As you know, even the grade schools are now teaching “scientific agriculture.” My boy of twelve has just placed in my hand Stone-Mills “Intermediate Arithmetic.” It contains page after page of so-called “Problems of the Farm.” I cite you a composite of half a dozen—by actual count there are twenty-four like this in one small text:
“Farmer Jones raised ten acres of wheat, which yielded 100 bushels and sold at $1 per bushel. What did he receive for his crop? How much more would he have received if, by better cultivation, better seeding, better seed and more careful harvesting, he had raised 200 bushels on the same field?”
Now, the fact is that in this problem there has been inserted the most deliberate falsehood that was ever spoken in the name of economic science. The implication is that in order to double his income all the farmer has to do is to double his output. And that implication is a lie. It is a known fact that with our present marketing system the farmers of the country receive even less for their bumper crops than they receive for their lean crops of the same products. And why not? If there is an iota of truth in the so-called law of demand and supply, it follows that just as the farmer increases his output of crops, there must follow a corresponding decrease in price or purchasing power. Hence an increased output cannot possibly benefit the farmer.
In the chapters dealing with Detroit we made the acquaintance of Professor Edwin L. Miller, principal of the Northern High School. An agonized pupil mails me another book by this professor, entitled “Practical English Composition, Part II.” It deals with the subject of journalism, and I find the margin dug into by an indignant pencil, where Professor Miller tells his students what public-spirited and well-meaning men are the editorial writers of the American press. The professor gives examples of editorials, one of them an exposition of the follies of Socialism, taken from the Philadelphia “Record.” I quote one paragraph:
There is a common impression among Socialistic workmen, encouraged by some of the new-fangled college professors, that the weaver produces all the cloth that comes off the loom he tends, and he is robbed if his wages are only a part of the value of the cloth. But he is only one of a long line of producers, each of whom has to get some of the money for which that cloth is sold.
There follows a detailed argument to the effect that the farmers who raised the raw fibre and the railway men who transported it are entitled to their share of the product. And after the pupils have read and assimilated this marvelous discovery, they are asked the question: “What is proved by this editorial?” Let me tell Mr. Miller’s future pupils what is proved—that the editorial-writer of the Philadelphia “Record” is an ignoramus. I challenge Professor Miller and the “Record” both, to find anywhere in the world a Socialist authority who does not plainly state that the Socialist demand is for the collective workers to receive the full value of their collective product. Under Socialism, as a matter of course, all workers of whatever sort, whether of hand or brain, who contribute to the making of finished products, will receive their proportionate share of the value they have created. The only people who will be left out are the owners of stocks and bonds and other pieces of paper, who under the present system of wage-slavery draw off the surplus product of the collective labor, and use this unearned wealth to hire educational experts to misrepresent the cause of social justice.
Or take the volume entitled “Representative Modern Constitutions,” extensively used in the colleges and high schools in Southern California. It is edited by two instructors at the Southern Branch of the University of California, and published, of course, by the Los Angeles “Times.” Among the constitutions of a dozen different European countries is included that of Russia; but our “Times” is not content to print the constitution of Russia and let it speak for itself, it is necessary to provide an antidote in the form of a preface by W. J. Ghent, retired Socialist who is introduced as “a distinguished authority on Russian affairs.” Ex-Comrade Ghent’s preface elaborately explains to the student that the Russian constitution doesn’t really mean anything. He talks about its “safeguards against democracy,” as if such safeguards were obviously wicked; overlooking that other text-book published by the “Times,” “Back to the Republic,” by Harry Atwood—which compares democracy with promiscuity, free love, gluttony, drunkenness, discord and insanity!
Says ex-Comrade Ghent: “Never before has anything professing to be a constitution set up such elaborate safeguards against democracy.” The students will swallow that, without bothering to look into the constitution and see; but I did bother, and I quote you a few of the things expressly provided for: “The land to those who work it ... a general democratic peace ... the free determination of the peoples ... real freedom of conscience ... freedom of expression of the toiling masses ... free meetings ... full and free education ... equal rights to all citizens ... recall of deputies.” Do you think I would be exaggerating if I were to reverse Ghent’s statement and make it read: “Never before has anything professing to be a constitution set up such elaborate protection of democracy?”
CHAPTER LXIII
PROFESSOR FACING BOTH-WAYS
The situation confronting a would-be writer of school text-books in the United States is as follows: If he writes on astronomy, engineering, or Spanish grammar, he may write the truth; but if he writes on history, economics, or literature, he either writes dishonest books, or he writes no books.