So now our National Education Association is what the gang wants it to be. Let us see exactly what that is.

The next convention was held at Des Moines in 1921, and here were the first fruits of the sowing. I have before me a tabulation of the delegates to the Des Moines convention, classified according to their occupations. Statistics make tiresome reading, but in this case the statistics are the heart of the argument, so I beg you to consider these figures carefully. There were present at this convention a total of 553 delegates having votes; among them were: state superintendents, 33; county superintendents, 21; city superintendents, 104; presidents of colleges and normal schools, 28; principals of high schools, 34; principals of elementary schools, 54; supervisors, 23. That makes a total of 297 delegates belonging to the employing class—297 out of 553, a comfortable majority. But note further: the tabulation includes 14 miscellaneous, 46 not classified, 6 editors of educational journals, and 2 agents of book companies; if we set these to one side, we find that the 297 members of the supervising force were figured upon a total of 485 delegates.

And now, to balance this, consider the representation of the teachers: special teachers, 8; teachers in colleges and normal schools, 34; teachers in high schools, 65; and teachers in elementary schools, 81. That makes a total of 188 teachers, including college professors; and this to be balanced against 297 members of the supervising force! In our schools the teachers outnumber the supervising force by ten or fifteen to one; but in this national body, as between the two groups, they have thirty-nine per cent, while the supervising force has sixty-one. Such is “democracy” in the great educational organization of the school world!

At the close of the 1923 convention, held in Oakland, it happened that I was in the locality, and said something to a newspaper reporter about our school Tammany Hall. Some of the gang leaders made indignant reply; and I received a letter from Mr. Joy E. Morgan, editor of the official “Journal of the National Education Association,” who said that I was misinformed concerning the organization, and asked me to have lunch with him. I am shy about breaking bread with the enemy, but I am always glad to talk with him, because he never fails to give me better ammunition than I could otherwise get. So I went to call on Mr. Morgan after lunch, and we had a pleasant chat of an hour or so. He is a young man, and friends assure me that he is well meaning but uninformed. I will pass no judgment, but my story will make clear his amazing ignorance, not merely concerning his own organization, but even concerning his own paper.

Mr. Morgan started off with the ancient formula that the N. E. A. is “democratic”; all the teachers of the United States were welcome—in fact, they were implored to join their professional organization. I asked Mr. Morgan about this matter of having honorary members who were ex-officio delegates and endowed with votes. Here was a representative body, purporting to be democratic, but which started out with 23 life directors and a long list of ex-officio delegates, the president, the treasurer, the 12 vice-presidents, the 5 members of the executive committee, 52 state directors, 52 state superintendents of public instruction—and, to cap the climax, all the past presidents, a new one added every year! The total of these ex-officio delegates was 151, and out of this total just three were classroom teachers! That constituted a handicap against the teachers of 145 votes; and since it took 100 classroom teachers to elect one delegate, and in big cities five hundred teachers, it took somewhere between 14,500 and 72,500 teachers to overcome the handicap against them in every N. E. A. convention! Was that what Mr. Morgan understood by “democracy”?

The young editor did not use the phrase, “oil-domes,” but he did assure me that the interests of superintendents and teachers were not opposed, and that the teachers of the country, many of them, elected their superintendents to represent them; moreover, there were great numbers of teachers who were delegates—probably a majority ofof the convention, Mr. Morgan actually said that; and then I handed him the tabulation of the Des Moines convention, which showed 188 teachers, as against 297 members of the supervising force. He studied it, and was obviously embarrassed. “I don’t know just what to say,” he replied. “I hardly think it can be accurate. The tabulation must have been made by some interested party.”

Now the tabulation had been given to me by Frances Harden, who is in Margaret Haley’s office, and I could not deny that Miss Harden was “interested” in the problems of N. E. A. representation. I said to Mr. Morgan: “I will investigate and find out just how that tabulation was prepared.”

“It looks to me absurd on the face of it,” continued the young editor, “because you see it gives two ‘agents of book companies,’ and that is preposterous. No agent of a book company could be a delegate to the N. E. A.”

“I will look into that,” I promised; and we chatted for a while about other aspects of the class struggle in education. Mr. Morgan gave me a file of his publication for the past year, in order that I might see what excellent material they were using; then I took my departure, and sought out Miss Harden and her bunch of “Bolsheviks,” who had come on to attend this Oakland convention. We had dinner in a little “dago” restaurant, and I told them of Mr. Morgan’s objection, and it would have done you good to hear Miss Harden laugh. “Why,” she said, “that tabulation was made from the official list in his own paper, the Journal of the N. E. A.; and Mr. Morgan was managing editor at the time the list was published! When I get back to Chicago I’ll send you a copy of that issue; they listed all the delegates at the Des Moines convention, giving the occupation of each, and all I had to do was to go through the list and check the number of superintendents, the number of principals, and so on. We made the tabulation and published it, and it’s interesting to notice that next year the list of delegates as published in the Journal no longer states the occupations of the delegates, but merely the organizations they represent. You may take it from me, it will be many a long year before the Journal again makes the blunder of revealing the make-up of one of its annual conventions!”

“What about the matter of the book company agent?” I asked; and Miss Harden and her “Bolshevik” friends laughed more merrily than ever.

“Why, one of those two agents is Major Clancy, and Mr. Morgan knows him as well as he knows anybody at the convention. He’s here at Oakland—one of the first sights that is pointed out to a new delegate. He’s a kind of unofficial host to all of us.”

“But is he here as a book company agent?” I asked, in bewilderment.

“Why, of course,” said the teachers; and Miss Ethel Gardner explained that he had got up some kind of club or association of the agents in his locality, and got himself named as their representative.

In case you should find all this as incredible as I found it, let me add that Miss Harden faithfully carried out her promise; when she got back to Chicago she sent me two issues of the “Journal of the National Education Association.” The first is the issue for December, 1921, and I note the name of Joy Elmer Morgan, managing editor. Beginning at page 199, and continuing to page 205, I find a list headed, “The First Representative Assembly; delegates who attended the 59th annual meeting of the National Educational Association in Des Moines, July 5-8, 1921.” There I find the delegates by state, with the occupation of each one given; on page 203 I find “Robertson, W. W., agent for Charles E. Merrill Co., 19 West Main St., Oklahoma City.” And on page 202 the name “Clancy, Major A. W., 502 Globe Building, Minneapolis.”

The second issue of the Journal is that for September, 1922, and again I find Joy Elmer Morgan, managing editor. From pages 291 to 298 I find the list of the second representative assembly, with the occupations of the delegates not given. On page 295 I find as follows: “Clancy, A. W., Bookmen’s Department of Minnesota, 2516 Humboldt Avenue, South, Minneapolis.” And then, as I complete this manuscript, the Journal of October, 1923, appears, and gives the list for the third representative assembly, at Oakland, California—and again the occupations are not given, and again Major Clancy is given!

Yes, you may count upon Major Clancy to attend all N. E. A. conventions! Turn back to our Minneapolis chapters, and read about this one-armed old veteran of the threshing machine. And come to Oakland, and see him in the luxurious parlors of the Oakland Hotel; come to San Francisco and see him in the parlors of the Fairmont. He is the lord of motor cars and of boat-rides; never does he sit down at table except it is crowded with guests. The editor of the “Journal of Education”—not the official N. E. A. Journal, but an independent weekly, published in Boston—portrays this aspect of the Salt Lake convention of 1920 in a playful paragraph. Says the witty editor Winship: “No one in the association at summer and winter meetings, has in fifty years had as many men and women to as many feasts as has Major Clancy.”

Perhaps all this hospitality is poured out from the Major’s own generous heart; perhaps again, it is his employers, the book companies, who fill the cornucopia. However it may be, the major is the idol of the schoolmarms; he chats with them jovially in the lobbies, and now and then you see him jump up and run across the floor—some superintendent has entered, and he must shake the hand of all superintendents. Presently you see him button-holing one of the great leaders of the gang, and there is a whispered conversation; it is by these little chats in lobbies that we get our business done—the gentlemen’sgentlemen’s agreements whereby votes and influence are traded for contracts involving your money and mine.

A teacher friend of mine traveled all the way from the East to attend the N. E. A. convention of 1923 at Oakland; on the day before the opening of the convention she visited the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, where in the lobby she observed Major Clancy in conversation with Principal Olive Jones of New York. This conference lasted for a couple of hours, and other members of the gang took part in it from time to time. My friend wondered what it was about; she never found out, but she noted that before the convention came to a close, Principal Olive Jones of New York was chosen as the new president of the N. E. A. The Major had had advance information, you may be sure; and likewise the rest of the gang had had it. In fact, this 1923 convention had been held in Oakland, because it was the bailiwick of Hunter, and he and Strayer had promised the honor to Miss Jones when they asked her influence at Salt Lake City. This promise had been for 1921, but the gang had fallen to quarreling among themselves—Owen of Chicago had broken with Strayer, and Miss Williams had got the prize in 1921, and Owen had grabbed it for himself at Boston in 1922. You see what the inside ring is giving its time to, and why the great national organization of the school world is an object of contempt to every educator who has a truly professional ideal.