So we are not surprised to learn that the invisible government of Spokane is the Employers’ Association, backed by the Washington Water Power Corporation; and that the head of the city school board is a grain speculator, prominent in anti-labor campaigns; also that they have their full quota of text-book scandals, and a campaign to introduce the teaching of the Bible in the schools—purely as literature, of course; also, that they discovered a high school teacher to be a Unitarian and believer in evolution, and he was reported to the superintendent as an atheist; also, that the teachers at the high school do not dare attend a lecture course given by the local Unitarian clergyman.
You might think you were in Portland, hearing a teacher remark: “Whenever they want to reduce our salaries, they cast slurs at us in the newspapers for weeks.” You might think you were in Los Angeles, when you hear how the business organizers endeavored to set the school children to writing essays on reactionary themes, and how a little group of “kickers” in the city offered a prize for the best essay on Woodrow Wilson’s “The New Freedom.” At this time Woodrow Wilson was robed in the majesty of office, so the proposition put the school board in something of a quandary. They turned the matter over to a committee, which solemnly resolved: “‘The New Freedom’ is not a book by Woodrow Wilson, but a series of extracts from campaign speeches, highly partisan in character.” So the proposition was turned down!
CHAPTER XXX
THE ANACONDA’S LAIR
We continue our journey, and enter the domain of the copper kings. In “The Goose-step” I have portrayed the state of Montana as entirely swallowed by a monstrous reptile known as the Anaconda, and I have shown what this reptile has done to the universities of the state. Let us now have a glimpse of Butte, which is a mountain of copper with office buildings and miners’ shacks on top. We shall find here a situation resembling Berkeley; that is to say, the workers have been making desperate efforts to control the education of their own children, but without success. The copper interests, in their efforts to control Montana, have stopped at no atrocity and no crime. They have broken strikes with the utmost brutality, and when the people of Butte succeeded in electing their own political administration, the Black Hand used its control of the state machine to turn the city administration out. In the same way, they have been willing to wreck the schools by every device of slander and corruption. It is hard indeed to find honest public officials in a community where the rewards of treason are so high, and the penalties of public service so heavy. The result has been that the schools of Butte have served as a football of rowdy gangs.
The early stages of Montana history consisted of civil and political war between the Anaconda and its rival, F. Augustus Heinze. In those days public officials and political parties commanded fancy prices; but these good times came to an end in 1906, when the Anaconda bought out its rival, and took control of a state as big as Germany—most of its minerals, ninety per cent of its water power, and a hundred per cent of its politics. Butte at that time had an honest school superintendent by the name of Young; and because the Anaconda crowd could not use him, they began war upon him; three years later they kicked him out, and he died of a broken heart. They put in “the crookedest school man in the Northwest”; a gentleman who had two interests which absorbed his attention—breeding fancy dogs, and training brutal football players. Montana football tactics became a scandal throughout the country; and teaching standards fell so low that other cities refused to accept credits from Butte.
In 1911 came a radical wave, and a Socialist clergyman, Lewis J. Duncan, was swept into office as mayor. The first thing the Socialist administration attempted was to clean up the redlight district, and this brought them into conflict with two of the Anaconda’s political bullies on the city’s detective force. The pair were put on trial, one for blackmailing a prostitute, and the other for soliciting a bribe, and were convicted. They swore vengeance, and immediately afterwards one of the most efficient teachers in the Butte high school, who had been active in war upon the grafters, was summoned before the school superintendent and notified that she would not get her yearly reappointment. (They keep their teachers in Butte upon a string, having no tenure, and never knowing if they are to be re-engaged.)
This lady was told that her work was “not satisfactory,” but the superintendent gave no specifications, and refused to discuss the fact that the principal O.K.’d the teacher’s work. As a result of this development, a teachers’ union was organized in Butte, and immediately the three officers of the union were let out without cause. The fact that the superintendent had given one of these teachers a fulsome recommendation only one month previously did not count at all. The president of this union, a Harvard post-graduate, was blacklisted, and kept from any teaching position in Montana. In the meantime, Mayor Duncan, who had been re-elected, was kicked out of office by the Black Hand.
The Socialists had never been able to elect more than three of the seven school board members. In the 1916 campaign the Anaconda crowd made the open boast that they had controlled the schools for twenty-five years, and would continue to control them. They elected their ticket, and proceeded upon a campaign to “clean out the radicals,” dismissing without charges twenty-four of the most efficient and intelligent teachers. There was a roar of protest from the city; a prominent society woman, friendly to the teachers, made the statement at a mass meeting that it was the program to discharge every teacher who had attended the study classes conducted by the Reverend Lewis J. Duncan for nine years prior to his election as mayor. This lady’s husband happened to be cashier of the First National Bank, and at the next meeting of the directors of the bank this cashier lost his position. The school board took to meeting in secret and refusing admission to the angry public. Nevertheless, the people succeeded in having their way, to the extent that the teachers were reinstated and the superintendent retired.
Then came the world war, and that made things easy for the grafters. Since then there has been in Butte the same situation that we found in San Francisco; the Catholic schools are flourishing, while the public schools are deprived both of their money and their brains. A couple of years ago, through misuse of funds, the school treasury was so low that the schools were about to be closed two weeks in advance of the regular time. As a consequence of the Anaconda’s control of the state government, the mining companies pay taxes only on their net profits, and when they close down, as they did for a whole year, there are no net profits and no taxes. At the last moment the banks agreed to lend the money to keep the schools going—Big Business could not quite afford to have the news go out to the world that “the richest hill in the world” was unable to afford schools! In connection with this problem of mining company taxation in Montana, you may read in “The Goose-step” how Professor Louis Levine was kicked out of the state university for writing a treatise on this subject.
The working people of Butte are still struggling to have something to say about their schools, but their struggles are now blind and helpless, because the war has put the Socialist movement out of business, and without the idealism and training of the Socialists the labor movement falls prey to bribery and intrigue. There are now several so-called “labor” representatives on the Butte school board; and having read the story of a “labor” administration in San Francisco, you will be prepared for what is happening here. The Anaconda has not the least objection to its henchmen calling themselves “labor” men—provided only they will vote for the Anaconda. Big Business today has its representatives in all labor unions; and the Black Hand sees no harm in petty graft and a flourishing redlight district, provided that taxes are kept down and dividends not interfered with. On this “labor” board in Butte are a couple of loud-mouthed demagogues, whose main concern is to get patronage for relatives and friends. One of them has had his brother made utility man for the board, and his sister a teacher in the high school—somewhat to the concern of the city, because this lady is decidedly unusual in her mind, and two other members of the family are under restraint. Mr. O. G. Wood, until recently clerk of this board, writes me: