The same reservations might be made with reference to Senator Cashman’s statement on the constitution. And yet a fair interpretation of what he says on that subject compels us to class him with those extreme worshipers of that document who, like the authors of the New York teachers’ test oath, would maintain the constitution, unchanged, at any cost. Speaking of the fathers and their work, he says: “Then they wrote and the states adopted the supreme law of the land, the American constitution, the most sublime public document that ever came forth from the mind and soul of man, establishing a system of government based upon the consent of the governed, with religious liberty protected, inherent rights guaranteed, to be written in indestructible letters into the pages of the nation’s laws.” [Editor’s italics.] It is a well known view of the present progressives, as it was of the framers themselves, that, great as was the original constitution, it was still far from being perfect. Also, most progressives now accept in principle the conclusions of Charles A. Beard, the historian whose recent investigations on this point are now well known, that the constitution represents a partial reaction from the democracy of the Revolution, and was designed in part to set limitations upon the popular will. While venerating the constitution, progressives in the main believe that such restrictions as the legislative election of senators, the appointment and life tenure of judges (some would include the mode of electing the president), were intentionally anti-democratic, and that these and other defects which time has revealed ought to be subject to modification whenever the people desire the changes. The mode of amendment having been designed to make changes difficult, or impossible (though in recent years several changes have been adopted), leading progressives have long held that that fundamental article ought to be amended first in order to facilitate other changes. This was Justice John B. Winslow’s opinion, put forth in 1912; it was the burden of an important plank in the La Follette national platform the same year; that doctrine was preached, at least in spirit, by the late President Roosevelt. In short, it is a progressive principle that the constitution must cease to be a fetish—a dead hand upon the present and the future—and must be adjusted, from time to time, to existing social, economic, and political conditions. The document represents, for the time, a mighty triumph of constructive statesmanship, so progressive leaders believe, and it should not be changed “for light or transient causes,” much less revolutionized, but “it was designed for a rural or semi-rural state.” The men who made it “however able could not anticipate or solve the new problems of life and government which have come upon us in the last half century.”[90]
To follow Senator Cashman’s outline of American history into the recent period to the all-engrossing event of the World War and America’s participation therein would be fruitless. Not one of us can conscientiously claim to be an impartial investigator with respect to things which have wrenched our souls. We cannot abdicate our own personalities. In treating the war, all that any historian at present could hope to do would be to state his views with becoming restraint and concede that those views may ultimately prove to be quite wrong. A censorship law of fifty years hence (if our people shall then still adhere to the censorship idea) would be sure to condemn the teaching of what some of us now piously believe with reference to this feature of history; just as a censorship law of today, if it included in its scope the Civil War, would condemn the teaching of some things which nearly one-half the voters of Wisconsin sincerely believed in 1864. “Time is the great sifter and winnower of truth,” and we must consent to leave these matters to the investigators of our grandchildren’s generation. Yet the gravest danger to be feared from the law we are now discussing lies in the psychological probability that every second man’s opinion of a given history will be based not on what the author says about the Revolution, or the Constitution, or the War of 1812, but on what he says about the recent war and the League of Nations. In other words, the reader who is prejudiced against an author on account of his last chapter, which is almost sure to be unsatisfactory to many, will find the first, the middle, and all other chapters reeking with faults, and this even while personally he may be unconscious of having imbibed a prejudice at all.
There is a possibility that, as an engine for expelling books now used, the law will become a dead letter, first, because it may prove unexpectedly difficult for a dissatisfied citizen to persuade four others to act with him in making complaint, which however is not probable; second, because of the clamor of those in the district who are not keen for or against the book, but who realize that if it is thrown out all old copies will be worthless and they will have to pay for new books at the opening of the next school year; third, because the first cases brought may go against the complainants and discourage others from multiplying complaints. But, the popular psychology being what it is, there is an equal chance that the law may foster a widespread disposition to attack history books, geography books, civics books, and even readers; that it may keep educational matters in a state of turmoil, engendering much social bitterness due to the clashing of parties and interests over questions raised in the school-book fights. In such controversies teachers would be the first to suffer, because their opinions would be called for at once, which would place them between two fires; and no surer way could be found to degrade the social influence of our schools than by keeping the teachers in a state of perpetual anxiety.
We have reason to think that Senator Cashman, an acknowledged friend and promoter of education, would deeply deplore such a result. If he had anticipated anything of the kind, doubtless he would have refrained from offering his bill. But laws, like children, when they get out of hand, have a way of surprising their progenitors. However, we have the law and must use it to the best ends.
If every one in position of leadership or authority in relation to it—and among those are members of this Society—shall feel a responsibility for guiding discussion into proper channels; if debate on school-book questions shall be kept not merely free but also parliamentary in form and spirit; if we all insist that differences of view must be treated tolerantly; if we can secure from the public toward the arguments and facts in these cases a measure of that openness of mind which characterizes the American juror sworn to try a case fairly on the evidence, it may be possible to mitigate or prevent the evils apprehended.
And if, without discouraging research, the law shall merely enforce through future adoptions the idea that good taste is as obligatory upon the textbook maker as good manners are upon the private individual, one point will have been gained. We trust this may not be won at the expense of a disposition to whittle down the truth to fit a supposed demand, or that it will result in substituting books written by dishonest or spineless persons for those written by men and women of real character and scholarship.
In the midst of the late war the school supervisors of a western state discovered what they believed to be propaganda favorable to one of America’s enemies, and demanded the expulsion of the book from the schools. The superintendent, being a wise and thoughtful man, prepared and printed a page of corrective criticism, which all teachers were asked to paste in the accused book and to teach to the children with the regular text. By that simple device he saved the people of the state many thousands of dollars which would have been paid for an inferior text, if the book had been expelled. If the law shall permit such a handling of the borderline cases, does it not seem that in a time when we are at peace with all nations, we could act with equal calmness, equal justice to authors or publishers, and equal regard for the interests of the people who have to buy school books?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] As the tide of emigration from the northeastern states rose higher, it bore along a goodly number who were not of the old American stock, particularly English and Irish, with some Scotch and Germans. Yet, many of these were natives of the states named and, if foreign born, had enjoyed so long an apprenticeship to the Yankee system of life as to enable them faithfully to represent it.