Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Mrs. Young immediately withdrew her name, claiming that no superintendent can succeed who requires a second ballot for election. The second ballot was taken at once, after reconsideration of the first ballot was refused and John D. Shoop, first assistant superintendent, was elected by a vote of eleven to five, without discussion. The president of the board immediately resigned, as did Dean Walter T. Sumner, from the chairmanship of the school management committee.

Instantly teachers’ organizations, parents’ societies, the Chicago Woman’s Club, the Woman’s City Club, and many other women’s organizations lined up for action. A mass meeting called by them crowded the Auditorium with 4,000 women and men on a Saturday morning. Rousing and determined speeches were made by many representative citizens, among whom were Jane Addams, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Harriet Vittum, and Margaret Haley of the Teachers’ Federation.

The meeting adopted resolutions calling upon the mayor to accept the responsibility for the reinstatement of Mrs. Young to her place in the school system, demanding the immediate resignation of the superintendency by John D. Shoop and appointing a committee to urge him to withdraw; asserting that two of the remaining members of the school board should add their resignation to the four already in the hands of the mayor and asking Governor Dunne to call a special session of the legislature to enact a law making the membership in the school board an elective office and giving the voters the right to recall board members.

Litigation resulted and Mr. Shoop refused to be a party to that and so resumed his former position as first assistant superintendent. The vote at the newly constituted board recorded thirteen for Mrs. Young, seven not voting and one absent.

While Mrs. Young had accepted, before her reinstatement, the position of educational editor of the Chicago Tribune and had published her salutatory, she intimated her willingness to be reinstated on condition that the board of education should be so reconstituted as adequately to support her administration. Although the mayor exacted pledges from his new appointees to assure Mrs. Young’s reëlection, yet the majority of the board is still so negative in its ability and so colorless in its attitude toward educational policies that at best Mrs. Young will find inadequate support for the continuance or development of her positive program. Nevertheless she promptly resumed her duties at the end of December, 1913.

The opposition to Mrs. Young seems to be personal rather than political. Her stout stand for the prerogative of the superintendent to select textbooks and initiate the educational budget may have disappointed the hopes of some members of the board for commercial prestige in letting large contracts. Her cautiously planned instruction for parents and older scholars in sex hygiene, although authorized by a majority of the board, arouses stubborn antagonism, especially among the people in certain ecclesiastical circles.

The most fundamental issue raised by the whole controversy is whether the city administration should be recognized to have any control over the school board and its policies. To safeguard the non-political management of the schools, some are appealing to the legislature to make the office of school trustee elective, while others are content to leave it within the appointive power of the mayor in their hope to make the office of mayor and alderman non-partisan by securing their nominations by petition and their election by a ballot from which the party circle and column shall be eliminated.

The Women’s League for Good Government of Elmira, New York, in the election of November, 1913, was very earnest in its desire to improve the school conditions. In October, before the municipal election there were school elections in three districts of the city. As the machine politicians controlled the schools with other city departments, the Women’s League nominated strong candidates in two of these districts in opposition to the candidates of the machine and carried on a spirited campaign in their behalf. It took the “whole force of the machine” to defeat the candidates of the women and openly “fraudulent” methods were used to win. Hundreds of women in open fight against the “gang,” and almost winning, served as an object lesson to male voters to such an extent that in the November election following this, the non-partisan ticket was victorious.

The Committee of Fifteen on “School Efficiency” of the National Council of Education, to “give heed and guidance to the growing demand for investigating schools and testing the efficiency of school systems,” has three women members: Katherine Blake of New York, Mrs. Young of Chicago, and Adelaide S. Baylor of Indiana, deputy state superintendent.

A league is being organized by Denver women to secure the proper recognition of women in the management of the schools. Forty women’s organizations are interested. Three women are wanted on the board, a woman as medical director of schools, and the repeal of a recent edict against married women as teachers is demanded.