate, however, that actuat 
effectiveness of schools in some cities 
is being reduced: 

170 cities will shorten school term 
10 days or more this year. 

92 of these cities will cut terms 20 
days or more, 

200 counties last year cut school 
terms 10 days or more. 

130 shortened their terms 20 days 
or more last year. 

More than 4,730 


rural schools 


closed early in 1931-1932. 

More will probably have to be 
closed early this year. 

School term in the United States, 
averaging only 173 days in prosper- 


ous times, is shorter than in foreign 
countries. In France school term is 
200 days, in England and Sweden 210 
days, and in Germany and Denmark 
246 days. 

Less Service 

73 cities have curtailed or elimi- 
nated night schools or Americaniza- 
tion classes. 

85 cities have curtailed or closed 
kindergartens, 

85 cities have closed or partially 
eliminated schools and classes for 
handicapped children. 

93 cities cut music supervision. 

42 cities cut general supervisory 
service, 

48 cities cut school medical service. 

68 cities cut school nurse service. 

Music instruction cut in 52 cities. 

Art instruction cut in 28 cities, 

Home economics instruction cut in 
62 cities. 

Manual training instruction cut in 
64 cities. 

Physical education cut in 81 cities. 

These reports from only two-fifths 
of cities are probably representative 
of other curtailments made elsewhere. 

—Report of Office of Education, 

Dept. of the Interior. 


Chinese Teachers Strike 
for Pay 


From every province in China, and even 
from the principal government universi- 
ties in Nanking and in Peiping, come re- 
ports of entire teaching staffs going on 
strike or threatening to close the schools 
because of non-payment of salaries. 

In many cases the teachers have had no 
pay since last December, and in only a 
few cases have even half the monthly sal- 
aries been paid since the beginning of this 
year. The teachers have remained loyally 
at work with their classes, but now their 
slender resources are exhausted and they 
are obliged to stop teaching and to turn 
to any kind of work or common laber 
which will bring in enough to sustain 
themselves and their families. 

The educational problems in China be- 
come more and more serious from year 
to year. Funds for maintaining schools 
and colleges decrease in direct ratio to 
the incidence of civil wars and the in- 
crease of the armies. 

The Nanking Ministry of Education 
estimates that there are 37,800,000 chil- 
dren of school age in China, of whom 
only 7,937,558 were accommodated in 
schools (of a kind) at the end of last 
year. 

The opening of 1932 found China with 
407,044 teachers, a vast majority of them 
teaching only “old style” subjects, and en- 
tirely untouched by modernism, science, 
foreign languages or any ideas of man- 
ual training. China needs 1,200,000 trained 
teachers, but cannot pay the 407,044 who 
heretofore have kept operating the 192,- 
805 primary and grade schools which exist. 

At present the Ministry of Education at 
Nanking has available annually only about 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


$15,000,000 silver; that is, this sum is sup- 


posed to be available for education, but 
because of military drains upon the na- 
tional treasury is rarely obtained for the 
schools. This is equivalent. to only a 
little more than $4,000,000 a year in Amer- 
ican money. 

“A situation such as that now revealed 
calls for the plainest of speaking,” de- 
clares The China Press, a Chinese owned 
and edited daily newspaper published in 
English in Shanghai. “It is simply dis- 
graceful, and is moreover highly danger- 
ous. 

“Part of the duty of the teachers is to 
inculcate in the minds of their charges 
respect for the government of their coun- 
try. How much enthusiasm can they put 
into such exhortations when they are suf- 
fering from financial embarrassment be- 
cause the government has failed to honor 
the obligations it assumed when these men 
were appointed to their posts? 

“The outrageous state of things which 
has existed for so long in the education 
department makes it impossible that the 
right type of men can be secured for the 
schools, and universities of this 
country. 

“What sane man is going into a pro- 
fession that is poorly paid in the first 
place, and in which he is compelled to 
wait for half a year to get even a por- 
tion of his meager stipend?” 


colleges 





The state makes a free gift to its 
citizens of what is known as ele- 
mentary or primary education, re- 
garding money spent in this way as 
a kind of premium of national in- 
surance. An ignorant nation is a 
nation ready to be roused to riot 
and fury on very small provocation 
6 Ot ee ae 
again; and an ignorant nation may 
assuredly look forward to becoming 
the servant of a _ nation better 
educated than itself—Richard Wil- 
son, in The Complete Citizen. 


Psychological Institute of 
University of Vienna 

The Psychological Institute of the 
University of Vienna will hold its 
third annual summer school in psy- 
chology for American students from 
July 9th until August 9th, 1934. The 
courses, which are taught in English, 
include the following: Language and 


Personality (Karl Buehler), Child- 
hood and Adolescence (Charlotte 
Buehler), Biographical Methods 


(Charlotte Buehler), Viennese Tests 
for Children, Experimental Psychol- 
ogy, Business and Social Psychology. 
The University of Kentucky is again 
supervising these courses and will 
grant six semester-hours university 
credit for the work done in Vienna. 
For further details address the Edu- 
cational Director, Dr. Henry Beaw- 
mont, University of Kentucky, Lex- 
ington, Kentucky. 











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1934 





JUNE, 








BOOKS 


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














THe Wortpd Book ENcycLopepia, 
W. F. Quarrie & Company, Chi- 
cago, Ill., and New York, N. Y.., 
19 volumes including a Guide 
Book, 8,000 pages, 14,000 illus- 
trations, color plates, graphs, etc. 


There are several distinguished en- 
cyclopedias on the American market 
today but few are up-to-date. Here 
is a reference work that deserves a 
dignified place among the first-rate 
American encyclopedias, and in one 
important respect, it is superior to 
them all. While nearly all the exten- 
sively advertised encyclopedias are 
revised at intervals of a quarter cen- 
tury, and in some instances less fre- 
quently, the World Book Encyclo- 
pedia, on the other hand, has been 
revised substantially thirteen times 
since the World War, and the pres- 
ent edition is a completely revised, 
reset piece of work and brought up to 
the early events of President Koose- 
velt’s Administration. While the 
publishers of the World Book are as 
sufficiently commercially-minded as 
others and as eager to enhance the 
distribution of their set, they never- 
theless never lose sight of the time- 
liness of their work. They maintain 
a steady corps of research and edi- 
torial workers who are continuously 
collecting new material and revising 
the old articles and thus laying the 
foundation for new editions. Of all 
encyclopedias, then, with the excep- 
tion of one loose-leaf encyclopedia 
published in New York City and 
which is revised from two to three 
times yearly, the World Book is the 
most up-to-date encyclopedia on the 
American market today. 

The World Book is under compe- 
tent editorship. Its editor-in-chief 
from 1917 to 1931 was Michael V. 
O’Shea, B.L., late professor of Edu- 
cation at the University of Wisconsin. 
The present revised edition was under 
the editorial supervision of S. Edgar 
Farquar, M.S., an outstanding au- 
thority in many cultural fields. Among 
its extensive list of contributors may 
be found names of men and women 
who have distinguished themselves in 
every walk of life. A few instances 
will suffice to confirm the credibility 
of World Book writers and the au- 
thenticity of their material. Morris 
Fishbein, M.D., outstanding leader in 
the field of American medicine and 
famous editor of the Journal of the 





American Medical Association, wrote 
the articles on physiology. Eugene 
Lyman Fisk, late director of Hygiene 
of the Life Extension University, 
wrote on life extension. Frank P. 
Graves, President of the University 
of the State of New York and State 
Commissioner of Education, wrote 
on education. Harry L. Holling- 
worth, Professor of Psychology at 
Columbia University, wrote on voca- 
tional guidance. Joseph Jastrow, in- 
ternationally- known _ psychologist, 
wrote on alchemy and related sub- 
jects. Maria Montessori, pioneer in 
educational reform and world re- 
nowned founder of the Montessori 
System, wrote on her system. Ray 
Lyman Wilbur, president of Stanford 
University, wrote on his university. 
And so all along the line. 

The articles on the sciences and 
technical arts were penned by men 
and women who have made names 
for themselves in their fields. The 
articles on the various countries and 
governments of the world were 
drafted by men and women generally 
associated with their governments in 
some official capacity. In a word, in 
respect to contributors the World 
Book may be matched to any other 
leading encyclopedia in the United 
States. As a matter of fact, the 
World Book, for many years, has 
been highly recommended by state 
educational bureaus, school principals, 
and leading educators and librarians. 
It is widely used in the libraries of 
elementary and secondary schools 
throughout the country. 

In method of presentation, I may 
say without hesitation, it is superb, 
though, it is true, not as comprehen- 
sive as some of the widely advertised 
sets. The articles on history, geog- 
raphy, science, and particularly those 
relating to the American scene, are 
comprehensive and extremely well 
written. Unfortunately the 1933 edi- 
tion of World Book was put out be- 
fore the advent of “the Roosevelt 
Revolution” and none of the epochal 
events following in its wake are re- 
corded in its pages. However, if the 
reviewer's information is correct, the 
World Book publishers issue a sup- 
plementary Year Book, which is sup- 
plied free to subscribers of the set. 
Undoubtedly in the next edition ‘of 
the Annual this shortcoming will be 
overcome. 

Of particular interest and help to 
students and teachers should prove 
the “outlines and questions” which 
may be found at the end of important 
articles. Especially valuable is the 
Reading and Study Guide which fills 
the entire nineteenth volume. Here 






25 


the entire scope of human knowledge 
is divided in several major classifica- 
tions, such as anthropology, agricul- 
ture, botany, education, and history, 
and under each classification the 
reader will find in alphabetic order 
the most comprehensive subject-index 
covering this division of human 
knowledge, with the number of vol- 
umes and pages indicated. In the sec- 
ond part of the volume the teacher 
will find a very interesting method 
for arranging class-room projects in 
all subjects—and the student may find 
it exceedingly helpful in pursuing his 
class-room work. Another unique 
feature of the World Book is its pres- 
entation of bibliographies. Departing 
from the method of all encyclopedias, 
where bibliographies are presented 
at the end of articles, the World 


Book editors allotted a _ special 
section to a bibliography in  vol- 
ume eighteen under which books 


for supplementary reading may be 
found under an alphabetical and top- 
ical arrangement in line with the sub- 
ject treatment in the Encyclopedia. 
This method is a great time saver. 
Reluctantly we are obliged to con- 
clude the review with a serious criti- 
cism of the World Book. Before 1929 
this encyclopedia was published under 
the name of Wortp Book and was 
then primarily designed for students 
of elementary and secondary schools. 
Since 1929 the name was changed to 
the Wortp Book Encyciopepia and 
widened in scope to embrace all 
classes of readers, young and adult 
and old. Unfortunately in its wid- 
ened scope it falls below the mark. 
In perusing the pages of the World 
Book Encyclopedia one is led to think 
that he lives in the idyllic era as en- 
visioned by Professor Carver at the 
height of prosperity—an era free 
from class war, strikes, lockouts, un- 
employment, and poverty. To strikes 
and lockouts only a few lines are 
given, while other leading works de- 
vote pages to the same subject. Un- 
employment, which has actually dis- 
located the economic machine of the 
world and thrown from 60 to 70 mil- 
lion men and women out of employ- 
ment, of which over 13 million alone 
were found in the United States in 
March, 1933, receives only a few 
paragraphs. Technological unemploy- 
ment, the world-wide labor unrest, the 
measures advocated or taken by the 
nations in grappling with them, are 
barely mentioned. Twenty-five lines 
are devoted to the injunction in the 
United States, a few more lines to 
trade union and labor organizations, 
and the American Federation of La- 
bor is passed off with merely five 



































































26 


lines. In a word while the World 
Book Encyclopedia is fully up to the 
mark in its treatment of geography, 
history, contemporary achievements in 
the field of all sciences, it falls far 
behind the other leading encycloped- 
ias in its treatment of economics, so- 
ciology, industrial and labor prob- 
lems. Particularly regretful is the 
editors’ indifference to the problems 
of the present depression, which have 
held mankind in their grip for the 
past four years. Unless the editors 
are prepared to overcome these seri- 
ous shortcomings in the next edition 
of the World Book Encyclopedia, I 
am afraid the World Book will never 
commend itself to the attention of the 
student whose mind reaches out be- 
yond the classroom atmosphere. 


MicwHaet B. SCHELER. 


THe Mopern Woritp: A PAGEANT 
oF Topay. By H. C. Knapp- 
Fisher. Dutton & Co. $2.50. 


Mr. Knapp-Fisher in his final note 
to the 50 chapters of his book con- 
fesses, “In this book we have darted 
over the modern world, rather like 
mice, looking here at one thing and 
there at another thing. We have 
stayed perhaps too long in one land, 
not long enough in another; though 
we have, I hope, gained some idea of 
the variety of peoples and lands and 
work in the world.” Not every author 
so correctly appraises his own effort. 
The reviewer feels that to stay for 
the first 22 chapters in the British 
Empire, with five for the United 
States, three for the League of Na- 
tions, and a single chapter each for 
most of the other countries, is not a 
well proportioned visit. 

Then, too, the modern world is in 
such violent flux that already the de- 
scriptions are out of date. For ex- 
ample, Premier Ramsay MacDonald, 
that pathetic apostate to everything 
he has tried to build during his life- 
time, is referred to as the head of the 
British Labor movement; the glow- 
ing description of Socialist Vienna, 
building up out of her misery and 
despair sunlit, flower-bedecked apart- 
ment houses for workers, now only 
provokes tragic memories. 

Mr. Knapp-Fisher, to his credit. 
abandons completely the old nation- 
alist corridor view of history. He 
writes with an engaging freshness 
throughout, despite the astonishing 
amount of information conveyed in 
his survey of the world. He is gravely 
alarmed about the drift to war and 
the piling up of armaments; he cham- 
pions free intercourse of peoples in 





the present and autarchic world. But 
he remains a liberal with roseate 
views of the functions of government 
supposedly looking after the whole 
community. Without a trace of cyn- 
icism he describes the British Empire 
as a “civilization club.” The labor 
movement, according to his view, is 
out merely to remedy the inequality 
of wealth distribution and introduce 
public ownership. Such ideas as the 
exploitation of the workers and the 
ensuing class struggle* are another 
language to him. Yet he tries so hard 
to be impartial and he has superficial 
praise for Mussolini, Hitler, and 
Stalin! He ignores the economic pen- 
etration of Canada by United States 
interests; he glosses over the brigand- 
age of the great powers in seizing and 
retaining the ports of China, and his 
picture of Japan anxious about what 
her unruly neighbor, China, may do 
seems in variance with the facts. 
Perhaps a desire not to offend Amer- 
ican readers rules out in the descrip- 
tion of the Panama Canal any refer- 
ence to the way in which the needed 
area on the isthmus was taken from 
Columbia by big stick methods. There 
is the same evasion of reality when 
Mr. Knapp-Fisher (p. 202), explain- 
ing the rise of the United States to 
riches and power, remarks: “For 
riches do not come to men if they 
do not toil, if they are not wise and 
clever and patient.’ Before he writes 
again our author should take a read 
ing course in such books as The 
House of Morgan by Lewis Corey, 
Mellon’s Millions by Harvey O’Con- 
nor, and The Robber Barons by 
Matthew Josephson. 

Despite such faults, this book in 
the hands of an informed teacher will 
serve as a useful text in world citi- 
zenship and economic geography. In 
times when the new mental Ice Age 
of reaction and nationalism en- 
croaches, even imperfect contribu- 
tions to world-mindedness must be 
utilized. 

Mark STARR. 


Tue New _ INTERNATIONAL YEAR 
‘ Book, 1932. Funk & Wagnalls 
Company, New York, N. Y. 548 

PP- 

The New International Year Book 
is veritably the finest compendium of 
the world’s progress in all fields of 
human endeavor published in the 
English tongue. It is edited by the 
world renowned lexicographer and 
editor of the “Funk & Wagnalls New 
Standard Dictionary of the English 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


language,” Dr. Frank H. Vizetelly 
—a name which has come to stand 
for scrupulous authenticity. While 
the Year Book is issued as a supple- 
ment to The New International En- 
cyclopedia—which, by the way, has 
been taken over by Funk and Wag- 
nalls Company and is now edited by 
Dr. Vizetelly—it is wholly an inde- 
pendent work and constitutes an in- 
valuable record of human history, 
from year to year, and as such will 
be highly prided by owners and non- 
owners of the New International En- 
cyclopedia alike. 

In topical treatment the Year Book 
follows the alphabetical order as 
found in the New International En- 
cyclopedia and all other distinguished 
encyclopedias, and its articles are 
written by the same experts and au- 
thorities who write for The New In- 
ternational Encyclopedia, men and 
women who have few compeers in 
their respective fields of endeavor. 
The Year Book is profusely illus- 
trated and contains a valuable selec- 
tion of the latest maps produced by 
the well known map makers, Rand, 
McNally & Company. 

The outstanding events of the year 
1932 are exhaustively treated, well 
documented, and supplied with up- 
to-date and interesting bibliographies, 
Thus in the national field, the Amer- 
ican banking crisis receives four and 
a half double-column pages of treat- 
ment, with tables and statistics show- 
ing the status of the banks in 1932. 
Full seven pages are devoted to a 
general review of the financial con- 
ditions of the United States. In the 
international field we find the same 
painstaking treatment. Thus France 
receives nearly 8 pages; Germany, 8 
pages; Russia, nearly 6 pages; Italy, 
44 pages; Japan, 6 pages. All the 
changes and advances in all fields of 


human cognition: economics, soci- 
ology, psychology, criminology, all 


branches of science, etc., are authen- 
tically recorded. The benefactors of 
mankind are by no means neglected. 
There are hundreds of photographs 
of well known men and women who 
have distinguished themselves in one 
field or another, with comprehensive 
biographical sketches. On the nega- 
tive side of the human medal, war, 
disease, militarism, unemployment, 
strikes, etc., receive their appropriate 
space, documented with the latest 
charts, statistics, and illustrations. In 
a word, those who are fortunate to 
enrich their libraries with the annual 
volumes of the International Year 
Book are intelligently apprised of 








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JUNE, 1934 


“history in the making” oe I 
hope a slight suggestion will not mar 
this review of this important work. 
I hope the publishers will bind the 
1933 edition of the International 
Year Book in a more durable bind- 
ing. For constant use, as the Year 
Book is certainly designed to be, the 
present binding is too fragile. 


MicuHaet B. SCHELER. 


oK *K * 
INTERNATIONAL Book oF NAMES. 
C. O. Sylvester Mawson, Litt.D., 


Ph.D. Thomas Y. Crowell Com- 


pany, New York, N. Y. 308 pp. 
$2. 
Here is something new on the 


literary firmament, and a work every 
member of the intelligentsia, particu- 
larly the one _ preoccupied with 
“words” as a means of earning a 
livelihood, has awaited impatiently 
and will welcome. The “J/nterna- 
tional Book of Names,’ to quote 
from the inside title page, is “a dic- 
tionary of the more difficult proper 
names in literature, history, philos- 
ophy, religion, art, music, and other 
studies, together with the official form 
and pronunciation of the names of 
present-day celebrities and _ places 
throughout the world, with post-war 
geographical changes duly incorpor- 
ated.” 

While, it is true, a good portion of 
the information incorporated in this 
work may be found in expensive and 
unabridged dictionaries or volumin- 
ous encyclopedias, no other publica- 
tion, however, offers such a compre- 
hensive list of names of important 
places and personages in a handy and 
compact volume. Above all, few ed- 
itors of modern reference works have 
taken the pains to check up on the 
accuracy and pronunciations of for- 
eign names of places and personages 
—past and present—as punctiliously 
as Mr. Mawson has done. Whenever 
Mr. Mawson was in doubt as to the 
pronunciation or spelling of a word, 
often in common usage, he would 
write to the person direct, if living, 
or to the nearest relative known, if 
dead, and thus obtain the exact meth- 
od employed by the person himself 
or herself. In respect to doubtful 
geographical names, Mr. Mawson 
would write to the government direct 
or representatives of such govern- 
ments whose territories embrace the 
city, river, mountain, or what not, 
and thus ascertain the correct spell- 
ing and pronunciation of doubtful 
names. In looking over the Interna- 





tional Book of Names the reader will 


be amazed to learn how incorrectly 
many of our leading reference works 
and encyclopedias have been pro- 
nouncing numerous names of per- 
sons, places, and events—some of 
which have received wide currency 
and are often found in leading lit- 
erary periodicals. 

The eventful changes brought 
about by the World War in the geo- 
graphy of the European continent 
and in the nomenclature of states, 
cities, governments, and peoples are 
correctly recorded in the pages of this 
book. Look at the pre-war and post- 
war maps of Russia! The effects of 
the World War are visible at a 
glance. A new name for nearly 
every important old landmark of vast 
Russia—and what a mass of new 
towns and governments (states) 
within the new Russia! Within the 
space of two or three years the old 
Czarist textbooks on geography have 
become as obsolete as the bow and 
arrow of the savage in modern war- 
ee 

While the ‘ ‘International Book of 
Names” constitutes an invaluable ad- 
dition to the rich American collection 
of reference works, it suffers from a 
serious weakness which, I hope, the 
publishers will overcome in the next 
edition—the omission of the first 
names of the important living and 
dead personages. To the writer and 
research worker the first names are 
as important as the surnames, and 
to supply this information Mr. Maw- 
son will find it no easy task by any 
means. For many luminaries 
have had several versions of their 
first names broadcast throughout the 





world. Take, for instance, the name 
of the great Lenin. His first name 
was variously given as _ Nicolai, 


Nicholas, Nikolai, and in communist 
literature it is presented as Vladimir 
Ilyitch—which is correct? 


MicHaet B. ScHELER. 





Book Notes 

“EDUCATION IN THE RECOVERY 
PROGRAM” contains 24 large pages 
and is a reprint from “School Life,” 
official organ of the U. S. Office of 
Education. It lists all new Federal 
agencies, outlines 11 important Fed- 
eral acts, the F. E. R. A. educational 
program, opinions of the President 
and Cabinet Members on education, 
six proposed steps of federal aid, etc. 
It may be obtained for 10 cents from 
the Superintendent of Documents, 
Washington, D. C. 








27 





“Books OF GENERAL INTEREST FOR 
Topay’s Reapers” is a 60 page book- 
let published by American Library 


Assn. and American Assn. _ for 
Adult Education in cooperation 
with U. S. Office of Educa- 
tion. It is a useful catalogue of 


simply written, informative, and read- 
able books—suitable for use in cur- 
rent adult education activities. 25c 
for single copies, 15c in lots of 10 or 


more. May be obtained from A. E. 
C. office. 
THe Sounp Morton PIcTureE IN 


ScIENCE TEACHING. Phillip Jus- 
tin Rulon. Harvard Studies in 
Education. Vol. 20. Harvard 
University Press. 1933. 230 
pp. $2.50. 

A study of results in the use of 
moving pictures with student groups 
studying science. The book is not for 
the general reader, but is for the 
specialist who has some interest and 
definite knowledge in this field of 
education. 


AMATEUR WaritinGc. Davida McCas- 
lin. Ray Long and Richard R. 
Smith, Inc. New York, 1933. 
351 pp. $2.00. 

A book containing many hints and 
valuable suggestions on direct writ- 
ing and speaking for amateurs. The 
book is marked with common-sense 
suggestions, and should prove valu- 
able to youngsters fresh out of col- 
lege who are interested in literary 
expression. 


Professor Harry A. Overstreet, 
long a valued member of the Amer- 
ican Federation of Teachers, has pub- 
lished a new book, ‘““We Move in New 
Directions”. We clip the following 
pertinent comment from an exchange. 


This man Overstreet, down at the Col- 
lege of the City of New York, must be a 
pretty good guy. At least he knows how 
to write a good book and to give it a 
good title. “We Move in New Directions” 
does the neatest job of summing up Amer- 
ican history by treating it as a series of 
seven “Adventures” that this reader has 
run across. The eighth adventure, which 
he sees beckoning to the American people 
at this moment, is one which calls for the 
possession of a “Five-Fold Wisdom,” 
treated in one very readable chapter, and 
throws out “A Challenge to Education” 
which he makes plain in another. Although 
he is less imaginative and therefore per- 
haps less entertaining than H. G. Wells, I 
like Overstreet much better on this ac- 
count: I have some reasonable hopes of 
living long enough to see for myself 
whether Overstreet has correctly visioned 
our “New Directions,” but “The Shape of 
Things to Come,” Wells has put so far 
in the future that none of us will have 
any chance to check up on him. 


George R. Staley. 














News from the 
Field 


New Locals 


The followings locals, 34 in number, have 














been chartered since the iast issue of the 
AMERICAN TEACHER: 
lk owe odscccesvess Local 287 
ES o.oo ce eece tee Local 288 
Mingo County, W. Va........... Local 289 
Wood County, Ohio............. Local 290 
Youngstown, Ohio.............. Local 291 
Grand Forks and Walsh Counties, 
ee ll Local 292 
ED OE Se Local 293 
Morrow County, Ohio........... Local 294 
Pulaski County, Ark. (colored) .Local 295 
Springfield, Ohio................ Local 296 
South Franklin County, Ark...... Local 297 
oe bi bee ces ewes Local 298 
NES en eee Local 299 
 MEEErdsnsecegeccccsccceg eGR GOO 
ees Coommty. Ag... ....cccces Local 301 
CS See Local 302 
SS, Ee re Local 303 
ES See rs Pere Local 304 
Garland County, Ark............. Local 305 
Conway County, Ark............. Local 306 
Sebastian County, Ark........... Local 307 
a” Ee a ..Local 308 
ee Local 309 
ES ee a Local 310 
I MT ve cccaccedess Local 311 
Conway County, Ark. (colored) .Local.312 
Speweie Pitt, Atk.........ccece Local 313 
gS es ere Local 314 


S. Dis. Woodruff County, Ark...Loecal 315 
North Woodruff County, Ark...Local 316 
Central Woodruff County, Ark..Local 317 


White County, Ark.............. Local 318 
EE ee Local 319 
South Pike County, Ark......... Local 320 


These additions to the family of the 
American Federation of Teachers brings 
the number of new locals for this year 
at the date of going to press, May 15, to 61 

The outlook for the success of a sound 
program for school protection was never 
more encouraging. 


Chicago Local 3 

In “An Open Letter to the Citizens of 
Chicago,” the Federation of Women High 
School Teachers, Local 3, has these sig- 
nificant statements: 

The North Central Association has just 
taken ten Chicago high schools off its ac- 
credited list. and warned every other hich 
school in Chicago of lowering of its edu- 
cational standards. The Association com- 
mended the teaching force for the quality 
of the service rendered under adverse 
conditions. 

While the entire burden of financing the 
schools for this year has been shifted to 
the teachers and their creditors, money 
has been found for other purposes, 

Paid through 


West Park Employees..... November, 1933 
County Employees .......... January, 1934 
City Corporate Employ’s. February 15, 1934 
Lincoln Park Employees..... April 15, 1934 
South Park Employees...... April 15, 1934 
re April 15, 1934 
Board of Education......... ..++-June, 1933 


Since the schools of Illinois are rated 
42nd 


in educational standard in the 48 





states according to the statistics of the 
U. S. Office of Education, though it is 
seventh in per capita wealth, and since 
the state share of the school expenditures 
is now so small that it is 39th in the list 
of states, it is inexcusable to let this at- 
tempt (the Legislature’s welter of partisan 
politics) to put the schools of Illinois on 
a sounder basis end in a fiasco. 

The greatest prospect of help from the 
Federal Government has been a proposed 
amendment to the Industrial Credit Bank- 
ing Act which would allow municipalities 
and boards of education to borrow from 
the government. 

Are the citizens of Chicago willing to 
see the schools reduced in real efficiency 
until they close, without raising a hand? 

If you are unwilling to see this tragedy 
occur—do these things now! As an in- 
dividual or as the representative of an 
organization: 1. Write or wire your State 
representatives. 2. Write your congress- 
man and senators and to the President to 
hasten the federal legislation. 3. Write to 
the mayor of Chicago, urging that the city 
corporate return to its former policy of 
buying warrants from the Board of Edu- 
cation. 


Washington Local 27 


To argue the need of organization among 
all classes of wage earners, including pro- 
fessional people, would be to insult your 
intelligence. 

The New Deal recognizes the 
organized groups for organized 
organized expression, and organized 
justments between employers and 
ployees. 

In addition to these benefits, organized 
groups can do much in the way of edu- 
cational research and community improve- 
ment. 

Washington Teachers’ Union, Local 27 
of the American Federation of Teachers, 
has a threefold aim, economic, educational, 
and social. 

We wish to safeguard tenure, secure best 
possible salaries and working conditions, 
best standards of supervision and teacher 
rating, and best possible cooperation be- 
tween the administration and the teachers. 

We wish to enter the world’s activities 
beyond the class room, to participate in 
shaping educational aims and procedures, 
to help solve community problems, to help 
teachers in less favored communities, to 
assist in pupil relief, and to help create 
opportunities for the products of our 
schools. 

Washington Teachers’ Union, Local 27, 
invites membership among teachers on all 
levels of our schools. Financial stress, ill- 
ness, retirement do not disqualify members 

We are affiliated with the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers and the American 
Federation of Labor and with the Wash- 
ington Central Labor Union. 

To you, and to all members of the corps 
of teachers of Washington, D. C., we ex- 
tend a welcome to a fellowship of mutual 
helpfulness and altruistic endeavor. 

x * * 

The above letter was sent to all eligible 
teachers in Washington. Its convincing 
appeal and recognition of the social sig- 
nificance of the union movement resulted 
in a gratifying increase in membership. 


Madison Local 35 


The Madison Teachers’ Federation Lo- 
cal 35 not only believes but acts on the 


need of 
thinking, 
ad- 
em- 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


principle that teachers should take an ac- 
tive part in the political life of the com- 
munity. At the regular meeting preced- 
ing the spring election, candidates tor the 
school board spoke, explaining their poli- 
cies and programs. 

At the annual luncheon Dr. Willing of 
the University of Wisconsin was the 
guest speaker. Dr. C. G. Welles, presi- 
dent of the Wisconsin State Federation 
of Teachers, and A. S. Zander, organizer 
for the state organization, were the other 
speakers. 

The local continues to 
bership and effectiveness. 


grow in mem- 


Granite Cty, Ill., Local 38 

The Granite City Federation of Teach- 
ers Local 38 feels the importance of get- 
ting members out to meetings. It  be- 
lieves that the Let-George-Do-It attitude 
is one of the causes of our present trou- 
bles, and is, therefore, trying to make the 
regular meetings of the local so interest- 
ing that the members cannot stay away. 
A speaker of reputation talks on school 
problems at each meeting. 

The membership of the Federation has 
doubled the past month and a 100 per cent 
membership is expected before the close of 
the school year. 


Portland Local 111 


The Portland Teachers’ Union Local 111 
has waged a valiant and brilliant fight 
against the sales tax, which has increased 
the prestige of the union, both among the 
teachers and the general public. (See 
page 8 for report and account of press 
support. ) 

Membership is increasing and is now the 
largest in the history of the local. 


Philadelphia Local 192 


In connection with the 100th anniversary 
of free education in Pennsylvania, Phila- 
delphia school teachers have arranged an 
elaborate celebration. 

Local 192, the American 
Teachers sponsored a mass meeting at- 
tended by parents, teachers, and public- 
spirited citizens of Philadelphia. Speakers 
included Governor Pinchot, Professor 
George S. Counts of Columbia, and Dr. 
Jesse H. Holmes. 

The meeting was held at the William 
Penn High School Friday night, April 13. 
Pertinent questions relating to the Phila- 
delphia educational system, the tax issue 
and child welfare were discussed 


Grand Forks Local 205 


A. F. of T. locals in North Dakota were 
particularly fortunate during the first of 
April to have with them Dr. Harold M. 
Groves, member of the University of Wis- 
consin Teachers’ Union, Local 223. vice- 
president of A. F. of T., and nationally 
known tax expert. He addressed the Agri- 
cultural College at Fargo on April 3, and 


Federation of 


the Valley City State Teachers’ College 
local on April 4th. On April 5th, he was 
guest of the Economics Department and 


of the Wisconsin Club at the University 
of North Dakota. In the evening, as guest 
of the Grand Forks Teachers’ Federation, 
Local 205, he delivered a most thoughtful 
and convincing address on the “Crisis im 
Education,” stressing the value and impor- 
tance of aggressive organization of teach- 
ers affiliated with Labor. 

















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1934 


JUNE, 


Chattanooga-Hamilton County 
Local 246 


The Chattanooga-Hamilton County 
Teachers Union, Local 246, had as its guest 
speaker at its annual open meeting on 
April 14, Miss Selma M. Borchardt, legis- 
lative representative of the American 
Federation of Teachers. 

The Chattanooga Times reported the 
meeting as follows: 


UNION OF TEACHERS 
CALLED BENEFICIAL 


National Leader Says Craft Gets 
Proud Heritage 


Miss Borchardt Says Standards Higher 
Where Union Strongest 


The organized labor movement gives the 
teachers of the United States a proud heri- 
tage in service and social achievements, 
Miss Selma M. Borchardt, a member of 
the board of directors of the American 
Federation of Teachers, told members of 
the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Teach- 
ers’ Union. 

Miss Borchardt is a teacher in the 
schools of Washington, D. C., and legisla- 
tive representative of the federation in the 
national capital. She addressed the local 
organization in the assembly hall of the 
University of Chattanooga, on “Labor's 
Fight for the Schools.” 

“T know of no group that has done more 
to promote good citizenship than the 
American Federation of Labor,” Miss Bor- 
chardt declared. “No organization has a 
finer record in social service. 

“Tt was the first organization in the 
United States to fight for abolition of 
child labor, compulsory school attendance, 
and free textbooks.” 

Miss Borchardt said she took pride in 
being a trade unionist because of her pride 
in craftsmanship, for which the trade union 
movement stands, and because she _ be- 
lieves in working for wage standards. 

“There is nothing unprofessional or un- 
dignified about working for higher wage 
standards for ourselves,” she said. “Mem- 
bers of the medical profession and lawyers 
have tacit understandings about their fees 
—why shouldn’t we come out in the open 
and fight for better salaries?” 

Miss Borchardt also urged the Chat- 
tanooga and Hamilton county teachers to 
work for the principle of tenure of office 
instead of the “vicious contract system” 
for the teaching profession, and called on 
the group to join the national organized 
forces of labor in holding the democratic 
administration to its platform pledge for 
old age pensions. Strength for teachers 
as other groups lies in organization, the 
visitor pointed out. 

“We agree with President Roosevelt 
that the day of rugged individualism has 
passed and we stand for organized col- 
lectivism,” she said. “Where the union is 
strong, the standards are high.” 

Miss Borchardt included in her message 
a description of her travels in Europe in 
the interest of the organized education 
movement. 


Toledo Local 250 


The Toledo Federation of Teachers, 
Local 250, held its annual election at Scott 
High School Auditorium, April 25, at 
4 P.M. Mr. William Bradford, a member 


of the Nominating Committee, took charge 
of the balloting. 

The official returns for officers were: Mr. 
Raymond F. Lowry, re-elected president; 
Mr. Harry Lamb, vice-president; Miss 
Catherine D. Brown, executive-secretary ; 
Miss Catherine Clark, treasurer; Mr. 
George Hammersmith, secretary; chairmen 
of the various committees: Nominating 
Committee, Miss Gertrude Kinzle; Finance, 
Mr. Roscoe Baker; Membership, Mr. Glen 
Lake; PTA-Relations, Miss Jane Ens- 
worth; Professional Standing, Miss Sylvia 
Butler; Records, Mr. Francis Boyle; Wel- 
fare and Social, Mrs. Winifred Nolan; 
Maintenance, Edward E. Packer; Organ- 
ization, Mr. Carl A. Benson; Legislative, 
Mr. Clyde Kiker; and Research, Miss 
Dorothy Miller. 

A general meeting was held at Scott 
High School, Wednesday, May 9, for the 
installation of the newly elected officers 
and the presentation of annual reports of 
the officers and committees. 

Local 250 takes pride in announcing the 
location of its new home, a suite of rooms 
at 219 15th Street, the rapid growth of the 
organization having made more adequate 
quarters necessary. 

President Lowry, an able and enthusias- 
tic organizer, has planned a State Conven- 
tion of Ohio locals of the American Fed- 
eration of Teachers, which will be held at 
Springfield, Ohio, on May 26, to consoli- 
date the forces in a state-wide drive for 
an income tax. The program will include 
prominent educators and labor leaders. 
Mrs. Florence Curtis Hanson, Secretary- 
Treasurer of the American Federation of 
Teachers, will act as chairman. 


Savanna, Ill., Local 255 


The Savanna Teachers Union, Local 
255, participated actively in the school 
board election and is well pleased with the 
result. 

Mrs. Maloney spoke on Vienna at the 
regular meeting, and the fraternal and so- 
cial side of the organization was not neg- 
lected. 

The membership is now 60 per cent of 
the teaching force. 


Grand Rapids Local 256 


Grand Rapids Local 256 was a construc- 
tive force in influencing the decision of 
the Board of Education to vote an addi- 
tional $500,000 in cash or scrip above a 
guaranteed cash minimum for teachers’ 
salaries for 1934-35. The minimum named 
is the same as that of 1933-34. 

Cooperating with the zealous activity of 
the superintendent of schools and the local 
teachers’ club, Grand Rapids Local 256 
served as a necessary and significant link 
between the labor representative on the 
Board of Education and the teachers; in 
its efforts, it received the whole-hearted 
support of officers of the Grand Rapids 
Trades and Labor Council. 

Ina M. McNEAL. 


New Bedford Local 263 . 


The New Bedford ‘lreachers Union, 
Local 263, has elected the following offi- 
cers: 

President, Mr. John Connors. 

Vice-President, Mr. William Coonan. 

Secretary, Miss Marion Colby. 

Treasurer, Miss Agnes Conners. 

The union is growing in membership and 
effectiveness daily. An open meeting to 








29 


acquaint the teachers and general public 
with the school situation and the union 
program for school protection is planned 
for the last of May. 


North Dakota State College 
Local 265 


Dr. Herbert C. Hanson, secretary-treas- 
urer of Local 265, reports splendid progress 
in the local and the community. The meet- 
ings with Professor Groves were most suc- 
cessful and new members and locals are 
expected. 

A number of committees are very ac- 
tively at work, some for internal improve- 
ment of the college and some for com- 
munity welfare. 

Mr. E. E. Green, secretary-treasurer of 
the North Dakota Farmers’ Union, is in- 
terested in the teachers union and a for- 
tunate cooperative relationship has been 
established. 


Tooele, Utah, Local 270 


The Tooele County Federation of Teach- 
ers, Local 270, has dealt successfully with 
the Board of Education in naming the 
terms of contracts for the coming year. 
The local has secured a much better con- 
tract for the teachers than they previously 
have had. 

It is now working on the problem of 
certification of teachers. 

Membership is increasing. The majority 
of the teachers of the county are now 
members. 


Bloomington Local 276 


Bloomington Local 276 has increased its 
membership to 92 per cent of the teachin 
force of the city. Great interest and loya 
support are in evidence. The local has 
helped to raise the salaries of the teachers 
not having the maximum. 

The union is recognized by the Board of 
Education and its cooperation welcomed. 


Hazelton, Pa., Local 277 


The Hazelton Federation of Teachers, 
Local 277, is effecting a strong organiza- 
tion on the basis of a sound program. 
Committees are at work and membership 
is increasing. The interests of teachers on 
relief are being protected. 


New Rochelle Local 280 


The New Rochelle Federation of Teach- 
ers is working on the problems of new 
board members, the tax situation, and or- 
ganization. 

A number of open meetings of an edu- 
cational nature have been held. A series 
of teas have been given by members for 
prospective members. 


Salem Local 283 


The Salem Teachers Union, Local 283, 
has had remarkable success in the few 
weeks since it organized. It started few 
in numbers but this is no longer the case. 
Its present accomplishments merit the sup- 
port of every Salem teacher. 

A committee of the Salem Trades and 
Labor Council at the request of the union 
attended the budget meeting of the school 
board and asked for a salary increase for 
the teachers for next year. They also pre- 
sented a petition from the merchants of the 
town asking for the same. 

Anp Tuey Gor It. 






i 
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30 


* . 

Springfield, Ohio, Local 296 

The Springfield Federation of Teachers, 
Local 296, is justly proud of its banner 
record in charter signers. It has started 
off with 98% of the classroom teachers of 
the city as charter members. 

On May 26 it will act as host to the 
union teachers of the state at a meeting for 
the discussion of state and national educa- 
tional problems. Distinguished educators 
and labor leaders will address the meeting. 


Greater Cleveland Local 279 


The Cleveland School Board by a unan- 
imous vote recognized Local 279, American 
Federation of Teachers, affiliated with the 
American Federation of Labor, as the le- 

ally accredited organization to represent 
its members before the board. 

In a statement of principles presented 
to the board the union said: 

“The present salary schedule adopted in 
1920 has worked well and has been un- 
usually satisfactory and should be main- 
tained.” 

This cooperative note was carried even 
further in another section of the state- 
ment, which asserted that the union agreed 
with some members of the school board 
that teachers should receive the same treat- 
ment as bondholders. This clause followed 
one pointing out that about a million dol- 
lars had been diverted from the city’s op- 
erating fund for debt service. 

The statement ended with a plea for 
Federal aid for education. 

“The failure of banks and railroads can 
only be described as a catastrophe,” the 
clause said. “There are no words to de- 
pict the hopelessness of our people were 
the schools to collapse.” 


Organization in Florida 


Homer J. Odell, Duval County Local 
254, and Miss Bernice McRae, Baker 
County Local 262, were delegates from 


their respective locals to the Florida State 
Federation of Labor convention in Miami 
the week of April 9. For the first time 
teachers were seated as delegates in a 
Florida labor assembly. It was regarded 
as an important occasion by both labor 
and teachers. 

“glutions supporting the teachers’ 
efforts for a teacher tenure bill and teach- 
ers’ pension laws were adopted. 

The convention gave its unanimous en- 
dorsement to a teacher program seeking 
$7,500,000 from the next Legislature for 
schools. 

The high light of the convention, how- 
ever, which had state wide press notice, 
both news and editorial comment, was the 
recommendation of the education commit- 
tee for the appointment of a permanent 
committee with members in each of the 
organized cities to assist in the organizing 
of A. F. T. locals. 

The following A.P. dispatch is typical 
of the dozens of news stories published: 
LABOR BODY FAVORS 

UNIONIZING TEACHERS 


Miami, April 11, (AP).—Florida’s State 
Federation of Labor closed its thirty-fourth 
annual convention here today with definite 
plans drafted for missionary work toward 
the unionization of 8500 school teachers in 
the State. 

Committees are to be selected from local 
labor grouns to wage an intensive campaign 
to gain affiliation of the teachers with the 
American Federation of Teachers. 


The Florida locals and the American 
Federation of Teachers are happy and 
hopeful over this action. The work has 
already begun and results are in evidence. 





Stern Signs Agreement with 
Newspaper Guild 


Philadelphia Record Editorial Employes 
Win Closed Shop and 40-Hour Week 
J. David Stern, publisher of the 

Philadelphia Record, and also the 

New York Evening Post, signed a 

collective bargaining contract with the 

Newspaper Guild of Philadelphia and 

Camden, N. J. It is said to be the 

first contract to be negotiated between 

a newspaper publisher and a local 

unit of the Guild. 

The contract provides for recogni- 
tion of the guild, a closed shop with 
a check-off of guild dues, a five-day, 
forty-hour week for all editorial em- 
ployes earning less than $4,500 a 
year; two weeks’ annual vacation 
with pay, increased educational stand- 
ards for copy boys and apprentice re- 
porters, dismissal notices ranging 
from two weeks after six months’ 
employment to three months after 
nine years; a scale of wage mini- 
mums for the lower paid brackets; 
restoration of a 10 per cent wage re- 
duction sixty days after payment of 
the next regular dividend; establish- 
ment of a wage scale committee and 
an arbitration board, and provision 
for sickness and accident disability. 

Expressing the hope that eventu- 
ally the minimum pay for editorial 
workers in newspaper offices would 
be $5,000 a year, Mr. Stern said the 
signing of the contract “will raise the 
dignity of the profession of journal- 
ism.” 


Extension of Physical Education 
in Schools Urged as Check 


to Juvenile Crime 


Giving ill health as a cause of ju- 
venile delinquency, Miss Henrietta 
Additon, Deputy Police Commission- 
er, urged an extension of health edu- 
cation in public schools and in the 
community to prevent crime. 

Miss Additon, speaking to the As- 
sociations of Men and Women Teach- 
ers of Health Education in High 
Schools, told the gathering of 400 
members their work was an import- 
ant adjunct to the Police Department 
in correcting crime. She said police 
authorities regarded health as a pre- 
dominant factor in juvenile delin- 
quency. 

“We have found a sickly lot among 
those boys and girls who appear in 
the juvenile line-up at police head- 
quarters each day,” Miss Additon 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


said. ‘None ever partook of athletic 
activities; they know no games or 
sports; they know nothing about rhy- 
thm, such as is taught in dancing 
classes in the schools.” 

Miss Additon told of experiments 
made by a surgeon who had reached 
the conclusion that the removal of 
an appendix often acted as a crime 
preventive, and said her department 
had tested the theory and found it 
it workable. A small boy, charged 
with stealing, she said, complained of 
a pain in the side, and when his ap- 
pendix was removed “he actually did 
stop stealing.” 

Miss Additon said crime prevention 
among juveniles would be aided if the 
attention of the schools and _ social 
agencies were focused more on health 
conditions of youth. A community 
wide movement in health education, 
she said, would reduce juvenile delin- 
quency, as infant mortality has been 
decreased by health education. 

—New York Times. 





Who's Who in this Issue 


| 














James C. Adell, teacher of science, 
John Hay High School, Cleve- 
land, and organizer Greater Cleve- 
land Local 279. 

Myrtle Heard Higley, Ph.B., Uni- 
versity of Chicago, formerly head 
of the Social Science Department, 


East High School, Youngstown, 
Ohio. F 
Arnold Levitas, teacher, Industrial 
High Schools, New York City, 


member, New York Local 24. 
Henry Craig Seasholes, teacher, John 
Adams High School, Cleveland; 
member, Cleveland Local 279. 
Freeland G. Stecker, teacher, Lane 
Technical High School; treasurer, 
Chicago Men Teachers Union Lo- 
cal 2; former secretary-treasurer, 


A. F. of T. 





DELEGATES 

A. F. T. CONVENTION 
Chicago, Illinois 

June 25-29 


For transportation 
and hotel reservations 


information 


Apply to the National Office 


AMERICAN FEDERATION OF 
TEACHERS 


506 South Wabash Avenue 
Chicago, Illinois 











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RADIO BROADCASTS 


American Federation of Teachers 


WBBM—870 kc.—Tuesdays, 8:55 a.m. 


Men Teachers Union of Chicago 


WCFL—970 kc.—Mondays, 
Wednesdays, 9:45 p.m. 


Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 4:30 p.m. 


K YW—1020 kc.—Wednesdays, 5:00 p.m. 
Saturdays, 10:45 a.m. 


Federation of Women High School Teachers 
WCFL—970 kc.—Saturdays, 9:45 p.m. 


Tuesdays, 


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The programs over WCFL can be heard 
anywhere in the WORLD by tuning in on 
WX9AA, 6080 kc., the short wave station 
operated in connection with WCFL. 


LISTEN IN 


Every program is a worthwhile talk on the 
necessity and economy of public education. 




















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in the Catskills 
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Pioneer Youth Camp is a co-operative 
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VON ONONOOLON ODO ONO OVO OVO) 





—AASTZ ‘ i A mn iS 











1934 
PLACEMENT PROSPECTS 


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American Federation 


of Teachers 


506 South Wabash Avenue 
CHICAGO, ILL. 


Sp 


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 afhliate 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 bi-monthly 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.