CHAPTER LI
THE PLOT FAILS
First you will ask to know the people who did the job; which means that you will be introduced to the bosses of our educational Tammany Hall. Some of them you know already; but for convenience I will re-introduce them.
Superintendent Fred M. Hunter, ward leader of Oakland, 1921 president of the N. E. A., and life director of the N. E. A. During his presidency, Mr. Hunter had a liberal teacher, whom he recommended for discharge to his board of education. The board thought the teacher ought to have a hearing, to which he was legally entitled; but Hunter’s proposition was that he would give the teacher a hearing if the teacher would first resign. “In other words,” said a board member, “you want to hang him first and try him afterward.” With these words ringing in his ears, Hunter went to the convention of the N. E. A., and presided over meetings at which eloquent orators set forth in glowing terms the rights of teachers under our great American democracy!
Carroll G. Pearse, formerly president of the Milwaukee State Normal School, and now a book agent; also a trustee and life director of the N. E. A. We have seen Mr. Pearse smashing the classroom teachers of his own city. If we had time for a detailed study, we should discover him running the N. E. A. machine for a decade, from the time he was president in 1912.
Next, President William B. Owen, of the Chicago Normal School, 1923 president of the N. E. A. Mr. Owen is the ward leader of Chicago, and we have just seen him in Boston, stealing from the classroom teachers their own national organization. Mr. Owen is vice-president and life director of the N. E. A.
Next, Professor Howard Driggs, of the English department of the University of Utah, author of “Live Language Lessons,” president of the Utah Educational Association, a power in the Mormon church, and vice-president of the N. E. A.
Next, Superintendent Charl O. Williams, of Shelby County, Tennessee, a lady of fine presence, an “inspirational” orator of the old Southern style, an aggressive Democratic politician, 1922 president, and now life director and field secretary of the N. E. A.
Next, Mrs. Josephine C. Preston, state superintendent of public instruction of Washington, 1920 president and life director of the N. E. A. We have seen Mrs. Preston browbeating the teachers and defending the incorporate tax-dodging creatures of the lumber country.
Next, Principal Olive Jones of New York, 1924 president of the N. E. A., also trustee and director. I asked two New York teachers to tell me about her, and the answer came: “She is small-minded, vindictive, not over-scrupulous, a self-advertiser and office seeker, a good, clever politician.”
Last but not least, the representative of Columbia University in our educational Tammany Hall. Before introducing him it is necessary to explain that for the first decade of this century our national school machine was run by Nicholas Murray Butler, who was president of the N. E. A. in 1895, and then head of the Department of Education at Columbia University. Becoming president of Columbia, Butler dispensed the educational patronage of Teachers’ College for his gang. How great this patronage is, you will understand when I tell you that Teachers’ College has officially announced that it furnishes more teachers than all the other universities and colleges of the United States and Canada combined. You will find half a dozen chapters about the dispenser of this patronage in “The Goose-step,” and I point out to you that the most bitter critics of the book did not find a single error in my statements concerning him; nor did one educator in the United States come to his defense.
“Nicholas Miraculous” was preparing himself to take charge of the American government, so he no longer had time to bother with the school world. He turned this detail over to one of his subordinates, George D. Strayer, professor of educational administration in Columbia University, and 1919 president of the N. E. A. It was during Strayer’s presidency that the great plot was hatched, and he received a year’s leave of absence from his university, so that he might devote his entire time to putting it through. He presided at the Milwaukee convention of 1919, where he failed. Then he was elected first vice-president, and sat at the right hand of the president at the Salt Lake City convention of 1920, and supervised her every move. Both Strayer and Butler are life directors of the N. E. A.; and so, as you read this story, you must understand it as one more of the Nicholas Murray Butler chapters of “The Goose-step”—it is the spectral hand of old J. P. Morgan, the elder, reaching out and seizing the minds of your children, and twisting them out of shape, so that Morgan’s heirs shall be able to pick their pockets without inconvenience.
Our story begins with the midwinter convention of the N. E. A. in 1918. Miss Frances Harden of Chicago was the first classroom teacher who ever attended a midwinter convention—and she had to pay her own substitute in order to do it! She saw the plot being hatched by the Department of Superintendence, and brought back word to the Chicago teachers, who got out a circular describing it, and pointing out what had happened in their own state of Illinois, which had just been “reorganized” and made a delegate body according to the new scheme. The first Illinois convention under this plan had been held in December, 1917; 1,360 teachers had attended, and the effect of the scheme had been that 1,193 of these teachers were disfranchised! There were only 167 delegates entitled to vote, and the occupations of these delegates were listed as follows: county superintendents, 42; city superintendents, 53; presidents of colleges, 4; principals of high schools, 12; principals of elementary schools, 24; teachers in colleges, 5; teachers in high schools, 13; teachers in elementary schools, 14. In other words, out of 167 delegates, 135 represented the supervising departments, and only 32 were teachers—only 14 of these being elementary classroom teachers!
This Illinois reorganization was the work of Owen of Chicago; it was his pet scheme. At the Pittsburgh convention notice was given of intention to apply it to the N. E. A., and the gang set to work to line up the school bosses.
Then came the Milwaukee convention of 1919; here Strayer presided, and the gang had a charming device to get rid of the teachers. The by-laws provided for the business meeting at 11 a. m. of the 4th of July. Milwaukee had a “sane Fourth” program for that day, and the teachers were supposed to be occupied in the parks; the gang, thinking to catch them off guard, called a “snap” meeting at nine in the morning. But the Milwaukee teachers have been trained in politics, and know its devices. They had arranged to have the “sane Fourth” program taken care of by those teachers who were “associate” members of the N. E. A., while the “active” members, who had votes, were to attend the business meeting. Some of them got wind of the 9 a. m. trick, and these went in and started singing “America.” They went right on singing “America” until 11 a. m.—they are so patriotic in Milwaukee, and that was their idea of a “sane Fourth!” To make sure of keeping it sane, these Milwaukee teachers omitted to eat any lunch, and stayed by the convention until it came to an end at 5 p. m.
The gang brought up their reorganization scheme, and Margaret Haley arose on the floor of the convention, and told them that they were violating their federal charter. The reply was that they would put the scheme through and get the charter changed afterwards. But Margaret Haley, who has a way of consulting lawyers, pointed out to them that any teacher could get a court injunction, and forbid them spending a penny of the association’s money for a year. So they dropped the proposal; Owen resigned from the committee and moved to discharge it; the slate was wiped clean, and the teachers thought the scheme was dead—except for a few who made note of a motion to appoint a committee to take up the question of amending the charter of the N. E. A!
The place selected for the next national convention was Salt Lake City. The classroom teachers made no protest—how were they to know that the gang had been conducting an “educational survey,” combing the United States with a fine comb, to find one place where they might be sure of getting their way? Said one teacher, when she got to Salt Lake and saw the frame-up: “We should have had notice of this.” Said H. S. Magill, field secretary of the N. E. A.: “You blocked us twice; this year we’ve come where your cohorts couldn’t follow us!” Said Strayer, strutting like a little bantam: “We took it where we could put it over.” And if that is not enough for you, a prominent official of the Milwaukee convention told Miss Ethel Gardner, quite naively, that Professor Strayer had a most wonderful plan, by which he was going to get all the big business men of the United States back of the N. E. A! (He did.)
When the minutes of the Milwaukee business meeting were produced, they included a notice of intention to amend the by-laws at the next convention, by repealing the provision which requires a year’s notice before a constitutional amendment can be adopted. No one could recollect having heard such notice given, but the minutes showed that it had been given by Professor Howard Driggs, the great Mormon educator. It was a peculiar kind of proposition for a great educator to make; whenever you mention the subject of constitutions and by-laws to such an educator, the first thing he praises is that system of “checks and balances” prevailing in the Constitution of the United States, which imposes restrictions upon the hasty passions of the masses and compels us all to stop and think before we act. Such a provision had been put into the by-laws of the N. E. A.; and now it was proposed to abolish it, and permit the hasty passions of the masses to prevail!
Professor Driggs apparently realized the strangeness of such a proposition, coming from a great educator; discussing the matter on the floor of the Salt Lake convention, he said he had not known the contents of the notice when he gave it. Somebody had handed it to him—he thought perhaps it was Mr. Magill, the field secretary—and asked him to give the notice, and he did so. Dear, innocent, trusting Mormon educator—you could hardly believe that he was forty-seven years of age! Before you decide what to believe about him, wait and see what use the gang made of that alleged notice.
They had a whole year to work in, and they went at it systematically. They drafted an amendment to the charter of the N. E. A., known as Section 12, providing that it might be organized as a delegate body and governed by a representative assembly. The gang leaders spent much time in our national capital, getting this charter amendment passed by Congress and signed by the President. When our leading plutocratic educators appear in Washington, asking to be permitted to govern their school proletariat in their own way, how should a plutocratic Congress refuse? The amendment was being trumpeted over the country as a plan to make the N. E. A. “democratic.” The President of the United States had just made the whole world “democratic,” so it was to be expected that he would approve the plan and sign the bill.