Space is limited, so let us drop the merchants and manufacturers, and consider another great power, the American Bankers’ Association, which has gone aggressively into education. This power has formally declared its disapproval of the popular custom of using such words as “Wall Street” and “capitalistic” in a disrespectful manner; so, in combination with the American Institute of Banking, it takes steps to make the new generation more polite. It has prepared a program of lectures, beginning with the seventh grammar grade and continuing through the four years of high school. Its “Committee on Public Education” has prepared a series of ten lectures, and arranged to distribute them in the schools through the eighty-three city chapters of the American Institute of Banking. Bankers from each chapter will give lectures in the public schools at the rate of one a month during the school year, teaching the economic system upon which our banks are founded.

What this economic system is can be stated in one sentence: our government has turned over the most important function of modern life, the creation of credit, to a group of selfish interests, which are thereby enabled to confiscate the greater part of the product of the modern industrial machine. Naturally, the bankers want the schools to teach that this is a divinely inspired arrangement. We have seen their educators at work in city after city, with lectures and “thrift campaigns.” We have seen them in Montana, taking over the whole school curriculum, and in Colorado taking a good part of the school funds as well.

Also the lawyers come forward to do their part. At the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, in Minneapolis, 1923, a “Committee on American Citizenship” brought in an elaborate report, full of words of terror: “inroads,” “threatened changes,” “insidiousness,” “dangerous tendencies,” “dangerous elements,” “long established institutions,” etc., etc. There are four hundred “Red” newspapers, with five million readers, say the lawyers of the United States; and these lawyers propose to protect the people by taking charge of the schools. All local bar associations are to organize committees, and there is to be “unity of policy and action” all over the country; “direct contact will be made with all our schools and colleges.”

And already, it appears, some of the local lawyers have got to work. In the September, 1923, issue of “School Life,” published by the Bureau of Education, I learn that the Indiana State Bar Association is co-operating with the schools, sending speakers on the Constitution; and of course this will be the same thing, the lecturers will say nothing about the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, they will interpret it solely as an instrument for the perpetuation of privilege.

Next, the National Chamber of Commerce, under the guidance of Professor Strayer of Columbia University, Educator-in-Chief of J. P. Morgan & Company. This mighty school magnate has organized a committee for co-operation between chambers of commerce and city school departments. We have seen this “co-operation” working in many cities, resembling the alliance between the lady and tiger—“they came back from the ride with the lady inside!” The co-operating organization is known by the imposing title of “The American City Bureau of the National Committee for Chambers of Commerce Co-operation with Public Schools”; think what a delicious mouthful for a functionary—executive secretary of the A. C. B. N. C. C. C. C. P. S.!

This mammoth institution issued a report based upon a survey of schools in nine hundred cities, from which most optimistic conclusions were drawn by the “Outlook,” house organ of the firm of God, Mammon and Company. Miss Josephine Colby, a “kicked-out” union teacher, wrote to the “Outlook,” pointing out how misleading this editorial was, because it gave the impression that the Chamber of Commerce report represented the entire country, whereas it covered the large city schools, which are the best, and left out the rural schools, which are the worst. Needless to say, the “Outlook” had no space for this letter; and that is why boards of education all over the United States recommend the “Outlook” as proper reading for goose-herds and goslings.

Next, the National Industrial Conference Board, which is the research and propaganda bureau of a long list of Big Business associations—cotton manufacturers, hardware, paper and pulp, electrical, chemical, wool, automobiles, boot and shoe, metal trades, erectors, founders, rubber, silk, railway cars, etc. Here is one of the most powerful “educational” organizations of the country; its active manager is a consulting engineer of the General Electric Company, who got his education in Austria and Germany, and is working to introduce the German system of slave training. This great organization has been active all over the country in censoring text-books and supervising the contents of our children’s minds. At its instance the Chamber of Commerce in St. Louis caused Washington University to cease using the book entitled “Community and National Life,” by Professor Charles H. Judd, head of the department of education of the University of Chicago.

Also, this National Industrial Conference Board discovered that the Bureau of Education of the United States government was circulating a series of pamphlets by Professor Judd, entitled “Lessons in Community and National Life”; which pamphlets were discovered to be full of most terrible Bolshevik material. They quite definitely labored to prejudice the minds of little children against the leading doctrines of our organized American manufacturers. Consider, for example, a sentence such as the following:

Or consider a criminal Bolshevik utterance like the following:

Or an incendiary statement such as this:

Again, think of telling a tender young child about a workingman who contracted tuberculosis, so that his oldest boy had to leave school, and the mother had to go out to day sewing, with the result that “the young children ran wild.” Then follows the subtle propaganda:

There was a whole list of Bolshevik utterances such as this, which you may find quoted and discussed in a pamphlet published by the National Industrial Conference at Boston. The title of the pamphlet is: “A Case of Federal Propaganda in our Public Schools.” The pamphlet doesn’t state what was done about this matter, so I mention that the circulation of the wicked propaganda by the United States government was immediately stopped.

Next, the National Association for Constitutional Government, which is sending out lecturers to talk to school children on the Constitution. A teacher in St. Paul tells me about a woman from this organization, who was allowed half an hour in a high school of St. Paul, and devoted two minutes to the Constitution, and twenty-eight minutes to the Bolsheviks—meaning, of course, everybody who believes in municipal milk inspection and government control of railroads. This lady has just turned up in Southern California, having got herself transferred to the Better America Federation. She lectures in the drawing-rooms of our rich ladies, and feeds them all the old garbage—free love, nationalization of women, the communization of children, the tearing down of churches. She lends spice to her discourse by telling how she herself in her youth was seduced by these cults of Satan. It is noted that no one is ever given an opportunity to question her, and she never appears before those organizations whose rules provide that both sides of every question shall be heard. She has a new and curious formula for getting at the truth: “If you want to know about Socialism, don’t go to the Socialists!” To a friend of mine she said, with lifted eyebrows: “Do you really think Upton Sinclair is sincere?”

Next, the National Security League. From a syndicated newspaper article, occupying two columns, I cut the following head-lines:

/* LESSONS IN PATRIOTISM ARE FREE FOR TEACHERS

Revision in Study of Civics All Over Country Helped by Noble Work of League Secretary */

In the text which follows I learn about this wonderful secretary, the daughter of a “patriotic instructor” of the G. A. R., who now maintains an office in New York, and is the “personal friend” of the seven hundred thousand school teachers of the United States. Many of these teachers do not know much about the Constitution; being afraid to reveal the fact to their supervisor, they are glad to write for advice to a specialist in patriotism. In the past five years a quarter of a million teachers have had either direct or indirect relationship with this system. Twenty-six states have passed laws requiring the teaching of the Constitution in the schools, and this secretary is right there with the dope, especially prepared for children of every age. For example: “The Supreme Court is the greatest contribution to free government ever made, in that it exists to protect the people from the tyranny of the government they themselves set up.” In other words, nine venerable gentlemen, seven of them the lifelong hired men of great corporations, have usurped to themselves the power of annuling laws of Congress—including a law intended to save several million children from slavery in glass factories and cotton mills and enable them to go to school.

There are numerous other great organizations of Bolshevik hunters supervising our schools—the American Civic Association, the “America First” Publicity Association, the International Association of Rotary Clubs, the Inter-Racial Council, the National American Council, the Sentinels of the Republic—a whole universe of Babbitts! The New York “Commercial,” a daily newspaper of Wall Street, makes a regular feature of Bolshevik hunting. It has an “expert” who publishes a daily department, “The Searchlight,” all got up in official fashion, with index numbers ready for filing in your spy cabinet: “File No. 21, Report No. 7, November 21, 1923, Schools and Colleges, Radicalism In”—this kind of thing gives delight to the Babbitt soul, like a stuffed cat to a baby. This particular report deals with the National Student Forum and its branches in the colleges, particularly the Harvard Liberal Club. It quotes me as approving these organizations. The passage is taken from “The Goose-step,” page 466, and appears in the New York “Commercial” as follows:

The New York “Commercial” stopped there, and stopped, according to the rules of punctuation, with a period. But, as it happens, that period constitutes a lie; for in “The Goose-step” the punctuation mark is not a period, but a semi-colon, followed by the words:

You see what a dirty piece of work! The Harvard Liberal Club is what its name implies, an organization believing in free discussion and a hearing for both sides. I gave an account of its activities which proved it to be that. The New York “Commercial,” desiring to prove the Harvard Liberal Club a “radical” organization, deliberately mutilates my sentence, and represents the Harvard Liberal Club as inviting only radicals, and myself as endorsing such a procedure in colleges!

Now skip one or two thousand miles, to where the Sioux Indians once chased the buffalo, and the capitalist Indians now chase professors through college halls. The legislature of Iowa passed a law providing for a course in “citizenship,” and the state superintendent appointed a committee to prepare a course, the chairman being Harry G. Plum, professor of European History at the state university; a Columbia Ph.D., author of several historical works, and an entirely respectable person. Professor Plum, with the help of his graduate students, prepared a syllabus, in which he made so bold as to discuss American problems on the basis of facts. So Professor Plum became a target for the arrows of the Ottumwa “Courier,” which insisted that high school students ought not hear about such a topic as “the English Industrial Revolution.” Said the editor of the “Courier”: “To the teacher of history industrial revolution may mean a change in mechanical methods, but to the radical it means overthrow of government.”

Furthermore, Editor Powell objected to the use of such words as “problem” and “difficulty” in connection with our civilization. High school students ought not to know that there are any problems or difficulties—unless possibly it be the problem or difficulty of compelling college professors to obey their masters! Also Editor Powell would not permit Professor Plum to list the I. W. W. among labor organizations; he would not let the professor make frequent references to “the capitalist group” and to “capital and labor”; he would not let the professor state that the farmers were responsible for the Populist movement and the Nonpartisan League; nor would he permit the suggestion to be made that high school pupils should “participate in the working out of problems.” Editor Powell was so determined about all this that he carried the matter to the state legislature and forced an investigation, at which Professor Plum was grilled, and the university faculty was made unhappy. As Editor Powell put it in his paper: “Iowa City does not want any question to arise as to the brand of teaching at the university, while the big appropriations for the institution are pending before the legislature.” Needless to say, the wicked syllabus was thrown out of the schools of the state.