Professor Judd goes on to explain his belief that in many cases these things are done by book agents without the knowledge of the company, and that the company would be “greatly distressed to know that these things happen.” I have a great respect for Professor Judd, one of the most liberal and courageous educators in this country; also I have great respect for a college professor, a very distinguished author of school text-books, who writes me that the trouble is due to “the less scrupulous agents in the heat of a campaign.” This gentleman’s own publishers “deprecate these methods, but perhaps the heat of a campaign will now and then lead local agents astray. I have plenty of reason to suspect that other publishers make it impossible to play the game very fairly.”
In answer to this, I can only state my own point of view—that I cannot take much stock in the idea that heads of large-scale modern industries do not know what their employes and agents are doing. They make it their business to know, and any lack of knowledge which they have is formal; that is, a business man smiles and says: “Don’t let me know about it!” But in reality he knows; and the school officials who get the “rake off” also know. Says Professor Robert Morse Lovett, also of the University of Chicago: “There is scarcely a large city in the country in which the pupils and teachers alike are not shamefully and scandalously defrauded by action of school trustees, which would be characterized in the mildest terms as wilful mismanagement conducing to private profit.” And Professor Guido Marx of Stanford University tells me how he referred to school book graft before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, and a representative of a book company said to him: “What’s the matter? Have you got a book you can’t get published?”
It appears that ethical codes on book matters are in a somewhat unsettled state—out here in California at any rate. I have on my desk a series of letters from a California school-book publisher, personally a very likeable and genial fellow, who assures me that he doesn’t think there is any harm in the fact that a lady editor of his magazine, formerly a stockholder in his business, and still having a desk in his office, is also a member of the local school board, and in this capacity signed orders for the purchase of something less than a thousand dollars worth of books from this publisher. I suppose that if I were to meet David P. Barrows, Dean of Imperialism at our state university, he would assure me there was nothing wrong in the fact that he, while head of the department of political science at the university, was invited by the Mexican government to come down there and advise them on the subject of education; and that he went, and became vice-president of the Vera Cruz Land & Cattle Company, and came back to recommend war on Mexico, so as to give value to his holdings in that concern!
All this time we have been thinking of text-books as a source of dividends. It is necessary to remind ourselves that these sources of dividends are also sources of ideas to our children. How do the ideas count, in comparison with the dividends? Let me quote Professor Judd once more:
There is a more fundamental matter which is not scandalous but which is important. Book companies influence the schools to an enormous degree by furnishing the materials of instruction. The ordinary teacher in the American school is so little prepared for his or her work that the material supplied in text-books is absolutely indispensable to the conduct of classes. When a book company gets a successful text-book, it is very loath to make any changes in the book for obvious reasons: the cost of making new plates and the danger of losing the market prevent revision of text-books. The result is that there are sets of text-books which exercise a thoroughly unwholesome influence on school practices, just because the book companies are unwilling to make expensive revisions and are interested primarily in selling the books that they now have in stock. When a good report is prepared by one of the technical societies, and book companies are asked to conform to the progressive ideas which are expressed in such a report, one finds these companies very reluctant to try any experiments.
When I was a lad, I learned geometry and algebra as two entirely separate subjects, and until today it never occurred to me that they were in any way related, and might be taught as parts of one subject. But now I learn from an educator that this is the case. And why are they taught separately in all high schools of the United States? Well, because geometry and algebra are the private preserves of Ginn and Company, owners of the Wentworth text-books, which lead in this field. Any teacher or superintendent who should suggest that these profitable works be scrapped would not be regarded with favor by the hundred and twenty-five agents of this great book concern, who have so much to say about high salaried school positions.
CHAPTER LXVIII
THE CHURCH CONSPIRACY
We have seen the activities of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in many American cities; but because this is a national system, competing with the public schools in every part of the country, it is necessary to consider the general aspects of the parochial school problem. Many Catholics will read this book and write me letters; therefore I will save both my time and their feelings if I explain at the outset that I know there are a great many decent, hard-working Catholics in the United States, and also many earnest and devoted Catholic teachers in the American public schools. My quarrel here is with the Roman hierarchy, which holds the faith of millions of sincere people, and sells it out to the exploiters of the world. This is a book on economics, and its plea is to Catholic working people, to open their eyes to the class struggle, and see how they are being betrayed and plundered in modern capitalist society.
This class struggle is in the Catholic Church, precisely as in other organizations. There are Catholic trust magnates and exploiters of labor, and they give their money to Catholic educational institutions, and then control these institutions in the interest of the open shop and general reaction. I was not well informed about the insides of Catholic affairs, and when I came to investigate I could not keep from laughing, to discover how completely Catholic education reproduces all the features of Protestant education. Here, for example, is James A. Farrell, president of the Steel Trust; he got part of a common school education, and then went to work in a steel mill; in 1922 we find him getting an honorary degree from the Catholic Georgetown University!
Here is Francis P. Garvan, wealthy corporation lawyer, Attorney-General Palmer’s assistant in robbing helpless Germans during the war. He gives generously to Catholic schools and colleges, and gets an honorary degree from Fordham University, and is a trustee in the Catholic University of America. He vigorously carries on the open-shop propaganda in the Catholic world, and bitterly fights the influence of Father Ryan, who sympathizes with labor. Here is Condé B. Pallen, graduate of Georgetown University, a wealthy Catholic propagandist, editor of the “Catholic Encyclopedia,” and head of the “Committee for the Study of Revolutionary Movements of the National Civic Federation.” Mr. Pallen is one of the “Helen Ghouls”; and thereby we discover that in the world of Big Business the gulf between Catholics and Protestants has been bridged. It is my hope that this gulf may be bridged in the world of labor, and that Protestant and Catholic wage-slaves will no longer permit themselves to be divided and conquered by their masters.