Mr. Johnson was running for re-election to a public office, and Miss Hesse, a citizen of St. Louis, was being asked for her vote; she thought she had a right to be informed about the matter, and she said to Mrs. Gellhorn, privately and politely: “Is it true, as has just been stated at an open men’s meeting, that Mr. Johnson is the head of a sweat-shop, and is connected with a real estate company doing business with the board?” That was all of the conversation; and for it Miss Hesse, who was head assistant of the Franz Sigel School, and had been a teacher in St. Louis for thirty-one years, was driven from her position and from the school system.
Mr. Johnson himself got hold of the story, and the matter was brought up before the board. A motion was made for the expulsion of Miss Hesse, and when the motion was about to die, Mr. Johnson himself seconded it. Miss Hesse managed to get a public trial, and at this trial Mr. Johnson served in the triple capacity of complainant, prosecutor and judge. Three other members of the board gave testimony against the teacher, and then voted as judges against her.
I am told by one who has investigated the matter that the charge concerning Mr. Johnson’s connection with a real estate company was false; but the charge had been made in a public meeting, and so Miss Hesse thought she had a right to inquire about it. Whether Mr. Johnson’s large box and basket factory is properly described as “a sweat-shop” I can not say; if I should call it that, Mr. Johnson, who is a contentious person, might put me on trial also. But I presume I may quote a physician in St. Louis, Dr. H. W. Faber, who writes me that he had to attend girls who worked in this basket factory, and had worn down the skin of their fingers until the blood oozed out on the baskets. I presume also it is permissible to say that one of the ladies who testified to having heard Miss Hesse’s question about a “sweat-shop,” belongs to a family which ran a sweat-shop in the Missouri penitentiary!
Miss Hesse’s expulsion made a great stir in the city; a petition was circulated for her restoration, and twenty-five thousand people signed it. The Central Trades and Labor Union appointed a committee to take up the matter; but the board declared that it had no power to advise the superintendent to reappoint a teacher. We may venture to guess that if the board had made a polite recommendation, the superintendent would not have ignored it. But they preferred to leave matters as they stood; and the rule for teachers in St. Louis was stated to the newspapers by a Jewish rabbi: “Do nothing, say nothing, be nothing!”
CHAPTER XXXVI
INTRODUCING COMRADE THOMPSON
We move north to Minneapolis, headquarters of the milling industry, and financial center of a rich iron and lumber territory. Here we find the beginnings of hope for America; organized labor has broken away from its old leadership and gone vigorously into politics, while the farmers, rejecting the propaganda of their exploiters, have struck hands with the labor unions. The result has been the Farmer-Labor party, which has elected both United States senators from Minnesota, and will probably take over the state administration at the next election. It controls the city council of Minneapolis, and is fighting to get the schools away from the Black Hand.
The labor-smashing society of Minneapolis for twenty years has been the Citizens’ Alliance, with a secret service department and a program of terror. They have gone after the schools, as everything else; they have had their friends on the board—contractors’ friends and real estate friends, and open-shop friends. During the war the contractors put forward their lawyer, the product of a military school, and the secretary of the Citizens’ Alliance announced that this Mr. Purdy was to run the school board. They borrowed the automobiles of the rich, and elected him by the votes of the cooks and chambermaids and chauffeurs of Minneapolis. As colleague on the board they gave him a Mr. Jepson, president of an artificial limb company, who, needless to say, was getting rich out of the war. While he was a member of the state senate, he had written letters to his agents, ordering that all packages should be shipped to him personally, because the express companies were so kind as to handle his personal packages free. I had an amusing experience in connection with this artificial limb gentleman. I sent the manuscript to a certain high-up Minneapolis educator, who thinks I am too extreme in my distrust of the plutocracy. He promised to correct my errors; and concerning this Jepson story he wrote:
This is a dim and mysterious tale. What frank does a state legislator have? A postage allowance perhaps, that all the boys use up in some way, whether for stamps or cigars. Or do you mean that the American Express Company carried his packages free because he was a legislator? I have never before heard this story, and I am not enough interested to look it up. But you had better get a more accurate version before you publish it. I know Jepson, and he does not strike me as just that kind of a scoundrel.
Well, I was more interested than my correspondent, and I looked it up. I have before me a poster, measuring 25 inches by 39, with letters at the top 1-5/8 inches in height:
/* DISHONEST IN BUSINESS IS THIS THE KIND OF STATE SENATOR WE WANT TO REPRESENT THE 44TH DISTRICT? */