The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools

by Upton Sinclair

After that the big highwaymen resolved to put Margaret Haley out of business. The Chicago “Tribune” came out with a story that she had applied for a four thousand dollar pension, and it was then discovered that she had for seven years been collecting two salaries, one from the board of education and the other from the teachers. The “Tribune” had told so many lies about the teachers that it thought nothing mattered. But Margaret Haley brought a libel suit, and proved that she had had no salary from the board of education and that her salary as business representative of the Teachers’ Federation was precisely the same as she would have got as a school teacher. The jury brought in a verdict in Miss Haley’s favor, and she collected five hundred dollars from the “Tribune,” and presented it to the Labor party!

By way of countering the Teachers’ Federation, the politicians of Chicago have got up the usual fake organization. It is called the “Teachers’ League,” and nobody can find out who belongs to it, or who gives it the authority to speak for the teachers. But it speaks; and the “Tribune” and other kept newspapers take up its voice and broadcast it. This fake “League” is used for lobbying in the school board and the state legislature, and more especially for the slandering of union teachers. It appeals to every kind of ignorance and base prejudice; charging that those who run the Teachers’ Federation are “Bolsheviks,” and more terrible yet, that they are atheists! When the “Tribune” calls you names like this you cannot punish it; Henry Ford found that out when the “Tribune” called him an Anarchist! You know how much of an Anarchist Henry Ford is, and so you can judge how much of a Bolshevik and atheist the leaders of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation are! As I write this book, a superintendent and two instructors at the Chicago Parental School are suspended, as result of a coroner’s probe into the suicide of a fifteen-year-old boy, who hanged himself to escape torture. And I wonder, if I were to call the owners of the Chicago “Tribune” the murderers of this boy, would anybody sue me for libel?

It is time we gave some attention to the fate of the children, in this city where $10 is not safe anywhere. Let me take you to one Chicago high school as portrayed to me two years ago. This school gets up entertainments, which take the boys out of the class-rooms; pupils often fail in their classes, because they have been playing in an opera “to make money for the school.” Money is collected at such entertainments—and replaces scholarship as an aim. The school takes part in industrial exhibits; the boys work to prepare these exhibits, and prizes are collected, and the money goes into the general fund. When the state stops giving cash prizes, the school at once stops competing. The school publishes a paper; it is a wretched paper, of poor literary quality; the “boosters” have charge of it, and it makes money “for the fund.” A certain teacher in the school has become an artist, and has painted a beautiful picture; it is proposed to purchase this picture for the school, and some of the school funds are to be used for the purpose. The teachers and pupils have been working under heavy pressure to earn this money, but they are not permitted to have anything to say concerning the purpose for which the money shall be expended.

The boys know of such conditions, and so do the teachers; the school is, to use the phrase of one of them, “a hell of hate.” Poor and foreign-born parents, coming to the school, are insulted and abused. Teachers are scolded before their classes. The teachers take the matter up in a faculty meeting, and the principal is interviewed by a committee from the faculty, and hears a strenuous and detailed discussion of his conduct. The teachers object among other things to having their efficiency judged by their ability to sell tickets. The principal promises to reform, but does not, and finally thirty teachers sign a petition to the superintendent. Before delivering it, they have one more conference with the principal, who admits his faults—and then sets out to avenge himself, by demoting three of the teachers, and marking down the rating of another from the highest to a very low grade. A woman member of the committee is summoned to a “grilling”—in the course of which she hears all the other members of the committee berated. A day or two later there breaks out into all the newspapers of Chicago a scandal story, and the principal gives an interview hinting that “there is one example of radical teaching in the school.”

It appears that the Association of Commerce had asked that on Armistice day all the pupils should face the East, and silence should be maintained for one minute while everybody thought about the dead in France. But two students refused to face the East, and so the newspapers called them “Bolsheviks.” It was intended to implicate this brave woman teacher—although the two boys were not her pupils, nor even in her department. The boys were hauled up before the authorities, and questioned as to their “Bolshevism.” They admitted that they did not believe in war. As to facing the East, that was a Mohammedan custom, and one of them was a Jew, and neither a Mohammedan!

I could tell you of another school in which the lunchroom, supposed to be operated at cost, has been used for money-making. I could tell you of cases of cruelty to pupils, and the abuse of parents. I could tell you of one of Chicago’s few real educators, Principal McAndrew of the Hyde Park High School, who was forced out because he refused to promote the incompetent son of a school board official.

I have in my possession a statement signed by two Chicago high school boys, reciting how, at the instance of their principal, Mr. Lewis A. Bloch of the Marshall High School, they agreed to work for the board of education. They went to the office of the board at 460 South State Street, and Mr. Bachrach, in whose office they were put to work, agreed to pay them three dollars a week to cover their car fare and lunch. On the afternoon of the last day of the week Mr. Bachrach informed them that “suddenly and unexpectedly the Chicago Board of Education’s treasury had gone dry, and that the three dollars compensation could not be given us.” These boys ask me to withhold their names. Another boy states: “I have since found that this has been done time and again, and also with the same excuse at hand.”

These Chicago schools are strenuous for the “Americanization” of the foreigners—which means despising the foreign children and calling them names. It meant in war-time the activities of spies—boys paid to report what this teacher has said, and that. Also, it means the repression of every kind of liberal activity. During the recent slaughter of the Jews by the Poles, the Jewish people in Chicago were stirred up, and organized a protest parade. Some Jewish children asked to be permitted to attend this parade; they got up a petition, and their request was denied. They argued that they had been allowed to attend all kinds of bankers’ parades and Association of Commerce parades; why not an anti-pogrom parade. The answer of their principal was that if they went to the parade they would all be “fired.” Nevertheless, the Jewish children went to the parade, and there were so many of them that they were not “fired.”

The schools of Chicago are a happy hunting ground for every form of reactionary propaganda. The War Department supplies “dope” for the high school papers, and it is published. The boys hate this military training, but they take it; as one boy explained to his teacher, “I’ve been bullied for two years; now it’s my turn to bully somebody else.” Many years ago Chicago had a great superintendent of schools, Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, and she tried to keep this curse of militarism away from the children. She introduced in courses for every grade a little time to be given to the teaching of peace; but the president of the school board, attorney for the packers who came to board meetings drunk, cut it out.

The bankers come to set up their golden calf in the schools; also the various commercial men who want to use the schools for advertising—putting their “dope” into the writing books. For example, the book-keeping classes copy pages of the transactions of Marshall, Field & Co. A recent investigation in the technical schools showed that employers were calling up for high school students, and even specifying their church affiliations. Such employers use the public schools to train their apprentices, and then violate the constitutional rights of citizens. The Yellow Taxi-cab Company sends to schools to ask if would-be drivers have union relatives!