I am free to mention, however, that teachers’ salaries are delayed for one week, and in the meantime the money lies in somebody’s bank. That may seem a small matter, until you figure that the interest on two million dollars for one week amounts to three thousand dollars a year—a sum worth anybody’s taking!
The women teachers complain also of male parasites, who do little work, but draw high salaries. Many of the supervisors draw an extra salary from the state university, and seldom come to the schools; the teachers until recently had to go to them and pay to be taught. There is a drawing supervisor drawing pay in the state university; there is another supervisor who is paid twenty-nine hundred dollars a year, who also teaches in the state university, and whom you may see smoking every afternoon in a hotel lobby. Teachers assure me that he has not visited some schools in three years.
There is the usual graft in the purchase of supplies, and the usual inability of the teachers to get supplies. When they make public complaint about this, they read items in the “Oregonian” to the effect that the reason there is no money for school supplies is that it all goes for teachers’ salaries. Hardly ever is the problem of school funds discussed, that this little sneer does not emerge. Some teachers became indignant, and started to investigate the expenditure of school money; the principal of their school became interested, and took the investigation off their hands, and discovered so much that he was made an assistant superintendent to keep him quiet; three other men were promoted to be principals, as a result of this little affair! They have taken out cooking, sewing, and manual training from the sixth grade in the elementary schools; last year they threatened to take out more subjects—because they are so poor. But they are not too poor to pay eight hundred and thirteen dollars and sixty-one cents per month for the teaching of poetry at the assemblies!
They have in Portland a system whereby the teachers are supposed to have something to do with the selecting of text-books. There was a sort of “book-election,” at which the teachers were to indicate their choice. Swarms of book men descended upon the city, and were charming to the teachers; then the ballot boxes were taken secretly to the court house, where they were kept all night—open. Ginn & Company got four of the principal books, and the agent laughed and said he hadn’t had to work very hard.
Having heard about Portland’s banker-boss, Mr. Mills, you will not be surprised to learn that the Portland schools are active in the interest of commercialism. In the last few weeks the bankers have been giving lectures every week; the Navy got its “day,” and then the “Oregonian” with a spelling-bee! As a means of teaching Big Business in the schools, they introduced what they called the “Business Science Normal”; there were two meetings a week for three weeks, and each meeting was repeated twice, so that all the teachers might attend. At the suggestion of the superintendent, invitation cards were sent in bulk to the principals, and by them distributed to the teachers; the schools were closed early, so that every teacher might be on hand. In addition to lectures, there were fifty-two printed articles about business, twelve issues of “Business Philosophy,” the official organ of the “Business Science Society,” and “a year’s council privilege with the educational director of this society.” Here was a wizard without peer in all the realms of Mammon—as you learned from a circular got out by the Portland Chamber of Commerce, which described him as “known wherever the English language is spoken as one of the world’s greatest business scientists. He is the author of five sciences dealing with human relationships.” Did you ever hear anything so wonderful? A man who created five new sciences, all out of one head and in one lifetime! I wonder how many Newton created!
While I was in Portland this wide-awake Chamber of Commerce had taken up propaganda for a “world’s fair” to celebrate the discovery of the Northwest. Of course they thought first of the school children: Let the children write compositions upon the desirability of this world’s fair! The Chamber of Commerce would supply the arguments, and the children would copy out maxims, and take them home to their parents, and so the people would be induced to pay the cost of the fair out of public taxes!
Also, the city has a “Rose Festival” every year, the purpose being to exhibit advertising “floats” of the various stores. The children are supposedly not required to appear in this parade, but schools which neglect their duty are considered disloyal. The children spend two or three weeks being drilled, and of course lose that time from study. They have to stand round in the streets all day; there are no toilets available, and some of the children became seriously ill.
I talked with a group of high school teachers. At the Washington High School they have a Junior Chamber of Commerce; one of the teachers asked me to imagine a Junior Central Labor Council, but my imagination was not equal to this flight. Some of the teachers had wanted to discuss a teachers’ union, but the principal of the school forbade it. Finding it impossible to keep the high school students from sometimes hearing of modern ideas, the business men abolished outright the departments of economics and sociology. The students signed a petition for the restoration of these courses; a group of thirty of them went to interview Superintendent Grout and take him this petition, and he insulted them, informing them that the Portland schools were not being run on petitions of the pupils. This school was forbidden to debate the Plumb Plan, and also to debate Socialism. The teachers have been forbidden to allow any discussion of the creation, of evolution, of the Hebrews in history, and of the birth of Christ.
The Portland forbidders, resolving to make a clean sweep, also forbade the “New Republic” and the “Survey.”[“Survey.”] A committee of teachers went to protest in the matter of “The Survey,” and were told that this magazine was “one-sided” in its treatment of capital; they were advised to content themselves with such publications as the “Outlook,” the “Independent,” and the “Literary Digest.” They pointed out that it might be possible to regard these magazines as “one-sided” in their treatment of labor, but no answer to this argument was returned. At the Washington High School the students, with the help of the history department, gave an entertainment for the benefit of the school library. They earned three hundred dollars, but they were not permitted to select their own books—the list had to be passed by the superintendent’s office. Also, the pupils are forbidden to invite outside speakers. I assume that this school is named after George Washington, so I recommend an inscription to be carved across the front of the building—some words taken from the letters of the Father of his Country, as follows:
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”