Other books have incurred the disapproval of business interests. American Economic Life by Henry Reed Burch has been charged with being “unfair” in its treatment of monopolies for saying: “Trolley lines, subways and ’bus companies often possess great monopoly power. For example, in a city of one million and a half the competitive cost of transportation perhaps does not exceed three or four cents a passenger, yet the actual price paid by the passenger is usually from five to eight cents. This difference between the price paid and the competitive price represents the extent of the monopoly power.”[629]
Many business organizations have interested themselves in a program for education not only among their own employees but among the people in general. Pamphlets and other published materials have in this way been distributed to set forth the point of view held desirable. Such a motive doubtless led to a survey of books dealing with the subject of banking in 1919 by the American Bankers Association. The examination of the books induced the Association through their Public Education Commission to publish and distribute a series of talks to be given in the schools, since the books examined were, on the whole, found to be “prepared from the standpoint of bankers, and not the standpoint of the mass of students who attend high school.”[630] The talks were designed to be delivered by bankers to pupils in the eighth grade, the senior year of the high school, and to civic, business and fraternal organizations in order to acquaint people more thoroughly with methods of banking.[631]
During the World War the preparation of a series of lessons entitled Lessons in Community and National Life under the auspices of the Bureau of Education and the Food Administration provoked adverse criticism from the National Industrial Conference Board. In the lessons topics pertinent to a study of community civics were treated, and included discussions on international trade relations, manufacturing methods, labor organizations and similar subjects. To these, exception was taken, and it was asserted that “opinions on controversial subjects are frequently introduced into the Lessons by suggestion rather than by direct statement, and through the whole fabric is woven a thread of propaganda in favor of the eight-hour day, old age pensions, social insurance, trade-unionism, the minimum wage and similar issues.”[632] A “partisan” attitude was said to be expressed in such a statement as: “We are told that in the United States somebody is injured while at work every fifteen seconds, and somebody is killed every fifteen minutes. We cannot wonder at this when we realize how many dangers there are in modern industry.”[633] According to The [New York] World, Magnus N. Alexander, managing director of the National Industrial Conference Board, alarmed a convention of the National Boot and Shoe Manufacturers’ Association when he told them that these lessons were spreading “insidious, unwarranted propaganda, particularly injurious for reading by youth in the plastic age when youth is inclined to take for granted and as proved all that is said through the medium of the books in his classroom.”[634]
These criticisms caused editorial comment in different periodicals throughout the country. The Capital Daily Press of Bismarck, North Dakota, declaring that “for generations the reactionaries have maintained their grip on the control of our educational institutions, and from the kindergarten to college the ‘plastic minds of our youth’ have been sedulously taught the superior sacredness of private property and the supremacy of dollar rights over human rights. This is one thing which has made political and industrial progress so slow.”[635]
To the editor of The School Review the whole discussion furnished “a legitimate opportunity to call attention to the fact that the schools have been very deficient in times past in their treatment of social problems.” He felt that the time had come “when there ought to be a very clear and explicit assertion on the part of educational people that they will not be dominated by such criticism as here presented,” for he believed “the schools of a democracy have a right to discuss democratic and popular matters.”[636]
FOOTNOTES:
[411] Stephens, H. Morse, “Nationality and History,” The American Historical Review, Vol. XXI (January, 1916), pp. 225-237.
[412] “Our School Books,” De Bow’s Review, Vol. XXVIII (1860), p. 435 et seq.
[413] Ibid., p. 439.
[414] Ibid., p. 437.