But even that is not the limit in Seattle; another board member up to 1923 was a Stone and Webster engineer, who murdered the English of Banker Shorrock’s queen. Somebody said that a cut in wages would lower the morale of the teaching force. “That moral stuff don’t go with me,” declared Engineer Santmyer. “I know lots of them girls, and there ain’t anything wrong with their morals.” It is interesting to note that this engineer was also connected with the Pacific Coast Coal Company, from which the school board purchased most of its coal.
Another board member who retired along with him was Mr. Taylor, Northwestern representative of a big school-book publishing house. He gave a written pledge that he would oppose any attempt to reduce the teachers’ salaries; he signed this pledge on April 19, 1922, and on June 10, 1923, he seconded Banker Shorrock’s motion to make a heavy cut in the teachers’ salaries. Mr. Santmyer also joined in this vote against the teachers, and when his victims protested, he got cross, and addressing a meeting of the school engineers, declared: “I just want one more crack at them damned teachers.”
The friends of education in the state of Washington brought before the voters in 1922 a “tax equalization” measure, whose[whose] purpose was to compel the big corporations, and especially the lumber interests, to pay their proper share of school taxes. Against this measure all the organizations of the Black Hand lined up—the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the Central Committee of the Republican Party, the reactionary governor, the Seattle Board of Education, the kept newspapers, the state university, the Weyerhaeuser lumber interests, the president of Whitman College—to which the Weyerhaeusers had just contributed seventy-five thousand dollars—and finally the state superintendent of education, Mrs. Josephine C. Preston. Remember this lady, because when we come to study the National Education Association, we shall find her as its president, occupying the throne of power at the Salt Lake City convention of 1920, where the gang turned out the teachers from control.
I have shown in Los Angeles, and will show in many other cities, how the Black Hand bars “politics” from the schools. Here in Seattle the board of education offered a classic demonstration of what this means. Some of the teachers in the high schools presumed to have class discussions in which both sides of the equalization amendment were heard. At five o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, October 27, 1922, the school board of Seattle passed a resolution absolutely forbidding teachers to engage in any kind of political propaganda in the schools, or to post on the bulletin boards any notices except those pertaining strictly to school business. Eighteen hours later, at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, October 28, Dr. Sharples of the board, Mr. Santmyer of the board, and also the secretary of the board, appeared before a meeting of school janitors, engineers and custodians, in a school building, and there spoke in opposition to the equalization amendment. The secretary of the board traveled to other parts of the state to oppose this amendment, and he spoke at meetings during business hours—that is, during the time he was being paid by the people of Seattle to do his work as school board secretary.
Another incident, to give you an idea what it means to be a teacher in Seattle. Early in 1923 eight or ten high school teachers received notice from the superintendent that their names were being withheld for reappointment, until the board could complete an investigation concerning a teachers’ meeting which had been held the previous summer, at which a resolution had been adopted condemning the board for cutting the teachers’ salaries. The teachers who received this written notice tried to find out what it was all about, and they learned that the board of education had in its possession an unsigned typewritten document, purporting to be a resolution adopted by the teachers and transmitted to the Central Labor Council.
But the teachers had held no such meeting and adopted no such resolution; the secretary of the Central Labor Council declared that no such communication had ever been received from the teachers; and when the teachers tried to get a copy of the alleged resolution from the board, they were told that all the copies had been “lost”! Under its own regulations, the board was barred from considering documents with typewritten signatures; nevertheless, they took two weeks to consider this “lost” document, and finally gave the teachers their jobs—but without apology for the false accusation!
We shall find it worthwhile to glance at school conditions throughout this state. The Washington farmers and fruit ranchers, picked to the bone by the railroads and the banks, have their Nonpartisan League and their Farmer-Labor party, and are trying to get their schools. Mr. J. T. Sullivan, a teacher at Klaber, with a twelve-year record, ventured to run for county superintendent on the Farmer-Labor ticket. Reports were circulated that the platform of this party consisted of three planks—nationalization of all property, compulsory free love, and the destruction of all churches. The county superintendent—that is, Mr. Sullivan’s political opponent—declared that Mr. Sullivan would either give up his political activities or have his teacher’s license revoked; and Mrs. Josephine C. Preston, the state superintendent, refused him a license to teach in another county, because he could not get the endorsement of this same county superintendent!
Mr. William Bouck, master of the Washington Progressive Grange, a rebel organization, gave me the names of two young women teachers in Lewis County, who were asked if they were members of the Nonpartisan League, and when they answered yes, they were told that they were “fired.” Mr. Bouck’s own daughter applied for a position as teacher, and her credentials were judged satisfactory, but her name was suspicious; she was asked if she was any relative of William Bouck, and when she answered that she was his daughter, the director replied: “Well, you can go to hell!” Mr. Bouck added that there were grave-yards of radical teachers all over his county; and one of the other men in the party spoke up, saying that he had six personal friends who had lost their teaching positions because of their political opinions.
Everywhere throughout the state the book agents are in active control, working hand in glove with the politicians. I was shown one school primer, for which the Washington schools were paying sixty cents, and the same book was sold by the same company in Tennessee for twenty-two cents. Many school districts in the state were close to bankruptcy, because of the theft of their school lands by the big lumber companies; in all these lumber districts the companies put their own men on the school boards and run education. In the town of Centralia the boss of the schools, as well as of the town, is F. B. Hubbard, a mill-man, former president of the Employers’ Association, who incited the Legion men to raid an I. W. W. hall and hang the inmates with ropes. The Legion men had the ropes in their hands, and the door half battered down, when the I. W. W.’s opened fire, and Hubbard’s own nephew was one of those killed. The Associated Press sent out a dispatch stating that the I. W. W.’s had opened fire in cold blood on the Armistice day parade of the Legion, and it will take a generation to unteach this monstrous lie to the American people. Thus the Great Madame conducts for her Big Business masters the adult education classes of our schools!
Beginning our journey East, we find ourselves in Spokane, where we shall not mind stopping, because the lumber barons and kings of silver and lead have built themselves a sumptuous hotel; once within its portals, we may think we are among the plutocracy of New York or Paris or London. The first thing we do is to buy a paper from the news-stand, and learn that the lumber barons and kings of silver and lead have been equally lavish to their children, providing them with high-power motor cars, which they are driving recklessly about the city to the great distress of the police—who, of course, could not arrest the sons and daughters of royalty. It appears that these youngsters, instead of studying their high school lessons, have been studying the “movies”; they are going off on joy-rides, spending the night at road-houses, and the judge of the juvenile court has taken the matter up, and charges that school probation officers, seeking information about these youthful escapades, have been unable to get it from high school teachers, because the city superintendent of schools has intimidated the teachers.