In addition to the patriots, who are interested in the contents of our school books, there are large groups of business gentlemen interested in these books as merchandise. Every year our twenty-three million school children and seven hundred thousand college students require and consume millions of new books; so here is a great industry, like every other in America, a battle-ground of graft and favoritism. It is a main support of the political machine in our schools, a reason why we cannot get honest and competent educators for our children.

For a long period the school-book industry was practically a monopoly. The American Book Company controlled ninety per cent of the business, and everywhere its name was synonymous with corruption. Now there are many competitors in the field, and the business of the American Book Company represents only sixty or seventy per cent of the total. But it remains an enormous corporation, and its methods are the same as ever. According to the law of business competition, which is praised in all school and college text-books, the competitors of the American Book Company are forced to meet its methods and to buy their share of success.

There are something like a hundred and fifty “independent” firms manufacturing and selling school-books; some of them are very large firms. I had the pleasure of talking with a number of these book gentlemen, and I found them willing to go into detail about the doings of their rivals. As to their own doings, nothing is said; but you can inquire next door. Two of these gentlemen assured me that direct corruption has gone out of fashion in the book game; no longer do the agents pay spot cash to superintendents and state commissions for “adoptions.” I asked one at what date this happy change had taken place, and made note that the date was prior to some cases of cash payment of which I had positive information.

However, I report the statements of these book gentlemen. The graft is now of the “honest” variety; there has been the same evolution that we have seen in the Tammany machine, from the days of Tweed, when the property of the city was stolen outright, to the present time, when the Traction Trust pays the campaign expenses of politicians, and gives them legal retainers, and contracts, and other “tips” of a legitimate business nature. What the agent of a book company now does is to contribute generously to the campaign funds of superintendents and school board members. Thus the various book companies have their “own” superintendents and their “own” school machines. The superintendents not only select the books of these companies, but they accept friendly recommendations as to teachers and promotions; so book company agents also conduct informal teachers’ agencies, and have long lists of their “own” teachers.

And when promotions and favors in the system are desired, the big, powerful, and always genial book company agent is a good man to see. He is always present at conventions, pulling wires for his crowd. If legislation is wanted, he knows the legislators, and if investigation is threatened he knows the press correspondents and managing editors. All these things will be told to you by any book man who is willing to talk. Their excuse is that they have to do it, because the other fellow does it, and there is no other way to get business. They are in the same position as the railroads, which have to control the political machines in order to keep the machines from “holding them up.”

In one of our Eastern cities I had an amusing experience. I happened to meet socially a certain large capitalist, high up in the councils of the employers’ association of his city. He was a merry old gentleman, and meeting a muckraker appealed to his humor; he “blew” me to a fine lunch at what I guess is the most costly athletic club in the world. He asked me what I was writing; and when I told him, he mentioned a friend of his, a high-up official in a big text-book company, who had told him a number of amusing anecdotes of the buying of state legislatures and city school boards and superintendents. Naturally, I said I would like to meet that school book official; so the old gentleman put me in his limousine and took me to his friend’s office, where I spent an hour or so, listening to an inside account of conditions in many states.

The substance of what the man said was that it was impossible for book companies not to pay commissions; the politicians would demand anywhere from a thousand to five thousand dollars for a state contract. He described in detail the state of Indiana, where the text-books are adopted for periods of five-years, and there is a political board of utterly incompetent men, with no qualifications for judging text-books. On the date of adoption there will be perhaps fifty agents swarming to the state capital; you will find out what the price is, and you either pay it, or you go out of business so far as concerns the state of Indiana.

I went off and made some notes of what this gentleman had told me; but I wasn’t sure of some details, so I wrote him a seductive letter—all in the strictest confidence, of course—asking him to verify certain statements. In reply came a no less polite letter, assuring me of his pleasure in the recollection of my visit, but saying that my capitalist friend and myself had misunderstood the purport of his conversation. He had entertained us “with some of the legends of the business, which had been handed down from one generation to another.” But these things weren’t done any more, and selling text-books is now “an honorable business.”

It happened through a coincidence that I had on my desk a letter from Professor Charles H. Judd of the University of Chicago, whose adventures with the National Industrial Conference Board were told a few chapters back. Professor Judd, as head of a great department of education, has had opportunity to watch the book company business from the inside. He says, among other things:

Let us consider the American Book Company, because it is the biggest, and has set the pace for the rest. Thirty years ago my friend George D. Herron, then a Congregational clergyman and college professor, came upon the wholesale knaveries of this concern. Henry D. Lloyd and President Gates of Grinnell College took up the facts, and published them in a little Christian Socialist paper in Minneapolis, the “Kingdom.” The answer of the American Book Company was to file suit for a hundred thousand dollars damages. Dr. Herron writes me:

And now, a generation later, we find the Commissioner of Accounts in New York City carrying on his investigation into text-books, and there appears before him Mr. George E. Morrison, editor of “The Historic Hudson,” and recently a reporter for the Detroit “Journal.” You will recall Detroit as the home of Mr. A. V. Barnes, president of the American Book Company; also of ex-Senator Newberry, his brother-in-law; also of Mr. Fred Cody, agent of the American Book Company, convicted with Newberry of election frauds; also of Mr. Frank Cody, brother of Mr. Fred, and superintendent of schools in Detroit. Under these circumstances you will not be surprised to learn that Michigan is a center of American Book Company activity. Mr. Morrison in his testimony stated that he had been given several weeks’ leave of absence by the Detroit “Journal,” to collect evidence concerning this matter. Mr. Morrison interviewed a hundred and twenty-seven witnesses, and turned over their evidence, with the affidavits of eighteen out-of-town people, to the prosecuting authorities. The matter was presented to the grand jury, which took minutes and returned a report in which Mr. Morrison was abused by numerous public officials, who stood in with the Newberry-Cody gang. The influence of this gang, said Mr. Morrison, was sufficient to paralyze the arm of the public prosecutor, and to cause a police justice to get busy and prevent indictments.

Mr. Morrison went on to explain the methods of the American Book Company, and just how the money of the school children of the United States was used to buy a seat in the Senate for Truman H. Newberry. I quote from the stenographic record:

Also I quote from another portion of this interesting testimony: