[F]. In December, as I am reading the proofs of this book, Mrs. Lindsey writes me that he has not yet spoken, and she knows of no prospect.
So we see the same thing that we saw in Los Angeles and Spokane—the children, being deprived of the joys and excitements of the intellectual life, follow the example of their elders and go “wild.” If I had the power to gather all the parents of America for one hour, and make them listen to whatever I chose, I think I should put them in the private chambers of Judge Lindsey. I had the pleasure of spending several days with him. I thought I knew something about what is going on among the school children, but I was staggered when I heard Lindsey’s story. I am going to tell it, but later on—for the reason that these conditions are not peculiar to Denver, they are a problem of the entire country. After we have satisfied ourselves what plutocratic education is, we shall want to know what it has done to our children, and how our grand-children are to be saved.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE DOMAIN OF KING COAL
Back in the days of President Buchanan the American Congress set aside large tracts of federal land, to be devoted forever after to the support of schools; and these lands have ever since been the favorite pasturage of Big Business. In state after state I found highly cultured members of old ruling families interested in education—and living upon fortunes made by the theft of school lands! In Maine and Wisconsin and Oregon these lands were stolen for the timber; in Minnesota for the iron ore; in Michigan for the copper; in Oklahoma and Texas for the oil; in Indiana and Illinois and Colorado for the coal.
The story of the Colorado school lands is told in a little pamphlet, “The Looters,” by George A. Connell, Cedaredge, Colorado. The sections set aside were Numbers Sixteen and Thirty-six of all government townships; and according to data available, the schools of Colorado own about six billion tons of coal. Instead of working these mines for the benefit of the schools, the state of Colorado turns the land over to the coal companies for a royalty of ten cents per ton of coal mined! The schools have to have coal themselves, and they purchase it from these same coal companies. It costs the companies, to mine this coal and deliver it to the schools, $5.80 per ton, while the price which the schools pay for it is $10.50 per ton; the coal companies therefore make $4.70 per ton, and this after paying the ten cents royalty to the schools! In the year 1920 there were mined almost a million tons of coal from the state school lands; the schools got for this a net profit of a little over eighty-five thousand dollars, while the coal gang made a net profit of nearly four and a half million dollars. In other words, the coal companies made in one year from the coal more than the schools will make in fifty years. Under the present method of doing business, the schools and the people of Colorado will surrender to the coal corporations for the coal taken from the school lands a total net profit of twenty-seven billion dollars.
Let us follow this coal money. Under the law a part of it has been turned into a “permanent school fund,” which now totals ten million dollars. And where does this money go? Why, to the banks, of course; and what do the banks pay for it? They pay three per cent interest; and at the same time the various school districts are borrowing money, and have to pay five and a half per cent on their bonds! The difference between these two items means a quarter of a million dollars, which the schools of Colorado are donating to the bankers every year! That pleases the bankers, and they use their control over the educators of Colorado to keep the people from knowing about the graft.
In September, 1920, there was a contest arranged between two district schools, and an eighteen-dollar basketball was put up as a prize for the school which could give the best answers to twenty-four questions. The principals of both schools accepted the terms of the contest, and the county superintendent agreed to assist. The questions were to be published in the local newspaper, the Surface Creek “Champion”; the editor said he would take them under advisement, but he never published them. The Republican county committeeman was called in to the “advisement”; the county superintendent, who was up for re-election, was also called in, and this lady made a hurried trip to the two towns and called off the contest. And would you like to know why? Well, one of the twenty-four questions read this way: “How much of the permanent school fund is loaned to the banks, and how much is on deposit?”
The county superintendent had sent this question to the state superintendent, and a letter came back, signed by both the state superintendent and the deputy: “I cannot answer this question. I could not get any information along this line.” The question was presented to various educators throughout the state, and they admitted that they did not dare to touch it. The question was presented to the editor of the “Rocky Mountain News,” the great organ of the plutocracy of Denver, and the editor not only refused to print anything about it, but stated that “any man that stirred up such things is a Bolsheviki and an undesirable citizen.”
In 1914 there was a great strike of the Colorado coal miners, which led to a civil war, not merely at the mines, but also in front of 26 Broadway, New York, the offices of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and also at Tarrytown, where the Rockefellers, father and son, have their palatial estates. This civil war was of concern to the Colorado schools, because they paid all the cost of it; the coal company gang in the state legislature put through a bill, taking five hundred thousand dollars from the school funds of the state, to pay the cost of breaking a strike for Mr. Rockefeller. The radicals carried on a campaign for a year or two over this issue, and as a result of the publicity one-fifth of the amount was paid back to the schools.