JUL 78 1941 THE AMERICAN October, 1940 T EAC H E R PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS as ete Cae IS SE CESSATE REPORT — _ The AFT Convention Educational Policies Committee GEORGE S. COUNTS: _ The Teaching of Patriotism SEN. J. C. O’MAHONEY: A Statement of Ownership in the U.S.A. HUGH WING: - - Jitters in Pittsburgh IRVIN R. KUENZLI: — _ The AFT’s Twenty-Fifth Year GEORGE FINLAY SIMMONS, President of Montana State University, and JAMES D. GRAHAM, President of Montana Federation of Labor _ _ Labor and Education AFT COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN ANNOUNCE ‘41 PLANS The Story of One Carl Roth News of the Labor Front Teachers Union in Action Which 1941 GARS will be best buys? HE 1941 Automobile Parade is on. Already two-page magazine spreads shout about “Patented Auto-Poise Control,” “Simplimatic Transmission,” “Powermatic Shifting.” Each car claims to give most power, smoothest ride, strictest economy in automotive history. Each claims to give best value for your dollars. There’s one unbiased guide—Consumers Union—to help you pick the car which fits your needs. This month, CU »reviews the 1941 models—gives you the unbiased opinion of automotive experts on the value offered in each car. This February, CU presents final ratings on the cars. All year around, CU Reports are printing dozens of unbiased test reports on products you buy every day. Reports that will bring you satisfaction, save you money. For instance, in this same October issue . . . VITAMINS Should you take cap- sules for that winter cough? CU lists your normal vitamin re- quirements, compares the cost and potency of 200 vitamin prep- arations. RECORD-PLAYERS Records are cheaper now. What sort of record-player should you buy? Wireless, or direct-connected? Must you pay $15, or should you wait for a $3 offer from your daily paper? Also: Suspenders & Garters CU 1941 BUYING GUIDE (Ready December) * The biggest, most complete Buying Guide ever published by Consumers Union. * 382 pages—96 more than ever before. But it will fit into pockets and handbags. nahn Mh Mi Mi Ml Mi Ml Ml Ml Ml Ml Ml Ml Ml Mn lll Mi i i i i hi i * Concise comment on hun- dreds of kinds of products, ratings of thousands of brands, dozens of sections of general buying guidance. i . Dr. West’s Vray . Household Ammonia. All in one monthly issue of CU Reports. CU members get the Reports for one year, plus the brand-new 1941 Buying Guide. =<========CLIP THIS COUPON NOW =========4 CONSUMERS UNION, 17 UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK CITY I hereby apply for membership in Consumers Union. I enclose [] $3.50. Send me Consumers Union Reports for one year including the 1941 Buying Guide. [_] $6 for two years. I. agree to keep confidential all material so designated. ESE Ee ey ee Oe ae | PPPPPLP PPP LPP PLL PPL PICK UP ANY PAPER— tune in any radio station—to learn what happened today. But to look into tomorrow read Survey Graphic—the only magazine of social interpretation in the world. Coming soon are a comprehensive analy- sis of the Fifth Column, a series on war relief and refugee operations, articles on labor and the defense programs, your town and war, the south in transition, anti-fascism in Latin America. Regularly $3 a year, special offer—6 months for only $1. Send payment with this advertisement to Department AT. SURVEY GRAP H | C 112 E. 19 Street, New York City eeere AFT Literature What every member should know about the Teachers Union 1. Information about the AFT 35c per hundred 2. Six Major Purposes 25c per hundred 3. Can Teachers Unions Be Called Out on Strike? 25c per hundred 4. Why I Am a Member of the Teachers Union 35c per hundred 5. Questions and Answers 35c per hundred 6. What 17c Will Do in AFT Dues 35c per hundred 7. 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A Challenge to Classroom Teachers (Desk Blotter) 25c per hundred Order by number from American Federation of Teachers 506 S. Wabash Chicago, IIl. THE AMERICAN TEACHER as to Se the lati thei war legi Oy OCTOBER, 1|940 Vol. XXV, No. 2 JITTERS IN PITTSBURGH Hugh Wing 5 AFT COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN ANNOUNCE °41 PLANS ¥ 8 E. Glenn Baxter, Lillian Herstein 8 Florence Rood, Alice Hanson, Frances Comfort 9 Samuel Barth, Hazel Murray 10 Maurice Crew, Samuel Greenfield 11 Eleanor Coit 12 REPORT OF THE AFT CONVENTION EDUCATIONAL POLICIES COMMITTEE 13 LABOR AND EDUCATION James D. Graham and George Finlay Simmons 17 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDUCATION TO CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY Frank E. Baker 19 A STATEMENT ON OWNERSHIP IN THE U. S. Joseph C. O'Mahoney 25 THE STORY OF ONE CARL ROTH 28 DEPARTMENTS EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 3 Irvin R. Kuenzli 6 George S. Counts 7 THE SECRETARY-TREASURER’S PAGE THE PRESIDENT’S PAGE ON THE LABOR FRONT 26 THE TEACHERS UNION IN ACTION 29 NEW BOOKS BLACK WORKERS AND THE NEW UNIONS Mary Herrick 31 THE CONTRIBUTORS 31 Member of Educational Press Association Drawings by Chandler Montgomery THE EDITORS of the American TEACHER request that no mate- rial be reprinted from this magazine without an accompanying credit line stating the source and the issue in which such material appeared. GEORGE 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. Accept- ance 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, Ill. 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. a Union Move Protects Pensions AFT members interested in the proposed amendment to the Social Security Act (S. 4269) introduced by Senator Robert Wagner will be glad to know that before the bill is actually considered, the American Federation of Labor and Senator Wagner will consult with repre- sentatives of the Teachers Union. Selma M. Borchardt, legislative representative of the AFT, in a recently issued statement points out that the plan to extend the Act to 1,500,000 public employees must be done in such a way as not to jeopardize existing teacher pension plans. In his letter Senator Wagner pointed out that the legis- lation, introduced at the request of the American Fed- eration of Labor, was designed to cover more than 40 per cent of workers on the public payrolls, all of whom are not covered now by any form of pension plan. “Apart from teachers,” Senator Wagner said, “three out of every five state, county and municipal employees have no old-age insurance plan of any kind. In addition many employees lose valuable pension rights when they move into or out of public employment at some time of their careers.” Miss Borchardt in a communication to all AFT locals warned members to disband all fears that the proposed legislation might injure teachers’ present gains, but rather teachers should fear that the same forces which fought OCTOBER, 1940 THE AMERICAN TEACHER Published by The American Federation of Teachers AFFILIATED WITH THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR the Act when it was originally introduced would now seek to bar its extension to persons at present having no protection of this type under any law. Miss Borchardt called upon all locals to make a careful study of the present draft and submit proposals for revision to the Executive Council. Before any bill is introduced for actual consideration by Congress, the American Federa- tion of Teachers will be called into conference by the AFL and Senator Wagner to consider the final language of the bill, Miss Borchardt declared. Senator Wagner has issued the following statement on S. 4269: “I wish to say most emphatically that the bill, S. 4269, is in no way intended or designed to repeal existing pension systems affecting public employees or to wipe out the accrued rights of employees in such systems. It is no part of my thought or plan to eliminate or undermine these existing systems, to reduce the benefits thereunder, or to interfere with their independent status. My purpose, and that of the American Federation of Labor, at whose request I intro- duced the legislation, was not to reduce the old-age security of any public employee but rather to extend such security more widely. “This phase of the bill arises from the fact that more than 1,500,000 public employees throughout the country—about 40 per cent of the total—are not covered by any form of insured pension plan. Apart from teachers, three out of every five state, county and municipal employees have no old-age insurance plan of any kind. In addition, many employees lose valuable pension rights when they move into or out of public employment at some stage of their careers. “To bridge this obvious gap in our social security struc- ture, the bill would provide, for public as well as other em- ployees, a ‘floor of protection’ in their old age, including the special advantages of family and survivors’ protection in the basic old-age insurance system established under the Social Security Act. Existing pension plans would be co-ordinated, not amalgamated, with this basic system, thereby giving public employees covered by existing plans greater protection than ever before. “The problem is similar to that raised concerning industrial pension plans when the Social Security Act was first pro- posed. Notwithstanding the fears then expressed, not a single private plan has been abandoned since the Act was passed in 1935, and, on the contrary, the number of such private plans co-ordinated with the basic old-age insurance protection under the Act has doubled. “As I stated on introduction of the bill, I have no intention to press it at this time, but simply to submit the entire problem for the study and consideration of the special sub- committee designated by the Senate Committee on Finance to study problems of old-age insurance protection. This study will not begin for some months. You may be assured of my wholehearted co-operation in working out every possible safe- guard to protect the rights of public employees covered by existing pension plans.” Organize the Unorganized The first step to carry out President William Green’s pledge at the AFT Buffalo convention to throw the full weight of the American Federation of Labor behind a drive to organize the country’s unorganized teachers was realized recently at a joint meeting of AFT and AFL leaders. Meeting last month, the committee took up President Green’s challenge to organize the teachers as a first line of defense of American democracy. The joint meeting made plans for an organizing campaign, nation-wide in scope, with the assistance of AFL state federations and city central bodies. This assistance to organize the teach- ers free from any domination by political factions will be combined with the resistance of the American Federa- tion of Labor to any and all shortsighted attempts to curtail educational facilities for the American community. Representing the AFT were President George S. Counts, Secretary-Treasurer Irvin R. Kuenzli, and Vice Presidents john D. Connors, Massachusetts, Arthur Elder, Michi- gan, and Mark Starr, New York City. The AFL com- mittee appointed by President Green consisted of Mathew Woll, John P. Frey, and Elmer E. Milliman. Labor ‘Shortage’ is Propaganda The myth that labor gains must be scrapped for the sake of national defense or that there is a serious shortage of skilled labor for defense industries is being roundly exploded these days. A leading article in the August issue of the American Federationist, official organ of the American Federation of Labor, declares that there is no parallel between legis- lation safeguarding working standards in the U. S. and the labor laws which some writers say were partly respon- sible for the defeat of France. While the French laws may have been rigid, the Wage-Hour Act in the United States is flexible and does not prevent longer hours than the maximum, providing overtime is paid. Moreover, longer hours sap efficiency, the article declares, quoting a general order of the United States Army during the first World War which shows that the output of workers on a ten-hour day “will be the same, or even less, than it was during the shorter (eight-hour) day.” In the same issue President William Green emphatic- ally refutes unfounded reports of labor shortages. He points to the conclusive fact that there are still almost 4 10,000,000 unemployed in the nation and that a large percentage of these are skilled and semi-skilled workers who can be employed in defense industries. Evidence that the cry of labor shortage is simply vicious propaganda formulated by anti-labor employers and manufacturers comes directly from Colonel Philip B. Fleming, administrator of the Wage-Hour Act, who de- clared recently that out of the tens of thousands of em- ployers engaged in defense work, only four have com- plained that they were having trouble operating under the law. Upon investigation, Fleming stated, not a single complaint was found to stand up. One of the manufac- turers who protested argued that there was a lack of skilled labor in his community and asked that he be granted the right to work his employees more than the 42-hour limit fixed in the law, without paying them overtime rates. Investigation disclosed, however, that the town was full of skilled mechanics available for jobs, but that the manufacturer demanded they work for 40 per cent less than the prevailing wage. The further argument that hours of labor must be lengthened for the sake of national defense was recently blasted in a new government report. Prepared jointly by the Department of Labor and the Department of Commerce, the report showed that workers’ efficiency has vastly increased since the last World War, and that defense industries are getting a far greater proportion per man-hour from the employee than they did twenty years ago. As a result, labor costs have dropped in all major industries, and have been most marked in the plants turning out national defense orders, according to the survey. Citing a number of illustrations, the study showed that since 1919 in petroleum refining, labor costs per unit of output have declined by 57 per cent; in chemical factories, by 50 per cent; in blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills, 38 per cent; and in metal smelters, 30 per cent. On the other hand, the rise in labor’s pro- ductivity has been particularly impressive, the report disclosed. In blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills, the output per man-hour grew by 27.5 per cent; in petro- leum refining, 26 per cent; in rayon, 58 per cent; and in cement, 25.2 per cent. A special study of the cement industry brought to light unusually great increases in labor productivity. The investigators found that from 1904 to 1919 the amount of work turned out per wage worker increased 77 per cent, and from 1919 to 1938 jumped again by more than 100 per cent. In the face of this indisputable evidence it is clear that there is available a sufficient supply of skilled and semi-skilled labor for defense industries. Therefore, we must not allow our public schools to be turned into cen- ters for preparing poorly trained workers whose only func- tion can be to undercut those adequately trained organ- ized workers who stand ready to offer their services for the wages and hours guaranteed by the United States government. THE AMERICAN TEACHER —=S”—C tate de i ee —-* we 2. wr 4 OcTC at for Jitters in Pittsburgh PITTSBURGH TEACHERS realized with apprehension the last week of September how precarious their exposed position in society is when irresponsible newspapers for cir- culation-building purposes begin to exploit the emotional tensions unleashed today. Adverse publicity struck viciously at an outstanding Pittsburgh teacher and for a short time threatened to ruin him. The victim was J. C. Spahr Hull, one of the best known and popular high-school teachers in the Pittsburgh system. Active in educational affairs, he was one of the leading organizers and officers of the important Community Forum. Radio work and occasional sermons in one of the out- standing churches made him perhaps better known than any other teacher in the city. During the last three years he has been prominent in pacifistic peace groups. His repu- tation as a teacher and as a citizen was very high; he had never been criticized for his activities or beliefs. Then overnight a super-patriotic newspaper editor, using familiar methods of distortion, innuendo and denunciation, raised a seemingly widespread mass hysteria against him, forced him into suspension from his job, and threatened to wreck his career with charges of draft obstruction. The facts of the case added up to very little. During September some twenty pacifists and conscientious objectors met to discuss their status under the Selective Service Act. Choosing Mr. Hull as chairman, they decided to meet informally from time to time to study their rights and duties and perhaps practice answering the tricky kind of questions which might be used to confuse conscientious objectors. They limited their group to bona fide pacifists, and there is no evidence that they had any intention to evade the draft laws, or to encourage outsiders to join their group. They avoided publicity for this reason. Actually there were only three members in the group eligible for the draft. However, in some way the assistant city editor of the Pittsburgh newspaper, The Post-Gazette, joined the group incognito, then broke a sensational story on the front page headlined “School Teacher Heads School to Aid Draft Dodgers.” A minor storm broke loose. Mr. Hull was immediately suspended by the assistant superintendent of schools, the superintendent being out of town. For several days the newspapers screamed about “storms of protest against Hull,” all of which consisted of a single column of ill-balanced statements solicited from half a dozen Legionnaires and members of patriotic societies, and a single letter from a minor Chamber of Commerce group. Dark hints of an impendirg FBI investigation were thrown out. Explanations by Mr. Hull, and also by a minister and an assistant director of an important settlement house, who: were also members of the group, were given little notice or even suppressed by the newspapers. After a week of trumped-up hysteria, the newspapers realized that Red scares have been overworked in Pitts- burgh, and that the public has not lost its common sense, whereupon they quietly dropped the whole thing. The group announced it would hold no more meetings. The superintendent issued effusive protestations of the patriot- ism of the school system and, withgut exonerating Mr. Hull or making any definite charge against him, quietly put him back at his job. During the scare period, he had kept Mr. Hull working in the Board of Education offices. At no time did the administration take any definite stand one way or the other. Mr. Hull, although protected by a very strong tenure law, chose to throw himself on the mercy of the super- intendent. Likewise, he failed to consult a lawyer. As a result of this passive attitude, his friends and supporters were unable to take any effective action to support him. He has saved his job, but at the price of publicly promis- ing the superintendent that he will avoid any and all activities and interests but “those educational and religious activities which command community support.” This case is a kind of preview of the type of academic freedom case we are likely to see repeated. As such it offers a number of lessons. At present the instigating newspaper editor is expressing regret and some sympathy for his victim. But his paper has a policy of irresponsibly smearing unpopular groups and individuals; therefore we can certainly expect repetitions of unscrupulous attacks on other people or groups. Almost any holder of a minority opinion can be smoth- ered today by accusing him of obstructing national defense. It therefore behooves any teacher critical of the provisions of the National Defense Program to examine carefully whether his actions obstruct the national effort to rearm. If they do, he must expect determined attacks. If the experience here is typical, a teacher whose patriotic motives are called into question can expect little community sup- port. For despite Mr. Hull’s popularity and high reputa- tion as teacher and citizen, the only public support he received within the school system came from his students. His colleagues washed their hands of him while violently and even mawkishly protesting their own patriotism. The high school went to absurd lengths to prove itself uncon- taminated, even tying up traffic for several blocks around it with outdoor mass flag-salutes. Liberals privately wrung their hands and asked what could be done. His own teacher organization, a kind of community union, remained dis- creetly silent; he gratefully thanked the president of AFT Local 400 for proffered help, although in the past he has been unfriendly to the Teachers Union. To sum up, when the newspapers loose the pack with the cry of “unpatriotic,” the intimidation is likely to scare off any help from the unfortunate teacher except from some mili- tant group such as the Teachers Union, which has taken the trouble to study and understand the teacher’s rights and which has developed a courage and discipline adequate to the kind of fight which is required under such circum- HucH WING stances. OCTOBER, 1940 nF : —_——9 age 4 4 The AFT’s Twenty-Fifth Year THE OPENING of the 1940-41 school year marks the beginning of the twenty-fifth year in the history of the American Federation of Teachers. Notwithstanding the fact that the AFT is beginning the last year of its first quarter of a century of existence, the Union is compara- tively a new development in American education as con- trasted with the National Education Association of America and the great National Union of Teachers of England, both of which were founded some seventy years ago. The living members of the small group of courageous and progressive classroom teachers who met in the City Club of Chicago on April 16, 1916, to found the AFT may now behold an organization of approximately 35,000 members in more than 200 locals scattered from coast to coast. They may behold an organization which, backed by several millions of organized workers, has become one of the most powerful and influential educational organ- izations in America. They may behold an organization which is one of the largest “white collar” unions in the nation. They may behold a trade un.on which, in its fundamental structure and financial support, is one of the most democratic and economically-operated international unions in the world. They may behold an educational organization which is controlled by classroom teachers from the kindergarten to the college and which includes in membership many of the outstanding educators of the nation. They have seen the Union—emerging from the trials, tribulations, and struggles of those early years— multiply its membership four times in less than five years (1934-1939) and double its membership in less than two years. They have seen the formation of locals in all of the twenty-five largest cities of America except two. They have witnessed the establishment of a local in Chicago with more than 8,000 members, representing two-thirds of the teachers of the nation’s second city—a local which before the recent fall of France was in friendly and vic- torious competition with the teachers of Paris for the honor of having the world’s largest local teachers’ union. They have seen locals established in many typical Amer- ican cities representing 50 per cent to 100 per cent of the teachers in those cities. Included in this number are such representative cities as Chicago, Illinois, Cleveland, Ohio, Atlanta, Georgia, Toledo, Ohio, Springfield, Ohio, Butte, Montana, Augusta, Georgia, Anderson, Indiana, and Parkersburg, West Virginia. The mere size, growth and structure of an organization, however, do not in themselves justify the right of that organization to place in the great galaxy of American 6 organizations. Only by accomplishment of worthy ob- jectives and by service to its members can a trade unien legitimately exist in a democracy. The early founders of the AFT wisely recognized that a trade union has only two fundamental objectives to which all other considera- tions are subordinate: (1) to improve the craft, and (2) to improve the working conditions of craftsmen. The early leaders of the AFT were convinced that educators were prone to devote too much time to volumes of philo- sophical statements and meaningless pedagogical plati- tudes which soon found their place on dusty shelves and had little effect upon actual teaching in the classroom. Teachers became known as a group of “resolutionists” and “resolvers.” The founders of AFT, therefore, felt that teachers should join with millions of other workers for the prac- tical purpose of improving their craft and providing better working conditions for the craftsmen. The objects as stated in the constitution are consistent with the funda- mental philosophy of organized labor: (1) to obtain for teachers the rights to which they are entitled, and (2) to raise the standards of the teaching profession—to provide progressively better education—to make the schools laboratories of democratic government. The founders of the AFT would, undoubtedly, have been gratified to hear one of the nation’s outstanding educators say recently: “The AFT has, in my opinion, exerted a greater influence on American education during the past year than any other organization.” A fair and impartial examination of the record of the AFT during the past year will reveal by far the greatest number of significant victories in the history of the Union. Certainly no other teachers’ organization in America has won so many impor- tant victories in so short a time—victories which improve the craft and provide better working conditions for the craftsmen. As we enter upon our twenty-fifth year, it is a fitting time to take stock of ourselves, to re-examine our pro- gram of action in terms of the fundamental objectives for which the Union was established, and to move forward to a greater, more powerful AFT. It is an appropriate time to call to mind the last mes- sage of the illustrious labor leader and social philosopher, Samuel Gompers, whose signature appears on the original charter granted to the AFT in 1916: Say to them that as I kept the faith I expect they will keep the faith. They must carry on. Say to them that a union man carrying a*card cannot be a good citizen unless he upholds American institutions, and he is a poor citizen if he upholds American institutions and forgets his obligations to his trade associations. Irvin R. KUENZLI THE AMERICAN TEACHER a ~ of mi en us ce tel or it its res to in me ins stri of ¢ b- en oTS ily 2) ‘he ors lo- iti- nd m. ts” ers ac- ter da- ain ind —to the een | da | past tial past ‘ant her 0 ove ting pro- _ for yard nes- her, rinal ) at a nless on if LI HER She The Teaching of Patriotism WE HEAR much these days about the teaching of patriotism. We shall doubtless hear much more during the coming year. Since this development may affect pro- foundly the work of the school and the fortunes of the American Federation of Teachers, it is imperative that we give the matter careful and informed consideration. The source of the growing concern over the teaching of patriotism is apparent to all. It is to be found pri- marily in the impact of the war beyond the Atlantic on the mind of the American people. Whenever a society enters a period of crisis and danger, the sociologist tells us, internal differences tend to be over-ridden, some con- ception of the general welfare is made paramount, and a spirit of unity and solidarity is demanded. This tendency tends to manifest itself in any society, whether primitive or advanced, ancient or modern, despotic or free, provided it has not lost its vigor and vitality. It even manifests itself in the group life of many sub-human species. The demand for the teaching of patriotism constitutes a move toward increased unity and solidarity. It is a response to a growing consciousness of external danger— an effort to achieve the psychological condition essential to defense. Whether this tendency will grow or decline in the months ahead will most certainly depend in large measure on the course of the war abroad. The more insecure the American people feel, the closer the European struggle approaches the territories of the Western Hemi- sphere and the shores of North America, the more em- phatic and general will be the insistence on unity and solidarity. In view of the deep conflict between democ- racy and totalitarianism, the aggressive philosophy of the axis powers, and the close interdependence of the world, the success of totalitarian arms will inevitably further arouse and deepen the fears of the American people. This in turn will increase the demand for loyalty to some idea of national interest. To attempt to oppose such powerful social forces will lead invariably to isolatior and ineffectiveness. The situation is freighted with serious hazard to the things for which the Federation has always stood. “Patriotism,” observed Samuel Johnson, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Although this observation of the great lexicographer leaves much unsaid, it unquestionably con- tains an element of truth. From earliest times ruling orders and ambitious men have exploited conditions of crisis and danger to advance nefarious and selfish pur- poses, to consolidate their privileges, to enhance their material fortunes, to send their enemies to the block, to achieve greater political position and power. OCTOBER, 1940 resident : Zz age Today reactionary and excited persons, groups, and organizations are exploiting the current situation to bring the public school into disrepute and to undermine popular confidence in those educational practices which in the long run will serve most fully the general welfare and the cause of democracy. They are striving to introduce into the school a conception of patriotism which will promote special interests. An excellent example of this tendency is the widespread attack on the Rugg textbooks in the social studies, an attack which is supported by powerful interests and led, apparently, by Mr. Merwin K. Hart, executive head of the notorious New York State Economic Council. The charge made against the books is that they “sneer at American institutions,” “twit the founding fathers,” and “poison the minds of youth.” It is not the purpose of this “page” to pass general judgment on the Rugg books as aids to teaching and learning. The point to make is merely that they are the work of a scholar, that they are the product of almost a quarter-century of experience and experimentation, that they represent a sincere, competent, and sympathetic effort to introduce American children and youth to an under- standing of our society and history. They are being attacked today by persons with no scholarly attainments whatsoever, for strictly partisan political purposes, and in the spirit of a lynching party. They are being condemned on the basis of neighborhood gossip and twisted news- paper accounts. They are being thrown out of schools without being given a hearing by people who have never read them. All of this is being done in the sacred name oi patriotism. This is certainly one way of achieving national solidarity. But it is the totalitarian and not the democratic way. In this situation our obligation as teachers is clear. We must oppose with all of our strength every effort to bring the spirit of despotism into the American public school under the guise of teaching patriotism. At the same time we must not allow ourselves to be maneuvered into a false position, to be made to appear disloyal to the welfare of the nation. We must place our loyalty beyond question, but we must insist that national unity be achieved in terms of the interests of the whole people and that patriotism be given the content of democracy. Positively we must take advantage of the heightened social concern to put a finer and more dynamic conception of patriotism into the schools. We must strive to inspire our children with a devotion to the great processes, prin- ciples and values of free society and with a resolve to practice these processes, to apply these principles and to realize these values ever more fully in American life. Grorce S. Counts AFT Committee Chairmen Announce ’41 Plans Lillian Herstein Alice Hanson E. Glenn Baxter Florence Rood Frances Comfort The Executive Council has urged all Standing Com- mittee chairmen to set up “core” committees which can meet frequently as a group and formulate their work. Reports of Committee meetings will be submitted to other members by mail for comments and suggestions. The council hopes that this method of committee organization will strengthen the work of AFT Committees. State Federations E. Glenn Baxter THE POSITION OF STATE FED- erations with relation to the national and local organizations is in a state of experimentation. It would appear therefore that the chief function of the Committee on State Federations would be to lay down a philosophy of state bodies and to delineate the special functions of such organizations within the framework of the American Federation of Teachers. Furthermore, the Committee should be able with the aid of existing state federations to compile a list of activities that have been effective in achieving the aims and objectives of the American Fed- eration of Teachers. To do these things the committee will need to find logical and practical answers to the following questions: (1) What is to be the work of state federations? (2) How can they best serve the cause of the American Federation of Teachers? (3) Can state bodies do an effective job of organizing? (4) How can they best co-ordinate the work of the locals‘of the AFT within the state? (a) Shall they establish statewide committees to focus the strength of the locals on accomplishing better working and better learning conditions? (b) Shall they publish a bulletin containing discus- sions of educational problems and news of locals’ activities? Hazel Murray Eleanor Coit Samuel Greenfield Maurice Crew Samuel Barth (c) Shall they sponsor regular statewide meetings for the purpose of bringing AFT members into closer communion and to stimulate enthusiasms for AFT aims and objectives? 5. What are the special functions of state federations? (a) How can they best handle school legislation? (b) How can they secure adequate financial aid to education? (c) How can they best promote teacher security? (d) How can they best protect and defend teacher rights and freedom? (e) How can they free the teacher for fulfillment of his ideals of citizenship and education? Answers to these and other questions which will arise as the Committee’s work progresses will need to be found if state federations are to function properly within the framework of the AFT. Every member of the AFT and especially members of the national committee and expe- rienced officers of state bodies can greatly assist the core committee by sending suggestions and copies of effective programs and activities to the chairman. National Educational Policies Lillian Herstein THE NEED FOR NATIONAL defense will give those who are on the alert to curtail educational facili- ties an opportunity to offer increasing resistance to any expanding program of education. The American Federa- tion of Teachers apparently sensed this danger and focused its attention at the last convention on a resolution dealing with the crisis in education. It will be the particular task of the Educational Policies Com- mittee to carry out as far as possible the mandate of that resolution. In an intense internaticnal situation such as we are now THE AMERICAN TEACHER fi > 0 °C er nt ad he id re ve li- Ow experiencing, there will be encroachments upon academic freedom; there will be an attempt to invade the schools with all sorts of activities irrelevant to the defense of the country and the educational needs of the children; there will be frontal attacks upon expenditures for education. It is hoped that the Educational Policies Committee will be of use to the locals in solving the problems arising out of the present situation. Pension and Retirement Florence Rood INFORMATION ON THE GEN- \ \ Y} , eral principles on which pension plans \ gf should be drawn has been available ~ for some time. There have been no de- velopments in this line in the past several years. The Pension and Re- tirement Committee proposes to watch pension trends and collect material helpful to teachers interested in pension legislation. Late last spring a questionnaire was sent to the office of the secretary of state in each of the forty-eight states asking what pension legislation had been undertaken at the last legislative session, its history, how it was initiated and the results. The returns offer suggestions for follow- up work which the Committee will carry on. Finance officers in thirty large cities responded very fully to a questionnaire on the rise in city budget appro- priations for services other than those of education. The contrast, on a superficial study of the returns, is startling. A report on this feature of pension interest will also be submitted. WX Academic Freedom Alice Hanson THE ACADEMIC FREEDOM Committee is still in process of for- mation, and so a formal statement of purpose and function cannot at this g time come from the Committee itself. However, as I, personally, see the work of the Committee, it has two jobs to do: first, to investigate or arrange for the investi- gation of cases referred to it and, second, where the investigation indicates a violation of academic freedom and discriminatory action against our members, to ad- vise and assist the local union in the defense of their case. By its very nature as a volunteer committee, located in the Middle Atlantic area, the Academic Freedom Committee cannot seek out cases. It must, however, endeavor to take up as quickly and wisely as possible all cases referred to it. On procedure, two things seem to me important and expedient: first, that where possible, cases come to the Committee through the official channels of the local union OCTOBER, 1940 whose member or members are involved. In an organiza- tion like ours, authority rests so largely in the local organization that the function of a national committee is necessarily chiefly advisory and supplementary to the work planned and carried through by the local. The second point is that new procedures established by the Executive Council provide that all communications to locals must go through the national office. This means that the Academic Freedom Committee will work closely with the national office at the points both of investigation and defense. For this reason, cases might well be referred to the Committee via the national office or, if referred directly to the Committee, be reported at once to the national office. Social and Economic Trends Frances Comfort THE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL and Economic Trends has been the depository of Convention dynamite. The first function of the Committee, as I see it, is to handle the dynamite ———— with due respect. This has often been impossible for a committee squeezing its meetings in among business sessions and caucuses of the Convention. It is to the credit of the AFT that, in convention as well as in local discussion, it does consider those matters of general controversy which necessarily divide any group which seriously discusses them. How far such a course can wisely be pursued is open to debate. Most profes- sional organizations ignore the larger issues altogether and concentrate with ferocity on those affecting their group interest. That makes for unity in the organization but ultimately, we believe, for public hostility to its program. There is no way of handling controversial issues and avoiding controversy. What, for instance, are the best means to peace, prosperity, progress, individual oppor- tunity? The AFT will continue to split on such questions to the extent that it sincerely attempts to answer them; no committee can alter that. But it should be possible for a group of teachers, experts presumably in the art of resolving differences through discussion and confer- ence, to find means of handling their principled disagree- ments with a minimum of violence to one another, to the organization, and to the issues involved. In pursuit of these means, the Committee on Social and Economic Trends, with a year in which to work, can study intensively the impact of these trends on public education and submit to the Convention considered pro- posals for definite action by the AFT. Such proposals will limit the area of controversy, both as to number of issues debated and scope of the debate. On questions of doing, as opposed to “going on record,” disagreements are rela- tively slight. ss | ai To limit further the quantity of dynamite thrown onto the floor of the Convention, the committee can analyze the essential bases of the controversies in ques- tion, with a view to discarding the trivial and irrelevant. A resolution may be opposed for its wording or its appeal to other controversies rather than for its basic intent. Delegates are variously sensitive to the implications of conflict language and entertain varying concepts of the role of the AFT. These differences are in part geograph- ical, as are morals, politics and other social attitudes. The Committee should be able to reduce these differences to a minimum and prepare alternative proposals which represent the heart of the controversy. The work specifically assigned to the standing com- mittees, that of preparing bibliographies and collecting factual materials, will be only slightly less controversial, in the case of our Committee, than consideration of the questions themselves. In the field of social and economic trends, undebatable fact is relatively scarce while opinion is bountiful, divergent, and charged with emotion. It is therefore apparent that all points of view must be adequately represented on this Committee if its work is to have real value to the organization and the National Convention. A committee’s function is to serve, not to influence or direct. The core committee will represent, as nearly as its chairman can manage, a cross section of AFT opinion. The locals can be trusted to see that par- ticular viewpoints, geographical and political, will be duly represented among the consultants. And these will assuredly be consulted. The hopper is open for suggestions of every sort. We should especially like suggestions on questions to be studied and specific services this Committee can provide for AFT locals and individual teachers. We expect pres- sures; it is our job to deflect some of these from national officers and convention delegates. Vocational Education Samuel Barth THE FUNCTIONS OF THE VO- cational Education Committee will be to gather information about the many problems confronting vocational education in the United States. A core committee of six. will meet regularly in Chicago to plan the procedures of the Committee which has already received promises of co-operation from many sources. L. H. Dennis, Executive Secretary, American Vocational Association, J. C. Wright, Assistant United States Commissioner for Vocational Edu- cation, C. A. Prosser, Vocational Consultant, National Youth Administration, and Frank W. Hubbard, Director, Research Division, National Education Association, are among those who responded to our request for their valuable assistance. The Committee is also in touch with the National Youth Administration, National Defense a Commission, National Youth Commission and the Ameri- can Federation of Labor. Current conditions are calling for the need for voca- tional training for national defense, and the demand that public schools co-operate more in training and retraining people for industry needed in national defense presents many and varied problems. Many of the eight million students in our secondary schools and junior colleges will be affected by the progress of the vocational training program under the National Defense Act. Our Committee will study and analyze the information it receives and keep the members of the American Fed- eration of Teachers informed as to the problems, activities and progress of vocational education in the United States. We urge all AFT members who are familiar with the vocational education program in their communities and have information to contribute to please communicate with the chairman of this Committee. Public Relations and Publicity Hazel Murray PROPAGANDA IS A WEAPON which may be turned upon enemies of education who have used it sucess- fully against the schools. To promote more effective use of propaganda and to assist member locals in developing satisfactory pro- grams of publie relations is the purpose of the Committee on Local Publicity and Public Relations, set up recently by the Executive Committee of the AFT. This Com- mittee will function throughout the year. Those who interest themselves in supplying the public with correct information about the schools will note several facts bearing upon the current war against pub- lic education. Briefly, they are as follows: (1) Patrons of schools do not sufficiently realize the extent to which efficient schools depend upon adequate financial support. (2) Certain business interests and many so-called civic organizations are undermining the finances of the schools with “economy” programs. These groups ignore the fact that a good school system is the best asset a community can have. (3) Groups like the above and individuals are con- tributing to campaigns which are aimed at reducing the income of the schools, and which, in so doing, are low- ering the morale of teachers and attacking the validity of public education. (4) Reduction of school income from various sources has made it necessary for many school systems to lead a hand-to-mouth existence. This situation exposes them to unscrupulous attacks and makes the financial security of the teacher a plaything of politicians. THE AMERICAN TEACHER Pee Fy unc Un atte hon I m wist slic ote ib- the ate vic ols act lity ‘on- ow- lity rces lead hem rity (5) In the scramble for public’ funds, city, county and state governmental coffers are often filled at the expense of the schools. (6) Newspapers are allying themselves with anti- educational forces, thus denying the schools a hearing. This is especially true where labor boards are functioning. Local bodies are asked to be on the lookout for ex- amples of unfriendly operations against the schools and to communicate to the Committee methods used to com- bat them. Insurance and Credit Unions Maurice Crew IT STRIKES THE COMMITTEE on Insurance and Credit Unions that teacher welfare should be one of the day-to-day, year-in-and-year-out ac- tivities of the American Federation of Teachers. If we discount 50 per cent of the enthusiasm of the Committee on the ground that each committee is likely to believe its work the most important, we can still find plenty of reason for teacher welfare. The principle of collective bar- gaining can be applied to many problems of living as well as to professional problems and working conditions. Aid in solving these personal problems will make for happier teachers, better suited for their work. They will be more satisfied with their Union, and new mem- bers will be attracted for a variety of reasons. A preliminary examination of a partial survey, con- ducted by the Committee at the Convention, shows that many of our members belong to local unions that offer no insurance on a group plan, that probably less than half have opportunity to join a credit union simply because their locals have not organized them, and of course rela- tively few have a group medical plan as yet. At the Convention in 1939, the Committee outlined a plan for carrying to the membership, by way of the AMERICAN TEACHER and otherwise, information on credit union organization, health and accident insurance recom- mendations, and discussion of group medical practice under a prepayment plan for unions. M. F. Franks of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, became so interested while attending these committee meetings that upon his return home he organized a credit union in his local. At the meeting this year Max Oran of Philadelphia wanted to know what provisions should go into a health and accident policy that his local is planning. He was able to get expert information from such persons as Genevieve Souther of Chicago and Samuel Greenfield of New York. I mention these cases as the type of work this Committee wishes to do throughout the year. The Committee is gathering material on these topics and building a bibliography which it will publish. The Committee will be able to send specific information to locals or members who write into the national office for such information. Then, most of all, the Committee wants OCTOBER, 1940 to publish some articles on organization and operation of credit unions, group health and accident insurance, and on group medical plans for teachers. These articles if published in the AMERICAN TEACHER should stimulate thought and help produce action along the line of teacher welfare. The difficulties involved in working apart is properly appreciated. Unless the work is planned and divided and each one does his part alone, little will be accomplished. On the other hand the members of the Committee realize the possibilities for the good of the organization in this type of work. We appreciate the incentive for working for the common cause of all the members and helping to build a bigger and greater American Federation of Teachers. Will you who are in sympathy with this work write the chairman through the national office, inclosing your suggestions? Will you also work in your own local for more and more effort to be expended in this direction? Taxation and School Finance Samuel Greenfield TEACHERS ALL OVER THE nation face three serious attacks on their incomes this year: local govern- ments will attempt to cut their salaries and slash appropriations for educa- tional services; the national govern- ment has already increased their tax burden and conditions promise further increases of a like nature; and, finally, the cost of living has already begun to rise, will no doubt continue upwards and thus force a sharp drop in the purchasing power of the teachers who are, for the most part, on fixed salaries. Reports are already coming in concerning the activity of realty and merchant groups in the direction of cut- ting expenditures for education. Salary cuts are being bruited about in the name of national defense. On the national scene the revenue bill, now passed, which reduced the income of teachers, did so by increasing income taxes on individuals in the lower brackets by an average of 50 per cent, reducing the exemption levels so that two million more consumers will be subject to the Federal Income Tax, and by levying $370,000,000 in consump- tion and excise taxes, most of which will be paid for or passed on to the consumer. In sharp contrast, however, the Excess Profits Tax exhibits a tender concern for corporation tax payments and will thus yield insufficient revenue. This augurs further tax demands upon teachers and others in the lower brackets. All the tax-avoidance devices which enable the wealthy to avoid paying between two and four billion dollars annually were left untouched. The Taxation and School Finance Committee proposes to accomplish the following ends: (1) to describe the tax burdens being placed upon the incomes of those least able to pay; (2) to acquaint the membership of the AFT with existing federal, state and city tax structures; and (3) to develop a positive tax program, nationally and locally, which will produce sufficient revenue to sup- port an adequate educational system, which will be a progressively graduated tax system based upon the ability to pay and which will seek out as yet untapped sources of revenue for real national defense. To implement these ends, the Committee proposes to make available to all locals “Business Profits Soar” charts which will describe the large profits that corporations are now earning. They can be used as an argument to con- vince people that there is no need to cut appropriations for education. The Committee will also make available detailed analysis of the existing Federal Tax Structure. In addition we will digest all information sent to us by the different locals and distribute it widely. We will also help individual locals solve their own financial problems, help them in their research and suggest effective methods of procedure. This will either be sent to the individual locals or be published in the AMERICAN TEACHER. All locals should place us on their mailing lists for pub- lications and other materials which they publish. Locals are also invited to write for assistance on their particular problems. Workers’ Education Eleanor Coit THE WORKERS’ EDUCATION Committee of the American Federa- tion of Teachers has attempted during the past year to carry on its work under two headings. First, it has con- cerned itself in the preparation of materials for use by AFT locals in connection with their study of the labor movement, and, second, it has concerned itself in strengthening the co- operation between locals of the American Federation of Teachers and workers’ education groups, especially in connection with the services rendered by members of the AFT to workers’ classes. The Committee has published a list of suggested read- ings on the American labor movement which was sent to locals throughout the United States and which was dis- tributed at the Convention. This bibliography was en- closed with a letter to the locals of the American Federa- tion of Teachers giving suggestions about activities which might be undertaken by local workers’ education commit- tees. It was suggested, for example, that study groups might be formed for the locals’ members for the purpose of a better understanding of the labor movement, first, in their own community and, secondly, the community at large, and that an educational committee might well give its attention to the purposes and programs of organized labor outside of the AFT so that members of the Federa- tion would have an opportunity at each meeting to hear something of the activities of labor groups. At this time, also, reprints of the article on workers’ education by Alice Hanson which appeared in the April, 1939, issue of the AMERICAN TEACHER were distributed. In order to further assist local committees, both in | connection with their study of the labor movement and in connection with the work of their local labor educa- tion committees, members of the national Workers’ Edu- | cation Committee have been allocated to different areas in i which they stand ready to aid local groups in the field of workers’ education. The Committee has given much thought to methods by which it could function more effectively on a national basis and as one method of strengthening its work has enlarged the Committee this year to include more mem- bers of the American Federation of Teachers who are | active in workers’ education. It has been suggested that there be small regional groups and that these groups take — every opportunity to have included in general workers’ education conferences in different sections of the country discussions by the teachers present of questions of con- cern and interest to them and to the Committee. The Committee has felt that it would be wise, also, to try to interest the entire membership in a program of workers’ education and to this end has given some thought to planning further articles for the AMERICAN TEACHER. Several are now under consideration. In connection with this phase of its work, also, the | Committee planned the program on workers’ education which was scheduled for the Convention on Friday, | August 23rd. The presentation which was planned for that time was as follows: Presiding: Ned H. Dearborn. . Discussion Chairman (In the chair when Dr. Dearborn has to leave): Eleanor G. Coit, Chairman, Workers’ Education | Committee, AFT; Director, American Labor Education | Service; Member, Local 5, AFT. Beginnings and Background of Workers’ Education in the | United States: Lillian Herstein, Director, Department of Lectures, Chicago Board of Education; Member, Ex. ecutive Board, Chicago Federation of Labor; Member, Local 1, AFT. Current Workers’ Education Activities: (1) The Resident School: Esther Peterson, Staff Repre- sentative, Hudson Shore Labor School; Member, Local 189, AFT. (2) The Local Union Class: Dorothy W. Douglas, Depart- ment of Economics, Smith College; Member, Local 230, AFT. (3) The Classroom without Walls: James Dombrowski, Chairman, Highlander Folk School; Member, Local 261, AFT. (4) The Labor Institute: Spencer Miller, Jr., Director, Workers’ Education Bureau; Member, Local 5, AFT. (5) The Nation-wide Union Program: Mark Starr, Educa- tional Director, International Ladies’ Garment Work- ers’ Union; Member, Local 189, AFT. The Committee has expressed interest, also, in various studies which would be useful to its work and is giving consideration to these for the coming year. The Com mittee has also made use of its own meetings to discuss methods by which members of the Teachers’ Union and workers’ education projects could be brought into closer and more effective relationship. THE AMERICAN TEACHER —hClUcL er lh eS a OUPTelU rll lhl Peaspoevaw<.n «4 S-S8828Eo 8 und du- 3 in eld nal aaa Tania pm- hat ake — ers itry -on- , to 1 of ight IER. tion day, for ation ation it of nber, errr ot Report of the AFT Convention Educational Policies Committee This report was referred to the Executive Council by the National Convention. The Executive Council in turn has referred the report to the Standing Committee on National Educational Policies and has ordered that copies be sent to members of the Executive Council for further study. Preamble Two years ago the National Educational Policies Com- mittee issued a prophetic warning to our locals. It stated then: “All over the country a strong attack is developing on the American system of free public education. This attack . . . is based on the conviction that a democratic system of education is developing a democratic people, able to think, to vote, to act in its own interests. Such an educated, alert populace might be disastrous to certain vested interests in the nation. There is a strong movement, therefore, on foot to limit, narrow, and redirect American education.” An examination of events in our country in the past two years provides ample evidence as to the correctness of this prediction. The attacks have been made on both the quantity and the quality of education. In the name of economy, millions of dollars have been cut from state and local educational budgets. In several cities in Ohio, schools were closed for part of the school year. Philadelphia closed its normal schools and its summer schools. Every local in our Federation had to devote a great part of its activity to saving the public schools from the attacks of the budget-cutters. Every community in the nation has felt the effects of “economy” in terms of curtailment of school services, a shorter school day or year, dismissal of teachers, overcrowded classes, and so on. In addition to the attempts to deprive our public schools and colleges of necessary funds, there has been the nation-wide move to “narrow and redirect American education.” The New York State Chamber of Commerce, most powerful of big business organizations, questions the value of education and culture to the State. This body states that education beyond the point of literacy is of doubtful value. The Progressive Education Association is under attack by powerful groups calling for a return to “fundamentals.” In one city, the public library has had to remove all books on consumer education and co-operatives. In Massachusetts and New York, free public higher education is under attack, with New York about to see another “investigation” into “subversive influences” in its schools. In the present critical period, the same enemies of the OCTOBER, 1940 public schools are taking advantage of the war hysteria. In the name of “national defense” and “Americanism” they are increasing their’ attacks on education for democ- racy. They advocate that the dollars for armaments shall come out of educational and social welfare budgets. Indi- viduals and organizations most outspoken and courageous in defense of the schools are accused of being “sub- versive.” In the same statement in which it gave its warning, the National Educational Policies Committee also suggested a method for meeting these attacks. The Committee said: “We must implicate the people and excite their interest in the problems of democratic education. We must see that educational change shall be the concern of the whole people.” Now, more than ever before, must all the locals of the American Federation of Teachers intensify their efforts to realize this objective. Progressive teachers raust respond to this challenge, not only with a spirited defense of democracy, but with concerted militant action to extend it. The great body of the American people turns to the schools for leadership and guidance in the education of themselves and their children in the ways of democracy. In response to their demands, we must re-examine the en- tire curriculum, teaching procedures and administrative practices, so that we may truly fulfill our responsibility for inculcating the spirit and method of democracy. More- over, we teachers look to the people for certain answers. We want to know what forces in society will give us their support, how an effective alliance between these forces and ourselves may be accomplished and how teachers may best function as leaders towards effective democracy in the community. Every local should set up as a major objective of the year this problem of stimulating public interest in educa- tion for democracy. Educational conferences made up of all groups in the community interested in the welfare of children, speakers’ bureaus to provide discussion leaders, participation in the formation of community forums are some of the ways in which the people can be involved in the formulation and support of educational policies. The people—labor, farmers, civic, fraternal, religious, youth and other groups—want a fine, democratic school system for their children. The best guarantee of their continued support for progressive educational policies is to see to it that the people participate in the creation of these educational policies. The National Educational Policies Committee therefore recommends to this Convention and to our Executive Council that the problem of stimulating public interest in and support of education for democracy be a major objective for the coming year and that our Educational Policies Committee be instructed to provide inspiration and continued guidance for our locals towards the attain- ment of this goal. We also suggest that all resolutions adopted by this Convention which recommend certain educational policies should contain a further resolution which provides for enlisting public support for the pro- posal. Finally, we urge very strongly that the matter of a National Educational Conference on Education for Democracy to be sponsored with the co-operation of nation-wide progressive organizations be given serious consideration by our Executive Council as a project for the very near future. The tradition of free public education has been estab- lished in our country through the efforts of organized labor and other progressive groups. Our people are de- voted to our public schools. These critical times demand that the AFT provide the leadership in the fight of the people to preserve and extend education for democracy. Expansion of Educational Facilities Two resolutions recommended. One comes from Phila- delphia Local 192 and deals with a specific problem. The second comes from Chicago Local 1 and deals with the general problem of the necessary expansion of educational facilities. The committee recommends the adoption of both. Both embody the principles we have enunciated in the preamble. Resolution No. 18 “Wuereas, A no-failure policy of promotion disguised as con- tinuous pupil progress is now being practiced in the Philadel- phia schools, resulting in slipshod learning; and “WHEREAS, We have become increasingly disturbed over the lack of progress evidenced by our students, although con- vinced that our students can do better; and “Wuereas, The difficulty lies mainly in the attempt to superimpose progressive theories and methods of education on non-progressive situations, and by that we mean schools with large classes, inadequate supplies, insufficient number of teachers, and so forth; and “Wuereas, ‘Individualization of instruction’ is a hollow mockery in classes of forty or more; and “Wuereas, This has resulted in the superficial form of pro- gressive education but not the substance; therefore be it “Resolved: That in order to achieve genuine continuous pupil progress we must have an expanded school system based on an adequate budget, with full provision throughout the entire system for small classes, many adjustment teachers, adequate provision for remedial teaching, guidance, counselling, and adequate materials.” Resolution No. 5 “Wuereas, In the early days of our republic, an educated citizenry was recognized as essential to the continuance of this new experiment in government; and 14 “Wuereas, This need has been intensified by the continuous increase in the complexity of our social, economic, and politi- cal life; and “WHeErEAS, The world-wide clash of ideals and the insidious use of propaganda in this clash makes education a first line defense in the preservation of our nation; therefore be it “Resolved: That this convention assembled urges each indi- vidual local and state organization as well as the national organization to increase its efforts to obtain greater expansion for free public education by the city, state, and nation; and be it further “Resolved: That Educational Policies Committees in locals implement their efforts to obtain greater expansion for free public education through the medium of conferences, forums, and symposia which have the co-operation of all interested groups in the community; and be it further “Resolved: That the National Educational Policies Committee serve as a clearing house for exchange of ideas and experi- ences in order to give assistance to locals in these efforts.” Militarism and Education The vital importance of maintaining free inquiry and free discussion in the schools, of avoiding regimentation and militarism in education is explicitly stressed in seven resolutions presented to this Convention from different areas of the country and implied in at least as many more. The Committee believes that a basic sentiment of the AFT is well-expressed in the following words from a resolution (No. 24) presented by the North Shore Local No. 460: “America’s defense policy must defend first of all America’s children in their right to learn and to seek the truth, in their right to health and full educational opportunity, and in the right to assume without regi- mentation the duties of full, constructive citizenship.” To oppose the ravages of militarism in the schools which too frequently attended the last war, the Committee regards it as fundamental that school programs, in regard to curriculum and other matters, should remain under the control of regular educational authorities and the pro- fessional teaching staff. Furthermore, the Committee recommends to the Execu- tive Council of the AFT that a national committee* be con- stituted now to develop a constructive program of essential safeguards and positive methods to keep alive American democratic education in time of war and preparation for war. The Committee strongly urges the need for further attention to the problem of youth training and youth employment in all its recent phases—a subject recognized in panel discussion and addresses but notably absent from resolutions presented to the Convention. The Committee believes that several desirable objectives of AFT policy in the matter of youth training and youth employment programs can be broadly defined at the present time. (1) Increased provision for vocational training should not be limited to meeting emergency requirements for military defense, but should involve plans and expendi- *Such a committee has been set up by the national Executive Council. It grows out of the resolution on y national emergency in education which was printed in full on page 5 of ~ September issue of the American Teacher. The Committee is composed of Ge orge Axtelle, chairman, Wanger, Philadelphia, and S. Amelia Yeager, Madison. All members of the Committee would appreciate suggestions from AFT members. THE AMERICAN TEACHER nn a. hUlUrrkDlUCr lO I I ¢ I € R F a a us us ne li- al on nd als ee as, ed nd on en nt re. the tee PEP ee so tures for constructive work (conservation, housing, food and service industries, etc.) and should be linked with balanced long-range employment policies. (2) Expansion of youth training should be largely co-ordinated with expansion of the public school system, and federal aid should be given for such very necessary expansion, rather than for the creation of separate units and authorities. The placing of vocational training by the National Defense Advisory Commission under the direction of state boards of education is thus far in line with this recommendation. Standards previously adopted on vocational training by the AFT and the AFL and now being supplemented by AFT committees in this field will thus find a more ready application. These standards guard, among other things, against the weakening of cul- tural study to favor vocational training. (3) The carrying out of youth training and youth em- ployment programs should have, in the large, a democratic rather than a military pattern. This requires that self- directed youth groups and labor unions should share responsibility and actively co-operate with governmental, educational and industrial bodies in the planning and administering of youth programs. The work experience provided in youth training should bring youth into contact and collaboration with organized labor groups and with actual problems of collective responsibility. Improvement in the much-discussed morale of youth, universally con- ceded to be of enormous importance to the defense of democracy, is to be expected from such experience and employment rather than from militarization. It is submitted that these proposals have a three-fold bearing: (1) on the social and cultural broadening of existing vocational training; (2) on developing a less academic educational program in closer touch with actual nie Ske: Sn oer ec” eR oe « Se: eee eee toes a - P < . ky oe Sad life; and (3) on the strengthening of democratic morale and purpose. Democratic Administration ; Education of children for life in a democracy pre- supposes democracy in the teaching-learning process. This in turn requires an organization of the school that will exploit to the full all the latent potentialities of the staffs which are as yet unused to any great extent. The con- tributions which teachers might make in the formation of curricula and courses of study, in the guidance of pupils, in the training and selection of teachers, in the growth of teachers in service, and in the establishment of optional standards of classroom conditions are inhibited by an organization which imposes orders from above in a dicta- torial manner. We believe that the few and meagerly-used progressive instruments that have met with much success should be championed by the American Federation of Teachers. To this end we submit the following resolution: Resolution No. 30 “Wuereas, The training of citizens for life in a democracy can be carried on most successfully by teachers who are them- selves functioning under democratic conditions; and “‘Wuereas, The traditional line and staff system of admin- istration impedes the progress towards democratization of the school as a whole; and “WHEREAS, Experiments have shown that democratic admin- istration and supervision of the schools must effectively enlist all the talents of the staffs in the service of the schools; therefore be it “Resolved: That the American Federation of Teachers urge the institution of such democratic organization, administra- tion and supervision as will encourage teachers to participate in the formation of policies governing the appointment of teachers, salary schedules, teacher ratings, working conditions, and curriculum building through the establishment of teach- ers’ interest committees, advisory councils representative of eh ae ERS . SERSSe Ak este, we LEO See ean Sia Stee iat A , NN > 4 on oa 7 RE ects cet 5. the teachers, departmental committees or building councils; and be it further “Resolved: That we urge the AFT to be vigilant in safe- guarding against the perversion of such democratic organiza- tion for anti-democratic purposes.” Resolution No. 28 “Wuereas, One of the cardinal principles of American democracy has been the separation of church and state, and this principle has always been maintained by the separation of religious and secular education; and “WuHerEAS, There have been many recent attempts to change this condition, such as the Coudert-McLaughlin Bill which became law in New York State in 1940 and which pro- vides for release of children for religious education on school time, and such as the attacks of prominent churchmen on religious grounds against the appointment of Bertrand Russell to City College; therefore be it “Resolved: That the American Federation of Teachers re- affirm its support of the control of public education by the democratically elected representatives of the people, and its opposition to the introduction of any religious element into the administration or policies of public education.” National Examination Systems Resolution No. 17 “WuHereaSs, The American Council on Education has an- nounced a Teacher Examination Service as a supplementary ‘aid to teacher selection’; and “WHEREAS, These examinations are now being used in various cities of the nation; and “Wuereas, Fears have been expressed that such national examinations may provide convenient machinery for the estab- lishment of teachers’ ‘blacklists’; and “Wuereas, This particular testing service is privately financed, and privately controlled, with the possibility that the national examinations may become instruments for the control of teaching curricula and methods and the restriction of free thinking; and “Wuereas, The national examinations have been introduced into one city without full discussion by the teachers and com- munity involved and with the effect of destroying existing eligibility lists; therefore be it “Resolved: That the AFT reaffirm its belief that teacher selection is best accomplished by full staff participation in the process, under the, guidance of democratically elected and representative boards of education (including teacher repre- sentatives) responsible to their communities; and be it further “Resolved: That the AFT reaffirm its support of all steps to improve, objectify and keep free of political considerations methods of selecting teachers; and be it further “Kesolved: That we urge on local boards of education to refrain from using such examinations.” Alternative Resolution “Resolved: That we urge the AFT to take steps to study the conduct and result of these examinations during the coming year, and to see that the interests of democratic procedures are safeguarded.” Curricular Reform The Committee recommends the adoption of Resolution No. 19. “Whereas, In a rapidly changing world, curricula in many school systems do not sufficiently meet the needs of all our children; and “Wuereas, The majority of the children in our schools are children of workers; and “Whereas, Teachers affiliated with organized labor are par- ticularly sensitive to the needs of such children; therefore be it 16 ' “Resolved: That the American Federation of Teachers, through its Educational Policies Committee, set up guiding | principles for building curricula; and be it further “Resolved: That the following principles, drawn up by the Educational Policies Committee as a basis for discussion and planning of guiding principles for building curricula be | adopted; and be it further | “Resolved: That the National Educational Policies Committee should establish a clearing-house for all new ideas about cur- riculum building.” Making the Curriculum Curriculum changes should be instituted only after public discussion at which all interested groups of the community are represented. The actual curriculum should | be planned by committees composed of curriculum experts, classroom teachers and parents. The experts should be | chosen by the Department of Superintendence, the teach- ers elected by democratically-run teacher councils, and the parents elected by democratic parent or parent-teacher | associations. The final decision should rest in the board of | education representing all interested groups, including labor. Teacher-training institutions should establish courses in progressive education for the student-teacher and the teacher in service. Tenure should be adequately protected for the teacher in retraining. Experimentation in new procedures should be encour- aged in our public schools. The Form of the Course of Study The objectives and minimum requirements of courses of study should be mandatory, but the detailed curricular material for achieving the objectives should be flexible in | order to meet the varied needs of children. The course of study should be rich in aids to the teachers. Aims of the Curriculum The curriculum must aim to meet the needs of children who are living in a democratic society and to further the preservation and the extension of democracy in a chang- ing world. It must aim to provide the pupils with opportunity to acquire useful equipment for the kind of economic, cul- tural, social, physical and emotional life which is their right in a democracy. Standards of a Good Curriculum The whole curriculum should constitute an experience in democratic behavior. To this end full use should be made of democratic discussion and of co-operative projects. The curriculum should concern itself much more fully than it has in the past with the lives, experiences, activi- ties and problems of the commonfolk and their contribu- tions to the basic pattern of American cultures. The curriculum should present adequately and sym- pathetically the contributions and needs of organized labor. The curriculum should contain the definite content necessary for teaching understanding of and democratic attitudes toward religious, racial and social groups. It should present the cultural and economic contributions (Continued on page 18) THE AMERICAN TEACHER ers, ling the and ttee cur- | fter — the uld Tts, ich- the cher lof | ling the ted our- rses ular ein | e of heir ence 1 be ‘ully tivi- ‘ibu- ‘ized tent . It ions aes Mr. George T. Guernsey, Editor The American Teacher Chicago, Illinois Dear Mr. Guernsey: I am enclosing a letter which I received from President George Finlay Simmons of Montana State University in regard to the position taken by the Montana State Federation of Labor on the millage tax for the support of higher education in Montana. Three times within the past twenty years the legislature of Montana has submitted a referendum to the voters on the question of whether the legis- lature could appropriate more money for the opera- tion and maintenance of the state University units, this money to be raised by an extra tax which would run for a period of ten years. The ten-year period expires June 30, 1941, and the last session of the legislature submitted a referendum to the taxpayers as to whether or not the tax for the University units could be increased three and one- half mills a year for the next ten years. This will be voted upon at the general election. When the millage tax question was before the voters of Montana in 1930 the banks and insurance companies that owned vast tracts of land which were acquired through foreclosure of farm mortgages carried on a campaign against the increased tax. Had it not been for organized labor’s support the increase in the tax for higher education would not have carried. The election returns show that the measure for the education tax was defeated in thirty- eight counties and carried in eighteen counties. Labor was then organized in only eighteen counties in the state, seventeen of which gave an over- whelming vote in favor of the education tax. In fifty-five counties in the state outside of Silver Bow (Butte), the measure was defeated by nearly four thousand majority. However, when the votes of the union men and women of Butte were counted the education tax carried the state by over three thou- sand votes. This year, as in the past when the education tax was before the voters, the Montana State Federation of Labor Convention passed a resolution in favor of the measure and urges all voters to support the state educational institutions. A number of local unions throughout the state have likewise endorsed the referendum. If the tax referendum for school purposes carries this year it will be by the votes of the members of organized labor. With best wishes, (Signed) James D. Granam, President Montana State Federation of Labor Labor and Education . . « two letters sent to the AMERICAN TEACHER by the president of the Mon- tana State Federation of Labor Mr. James D. Graham, President Montana Federation of Labor Helena, Montana Dear Mr. Graham: As we approach the general election to be held on November 5, at which time we submit the ten- year recurrent question of the millage tax for the support of higher education in Montana, I want you to know how very much we appreciate what you and the Montana State Federation of Labor have been doing to secure the backing of labor organizations and members in the state for this issue. The passage of a resolution at your annual con- vention on June 27, 1940, endorsing the continu- ation and expansion of educational facilities of the six units of our University system, and your pledg- ing of support for the passage of Referendum Measure No. 42, authorizing the ten-year 3% mill tax levy on property, was a very fine and public- spirited action. I have heard from a number of sources that you are giving a considerable part of your time to furthering the interests of this measure. You are doubtless fully conversant with the fact that the parents of students at Montana State Uni- versity form a true cross section of every possible trade and profession practiced by the people of Montana, that more than half of our students earn a part or all of their expenses for a college education, and that the sons and daughters of several hundred members of the various trades and labor groups are attending this institution. We estimate that a fifth of our students come from families representing labor and the trades, another fifth from small-town merchant families, a fifth from ranches and farms, a fifth from employees of municipalities and govern- ment divisions, and less than a fifth from professions of various sorts. Certainly the families which you represent more closely are securing a very fine public service for their sons and daughters here at about half the cost per student expended by first-class institutions in neighboring states. We shall appreciate very much any further efforts which you andthe members of your component organizations may make for the passage of the mill- age referendum and for the furtherance of higher education in Montana. Sincerely yours, (Signed) Grorce FINLay SIMMoNns President, Montana State University OCTOBER, 1940 (Continued from page 16) of each group, and scientific knowledge about the nature of races, relations of intelligence to environment, origin of mores, etc. The curriculum should teach the desirability of peace and should give a realistic understanding of foreign affairs. It should include discussion of fundamental causes of war and hate, methods of eliminating these forces, the nature of existing tensions and conflicts and methods of planning for peace. The curriculum should deal concretely with democracy and should include a realistic discussion of such topics as the Bill of Rights, its guarantees and current violations; the effects of political machines in circumventing demo- cratic processes; the power of financial oligarchies to circumvent democracy; the exercise of the franchise; the need of a properly educated citizenry as a basic factor for the promotion and maintenance of democracy; and the relationship of economic security to real democracy, as well as discussions of current issues. The curriculum must provide information needed by intelligent consumers. The curriculum on the secondary level should include realistic, honest vocational guidance and training. Guid- ance should include adequate information on the require- ments, financial opportunities, working conditions, and organization of workers in each field of work. The curriculum should provide the information and the opportunity for experimentation necessary for understand- ing the nature of the physical world in which we live. The curriculum should help pupils understand that our world is a changing world, and that society can and should be changed when desirable through democratic processes. The curriculum must provide an adequate health pro- gram, including problems of public health, sex education, and education for mental hygiene. The curriculum must afford ample opportunities for pupils to come into actual contact with the outside world by means of a program including trips to museums, con- certs, factories, field excursions, and visits from musicians, artists, writers, athletes, industrial and labor leaders, and civic and social workers, and wherever possible pupils should be provided with opportunities for actual partici- pation in community activities. For curriculum change to be effective, adequate work- rooms, equipment, and conditions must be provided where children can create afd experiment. We recommend that this resolution be printed in the AMERICAN TEACHER to be used for purposes of discussion in locals. Child Welfare The keystone of the whole educational movement is the child. Since the welfare of the teacher body is but a means to insure greater child welfare, it is fitting that at this time we express definite policies to further the welfare of American children. The welfare of children depends upon factors in the environment in which they live. Among these factors over which the school might exercise influence, we have noted several significant areas, namely: health, community life, home and family life, and vocational and ‘economic relationships. In the area of health we believe the American Federa- tion of Teachers should go on record in favor of: (1) Establishing the right of every child to health and the available services contributing to good health regard- less of his ability to pay. (2) Extending rather than curtailing the present edu- cational opportunities for the physically and mentally handicapped, such as: deaf, blind, crippled, subnormal, tuberculous, and cardiac cases. (We are oposed to the idea that money expended upon these opportunities does not bring sufficient returns to society.) (3) Supporting a drive for a co-ordinated program of health guidance within the schools by science, physical education, lunchroom, home economic and other depart- ments to assist pupils in solving their health problems. (4) Advocating continuous co-operation of the school with the health facilities of the community and assistance in local and national movements for extending these facilities. (5) Establishing a positive program to remove the effects of sub-standard diets on a large percentage of the population. (We must recognize the present danger of producing permanent malnutrition disabilities on a wide scale.) (6) Advocating the promotion of healthy mental and emotional development of children through a sound pro- gram of individual guidance and aid in solving problems of adjustment to group living. (7) Adoption of Resolution No. 4 submitted by Local No. 1, Chicago. In the area of community living we believe the Ameri- can Federation of Teachers should go on record in favor of: (1) True equalization of educational opportunities by a policy of improving educational housing and equipment especially in areas of social and economic underprivileged. (2) Extension of playgrounds, settlement houses, youth organizations and other similar facilities for organization and supervision of recreation especially in those areas which need them most. (3) Increased co-operation of the school and teachers with existing community agencies, such as the church, private and public social work, parent organizations and national youth organizations, e.g., YMCA, Boy Scouts, American Youth Hostels, etc. In the area of home and family life we believe the American Federation of Teachers should go on record in favor of: (1) Broad policies designed to improve the living conditions of all families, particularly those blighted by unemployment and substandard incomes. These policies comprise housing projects, regional planning, park and THE AMERICAN TEACHER On eR eee. ‘-O = oe Om OOOem Sse coc * ifee 1 to vere vere hire, for »ken d to York: HER : D. T. Blodgett sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment for a pamphlet urging the voters of Iowa not to re-elect congress- men who voted for conscription. Molly Steimer was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprison- ment for being one of a group that threw leaflets from a window at the corner of Huston and Crosby Streets in New York City, denouncing the sending of American troops to Vladivostok as illegal. The sending was without legal authorization, as I have been informed by a high official of the United States Government. According to his statement there is no record whatever in the Archives at Washington of any legal authority for the sending of troops to Russia. In what is known as the Abrams case, Molly Steimer and her associates were convicted, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court and was upheld by that body. Justice Holmes dissented in these words: “In this case sentences of twenty years’ imprisonment have been imposed for the publishing of two leaflets that I believe the defendants had as much right to publish as the government has to publish the constitution of the United States, now vainly invoked by them.” Cases of the sort cited can be multiplied a hundred- fold, evidences of irrationality in a country whose form of government can only continue if based on rationalism. _ The second responsibility of the public schools is to develop and inculcate social understanding. That is a primary responsibility. In this the public schools have failed to a considerable extent. This summer I had the opportunity to listen to graduate students discussing con- temporary affairs in dining halls and lounging rooms of a state university and was shocked at the stark ignorance of teachers in our public schools on fundamental current affairs. That our public schools have failed to some extent in developing social understanding may be indicated by a few examples. Because of the frontier hang-over, few people appreciate that we are in the midst of a con- tracting economy.~ As has been so clearly pointed out by Lewis Mumford and other realistic thinkers, the world has been explored except for a few frozen regions in Antarctica and some inaccessible mountain tops. The exploration of new lands is practically finished. | The deluge of population expansion that came upon us in the nineteenth century has come to a point of stability. Except in Russia and possibly China, which are in reality frontier nations, the expansion of population has ceased. Sometime between 1945 and 1965, probably about 1955, the population of America will reach a point of stability and will cease to increase. What is still more meaningful, we replace factories, not to attract additional customers, but to prevent depreciation and to increase the quality of the product. So we have reached the qualitative stage in economy and the same thing is true in education. We are just going out of the quantitative stage in education and are going into the qualitative stage. I think we entered the latter stage about 1930. Our high school population increased OCTOBER, 1940 during the era of expansion from 90,000 to 6,000,000. We built magnificent buildings. We had a great many excellent educational administrators but few great teach- ers because we were aiming at quantity and not at quality. During the period of expansion from 1870 to 1930, it took about 200,000 new teachers yearly to meet the demand. Today it doesn’t take more than 100,000, prob- ably not more than 90,000, and so we have reached the point where we can get better teachers. We are going into the era of quality, both in economy and in education. The fact that we are in a contracting and not in an expanding economy may mean that the question arises whether capitalism can continue to exist in an economy that is not expanding. I think it is a very great question. The second thing that is fundamental in social under- standing is that, regardless of which side wins in the second World War, only those nations will continue to exist that are based on a planned economy. Nationalities of the future will be based on economic planning, pos- sibly on a continental rather than on a national scale. Even before the present war Norway and Sweden had adopted a planned economy operated on democratic principles. Now, England under the necessities of war has adopted a planned economy. The great problem that faces the American people today is: Can we develop a planned economy democratically? That brings us immediately to several dilemmas of democracy: first, the dilemma between socialism and freedom. We all know that we have to have greater governmental control of our social affairs. I stated that once in a meeting of American Federation of Teachers, and a man back in the audience said, “Why?” I asked, “Did you ever drive an automobile in crowded traffic?” I didn’t need to answer him in any other way. There isn’t any doubt but that we have to have greater governmental control of our social affairs. The question is: Can we accept those greater governmental controls and still retain our personal freedom? Can we institute here in America a government that will accomplish these greater governmental controls and still preserve our spiritual freedom? We can if—and that if is a big one— we keep the attitude of criticism toward the origin, the purpose, the application and the implementation of these controls free and open. If we do that, I think we can accept these greater governmental controls and retain our spiritual freedom, the freedom to do the things necessary to protect the integrity of individual personality. Sweden has done it; we should be able to do as well. Then there is the dilemma between technology and unemployment which is so little understood by the Ameri- can people. You have the arguments tat technology increases unemployment and that it does not. The answer is that it may or it may not. America will not go back to hoe and scythe and wheelbarrow and stagecoach econ- omy and reject technological gains. On the other hand, democracy can’t continue to tolerate an economy that pro- duces permanent unemployment. Not long ago I was told by an engineer in General Motors that any time the motor companies were willing to make the necessary installations to use the electron tube they could get rid of a large part of the men on the assembly line. During the last ten years the number of man hours for building a low-priced automobile has decreased from something like eleven or twelve hundred to eighty or ninety. Secretary Wallace has said that we could raise all the food that we need in America with five million fewer people on the farms. The dilemma of unemployment is shown in the studies of the American Youth Council Commission. These studies reveal that there is a much higher proportion of farm youth between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five unemployed than there are of urban youth. When one asks what is the solution to that problem, the first sugges- tion is likely to be that the government should buy up tax-delinquent land, divide it into small farms of thirty or forty acres and put these youth on them. But modern machinery can’t be used efficiently on thirty or forty acre farms. So far youth are thwarted by the dilemma between technology and unemployment If technology increases production and if the fruits of production are equitably distributed, unemployment will not result. For instance, if the greater profit from in- creased production is used to increase wages or lower prices or to build new factories for needed increase of production, unemployment will not result. On the other hand, if the extra profits are hoarded or used to buy stocks or bonds already in existence or in speculative investments, improved technology will cause unemployment. We must teach fundamental economics of that sort in our public schools. I think we haven’t done it. But there is another solution of technological unem- ployment that is interesting to teachers. We have ten OT nae > x aD million unemployed; we aren’t going to reject technology, and the only cure that will be found for unemployment in our present framework or any other is the employment of many more people in the production of the imperish- ables of life. We can produce all the material things we need, if we use technology, with many fewer people employed. That means that we have many more people available for the production of non-materials. For instance, the imperishables are education, social service, medicine, law, philosophy, religion, and so forth. The semi-perishables are railroads, canals, bridges, roads and all public improvements and public buildings. The perishables are food, clothing and luxuries. The more people that you have employed in the imper- ishables, the greater will be the demand for the semi- perishables and perishables, and there never has nor ever will be an over-supply of the imperishables. The only way we shall ever cure our unemployment is to have more millions of people engaged in the production of the imper- ishables of life. That means more people in education, more in social service, more in preventive medicine and dentistry, more in recreation, more in social research and planning, and more in the conservation of the soil. It is the only way of meeting that dilemma, and the whole tendency is in the other direction. Every legislature that we have today is cutting down the production of the imperishables. The last legislature in Wisconsin passed a law stating that I, as an employee of the State, cannot buy at wholesale from any purchasing agent of the State. I spend all of my income in consumers’ goods, and if they cut down my income or raise the prices for consumers’ goods, I simply buy just so much less. Economists tell us that we have a potential market of twenty billions in the lower income classes. When you tell people today that we must have millions yy = fF —- “| ous le) Coo tT a wHMoep ae os nt ve at he ial ds he 2r- ni- er ay re er- nd nd the ure the sed not ite. 1ey rs the more in the production of the imperishables, they will put you down as queer. Yet it is the only possible cure for ~ “4 unemployment unless we °‘% }{ adopt the totalitarian meth- ay " ods of curing unemployment »* . by war industries and by , constantly lowering our standards of living. Another responsibility rest- ing upon the schools is to preserve the ideals of democracy. The first of those ideals is the supreme value of the individual personality. On the walls of the school-room in Germany you will find the motto, “You are nothing.” American education begins and ends with individual personalities. That concept means that government exists not pri- marily to build ships, drain canals and build roads, but to create the conditions that are best fitted to develop excellent personalities. I am willing to guess that the production of unique personalities and great abilities will cease in the totalitarian states and there is evidence that it has already ceased in many fields from which come the choicest fruits of the human spirit. There is proof in history that the only type of environ- ment that creates great abilities and great capacities is the atmosphere of freedom. Athens had a degree of free- dom for about half its population never experienced by any other people. In the first place they had no sacred book. They were not suppressed by political dictator- ships. They had few individual inhibitions. They had a degree of individual freedom seldom arrived at in many people, and in a short period of time they developed more great abilities and wrote more great names on the pages of history than any other nation has ever done in a comparative period of time. Sparta was a military despotism. The youth were born in the world simply to serve the state. You can hardly think of a permanent contribution that Sparta made to permanent culture. The second ideal is that of spiritual freedom, guaran- teed in the first amendment: “The Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or abridg- ing the exercise thereof, or prohibiting freedom of speech or press, or the right of people freely to assemble.” That is the kind of spiritual freedom necessary to develop a good personality, the preservation of which is one of the first responsibilities of the schools. The third ideal is that of equality. I might tell you a story. A year ago last May I delivered the address at the graduation exercises of a large high school. I spoke on democracy, the heritage of the high school graduate. There sat on the platform a Congregational minister who gave the invocation, and he had with him as a guest an Anglican clergyman. After the speech the Englishman said some complimentary things, as the niceties of the occasion OCTOBER, 1940 required. Then he said, “Yes, democracy is a precious thing, but it doesn’t mean all that you said it does,” and continued, “It doesn’t mean equality of education. In England we believe that there is common work to do, and we keep a class of people to do that work, and that has nothing to do with higher education.” I was “loaded” for him because my wife and I had spent some time the previous year wandering around in England. We didn’t go to save our own souls or to come back and save the world. We went for a good time. But we made one observation, and that was that the common people of England have been exploited. Around Downing Street and Whitehall we saw the civil service employees, fine upstanding men, six feet tall, with striped trousers and a black coat and umbrella and a pair of gloves. But when we saw the laborers on the streets, we concluded it would take three of them to make two American laborers. We said so often as we observed the working girls, “How we wish we could see a fine physical specimen of girlhood!” When we came back, our boat landed in East Boston, and we got into one of these cars with seats running along the side. On the other side there were four girls, plainly from the working class of East Boston. My wife said, “I didn’t see a single working girl in England as well developed physically as those girls sitting on that seat are.” It has been confirmed that in England a system of democracy which is a political faith only, guaranteeing political freedom and not including equality of oppor- tunity, has exploited the common people. The fourth thing that the schools must do, and I want to emphasize this, is they must demand that the schools be controlled and administered on democratic principles. Unfortunately, we have imitated industry in the con- trol of the American schools, with a board at the top that hasn’t been representative and with an administrative officer on the managerial plan, who has assumed that he was an employer and not simply a co-worker and a leader in educational enterprise. I am not an employer of the ninety teachers that are on the staff, and neither is the board. Society is the employer, and the board is set up to work for the teachers to do the work that the teachers cannot do. The teachers cannot go to the legislature and say, “We want our appropriations increased,” because their personal interests are involved; they cannot go to 23 the public and present the case for increased taxes, and so the board is given the privilege of working for the teachers, doing a type of work that the teachers cannot do. Society employs the teachers and appoints the board; the function of the board is to supplement the work of the teachers, to do a type of work the teachers cannot do. As I said, I am not an employer. I am simply one _ selected as chairman, leader of a group of teachers. I think that every administrative officer should be funda- mentally and primarily a teacher and then simply a leader of his colleagues in the enterprise of education. When we come to that, we shall get rid of this dualism that we have in American education, which, I think, is one of the great handicaps of the American public schools from the standpoint of democracy. ; How can we expect to create democratic environment when our schools are set up and controlled on an auto- cratic basis? But that isn’t all. Teachers must not only demand that the administration be democratic, they must be democratic too. Not until every classroom in America becomes a laboratory in democracy in which the children shall learn democracy by experiencing it will this vision of our founding fathers be realized. This is the kind of program for which the American Federation of Teachers must work. That means several things. First of all, it means that the public schools shall carry on by increasing the area of common agreement. That doesn’t mean that every time you draw the shades or turn on the heat the teacher and the children will stop to arrive at a common agreement. But on the fundamental principles of control the room will proceed by common agreement. Dr. Boyd Bode gave me this definition of democracy: “Democracy is that form of government in which the constant extension of the area of common agreement is the sole standard of progress.” Let’s make that the sole standard of progress in the administration and control of our public schools. In the next place, the responsibility of the public schools is to save American democracy by making it work. Totalitarianism isn’t going to come by the process of bureaucracy from the center out. It doesn’t come in that way. Totalitarianism marches in over the body of a useless and ineffective government. That is what happened in Germany. When government under the Weimer Con- stitution became utterly ineffective, then the Nazis took possession. And when parliamentary government became utterly futile in Italy, the Black Shirts marched in. Our problem is to make democracy work in the administration of schools and in the classrooms. I might mention one other thing that needs emphasis. In the administration of the schools, all elements in our population should be represented. I went into an office of a superintendent in a large city in the depths of the depression. I said to an assistant superintendent, “How are things going?” “Oh,” he said, “they are going terribly, cutting out art 24 and cutting out music and cutting out physical education. The board doesn’t talk our language at all.” Then he | hesitated before proceeding with this: “The only mem- bers of the board that talk our language are the labor members,” and then he fairly caught himself before burst- | ing out with this: “And we always fight them.” Why? “The only people on the board that talk our language are the labor representatives,” and then “And we always fight them.” President Green® told us that with the help of organized labor we can get funds for school buildings. If I ever | get the buildings and equipment the Milwaukee Teachers College so much needs, it will be through the support of | organized labor and not by that of the Chamber of Commerce. When the World War is over, America will face the worst economic crisis it has ever known. In my uninformed opinion, the depression that began in 1929 will be mild compared with the one that will begin then. Our world markets will be gone. The only place of economic expan- sion will be the potential market, the purchasing power | of the common people, which is, and will continue to be, utterly neglected. Then the schools must teach the realistic truth about | history. I spoke about the h¥steria that is threatening us and the need of the schools to remain rational. The greatest blunder of modern times was when we went into the first | World War. I know some of you aren’t going to agree with | that, which is all right. If we hadn’t gone into the World War when we did, | we wouldn’t have planted the seeds for the situation we | are in today. If we hadn’t gone in at that time, Germany probably would have won the war. Russia was out by revolution. The morale in France we know now was low. | England was fighting with its back to the wall. Probably | Germany would have won. But it would have been a | negotiated peace, and the Hohenzollerns, as much as I | dislike them, would have probably remained on the throne. But they were at least decent; they believed in culture; they believed in religion; they believed in civilization. While we might have a war today, we wouldn’t have it led by a modern Genghis Khan who utterly disbelieves in culture and morality. We threw the world out of bal- ance and caused the situation that we have today. And] hope and believe that the public schools will help us in keeping Hitler from winning a victory over the minds of American people by leading us to reject our democracy in order to defeat him by his own methods. Defeat him, yes, but defeat him by democratic processes and democratic methods; because if we defeat him at the cost of our democracy, he has won anyway. The responsibility of the schools is this: To preserve democracy by making it work. The place for us to help make it work is in the administration and management of the schools. 2See the address by William Green, President, AFL, to the National Convention of the AFT in the September American TEACHER newspape. THE AMERICAN TEACHER . ' ara ion. } 1 he | em- abor | Irst- our And ever — hers t of | r of - the mild orld pan- ower — > be bout © ig us atest first with | did, | n we nany it by low. | nably en a as I | rone. ture; od National \CHER A Statement on Ownership in the U.S. Senator Joseph C. O’Mahoney, Chairman, Temporary National Economic Committee A STUDY, “The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Non-Financial Corporations,” has been submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Tem- porary National Economic Committee as information bear- ing upon the problems of concentration of economic power. It has not yet been officially accepted by the Temporary National Economic Committee, its status being identical with many other reports offered by government agencies, business organizations and private citizens. Up to the pres- ent it is material offered solely for Committee use. Let me emphasize the fact that this study does not repre- sent the views of the Temporary Nationai Economic Com- mittee since it has not yet been passed upon by our Com- mittee. It had not been intended to release the report until, in the interest of a fair appraisal of the very impor- tant issue of ownership of this vast segment of American industry, the 200 corporations studied had been given the fullest opportunity to examine it and make such reply as they deem desirable. Premature publication this morning of a story on the study impels me to make this statement and to say that any comment the companies studied may wish to make will be received by the Committee and be- come part of the printed record. The Committee is not trying to prove any preconceived thesis. It is only seeking the facts. A summary of the highlights of the study follows: The 200 corporations account for the bulk of activities in manufacturing, mining, electric and gas utilities, trans- portation and communication. Consequently, an analysis of who owns them indicates the extent of concentration of ownership of much of the nation’s productive facilities. The report is primarily statistical and the information presented has been based largely on original sources taken from the files of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Three family groups, the DuPont’s, Mellon’s and Rocke- feller’s, have shareholdings, valued at nearly $1,400,000,000, which are so placed as to give them considerable influence, if not control, over fifteen of the 200 largest non-financial corporations. Thirteen family groups, of which these three are a part, have holdings worth $2,700,000,000, representing 8 per cent of the stock of the 200 corporations. Only one- half of the large shareholdings of individuals in the 200 corporations are in the direct form of outright ownership. The other half is represented by trust funds, estates and family-holding companies. Each large interest group shows a strong tendency to keep its holdings concentrated in the enterprise in which the family fortune originated. However, many large family interest groups have greatly expanded their individual sphere of influence through the acquisition of control over additional enterprises by the corporations which they control. In obtaining this further control such acquisitions are financed mainly out of undistributed profits of the parent bodies. In 40 per cent of the 200 largest corporations one family or a small number of families exercise their absolute con- trol because of ownership of the majority of the voting securities or working control through ownership of a sub- stantial minority of the voting stock. About 60 corpora- tions, or 30 per cent of the 200, are controlled by one or more other corporations. Thus in only 30 per cent of the corporations does the small group of dominant security- holders fail to appear. The financial stake of officers and directors in their own corporation is relatively small, for they own only 6 per cent of the common stock and less than 2 per cent of the preferred stock of the 200 corporations. However, there were 245 such officers and directors, each of whom had more than a million dollars worth of the stock in his com- pany. This minor fraction of all officers and directors accounts for 87 per cent of the aggregate value of holdings of officers and directors. Usually these heavy stockholders are members of the dominant or controlling families. The twenty largest shareholdings in each of the 200 cor- porations account on the average for nearly one-third of the total stock. In the average corporation the majority of the voting power is concentrated in the hands of ap- proximately 1 per cent of the stockholders. Based on the statistics of this study it is estimated that the number of individual Americans owning corporation stock is much smaller than generally believed and probably does not exceed 9,000,000 persons. On the average a stockholder owns shares in three different stock issues and two and a half corporations. Most of the 9,000,000 indi- vidual stockholders have such small amounts of stock that they receive a minor fraction of total dividends paid. Half of all stockholders have annual dividends of less than $100. The group which depends on stock dividends for a substantial share of its income is relatively small, probably not more than a half-million persons. The concentration of ownership of stock is shown by the following figures to be highly concentrated: 10,000 persons (0.008 per cent of the population) own one-fourth, and 75,000 (0.06 per cent of the population) own half of all corporate stock held by individuals. Foreign investors have a considerable stake in the own- ership of the 200 largest non-financial corporations. At the end of 1937 their holdings of common stock totalled $1,800,000,000 and of preferred stock $200,000,000. For- eigners, however, have a majority control of only one of the 200 corporations, the Shell Union Oil Corporation, although their holdings are very substantial in Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation and the American Metals Company, Ltd. The foregoing study was prepared by the staff of the Research and Statistics Section of the Securities and Exchange Commissiori, Trading and Exchange Division, under the direction of Raymond W. Goldsmith and Rex- ford C. Parmalee. The Securities and Exchange Commis- sion has approved the study for submission to the Tem- porary National Economic Committee and in doing so offers it as basic factual material without any recommen- dations whatsoever. OCTOBER, 1940 oe te clabor Sront THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF Labor will cling to its traditional non- partisan political policy in the current presidential campaign, the Federation’s council decided in Washngton, D. C., on October 2. The executive council, meeting in its regular fall session, de- cided that the line followed by the Fed- eration since 1924, when Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin was endorsed as a presidential candidate, should not be abandoned. As in previous years, the Federation will publish a pamphlet containing the labor record of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the two major political parties, the labor planks of the platforms of the two parties, and a copy of the requests made to the two parties by the Federation. “When all such political information is made available the individual members of organized labor invariably support candidates for office who are known to be friendly and sympathetic toward the aims and purposes of the AFL and who enjoy the confidence and esteem of the members and representatives of organ- ized labor,” the council’s statement said. * SWEEPING DISSATISFACTION with the government’s efforts to prevent a new crop of millionaires from fatten- ing on the defense boom was voiced by participants in the Federated Press Monthly Poll of Labor Editors. Answering the question, “Do you think congress and the administration are taking adequate steps to curb profit- eering on national defense?” more than 100 labor editors declared: Unde- Yes No cided (All figures are percentages) Re ie ale 14% 72% 14% ee 5 92 3 Unaffiliated ..... 19 81 0 fs 0 100 0 Total Average ..11 82 7 Although the figures show dissatis- faction by a ratio of better than seven to one, a tabulation of combined circu- lations reveals a much broader ratio. Papers voting “Yes” represented only 3 per cent of the total circulation, while the “No” vote represented 93 per cent and the “Undecided” accounted for 4 per cent. Most of the questionnaires were re- turned just before the excess profits tax was enacted. Since no radical changes were made in the bill after the question- naires were mailed, it is fair to conclude 26 that the labor press is dissatisfied with the measure. Almost two-thirds of the editors said the government should take over the munitions, shipbuilding, aircraft and other key industries. Next most popu- lar proposal was conscription of wealth through a requirement that “manufac- turers fill defense contracts at cost.” The no profit alternative was supported chiefly by CIO editors, while a milder formula for an 8 per cent profit limit was the choice of one-fourth of the AFL editors. Not a single editor marked as his final choice a fourth alternative, which read on the questionnaire: “To encour- age manufacturers, only modest taxes should be imposed on profits in defense industries.” * MUSTERING ONLY 125 VOTES against 539 for two local AFL unions, the American Newspaper Guild (CIO) lost an NLRB election in the editorial and commercial departments of The Chicago Herald-American. The elec- tion was the sequel to an eighteen-month strike against the Hearst paper, settled last April. * A TURBULENT FIVE-WEEK STRIKE at the Leviton Manufactur- ing Company was settled on October 2 at a conference among attorneys for the NLRB, the company, and Local 3, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (AFL). H. H. Broach, union representative, called the outcome “a decided victory.” The company agreed to reinstate Joseph Mahler, a discharged unionist, and promised to mail each of the 1,700 workers a letter saying the firm would abide by the Wagner act. * DATA ON NLRB ACTIVITIES UP to September 1, 1940, released October 10 show that during August 630 new cases arose involving 102,681 workers, an increase of 115 cases over the preceding month and involving 21,137 more workers. In its cumulative report of board activities since October, 1935, it ap- peared that the 26,724 cases involving 6,417,545 workers finally closed repre- sent 90 per cent of all petitions and unfair labor practice charges filed with the board during the five-year period. * DEATHS OF WORKERS IN THE mining industry, due to exposure to dust, are excessive and the mining industry should take measures to control the dust, Edited from the Labor Press and the Federated Press Dr. R. R. Sayers, director of the Bureau of Mines, told the National Safety Con- gress in a speech in Washington, D. C., recently. The recent growth of mech- anized mining in the bituminous coal industry has greatly increased dust haz- ards, Sayers said. He asked that such methods as proper ventilation, wet meth- ods of mining, proper blasting practices, and the use of masks be installed to cut down on disease. Studies by the U. S. Public Health Service, he said, show that 6 per cent of the hard-coal miners examined have “clinical pulmonary tu- berculosis” while the average prevalence of the disease in the U. S. is only 2 per cent. * MEMBERS OF FEDERAL LOCALS of the AFL will be exempted from dues payments and retain their good standing while in the army, the AFL executive council anounced October 9. At the same time it was disclosed that the national and international unions are considering steps to safeguard the bene- fits of union members who are drafted or who volunteer. Last year $25,000,000 in old age pensions, death benefits, health and unemployment compensation were paid out by the unions to their members. City central bodies and state federa- tions, according to AFL President Wil- liam Green, will set up machinery to assist conscripts in getting back their jobs after their period of service. “The AFL is determined to do every- thing in its power to protect the status and promote the welfare of those who are called upon to serve our country in its time of emergency,” Green said. * A SEVERE INDICTMENT OF TOM Girdler’s anti-unionism was contained in a report by NLRB Trial Examiner Horace A. Ruckel, recommending rein- statement with back pay of 369 workers at the Buffalo plant of the Republic Steel Corporation. “The record in the present proceed- ings leaves no doubt that the respon- dent’s unfair labor practices caused the strike (the 1937 Little Steel strike),” said the report, which was based on a five-month hearing. “It is sufficient to note that not only was the strike called for the plants gen- erally, but many of the unfair labor practices which have been reviewed here, such as, for example, employer- dominated labor organizations and dis- tribution of anti-union literature, were common to other plants of the respon- dent and indeed were a part of a cen- THE AMERICAN TEACHER + Awe on- ch- oal az- ich th- es, cut ow ers tu- nce nly LS ues ing ‘ive hat are ne- ted lth ere ers. Ta- Vil- — to heir ery- atus who y in iner 2 A ELEN trally directed campaign of opposition to the organization drive of the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee (CIO) throughout the respondent’s plants.” * INCREASE OF THE PER CAPITA tax of international and national unions to the AFL will be recommended to the AFL convention which opens in New Orleans on November 18, President William Green announced recently. Green, following the first day’s ses- sion of the regular fall AFL executive council meeting in Washington, D. C., said the council would ask the conven- tion to raise the present two-cent tax to three cents and lift the penny assessment that has been levied since 1937. That the action might pave the way for reaffiliation with the Federation of the International Typographical Union (AFL suspended) was indicated in Green’s announcement that a committee of five had been appointed by the Fed- eration to discuss with the ITU the ques- tion of reaffiliation. One of the principal reasons for the suspension of the ITU was its refusal to pay the one-cent assessment which was voted by a meet- ing of AFL officials in Cincinnati in 1937. At that time the levy was to go into a “war chest” to fight the CIO. The Fed- eration’s committee will meet with the ITU at New Orleans on November 20, Green said. + THE FORD HIGH-WAGE MYTH got another dent when union members employed at the Lincoln plant of the Ford Metor Company in Detroit gave information to the Ford Organizing Committee of the United Auto Workers (CIO) on wage rates at the plant. On that basis the union made the fol- lowing comparisons: Minimum Wage per Hour Chrysler Briggs Ford Arc and gas welders.$1.13 $1.10 $0.75 Metal finishers .... 1.13 1.10 .75 Spot welders ..... .98 .75 Water sanders .... 1.13 1.10 .90 Paint sprayers .... 1.13 1.10 85 Paint touchup .... 1.08 1.10 .75 Dingmen and metal iE Seabees ie 1.38 a .95 Doorhangers ..... 1.11 1.10 75 In many cases the Ford-Lincoln maxi- mum in these classifications is below the minimum at the Chrysler and Briggs plants in Detroit where the UAW-CIO has contracts. * CRITICISM OF ITS NEW GROUP medical plan by the New York County Medical Society brought a sharp retort from Local 802, American Federation of Musicians (AFL). An editorial in the New York Medical Week, official OCTOBER, 1940 journal of the society, complained that the union’s plan for providing free med- ical service and free hospitalization for unemployed members interfered with the “free choice of physicians.” Pointing out that the organized doc- tors have failed to solve the problem of adequate medical care for those who can’t afford present rates, Local Secre- tary William Feinberg commented: “*You can’t do it and we won’t’ seems to be the attitude of the doctors’ asso- ciations. Labor is not content to be hamstrung by such a dog-in-the-manger policy. We know the needs of our in- digent unemployed. We feel an obliga- tion to exert our every effort to help meet the problem of medical services for our needy.” It was also pointed out by the union that unemployed persons have no free choice of physicians anyway, since they must accept whatever care is given them at public institutions or charity clinics. WITHIN A FEW MONTHS THE AFL will start production of a movie based on the life of Samuel Gompers, Chairman Charles Sinnigen of the local Union Label Trades Department announced at the monthly meeting of the New York Central Trades and Labor Council. Paul Muni, who played the leading role in The Life of Emile Zola and The Life of Louis Pasteur, has agreed to portray the former AFL president, Sinnigen said. Although leading producers have expressed interest in the story, the film will be produced entirely by the AFL under sponsorship of the national Union Label Trades De- partment. “If we gave it to a producer, they’d delete a lot of stuff which we want included,” Sinnigen explained. Washington banks have agreed to advance $250,000 of the $400,000 needed for the production, Sinnigen said. The balance will be raised from AFL unions throughout the country. THE JOHN HANCOCK MUTUAL Life Insurance Company has affixed its John Hancock to a union contract. The agreement, signed with the Indus- trial Insurance Agents Union, an affiliate of the United Office and Professional Workers (CIO), is the first union con- tract with a major insurance firm. It covers 1,027 workers in the company’s twenty-five New York offices. Unwarranted dismissals, which have constituted the main grievance of insur- ance agents, are barred under the terms of the new pact. Arbitration and griev- ance machinery is set up, two-week paid vacation for employees with more than a year of service is granted, and the union is recognized as sole bargaining agent. Hancock is one of the big three in the industrial life insurance field. The other two are the Metropolitan, which has conducted a bitter fight against unionism, and the Prudential Insurance Company. * A NEW CONTRACT DESCRIBED by President Barney Bader of Local 751, International Association of Machinists (AFL), as “the best in the aviation in- dustry” has been signed by the Boeing Aircraft Company of Seattle. The pact covers 7,000 workers. Main demand of the workers, a 62% cents hourly mini- mum for new employees, is incorporated in the agreement. The company’s in- sistence on cutting this rate to 55 cents had forced the union to the verge of a strike. The walkout was averted when first the workers and later the company accepted an arbitration plan submitted by Sidney Hillman, labor chief on the National Defense Advisory Commission. The agreement also provides preferential hiring and one-week paid vacations. * A DIGEST OF LABOR LAWS enacted by the eight states whose legis- latures met in regular session in 1940 and by Congress between January and August, 1940, has just been issued as Bulletin No. 40 of the Division of Labor Standards of the U. S. Department of Labor. The laws included relate to apprenticeship, child labor, hours of work, industrial relations, industrial home work, safety and health, regula- tion of private employment agencies, wage payment and wage collection, work- men’s compensation, state departments of labor, and prevailing wages on public works. There is no: minimum wage heading this year because nothing was done in this field. A few changes in labor laws are as follows: New Jersey raised the age at which children may be regularly em- ployed from fourteen to sixteen and set a minimum age for hired agricultural labor—twelve years. Kentucky strength- ened its Department of Industrial Rela- tions, which will henceforth have exclu- sive responsibility for administering state labor laws. Alabama extended the ‘coverage of its workmen’s compensation law from employers of sixteen or more to employers of eight or more, thus giv- ing workers in small establishments the same advantages as those in large con- cerns. New York increased the benefits payable to silicosis victims under its occupational disease law. In Congress the chief gains lay in the defeat of moves to exempt national de- 27 mee « The Story of One Carl Roth The following release was sent out by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 3, New York City. It probably will not be printed in many newspapers other than the labor press. In the eyes of labor-hating reac- tionaries, the American Federation of Labor is a gallery of crooks, oppor- tunists, crackpots and criminals. But here is the story of a type of man the enemies of the AFL never mention. It is the story of Carl Roth, 38-year-old electrical worker who owned a neat little frame home in a quiet New York suburban street, where you’d think the harsh cries of labor conflict and tragedy would never intrude. As a matter of fact, no one had the faintest premonition— not big, jovial Carl, nor his wife, Anna, nor his 12-year-old son, Billy. Today Carl is dead. And in the words of James A. Wechsler, bril- liant young author and contributor to many of the nation’s most infiu- ential magazines: “Roth’s name has leaped from rank-and-file obscurity to the immortality reserved for labor martyrs.” For Carl met a strange and un- timely death a few days ago while doing picket duty at the gates of the Triangle Conduit Cable Company, in Glendale, Queens, a suburb not far from the calloused center of this city. The strike was two months old. As police, on foot and mounted, closed in on the marching ranks of pickets, the emotional shock was too great for Carl. He collapsed—vic- tim of a heart attack. The same evening into one of the union’s many meeting halls—it has 18,000 members —marched about 1,000 cable workers, members of Local 3 of the Interna- tional Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (AFL) who came to hear union leaders eulogize their departed brother. The feelings of the union, how- ever, were not expressed solely in words. Roth’s son, Billy, was voted a life membership in the union. The organization also pledged to do all that it could to assist Roth’s wife. A check for $3,000 was immediately dispatched to the bereaved woman. The next day the union’s seven- story headquarters was draped in purple and black. Roth’s body lay in state as thousands of his fellow- members filed by in reverent silence. There was no reason why Carl should have been at the Triangle picketing demonstration. He wasn’t a Triangle employee. As a matter of fact, he worked for the company which maintains, repairs and inspects New York City’s street lighting sys- tem. The men at Triangle were striking for 80 cents an hour; at present they are receiving 63 cents an hour. Roth’s rate of pay was $2.00 an hour for a thirty-hour week. Sixty dollars was an average week’s pay. He was in clover. He might have stayed home, enjoyed the company of his wife and son. He was getting on to middle- age when men are inclined to take it easy and shy away from extra chores. Local 3 is a progressive, dynamic union. When a Local 3 man says, “An injury to one is an injury to all,” he means it. So when the Triangle plant was struck, hundreds of mem- bers of the union looked on the fight of the Triangle workers as their fight. The union had fought for the improved wages and conditions which Roth enjoyed. It made it possible for him to own his home, to buy a piano for his wife, to begin to lay aside a few dollars for Billy’s college education. The least he could do was to help his less fortunate brothers. a union member twenty-one years, quit work at 3 a. m. He was on the night shift and a couple of hours later, without going home or chang- ing his clothes, he started for the Triangle plant in the gray dawn. He really didn’t have to. But that’s how it was with Carli Roth—somehow other people’s troubles were his too. thugs and strikebreakers into the plant. Suddenly there was a flurry of excitement, a flame of protest, a momentary clash. Roth was standing on the sidelines looking on at the moment. Then he collapsed. He had succumbed to heart failure. little frame house in the quiet, tree- shaded suburban street to talk to his family. His was a simple story; he was a big, good natured, kindly fel- low. Everyone called him Carl, even the kids in the street. listen to his wife play the piano and to talk with 12-year-old Billy about the rosy future that lay before them all. Mrs. Roth told the union repre- hard to give Billy that college educa- One morning Roth, who had_been The police were herding armed Union representatives went to the He liked to take pictures and to sentatives that it was going to be tion of which Carl had always dreamed. “I guess we'll have to forget about all that,” she said. But Local 3 thought differently. Shortly before the funeral, Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., business manager of Local 3, said: “Our union will see to it that Carl Roth’s boy gets that education. From now on that is one of the responsibilities of Local 3. Without men like Carl, who are pre- pared to sacrifice their own profes- sional interests for their fellow men, the labor movement couldn’t exist.” As one of the New York reporters covering the funeral said: “Carl Roth has become a name for union history books.” fense contracts from the Public Con- ply for free distribution lasts. They tracts Act. Both Army and Navy sup- ply bills carry clauses assuring the con- tinued application of the Walsh-Healey Act fo contracts in excess of $10,000. The eight-hour day law has been amend- ed, since this bulletin went to press, to permit work in excess of eight hours a day on payment of time and a half for overtime. Copies of this bulletin may be ob- tained upon request from the Division of Labor Standards as long as the sup- may also be purchased from the Super- intendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., for 10 cents. * THE LITTLE WAGNER ACT drafted in 1939 by the Minnesota State Federation of Labor will be presented to the 1941 session of the legislature as a substitute for the present Republican state labor law, known in labor circles as the Stassen slave law. This action will be taken as a result of a resolution adopted by the federation at its 50th annual convention. “If this proposal is defeated,” the resolution says, “the officers are directed to work to the end of securing amend- ments with particular reference to the waiting period (ten days before strikes), and the injunctive proceedings, and they are further directed to oppose any and all attempts that may be made to it crease the restrictive features of the act.” THE AMERICAN TEACHER tion 50th the cted end- ces), they ) In- HER ~ 3 by a Union in ys NEW YORK, N. Y.—Potent ammuni- tion for teachers unions throughout the country in their fight against educational budget cutting are the illustrated bulle- tins, “Business Profits Soar,”—the first two of which are now being dis- tributed by Samuel Greenfield, chairman of the National Taxation and School Finance Committee. Closing line of the first bulletin was “The Richest Nation in the World is Entitled to the Best Schools.” The bulletin shows headlines from the financial and business pages of New York newspapers, showing the profit- boom that industrial and commercial firms are enjoying as a result of national defense program orders. Copies of these bulletins may be obtained from Samuel C. Greenfield, 882 East 10th street, New York, N. Y. * CHICAGO, ILL. (No. 1)—The Chicago Union has had a busy fall. New com- mittees for an in-service training pro- gram, for an extension of radio time, for increased activity of the speakers’ bureau and for a research library are under way. The study class is drawing up plans for the year. The Credit Union did a business of $400,000 for the summer. The Civic Medical Center and the Group Insurance report activ- ity. The Red Cross unit is growing. A card party to raise money for the reserve fund drew more than two thou- sand people on October 12. The Illinois Federation of Labor voted complete support for the intro- duction of tenure legislation for Illinois teachers at the coming session. * SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. (No. 61)— Ways and means of increasing the mem- bership and of making meetings more interesting were the subjects discussed by the Executive Board of the Local at a recent meeting at the home of President E. V. Cleary. The problem of adequate housing for WPA education classes has been par- tially solved, it is reported. by the open- ing of an Adult Education Center in the old Washington school. It was also re- ported that former President G. M. Klingner has been promoted to the vice- principalship of the George Washington Jr. high school. * TRENTON, N. J. (No. 437)—“We must be made conscious of the fact that a democracy can survive only when the young are adequately trained for OCTOBER, 1940 assuming the responsibilities of the citi- zen.” This is what Franz Boas, noted anthropologist and AFT member, wrote in a recent issue of Friday magazine in his discussion of what education for democracy meant to the nation. The entire article was reprinted in a recent issue of the New Jersey Teacher, organ of the State AFT. Dr. Boas points out that three pre- requisites are all important for the development of democracy through edu- cation. He sees “opportunity for devel- opment, protection of children’s health and a need for critical thought” as vital factors in the training for a democratic life. * NORMAN, OKLA. (No. 650)—A larger defense fund would add to the strength of the AFT, is the opinion of the Local as reported by Arthur Hammendinger, financial secretary. The Local urges that the Executive Council should take steps to increase the levy on each mem- ber to one dollar per year, to be aver- aged over all members. * TACOMA, WASH.— Many members plan to attend the Fifth Convention of the Washington State Federation of Teachers in this city on October 11-12 at the Tacoma Hotel. A full program of discussion has been planned by Con- vention Committee Chairman, Arthur Broetje. Committee reports, discussion of the needs of the locals and the election of officers are slated for the first day of the meeting. Committee chairmen are: 1. Program and Speakers Committee: Chairman, John King, State Education Department, Local 483. 2. Arrangements Committee: Chair- man, Ramona Barry, Tacoma, Local 461. 3. Publicity Committee: Chairman, Nellie Appy, Seattle, Local 200. 4. Affiliations Committee: Chairman, Pauline Thompson, Seattle, Local 200. 5. Credentials Committee: C. A. Berst, Seattle, Local 596. 6. Publications Committee: Chair- man, Hildur Jo Erickson, Seattle, Local 200. 7. Elections Committee: Chairman, Robert Iglehart, Seattle, Local 401. 8. Resolutions Committee: Chairman, Garland Ethel, Seattle, Local 401. 9. Organization Committee: Chair- man, Lila Hunter, Seattle, Local 200. 10. Constitution Committee: Chair- man, Winifred Werner, Olympia, Lo- cal 478. 11. Legislative Committee: Chairman, Al Huguenin, Bremerton, Local 336. 12. Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee: to be selected. 13. Rules and Steering Committee: Chairman, Mary Lou Jenkins, Olympia, Local 478. Keynote of the members feelings on the purpose of the Convention was sounded by an editorial in the Wash- ington Teacher which pointed out that mounting national emotionalism can wipe out the gains that have resulted from four years of work and that unity between teachers must be preserved. . MONTEAGLE, TENN. (No. 261)— The Eleanor Roosevelt Scholarship for the fall term at Highlander Folk School has been awarded to Ed Blair, president of the Nashville. Tenn., local of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Teachers at the school are members of the AFT. * SEATTLE, WASH. (No. 200)—The Union shows a gain in membership this year of over 125 per cent reports Frank H. Cass. Teachers’ contracts given out last spring called for a cut in salary of 4% per cent. but since that time, due partly to the work of the union, the cut has been reduced to 3 per cent. With plans under way for an active part in the school board elections next spring, the Local expects rapid development this year. * LOS ANGELES, CALIF. (No. 430)— The Cheyney case, which has stirred national comment and protest and caused the organization of a strong united action in Pasadena to have Ralph Cheyney and his wife reinstated in their work as teachers on the staff of the Pasadena Adult Evening School, is still pending, it is revealed in a report by the National Ralph Cheyney Defense Committee for Academic Freedom. The Committee is making a nation- wide plea for moral support and for the advance purchase of a new book of poetry, fiction, and humor by Mr. and Mrs. Cheyney, both nationally known poets and teachers. Basis for the drive to have Mr. Cheyney reinstated is the charge that he was not re-employed be- cause of his work in the peace move- ment. Address of the Committee is 744 Maple, Pasadena, Calif. Frank Cameron McLean is chairman. * LAFAYETTE, IND.—Appointment of committees on tenure, research, affilia- tion and resolutions was one of the major results of the meeting of the Executive Board of the Indiana Council of Teachers at Purdue University. A calendar for the coming year and resolu- tions for the coming session of legisla- ture were also prepared. * CHATTANOOGA, TENN. (No. 246)— Teachers in the educational system are more important than buildings says Chattanooga’s Labor World, publication of the Central Trades Union Council of that city, in an editorial. The publica- tion asks that the city consider looking into the classrooms to find underpaid teachers working under discouraging conditions. “Far worse than the state of disrepair of our buildings are the cruel wage con- ditions imposed on human beings that teach my children and your children,” the editorial declares. Pointing out that teachers are com- pelled by the requirements of their work to spend large sums of money for train- ing and background, the article urges the residents of Alton Park, the com- munity the editorial discusses, to put pressure on the city to provide proper teacher salaries and educational facili- ties. * NEW YORK, N. Y. (No. 5)—A testi- monial dinner to Charles J. Hendley, commemorating five years’ leadership of Local 5 of New York City, will be given Saturday, October 26, at the Hotel Commodore. Twenty-five hundred mem- bers are expected to attend. In a communication to all members announcing the testimonial, the executive board, sponsors of the affair, states: “Under his leadership the Union has grown during the period of his presi- dency from a small organization of 1,500 workers td over four times that number at the present time. It has emerged from insignificance to the proud position of leadership which it now occu- pies in the educational affairs of our citys . . . And throughout this entire period, whether we were having smooth sailing or whether we were passing through any of the many storms which we have so sucessfully weathered, Mr. Hendley has always preserved his forti- tude, his characteristic calm, his excel- lent judgment and his unwavering idealism.” 30 NEW YORK, N. Y. (No. 537)—The Union’s program for the year was dis- cussed at a meeting at the City College of New York. The program adopted by the Executive Board was mailed out to all members. The first meeting of the year, addressed by Dr. Bella Dodd, was attended by more than 300 members. It was reported that $300 had already been raised toward the $2,000 quota of the $25,000 defense fund to protect the Union against the Rapp-Coudert investigation. * KENOSHA, WIS. (No. 557)—John R. Redstrom, member of the Union and principal of the McKinley, Jr., high school, was the subject of a “Who's Who of Local Labor” in a recent issue of the Kenosha Labor, publication of the Kenosha Trade Union Council. The article traces Mr. Redstrom’s career from his childhood to his present posi- tion. The article reveals that he has worked in the Michigan sawmills, on the ore docks and as a railroad construction hand. * LOS ANGELES, CAL. (No. 430)—The Board of Education election for 1941 is being planned behind closed doors of the Chamber of Commerce of this city, the local was warned by Dr. Samuel Urner, writing in the Union Teacher, publication of the Local. Drastic revision of the tenure law, “business” conduct of the schools, re- vision of the curriculum, and a flat 10 per cent budget reduction—these, Dr. Urner says, are the objectives of the business group. He compares the potential drive of the city Chamber of Commerce with the drive of the state organization six years ago. Only the alert action of teachers’ groups and friends of public education prevented a severe defeat for the schools at that time. * NEWARK, OHIO (No. 411)—Mem- bers of the Union and guests heard Dr. Bronson Price of Ohio State University give his impressions of the National AFT Convention when the Local held its first meeting of the year. A social hour followed the meeting. * EAST CHICAGO, IND. (No. 511)— Events of the past few years have shown the urgent need of a better teachers’ tenure law in Indiana, the East Chicago Teacher, publication of Local 511 de- clares in its September issue. The publication cites cases throughout the state which disclose a trend to de- prive teachers of their academic free- dom. Included are cases in East Chi- cago, Gary, Peru and Hammond. A new tenure law for the state is being drafted by the Indiana Council of Teachers Unions. The draft of the law is being prepared by the legislative committee of the state body. The publication further reports the election of John J. Souter, former pres- ident of Local 511, to the Lake County Board of Tax Adjustment. Souter for- merly was associated with the office of the State Board of Tax Commissioners where he studied the Indiana plan of taxation. * DETROIT, MICH. (No. 231)—The Hamtramck Board of Education’s threat to void the nationally famous Keyworth Code has brought strong protests from labor organizations in and around De- troit, it was revealed with the publica- tion of a letter for an appeal hearing to the Board from President Frank X. Martel of the Detroit and Wayne County Federation of Labor. The Code was the work of the late Mark Keyworth, well known educator and has been put into effect in many school systems throughout the country. President Martel’s letter called the attention of the Board to the sound rela- tionship which has been built up between the employees of the school systems, the executives and others and that dis- card of the Code would constitute a backward step in school policy. * DES MOINES, IA. (No. 600)—Union teachers for union children. This was the point at issue in a state- ment released by the Des Moines Fed- erationist when members were urged to ask for union teachers for their children. The statement was released after a meet- ing of the Trades and Labor Assembly addressed by a member of the local AFT in Des Moines. The Union has gone on record opposing the proposed banning of the Rugg books. * NEWARK, N. J. (No. 481)—The Essex County Federation achieved a victory with the virtual doubling of regular ap- pointments by the Newark Board of Education for the current year. Thirty- six teachers received appointments to the secondary schools and ten to the elemen- tary schools, the latter all special teachers. The appointments came after almost a year’s campaign by the Union to add regular teachers to overcome the rising disproportion between regular and sub- stitute teachers. A recent study re vealed that more than one-sixth of Newark school children were being in- structed by substitute teachers. THE AMER!CAN TEACHER eat rth om De- ica- ing nty vell nto out the ela- ms, dis- ea nion ate- "ed- d to ren. eet- ably ocal ‘tory * ap i of irty- > the men- most , add ‘ising sub- r h of g in- ew Wools BLACK WORKERS AND THE NEW UNIONS, by Horace R. Cayton and Georce S. MitcHeirt. University o} North Carolina Press. 473 pages. $3.50. One of the significant shifts in the history of the American labor movement has been the influx of Negro workers into the industrial unions during the last five years. The Black Worker, written by Spero and Harris more than a decade ago, outlined the tragic story of the Negro’s exclusion from most of the craft unions and his consequent exploitation as a strikebreaker as his main means of obtaining industrial employment. Cayton and Mitchell, in the present study, have traced the change in the attitude of other workers in the mass industries to Negroes and the reversal in attitude of the Negro toward unions since 1934. The industries studied are steel, both north and south, meat packing, and railroad work in the south. A special study of the Birmingham industrial center reveals that Negro union membership in that area has risen to 25,000 in the last six years, approximately one-third of all Negro workers in Jeffer- son County, Alabama. All but 2,000 of this number are in mixed locals. The last section of the book is a frank and significant discussion of the factors within the Negro group as well as without it which have delayed union affiliation for Negroes. The study offers a mass of valuable material. Perhaps this material might have been digested and condensed somewhat, but the book is required reading for all those interested in the problems and progress of Negro citizens of America and in the welfare and sound growth of an American labor move- ment. Mary Herrick ~x~ * * National Teachers’ Registry SIR: In order to strengthen its educational services offered to trade unions and other workers’ groups, the American Labor Education Service has recently reorganized its national Teachers’ Registry. We believe that this will be of interest to your readers as this Registry affords an opportunity for all teachers who are interested in acting in a resource capac- ity for the workers’ education movement to register in one place. Such a Teachers’ Registry is important at this time because it will serve as a method of assisting labor organiza- tions and other workers’ groups to secure the best possible technical assistance for their educational programs. In addi- tion, as a result of having teachers all over the country regis- tered in one place, data on the present situation in this field will be available to all interested in workers’ education. I hope that you will be willing to publish this letter in THe AMERICAN TEACHER. I feel sure that your readers are familiar with the work of our organization and know that Labor Education Service is a national workers’ education organization giving technical and advisory assistance to work- ers’ groups of all kinds throughout the country. These in- clude unions, local labor colleges, resident schools, govern- ment projects, youth groups and many types of community organizations. Some groups seek help for their already estab- lished activities; others ask assistance in starting new pro- grams. Should the readers of THe AMERICAN TEACHER wish fur- ther information about our Teachers’ Registry, we would be very happy to communicate with them. Exeanor G. Cort, Director American Labor Education Service, Inc. 437 West 59th Street, New York City OCTOBER, 1940 @ WANTED New York Book Publisher re- spectfully solicits worth-while manuscripts for publication FORTUNY’S 87 Fitth Ave. New York, N. Y. Do you want to Save Money on the Purchase of Furniture, Rugs, Radios and other Home Accessories? If you do, send a card to Mrs. Thomas M. Thompson, 10505 Longwood Drive, Chicago, Ill. Advertising Representative for the Chicago Unien Teacher and e American Teacher COPY FOR CLASSIFIED ADS TO APPEAR IN THE American Teacher must be accompanied by payment. Rates: 90 cents per agate line. FORUM FILMS, INC., 8913 SUNSET BOULEVARD, Los Angeles, California, producers and distributors of educational films for schools (character building—personal development—not documentary) wish to appoint sales representatives in every State. Must have necessary qualifications to contact educators. SPECIAL ARTICLES, RESEARCH PAPERS, speeches, treatises, on educational, literary, sociological, economic, ete., topics. Outlines, excerpts, footnotes, bibliographies. Definite requirements of patpens fulfilled in over twenty years’ service. Mod- pn 4 charges. uthors Research Bureau, 51 fth Avenue, New ork. CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE HUGH WING of Local 400 is a member of the faculty of the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh. . . . ELEANOR COIT, Director of the American Labor Education Service, is a member of Local 5. . . . LILLIAN HERSTEIN, Director of the Department of Lectures, Chicago Board of Education, is a member of the Executive Board of the Chicago Federation of Labor and AFT Local 1... . E. GLENN BAXTER is President of the Ohio State Federation of Teachers and a member of Local 334. . .. FRANCES COMFORT is former President of the Detroit Federa- tion of Teachers, Local 231... . HAZEL MURRAY formerly edited the paper of the Greater Cleveland Local, No. 279. .. . SAMUEL GREENFIELD, who spoke to the delegates at the National Convention about tax-dodging methods used by large corporations, is a member of Local 5. . . . SAMUEL BARTH, Chicago Local 1, is a member of the Vocational Educa- tion Committee of the Chicago Federation of Labor. . . « ALICE HANSON of Local 192 has been active in union organizational work. .. FLORENCE ROOD is a member of the St. Paul Women Teachers’ Federa- tion. . .. MAURICE CREW of Chicago Local 1 is active in the Chicago Medical Center and published an article dealing with group medical plans in a past issue of the AMERICAN TEACHER. .. . JAMES D. GRAHAM is President of the Montana State Federa- tion of Labor. . . . GEORGE FINLAY SIMMONS is President of Montana State University... . FRANK BAKER is President of the Milwaukee State Teachers College and a member of Local 79... . JOSEPH C. O’MAHONEY is Chairman of the Temporary National Economic Committee. November Deadline Copy for the November issue of THe AMERICAN TEACHER must be in by Monday, October 28. Mate- rial for the December issue is due November 15. 31 itixson in the eiliboats ; The Institute for Propaganda Analysi was founded three years ago month to help cilizens detect and az alyze propaganda. To teachers offers special services and materials Get acquainted with the Institute’ work in one of these ways: 1. A YEAR'S SUBSCRIPTION Propaganda Analysis, at $2, bring you free your choice of recent Institute books: The Fine Art of Propaganda: Analysis of Father Coughlin‘ Speeches. (150-pages, pape: bound. Cloth-bound this boo retails at $1.50) War Propaganda and United States (363-pages, po per-bound. Cloth-bound, thi book retails at $2.75.) 2. A COMPLETE UNIT Of INSTITUTE study i als, for your classroom o library, may now be hag for $5. This material, purchased separc would cost $7.50. Th unit includes: A year’ subscription to Prog ganda Analysis choice of free boo copy of the Grou Leader's Guide ta Propaganda Ane ysis; bound vol umes I, II, and Il of basic material classroom w - . Five months sub “ secrear » ace \\ suze Beas”. New, | ovs . orN, *” GLA? Analysis @ WARLES “Pyear® aoe ; ‘ H. scab? -cersitY, 25c each, i Collese Ney ) Cra Unive, wee bundles of se each TS sgiversit Univers Calvre Linvt MACLEAN or more t j cate. ve JGLAS» N ° >> Ss. * reste crM/im itwavkee, © Ohio Sut Damenest, Joraick M pice North Sy one address. x E. BaKe® Eeh® iyersitY les : {gaRrD Gaiver ty, est ; od i Un USE THE Fear niversity "yale * Anee ILLIAM yyrnbia ty Ea LLe®s Co COUPON! , t R yDE R>: : t ; ‘ pIRECT prince Or on ABD CLOTDM piversitY g | Cc nT® Ly .. ‘sversitY & grantor Roser™ ee, Ha \lege Universe” Univers uver, Wor -agy MATS hens - MuarHY: N. Kerr cocial Kiatee iv. step avso™ Ol Of. ecot® se py pEN MA iy. Gs Schoo Minne’ E Mew Univer™ . YiversitY . JAMES ow york - WY GogeER, Univers" k. Sre Rowest Institute for Propaganda Analysis AT 40 East 43th Street, New York City 4 Enclosed is my check for .......... sees As a teacher I wish to take advantage of the offer I have checked below. I understand that a subscription now will bring me the current bulletin, THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, and the bulletin in preparation on the schools. (1) 1. One subscription to Propaganda Analysis for the next twelve months at $2. I indicate my choice of free bock below. 0) “The Fine Art of Propaganda: An Analysis of Father Coughlin’s Speeches.” QO) “War Propaganda and the United States.” C) 2. One complete unit of Institute study materials at $5. a student subscriptions for five months at 25c each. (Orders must total 20 or more, for one address.) Se ee Oe ee ” ES SRE iach a wndnndcadinteandun’ dedeeads oy ee ee “