Dr. Houston is a member of the Southern Education Board, one of the Rockefeller organizations, and later became chairman of the Federal Reserve and Farm Loan Board. Dr. Spillman was on the inside all through the Houston administration of the Department of Agriculture, and portrays his chief as “lying, cheating and intriguing, resorting to every device in order to keep the facts about farming costs from being collected.” You see, the farmers were expected to raise food and sell it below the cost of production; they are still being expected to do this, and are doing it. There was circulated through Dr. Houston’s department a typewritten sheet, said to have come from Mr. Rockefeller’s General Education Board, and concurred in by Secretary Houston, forbidding the department to make any investigation which would determine the cost of producing farm products; no one should ever hint at over-production in farm products, and the sole business of the department was to persuade the farmers to produce more.
This General Education Board possesses unlimited funds, pays no taxes, and renders no accounting to anyone. It employs a huge staff of experts in lobbying and wire-pulling. These experts got control of the farm demonstration work in the South, and because Dr. Spillman fought them in the North and West, they did everything in their power to handicap his work. I refer you to “The Goose-step” for the story of Professor T. N. Carver of Harvard University, who became head of a government department for which the Rockefeller board put up the funds. Professor Carver was an honest man, who really wanted to help the farmers, and worked out an elaborate program. It was turned down flat by the Rockefeller board, and Professor Carver told them in plain language what he thought of them, and then quit. In consequence of such intrigues on the part of the Rockefeller experts, the farmers of the Northwest are now flat on their backs, and ignorant of how it happened, or what to do about it.
Hundreds of expert super-educators, with strings of college degrees, are put upon the payrolls of the General Education Board, and sent to every portion of the United States to run our schools free of charge; and if you were to ask the General Education Board, or the capitalist press of the United States, you would be assured that never, never could it happen that anyone of these educators would cease for one moment from his altruistic labors, or think about anything so base as the interests of the Rockefeller corporations. But I invite you now to give attention to the story of Mr. Granville Cubage, who in 1922, announced himself as candidate for superintendent of public instruction in Union County, Arkansas. Mr. Cubage got out a pamphlet entitled “How Arkansas Schools Lost a Million Dollars,” and here is the strange story he tells. Mr. Cubage’s opponent in the race for state superintendent was Mr. A. B. Hill, state high school inspector at a salary of thirty-five hundred dollars a year paid by the Rockefeller General Education Board, together with an expense allowance of twelve hundred dollars. Mr. Hill’s second in rank got the same salary and allowance of Rockefeller money, his third in rank got the same, and his fourth in rank, the supervisor of Negro schools, got a little more—presumably to salve his feelings and preserve his prestige among the people of Arkansas, who do not like Negro schools.
Mr. Cubage, who has been for the past fourteen years a teacher at the State Normal School, goes on to explain how these four great educators have spent most of their time playing politics, and have secured one act after another from the state legislature, building up the power of their machine. Mr. Hill obtained the power to grade the schools, and to hire and fire teachers, and to give orders to the county superintendents—so on through a long list of powers. That may be all right, of course—if the educators are really educators, trying to serve the people. Also it may be proper that the state board of education should be filled up with Rockefeller agents, drawing Rockefeller salaries; but are they really serving the people?
Read on a little further, and you discover that Mr. Cubage is advocating that the great oil and pipe line companies, principally Standard Oil-Rockefeller concerns, should pay a “severance tax” upon the natural wealth which they draw from the state of Arkansas. And what have the great Rockefeller educators to say about that?
Mr. Cubage, in his campaign circular, tells us about an amendment to the state constitution, providing that the people shall pay more taxes to provide more money for the schools. At the meeting of the State Teachers’ Association, November 11, 1920, such an amendment was approved—but also containing a provision for the severance tax. Immediately Mr. Hill rose in the convention, and proposed that a “Committee on Phraseology” be appointed, to put the finishing touches to this resolution. Mr. Hill himself was not named on this committee, but his influence counted—for when the bill came out from the committee, with the “finishing touches” complete, it was discovered that the principal “finishing touch” had finished the severance tax provision! This provision had entirely disappeared, and Amendment 14, as approved by the teachers of the state, said nothing about such a tax. In order to beat Mr. Cubage, who favored the tax, and elect Mr. Hill, who opposed it, the gang assessed all the Arkansas school teachers three times, and made all county and city superintendents contribute one hundred dollars each to the campaign fund!
Later on, when the legislature came to consider bills providing for a severance tax, the great Rockefeller educators were at the state capital, advising the legislators that these bills were objectionable. And so, the next time you read about the abundant generosity of Mr. Rockefeller, the greatest educational philanthropist of all time, don’t forget this little story from Union County, Arkansas. By paying out a few thousand dollars for the improvement of Arkansas education, Mr. Rockefeller’s industries expected to save a million dollars a year in one single bill! I am sorry I have not access to the complete files of the General Education Board and of the Standard Oil Company, so that I can tell you how many tens of millions a year have been added to Mr. Rockefeller’s income by this simple little scheme of paying the salaries of educational politicians!
When you question our great captains of industry about proceedings such as this, they make one defense—they have to do it, because the other fellow is doing it. We must give Mr. Rockefeller the benefit of this plea; the rivals of the Standard Oil Company have also been buying up educators and state governments. Especially they have done this in order to get school lands which have been discovered to contain oil.
I have before me a copy of the Oklahoma “Leader” for July 1, 1922, telling the story of Robert H. Wilson, then candidate of the Black Hand for governor of Oklahoma. It appears that Wilson had been a member of the School Land Commission, and he had awarded a lease for a hundred and eighteen thousand acres of school land to an oil operator by the name of Marland, who made sixty-seven million dollars out of this lease and others. The scandal became so great that the legislature took up the matter and prescribed terms for releasing; but the School Land Commission met and solemnly took the stand that the act of the legislature was unconstitutional, and proceeded to continue Marland’s holdings on the old terms. In the court battle which ensued, the state of Oklahoma obtained $1,400,000 from the Marland interests—a sum which the School Land Commission had endeavored to throw away. If the school commission had held on to the lands and leased them upon proper terms, the schools of Oklahoma would have had not less than thirty million dollars.
It is interesting to note the outcome of the gubernatorial election. Mr. Wilson, the candidate of the Black Hand, was beaten by “Jack” Walton, hero of the Farmer-Labor party. Immediately afterwards it was discovered that all Walton’s campaign expenses had been met by the oil interests, and he proceeded to kick over his party and run the state of Oklahoma for these oil interests—among other things, turning out of office a radical educator, president of the Agricultural College. Governor Walton would still, no doubt, have been running the state for the oil men, if he had not made the mistake of attacking the Ku Klux Klan.