But that is a lot better than what Pittsburgh had ten years ago—a superintendent who represented a school-book house in St. Paul, and spent the rest of his time seducing his girl pupils; it was proved in court that he had had a criminal operation performed on one of them. My reporter friend had dug up four cases of rape by this superintendent in his own office, and the affidavits were presented to the grand jury. The school children went on strike against their superintendent, and finally he was tried, and the jury disagreed. Juries in Allegheny County agree only with steel officials.
In the slum neighborhoods of Pittsburgh you find atrociously crowded schools, in wretched buildings, some of them made of corrugated iron; in the rich districts you find palatial high schools. The system is run on a basis of political pull; good teachers are shifted, so that the sisters of ward-heelers may get promotion. When parents venture to complain they are insulted—especially if they are poor. There is a political machine even of the doctors; the favorites of the board of health get the jobs of vaccinating in the schools.
Further down the valley is Homestead, from which the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching derives its millions. You will appreciate the gay humor of this situation—in the schools of Homestead the steel-slaves are drinking water from the Monongahela River, into which various industrial plants discharge their acids. When complaint was made about this water in Homestead, the newspapers saw an opportunity to be witty, and assured the public that the water needed no filtering—the acids would kill the bacteria! I am assured that, owing to the effect of these acids, the plumbing in the homesteads of Homestead wears out in one-third the normal time; and this suggests the subject for an important scientific monograph—I see it in my mind’s eye, catalogued in Carnegie libraries throughout the United States and Great Britain: “The Internal Plumbing of Pupils; a Study of the Stimulation Effects of Sulphuric and Nitric Acids on the Renal Canals of One Thousand School Children at Homestead, Pennsylvania. By A. Learned Phaque, A.M., Ph.D., T.O.A.D.Y.; Bulletin of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, No. 4-11-44.”
Come to Northern Minnesota, and see what the Steel Trust does to the shipping port of its vast ore fields. I have before me a copy of the Duluth “Rip-Saw,” containing a detailed account of the activities of school board members who have had charge of teachers’ pension money, and have been lending it out for their private graft. One board member was an insurance agent, and if he loaned you the teachers’ money, you had to place your insurance with him. Needless to say, along with this go accounts of the humiliating of teachers, the beating down of wages, and the driving out of those with liberal sympathies. Judge Gary, of course, would say that he has nothing to do with all this; all that he does is to put up the campaign funds to keep such gangs in office.
Again, Lorain, Ohio, a port on Lake Erie, headquarters of one of the Steel Trust subsidiaries, the National Tube Company. Here are forty thousand people, most of them wage-slaves, and recently they elected a mayor who made an effort to serve them, and was smashed by the Black Hand. On the school system of Lorain the people have been unable to make any impression whatever. The house agent of the National Tube Company, a sort of watch-dog against the radical element in the mills, occupies the same post on the school board. The president of the board is a dentist and bank director, a high-up Mason and pillar of the Lutheran church; he rolls down-town in his big limousine, and lives “on the Avenue” in a large residence, which is taxed less than the small cottage of a machinist. Another member is a jeweler and bank director, a pillar of the Congregational church, who sees to it that the works of Scott Nearing, Jack London, Bernard Shaw and Upton Sinclair are kept out of the Carnegie library. The other members are a bank teller and a very intolerant ex-teacher, both devout Methodists.
As superintendent this board has had for ten years a perfect autocrat, who finds opportunity for many financial activities on the side. He is a typical small-town mind, and excludes from the system all teachers whose minds are bigger. The two most popular teachers in the system were driven out because their parents happened to be Socialists. A high school teacher, who had been on the faculty for twelve years, was charged with “refusing to do team work”—the real reason being that he attended labor meetings and tried to help the workers. When he was fired, a petition was presented, signed by every student in his class—except one, whose father was manager of the Chamber of Commerce. The fight was carried to the school board elections, but to no purpose, and this teacher left town.
There must be “no politics” in Lorain school affairs, the board solemnly ordains; but four years ago, when the ring was kicked out of the city hall, the school board hastened to make a job for one ring member. A working-boy was a minute or two late because a draw-bridge which he had to cross was swung open; he was punished for this, and on the second offense was threatened with loss of his grades. The son of a big bank director and promoter was found smoking cigarettes in the high school building, the punishment for which is expulsion, but the young man graduated three months later. These are petty details, and I only cite them because they are typical of a thousand school systems in small towns. Lorain would tell you that its schools are “progressive,” and would mention the beveled glass mirrors in the new high school, costing ninety-five dollars a piece. Its educators stand high—the superintendent got his enamel finish under Nicholas Miraculous last summer, and the high school principal did the same thing the year before, and other members of the faculty have done it or intend to. Superintendent Boone is a director of the Chamber of Commerce and of the Y. M. C. A., a Mason and a Kiwani, and when he came back from his course in “school management” at Columbia, he showed what he had learned by joining the Elks!
CHAPTER LXXIII
THE SCHOOLS OF OIL
So much for what steel does to schools; let us now see what oil does. Our journey of inspection will be under the escort of a rare high school teacher—one who is willing to tell his experiences over his own signature. Mr. David H. Pierce specializes in sociology, and at present is teaching hygiene and Spanish at a high school in Ohio. Two or three years ago he accepted a position as principal of a high school in the oil country of West Virginia. The town of Littleton, containing about seven hundred inhabitants, is spread along a valley, sharing it with a creek, a mud road, and a railroad; as far as the eye can see in every direction the hillsides have sprouted oil derricks. Mr. Pierce went there because he was tired of the “rigid” school system of New York state, and was told that in West Virginia things were more free. He found a commodious brick high school, and felt much encouraged—until the first faculty meeting, when the district superintendent stated: “There are two boys in your senior class who must pass regardless of their work. They have never been known to work in school and never will, but they come from a good family and must graduate.”
Mr. Pierce was supposed to be the principal of the school, but the superintendent hadn’t much else to do, and made his headquarters in the building. Mr. Pierce describes him as “a kindly gentleman, a good husband and father”; he let his teachers alone, except when it became necessary to protect his own position, by pleasing the aristocracy of Littleton. He would say to a student who was deficient in half a year of algebra: “Work six cases of factoring, and it will be satisfactory.” To a girl who had failed to take a year of high school mathematics he would suggest: “Go down and observe the class in eighth grade arithmetic a few times.”