Public opinion and the teaching of history in the United States

by Bessie Louise Pierce

[613] Report of the American Federation of Labor, op. cit., pp. 3-4, 9.

[614] Ibid., p. 21.

[615] Ibid., p. 23.

[616] Ibid.

[617] Ibid.

[618] Report of Proceedings, Eighth Day (1922), p. 356.

[619] Ibid. According to the Committee the “modern textbooks in most frequent use are: civics, Ashley’s The New Civics, Beard’s American Citizenship, Dunn’s The Community and the Citizen, Forman’s The American Democracy, Hill’s Community Life and Civic Problems, Hughes’ Community Civics, Magruder’s American Government in 1921, and Reed’s Forms and Functions of American Government; in economics, Burch’s American Economic Life, Burch and Patterson’s American Social Problems, Hughes’ Economic Civics, Laing’s An Introduction to Economics, Marshall and Lyon’s Our Economic Organization, and Thompson’s Elementary Economics; in sociology, Burch and Patterson’s American Social Problems, Ellwood’s Sociology and Modern Problems [sic], Towne’s Social Problems, and Tuft’s The Real Business of Living; in history, Ashley’s American History, Beard and Bagley’s A First Book in American History, Beard’s History of the United States, Bourne and Benton’s History of the United States, Cousins and Hills’ [sic] American History, Evans’ The Essential Facts of American History, Forman’s A History of the United States for Schools, and Advanced American History, James and Sanford’s American History, Mace’s School History of the United States, Muzzey’s American History, Thompson’s History of the United States, Political, Industrial and Social, and West’s History of the American People. “Labor and Education,” p. 28.

[620] The New York Times, September 3, 1923.

[621] Herskovitz, Melville J., and Willey, Malcolm M., “What Your Child Learns,” The Nation, Vol. CXIX (September 17, 1924), pp. 282-284. The book referred to is Berry, Margaret K., and Howe, Samuel B., Actual Democracy (New York, 1923). The quotation is found on page 63.

[622] In the discussion of trade-unionism objection was raised to the classification of unions as “business unionism—which is trade conscious but not class conscious, ... the friendly or uplift union which may be either trade or class conscious, and is conservative, ... ‘predatory unionism’ ... secret, either radical or conservative, class or trade conscious, and has two wings; ‘hold-up unionism,’ the corrupt type recently exposed in our great cities, and ‘guerrilla unionism’ which never combines with employers, but engages in a secret and violent warfare with capital ... a fourth and more objectionable type of unionism ... calls itself ‘revolutionary unionism.’ It may be either socialistic as was the Western Federation of Miners, or anarchistic like the Industrial Workers of the World....” Berry and Howe, op. cit., pp. 73-74.