The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools

by Upton Sinclair

The trolley cars take us a few miles south to the city of Oakland, where we find a still larger population of shipyard workers, longshoremen and factory hands, having ideas of their own, and therefore having to be taken in charge by the Black Hand. The situation in Oakland is of especial importance, for the reason that the school superintendent of the Black Hand in this city is one of the big chiefs of the National Education Association. Fred M. Hunter was the 1921 president of the Association, and at the convention where he was chosen the gang put through a “reorganization,” whereby it was made forever certain that the class-room teachers of America shall remain impotent in their own organization, while their opinions are voiced for them and their money is spent for them by the bosses of the educational Tammany Hall.

I wish you to understand that when I speak of the N. E. A. as an educational Tammany Hall, I am not slinging language, but giving a precise description of a sociological phenomenon. The N. E. A. is run by a political gang, and the bosses in it are exactly the same kind of people, functioning in exactly the same way as the ward leaders of Tammany. Fred M. Hunter is one of these ward leaders, and he uses the schools of Oakland, in no sense for the benefit of the city or its people, but solely for the building up of the N. E. A. machine, and of his power in this machine. As you read the story, therefore, bear this wider aspect of the matter in mind. The city of Oakland, with its quarter of a million people, mostly workers, contributes the sum of eighteen thousand dollars a day for the education of its children, and this sum is used by a school politician to reward his friends and punish his enemies. Incidentally, of course, this ward leader sees to it that our education, both local and national, remains plutocratic; just as the ward leaders of Tammany see to it that the “traction crowd” and the other big exploiters are protected.

The City of Oakland voted five million dollars for new schools, and Mr. Hunter explained publicly his idea that the proper people to handle these bonds were the business men; therefore he appointed a special committee known as the “Bond Expenditure Committee.” This committee proceeded to appoint a prominent politician as “land agent,” to handle the buying of sites, at a salary of three hundred dollars a month. The opposition members of the school board objected to this program, and forced the resignation of the Bond Expenditure Committee; whereupon, Mr. Hunter caused to be printed in the Oakland “Tribune,” kept newspaper of the gang, an interview proclaiming to the citizens that the school system was about to be disrupted.

You will appreciate the humor of this when you are told that during the previous year the schools had had to be closed for two weeks because of the wasting of school money; but at the same time the board had increased Mr. Hunter’s salary to ten thousand dollars per year! (It has since been raised to eleven, and is about to be raised again.) When the school board, in the effort to keep the schools open, tried to take control of the business department from Mr. Hunter, he caused the big business men of Oakland to come before the board and protest; and one of these men stated that he didn’t think it was so bad for the city to lose two weeks of school—a small matter of a hundred and eighty thousand dollars—as it would be to “injure the prestige of so big a man as Mr. Hunter!”

Not merely must the money put up by the Oakland taxpayers be sacrificed to Mr. Hunter’s “prestige,” but also the teaching in the Oakland schools must be sacrificed to the same end. Mr. Hunter promotes teachers who serve his political ambitions, and this without relation to their ability. The convention at which the National Education Association was “reorganized” was held in Salt Lake City in 1920; and Mr. Hunter’s right-hand man in putting this through was J. Fred Anderson, president of the Utah Educational Association. He delivered the votes of the Utah teachers, and immediately was made principal of one of Oakland’s large high schools, with salary and allowances amounting to $4,390 per year.

Also there is Miss Elizabeth Arlett, who, while supposed to be teaching the school children of Oakland, was touring the United States, shortly before the convention, in the interest of Mr. Hunter’s candidacy for the presidency of the N. E. A. Miss Arlett was promoted to be principal of a high school in Oakland, and I am told that many teachers in Oakland have heard her boast that she can have anything she wants in the Oakland school system.

On the other hand, there have been some teachers who have failed to carry out Mr. Hunter’s will—just as there are some labor leaders who will not sell out their union, but persist in representing the workers. Mr. Hunter wished to put his own henchman in the position of president of the Oakland Teachers’ Association. Here, please understand, were the teachers of the city, supposed to be electing the head of their own professional organization; but they were not permitted to cast their ballot secretly, they had to vote in the presence of the principal, and they got their orders for whom to vote. One young woman teacher failed to vote according to orders, and she was so persecuted in her school that she felt compelled to resign.

You might think that would have ended the matter, but if so, you don’t know the methods of the gang. This teacher applied for a position as secretary to a corporation, and was promised the position, but when she went to begin her work she was told by the manager that Mr. Hunter had reported her as having been “disloyal”; consequently this corporation could not employ her. And if you think that an unusual kind of thing, let me mention that only yesterday I was talking with a school teacher in Los Angeles, who told me about a friend of hers who had fought the gang, and then had left Los Angeles to seek a position elsewhere; for years afterwards she lost every position she held, because the gang ferreted her out and wrote letters about her to her new school employers.

There has just been a new school election in Oakland. In preparation for it, Mr. Hunter had got his henchmen in all the Babbitt societies of the city—the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, the Lions, the Ad Clubs, the “High Twelve,” the “Knights of the Round Table.” And a few days before the election he took eight boys out of high school, without the permission or knowledge of their parents, and set them to distributing election cards in boats and trains. His ticket won; and so he now has everything his own way.

The old board had persisted in keeping in office a “chief of construction” who was finishing the new school buildings. This man had required the contractors to live up to the specifications, and had thereby incurred the furious enmity of the grafters—and also, of course, of Mr. Hunter. The grafting contractors put up large sums of money to pay for the election of the new board, and the first action of Mr. Hunter when the new board came in was to recommend the discharge and force the resignation of the too honest chief of construction. In resigning, this official filed specific charges of fraud against the contractors, and Mr. Hunter’s school board majority utterly ignored the communication.