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SCIENTIFIC 


FEW AND CHANGING 
WORK OPPORTUNITIES 


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Courtesy PUBLIC AFFAIRS Pamphlets 


Youth in a Changing World by Floyd W. Reeves 





Published by the AMERICAN FEDERATION of TEACHERS 








Jutide the Couer 





Bricklayer-mayor Trygve Nilsen of 
Oslo credited the labor party with 
stopping fascism in Norway. ... In 
his town revenue from city-owned 
movies helps to build homes for the 
aged and to develop art and cultural 
activities. Commissioner Arthur 
Potterton, Mayor Frank Hague’s chief 
aid, recently “welcomed” the first con- 
vention of a CIO union in Jersey City. 

Non-union Boston Symphony Or- 
chestra was replaced by the unionized 
New York Philharmonic Orchestra at 
the music festival of the American So- 
ciety of Composers, Authors and Pub- 
lishers ... under the will of Col. Henry 
Lee Higginson, who founded the Bos 
ton orchestra, his endowment may be 
used only so long as the orchestra re- 
mains non-union, ... Higginson was a 
director of AT&T and General Electric. 

* 7 7 

If you’re interested, 97 U. S. repre- 
sentatives voted for the Townsend old- 
age pension bill last June—55 Repub 
licans, 40 Democrats and a Progressive 
and a Farmer-Laborite. The Co- 
operative Book Club did $16,341 worth 
of business the first five months of ’39 
with the new wholesale department out 
stripping the retail business ... eighteen 
governors signed the recent American 
Declaration of Tolerance and Equality. 
... John Lewis’ daughter has “adopted” 
a 10-year-old Spanish orphan boy 
the New Republic now earries the Book 
and Magazine Guild (CIO) label on its 
cover. Pietro di Donato, author of 
the fast-selling Christ in Concrete, is, 
appropriately enough, a member of the 
bricklayers’ union. 

* . * 

The Federal Trade Commission has 
just issued a 13-page complaint against 
Hearst Magazines Ine. and Good House- 
keeping for operating a phoney system 
of “guarantys” and “seals of approval” 

the report rips the testing scope 
of the Good Housekeeping Institute. 
.. + Income tax dodgers might well look 
to the record of the sharecroppers and 
tenants who borrowed government 
money to purchase their own farms. . 
according to the Farm Security Admin- 
istration although only $103,033 was 
due, as of March 31, 1939, the borrow- 
ers had already paid back $138,978. 

* * * 

The American Federation of Radio 
Actors at its annual convention re- 
elected President Eddie Cantor, Vice 
President Lawrence Tibbett and Treas 
urer George Heller and opposed any 
change in the Wagner Labor Act. 
Gov. Julius Heil’s legislature recently 
voted a 2e tax on cigarettes and voted 
down a tax on cigars costing 10¢ or more 

the Governor smokes 50e Corona- 
Coronas. ... Tom Girdler’s pay last year 
was $160,416. .. . In 1937 the average 


income of the U. 8, citizen was $9547, 
and in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas 
and South Carolina the figure was less 
than half that much. ... John Connolly, 
WPA worker who refused to strike when 
300 others walked off the job, was 
praised and promised a raise... it never 
came through because John was laid 
off under the new 18-month regulation. 
7 7 is 

The Free Press: A survey by “For- 
tune’ magazine indicates that people 
read, but don’t believe, their news- 
papers. The following table is in answer 
to the question, Do you think publish- 
ers soft-pedal news unfavorable to: 


Yes No 
Friendly politicians ..... 65.8% 148% 
Friends of the publisher. .63.3% 14.3% 
Big advertisers ......... 60.6% 18.5% 
Business in general...... 50.1% 29.6% 
EOe GIES 2c ccescscce 41.5% 31.8% 


The rest of the answers were divided 
among those who said they did not know 
and similar non-commital answers. 

While most people think the pub- 
lisher can be “reached,” the poll showed, 
they have a much higher regard for the 
publisher’s hirelings. If anybody cor- 
rupts them it’s the publisher. 

The question asked was whether re- 
porters’ impartiality is affected by: 

Don’t 
Yes No know 
Membership in la- 

bor unions ....34.6% 

Fear of the boss. .55.6% 


31.3% 32.7% 


20.9% 20.8% 


In other words, a clear majority 
thought that fear of the boss affected 
the impartiality of the reporters while 
an equally clear minority thought mem- 
bership in labor unions affected the re- 
porters’ viewpoint. Most of them didn’t 
know or were sure that such union mem. 
bership did not so influence the reporter. 

George E. Sokolsky was paid $28,- 
599.47 by the Iron and Steel Institute 
at the same time that he was writing 
(many times on industrial disputes) his 
column for the Herald Tribune Syndi- 
eate. ... Judge H. G. Sutton stopped 
the King County commissioners from 
granting the county printing contract to 
the Washington New Dealer, official 
paper of the Washington Commonwealth 
Federation, a strong liberal group in the 
state of Washington. Mark Starr, 
educational director of the ILGWU, told 
the League of Women Voters recently 
that organized labor receives unfair pub- 
licity in newspapers because it cannot 
spend $4,000,000 in ads. ... The Interna- 
tional Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 
(AFL) has filed suit against the Mount 
Vernon Daily Argus for $850,000 because 
of a slanderous story about the union. 

President Roosevelt recently de- 
nounced the United Press as having been 
“guilty of falsification of the actual 
facts” ...the New York Times printed 
160,000 words on the visit of the King 
and Queen of England to the U. 8S, and 
000 words (or close to it) on the Guild- 
Times NLRB case. 

. * * 

Reports substantiating the charge 
that “one-third of the American people 
is ill-housed, ill-clothed and ill-fed” con- 
tinue to come in as studies are published 
by the Works Projects Administration, 
the Federal Trade Commission, the Tem- 

(Continued on Page $1) 





Teach Democracy.” 


NEA meetings in San Francisco. . 


about schools for children. . 


Contributors to This Issue 


Dr. George Counts (Local 537), the new national president of the American 
Federation of Teachers, has just written a pamphlet called “The Schools Can 
Newly appointed head of the American Youth Com- 
mission and head of the Adviscry Committee on Education, Dr. Floyd Reeves 
(Loeal 259), gave “Youth in a Changing World” as a speech at one of the 
. . James Mitchell formerly taught at the 
Francis Parker School in Chicago and is now working for the Progressive Educa- 
tion Association on their Commission on Human Relations. He was a member 
of Local 442 and is probably now a member of Local 5. . 
Attorney General of the United States. . 
Trends and National Resources (published by the National Resources Committee), 
Bernard Stern is a lecturer in anthropology at Columbia University and the 
editor of The Family, a Progressive Education Association publication. 
Howard Lane (North Shore College Teachers Union 635) is a member of the 
faculty of the School of Education, Northwestern University, and is concerned 
.. F. D. Roosevelt is President of the United States. 
This is an edited version of the talk which he gave to the Conference on Children 
in a Democracy, the proceedings of which have been published by the Govern- 
ment Printing Office and can be obtained for 20 cents. 
New York College Teachers Union, Alonzo Myers here gives us the final 
installment of his complete review of the Regents 


. . Frank Murphy is 
. - One of the editors of Technological 


President of the 


’ Inquiry Report. We hope 











to be able to print some comments on the review included in this issue in our 
November issue. Lillian Herstein is a long-time member of the AFT 
(Local 1), a member of the executive board of the Chicago Federation of Labor 
and, incidentally, is in charge of lecturers for the junior colleges in Chicago. 
...A member of Local 438, Ohio State University, Norman Woelfel is a former 
managing editor of the Social Frontier. . . . George T. Guernsey is editor of the 
AMERICAN TEACHER. 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


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™ AMERICAN TEACHER 


Published by The American Federation of Teachers 





VOLUME XXIV 


OCTOBER, 1939 


NUMBER 2 








IN THIS ISSUE 


EP 6. cig he eineed aa eenae’ Public Affairs Committee 
Youth in a Changing World............ Floyd W. Reeves 6 
Films for Human Relations............ James P. Mitchell 11 
The Meaning of Civil Liberty........ ....Frank Murphy 13 
Culture in a Democratic Society......... Bernard J. Stern 16 
Schools for Tomorrow’s Children........ Howard A. Lane 18 
Children in a Democracy.......... Franklin D. Roosevelt 19 
DEPARTMENTS 
ee ee a Re George T. Guernsey 2 
EEF OET EC OCC Ce CEE EEC OE FCC PEE Oe 2 
eet TURRTNEEG ones sesieedececectacennasvavconns 3 
The President’s Page, Our Job for the Current 
Re re ore rn ee ee George 8S. Counts 5 
ee i oe cia wis Dik oe we Gedo VOSS Oe eee 22 


Among the New Books: 
The Changing Elementary School, Education for Amer- 
EE EEE Se ee eee ee Alonzo F. Myers 24 
Labor Problems and the American Scene 
i(veivt. keale wie Cuvdvee kobenece eee Lillian Herstein 
Heroes of Thought .................Norman Woelfel 
Se ne SAD og ee emma aL ba Mice Sa a a 
Drawings by Chandler Montgomery 


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no 19 bo 


THE EDITORS of the American Teacner request that no material be 
reprinted fre his magazine without an accompanying credit line stating 
the source an issue in which such material appeared. 


————-<>>__ —_ 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 
GrorGE T. GUERNSEY, Editor 


ENTERED as second class matter January 3, 1939. at the post office at 
Chicago, Illinois, under the act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance for mailing 
at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of February 28, 
1925. authorized November 3, 1926. 

SUBSCRIPTION: $2.50 for the year—Foreign $2.60—Single copies, 35c. 
Published monthly except June, July and August. at 506 S. Wabash Ave., 
Chicago, Il]. Subscribers are requested to give prompt notice of changes of 
address. Remittances should be made in postal or express money orders, 


draft, stamps, or check. 
SP 43 








—— Saturday Evening Post, traditional enemy of 
organized labor (against whom the Typographical 
Union is conducting a boycott) and everything pro- 
gressive including the public schools, has seen fit to 
publish an attack on the American Federation of 
g. A week later there 
‘smear’’ of the Railway Medi- 


Teachers by Benjamin Stolber 
appeared in the Post a‘ 
ations Board and on September 16 the National Labor 
Relations Board was the victim. 

Delegates to the 1938 convention can tell you that 
there was no anti-Semitic campaign against Lillian 
Herstein when she ran for national president. The 
charges against the AMERICAN TEACHER are interesting 
in the light of the 23-page report of comments on the 
magazine from outstanding educators and AFT Locals 
which was distributed at the 1939 national convention. 
Those who know of the untiring devotion of Jerome 
Davis to the cause of better education in America 


OCTOBER, 1939 


will be happy to know that he has engaged the firm of 
Weil, Gotshal, and Manges of New York City to enter 
a libel suit against the Post. 

But why, some may ask, did the Post attack the 
Union ? ; 

One might ask in answer, has the AFT taken the 
lead in exposing the attacks on school budgets coming 
from groups which the Saturday Evening Post repre- 
sents? Does the Post fear socially-minded teachers 
who help their students to think critically about the 
world in which they live? Is the Teachers Union 
growing rapidly and becoming the most effective force 
for Education for Democracy—Democracy in Educa- 
tion in America? 

The answer to all these questions which help to ex- 
plain the Post’s attack is simply, ‘‘ Yes.’’ 

As Secretary-Treasurer I. R. Kuenzli has already 
pointed out in a letter to all Locals, ‘‘This is a typical 
method which has been used many times in local and 
state situations, but never before have we had sufficient 
power to warrant an attack from such a journal as the 
Saturday Evening Post. This is the greatest recogni- 
tion of prestige and power which has ever come to the 
American Federation of Teachers. Let us accept the 
challenge and move forward as the real power our 


opponents recognize us to be.’’ 


x * 


wwe of certain technical difficulties in making 
up the AMERICAN TEACHER this month an official 
communication from Mary Foley Grossman, national 
legislative representative, is published on page 23 of 
this issue. We call it to your attention because it deals 
with a program for keeping America out of war. 


x * * 


IS GENERALLY RECOGNIZED that the maintenance of 
academic freedom faces a most critical test in the 
next few years. There are some indications that 
developments as extreme as those encountered dur- 
ing the World War and the frenzied ‘twenties may 
be expected. In some quarters the present European 
war is motivating a reappearance of the superpa- 
triotism which led to the Lusk raids. Whether or 
not the war continues, the preparations of reaction- 
aries in the United States for the 1940 elections may 
lead to abridgements of teacher freedom. 

That these lugubrious predictions are not simply 








guesses is suggested by an examination of the recent 
history of abridgements of academic freedom. In 
its report for 1938, the Academic Freedom Commit- 
tee of the AAUP indicates that its work was more 
extensive for that year than for any in the past five. 
In 1938 our own Academic Freedom Committee han- 
dled almost twice as many cases as in the preceding 
year; furthermore in a number of states it encoun- 
tered cases of mass dismissal. In Goose Creek, Tex., 
thirty-one teachers were dismissed in a body in vio- 
lation of academic freedom; in Jacksonville, Fla., 
forty teachers were dismissed for union efforts to 
secure passage of a tenure law. 


The handling of cases of this type, which unfor- 
tunately are the prototype of cases likely to arise 
in a period of hysteria, poses two problems. To a 
large extent the AFT has solved the problem of 
financing activities aimed at the reinstatement of 
ousted teachers. The National Defense Fund, which 
has been built up by setting aside one cent per mem. 
ber per month from per capita, has made it possible 
to assist given locals in the solution of financial prob- 
lems arising in connection with academic-freedom 
eases. However, no progress has as yet been made 
in solving the second problem, which bids fair to 
become even more important than the first. We 
refer to the problem of helping ousted teachers sus- 
tain themselves during the period in which a fight 
for reinstatement is being waged. 


Some recent campaigns to reinstate ousted teachers 
have dragged on for several years. The successful 
efforts to reinstate Messrs. Cook and Wolf in Chicago 
Teachers College took more than seventeen months. 
Professor Keeney’s reinstatement followed almost 
three years of activity. How long it will take to 
secure the reinstatement of the Goose Creek teachers 
and the Jacksonville teachers is difficult to say. It 
is to be noted that in the case of the Jacksonville 
teachers the average length of service is ten years; 
one teacher has served for more than thirty years; 
ten have served for more than twenty years. As in 
the Goose Creek situation, most of the teachers are 
men and women with families; some of them have 
little to fall back on. Since the opening of the cur- 
rent semester, a number of new cases have developed 
at Montana State University and the president of 
the New Jersey State Federation of Teachers has 
been dismissed. Among the five men threatened with 
dismissal at Montana are two heads of departments 
and a dean, all with long years of service behind 
them. The president of the New Jersey State Fed- 
eration of Teachers is a World War veteran and the 
father of five children. 

Making provision to help sustain teachers who 
have been ousted on improper grounds or who are 
threatened with dismissal is not a matter of senti- 
mentality or humanitarianism. It is a fundamental 


aspect of the proper defense of academic freedom. 
In emergency periods such as the present, and in 
periods of hysteria, a sustaining fund is to the de- 
fense of academic freedom what a strike fund is 
to the defense of the workers’ right to unionize. 
At the present time the National Defense Fund 
is much too small to be used as a sustaining fund; 
furthermore it is unlikely that the fund will ever 
grow to such proportion as to allow for its use as 
a sustaining fund. The national budget is so tied 
up at present as not to permit the creation of such 
a fund. Teachers are therefore urged to initiate 
discussions of the best means for establishing a sus- 
taining fund and to forward the results of such dis- 
eussions to the National Academic Freedom Com- 
In the eyes of the Committee no problem is 
A, >. 


mittee. 
of more immediate significance. 


x * * 


HIS ISSUE is the second number of Volume XXIV 
Fe the AmMerIcAN TEAcHER. During the year the 
American Federation of Teachers will publish eight 
issues of the AMERICAN TEACHER in magazine form 
and an undetermined number of newspapers which 
will be issued as Part II. In the main, the newspapers 
will carry the news of what Locals are doing and short 
articles dealing with problems which confront the 
AFT, while the magazine will carry the more general 
educational articles. 

We have some 20,000 copies of the September issue 
of the magazine, a sixteen-page report of the national 
convention, which we think should be distributed as 
widely as possible. Copies will be sold at the rate of 
$8.00 per 1,000, $4.50 per 500 and a penny apiece. 
We have already received an order from one member 
of the AFT for twenty-five copies which she is plan- 
ning to use as Christmas cards. We would like to 
suggest that if each member of the Teachers Union 
would order and mail out ten copies, we would have 
in the hands of the non-Union teachers 300,000 effec- 
tive replies to the Saturday Evening Post and all other 
reactionary interests who are today deliberately mis- 
interpreting the AFT to the public. 

All copy for the November issue of the magazine 
must be in our hands by November 1. Hereafter all 
copy will be due the twenty-seventh of the previous 
month. 

We are planning both a newspaper and a magazine 
for November and would appreciate as much Local 
news as possible. The best answer to attacks on the 
Teachers Union is the story of the work of each Local. 
While last year we received more news from Locals 
than ever before, at least half of the Locals never 
sent in any news. We know that these Locals are 
active and we hope that they will furnish us materail 
for the AMERICAN TEACHER. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





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The President's Page 





Our Job for the Current Year 


s ouR FEDERATION begins its twenty-fourth year 


we live in fear of a second world war. The 

press, the radio, our conversation and our 
thoughts are filled with the bitter and tragic struggle 
now unfolding in the Old World. Yet, even though 
Poland-has been destroyed by overwhelming German 
might, even though Soviet armies have shared in this 
conquest and even though Britain and France have 
declared war upon the Third Reich, the issue of war 
and peace among the great powers is still undecided. 
The developments in the chancellories of Europe and 
Asia remain far more important than the events of 
the battlefield. But if the clash of armies should 
cease altogether, the resulting condition would searce- 
ly be one of peace. That the present rulers of the 
world are capable or desirous of laying the founda- 
tions of international justice and order seems highly 
doubtful. We may therefore assume that during the 
coming year the struggle abroad will continue to 
east its dark shadow over our lives. 

This struggle, whatever its character or outcome, is 
freighted with the gravest consequences for our peo- 
ple. The future of our nation is deeply involved in 
its fortunes. If air power should prove superior to 
sea power, if the British and French empires should 
pass into dissolution, if totalitarianism in any form 
should come to rule the Old World, we would be pro- 
foundly affected. Of this there can be no doubt. We 
might be driven in self-defense to adopt the totali- 
tarian pattern of life and thought—to arm to the 
teeth, to become thoroughly militarized, to trample 
upon civil liberties and human rights, to convert a 
political faction into a holy order, to deify as a leader 
some man of boundless ambition, some person of nar- 
row and brutish mind. We cannot and we will not 
remain indifferent. Indeed, already in our hearts 
we have taken sides in the struggle. It could not be 
otherwise. 

We in the American Federation of Teachers are 
American citizens. Being jealous of our civic rights 
we shall, like other citizens, think, feel and act aceord- 
ing to the dictates of conscience. Also we are teach- 
ers. And as teachers, charged with the heavy respon- 
sibility of rearing the young in the ways of democracy, 
we are under obligation to be sensitive above others to 
the fate of our hard-won heritage of popular justice 
and freedom. Finally, we are members of a great 
fellowship which, being fully and frankly dedicated 


OCTOBER, 1939 


to the defense and advancement of democracy, is re- 
cruited inevitably from the most progressive ranks of 
the profession. All of these considerations make cer- 
tain among us a deep concern over the course of inter- 
national events. 

But there is a danger to the Federation here. We 
might easily dissipate our energies over the immediate 
issues of the world struggle. Through absorption in 
the controversies already raging and of others certain 
to come, we might find ourselves so hopelessly and 
bitterly divided that our work in the field of our 
special responsibility would be rendered ineffective. 
This responsibility is at least threefold: first, we must 
defend and improve public education; second, we 
must keep our minds focussed on the domestic tesks 
and problems of our democracy; and third, we must 
strive to keep the ‘‘lamps of reason’’ burning in the 
world and to prepare for the peace that is to come 
after the cannon have ceased their firing and the war 
planes have returned to their hangars. 

Our first responsibility is to defend and improve 
public education. Regardless of wars and rumors of 
wars, children come into the world and grow to ma- 
turity. The welfare of our society requires that these 
children be not neglected, that they receive the finest 
care we can give them, that they be prepared as fully 
as possible to discharge the increasingly arduous du- 
ties of citizenship. We must therefore resist with all 
our power every effort to mutilate the educational 
budget, every effort to close the doors of the school, 
to rob children of their cultural birthright, to reduce 
either the physical or the spiritual stature of our 
people. With equal determination we must resist 
every attempt on the part of reactionary or unenlight- 
ened forces to close the doors of the school intellectu- 
ally, to regiment the minds of teachers and children, 
to introduce the spirit and methods of totalitarianism 
into American public education. More than that, we 
must devote ourselves earnestly and without ceasing 
to the improvement of the curriculum, the methods of 
instruction and the patterns of administration em- 
ployed in our schools. We must take with utter seri- 
ousness and apply with greatest wisdom our tradi- 
tional slogan: Democracy in Education—Education 
for Democracy. 

Our second responsibility is to keep our minds fo- 
cussed on the domestic tasks and problems of our 
democracy. We know that the rise of dictatorships in 








the contemporary world and the overthrow of free 
institutions are directly traceable to the injustices of 
the social order, the bitter frustration of individuals 
and classes, the fears and anxieties generated by wide- 
spread insecurity, uncertainty and misery. Certainly 
a major threat to our democracy today is that the at- 
tention of our people will be entirely deflected from 
the domestic to the international situation, from eco- 
nomic reform at home to the waging of war abroad. 
If this should actually occur, we would find ourselves 
at the end of the struggle confronted with the current 
problems in a more advanced and dangerous stage. No 
people in the world as yet has mastered the forces and 
* factors released by the advance of science and tech- 
nology. And no people will be at peace with itself 
and with others until it has done so. We must en- 
deavor to keep this task perpetually before the minds 
of our citizens. 

Our third responsibility is to guard the great heri- 
tage of reason and to prepare for the peace. If the 


present war becomes full-blown, it will generate in all 
probability a spirit of hatred and savagery more in- 
tense and uncompromising than that developed in the 
last war. Yet, if such a spirit should dominate the 
peace, mankind would be but preparing the way for a 
yet more terrifying and debasing catastrophe for a 
later generation. Becayse of our detachment from 
the Old World, because of our descent from the 
various peoples engaged in the conflict, and because 
of our peculiar identification historically with the lib- 
eral and humane tradition of Western Europe, we 
would seem to be especially fitted to bring both reason 
and good will to bear upon the problem of shaping 
the peace. Particularly should we of the Federation 
strive through our own organs and through all the 
agencies of public enlightment in America to prepare 
the way for a just and generous settlement. If we 
eannot bring justice into the world, we shall ourselves 
become either the victims or the agents of injustice. 
GroraE S. Counts. 


Youth in a Changing World 


@ FLOYD W. REEVES 


HE Topic, ‘‘ Youth in a Changing World,’’ would 
readily lend itself to development along a num- 
ber of different lines. Since I cannot discuss 
all of the complex problems that now beset youth, 
I shall confine myself to certain issues which are 
related most directly to the increase in the age at 
which young people are able to enter gainful em- 
ployment. In discussing these issues, I should like 
to make it clear that I am presenting my personal 
views and not speaking either for the President’s 
Advisory Committee on Education or the American 
Youth Commission, although I shall have oceasion to 
refer to the work of both of these agencies. 

The American Youth Commission is actively en- 
gaged in formulating a report but has not as yet 
adopted many recommendations. Part of the pur- 
pose of this article is to present issues on which the 
Commission earnestly desires to secure further en- 
lightenment in order that it may prepare sound 
recommendations. 

Some of these issues were considered by the Presi- 
dent’s Advisory Committee on Education in its report 
last year. At that time, however, the Committee 
was able to deal with the problems only in part. Its 
recommendations in the field of youth service were 
largely designed for immediate application during 
a period of active experimentation with public serv- 


6 


ices for youth throughout the country. 

In the recent years of general unemployment, it 
has only slowly come to be realized that there is a 
special problem of yoyth unemployment. Unem- 
ployed young people are usually not segregated in 
the general statistics of unemployment. Even after 
educators, social workers and others in close con- 
tact with youth began to suspect that a dispropor- 
tionate number of young people were unemployed, 
it was some time before that fact could be proved to 
the satisfaction of skeptics. 

Definite proof was furnished by the 1937 Census 
of Unemployment. That census happened to be taken 
almost at the peak of business activity following 
the worst years of the depression, but it found almost 
11,000,000 workers who were wholly unemployed 
except for emergency work. Of the 11,000,000 almost 
4,000,006 were between the ages of fifteen and twenty- 
four inclusive. The unemployment rate was over 40 
per cent for the available workers between fifteen and 
twenty, although under 20 per cent for every age 
group above twenty-five. No age group, even that 
comprising adults over fifty-five, is as difficult to place 
as the group from fifteen to twenty, according to the 
records of the United States Employment Service. 

This problem of unemployed out-of-school youth 
has come upon us rather suddenly in recent years. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





EE 

















In a sense, however, it merely parallels a longer 
development with which we are all familiar. I refer 
to the great increase in the enrollment of young 
people in the schools, particularly the high schools. 

Many forces have been 
at work to increase the en- 
rollment of youth in school. 
Probably the most power- 
ful has been the changing 
character of the economic 
life of the nation. The oc- 
cupations which were and 
are easiest to enter at an 
early age, such as farming, 
have declined in relative 
importance. An increasing 
share of all employment is 
controlled by large indus- 
trial and commercial or- 
ganizations. For many 
years large industry has 





become progressively less 
willing to employ inexperienced young people below 
the age of eighteen or twenty. 

Until about 1930, the trend toward reduced em- 
ployment of youth in industry was counterbalanced 
by the enrollment of more youth in the schools. With 
the drastic reduction in employment which has taken 
place since 1930, the schools have been compelled 
to accept several million additional pupils who in 
previous years would not have continued in school. 
In spite of these increased enrollments, we have 
had in addition the piling up of unemployed out-of- 
school youth which has become so conspicuous. 

For convenience in discussing the situation which 
now prevails, we may distinguish four groups of 
youth, two of them in school and two out of school. 

The first in-school group consists of the youth 
who appear to be gaining some profit from formal 
instruction. According to the academic standards 
which are current, they are succeeding in their schoo] 
activities. 

The second in-school group consists of those for 
whom the school is performing not much more than 
a custodial function. These are the youth who lack 
interest or aptitude for the present program, par- 
ticularly for the formal instructional activities of 
the school. 

The first out-of-school group consists of the youth 
who are partially or wholly unemployed, or are 
employed in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the 
National Youth Administration, the Works Progress 
Administration or in other emergency work programs. 

The second out-of-school group consists of the 
youth who have full-time employment or other normal 
occupations such as homemaking. 

The employed youth have many problems and 


OCTOBER, 1939 


needs. Some of the jobs are very precarious. The 
younger employed youth especially are likely to 
slip back at any time into the unemployed group. 
Some of the jobs even though full-time do not pay 
an adult wage, which may be defined for presert 
purposes as a wage high enough to permit self- 
maintenance, marriage and the establishment of a 
home away from the parental roof. Almost all of 
the employed youth need further training if they 
are to advance. But most of the members of this 
group of youth have substantially completed the 
major transition from the dependency of childhood 
to membership in the working community on an 
adult basis. 

The in-school youth who appear to be profiting 
from their academic school activities also have many 
problems ‘and needs. The school program may be 
much too narrow to give the breadth of training 
needed under modern conditions. The content of 
the courses of study, the methods of instruction, the 
entire curriculum, may be archaic. The provision 
for school health and recreational services may be 
inadequate. The services of guidance and counsel- 
ing are almost certain to be inadequate. But for the 
time being, the successful in-school youth are being 
eared for by a going social institution which has been 
developed over the years primarily for youth of the 
type who are successful in the academic environment. 

The most acute problems are presented by the 
other two groups, the unsuccessful in-school youth 
and the unemployed out-of-school youth. On the 
one hand we have a large group of youth who find 
the discipline of the school irksome, who are unable 
or unwilling to benefit significantly from the type 
of full-time curriculum which is generally prevalent, 
yet who stay on in the school unless compelled to 
leave. Every school administrator is familiar with 
this type of pupil. 

On the other hand, we 
have the even larger group 
of unemployed youth who 
have left the school behind 
them. Possibly in half the 
cases these youth have 
withdrawn without having 
completed even the eighth 
grade. Some of them have 
dropped out for purely eco- 
nomic reasons, some be- 
cause schools, particularly 
high schools, were not ac- 
cessible to them, others be- 
cause they failed to find 
interest or benefit in the 





courses of study which were made available to them, 
and at least a few because they rebelled completely 
at the whole attitude and atmosphere of the school 








as they experienced it in their communities. 

Some years ago a committee of the Department of 
Secondary-School Principals under the chairmanship 
of Thomas L. Briggs gave extensive consideration 
to the problem of the youth who stay on in school 
even though the present type of high school is noi 
well adapted to their needs. The committee ha‘ 
been charged with the preparation of the well-known 
report entitled ‘‘Issues of Secondary Education. 
The Committee stated : 

Of the pupils who have 
been added to the enroll- 
ment since 1930 and of the 
increasing numbers who are 
likely to be added in the 
future, the majority doubt- 
less consist of boys and girls 
who possess obvious ability 
to profit by continued school- 
ing. These are the pupils 
whose earlier elimination 
was a cause for serious con- 
cern, ... But a very consid- 
erable proportion of the new 
enrollment is comprised of 
pupils of a different type— 
boys and girls who are al- 
most mature physically, who 
are normal mentally in the 
sense that they are quite 
capable of holding their own 
with the ordinary adult, but 
who are unable or unwilling 
to deal successfully with 
continued study under the conditions which even the best 
secondary schools impose. The fact that many of these 
pupils would far rather be out of school at work than in 
schoo] .. . makes their problem the more difficult of solu- 





0m... 

The Committee stressed the desirability of adapt- 
ing the schools to the pupils. It indicated some doubt 
as to whether this could be done completely and 
stated flatly: 

The secondary school ought not to be thought of as 
providing the sole means of education, nor even in every 
instance the best means of education, for boys and girls 
who have completed the work of the elementary grades. 


The Committee also had in mind the problem of 
the boys and girls who have not completed even the 
elementary grades but who are in fact out of school, 
above the age of compulsory attendance and for 
practical purposes almost entirely beyond the reach 
of the school. 

In the end the Committee came to this conclusion: 

Social changes have brought the United States to a 
place at which the conservation of youth can no longer 
be left to random effort or to individual initiative ... 
And the fact that the schools cannot undertake the 
necessary conservation without seriously impairing their 
educational efficiency leaves no wise course open but to 
establish some separate organization specially entrusted 
with the task.... 

The need of a non-school agency which will assume 
responsibility for the oversight of adolescents who are 
not in school is urgent. As soon as such an agency can be 


established school authorities should assume responsibility 

for tranferring to its supervision all pupils whose needs 

are likely to be better served by out-of-school activities 
than by continued schooling. 

Whatever else may be said about this proposal, 
[ submit that it was a statement of major importance 
coming as it did from a group of educators in the 
year 1936. The Committee outlined the nature and 
functions of the new supervisory agency which it 
had in mind. Although the agency was referred to 
specifically as a ‘‘non-school’’ agency, it was to be 
established as a part of the state educational depart- 
ment. The major responsibilities to be assigned to 
this agency were to supervise the activities of boys 
and girls who could find ways to occupy themselves 
and to provide appropriate work for those who could 
not. The agency was to encourage and stimulate 
educational interests and on occasion to recommend 
readmittance to the schools when that seemed desir- 
able. It was, in other words, to be a general social 
welfare agency for youth, distinct from but supple- 
mentary to the school. 

About the time the Briggs Committee was com- 
pleting its report, the American Youth Commission 
was organized and began its work. It commissioned 
Professor Harl R. Douglass, then of the University of 
Minnesota, to prepare recommendations concerning 
secondary education. His report to the Commission 
was published in 1937 and has since been widely 
read. ° 

Professor Douglass also pointed out that it is not 
certain that we can develop a full-time school pro- 
gram that would interest the type of boy or girl 
who does not now continue in school beyond the 
age of sixteen. He stated: 

It is questionable if any life made up chiefly of educa- 
tional activities which does not provide for work expe- 
riences can be made to appeal to young people whom 
nature and social tradition have ripened and made ready 
for entrance into normal adulthood. 

He therefore proposed that instead of seeking 
universal full-time school attendance to the age of 
eighteen, we should promote full-time attendance 
until age sixteen and half-time attendance until 
twenty or twenty-one. 

If this proposal were to be adopted, the question 
would then arise as to what should be done with the 
other half of the young persons’ time. Professor 
Douglass made a number of proposals for experi- 
mentation but was evidently not completely con- 
vineed of the efficacy of any one of them for general 
adoption. He referred to the non-school work super- 
visory agency proposed by the Briggs Committee 
as a subject worthy of further study and endorsed it 
for trial on a limited and experimental basis. He 
appeared to be most favorable to a plan of work and 
study based on the cooperation of private employers 
with the schools, to the extent that such cooperation 
could be secured. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








The so-called cooperative plan, under which pupils 
in secondary schools and higher institutions divide 
their time in equal periods between school and em- 
ployment is not new. It has been used on a limited 
scale ever since the pioneering work of the Univer- 
sity of Cincinnati many years ago. 

Where competently administered the plan has 
worked well. Anyone who has first-hand knowledge 
of the operations of the cooperative plan will agree, 
I believe, that the student-workers can obtain benefits 
from it which are exceedingly difficult to provide in 
any other way. 

The transition from full-time school to full-time 
work is facilitated ; the young person arrives at oceu- 
pational maturity much more rapidly. In many 
eases there is even a revived interest in formal educa- 
tion because the work experience serves to give 
vitality to intellectual interests which had not pre- 
viously been awakened. 

The fact remains, however, that the cooperative 
plan of organization is spreading only slowly. This 
may be due in part to the inertia of the educational 
system, but experience suggests that there are 
definite limitations on the degree to which the co- 
operative plan can or should be widely adopted. 

In most cases employers find it expensive to ar- 
range a special working schedule for the benefit 
of inexperienced young workers. The result is a 
tendency to eut below normal wage rates, followed 
by difficulty in determining a wage rate which may 
be considered fair under all the cireumstances even 
if all concerned are anxious to act in good faith. 

Because of these difficulties, experience has led 
many to believe that the only safe rule is to insist 
that the cooperative stu- 
dent-worker be regarded as 
a normal worker and be 
paid the normal wage rate 
for other workers of sim- 
ilar experience. When this 
is done, and it is done suc- 
cessfully in many instances, 
employers not unreason- 
ably expect the school to 
furnish them with selected 
students, students whose 





other qualities will compen- 
sate in part for their lack 
of experience and for the 
difficulty of organizing 
work for part-time workers. 
The plan then becomes a 
device for providing excep- 





The cooperative plan is particularly well adapted 
to the needs of young people who have completed 
the eleventh or twelfth grade but who are lacking in 
maturity from an employment standpoint. In my 
opinion, the work of the twelfth, thirteenth, and 
fourteenth grades, in other words the junior college 
and technical institute level, should increasingly be 
organized and offered on a part-time basis. This 
would be of great benefit not only to young people 
who ean obtain part-time employment with cooperat- 
ing employers, but also to many others, especially 
in rural areas, who can profitably give an increasing 
amount of their time to the work of the farm and 
the home without ceasing all attendance at school. 

If the work-study. plan is a good thing but the 
cooperation of private employers cannot be secured 
sufficiently to permit its general extension, and it 
appears that such is the case, then it becomes neces- 
sary to consider the extent to which work may be 
provided advantageously to youth under public 
auspices. 

The Civilian Conservation Corps was the first im- 
portant attempt in this country to set up a public 
agency to provide work especially for young people. 
At first it was thought of purely as a work program, 
rather than a work-study program. It soon became 
evident, however, that the educational needs of the 
enrollees were very great. It was found that 84 per 
cent of them had not completed high school, 44 
per cent had not completed the elementary grades 
and many were practically illiterate. All of them 
were presumably above the age of compulsory school 
attendance in their respective states. Many had been 
eliminated or had withdrawn from school some years 
before their enrollment in the CCC camps. As a 
whole, the group consisted of young men who were 
receiving no attention from the public schools at the 
time of their enrollment. In most cases they were 
members of families which were receiving some super- 
vision from social-welfare agencies. : 

In spite of the difficulties of providing an eduea- 
tional program for such a group, the need was so 
imperative that the Corps was forced to undertake 
that task. The comprehensive study of the Corps 
which is now being carried on by the American Youth 
Commission indicates that the educational program 
in the camps has made great progress during the 
five yea.’s of its existence. It is apparent, however, 
that it can and should be improved still further. An 
experimental program designed to test various pos- 
sible lines of improvement is now being carried out 
in a number of the camps through the cooperation 
of the American Youth Commission and the Corps. 


tional opportunities for young people who would be 
better than average employment risks under any plan. 
It does not provide for the youth with average or 
poorer than average ability. 


In some ways the Civilian Conservation Corps is 
a great achievement. It may be desirable that it 
become either a permanent institution or that its | 
major functions be performed permanently by some 


OCTOBER, 1939 9 











other public agency. There are marked limitations, 
however, on the extent to which the Civilian Con- 
servation Corps can provide a general solution for 
the problems of the entire group of young people 
with which this address is concerned. In the first 
place, enrollment in the Corps is limited to men. It 
provides no solution for the young women who make 
up the other half of the youth group. In the second 
place, the fact that during the period of enrollment 
the enrollees are away from their home community 
means that they necessarily lose contact with employ- 
ment opportunities as well as with the schools and 
other social agencies of their home community. 

Camps of the CCC type would appear to have value 
primarily for the accomplishment of work on the 
public domain and for the rehabilitation of young 
men who are particularly in need of the type of 
experience they receive in camp. In my opinion these 
services justify continuation of the present program. 
There may be some question, however, as to whether 
they would justify any great expansion of it. 

Partly because of the limitations of the CCC work 
eamps to which I have just referred, a second work 
program specially designed for young people was 
inaugurated by the Federal Government toward the 
end of 1935. I refer to the work projects program 
of the National Youth Administration. This program 
of work projects should be clearly distinguished from 
the program of student aid which has also been 
provided through the National Youth Administra- 
tion. 

The work projects program is entirely separate 
from the student-aid program and is operated solely 
for the benefit of youth who have left the regular 
schools. The youth who are eligible for employment 
on the NYA work projects are between the ages of 
eighteen and twenty-four. Up to the present it has 
been required that they be certified as in need of 
relief by a public relief agency. 

The*work program of the NYA began as a part 
of the general work relief system and until recently 
it was closely interlocked with the program of the 
Works Progress Administration. For the last year 
it has provided continuously for over 200,000 young 
people who have been certified as in need of relief. 
They have worked about 55 hours a month and have 
been paid about $17 a month. 

Even before the National Youth Administration 
was established there were, as there still are, many 
youth in the eighteen to twenty-four age group who 
were receiving general work relief on the same basis 
as adults. Why, then, was a separate work relief 
program established for youth? 

The reason was the belief that young people on 
relief needed special supervision and assistance. It 
was thought that if they were cared for separately, 
work projects could be organized which would offer 


10 


more valuable work experience and training. 

This belief has been borne out in practice. As 
the National Youth Administration has become more 
and more familiar with the characteristics and needs 
of the project workers, additional emphasis has been 
placed upon supervision and training activities. The 
innumerable agencies which have cooperated by 
sponsoring projects in many cases have been led to 
take a new interest in the sound development of 
young people. Increasingly it has been possible to 
stimulate the project youth to return to the schools 
for educational services and to secure special provi- 
sion for them by the school authorities. 

All of this has been an exceedingly interesting 
development and one which merits the closest study 
by all who are interested in the welfare of youth. 
The program is, however, still frankly experimental. 
It was started to meet an emergency situation. It 
has been continued from year to year through Con- 
gressional appropriations but without any legisla- 
tion establishing it on a regular basis. Many of the 
administrative arrangements which have been neces- 
sary to meet circumstances as they arose are probably 
not of the kind that would be desirable for perman- 
ence. Taken as a whole, the program has added 
greatly to our experience in dealing with the problem 
of unemployed out-of-school youth, but it is in need 
of further evaluation and, possibly, of some re- 
construction. 

I recur to the problem with which I have been 
mainly concerned throughout this article. What 
shall we do about the youth who are unsuccessful 
in school or who have left the school but are not 
yet able to secure placement in normal employment? 

Can we agree that the major need of this group of 
youth is a program or_set of programs which pro- 
vides both for supervised work experience and for 
further educational activity during a transitional 
period between full-time school and full-time em- 
ployment? 

Can we agree that some public agency or agencies 
must provide a large part of the supervised work 
experience if we are to have such a program, at 
least so long as industry continues in its present 
reluctance to employ youth under the age of twenty? 

If a general program of supervised work experi- 
ence is to be provided for young people under public 
auspices, what type of public agency shall provide 
it? Shall it be federal, state, or local? Or shall it 
be operated on an experimental basis at two, or 
possibly at all three, of the levels of government? 
Shall it be regarded primarily as an educational 
agency, as.a social welfare agency or as a new type 
of agency which does not fit existing functional and 
professional classifications? 

I raise the last question particularly because we 
all have a marked tendency to think in terms of 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 











professional categories. Unfortunately, the problem 
I have been discussing is in the field of social wel- 
fare at least as much as in the field of education. 
Just as most social workers are laymen in the field 
of education, so are most educators laymen in the 
field of social work. It is as obvious as it is unfoer- 
tunate that there are deep cleavages of philosophy 
between the two fields. Until there is greater mutual 
understanding, all of our efforts to solve the educa- 
tional and welfare problems of youth will be greatly 


Films for Human 


@ JAMES P. MITCHELL 


ROGRESSIVE TEACHERS must be frequently shocked 

by the amount of acceptance by students of 

extremely conservative or outright reactionary 
beliefs, including an emotional resistance to social 
change. Often this comes from students whose unfairly 
limited opportunities most clearly demand social 
change. Union teachers hear students echoing some of 
the more violently untrue attacks on unionism and 
know that those same students come from families in 
desperate need of unions. Where do such attitudes 
originate? We all know some of the reasons; one that 
we too often neglect to consider is the regimented class- 
room. Whether or not the teacher’s own intellectual 
position is liberal, if she orders her classes about she 
is building authoritarian patterns into their lives. The 
very manner of the teacher may mean, in its actual 
effects on students’ lives, that orders come from above 
and that the student’s job is to carry them out. The 
emphasis on accumulation of facts has the actual effect 
in students’ responses of denying the validity and 
importance of conclusions, generous and warm emo- 
tions, action. 

Teachers are not to blame for this. They themselves 
were created by similar methods and have not yet been 
able to break away toward a freer education. Many, 
perhaps most of them, are honestly looking for a better 
approach. There is now available to them a resource 
which more than any other single tool may loosen the 
rigid boundaries of the conventional classroom. The 
tool is the use of the Human Relations films’ of the 


1The films can be rented by educational organizations from 
the Commission on Human Relations of the Progressive Edu- 
cation Association, 45 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, for 
sums as low as $5 for the minimum two-week period. A cata- 
logue, with full information and synopses of the films, is fur 
nished on request to teachers who think there is a good 
chance of their using the material. Study guides are included 
with the excerpt and may be purchased separately for 25 
cents each. 





OCTOBER, 1939 


handicapped. Notwithstanding conflicts of profes- 
sional interest and those questions of administrative 
organization on which it is so easy to disagree, it 
seems to me imperative that we hold fast to the 
major problem until we can arrive at a solution. 
That major problem is the kind of a program that 
will be most effective in meeting the actual needs 
of the young people of this country. Surely the 
problem is large enough to give scope for the best 
thought and efforts of all of us. 


Relations 


Commission on Human Relations of the Progressive 
Education Association, which have just been made 
generally available to schools. 

Some of the background of the films needs to be told. 
The Commission believed that if young people are to 
function democratically they need an education which 
will give them help in those problems, personal and 
social, of most direct concern to them, in the under- 
standing of the real motivating forces of human 
action, in the developing of better ways of relating 
themselves to others. It thought that one way of work- 
ing toward such an education would be the presenta- 
tion of excerpts from moving pictures showing how 
people relate themselves humanly (or inhumanly) and 
after the students have experienced this absorbing 
and emotionally significant joint experience to have 
them discuss the issues which the excerpt has raised. 
Almost all the commercial film studios agreed to co- 
operate, turning over negatives of their pictures. 
These were carefully edited for materials of most 
direct concern to young people, and altogether about 
sixty shorts, lasting from five to thirty minutes, were 
made. Teachers from about twenty institutions, rang- 
ing in nature from vast metropolitan high schools to 
a reformatory, were chosen and trained to take part 
in the experiment to discover how the films should be 
used. Four times during the two-year experimental 
period a careful survey of the students’ attitudes 
about human relations was made. Verbatim records 
of discussions were kept, and the large body of vital 
information thus collected is now being carefully 
studied. 

A great deal of attention was given to techniques 
of discussion. In general, the Commission feels that 
the students should begin very freely, pointing out 
issues and problems raised by the excerpt which seem 
most important to them; these are not always what 








are expected. Later in the discussion the teacher takes 

a more active part, not to moralize or tell the students 

what to think but rather to push the students toward 

clearer meanings and deeper understanding. How did 

he get that way? Was.the reason that she gave the 

real one? How could the situation have been handled 
better? If you had known him at the time what would 
you have done? Do people like you and me ever act 

that way? Why? These are typical contributions of a 

leader. A summary by a student closes a discussion 

which is not expected to produce conclusive answers 
to the questions it raises, but rather to illuminate 
human behavior, leading te further study. It often 
leads to social action, as when students who discussed 

a lynching scene from ‘‘Fury’’ circulated a petition 

in support of anti-lynching legislation, and students 

who had ascribed the gang life of boys in ‘‘The Devil 

Is A Sissy’’ to slum conditions participated vigorously 

in a campaign for a new housing project. 

The insights shown by the students are often amaz- 
ingly keen. In a time when it is vital to understand 
the factors which make for aggressive, warlike, retali- 
atory behavior such material as the following becomes 
especially interesting. Students are discussing ‘‘ Black 
Legion’’: 

ANTHONY: There certainly were many examples of 
propaganda in the movie. There was the sales- 
man trying to sell the car. There was the radio 
speaker and there was quite a bit of propaganda 
for education, at least in the situation of Dom- 
browski... and an element that seemed to warn 
us against propaganda; to at least put us on our 
guard against it. 

ROBERT: I think that there are many other ones, 
like the idea of joining a band, a group of men, a 
lot of whom you respected, and that it is a secret 
group. That tickles your ego, in a way, that you 
were selected; that you are to be a member of a 
select group and that you are going to have a uni- 
form and carry a gun and all of these distinguish- 
ing features that the other people don’t have. 
Maybe that is a manifestation or development of 
the ego in ourselves. 

LUTHER: It certainly appeased him for the dissatis- 
faction and shame, more or less, that he had in 
not getting the job. He was certainly very dis- 
appointed. I think that this offered relief to him, 
and he accepted the propaganda because he was 
ready to accept it. I don’t think that in any other 
circumstances he would have accepted this propa- 
ganda. 

JOHN: I don’t think all these workers were definitely 
against the foreigners. You are not against them 
definitely. It is when they interfere with you and 
your ends, then, of course, you are against all 
the foreigners, but otherwise you don’t care what 
kind of a job they have. 


LEADER: That is close to Calvin’s statement that 
the reason why the propaganda was so easily 
accepted was because it coincided with his eco- 
nomic interests, and that the economic interests 
were the determining factor, really. 

ROSAMOND: I think that Frank as an individual is 
rather interesting because he wasn’t prepared for 
anything like not getting the job. When he was 
at home, his wife would take his cigarette and 
knock the ashes off for him, and his little boy 
could beat up another little boy, and he could 
sock his little boy, and he was just keen, and 
there was nothing he couldn’t have. He just 
wasn’t psychologically prepared for losing the 
job. 

* * * 
And in another discussion : 

RICHARD: ... He had to recreate his security and 
everything, and he recreated it by sort of false 
Americanism, by saying: Well, it is the foreign- 
ers. He was sort of saying: It wasn’t my fault 
at all, it was just because they were foreigners. 

NORMAN: ... There was some force that was caus- 
ing him to be insecure, but he evidently found 
the wrong cause for his insecurity. 

GEORGE: I wonder if he really was sure he would 
get the job. It seems to me he was telling every- 
body that he was the best, trying to impress them 
with the fact, instead of letting them draw their 
own conclusions. It seemed to me that might be 
an inward feeling inside of him, an inferiority, 
and that he wanted to impress upon the people 
that he was the best. 

RICHARD: He wasn’t sure he was going to get the 
job; he wanted continually to reassure himself 
and put himself on a more secure basis. He had 
been unemployed previously, and now this ad- 
vancement—well, I guess he looked at everything 
more or less in terms of success in the eyes of 
other people as much as success in his own eyes, 
and when these people complimented him, when 
they assured him, it was added security, and that 
is what he wanted primarily. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 











And in a discussion of a lynching, an excerpt from 

‘“‘Pury’’: 

ANNE: When people are that excited they think 
in very simple terms, that one thing is right 
and one thing is wrong, and everything is 
brought down to the elemental facts. They 
just figured that, well, someone had been kid- 
napped, and here was someone who seems to 
have done it, and there were no other factors 
coming in except that he should be punished. 

ROSAMOND: I think that everybody saying it is 
a natural trait, it is just human nature, is just 
rationalizing. You ean get to the problem, 
I think, not by speeding of trials and getting 
better courts, and things like that, but merely 
by the slow process of education. People have 
to become educated to all these things. 

Especially important is the fact that in film dis- 


The Meaning of 
@ FRANK MURPHY 


NE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE YEARS ago, a group 
() of American citizens, meeting in the colonial 

community of Concord, N. H., voted by 57 to 
47 to ratify the Federal Constitution which had been 
written at Philadelphia one year before. 

We do not formally celebrate the day, but it was an 
event of tremendous significance. It meant that the 
required majority of nine states had ratified and that 
the Constitution was in full legal effect. It meant that 
the American people had cast their lot together under 
the guidance of a document that Gladstone once de- 
scribed as the most remarkable political work produced 
by the human intellect in modern times. 

That document—our Federal Constitution—is re- 
markable in many ways. But there is one thing, above 
all, that makes it remarkable—one quality on which all 
the others depend—and that is the singular emphasis 
it places on personal liberty. 

In the very first sentence we read that the American 
people established the Constitution to secure, among 
other things, ‘‘the blessings of liberty’’ to themselves 
and their posterity. And the history books tell us that 
they were so very concerned about their liberties that 
many of the states refused flatly to ratify the Constitu- 
tion unless they were assured that a bill of rights 
would be added. When that assurance was given they 
ratified, but not before. 

Obviously, the Bill of Rights was not an accident. 
It was not the product of a whim or a passing fancy. 


OCTOBER, 1939 


cussions teachers cannot, without nullifying all the 
values of the project, be dictatorial. They must 
merely be useful to students in deepening their 
understandings. They must have the profoundest 
respect for and receptivity to what everyone in the 
group says and is. They must help find fruitful 
avenues for social action for which powerful emo- 
tional drives have been set in motion. Thus the 
discussion becomes the practice of democracy in 
the classroom. It should lead to an extension of 
democracy into all other school activities, and even 
to the cooperative, democratic planning by students 
and teachers of the whole curriculum. Students 
who have lived through a school which practices 
democracy instead of praising it cannot be condi- 
tioned to an acceptance of fascism or unmoving 
conservatism, because they have found that democ- 
racy is too enjoyable to be surrendered. 


Civil Liberty 


The people were in deadly earnest about it. They had 
shed blood and suffered hardship to gain liberty and 
they were determined to give it the best protection 
they could devise. 

And so, when it came to the job of framing the Bill 
of Rights, they did not mince words. They did not 
hedge it around with restrictions or weaken it with 
qualifications and conditions. They said in plain 
English : 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment 
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or 
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the 
right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition 
the Government for redress of grievances.” 

In virtually every one of the forty-eight state consti. 
tutions we find the same bold guarantees of civil and 
religious liberty, expressed in the same blunt language. 
The Constitution of New Jersey, for example, declares 
with beautiful simplicity, ‘‘No law shall be passed to 
restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the 
press.’’ 

Just a few days ago the Supreme Court declared 
that the federal courts would protect the fundamental 
rights of the individual from encroachment not only 
on the part of the Federal Government, but on the part 
of the state and local governments as well. In his 
opinion, Mr. Justice Stone reminded us again how 
much the Bill of Rights means to our democracy. ‘‘No 
more grave and important issue,’’ he said, ‘‘can be 
brought to this Court than that of freedom of speech 


13 





and assembly.’’ 

Why is this so? Why this remarkable emphasis on 
freedom of speech and assembly and religion ? 

Because the wise men who wrote the federal Bill of 
Rights and the New Jersey Bill of Rights were doing 
more than stating legal prohibitions on the legislature. 
They were expressing a philosophy of human living. 
They were defining the spirit of a free and sovereign 
people. They were putting into words the meaning of 
democracy itself. 

They were determined to put an end in this country 
to the kind of government that tells the individual he 
may not speak as he pleases; that tells the newspapers 
what they may or may not print; that denies the citi- 
zen the right to practice whatever religion his con- 
science chooses; and that, in general, treats the indi- 
vidual as the servant of an all-powerful state. 

They were so bent on ending that kind of govern- 
ment that they started a revolution and never gave 
it up until their objective was won. 

We could destroy all their work if we wanted to do 
it. We could uproot this whole democratic structure 
overnight simply by going back to the ancient notion 
that government knows what is best for the people and 
that the people must not question the wisdom of what 
the government does for them or to them or with them. 

But if we did that, we would be striking a heavier 
blow at civilization than it has ever suffered in the 
history of mankind. 

What, after all, is civilization? Is it our great sky- 
scrapers and our long bridges? Is it our huge factor- 
ies and marvelous automobiles? Is it the radio and 
the airplane and all the rest of the wonderful inven- 
tions that make life easier and smoother and faster? 

Those things are part of it of course—an important 
part of it. But they aren’t all of it. 

The heart of civilization, the thing that gives it a 
soul, is exactly that spirit of freedom that runs all 
through our Bill of Rights. It is the idea that the in- 
dividual has a natural right to be free up to that point 
where he injures the interests of the people as a whole. 

Take that idea away from our government, or build 
a government without it, and you have a government 
that is something less than civilized. 

It may seem that I have constructed a straw man so 
that I might have the satisfaction of pushing it down. 
It may seem pointless to talk about the Bill of Rights 
when obviously the overwhelming majority of our 
people believe the Bill of Rights is a good thing and 
want it kept in our Constitution. 

I wish that the problem were as simple as that, but 
it isn’t. 

It is one thing to believe in civil liberty and another 
thing to practice it in all the daily relationships of 
man to man. And I am afraid the facts are that some 
of us have been for civil liberty in theory but not very 
careful about practicing it in our daily lives. 


14 








Some of us, under the tension of political and eco- 
nomic conflicts, have let ourselves forget that civil 
liberty is not just for those with whom we agree but 
also for those whose ideas are hateful to us. We have 
forgotten that civil liberty is not just a problem for 
the federal and state governments, but something that 
must be protected first of all by every individual citi- 
zen. The Federal Government, for example, cannot 
effectively protect the civil liberty of the individual 
unless public-spirited citizens in every community 
have the courage to come forward and cooperate with 
the Federal Government in seeing that the rights of 
the humblest and most unpopular minority are scru- 
pulously protected. 

Because some of us have at times forgotten these 
things, we have condoned infractions of the Bill of 
Rights that Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry and 
Benjamin Franklin would never have condoned. 

What is the evidence? It comes to us in the Depart- 
ment of Justice every day in a steady stream. Every 
day the newly created Civil Liberties Unit reads the 
tragic story in letters and telegrams from all parts of 
the country. 

We hear of municipal officials aiding in the provoca- 
tion of race conflict, even though government in a 
democracy is intended to be for all and not just some 
of the people. 

We hear of arbitrary ordinances and arbitrary po- 
lice action that deny workmen the right of peaceful 
picketing, even though our courts have recognized that 
peaceful picketing is a just and proper right of work- 
ing people. 

We hear of local authorities and private citizens 
manhandling union organizers, even though the Su- 
preme Court long ago recognized that it is proper and 
desirable for labor to unite in organizations. 

We hear of groups arbitrarily denied the right to 
distribute literature, even though the Bill of Rights 
leaves no doubt that freedom of speech and of the 
press are fundamental to our political system. 

But there is no need to go to the Department of 
Justice for proof. The citizen who looks carefully can 
see it all around him, near at hand. He ean see it in 
the type of mind that believes labor or industry, as the 
ease may be, ought to be punished for its sins by ter- 
rorism and coercion; in that distorted mentality that 
blames the Jew for all our troubles; and in the dis- 
crimination practiced against those who. happened to 
be born with a darker skin than most people possess. 

What are tiese tendencies and practices, after all, 
but forms of intolerance? And what is there more 
completely opposed to the Bill of Rights and to all our 
American traditions than intolerance? It is the most 
un-American, unconstitutional, un-Christian, and un- 
democratic thing in our life today. 

There is no room for intolerance in the America 
that our fathers planned. It belongs in those other 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 









countries where freedom has been all but forgotten 
and where human slavery is the common lot. It be- 
longs in those other lands where men hardly dare to 
whisper their thoughts and where they hold their 
meetings by stealth under cover of the night. It be- 
longs in those places on earth where fine literature 
and art and music have been destroyed and where the 
schools spread propaganda for those in power. 

Intolerance has no place here, and those who em- 
brace it are following not the fathers but someone else. 
They are not following Jefferson, for it was he who 
sponsored the Bill of Rights. They are not following 
Benjamin Franklin, for it was Franklin who deliber- 
ately wrote into the Declaration of Independence the 
phrase ‘ Such individuals forget that 
America became great because it was created and has 
remained spiritually one people. 

Go down in the subway of the great metropolis, 
walk the crowded streets and the market places, stand 
near the factory gates at closing time, and what do 
Not Englishmen or Italians alone, or Gen- 
tiles or Jews alone, or white people or black alone, or 
You see the chil- 
dren of every race and every nation and every creed 
You see America’s future. 


‘one people.’ 


you see? 
conservatives or progressives alone. 


under the sun. 

If you are disheartened by what you see, if these 
people of other races and national origins seem alien to 
you, then America’s future and your own will not be 
happy. But if you see them all as being of the stock 
that built this great nation from a wilderness, if you 


look at them as fellow servants of democracy, then 









Lia 










Cy 
A 





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|INCREASED 
USS 

































our future is bright and full of hope. 

America is not 100 per cent Puritan or 100 per cent 
Cavalier. America is an amalgam of men and women 
of different kin with a common passion for liberty and 
And with them all rests the future of 
American democracy. 

In many ways, the period we live in is like the period 
that followed the Civil War. There has been no 
Gettysburg or Bull Run, but, in the manner of war, 
the depression has inflicted wounds and brought hard- 
ship to many. Today, as in 1865, the nation faces a 
tremendous job of reconstruction. 

We need to place the economic system in such order 
that men may have the chance to work and to earn a 
living wage. We need to find ways to bring health 
and decent shelter to those who lack them. We must 
take care that the aged are adequately insured against 
want and the worker against unemployment. 

We must protect the quality of government service 
by weeding out the incompetent and protect its in- 
tegrity by eliminating those who violate their public 
We must cut the alliances between polities and 


tolerance. 


trust. 
corruption wherever they exist. 

Just as it was with Lincoln in 1865, we need ‘‘to 
bind up the nation’s wounds’’; to care for those who 
have borne the modern battle; ‘‘to do all which may 
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.’’ 

And now, as never before, we need to do our work, 
as Lincoln advised, ‘‘ with 
charity for all.’’ We need to do it with tolerance for 
those with whom we disagree; 
those who are less fortunate than we; 





with malice toward none, 


with compassion for 
with sympathy 
and understanding for those who speak a different 
tongue or whose background is in a different land. We 
need to do it with a constant understanding that the 
things we have in common are more important than 






any difference that may seem to keep us apart. 
It is in such a spirit, and such a spirit alone, that 







peace is won, justice achieved and the sons of men 






made free. 












-) 


38 
ree 
wrt 


-« 













ERSONS INTERESTED in fostering and extending 
culture in a democracy have firm faith in the 
inherent worth and dignity of personality and 

in the responsiveness of the human organism to the 
educative process. In contrast to the ideology of 
fascism, believers in democracy deny that creative 
participation in culture must or should be confined 
to a small elite of leaders assumed to be biologically 
superior, while the rest of the population must pas- 
sively accommodate itself to the cultural imperatives 
which these leaders dictate. Democratic philosophy 
postulates vast untapped potentialities of the common 
people, irrespective of their social origin, race, class 
or sex, and it contends that these potentialities will 
be manifested when environmental opportunities per- 
mit their fulfillment. The limits of man’s functioning 
in an expanding cumulative culture have not been 
remotely approximated, and as science develops and 
is applied, man’s constructive energies will be in- 
creasingly released. It is our function as educators 
to join with the forces that are enlarging the range of 
opportunities for the masses, not merely to encourage 
their efforts to develop new forms of cultural expres- 
sion, but to make present culture available to the many 
in our land who are denied its benefits. This implies 
that we must enlist in the struggles against poverty 
and exploitation which harass and dwarf the human 
personality, and that we strive for the extension of 
security and well being, the absence of which prevents 
vast sections of our population from significant par- 
ticipation in our cultural life. 

We are a country of many diverse national groups. 
Our present everchanging culture pattern is a com- 
posite of the contributions of these many peoples. 
Standardization into a mould of the values of a single 
dominant culture is to neglect significant values of 
the minority cultures. Coercive discrimination against 
these cultures by the fostering of insulating chauvin- 
istic prejudices is contrary to theory and detrimental 
to the interests of democracy. The distinctive trans- 
planted cultures of the ethnic communities, which in 


16 


the days of mass migration were an outstanding char- 
acteristic of the cultural life of America, are losing 
their identity in the face of the disintegrating forces 
of an urban industrial civilization such as ours. Their 
direct and indirect influences in the larger pattern of 
American culture are, however, still potentially strong 
and must be taken into account in charting the devel- 
opment of American culture. 

A democratic culture is likely to be less formalized 
than that of a caste society. The active participation 
of a larger number of people contributes elements of 
spontaneity and originality and serves to resist con- 
ventionalization. To encourage this dynamic quality. 
educational institutions must guard against the strong 
tendency to sanction traditional cultural values at the 
expense of creative emergent elements in contem- 
porary culture. Past cultural values must be trans- 
mitted to give valuable perspectives; they must not 
be set forth as final goals. 

It is easy to underestimate the influence which our 
schools have in establishing the attitudes and biases 
toward developments within our culture. The cur- 
riculum appears for the most part so remote from 
contemporary life, so formal and traditional, that 
critics are apt to think that it does not define accents 
on life. Yet by the very evasion of fundamental 
problems, by the failure to grapple with the realities 
of the contemporary situation, the schools develop 
negativistic, irrational and fictitious attitudes that 
have to be reeast during the adult quest for a fuller 
and richer life. It is questionable whether our schools 
now perform satisfactorily even the teaching of formal 
literacy, let alone the awakening of an alert under- 
standing of the social significance of science and tech- 
nology, of a knowledge of the economic and political 
forces which mould our lives and of an appreciation 
of literature, art and music. Our objectives should 
be to have the schools develop as far as possible inte- 
grated cultural personalities capable of coping not 
only with difficult economic stresses and intellectual 


Culture in a Dem 


@ BERNARD J. STERN 


























lemocratic Society 


and emotional currents that surge around us, but also 
of contributing creatively to the advance of culture. 
The proponents of the view that our educational 
institutions should take increasing responsibility for 
developing cultural maturity in our populace by direct 
introduction of cultural subjects 

in the eurriculum of the schools 

from the elementary grades on- 

ward find themselves blocked on 

all sides by vested interest groups 

some of whom mistakenly believe 

that mass ignorance is to their 

economic advantage. These groups 

speak of cultural subjects as 

‘*frills’?’ and would, under the 

guise of economy, strip the cur- 

riculum to what they regard as 

bare essentials for literacy. We 

cannot ignore the strength of this 

trend, nor fail to appreciate the 

threat which it involves to the 

development of culture in our 

democracy. The labor movement 

of which organized teachers are a 

vital part has countered this re- 

trogressive step by supporting 

federal aid to the states for the 

maintenance of schools to stem the 

contractions in education which 

the economic crisis set in motion. 

An extension of the campaign for 


the passage of such a bill is one of the most important 
immediate tasks for those interested in cultural 
progress. The cultural life of America cannot be ade- 
quately sustained and advanced by those who measure 
education in terms of the tax rate. 

It is these same vested interests that have con- 
sistently opposed federal projects that have meant 
much to the cultural life of America. By extending 
the mass base of the arts by the creation of new audi- 
ences, through offerings at prices within the range of 
workers, the federal theatre has stimulated a renais- 
sance of the theatre of America. The federal art 
project has sustained artists, whose work under their 
auspices ranks with the great creative art of history. 
The federal writers project has documented the cul- 
tural history of America in a manner which will serve 
as a point of departure for a better appreciation of 
our cultural values and has also made possible creative 
writing that has enriched our sensitivities. The WPA 
teachers have also done meritorious work, especially 
in the important and relatively neglected field of 
adult education. These federal projects have in fact 
provided the soil for the budding of a richer Ameri- 
can culture that will flower only if it continues to be 
nourished by the Federal Government. The bud is 
still too frail to flourish in the bare soil of the tradition 
of capitalist industrialism which has regarded art as 
extraneous to the good life defined instead in terms 
of acquisition of material wealth. It is imperative 
that we who are interested in the development of 
culture in a democracy extend our help to establish 
a permanent federal arts bureau which will stimulate 
further creative expression among those who would 
otherwise be deprived of such opportunities. 

At no previous period of history have technical re- 
sources been so favorable for the development of cul- 


ture. The potentialities of radio and moving pictures 


PALAIS AER She 


4 


Ab yee 


x 


Ji 

















are only beginning to be realized. Democratic pres- 
sures have led to the loosening of the stranglehold that 
the profit system has had upon their use, and their 
cultural possibilities for children as well as for adults 
are being explored. The success of such programs as 
‘‘ Americans All, Immigrants All’’ and ‘‘ Frontiers of 
Democracy’’ indicate that radio might soon be wide- 
ly used in ways which cannot fail to be fruitful for 
American culture. Likewise such projects as the 
preparation for schools of films dealing with human 
relations by the Commission on Human Relations of 
the Progressive Education Association, which utilize 
salient portions of significant commercial films, is a 
pioneer effort which opens up vast possibilities for 
use of the film as an effective cultural agency. The 
present has the advantage over the past not merely in 


the availability of these and other technical media; 
urban industrial society by its very nature is con- 
ducive to cultural advance. 

Yet within this society forces hostile to democracy 
make every effort to frustrate its advance by the 
utilization of concentrated wealth and technical re- 
sources, against the economic and cultural interests 
of the people. Workers and intellectuals organized 
into trade unions play a leading role in preserving and 
extending culture among the people. 

Trade unions were initially responsible for the 
establishment of the public schools and for universal 
compulsory education in the United States, the very 
foundation of the cultural life of a democracy. Their 
cultural tasks are not yet ended; in fact they have 
barely begun. 


Schools for Tomorrow’s Children 


@ HOWARD A. LANE 


O TEACHERS it is a staggering fact that the people 

of the Western World have been in no greater 

mess than in this generation, the first to be al- 
most universally schooled. We in America may for 
the moment complacently interpret the European 
scene, but our own careful observers are completely 
aware of the social disintegration among us. We 
have only to look at our prisons filled to overflowing, 
our long waiting lists of those needing institutional 
treatment for mental ills, at the ten years during 
which we have been so stupid as to do without the 
labor and ingenuity of at least twenty million of our 
people who are eager to carry their own weight in 
society through useful work, at our almost complete 
failure to harness the zeal, energy and intelligence of 
our youth and our women, at our common quality 
of living far below our potential standards of comfort 
and enjoyment, at our typical leisure-time activities 
serving much the purposes which the fleas served 
Mark Twain’s dog—they kept his mind off the fact 
that he was a dog. 

Social institutions are made up of individuals. 
It is inconceivable that we can have good people mak- 
ing up bad institutions. Among the greater truths 
of human living is one emphasized by Jesus. Institu- 
tions are made for man, not man for institutions. 
When social stresses come, when men are ill-served 
by their social arrangements, we must examine those 
arrangements or institutions and the men they serve, 
searching for guides to change; else the people perish. 

Bad people do not come from good schools. The 


American elementary school cannot escape the accept- 
ance of a sizable portion of responsibility for the 
breakdown in human character which has put Western 
civilization in a tail-spin. Long have we known that 
human characteristics, particularly in the realms of 
disposition, sympathy and concept of one’s self, are 
established in the early years of life. The only valid 
test of an educational program is to evaluate the be- 
havior of the pupil both presently and when he has 
gone forth from the direction of those responsible for 
that program. For more than two generations the 
school has accepted responsibility to shape character 
and personality—and it has continued to ignore its 
product. 

Of late we have learned much about the influences 
that shape human characteristics. It seems wise that 
teachers who accept some responsibility for the main- 
tenance and improvement of society shall take in- 
ventory from time to time on the maintenance of the 
good life for children. 
point of view of good social ethics as well as from that 


This is an obligation from the 
of good teaching. Let us examine those important 
principles of human development upon which a hope- 
ful program of public education must be based. 

It is not natural to be human. Distinctively human 
characteristics are acquired through social living. 
Those rare reported cases of recovered human off- 
spring who seemed to have been lost from human 
association for several years at an early age indicate 
clearly the impossibility of making them human. It 

(Continued on page 20 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 























Children in a Democracy 


N PROVIDING FOR the health and education of 

children, for the formation of their minds 

and characters in ways which are in harmony 
with the institutions of a free society, democracy 
is training its future leaders. The safety of de- 
mocracy therefore depends upon the widespread 
diffusion of opportunities for developing those 
qualities of mind and character which are essen- 
tial to leadership in our modern age. Further, 
democracy is concerned not only with prepara- 
tion for leadership, but also with preparation for 
the discharge of the duties of citizenship in the 
determination of general policies and the selec- 
tion of those persons who are to be entrusted 
with special duties. Beyond this, democracy 
must inculcate in its children capacities for living 
and assure opportunities for the fulfillment of 
those capacities. The success of democratic insti- 
tutions is measured, not by extent of territory, 
financial power, machines or armaments, but by 
the desires, the hopes and the deep-lying satisfac- 
tions of the individual men, women and children 
who make up its citizenship. 

We shall be concerned with ways in which the 
broad chasm between knowing and doing may be 
bridged over. We shall be reminding ourselves 
that all the lectures on nutrition will avail noth- 
ing unless there is food for a child to eat; that a 
law for compulsory school attendance is one 
thing and a chance to go to school is another. 
Prenatal instruction cannot assure healthy babies 
unless the mother has access to good medical and 
nursing care when the time for the baby’s arrival 
is at hand. We know how to budget a family’s 
expenditures; we have undertaken to preserve 
home life for fatherless or motherless children 
through the joint effort of the Federal Govern- 
ment and the states. We have made great prog- 
ress in the application of money and service to 
the promotion of maternal and child health ; the 
restoration of crippled children to normal phys- 
ical condition; the protection of neglected 
children and children in danger of becoming 
delinquent, especially in rural areas; and the 
elimination of child labor from industries ship- 
ping goods in interstate commerce. 

Yet, after all has been said, only a beginning 
has been made in affording security to children. 
In many parts of the country we have not pro- 
vided enough to meet the minimum needs of de- 
pendent children for food, shelter and clothing, 


and the Federal Government’s contribution to- 
ward their care is less generous than its contribu- 
tion to the care of the aged. 

If we can state in simple language some of the 
basic necessities of childhood, we shall see more 
clearly the issues which challenge our intelli- 
gence. 

We make the assumption that a happy child 
should live in a home where he will find warmth 
and food and affection ; that his parents will take 
care of him should he fall ill; that at school he 
will find the teachers and tools needed for an 
education ; that when he grows up there will be 
a job for him and that he will some day establish 
his own home. 

As we consider these essentials of a happy 
childhood our hearts are heavy with the knowl- 
edge that there are many children who cannot 
make these assumptions. 

We are concerned about the children of the un- 
employed. 

We are concerned about other children who 
are without adequate shelter or food or clothing 
because of the poverty of their parents. 

We are concerned about the children of migra- 
tory families who have no settled place of abode 
or normal community relationships. 

We are concerned about the children of minor- 
ity groups in our population who, confronted 
with discrimination and prejudice, must find it 
difficult to believe in the just ordering of life or 
the ability of the adults in their world to deal 
with life’s problems. 

We are concerned about the children living 
beyond the reach of medical service or lacking 
it because their parents cannot pay for it. 

We are concerned about the children who are 
not in school or who attend schools poorly 
equipped to meet their needs. 

We are concerned about the children who are 
outside the reach of religious influences, and are 
denied help in attaining faith in an ordered uni- 
verse and in the fatherhood of God. 

We are concerned about the future of our 
democracy when children cannot make the as- 
sumptions that mean security and happiness, 

This Conference and the activities which it ini- 
tiates furnish an opportunity for us to-test our- 
selves and our institutions by the extent to which 
they serve our children. 

FRANKLIN D. RoosEve.t. 





OCTOBER, 1939 






























































is a commonplace that the developing human acquires 
the language, mannerisms, attitudes, ideals, values, 
even the posture that predominate in the group with 
which he lives. Schools have given scant attention 
to this fact. It follows upon the acceptance of this 
principle that the school must know what kind of 
living fosters the development of desirable social 
characteristics and arrange its living conditions in 
those terms. 

Studies of the Child Welfare Station of the Uni- 
versity of Iowa offer convincing evidence that the 
human characteristics we have included under a con- 
cept of intelligence are closely related to the quality 
of social living of the child. Dewey has long insisted, 
as did Jesus, that Man’s mind is a social product. 
The Iowa studies show that the I. Q. is markedly 
affected by environmental pull. Children who spend 
their early years—age two to five—in nursery school 
are 20 per cent brighter than those who live normal 
lives until age five. 

The illegitimate offspring of dull women have I. Q.’s 
similar to those of the natural children of the neigh- 
borhoods in which they grow in foster homes. Chil- 





he . a rs y 
“eet ‘ 
sty ay 
- m ST mit ‘ H 
he 5 3-2) 2 tat SS ce 
na yabtetint 


- 


dren transferred from homes or orphanages to 
institutions for feeble-minded lose in I. Q. ; conversely, 
those placed from institutions into homes gained in 
I. Q. Children who live in a rich and stimulating 
environment increase in rate of mental growth. 

No greater tragedy has befallen American educa- 
tion than the widespread acceptance of the supersti- 
tion that the rate and extent of mental growth is fixed. 
Long have teachers preferred to teach in good neigh- 
borhoods because children are brighter there. For 
years we have known that our racial incompetents 
come from poor neighborhoods, city and urban. A 
generation has known that we secure higher mental 
averages among city children than among rural chil- 
dren, that Northern children are superior to Southern 
children, white ones superior to blacks in mental-test 
results. Men of science have rationalized these differ- 
ences as a result of differences in native capacity 
which perform economic selection rather than as a 
eause of differences in effective intelligence. A real- 
istic society, even if composed of selfish men, will face 
the fact that human intelligence is a product of man’s 
social life. This is not to deny the existence of actual, 
though slightly understood, differences in the capacity 
to become intelligent. However it seems quite likely 
that even this capacity to become intelligent is influ- 
enced by the experiences of the developing human 
being. 

Data of the National Resources Commission disclose 
the marked relationship in the counties of the United 
States between the number of children and meaget 
income, low standard of living, scant cultural oppor- 
tunities. 
homes have better teachers, smaller classes, larger 
playgrounds, newer and better buildings, more books, 
more real child activity than those from poor homes. 
If discrimination must be made wouldn’t a good or 
selfish society make up for home cultural deficiencies 
through schools? If we assume that good human 
characteristics result from good child life we must 
provide the good life for our children—and the school 
seems to be the proper institution through which to 
exercise this function. 

While the students of child development engage in 
heated discussions over details and perhaps a few 
basic meanings of their data, they seem to agree 
fundamentally upon the essentials of the good life for 
children. Let us examine these and discuss school 
practice in their light. 

Language is the means of social and intellectual 
development. Minds develop upon the interpretation 
of experience through language. 


In our city schools children from good 


Some one to listen, 
to answer questions, to explain is required by all of 
us. Rarely do we see elsewhere such alterations of 
personality as in deaf children who learn to communi- 
cate. 

Every human requires affection, the active concern 
of another or others who care how he gets along. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 








ee 








“ss 








I 





Whether or not this is a native urge concerns us little. 
No person of sound mind is unconcerned about the 
affection of others. Closely allied to this need is that 
of the respect and appreciation of one’s associates. 
Some would call it group status. Respect for the 
self is probably the integrating force in human life. 
Man has seant endurance for his own scorn. 

Man directs his acts toward purposes that he has 
planned and accepted. He must behave as an agent 
in determining his behavior. His endeavor must be 
directed toward the fulfillment of purposes he has 
accepted as worthy of pursuit. He must be free to 
experiment and evaluate and to learn through the 
exercise of freedom to seek social cooperation, the 
counsel of Wiser men, to anticipate the consequences 
of his behavior. 

To grow well, the developing human requires ap- 
propriate experience. He develops his ability only as 
he experiences in a real world. A major type of ex- 
perience is that which we call creative. Men have 
attributed to God great satisfaction as he looked upon 
his creation and found it good. We never outgrow 
the need to fashion, process, manipulate materials 
and conditions and hold our handiwork in our own 
hands and ask no man, “‘Is it good?’’ 

How are these needs—the conditions which foster 
the development of good characteristics—served in 
American elementary schools? 


I have the impression that teachers are more affec- 
tionate than they used to be. Teachers seem little 
aware, however, that by the time school age is reached 
many children feel the security of parental affection 
slipping away. The home fight has begun over man- 
ners, cleanliness, orderliness, music lessons. A baby 
is helpless, easy to love. As children assume adult 
posture and language, parental affection for the child 
‘‘as he is’’ seems to slip away. Pressure to behave 
as an adult is his hourly lot. The school, too, fights 
children—presses them to change. The dull, the 
dirty, the peculiar of speech, are treated as if unloved. 
Every normal person will find others to love him. | 
am convinced that the vast portion of our criminals 
and ne’er-do-wells are recruited from that vast horde 
of school children driven by ‘‘respectable’’ people to 
seek esteem and respect from undesirable persons. A 
few years ago I interviewed personally most of the 
boys in the Illinois training school for delinquents. 
Not one had known well the confidence and respect 
of a good adult. Few recalled the names of school 
teachers two or more years removed ; none had experi- 
enced a man-to-man conversation with his principal. 
Birds of a feather flock together because they respect 
each other for being as they are. 

Everyone must think well of himself. Schools must 
cease to make levels of social behavior and human 
skills the avenues to respectability. School marks, 
remedial classes, ability grouping and other forms of 


OCTOBER, 1939 











































































comparison cause the child to seek respect through 
extravagant devices. The dull are most often prob- 
lems to the school simply because they cannot secure 
self-respect through channels the school deliberately 
maintains. Good schools do not compare children on 
the basis of characteristics desirable for all children. 
A child’s satisfaction, group status, self esteem must 
never be dependent upon the quality of his speaking, 
reading, writing, calculating. Who can be so slow as 
not to comprehend the results of telling a child he 
reads poorly when he is doing as well as he can. Few 
fat men have great drives to be sprinters. 

Long have we known that experience is the best 
teacher. For half a century we have been looking at 
adult life to learn what children are likely to do in 
the future and using our findings as a guide to deter- 
mining child experience in school. They must read to 
be good citizens ; therefore, we have the children read. 
They must calculate; hence we make them figure. 
They must write; we place a pencil in their hands, 
demanding a product. How many teachers behave as 


21 





if they knew that the important aspect of experience 
is feeling. My eight-year-old daughter wishes she 
didn’t have to ‘‘do that old arithmetic.’’ What is 
she learning? We have blithely continued participa- 
tion in experience regardless of resulting attitudes of 
aversion, exhibitionism, incompetency, anxiety toward 
man’s best of information and skills. Man assumes 
the dominant tools of his culture if they actually 
function in his living. 

Man’s greatest achievement, perhaps the humaniz- 
ing factor in his development, has been planned shar- 
ing of labor—seeking greater individual satisfaction 
through group enterprise. Participation in the plan- 
ning of group enterprise is absolutely essential to the 
developing human. To what extent is this done in 
schools? To raise the question is to answer it for 
readers of this journal. We drive our children into 
gangs of many kinds seeking group significance often 
at times and ways incompatible with their well-being. 
Administratively managed school councils seem not 
to meet this need. The child needs to spend a major 
part of his time pursuing worthwhile social purposes 
which result from his developing concepts of social 
responsibility and his planning to carry out his role. 

Creative experience is as yet slightly known in 
schools. Burnham’s formula for mental health—‘‘a 
task, a plan, and freedom’’—seems fundamental. We 
can’t teach creativeness, but we can cherish it, provide 
it with opportunity to flourish. A genuine creative 
experience requires no extraneous motivation. Teach- 
ers may accept this as a rule: the extent of force, of 
demand or motivation, required to promote a learning 
activity is the extent of its inappropriateness. 

Schools typically make life less good for the dull 
than for the bright. Drill on the fundamentals are 
their lot; the bright are freed from meaningless drill. 
The three R’s are skills, not ends. They are learned 
through serving -ends, not before ends are sought. 
Homogeneous ability grouping is really economic 
grouping in our schools—a condition few good Ameri- 
cans would approve. 

Why do teachers rather commonly deplore a concept 


of economic aristocracy and worship in the cult of 
intellectual aristocracy? Teachers everywhere ex- 
hibit full acceptance of intellectual superiority as a 
valid claim to social advantage. Has this conception 
any ethical basis? 

Current findings in child development point to 
marked changes in elementary education. Teachers 
concerned with desirable social changes will conceive 
society as composed of individuals and their institu- 
tional habits. 

The writer would point to some changes in elemen- 
tary-school practice clearly indicated by the results of 
competent investigation among children. The close 
grading system will pass away. We are tremendously 
restricting experience through having children live 
in like age groups. Wider age ranges would de-em- 
phasize narrow skills and allow opportunity for more 
genuine experiences in group concern. School experi- 
ence will be more childlike. The three R’s, which will 
be de-emphasized and thus better learned, will give 
way to worthwhile child enterprise. The school will 
be the real cultural center of the neighborhood, main- 
taining the best possible cultural facilities and way 
of living. 

Schools will need the admonition, ‘‘ Judge not that 
Ye be not Judged.’’ Evaluation will be directed 
toward the worthiness of the school rather than at 
children as responsible free agents. 

School groups will be democratic social groups seek- 
ing immediate individual satisfaction through group 
enterprise. 

School buildings will be smaller, less formalized— 
the best possible places for children to spend the day. 

Leadership will displace discipline as the device of 
group control. The school will promote activities 
which make a real difference to its participants and 
its supporting neighborhood. It will be the collective 
parent providing facilities and opportunities which 
individual homes cannot provide. 

The school of the future will be staffed by personnel 
who know what life is for, to whom children give con- 
fidence and interest, who really care how children feel. 





Letters te the Editor 


Please Limit Your Letters to 500 Words 





SIR: The present emergency session of Congress, meeting at a 
time of world crisis, faces grave responsibilities. In preparing 
to accept my share of those responsibilities, my thoughts natur- 
ally turn to my former colleagues in the teaching profession. 
What are their duties, as teachers and citizens? What will the 
decisions of this Congress mean to them, and how can they help 
to influence those decisions? 

Teachers, I know, share the desire of the overwhelming ma- 
jority of Americans that there shall be no “blackout of peace” 


22 


in America. They can and must help their students and the 
parents of their students to sift the chaff of propaganda from 
the grain of real issues. 

Teachers are workers, consumers and trade unionists. Price 
increases resulting from war-profiteering will lower their own 
living standards, as well as those of all members of their com- 
munities. Attacks on the rights of labor and the trade-union 
movement, carried on behind a smoke-sereen of “national emer- 
gency,” strike at the foundations of economic democracy and 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


cae 





ws 


“ne mey 














prevent teachers from uniting with other workers and con- 
sumers in the defense of their living standards. Now, more than 
ever before, teachers must unite with other trade unionists and 
with the common people of their school neighborhoods in defend 
ing the social gains made under the New Deal. 

And teachers must now be on guard against any attempt to 
infringe on their civil liberties, professional or personal. They 
cannot teach democracy unless they are to practice its traditional 
freedoms. 

This Congress will face a terrific drive against the progressive 
gains made by labor and the common people in the last six years. 
Progressives in Congress will need all the support and help they 
ean get if they are to protect America from war and the war- 
makers, and the American people from reactionary conspiracies 
against their well-being and their liberty. 

I therefore call upon the teachers of this country, among whom 
I have so many friends, to carry the torch of progress high 
and to redouble their efforts for a free, peaceful, secure and 
democratic America. I know that they will respond magnifi- 
eently to that call. 1am sure that they will play a big part in 
organizing and uniting the youth and the parents with whom 
they work. I am sure they will, through their union and as 
individuals, bring before their representatives in Congress the 
eause of the teaching profession, which is the cause of all 
progressive America. 

Here is a concrete program, which I hope the teachers will 
help in achieving. Write your own Congressman and Senator, 
asking them to work for this program. Urge your friends to 
write. 

Our chief aim must be to keep America out of war and to do 
this the following should be done by Congress: 


1. Take all the profits out of war. 

a. Nationalize if possible the munitions industry. That fail 
ing, limit the profit thereon. 

b. Curb all profiteering, particularly on food and other 
necessities of life. 

e. Continue the protection of labor’s right to organize and 
bargain collectively in order that they may defend their 
wages and living standards against war profiteers. 

2.Guard against incidents, such as the sinking of the Lusi 
tania, likely to incite war fever in this country. 

a. Keep American ships out of war danger zones. 

b. Prohibit the travel of American citizens on belligerent 
ships. 

c. Require belligerents to take title to all commodities includ 
ing food and clothing as well as raw materials of war, 
such as scrap iron, oil and cotton before they leave Ameri 
ean ports. 

d. Require belligerents to transport all commodities in their 
own ships. 

e. No credits either public or private to warring nations. 

f. Continue the Munitions Control Board requiring all pur 
chases of war supplies to be licensed by the government. 

. Preserve and extend democracy at home. 

a. Protect the civil liberties (freedom of speech, press and 
assembly) of all Americans in order that the desire of the 
American people to remain at peace may continually be 
voiced. 

b. Insist on the right of every man to a job at a decent living 
wage, thereby providing the economic basis of real na- 
tional unity and patriotism, giving no chance for un- 
American doctrines to gain headway. 

I believe that the vast majority of the American people are 
agreed on the above program for keeping us out of war, and that 
we should unite on these major objectives and not allow our 
forces to be divided and our efforts to maintain peace crip- 
pled by the single issue of the arms embargo, for this issue in 
itself is not the determining factor in keeping our nation at 
peace. Lee E. GuYER 

U. S. Representative and Former President, Local 430 


e.5 


OCTOBER, 1939 


From Your Legislative Representative 


SIR: The following letter has been sent with the approval of 
the Executive Council to President Roosevelt and to keep 
people in the House and Senate: 

“The American Federation of Teachers numbering approx- 
imately 40,000 members desires to give you its point of view 
on the war situation in Europe as it effects America. 

“As teachers and trade unionists we are concerned in keep- 
ing America out of the European War which we believe to be an 
unprincipled fight for power. 

“We have definitely no sympathies in the struggle except for 
the American people and their children whom we teach. To 
that end we urge you to KEEP AMERICA OUT OF WAR by, 

1. Providing a positive program of jobs to counteract the 
mirage of “war prosperity” by enacting such bills as the 
Wagner-Steagall Housing Bill, the Thomas Federal Aid to 
Education Bill, the Wagner Health Bill, as well as bills to 
extend WPA and PWA, all legislation which will at the same 
time provide work and extend the security and well-being 
of the American people, will have a positive effect in stem- 
ming the movement toward war. 

2. Immediately curbing the rise in the standard of liv- 
ing, rigidly restricting profiteering on food and other necessi- 
ties of life. 

3. By protecting labor’s right to organize and defend its 
wages and working conditions. This means a defense of 
existing labor legislation. 

4. By protecting civil liberties in order to preserve and 
extend democracy (under guise of war emergency the com- 
mon rights of teachers as citizens have in some instances 
already been assailed). 

5. By limiting the profit in the munitions industry and 
related industries. 

6. By preventing the granting of credits either public or 
private to nations at war. 

7. By keeping American ships and citizens out of war- 
danger zones. 

“Finally we believe that laws themselves, arms embargo in- 
cluded, cannot prevent war. Only the will of the people, freely 
expressed and protected from the propaganda of war mongers, 
can prevent a “blackout of peace.” We therefore urge you to 
do everything in your power to preserve democracy and insure 
national security in America. 

Mary Foiey GrossMAN 
Chairman, National Legislative Committee 


Two Mistakes—Sorry! 

SIR: Your full presentation of the Educational Policies pane! 
discussion, in the September issue, was a noteworthy innova- 
tion. I do hope you will find it possible to print in full the 
other three panel discussions. 

I note that in the “Comments from the Floor” the very excel 
lent presentation of two problems by Mr. Cyril Graze of Local 5 
was, through some error, credited to me. 

In fairness to Mr. Graze this correction should be called 
to the attention of your readers. 

MEYER CASE 
Loeal 5 


SIR: Having been away all the summer, I found the AMERICAN 
TEACHER a very good means of catching up on the report of 
the conference. 

On page 14, in the report of George Googe’s speech, he says 
that the ILGWU’s “executive board, a few months ago, voted 
unanimously to recommend to their next convention return 
to the family of the AFL...” I checked with Editor Danish 
and it is completely news to him. I do not suppose there could 
have been an error in transcription of what Mr. Googe said. 

MarE STARR 
Educational Director, TLG WU 


23 














Among the 


New Beaks 





THE CHANGING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: Re- 
port of the Regents’ Inquiry, by Leo J. BRUECKNER 
and a group of distinguished cooperating specialists. 
New York: Inor. 416 pages. $3.50. 


EDUCATION FOR AMERICAN LIFE: Report of 
the Regents’ Inquiry, by LurHer Hausey Gutick. 
Chicago: McGraw-Hill. 167 pages. $2.00. 


T WAS IN CONNECTION WITH the failure of the Re- 
| gents’ Inquiry Commission to publish this report 
that I stated in the American TEACHER (April, 
1939) that ‘‘the failure to publish a volume dealing 
with elementary education .. . must stand as a severe 
indictment of those responsible for the Inquiry until a 
satisfactory explanation is made.’’ Dr. Gulick’s 
answer was to turn over to me Dr. Brueckner’s manu- 
script’ with permission to secure a publisher. I am 
happy to be able to report that this excellent study has 
now been published by the Inor Publishing Company, 
207 Fourth Avenue, New York City. The title is The 
Changing Elementary School. 

The principal questions which Dr. Brueckner’s 
study endeavored to answer were: 

1. What are the characteristics of the educational 
product at various levels of the elementary school ? 

2. What are the elements in the total learning situ- 
ation, both in and out of school, that condition this 
product favorably or unfavorably ? 

3. To what extent does the instructional program 
represent modern trends in educational thought and 
practices ? 

4. What changes in state policy will improve and 
strengthen the program of elementary education ? 

The following were among the most important of 
the major recommendations of the study: 

1. The period of elementary education should be 
regarded as one phase of a well integrated, continuous 
program which ends for most pupils at an age of about 
twelve. At this point these pupils should be admitted 
to post-elementary schools in which a differentiated 
program is provided, adapted to their level of develop- 
ment, ability and needs. The kindergarten should be 
established in all localities of the state, except in small 
rural schools. 

2. One-room schools should be discontinued as soon 
as feasible, except in remote places, in favor of a sys- 
tem of larger central schools. In kindergarten to sixth 
grade there should not be less than 180 pupils. Six 
hundred or more pupils would make possible a more 





1I have been informed that the cost of the Brueckner study 
was approximately $35,000. This is to correct the statement 
in the April number. 


24 





effective program in the elementary school. 

3. The curriculum must more clearly and more 
fully recognize the social function of the schools to 
prepare its pupils for the assumption of their responsi- 
bilities in a changing, industrial, democratic society. 

4. Schools in each locality should be encouraged to 
adapt their programs to the conditions that exist in 
their community in accordance with an accepted body 
of principles arrived at by the state through study and 
discussion, subject, however, to the rigorous scrutiny 
of the state. State instructional aids should therefore 
not consist of formal syllabi, as at present, but rather 
of descriptions of rich varied units of instruction from 
which teachers are free to select those that seem to be 
best adapted to their situation. The development of 
such materials should be encouraged locally. 

5. The curriculum must be flexible so that it may 
provide more adequately for variations in the needs 
and abilities of pupils. The plan of requiring a num- 
ber of pupils to repeat the work of a grade should 
gradually be discontinued in favor of a program of 
differentiated instruction adjusted to needs, interests 
and level of development of the pupils. The present 
plan of requiring pupils in rural schools to pass the 
preliminary Regents’ examination or similar examina- 
tions as a basis for admission to post-elementary 
schools should be discontinued. 

6. Instruction should recognize a much broader 
range of educational objectives than in the past. The 
schools must contribute as effectively as they may be 
able to the well-rounded development of the physical, 
intellectual, social, emotional and moral aspects of the 
personality of the learner. 

7. Instruction must be made more vital and mean- 
ingful by relating its content more closely to the affairs 
of daily life and by emphasizing learning through use 
in worthwhile social experiences rather than through 
formal routinized procedures. 

8. The school should consciously and definitely pro- 
vide in its program for the development of desirable 
character and personality traits of pupils. 

9. The state must take steps to equalize more nearly 
educational opportunity in respect to instructional 
supplies, materials and equipment. 

10. More effective supervision of instruction is nee- 
essary than is now provided in most places in the state, 
especially in supervisory districts where a majority of 
the beginning teachers have their first teaching experi- 
ence. 

11. Continuing cooperative research and experi- 
mentation are necessary and should be encouraged 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 





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RI on me Te Om RN ERE 








and provided for, both locally and by the state. 

12. The teaching staff must safeguard the state pro- 
visions for tenure by a continuing program of self- 
improvement through study and travel. 

13. State aid for kindergartens recommended. 

14. State should study experimentally the matter of 
establishment of publicly supported nursery schools. 

15. State aid should be distributed on an enroll- 
ment basis rather than on an attendance basis. Age of 
pupils rather than grade they attend should be consid- 
ered in distribution of state aid. 

16. State should require all schools to supply free 
textbooks and essential educational supplies. 

17. Adequate program should be established for 
education of handicapped children. 

This book is recommended for purchase by all per- 
sons interested in elementary education. Its useful- 
ness is not limited to New York State. 


EDUCATION FOR AMERICAN LIFE 


This is a well-written summarizing volume, reflect- 
ing very well the principal conclusions and recommen- 
dations contained in the ten published specialized 
volumes. Part I is a summary of the findings and 
recommendations of the Regents’ Inquiry. There are 
three chapters in this section with the titles, ‘‘Growing 
Schools for a Growing World,’’ ‘‘The Schools New 
York State Wants,’’ and ‘‘A New Educational Pro- 
gram.”’ 

Part Il deals with the following three major ele- 
ments of administration and finance: the improvement 


of school-district organization, rebuilding the state 
education department and costs and economies under 
the new program. 

It was necessarily true that there were many more 
studies than could be published. Undoubtedly the 
selection of materials for publication was a most diffi- 
cult task. In cases of those educational areas in which 
studies were not published the reader is entirely de- 
pendent upon the summarizing statements in Educa- 
tion for American Llafe. This reviewer did not consult 
all of the unpublished studies. He did, however, read 
the unpublished study entitled ‘‘Higher Education 
for the State of New York’’ by Dr. David Spence Hill 
and President Edward C. Elliott of Purdue Uni- 
versity. The recommendations contained in this study 
are not in harmony with the published recommenda- 
tions relative to higher education contained in Educa- 
tion for American Lafe. It is not the contention of the 
reviewer that the Regents’ Inquiry Commission was 
under obligation to accept any or all of the recommen- 
dations of its experts. It is contended, however, that 
when the recommendations of the experts are not made 
public and when the published recommendations are 
greatly at variance with the recommendations of the 
experts, there exists at least the obligation to make 
clear that the recommendations of the experts are be- 
ing disregarded. There follow in parallel columns the 
recommendations relative to higher education con- 
tained in Dr. Gulick’s summarizing volume and the 
unpublished recommendations of Dr. Hill and Presi- 
dent Elliott. 





Gulick’s Recommendations Printed 
in Education for American Life and 
Widely Distributed. 

“New York is adequately supplied with 
private colleges and universities, and pub 
lie and private professional schools, though 
it does not have a free state university.” ... 

“No additional state funds should be 
spent during this generation to set up 
new colleges or independent professional 
schools.” 

“The central institutional need of older 
youth is not for more academic liberal arts, 
teacher education, or other professional 
schools. . . . It is for subprofessional, sub- 
technical, and general cultural courses such 
as will be made available through the up- 
ward extension of the high school.” 


OCTOBER, 1939 





Recommendations Contained in ‘‘ Higher Education for the State of New 
York’’ by Hill and Elliott, and Not Published. 


“Two bald facts stand out: 

(1) Of more than a million adolescents of college age in the State of New York hardly 
one-eighth are regularly enrolled in college.” 

(2) Except within the City of New York and in the seven specialized State Colleges 
|and all of these charge certain fees but not tuition for bona-fide residents|* free 
instruction in general collegiate work does not exist in the State of New York as it 
does in the vast majority of American states. State scholarships only in small meas- 
ure mitigate this dearth of free opportunity. Predominantly, general collegiate edu- 
cation is accessible to the economically privileged rather than to the intellectually 
gifted regardless of wealth or poverty in the State of New York. 

“In round figures, the publicly-owned institutions of higher education in the State, 
including the present three Colleges in the City of New York, annually cost the tax- 
payers thirteen millions of dollars. If we consider only the publicly-owned institutions 
of higher education in the State situated outside the City of New York, a startling 
contrast is found for their total annual cost to the tax-payers is about six millions of 
dollars—even if 21 institutions of diverse kinds are included in the total. They are 
the five state colleges, two teachers’ colleges, nine normal schools, [Gulick recommends 
closing some of the normal schools] School for the Blind, Marine Academy—and the 
state scholarships may also be included in the total. At the same time, more than 
twenty-seven millions of dollars were appropriated in 1935 by the State of New York 
for institutions for mental hygiene, treatment of mental defectives, ete... . 

“Tt is wellknown that the State of New York is not only near the top of the list in 
wealth per child, but it also has a relatively high ratio of the number of adults to the 
number of children and youth to be educated. . .. This means that the State of New 
York has great wealth and more persons per youth to support higher education than 
have nine-tenths of the other states. 

“Tn years to come it could happen that the present monetary savings apparently result- 


*All material in italics is Professor Myers’ comment. 


25 

















ing from withholding by the State of New York of accessible opportunities for general 
collegiate education from capable but poor youths not residing in the City of New 
York will result disastrously. Ultimate losses both of wealth and of liberty can arise 
out of uneducated, resentful leadership in the future once it gets control of the 
greater enterprise of the people. 





“Youth in New York State go to college in 
remarkable numbers. In this State a greater 
percentage of the boys and girls go on 
with their education after high school than 
in any other popul-s state with the single 
exception of California. ... The New York 
State system of providing college and uni- 
versity education, principally through pri- 
vate institutions, and supplementing their 
scholarship funds with three thousand state 
scholarships, is in most ways remarkably 
successful.” 


“The U.S. Office of Education estimated that for 1931 New York ranked sixth among 
the States in the number of students whose homes are in State and attending institu- 
tions in the same State. That is, per 1,000 inhabitants 18 to 21 years of age inclusive, 
the number of students thus at the top of the scale was Washington 184; California 
176; Utah 166; Oregon 152; Kansas 143; New York 137. [If New York City were left 
out of the tabulation, New York State would be much farther down in the list. It 
might reasonably be expected that New York would stand at the top of the list since New 
York has only 10 per cent of the population of the country and more than one-fourth 
of the volume of the national income on which income tax returns are filed. | 

“The establishment of free tuition in liberal arts institutions, under State support 
and for youth of the State living outside of the City of New York would be resisted 
by many boards as well as by executives and professors of nonpublicly-owned colleges. 
[Dr. Gulick is at Columbia.] ... It remains to be proved how far this attitude is merely 
reaction to a bogey, since thousands of youth would not go to any college unless the 
existing economic hurdles of tuition and fees were overcome by the State. 

“Due to the termination of the Emergency Collegiate Centers which were being main- 
tained throughout the State by Federal funds, several thousand two-year college stu- 
dents probably will not be able to continue their college education in the State of 
New York. 

“Between one-half million and one million dollars are probably now being expended 
annually by the State in apportionments for ‘post-graduate’ high-school students. 
This amount could go far in the state-subsidization of properly organized junior colleges. 

“Assistant Commissioner Horner’s estimate in 1934 that 10,000 young persons in the 
State of New York were being prevented from doing college work on account of 
financial incapacity appears to be conservative.” 





“To meet these conditions, the following 
steps are recommended: 

“Amend the law to limit rigorously the 
incorporation of further independent gen- 
eral arts colleges and universities. 

“Appropriate no state funds for the es- 
tablishment of any state-wide system of 
‘junior colleges’ or of a state university, and 
authorize no city, county, or other area to 
set up new liberal arts colleges. 

“Double the number of competit.ve state 
scholarships available for those % ishing to 
go to college by raising the number to six 
thousand, and increase the stipenc from 
$100, as was fixed by law in 1913 when col- 
lege tuitions were $100 or less, to an amount 
sufficient to pay the tuition of each scholar- 
ship winner in any college in the State he 
may select, but not to exceed $400 .... Au- 
thorize local school authorities to finance 
competitive scholarships for not more than 
5 per cent of a graduating class, to be 
awarded by the Commissioner of Education. 

“Create one hundred Regents’ Graduate 
Fellowships of $400 each to be available 
for graduate academic, scientific, and pro- 
fessional study, and to be awarded by the 
Commissioner in accordance with the plan 
suggested. 

“Continue the present complex affiliation 
between the State and Cornell, Alfred, Syra- 
cuse, and St. Lawrence Universities, but en- 
ter into no more such arrangements. In 
other words, rely on the New York State 
scholarship system, not on the western public 
university system, for the realization of 
greater equality of educational opportunity 
at the college and university level.” 





“Recommended Policy: 

“More State responsibility than is now being carried by the State should be assumed 
by the Legislature in providing opportunities for general collegiate education outside 
of the City of New York. 

“This assumption of enlarged responsibility for collegiate education would include: 
.. . Enlargement of opportunity for general, collegiate education, in distinction from 
the present five or six kinds of specialized semi-professional offerings of the State 
Colleges . . . should also be facilitated by a thorough-going revision of the system 
of state scholarships.” [Elsewhere in the report it is stated: (p. 83) ‘The State Scholar- 
ships arouse keen competition in high-school pupils who strive to excel in passing 
Regents’ Examinations. In 1935, there were ten times more applicants with college 
entrance diplomas for these Scholarships than there were awards of the Scholarships.’ | 

“The Legislature should be asked to authorize communities of sufficient population 
and resources to establish local, but not state junior colleges; .. . to provide for state 
subventions of junior colleges at the rate of $100 per annum per student-unit of average 
daily attendance, the total such subvention not to exceed annually the sum of $2,000,000 
during the next five years.” 

[There followed an excellent statement of proposed standards and rules for these 
proposed tax-supported junior colleges. | 

“More attention at Albany [should be given] to the nature and costs of the total 
programs for accessory instruction now being purchased from Alfred, Cornell, and 
Syracuse Universities. 

“The agreements with non-publicly owned institutions should be changed with 
reference to the manner of fixing fees and charges for students of state colleges. The 
Board of Regents might ask of the Legislature sole authority, acting through the State 
Commissioner of Education, to accept or to reject in advance any and all rates or charges 
to be made for accessory or other instruction to be proffered to the State by Alfred, 
Cornell, and Syracuse Universities. ... A thoroughgoing investigation of this whole 
problem should be made by the Commissioner for the Board of Regents.” 





26 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 











What more need be said? The record speaks for 
itself. Dr. Gulick told me that there were distributed 
10,000 free copies of Education for American Life. 
How many copies were sold I do not know. It is clear 
that Dr. Gulick has published conclusions and recom- 
mendations that are completely opposed to the con- 
elusions and recommendations of his experts in the 
field of higher education. I would not question the 
propriety of this if Dr. Gulick had made public the 
findings of the experts and if he had made it clear 
that he was going counter to their recommendations. 
He did neither of these things. 

We are confronted here with an unusually serious 
situation. The Regents’ Inquiry Into the Character 
and Cost of Public Education in the State of New 
York was instigated by Owen D. Young, a member 
of the Board of Regents. The General Education 
Board (Rockefeller) supplied the money for the In- 
quiry, $500,000. There has been tremendous publicity 
attendant upon the publication of the report, Educa- 
tion for American Life. The public believes that the 
Regents’ Inquiry provides a safe and reliable charter 
for the redirection of public education in New York 
State. Yet here we have clearly revealed practices 
that cannot be condoned. How many other such ‘‘skel- 
etons’’ there may be in the Regents’ Inquiry files I do 
not know. I do know that enough has been revealed 
to cast suspicion upon the entire enterprise. Until 
these suspicions can be dispelled, the recommenda- 
tions and statements in Education for American Life 
cannot be accepted as a reliable study of the character 
and cost of public education in New York State. I, 
therefore, recommend that the Legislature of the State 
of New York make an official investigation of the 
Regents’ Inquiry Into the Character and Cost of Pub- 
lie Education in the State of New York. 

ALonzo F. Myers. 


LABOR PROBLEMS AND THE AMERICAN 
SCENE, by Lots MacDonaup, New York: Harper. 
878 pages. $3.50. 

N A LARGE COUNTRY LIKE THE UNITED STATES where industrial 
I and agricultural centers develop in circles whose circum- 
ferences never touch, where even in the same cities there is 
practically no contact between industrial, professional, or small 
business groups, labor unions, to the uninformed, seem like 
strange phenomena unrelated to the American scene. One of 
the best features of Miss MacDonald’s book is its clear picture 
of typical American communities showing that American unions 
emerge logically from their environment; that they are 
largely indigenous to the varied American soil, with all the vir- 
tues and shortcomings of such an evolution. 

The book is carefully documented and admirably organized 
to give the reader a comprehensive and yet not superficial pic- 
ture of the American Labor Movement emerging from a variety 
of typical American scenes such as Middletowns, coal camps, 
textile mill villages and clothing centers in large cities. Excel- 
lent sections present workers on the job, showing the problems 
of such varying groups as steel workers and white-collar work- 
ers. One part is devoted to cheap-labor groups, giving a clear 


OCTOBER, 1939 


analysis of the economic conditions of women and young work- 
ers, immigrants and agricultural workers, and the negro worker. 
After a section on the problems of workers in a machine age, 
the reader is ready for the very full and clear discussion of the 
American Labor Movement then presented. There follow dis- 
cussions on the approach of the employer, and labor and the 
state as related to protective legislation and labor disputes; 
and a conclusion which brings the labor problems of America 
up to the present. 

Those who teach American labor to students on the college 
level have long needed a text like Miss MacDonald’s. The 
book is also an admirable source of information for the lay 
person who desires to get a comprehensive and reliable picture 
of American labor. It has been prepared in accordance with 
high standards of scholarship and is furnished with enough 
detail so that each aspect is a solid piece of information and 
ean serve as the basis for further investigation by the reader. 

Chicago Teachers College LILLIAN HERSTEIN 


HEROES OF THOUGHT, by J. MippLeron Murry. 
New York: Messner. 368 pages. $3.75. 


Rk. Murry is a well-known British literary critic of broadly 
liberal persuasion. In Heroes of Thought he is concerned 
to sound a call for a return to Christian, democratic and 
socialistic fundamentals in political and cultural life. He is 
urging such a revivification of faith in God and exemplification 
of Christian love as will allow a universal church to assume in 
a selfconscious collectivistie democracy the integral role it played 
in the infinitely simpler collective society of the Middle Ages. 
Mr. Murry tries to show that democracy and socialism are 
part and parcel of the Christian ethic. His method of doing 
this is to indicate that the “heroes of thought” with whom 
he is also believed and accepted this relationship. He presents 
in turn Chaucer, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cromwell, Milton, 
Rousseau, Goethe, Godwin, Wordsworth, Shelley, Marx and 
Morris against the social, economic and cultural backgrounds 
of their worlds. The story of Western Europe’s defection from 
medieval Christian collectivism is told in terms of the funda- 
mental spiritual emphases of these men. The design of this 
story is hidden by literary preciosity while Milton, Goethe, 
Godwin and Wordsworth are being considered, but it emerges 
clearly again as Rousseau, Marx and William Morris are inter- 
preted. Mr. Murry sees in the words and deeds of these “heroes” 
man’s effortful striving toward the rebirth of faith in a spiritual 
and moral ordering of the environment. Because of the inven- 
tion of machinery and the consequent availability of enormous 
quantities of physical energy which followed upon bourgeois 
individualism this goal has been lost from sight. A great effort 
of the imagination is necessary to bring it into view again, but 
unless it is brought into view so that the masses of men see 
it and cling to it there is little hope of arresting the mad pace 
of man-made destructive forces in our modern world. Germany 
is citéd as an example of large-seale refusal to deal imagi 
natively and wisely with the vast energies now available. 

While Mr. Murry makes much of the role of the Church 
in the collective democracy which he hopes will emerge out 
of present chaos, it is by no means the Church that we now 
know. He recognizes the sorry tagging after capitalists that 
characterizes the Protestants and the shoddy bargaining with 
fascism that describes the Catholics. 

The chief function of Heroes of Thought would seem to be 
that of disturbing somewhat the social and economic complacency 
of the few academic intellectuals who may read it. The book 
lacks significance for the lay reader for two reasons: first 
because of the frequent literary preciosity already referred to; 
and second because it is much more a confessional for Mr. Murry 
himself than a social document of real importance. 

Ohio State University NORMAN WOELFEL 


27 











Ou the Labor Front 


Edited from the Labor Press and the Federated Press 





THE INTERNATIONAL LADIES’ 

Garment Workers’ Union reported at 
the general executive board meeting 
here that 1938 was the most prosperous 
year in the history of the union. 

Receipts of $6,171,252 set a new rec- 
ord, exceeding the 1937 figure of $5,847,- 
957 by a comfortable margin. The pre- 
ceding year’s deficit of $18,701 was con- 
verted into a surplus of $1,022,660, since 
disbursements were held to $5,148,591 
as against $5,866,658 in 1937. 

President David Dubinsky said that 
three chief factors accounted for the 
surplus of more than a million dollars: 
membership increase coupled with 
speedier payment of dues, an increase 
in the union’s reserves for such special 
funds as sick and death benefits, and 
a saving of almost $500,000 through a 
decrease in the number of strikes. 

In 1937 the union contributed $67,243 
in per capita dues to the CIO, plus 
$155,000 to the Textile Workers Organ- 
izing Committee and the Steel Workers 
Organizing Committee. Last November 
the ILGWU withdrew from the CIO, 
having paid $40,796 in per capita dues 
for 1938 up until that time. 

The educational and recreational de 
partment was allotted $153,927 in 1938, 
compared with $177,924 in the preceding 
year. Total organizational expenses, in- 
cluding strike benefits, salaries of union 
officers, hall rents, advertising, legal fees 
and other items, were $2,781,172, a sharp 
decline from the $3,617,444 of 1937. 

The report covers 298 local unions (in 
1937 the number was 288), 20 joint 
boards and 7 regional departments in 
the U. 8. and Canada, as well as the 
general office of the union. 


* 


THE AMALGAMATED CLOTHING 

Workers (CIO) has signed a 2-year 
renewal of its industrywide contract 
covering 40,000 workers, marking 18 
years of agreements reached through 
peaceful negotiation. 

The contract was signed by the New 
York Clothing Manufacturers Exchange, 
which represents 214 manufacturers and 
365 contractors producing 40 per cent 
of the country’s men’s clothing and 
doing a $300,000,000 yearly business. 

Conditions under the new agreement, 
which are the same as under the old 
one, include the 12 per cent wage in 
erease won in 1937 and the 36-hour week 
won in 1933. The union has set up a 
stabilizing committee to establish a 
national wage seale on each type of 
garment. Special Assistant U. 8. Atty. 
Walter Brower has been appointed im- 
partial arbitrator in the industry to re- 
place Dr. Henry Moscowitz. 

“The new agreement is a living ex- 
ample of how democracy in industry can 


28 


work,” said President Sidney Hillman. 
“It proves that the laws of the jungle 


need not dominate employer-employee re- 


lations.” 


* 
ON SUNDAY, JULY 30, 7-YEAR-OLD 
Jacquelyn Ann Engelmann trudged 
manfully at the head of the picket line 
before the Kohler plant near Sheboy- 
gan, Wis. 
Behind her in silent, solemn proces 


Membership 
A. FB. of &. 
183i - 1939 





sion marched some 150 men and women 
who walked in another picket line with 
Henry Engelmann, her father, on July 
27, 1934, the day he was shot and killed 
by Walter J. Kohler’s special deputies. 
Jaequelyn Ann’s second birthday came 
the week he was buried. 

Every working day since midsummer 
of that year strikers have carried their 
banners in front of the Kohler gates. 

Sunday’s line of march was marked 


3| GEERREEERGEE 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 











with unusual solemnity, for it was a 
part of the fifth annual memorial serv- 
ices conducted by Kohler strikers for 
Engelmann and for Lee Wakefield, an- 
other Kohler worker who fell in the 
blast of gunfire on that fateful day. 

Jacquelyn Ann beamed proudly as she 

earried a wreath of roses later laid on 
her father’s grave. Enge!mann’s parents 
and the parents of Lee Wakefield, slight- 
ly bowed, marched too. 
“They marched past the sprawling 
plumbing fixtures plant and past Kohler 
village — the touted “model village” 
which former Governor Kohler, the 
“bathtub king,” rules like a feudal baron 
—to the Kraedemann farm in the open 
eountry. 

There under the hot sun Jae Fried- 
rick, organizer for the Milwaukee Fed- 
erated Trades Council, retold the history 
of his long, bitter strike, and former 
Representative Thomas R. Amlie praised 
the bravery of men and women “fighting 
against industrial autocracy for the lib 
erties of free men.” 

In the summer of 1934, Friedrick re 
called, Walter J. Kohler, Sr., only 18 
months out of the governor’s chair, was 
one of Wisconsin’s eminently respected 
citizens. 

Kohler workers saw him differently. 
Sheboygan wages, industrial commission 
figures show, are among the lowest in 
the state. Men working in the Kohler 
pottery department were paid ten cents 
for each toilet bowl. Working fast, they 
could average 22 bowls in an 8-houg 
day. There were frequent complaints 
of silicosis hazards. 

Dissatisfaction came to a head in the 
summer of 1933 when over 1,800 em- 
ployes joined the AFL Federal Labor 
Union No, 18454, The company re- 
sponded by sponsoring the Kohler Work 
ers Association. 

On July 16, 1934, about 1,000 workers 
struck, Anton Brotz, chief engineer for 
the company, was the mayor of the vil 
lage. He swore in other company of- 
ficials and non-strikers as deputy police. 
Some were given black shirts to distin- 
guish them. All were given guns or 
“billy” elubs. 

On the evening of July 27 more than 
2,000 strikers, their wives and sympa- 
thizers, angered by a long series of 
provocations by the armed deputies, 
gathered at the plant. Some one threw 
a rock and broke a window. Deputies 
threw teargas bombs. Strikers returned 
some of them. 

The deputies replied with lead. Henry 
Engelmann and Lee Wakefield fell dead. 
Forty-seven others were wounded. All 
received their shots in the back. 


* 


INITIATIVE 131, OREGON’S FA- 

mous anti-labor law which was passed 
last year, was recently upheld unani- 
mously on all counts by a three-judge 
state circuit court. The AFL, CIO and 
railroad unions have announced that 
an appeal will be taken to the state 
supreme court and, if that body should 


OCTOBER, 1939 


fail to reverse the lower court, to the 
United States Supreme Court. 

The law was put over by the Associ- 
ated Farmers and the Oregon Business 
Council in the election last fall. The 
La Follette Civil Liberties Committee 
is expected to investigate the situation 
under which the statute was passed. 


* 


THE FIGHT AGAINST THE APEX 

decision which recently held the 
Hosiery Workers Union (CIO) for $711,- 
932 damages under the provisions of the 
Sherman Anti-trust Act is being carried 
forward by the Union, the National 
Lawyers Guild and the American Civil 
Liberties Union. 

The arguments of labor’s counsel have 
heen that the Sherman Anti-trust Act 
does not apply to labor unions since 
the act was written to help and not 
hinder organized labor. 


* 


AN IMMEDIATE STRIKE OF 12,000 

film craftsmen was averted when the 
International Alliance of Theatrical 
Stage Employees (AFL) and the Asso- 
ciation of Motion Picture Producers 
agreed on a 10-per-cent wage increase 
amounting to about $2,500,000 annually. 

The producers had fought against the 
raise on the grounds that the European 
war had caused considerable cut in prof- 
its. Negotiations will continue on the 
union’s demand for shorter hours and 
improved working conditions. 

The IATSE was certified by the 
NLRB as collective bargaining agency 
for the film craftsmen after defeating 
the independent United Studio Tech- 
nicians Guild by 4,460 to 1,957 in an 
election at ten leading studios. 


* 


THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACT, THE 

Labor Relations Act and the Wage- 
Hours Act, which form “the charter of 
industrial and economic democracy for 
the wage earners of the nation,” are 
in danger of “being mangled by lobbies 
which seek by flank attacks to 
chop these laws to pieces,” Elmer F. 
Andrews, wage-hours administrator, 
warned in a nationally broadcast speech 
recently. 

“Literally millions of workers, the 
neediest, the least organized and the 
economically weakest of all wage earn- 
ers are threatened by pending or pro- 
posed amendments to these great pieces 
of labor and social legislation,” An 
drews declared. 

He denounced, by name, the Asso- 
ciated Farmers of California and its 
stooge outfit, the Agricultural Produ- 
cers’ Labor Committee directed by Ivan 
G. MeDaniel, Los Angeles lobbyist- 
lawyer. 

The Associated Farmers of California, 
Andrews described as “a notorious la- 
bor-busting outfit of the West Coast 
which is largely financed by the cham- 
ber of commerce of California, big util- 
ity interests and employers opposed to 
organized labor. 





“The Associated Farmers has a long 
record of trying to solve their labor 
troubles by violence. It is a matter 
of notorious record that they have sup- 
pressed free speech, a free press, the 
right peaceably to assemble, the right 
to petition—just about all the consti- 
tutional guarantees that were intended 
to safeguard the liberties of a free 
people.” 

* 


MORE THAN ONE MILLION PER- 

sons throughout the United States are 
being provided with improved health 
services through the group plans, Dr. 
Kingsley Roberts, director of the Bu- 
reau of Cooperative Medicine, reported 
to the first convention on cooperative 
medicine held in New York. The con- 
vention adopted a resolution to set up 
a national organization for establishing 
and maintaining standards of practice 
for cooperative health plans throughout 
the country. Fifteen states were repre- 
sented. Representatives of the AFL, 
CIO and railroad unions commended 
cooperative medical practice to the con- 
vention, 

Labor speakers included Dr. H. P. 
Wells, medical director for the Brother- 
hood of Railway Trainmen, President 
Jacob Baker of the United Federal 
Workers (CIO) and President Elmer 
Brown of Local 6, International Typo- 
graphical Union. The groups voting to 
establish the new association were: 
Civie Medical Center, Chicago; Farmers 
Union Cooperative Hospital, Elk City, 
Okla.; Group Health Association, Wash 
ington, D. C.; Greenbelt Cooperative 
Health Association, Greenbelt, Md.; 
Group Health Association, New York 
City; Group Health Mutual, St. Paul; 
Milwaukee Medical Center, Milwaukee; 
Ross Loos Medical Group, Los Angeles; 
Trinity Hospital, Little Rock, Ark.; 





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Wage Earners Health Association, St. 
Louis. 

In the meantime group health plans 
continue to spring up. In Arkansas, 
under the Farm Security Administra- 
tion, a group plan is in effect in about 
75 per cent of the counties in the state. 
Under this plan the FSA clients make 
arrangements with each county medical 
society and with individual physicians 
for payment of monthly fees into a pool. 
In case of illness, members may call on 
any of the participating physicians and 
fees are then paid out of the pool. 

In Kenosha, Wis., representatives of 
the AFL and CIO are making joint plans 
for a cooperative medical, dental and 
surgical service for their members and 
their families. A similar movement is 
under way in Racine, Wis. 

In Michigan, where the Michigan 
State Medical Society has proposed a 
group medical plan, President R. J. 
Thomas of the United Automobile 
Workers (CIO) has made the following 
comparison between the Medical So- 
ciety’s proposed plan and the services 
offered by the Milwaukee Medical Cen- 
ter, which has 19 organizations affili- 
ated in the group plan including AFL 
and CIO unions: 


Milwaukee Medical Center 
(actual operation) 


Cost per month—TIndividual...... $1.00 
oS ee 2.00 
oo), eee ere 3.00 

Registration fee .........+.+...> none 

pn PT PCE Ee none 


Eligibility—Individual or group 
(no medical examination  re- 
quired if in group)........... 

ee eee 


Service—Unlimited ............. 





Michigan Medical Society 
(proposed plan) 
Cost per month—Individual......$2.00 


SE Wad 006 64s cae cons 3.50 
EE ni pc btwenses ceewsescoes 4.50 
Registration fee .........++-.e+. 1.00 
Additional fee........$5.00 of first bill 


Eligibility—Must be group of 25 
PE Ds tikes cde ke hae ewes «as 0 
Not more than $2000 ineome a year 
single; $2500 family........... 
Service—Up to $325 a year for 
individual; $550 for man and 
wife; $875 for family......... 


* 
THE NLRB HAS ORDERED THE 


Atlas Powder Co. of Stamford, Conn., 
to stop interfering with the rights of 
its employees to self-organization. At 
the same time the Board ruled that John 
Martinech, union secretary, and Klym 
Markevich, union member, were not dis- 
charged because of activities for the 
United Mine Workers Union. Evidence 
before the Board disclosed the follow- 
ing picture of the Company’s activity. 

Following a consent election held on 
December 8, 1937, which the union lost 
by a 292 to 96 count, a parade was held 
throughout the plant and through the 
town headed by the company foreman, 
Felix DiPriseo. After the parade, a 


30 


celebration was held on plant premises, 
which was participated in by employees 
of all departments of the plant except 
those in the lacquer- and pressrooms 
who continued working. Work in the 
other departments was apparently aban- 
doned. The celebration continued 
throughout the afternoon and evening, 
and participants hanged and burned ef- 
figies of union officers. Di Prisco passed 
out intoxicating liquor to the men. At 
the close of the day a dance was held 
at the office, during which some property 
damage to the company’s building oc- 
eurred. When the celebration was be- 
ginning the assistant superintendent of 
the department went through announc- 
ing that “anyone that voted right could 
go over and have a good time.” The 
general manager told the celebrators 
that “apparently it appeared as if they 
liked the way it came out and I may 
have told them I was glad they liked 
it.” The Board found that no one gave 
permission for the dance to the em- 
ployees, and that no disciplinary action 
against the employees who organized the 
dance or caused damage to the com 
pany’s property was taken. 

“The foregoing activities of the re 
spondent”, the Board held, “indicating 
its hostile attitude toward the Union, 
engendered among the respondent’s em 
ployees the fear of reprisals for union 
activities.” 

* 
THE “FALSE ECONOMY” OF MAYOR 


Jasper McLevy in “jeopardizing the 
health of Bridgeport’s school children” 
by refusing to accept the services of 
a free school doctor from the Federal 
Government has been condemned by the 
Bridgeport Central Labor Union (AFL) 
and the Bridgeport Board of Health. 


* 

THE FIRST CITYWIDE UNION SHOP 

contract covering newspaper editorial 
and business department workers has 
been signed between the American 
Newspaper Guild (CIO) and the San 
Francisco-Oakland Newspaper Publish- 
ers Association. 

The agreement, covering 1,400 work- 
ers, provides wage increases setting the 
weekly minimum for experienced report- 
ers at $57.69 on morning papers and 
$55.32 on afternoon papers. 


* 

A PRECEDENT WAS ESTABLISHED 

in local labor history when locals of 
a CIO and an AFL international union 
made a joint agreement with a group 
of employers. The unions involved are 
Local 76B of the United Furniture 
Workers (CIO) and the New York Wood 
Carvers and Modelers Association, affili- 
ated with the International Wood Cary 
ers Association. 

A chief aim of the three-way pact is 
to eliminate cut-throat competition by 
small contractors for wood-carving work. 
The agreement provides the closed shop, 
and arranges for hiring of equal num 
bers of AFL and CIO workers through 
a joint committee representing both 


unions. Eight of the 15 employers in 
the industry have already signed up. 


* 
LOCAL 10, POINT-TO-POINT DIVI- 


sion of the American Communications 
Association (CIO), has signed a new 
agreement with RCA Communications, 
Ine., covering 1,320 workers. 

Most important are the clauses pro- 
viding for job security in cases of tech- 
nological improvements. The company 
has agreed to confer with the union be 
fore introducing new machinery, in or- 
der to reduce layoffs to a minimum. 

Workers laid off under these circum- 
stances will be notified at least six 
months in advance, will be given an 
opportunity to train for jobs in other 
classifications and will obtain these jobs 
on a seniority basis. They will receive 
severance pay of one week’s wages for 
each year with the company if they 
have been employed for less than five 
years, and two weeks’ wages for each 
year if they have been employed for 
more than five years. 


* 


THE FOLLOWING UNIONS HAVE 

recently endorsed the third term 
for President Roosevelt: the National 
Match Workers Council (AFL), the 
United Rubber Workers (CIO), the 
Hosiery Workers (CIO) and the United 
Electrical Radio and Machine Workers 
(CIO). 

The Connecticut State Federation of 
gabor at its 54th annual convention 
adopted a resolution urging the AFL 
convention to give its full support to 
President Roosevelt and the New Deal. 


* 


BECAUSE OF THE DECISION OF 

the United States Supreme Court in 
the Lloyd Gaines case, the state legis- 
lature of Missouri passed a bill reor- 
ganizing Lincoln University for Negroes 
so that they may now take work at a 
new law school. Nineteen Negroes reg- 
istered at the law schools. 

Negroes picketed the school in St. 
Louis, protesting what they called 
“makeshift” equality. State attorneys 
argued that to admit Gaines to the Uni- 
versity of Missouri makes it a “reason- 
able certainty” that “a great amount 
of trouble” would be created. 

In Tampa, Fla., the AFL is inves- 
tigating Jim Crow practices that have 
cost 500 Negro workers their jobs. Pres- 
ident William Green took action after 
receiving a complaint from the National 
Association for the Advancement of 
Colored People. 

In Tennessee two suits have been filed 
in the United States Court attacking the 
constitutionality of a poll tax. Joseph 
S. Gelders, secretary of the Committee 
on Civil Rights of the Southern Confer- 
ence for Human Welfare, said that the 
ease of Harry Pirtle will decide in a 
clear-cut legal fashion whether states 
have a right to tax on a vital federal 
franchise. Seven southern states, in- 
eluding Tennessee, have the poll-tax re- 
quirement as a prerequisite to voting. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 











(Continued from Page 2) 
porary National Economie Committee 
and the Wages and Hours office. 

A new survey of the migratory cotton 
workers in Arizona shows that half of 
the 577 workers interviewed average 
$7.95 a week or less, and almost one- 
fourth less than $6.00 a week. Large 
families with 4 workers or more average 
$18.38 a week. 

The study centered in Maricopa, Pinal 
and Pima Counties, the three most im- 
portant cotton producing counties in the 
state. Interviews were held most in the 
evening and during Sunday when no 
picking was done. Maricopa County has 
been the center of Associated Farmers’ 
activity. 

“Since 1929,” the report states, “the 
Arizona cotton growers have depended 
on migratory cotton pickers from the 
western states. By 1930 the reduced 
acreage, the depression and the estab- 
lished flow of western cotton states 
people through Arizona made it unneces- 
sary any longer to offer rebates or free 
transportation. 

“In 1937 a small expenditure for re- 
eruiting brought great results. Although 
in 1920-21 approximately $300,000 was 
spent to secure a cheap labor supply of 
20,000, in 1937 the greatest single ex- 
pense in recruiting 30,000 workers was 
an item of about $900 for want ads in 
newspapers.” 


Two WPA studies of urban work op 
portunities, one in Birmingham, Ala., 
and one in Toledo, Ohio, found one- 
fourth of the workers unemployed. In 
Birmingham 26 per cent of the city’s 
employable persons were unemployed in 
private jobs and fewer than one-fourth 
of these were on federal work projects. 
An additional 10 per cent in the labor 
market were working less than 30 hours 
a week. The study, which was made in 
March, 1939, covered 42,392 Birmingham 
residents, 

Other of its findings show that 19 per 
cent of all white workers were unem- 
ployed compared with 34 per cent of the 
Negro workers. Families with a mem- 
ber on WPA have not had a full-time 
job in private industry lasting two 
weeks or more for an average of almost 
two years. Less than one-fifth of the 
married white women were in the labor 
market, while more than two-fifths of 
the married Negro women were working 
or seeking work. Eleven per cent of 
married white women held full-time jobs, 
and about 33 per cent of the Negro 
women in the labor market held full- 
time jobs. 

In Toledo 28 per cent of the normal 
working population was found to be 
idle, and 9 per cent more works fewer 
than 30 hours a week. It has been 14 
months since any member of an un- 
employed family has held a private job 
lasting two weeks. The employed have 
held their jobs on an average of 21 
months, and slightly less than 49 per 
cent have been working at the same 
job for more than two years. One- 


OCTOBER, 1939 


third of the idle workers of Toledo are 
currently employed by WPA, NYA or 
CCC, Fifteen per cent of the married 
women in Toledo are in the labor mar- 
ket. The average age of workers on 
WPA is 42 years. . 
Similar surveys have been made in 
San Francisco and New Bedford, Mass. 


* * * 


The Wages and Hours Division has 
recently reported that the much heralded 
difference in cost of living between the 
North and South is only about 3.1 per 
cent. In 5 southern cities housing and 
fuel costs were found to be less than 
in northern cities, but these were off- 
set by higher prices for clothing, furni- 
ture and furnishings. 

With these facts in mind, the report 
of the Federal Trade Commission on its 
investigation of the motor-vehicle in- 
dustry, which was submitted to Congress 
on June 5, becomes interesting. From 
1927-37 General Motors averaged 35.5 
per cent profit, Chrysler 28.6 per cent 
profit and Ford .8 per cent loss due 
to reconstruction of its factory in 1927 
and ’28. From 1927-38 Nash averaged 
36.9 per cent profit, Packard 21.2 per 
cent profit, Hudson 9.4 per cent profit 
and Studebaker 6.1 per cent profit. Dur- 
ing 35% years of operation, the report 
said, the Ford Motor Company manu- 
factured nearly 27,000,000 automobiles, 
sold them for $14,000,000,000 and made 
an aggregate profit of a little less than 
$1,000,000,000. In 29 years General Mo- 
tors made net profits amounting to $3,- 
013,031,048 before payment of income 
taxes. Chrysler’s net profits in 13 years 
were over $355,000,000 before payment 
of income taxes. 


« . * 


The basis on which some of America’s 
giant corporations have been develop- 
ing during the past few years was in- 
dicated in the recent hearings before 
the Temporary National Economic Com- 
mittee. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., chairman 
of the board of General Motors, testi- 
fied that in the past 18 years his cor- 
poration had had sales of about $17, 
000,000,000 and profits of $2,300,000,000. 
Of those huge profits $480,000,000 had 
been kept in the business while $520,- 
000,000 were charged off to deprecia- 
tion. He added that General Motors 
would be able to finance itself for some 
time to come and would even be able to 
finance the purchasers of its products 
to a large extent. 

Osear L. Altman, economist in the 
Securities and Exchange Commission, 
summed up these facts in the following 
manner: 

1. In no year since 1922 have busi- 
ness enterprises relied upon the capital 
markets for as much as $2,000,000,000 
of new savings in any one year for the 
purchase of new plant and equipment, 
despite average annual expenditures of 
$8,500,000,000 for the years 1923-29 and 
of $5,800,000,000 for the period 1935-37. 

2. The major source of funds for the 


construction of plant and for the pur- 
chase of machinery and equipment has 
been business savings plus funds set 
aside as depreciation and depletion al- 
lowance. 

3. Funds set aside by business enter- 
prises for depreciation and depletion 
have in recent years been 50 per cent 
greater than they were in the early 
1920's. 


A recent preliminary report of the 
Temporary Nationa] Economie Commit- 
tee stated: “The tendency toward the 
concentration of control of the econom- 
ic system in fewer and fewer business 
executives seems proved. The conse- 
quence of that tendency is a steadily 
lessening number of competitors. 

“It has been the traditional convic- 
tion of the people of the United States 
that the opportunity of the citizen to 
engage in business should not be re- 
stricted and that a system of free open 
competition is best caleulated to pre- 
serve that opportunity. It is clear, 
however, that the financial and other 
resources required for economic endeav- 
or are becoming increasingly difficult 
for the ordinary enterpriser to obtain 
and that concentration of economic 
power and wealth is accompanied by 
increasing unemployment and narrowing 
markets.” 


And finally, the recent 396-page re- 
port of the National Resources Com- 
mittee on the structure of American 
economy establishes that the depression 
loss in income through the enforced 
idleness of men and machines amounted 
to $200,000,000,000 worth of goods and 
services during the past 8 years. If 
the nation’s productive forces had kept 
up with the increase in labor force, the 
report declares, the extra income would 
have been enough to provide a new 
$6,000 home for every family in the 
country or enough to serap and rebuild 
the entire railroad system of the coun- 
try at least five times over. 

The problem, the Committee warned, 
is one of immediate importance and not 
just an academic exercise in economics. 
“It is a surprising comment on a na- 
tion that prides itself on its skill in 
organization, administration and in 
management that such tremendous 
waste of resources can occur,” it says. 
“The abundance of natural resources 
and the continental pioneering that has 
been necessary for their development 
may in part account for the past 
waste,” it continues. “With the conti- 
nent spanned, the frontier shifts from 
the bringing of new resources into con- 
trol to the more effective use of re- 
sources already controlled. Here is the 
great challenge of today.... 

“The time for finding a solution,” the 
Committee pointedly warned, “is not un- 
limited.” 

GrorGe T. GUERNSEY 

















HAT are the goals of our schools? Are 
they meeting today’s educational needs in 
the American way? Are our children learning 
to think for themselves or will they fall in line 
behind a rabble rouser? Can we cut across eco- 
nomic and racial 
barriers to provide 
equal educational 
opportunity for all 

young Americans? 


Beulah Amidon, 
editor, and 31 dis 
tinguished educa- 
tors and journalists 
answer these urgent 

questions in the special October SurveyGraphic 
—SCHOOLS: The Challenge of Democracy 
to Education, the successor to our three-edition 
smash hit, “Calling America.” 


They discuss the warning of our jobless youth - 


—wonders wrought in nursery schools—what 
we ask of grade and high schools—universities 
in relation to modern life—adult education— 
the educationally underprivileged — race dis- 
crimination—freedom—the heart of the prob- 
lem: teachers—propaganda—next steps—what 
every parent must know. 


The caliber of the contributors to this issue 
suggests the high standard of articles in every 
issue of Survey Graphic, the magazine Charles 
A. Beard “has long regarded as indispensable”’; 
E. C. Lindeman, John Chamberlain, Myron M. 
Stearns, John R. Tunis, Max McConn, Scott 
Buchman, Alvin Johnson, Farnsworth Crowder, 
Ordway Tead, William Allan Neilson, K. N. 
Llewellyn, Carson Ryan and 20 others. Over 50 


“ 
IT’S FREE... 


"The Challenge of Democracy to Education” 


photographs, charts and drawings supplement 
the text. 


Coming soon in other issuesof Survey Graphic 
is a special supplement in which Clyde R. Mil- 
ler, director of the Institute for Propaganda 
Analysis analyzes the discussion of propaganda 
by Freda Kirchwey, editor of The Nation; 
Howard Dietz, Publicity Director of MGM; 
Franklin Dunaham of NBC and Professor Har- 
old Lasswell and other spokesmen for radio, 
press, movies and religion at Williamstown. 
Also, a continuation of the series on American 
Cities in Transition including St. Louis by 
Audrey Granneberg, Santa Barbara by Kath- 
erine Glover—an account by S. K. Ratcliff of 
what America looks like to a British visitor— 
Ladies and Lynchers by Lewis T. Nordyke— 
The Impractical Practical Nurse by Edith M. 
Stern—Charney Vladeck by John Herling and 
a series on Federal Arts by Henry Alsberg, 
Hallie Flanagan, Warren Cheney. 


kk * 
SPECIAL OFFER 


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available on newsstands) sell for 40 cents to the lay- 
man or 25 cents to readers of The American Teacher. 
The annual subscription price of Survey Graphic is $3. 
For the next five issues—and the October issue free 
mail only $1 with the coupon below today! 





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