The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools

by Upton Sinclair

Let us take the country districts of California, from which you get most of your fruits, canned and dried. I have notes of the misadventures of many California teachers; apparently the habit of breaking the law is universal among school boards and superintendents of this state. In Bishop the principal of the high school drops teachers contrary to law, and when they resort to the courts he solves the problem by eliminating the courses of study taught by these teachers. In Calexico the courts refused to enforce the law regarding teachers’ tenure. In Santa Cruz the board of education has set aside the state law providing equal pay for equal work as between men and women. They have a school principal who for a trivial offense whipped two little boys so severely that they had to have medical attention. This also was against the law, but the board paid no heed to the petitions of the parents. Mrs. Josephine Tyler, who writes about this matter, states:

I secured one letter from a former resident of Santa Cruz, who had taken her adopted daughter out of school because of insulting treatment from Forsyth. I gave this letter to the president of the board to read, and, after reading it, he remarked, “I believe the man is crazy.” But he didn’t advocate his removal. He asked permission to show the letter to other members of the board, and I granted his request, after securing his promise to return the letter to me. I afterwards learned that some members of the board were very loath to return the letter to me, and I heard only recently that there is still some apprehension concerning that letter.... Forsyth holds his job because he stands in with and is a good propagandist tool of the lodges and the banking and business interests.

Or take the strange experience of the teachers at Fresno, the place from which you get your raisins. Up to recently the schools in Fresno had a superintendent by the name of Cross; he used to run the high school in Pasadena, and we played tennis together, and took pleasure in licking the school champions. I never observed in Mr. Cross any failure of manners on the tennis court, so I long for the day when we apply inside our schools the same standards as on the play-grounds outside. When Mr. Cross came to Fresno the sanitary conditions in the schools were “shocking,” and he so reported them; but next year one of the teachers ventured to make a report, showing that conditions in her school were still more “shocking,” and Mr. Cross resented the meddling of teachers in such affairs. This teacher was persecuted until she resigned, and the result was the forming of a teachers’ union in Fresno. Miss Verna Carson became the president of this union, and one of the board members told her that “the business men of this town are getting tired of having you going around through the state and organizing other locals.” In June of that year Superintendent Cross dropped Miss Carson, and when the teachers made protest, he declared his attitude to organized teachers: there was no use trying to deal with them by conference—“a base-ball bat or a gatling-gun is needed.” That was the kind of talk the Chamber of Commerce wanted, and they rallied to their superintendent’s support, and gave him a raise of a thousand dollars. When pushed by friends of Miss Carson, Mr. Cross finally gave a reason for her dismissal, “professional incapacity.” Miss Carson, being unable to get a hearing, proceeded to bring a libel suit, and Mr. Cross on the witness stand was invited to state what acts of “professional incapacity” she had committed. He could not give any, so he was adjudged guilty of libel, and obliged to pay the costs of the suit, and at the end of the year to resign from his position. This is one of the pleasantest school stories I have to tell, and I wish that teachers would make note of it and do likewise.

CHAPTER LXXV
THE SCHOOLS OF SNOBBERY

So far our attention has been given to the public schools. There is another large field of education, at which we can only stop for a glance—the private schools. There are over two thousand private high schools and academies in the United States, with two or three hundred thousand students; and apart from parochial and a few experimental schools, these institutions are maintained by the rich for the purpose of giving their children a class education. Some of them are large and wealthy, with endowments running into the millions; when we glance at their boards of control we are reminded of the interlocking directorates of “The Goose-step.”

For example, here is Phillips Exeter, a hundred and forty-two years old; in control we find Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, partner in the firm of J. P. Morgan and Company, director of the Guaranty Trust Company, overseer of Harvard University, trustee of Smith College, and director of the Crowell Publishing Company, which gives us that lovely “American Magazine” about which you may read in “The Brass Check.” Also Colonel William Boyce Thompson, mining magnate and Republican party chief; also Mr. George A. Plimpton, trustee of Amherst College, who has just helped to kick out its liberal president, and senior partner of Ginn and Company, who run Clark University and Clark College for the benefit of the Frye-Atwood geographies.

Also there is Phillips Andover, a hundred and forty-five years old, having at the head of its board a Boston bank president, interlocked with Yale University; as board members a clergyman, interlocked by marriage with the Boston Lowells, who are even more exclusive than the Boston banks; also a New York corporation lawyer, who ran our war department under Taft. At Hotchkiss we find the president of a trust company and a dean of Yale; a partner in a stock exchange firm, who is also treasurer of Yale; and a president of a bank, vice-president of a trust company and of the American Brass Company, director of a life insurance company and a trustee of Trinity College. At Groton we find as secretary the chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, interlocked with Barnard College and Nicholas Miraculous; also a member of the firm of Lee, Higginson & Company, the Boston bankers, interlocked with the University of Lee-Higginson, popularly known as Harvard; also two representatives of the Episcopal department of God, Mammon & Company.

At St. Paul’s we find the New Hampshire bishop and two other members of this same aristocratic firm, one of them interlocked with Yale; also a Baltimore copper magnate, interlocked with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and Johns Hopkins University; also a carpet manufacturer; a Republican politician of Boston; a Philadelphia lawyer, who is president of a bank and two railroads, director in four railroads, a trust company, an electrical company and an asphalt company; and finally, a real sure-enough, honest-to-goodness, cross-my-heart-and-swear-it English lord! At St. Marks we have the same bishop as at Groton, and two other representatives of the firm; also a cotton goods merchant interlocked with Boston Edison and Massachusetts Gas, the invisible government of Harvard; also a president of several manufacturing companies, who is vice-president of a railroad; one of the Choates, who directs railroads, banks and life insurance in New York; and finally “Jim” Wadsworth, senator and Republican boss of New York state, whose father I had the pleasure of putting out of politics some eighteen years ago. (See “The Brass Check,” page 45.)

The Lawrenceville School, a magnificent institution located five miles from Princeton, has on its board of trustees President John Grier Hibben of Princeton, one of our leading clerical militarists; also a New York banker who directs much foreign exploitation; also a bank president who directs insurance. At Lawrenceville they had a head master who was liberal, or at least human; he died recently, and the plutocratic alumni came, offering to raise a few millions, on condition that they should name the head master. They brought in the very successful coach of the Yale rowing crew; incidentally he was professor of Latin, but that is hardly worth mentioning in comparison. Because of his services in beating the Harvard crew, Yale gave him the degree of M.A., honoris causa—the same as they had extended to Jane Addams! This rowing gentleman proceeded to coach Lawrenceville under the new Prussian spy system, with the result of a faculty explosion too unsavory to be detailed in this book.

These schools of snobbery are scattered all over New England and the eastern states. They are training grounds for the athletic teams of the big universities, also for the university fraternities, so that social strivings and jealousies make up a good part of their student life. Admission to the more exclusive of them is an hereditary privilege; if you belong to the right families, your children and grandchildren are booked when they are born. Needless to say, the plutocratic psychology of these schools is never offended by the least breath of liberalism. In place of ideas, the boys are furnished with golf courses, motor cars, saddle-horses, boot-leggers, and all other comforts of home.