We move south to Philadelphia, the third largest city of the country, controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad and its allied banks, through an old-established and smoothly running political machine. Nearly twenty years ago Lincoln Steffens described it as “Philadelphia corrupt and contented.” For a while after that it ceased to be contented; there was a general strike, which was smashed by the mounted police. But then came the war, and Philadelphia is again at the apex of contented corruption and corrupt contentment.
So far as concerns the schools, there has always been the usual hundred per cent plutocratic board, distributing patronage and financial and real estate favors. When I visited the city in 1922 the schools were under the care of what was called “the octogenarian board”; at its head Judge Beeber, president of the Commonwealth Title and Trust Company, who sees that a good part of the school funds are deposited in his bank. Next to him was Mr. Burt of the American Bank, and financial intimate of the Vare brothers, contractors and political bosses who had run the city for a generation. Next, Mr. Simon Gratz, the czar of the schools for a generation, and president of a real estate organization—you remember in “The Goose-step” what I called the “interlocking directorate”; next, an aged war-horse of the Republican machine, who was open in saying that he represented the Vare brothers on the board, and whose name was frequently mentioned in connection with female teachers and pupils, to whom he had displayed undue ardor in his private office.
Several of these aged plutocrats have just been forced out by a popular upheaval, and the board is now run by Mr. William Rowan, who has a bank in Kensington, and whose other qualification for the office of school board president of a great city is that he is an undertaker. He presided at a banquet in honor of some distinguished Frenchmen, and one of these Frenchmen, a member of the Academy, made a speech in perfect English; Mr. Rowan in reply proposed that the assemblage should unite in singing the French national anthem, the “Marr-sales.” Also there is Mr. Boyle, replacing Mr. Burt as representative of the American Bank. Also Mr. Shallcross, a suburban political boss, whose son was recently president of the real estaters. Also Mr. Mitten, president of the Rapid Transit Company, and a nationally known union-smasher. Mr. Mitten has deluged the schools with his propaganda in favor of company unions; he sent so much that one high school returned it, marked “Send no more.” This traction company has been so plundered by the financiers that seventy per cent of its gross revenue goes to the bond-holders of underlying companies, which own no property and do no work. In the girls’ high schools some of the teachers of civics ventured to point out the significance of this, and so Mr. Mitten transferred this subject of civics to the grade schools, where the children are too young to understand high finance.
Philadelphia is an old and slow-moving city, in which everything follows precedent, and outward respectability is the whole of life. It resembles London, in that its leisure-class gentlemen have cricket-clubs; also in that old families have vast holdings of real estate throughout the city, which they hand down from generation to generation. The rich as a matter of course send their children to private schools, where they do not have to associate with the vulgar unwashed; so the big business men do not care what becomes of the public schools, and only want their tax assessments held down.
For many years the social service organizations agitated for a school survey by the city, and finally matters got so bad that the survey was made by the state. The four volumes of the report, dated 1921, lie before me. If you are suspicious of my opinions about schools, you may prefer to hear from the state superintendent of public instruction. Dr. Thomas E. Finegan is not a muck-raker, but a high-up educational politician, with more letters after his name than he has in it—A.M., Pd.D., Litt.D., L.H.D., LL.D.; and he says:
It cannot be too emphatically stated that the general condition of Philadelphia’s school plant is deplorable.
Nearly forty thousand elementary pupils are on part-time attendance because of lack of sufficient classrooms, and the high school pupils are handicapped by the heavy overcrowding of their classes.
There is a real hazard to the children of Philadelphia in the fact that seventy-four per cent of the school buildings are not fireproof, and are not equipped with modern fire protection apparatus. The system of fire drills and the devotion and competence of the teaching force afford the chief protection to most of the children in times of danger from fire.
The citizens of Philadelphia would be shocked to learn of the unsanitary and unwholesome toilet facilities that are provided for the children in a majority of the public schoolhouses. It is no exaggeration to say that many of the conditions not only threaten the health of the children, but are a menace to their morals as well.
Over eighty per cent of these buildings provide less than the standard play area now recognized as necessary to the healthy and happy school life of children.
Moreover, Superintendent Finegan goes on to say:
As matters now stand, however, there is no way in which the people of Philadelphia can register their will concerning the work of the public schools. This condition results from the fact that the members of the Board of Public Education are appointed by the judiciary rather than elected by the people. There is no escaping either the logic or the wisdom of maintaining that, where the members of a board of education have the direct power to levy and collect taxes for the support of the public schools, it follows as a necessary corollary that the members of such a board should be elected directly by the people taxed and so become directly responsible to them.
Of course, one can make out a case from any report by taking the worst items and quoting these alone. So I hasten to state that the makers of the survey found some things in the Philadelphia schools of which they could approve, and they were profuse in pious hopes that other things would be made better. But nothing can alter the significance of a statement such as the following:
Sixty-four per cent of the children examined were found physically defective.
Or of a statement such as this:
The most depressing condition observed was the indifference or passivity of a large proportion of the classes visited. Pupils asked very few questions, and it is most exceptional to find a recitation in which thoughtful inquiry is usual and frequent. Real discussion is as rare as signs of eager interest.
And again:
There is no organized attempt at any high school in Philadelphia, as far as the administration is concerned, to teach the pupils how to study.
Philadelphia has a new superintendent, by the name of Broome, and he was hailed as “the Broome that sweeps clean.” He had one new idea when he took charge of the schools; he wanted a teachers’ council, and that sounded like a revolutionary idea, and the teachers were interested. This council was to deal with all matters connected with the interests of teachers, and it would save the board of education the need of being troubled with teachers’ complaints. Presently it developed that out of the thirty-one members, considerably more than the majority were to be elected by small groups from the supervising force. After much political manipulation the superintendent succeeded in putting this plan over on the teachers; the council has now been in operation for a year, and all teachers realize its purpose. It has done nothing for teacher welfare—but it stands in the way, so that no teacher can any longer get access to the board of education!
We shall see when we come to study our education from the national viewpoint, that these superintendents meet together in county and state and national conferences, to work out plans for the holding down of the teachers and the regimenting of the school system. This clean-sweeping Broome of Philadelphia put into effect an ingenious method of enforcing conformity; he has a group of what he calls “superior teachers,” who are given extra pay and promises of advancement for exceptional scholarship, writing of theses, and other outside activity. The result has been gross favoritism, and the wrecking of the morale of many schools by the forming of cliques and political gangs.
Teachers who fall out of favor are treated like the policemen in New York; they are given jobs at the other end of the city from their homes—and Philadelphia is geographically the largest city in the United States. Three teachers were driven to suicide by such methods, and great numbers have left the service. In certain schools the system has now reached the stage of development with which we are familiar in the moving picture world, where promotion for women employes depends upon sexual favors extended to the men in power. Such is the reason which Philadelphia teachers assign for the sudden rise of certain ladies in the teaching force; and this condition is so common throughout the rural schools that the city teachers assign it as their main purpose in demanding tenure for all the teachers of the state.
A great many of the schools, and especially the high schools, are organized politically; the alumni associations and parent-teachers’ associations are used, not merely to get favors for their schools, but to serve the political bosses and their interests. The principal of a South Philadelphia school not long ago circulated among his staff a “request” that no teacher should “flunk” a certain notoriously poor scholar, the reason being given that “his father is the police lieutenant of our district, and we cannot afford to antagonize him.” This boy passed triumphantly; and of course the same favors are extended to prominent athletes, who would otherwise bebe barred from the school contests.
You will be prepared to learn that in such a city the feeble effort of the teachers to start a union was crushed by the discharging of some and the intimidating of the rest. (There were about a hundred members, and a prominent leader sold them out for a promotion.) You will be prepared to learn that the teachers get low salaries, and work all their lives without promotion, unless they belong to the “gang.” You will be prepared to hear that the Chamber of Commerce is strong, and has an “educational bureau,” which formulates the policy for the schools, especially as regards the training of Chamber of Commerce clerks and mechanics. You will also be prepared to hear that civil rights are things forgotten in this corrupt and contented city.
There used to be a certain old-fashioned type of gentleman who had read the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, and believed in civil liberty as a thing to be trusted and fought for; but that type is now out of date, and the hustling young business man, with his “under cover” agent and his “strong arm” detective, runs both the city and the schools. The spirit was shown by Superintendent Broome, when he heard a rumor from the Daughters of the American Revolution (delicious irony of that name!) that there were supposed to be some revolutionists among school teachers. The clean-sweeping Broome set to work at once to sweep out “un-Americanism.” “There are too many insidious influences at work today,” he declared. “If there are any persons with such ideas in our schools here, I wish they would resign before I am put to the embarrassing position of asking them to resign.” The same newspaper quoted “other school officials” as declaring that “if any teacher was suspected to be a radical, it was the duty of a citizen to inform the school authorities.”
Needless to say, education in Philadelphia is not inspiring to children; and, as we have seen in other cities, under such conditions the children get drunk. Early in 1923 Director Davis of the Prohibition Enforcement Bureau ordered his investigators to look into reports of drunkenness on the part of children in three public schools, who were said to be coming to school in a half stupefied condition. I asked a friend about this, and he wrote me that they were the children of Italian parents, who make wine. But then I inquired further, and I learned that among the English speaking mill-workers in the Kensington district the pastors of the churches found it necessary to band together to protect the children from the activities of boot-leggers. The brother of one of the highest teachers in the city was arrested on this charge, and there have frequently been charges of teachers imbibing during class sessions. Also, the use of drugs by school children is prevalent, as in our other great cities. How can you expect either the children or the boot-leggers to obey the law, when the public reads in its morning papers that, nearly five years after the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, the police of Philadelphia Corrupt and Contented are solemnly informing the keepers of thirteen hundred saloons that they must positively close next month! And they don’t!