We have asked the question: is a teacher a citizen? I can name a few places in the United States in which a teacher may be a citizen, provided he or she is willing to give up promotion and honors. Under those conditions a teacher may be a citizen in Chicago, Milwaukee,^[M] and New York, and I might think of a few other places if I searched my memory. On the other hand, if I wished to name places where a teacher is not a citizen, I could cover every state in the Union, and districts large enough to include several states.

You have seen that a teacher is not a citizen in North Dakota or in South Dakota. A teacher is not a citizen in Pennsylvania, where teachers’ unions have been outlawed by decree of the state superintendent. A teacher is not a citizen in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the superintendent has declared that no one may teach history who believes in the recall. A teacher is not a citizen in the state of Washington, where Miss Alfa Ventzke was turned out for protesting against the mobbing of NonpartisanNonpartisan League members; nor in Texas, where a gentleman whose name I withhold out of kindness to him, writes me how he has wandered from place to place seeking a school where a teacher may be a Socialist outside of school hours. He started out over thirty years ago, and in those days a teacher could be a Populist; but nowadays he has to hide—and even then they find him!

A teacher is not a citizen in Oklahoma, where Mr. A. A. Bagwell, who began life as a Methodist minister, and is now a Christian Socialist, has been hounded from public school to public school all over the state for fifteen years. Mr. Bagwell’s story is told in a series of nine two-column articles in the Oklahoma “Leader,” and it would take several pages even to sketch his adventures. I glance over the articles and note the names of town and county schools where he got into trouble—never for any reason but his Socialist opinions: Gotebo, Greer, Blue Jacket, Weatherford, Ardmore, Springer. The last place is Gotebo, where Mr. Bagwell was county superintendent, and the American Legion held its state convention and complained that the “firing squad” was not being sufficiently used on teachers. So this Christian Socialist was kicked out, and although he presents affidavits from literally hundreds of people where he has taught—including the school boards—he travels from one to another of his superiors demanding a hearing on the charges against him, and can get no hearing.

A teacher is not a citizen in Leesville, Louisiana, where Mr. Otto Koeb went to teach history in the high school. A mile from this town lies the Llano Colony, at which three or four hundred hard-working earnest men and women are making an effort to prove that human beings can labor from other motives than individual greed. Mr. Koeb thought this an interesting experiment, and wanted to write about it; he went to study it—and was informed by the superintendent that if he continued such visits he could not remain a teacher in the high school. So he gave up his position, and now has none.

Nor is a teacher a citizen in Dallas, Texas, where many years ago Mr. George Clifton Edwards, a teacher of Latin and mathematics, committed the crime of being a Socialist. The school board was “a quiet, vestry-like body,” and let him alone; but a certain rich lumberman, a combination of note-shaver and psalm-singer named Owens, served notice on them that if they did not fire the Socialist, he would elect a board that would. They did not, and so he did. From that time on, Big Business has run the schools, and has fired three other teachers, the best qualified in the city. They have closed all the night schools save one, which is practically an adjunct of the big department stores. As Dallas is a city of great distances, this means that evening instruction is denied to the working class.

Nor is a teacher a citizen in Austin, Texas, where sixty-three of them joined a union, and all the officers were dismissed. The president of the union, Mr. E. S. Blackburn, appeared before the superintendent and demanded the reasons in his own case. Mr. Blackburn was director of manual training, and the superintendent told him he didn’t administer his department well. As the teacher had given the sixteen best years of his life to the work, and loved it passionately, this hurt his feelings, and he asked for specifications. The superintendent, after some pondering, cited the fact that Mr. Blackburn hadn’t a wood-block floor in his manual training shop. The next question was, what school did have such a floor; and that was rather a poser, but finally the answer was forthcoming—the Manual Training High School of Chicago. Mr. Blackburn at once telegraphed to Chicago, and three hours later was informed by Western Union that there was no Manual Training High School in Chicago! Continuing his researches by telegraph, he learned that no manual training shop in Chicago had a wood-block floor; he laid these messages before the board—which was “speechless,” but nevertheless voted to sustain the superintendent.

Take Elgin, Illinois, a manufacturing city run by the open shoppers, with the usual board of business men and retainers. The condition of the schools was so bad that the teachers formed an organization—not a union, as they explicitly repudiated union tactics; they wanted merely a respectable teachers’ association, affiliated with the National Education Association. But the Black Hand wouldn’t stand even that, and persecuted the teachers to such an extent that they went into politics and tried to educate the public, and failed. The Black Hand, having been victorious at the polls, reappointed its superintendent, and he proceeded to get rid of six teachers and eight principals who had supported the teachers’ ticket, and to put seventeen other teachers on monthly contracts, so that they would have to be good. One of the principals who lost her place had been in the Elgin school system for twenty-six years, and expressed her feelings about the matter by taking poison and dying. You have heard of the Chinese custom of committing suicide upon the door-step of some tyrannical mandarin; it would appear that this is the one form of protest left to American school teachers in open-shop cities. In this case it was successful, because public clamor, accompanied by threats of lynching, caused the open-shop superintendent to quit.

A teacher is not a citizen in Atlanta, Georgia, where the teachers organized to work for salary increases and for larger school appropriations, and Miss Julia Riordan, a principal with a twenty years’ record, was so courageous as to help them. Three prominent business men called upon members of the board, and instructed them to “slap the teachers’ association” by discharging Miss Riordan. They did so—in secret session, and without giving their victim a chance to defend herself. Then they proceeded to fill the newspapers with mysterious hints as to this teacher’s offenses; one of the board members, Mr. McCalley, a gay humorist who represented a New York bond house, explained that he voted against granting Miss Riordan a hearing because of affidavits which he had received “under seal” concerning this teacher. “If those affidavits are true, I cannot vote to give Miss Riordan a hearing; if they are not true, somebody could be prosecuted.” The humorous Mr. McCalley failed to explain how anyone could know whether the affidavits were true, unless the principal were given a chance to refute them. He failed to explain how “somebody could be prosecuted,” so long as nobody knew who “somebody” was, or what “somebody” had charged!

A teacher may be a citizen in Buffalo, New York—provided that he or she is a very courageous and determined citizen! There was formed in Buffalo the “Teachers’ Educational League,” to deal with the wretched condition of the schools. In 1920 they published a pamphlet, in which they discussed the school situation; I quote four of the paragraphs to which the school board made objection:

The school board of Buffalo had as its president the local head of the Standard Oil Company, and as its other members a lawyer to the rich, a son of a banker, a son of a great lumber merchant, and a wife of a rich man. The action of these five was to summon the teachers and question them as to their responsibility for the pamphlet—but refusing to let them produce any evidence of the truth of their statements. After which the board met in secret session, and dismissed the president and the recording secretary of the Teachers’ Educational League. Also they found four other officers of the League guilty of “disrespect, defiance and insubordination,” and sentenced them to be removed, but with the privilege of being restored to their positions if they would sign an apology and promise to be good in future. Three accepted these terms; the other, together with the two who were unconditionally dismissed, appealed to the state commissioner of education, and it is pleasant to be able to record that this official reversed the action of the school board. So it appears that a teacher can be a citizen in Buffalo—provided she is willing to face a scandal and an expensive law-suit.

All this is a part of the “open-shop” movement, whose purpose is to keep the wage-slaves from organizing and acquiring power. From coast to coast both school boards and superintendents are solid on this question. In my home city of Pasadena the board of education unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the affiliation of teachers with the American Federation of Labor. At a convention of superintendents in Riverside, California, Superintendent Wilson of Berkeley declared that “the ends for which teachers’ unions strive are unsound.” In New York the state commissioner of education, John H. Finley, made the same statement, his ground being that a teacher is in the same category as a soldier, “an officer in the army of future defense.” Commissioners and superintendents who want to know how to enforce military discipline among teachers may receive instruction from Mr. J. W. Crabtree, secretary of the National Education Association, and formerly president of a state normal school in Wisconsin; at an N. E. A. convention he said to a friend of mine: “My teachers will never form a union—I keep their noses to the grindstone!”

Consider the experience of Miss Leida H. Mills, for twenty-nine years a teacher in the schools of Wichita, Kansas. The teachers there had no tenure, and were getting the munificent salary of forty dollars per month; they proceeded to organize, and Miss Mills, who was head of the Latin department in a high school, committed the crime of becoming president of their organization. The president of the board of education was a bank cashier, and he first fought her, and then fired her. She addressed a protest to the board, which the board ignored. She found a job on the Pacific Coast, leaving her mother and father back in Kansas; she has returned twenty times to see them—quite an inconvenience for a poor teacher! The Wichita board had to invite eight other teachers before they found someone to take Miss Mills’ place; but of course they always find someone in the end.

In San Antonio, Texas, there were no funds to increase the teachers’ salaries, and it was proposed to raise the money by private subscription—a method of putting the teachers under bonds to the bankers. That this was the plan became evident when the teachers began to form a union, and one banker withdrew a contribution of fifty thousands dollars which he had promised! The teachers went on with their union, however, and got some three hundred and fifty members; also a separate union of colored teachers with a hundred members. In the following spring the two active organizers of the union were “let out”—one of them a school principal who had been teaching the Mexicans for twelve years, and had spent a good part of his own salary in providing equipment for them; the other a high school teacher, a university graduate with four years’ excellent record. Both were well recommended by the superintendent, but the board fired them, and twelve more teachers resigned—with the result that both the white and colored teachers’ unions have disappeared from San Antonio.

In Houston, Texas, the teachers joined the American Federation of Labor, and the unions threatened the mayor with a recall, and the school board almost doubled the minimum teachers’ salaries. But then came Mrs. Josephine C. Preston, past president of the National Education Association—you remember the lady who presided at the Salt Lake convention, with Professor Strayer of Columbia seated at her right hand. Now we discover what the makers of educational “greatness” are up to; the “great” Superintendent Preston told the teachers of Houston that it would be far better for them to belong to her organization—it didn’t cost so much, and it was so much more genteel! So the teachers deserted the labor unions en masse. The president of the American Federation of Teachers remarked to me sorrowfully: “The price of a teacher in the United States is fifty dollars”—meaning that a teachers’ union would agree to disband if the board of education would give them fifty dollars a year increase of wages as the price of their civil rights.