Back in the days of President Buchanan the American Congress set aside large tracts of federal land, to be devoted forever after to the support of schools; and these lands have ever since been the favorite pasturage of Big Business. In state after state I found highly cultured members of old ruling families interested in education—and living upon fortunes made by the theft of school lands! In Maine and Wisconsin and Oregon these lands were stolen for the timber; in Minnesota for the iron ore; in Michigan for the copper; in Oklahoma and Texas for the oil; in Indiana and Illinois and Colorado for the coal.

The story of the Colorado school lands is told in a little pamphlet, “The Looters,” by George A. Connell, Cedaredge, Colorado. The sections set aside were Numbers Sixteen and Thirty-six of all government townships; and according to data available, the schools of Colorado own about six billion tons of coal. Instead of working these mines for the benefit of the schools, the state of Colorado turns the land over to the coal companies for a royalty of ten cents per ton of coal mined! The schools have to have coal themselves, and they purchase it from these same coal companies. It costs the companies, to mine this coal and deliver it to the schools, $5.80 per ton, while the price which the schools pay for it is $10.50 per ton; the coal companies therefore make $4.70 per ton, and this after paying the ten cents royalty to the schools! In the year 1920 there were mined almost a million tons of coal from the state school lands; the schools got for this a net profit of a little over eighty-five thousand dollars, while the coal gang made a net profit of nearly four and a half million dollars. In other words, the coal companies made in one year from the coal more than the schools will make in fifty years. Under the present method of doing business, the schools and the people of Colorado will surrender to the coal corporations for the coal taken from the school lands a total net profit of twenty-seven billion dollars.

Let us follow this coal money. Under the law a part of it has been turned into a “permanent school fund,” which now totals ten million dollars. And where does this money go? Why, to the banks, of course; and what do the banks pay for it? They pay three per cent interest; and at the same time the various school districts are borrowing money, and have to pay five and a half per cent on their bonds! The difference between these two items means a quarter of a million dollars, which the schools of Colorado are donating to the bankers every year! That pleases the bankers, and they use their control over the educators of Colorado to keep the people from knowing about the graft.

In September, 1920, there was a contest arranged between two district schools, and an eighteen-dollar basketball was put up as a prize for the school which could give the best answers to twenty-four questions. The principals of both schools accepted the terms of the contest, and the county superintendent agreed to assist. The questions were to be published in the local newspaper, the Surface Creek “Champion”; the editor said he would take them under advisement, but he never published them. The Republican county committeeman was called in to the “advisement”; the county superintendent, who was up for re-election, was also called in, and this lady made a hurried trip to the two towns and called off the contest. And would you like to know why? Well, one of the twenty-four questions read this way: “How much of the permanent school fund is loaned to the banks, and how much is on deposit?”

The county superintendent had sent this question to the state superintendent, and a letter came back, signed by both the state superintendent and the deputy: “I cannot answer this question. I could not get any information along this line.” The question was presented to various educators throughout the state, and they admitted that they did not dare to touch it. The question was presented to the editor of the “Rocky Mountain News,” the great organ of the plutocracy of Denver, and the editor not only refused to print anything about it, but stated that “any man that stirred up such things is a Bolsheviki and an undesirable citizen.”

In 1914 there was a great strike of the Colorado coal miners, which led to a civil war, not merely at the mines, but also in front of 26 Broadway, New York, the offices of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and also at Tarrytown, where the Rockefellers, father and son, have their palatial estates. This civil war was of concern to the Colorado schools, because they paid all the cost of it; the coal company gang in the state legislature put through a bill, taking five hundred thousand dollars from the school funds of the state, to pay the cost of breaking a strike for Mr. Rockefeller. The radicals carried on a campaign for a year or two over this issue, and as a result of the publicity one-fifth of the amount was paid back to the schools.

In the East Side High School of Denver there were two teachers who made so bold as to talk about these matters, and also to concern themselves with the civil rights of miners. Of the six demands of the strikers, five were for the enforcement of the laws of the state; and a pupil in one of the high school classes asked Miss Ellen A. Kennan whether this was true. An embarrassing moment for a teacher—with sons and daughters of coal operators in the class! Miss Kennan answered the question truthfully, and forthwith the president of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, Mr. Rockefeller’s concern which was breaking the strike, came to the school to demand an explanation!

Miss Kennan was one of the prize teachers of the Denver school system, a Greek and Latin scholar and a prominent lecturer at women’s clubs; she had been in the system for seventeen years. Her friend, Gertrude Nafe, had been in for seven years, and during the strike had the difficult experience of teaching the son of General Chase, the combination dentist and militia officer who was setting aside the Constitution in the coal country and supervising the Ludlow massacre. Miss Nafe also answered her pupils’ questions truthfully, and so the general and his employers made up their minds to get these two ladies out of the schools.

It took them four years to do it, and they had to increase the number of school board members, packing it with their henchmen. Even so, it was only the war that gave them their chance. They drew up an oath for the teachers to take, pledging loyalty to the Constitution and the government, and “to promote by precept and example obedience to laws and constituted authorities.” Miss Kennan and Miss Nafe cheerfully signed the first part of this pledge, but they found themselves in difficulties when it came to the second part. How can one pledge obedience to laws and constituted authorities, when constituted authorities are defying the laws? Consider the 1914 strike, in which the miners had tried to compel the constituted authorities to enforce the laws—and had failed! The teachers had explained this to their pupils, and now could not stultify themselves. Their friends begged them to sign, the pledge being ”nothing but a joke”—the teachers all so regarded it; but these two ladies took the matter seriously, and struck out the word “obedience.”

So they were slated to be driven from the system. They demanded a hearing before the board, and were permitted to make a brief statement explaining their reverence for their revolutionary ancestors, who had defied the constituted authorities when these authorities defied human rights. The principal of the school asked to be heard, and said: “I have never wavered in my faith in their value to the schools, in my faith in their services to the coming citizens of this republic.” But the board turned them out, and for the past five years the children of Denver have been taught by some teachers who take their oath to be a joke.

Time passed, and there came another strike of the Colorado mine-slaves, and another curious test of Colorado education. I have before me an issue of a weekly paper published by the striking miners, the Walsenburg “Independent,” January 3, 1922. It bears across the top in large letters the caption, “This paper was censored by the Colorado Rangers.” Then follows a news item to the effect that Professor S. M. Andrews, school superintendent of Walsenburg, and also of Huerfano County, had addressed a teachers’ meeting in Denver, and praised the rangers and their martial law. That much I learn from the paper; then comes the statement: “Censor cut out report of his speech as printed in the ‘Rocky Mountain News,’ December 30th.” Of course I might hunt up this issue of the “Rocky Mountain News” and tell you what Professor Andrews said, but I don’t think it worth the bother. The point is clear: a superintendent of schools, supposedly a public official, drawing two salaries from a coal mining community, goes up to the state capital, and before a convention of teachers defends the state police in their abrogation of state and federal constitutions during a strike; and the commanding officer of these gunmen in uniform forbids the miners’ newspaper to communicate to the miners what their own superintendent of schools has said about them in their own state capital!