CHAPTER LXII
THE BLINDFOLD SCHOOL OF PATRIOTISM
Needless to say, it is not only the military men who are revising our school text-books; all the business interests are wielding their blue pencils, and likewise the religious groups, and the racial and national groups. In New York City, Commissioner of Accounts David Hirshfield is leading a crusade against those who want to bring up our school children without hatred for England. The commissioner held a series of hearings, and gave an opportunity for all patriots to vent their dissatisfaction with school text-books which failed to make proper capital out of Betsy Ross and John Paul Jones, and which committed such offenses as mentioning that Sam Adams was a smuggler, or that Alexander Hamilton had said: “Your people, Sir, is a great beast.” Commissioner Hirshfield published at the expense of the city of New York an elaborate pamphlet, listing the offenses of such “un-American” text-books—David S. Muzzey’s “American History,” Willis M. West’s “History of the American People,” Albert B. Hart’s “School History,” and so on.
This crusade has spread widely, directed by what might be called the blindfold school of patriotism. According to this school, all our ancestors are equally to be revered, regardless of the fact that they called one another all the vile names in the dictionary; they are equally to be followed, although they lead in opposite directions. The bewildered historian must manage to agree with both Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, with Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln; a generation from now he will learn to agree with Calvin Coolidge and Eugene V. Debs!
It is easy to poke fun at Chinese ancestor-worship transplanted to America; but, on the other hand, one does not like to be in the same boat with those Anglo-maniacs whose purpose in writing text-books is to line us up with the British ruling-classes in their future wars. It is hard to take one’s choice between Commissioner Hirshfield, and, for example, Professor Greenlaw of the University of North Carolina, whose “Builders of Democracy” is one of the most popular text-books in our schools. Here is a book of more than three hundred and fifty closely printed pages, full of Anglo-American military glory. The first part is “The Call to the Colors,” and that is all American flags and battles. The second part is “The Builders and Their Work,” and that is Tennyson and Elizabethan seamen and the mariners of England, and “Burke, the Friend of America.” Part Three, “Soldiers of Freedom,” is “The Soul of Jeanne d’Arc,” and “Vive la France!” and “A Chant of Love for England,” and all the battles and glories of the late war. I search this book from cover to cover without finding one line about the builders of industrial democracy. There is a short section entitled “The Growth of Sympathy for the Poor Man,” which gives us “A Cotter’s Saturday Night,” and oddly enough, “To a Mouse”! But there isn’t one word about labor, there isn’t one word about Socialism, there isn’t one hint to any school child of the colossal struggle for economic self-government now going on all over the world, with its roll of heroes and martyrs as magnificent as any ever sung in the days of political revolutions.
All over this country the hunt for the unorthodox text-book is going on, and the principle upon which the revisers are working is set forth by Edward Mandel, district superintendent of schools in New York, who ordered every school principal in the city to direct his teachers of history to examine the history books and transmit reports. Said Mr. Mandel: “The question to be considered is not one of whether statements made in the text-books are truthful and based on fact, but whether propriety would be observed if they were included in them.” You will not be surprised to hear that this educational gang-leader went up to Albany, and was active in pushing through a series of bills known to the teachers as the “spoils bills,” their purpose being to undermine the merit system and give the gang entire control over promotions; and when he got through with this job, he was promoted to be associate superintendent at a considerably higher salary.
The final goal of these patriots has been reached in Arkansas, where the state legislature has just passed a bill providing exactly how American history shall be taught; the teachers are to avoid “a mere recital of names and events,” and devote themselves to “instilling an understanding and a love of country,” etc. In other words, there is to be no more history, only propaganda; and any teacher who slips up on it is to be fined from one hundred to five hundred dollars, or to serve in jail from thirty days to six months, or both. As we used to say when we were youngsters, and had got somebody down with our thumb in his eye: “Now will you be good?”
The leader in the crusade against what he calls “treason texts” is Mr. Charles Grant Miller, organizing director of the “Patriot League.” Mr. Miller tells me how “for years in my newspaper work I have encountered evils arising from the rivalries of text-book publishers and their unscrupulous methods of manipulating school officials and intimidating teachers.” He then goes on to tell how the Patriot League has set to work to give the text-book companies a dose of their own medicine. The haughty American Book Company has been brought to its knees; they submitted to Mr. Miller the proofs of a new school history, which had won the endorsement of the Sons of the American Revolution. But it didn’t suit Mr. Miller; he specified over three hundred unsatisfactory passages, and the American Book Company agreed to accept ninety-five per cent of these corrections. It has just sent Mr. Miller proofs of another school history, which he finds to be ninety-nine per cent all right from his viewpoint. Then they asked him to read in manuscript a new high school history; says Mr. Miller:
I have had a conference with the full editorial and business staffs of the American Book Company, within the last few days, and am satisfied that, whether for business reasons or because of real conversion to our cause, they will, for the present at least, issue no more texts that are not patriotic.
I have not undertaken a thorough study of school text-books; most of my readers have them in their own homes, and can investigate for themselves. However, I have on my desk a few samples, which were thrown at my head by indignant teachers and pupils in the course of my travels. For example, here is “Economics and the Community,” published by the Century Company, and written by Professor J. A. Lapp, a prominent Catholic propagandist. I consult the index for the most important aspect of “economics and the community”—that is, Socialism—and I find it is not mentioned! And then I take up a book prepared for the education of immigrants, Howard and Brown’s “United States,” published by Appleton. I glance over it, and in six different places I find enthusiastic praise of our great American newspapers. Also, the unsuspecting immigrants are told that “in our great country there is almost always work for everybody.” At the time this book was handed to me there were nearly five million unemployed in the United States! Later on the immigrants are told that “in the South Central and Southern states there are millions and millions of acres of good land which cannot now be cultivated because there are not laborers enough.” Nothing is said, of course, about the rents the poor immigrants will have to pay for this land, or what the bankers will charge them for crop and chattel loans—see “The Book of Life,” a quotation from a report of the United States comptroller of the currency.
And while we are dealing with country problems, let me quote from the letter of Mr. W. J. Hannah, of Big Timber, Montana, chairman of a rural school board: