[633] The National Industrial Conference Board in connection with this remarked: “Such a statement indicates a studied effort to present to the immature mind an exceedingly distorted picture of factory life. It suggests an almost constant maiming and mangling of industrial workers, whereas, as a matter of fact, most industrial accidents are of a minor character such as slight cuts, scratches and slivers. Take, however, at its face value the statement that somebody is killed every fifteen minutes while at work. On the basis of a 54-hour work-week, approximately the average in this country, this means a total of 11,250 deaths in industry per year ... the scholar should also be given an idea of the millions of workers to whom this total of deaths is related. He should in fairness also have pointed out to him the hazards of non-industrial pursuits which cause annually more fatal accidents than occur in industry.” The National Industrial Conference Board, op. cit., p. 11.
[634] The School Review, loc. cit.
[635] Quoted in The School Review, loc. cit.
[636] The School Review, loc. cit. Instances of criticism of textbooks might be multiplied. Authors have met objections to their works because there were no “Republican illustrations in the book,” because of quotations from Münsterberg and other Germans, and because of the discussion devoted to prohibition. In this last case a member of the Board of Education of Chicago is reported to have criticised the use of an arithmetic as looking like “a bartender’s friend” in that it was full of problems of “how much did this wine merchant order his sherry or how many barrels of whiskey could the man purchase for such an amount.” Iowa City [Iowa] Press-Citizen, November 13, 1924.
CHAPTER VII
The Attack on History Textbooks Since 1917
Since the World War, an ardent patriotism has swept the country, resulting in a widespread investigation of the teaching and writing of history. Sponsored by various groups, the movement has gained considerable momentum, until history teaching and history textbooks are in danger of being an expression of certain religious, racial or other partisan opinions. These groups hold, in common, that American histories, as now written, neglect heroic characters in American history, especially in the Revolutionary War, and that they are distorted by a pro-British bias. Propaganda, indeed, makes strange bed-fellows. In this new praetorian guard of the temple of American patriotism are found the Hearst newspapers, an element of the Knights of Columbus and of the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, and finally patriotic societies of this country.
The charge of “Anglicization,” usually enlivened by mysterious references to “British gold,” arises in part from the new trend of American historical scholarship in the last twenty-five years. Historians employing scientific methods have done much to revise the traditional ideas concerning our relations with Great Britain. Important contributions of this character have been made, for instance, by such historians as George Louis Beer, Charles M. Andrews, Herbert L. Osgood, Sydney George Fisher, and Claude H. Van Tyne.
These investigations were going forward at the same time that conscious efforts were being made by the publicists of the two countries to reveal to the two English-speaking peoples their common ties and responsibilities in the world today. Many books were printed and organizations formed to promote Anglo-American concord; among the latter, such bodies as the Sulgrave Institute, the Anglo-American League and the English-Speaking Union.
To suspicious onlookers the work of the historians in their cloisters took on the appearance of deliberate propaganda favorable to Great Britain—a suspicion, it need hardly be said, entirely unwarranted. It needed only an appeal such as that of Herbert Adams Gibbons that we solidify an amicable relationship with Great Britain through our common language, common ideals and common interests, to confirm the credulous in their suspicions.[637] Furthermore, suggestions from men like Albert Bushnell Hart that our history text-books be rewritten to encourage better international relations seemed to afford additional proof that pro-British agencies were in control of history textbooks.[638] The writings of special pleaders like Owen Wister strengthened this impression.[639] Indeed, Charles Edward Russell has gone so far as to declare that definitely planned attempts to rewrite American history textbooks, for the purpose of encouraging better Anglo-American relations, were launched as early as 1896, and have been carefully carried on since then.[640]
On the other hand, the proponents of revision, conscious of an “agitation for the reintroduction of parochial patriotism into the schools and colleges,” have entered a plea for “the truth” in school histories and for the writing and teaching of history by scholars unaffected by the demands of “politicians.”[641] To them, the true fount of patriotism does not arise from textbooks of history which are “nationalistic rather than impartial.”[642] They would seek, rather, to depict events not as “partisans” but in a “scientific spirit, with the desire to understand rather than to justify.”[643]