Next came a proposition before the board to cut out night schools and the Americanization program, on the ground that these cost too much money. The Socialist carpenter moved that instead they should cut out the military training; and he demanded a public hearing on the proposition. The board set a time for the hearing, and then began it earlier, hoping to rush it through before the opponents of militarism got in. But that was easy for a soap-boxer who has learned to speak at eight meetings in one day; he held all eight meetings right there before the board, and kept things going until the regular time which had been set for the discussion!
It proved to be a lively session. The Reverend Shutter, pastor of the Church of the Redeemer—oh, magnificent irony!—wrote a letter in defense of militarism, and pointed out how the army was needed for the putting down of strikes. The congressman for the Black Hand liked this so well that he put it into the Congressional Record, and it was sent out under the frank of the government. The editor of the Minneapolis “Labor Review” stated that he had heard the wife of a school board member, taking part in a debate at a women’s club, state that “we need soldiers to put the Socialists down.” This was practically the same thing as the clergyman had said, but for some reason the militarists took offense, and the editor was challenged to name the woman—which he did.
The climax came when a Congregational clergyman by the name of Stafford spoke in opposition to military training. He was lieutenant and chaplain in a medical regiment of the Officers’ Reserve Corps; so here was a first-class scandal. The members of this corps held a meeting and expelled him from their mess, and demanded that he surrender his commission. The commanding officer of his regiment demanded that he apologize and recant, and when he refused, preferred formal charges against him for “conduct unbecoming an officer.” The army martinets set up the contention that members of the Officers’ Reserve Corps and of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps are part of the army, and are under military discipline at all times, and it is a breach of discipline for any member of any unit to oppose military training. It is pleasant to be able to record that the War Department refused to sustain this extreme doctrine.
I have told in “The Goose-step” of the elaborate system of spying which the Black Hand maintained at the University of Minnesota, located in Minneapolis. They did the very same in the schools; they got out a questionnaire on militarism, and when one teacher omitted to answer about Socialism and labor unions, the fact was broadcasted in the kept newspapers. They sent a spy to inspect the text-books—including annotations written in the teachers’ own copies. One teacher told me of this, and how her principal had refused explanation of the incident. They tested students on Socialism, the I. W. W., etc., for the purpose of spying on the parents of these children. One high school teacher thought it proper that her pupils should know the meaning of such words before they answered questions; she advised them to go to a Socialist meeting and hear the Socialist arguments, and she was summoned by the principal and told that she would be discharged if she repeated this offense. Another teacher was censured for advising a student to read “The Jungle.”
The spies were especially successful in the case of W. R. Ball, “director of citizenship” in the Minneapolis schools. Mr. Ball had the idea that democracy really means something, and should be applied in every-day life; still worse, he belonged to the American Federation of Teachers. The Citizens’ Alliance had a so-called “American Committee,” and this committee employed two spies, bearing the hundred per cent names of Olsen and Kunze, who collected a mass of gossip concerning Mr. Ball’s utterances to his pupils. For example, he had referred his advanced students to John Fiske’s “Critical Period of American History”; in this work a chapter dealing with the period prior to the adoption of the Constitution is entitled “Drifting Toward Anarchy.” So the spies reported that Mr. Ball had advised his students to read a Socialist book entitled “On the Road to Anarchy.” They also introduced a statement charging disloyal teaching, signed by a well-known saloon keeper; and on the witness stand before the board of education, this gentleman was unable to remember anything in the statement, and finally admitted that the paper had been handed to him to sign by Spy Olsen.
Twenty-four principals and teachers, co-workers with Mr. Ball, appeared to testify to the value of his work, and a committee of professors of the state university, including a dean of the Graduate School and head of the history department, certified to the value of the pamphlets Mr. Ball had got out for his students. But Mr. Ball, in his statement to the board of education, confessed to holding such ideas as “that a large number of workers under the present capitalistic system, were getting wages too low to support their families with the necessities of life.” Also: “We defined a radical as a man who went to the roots of things and traced cause to effect, and was necessarily a deep thinker, and a friend to justice and righteousness.” The Minneapolis board of education considered that this was equivalent to a plea of guilty, and so they drove Mr. Ball from the Minneapolis schools.
You will be amused also to hear the story of how the Black Hand of this city put a detective agency upon the trail of Comrade Thompson, and what they found. The report came in that he was a plumber, French descent, member Holy Rosary Catholic Church, short, thick-set, dark complexion, could neither read nor write the English language, and expressed himself with great difficulty on the platform. Members of the Citizens’ Alliance who had heard Lynn Thompson speaking at eight meetings per day, told the detective agency that the details didn’t fit; they had been shadowing the wrong Thompson!
It is sad to have to report that after six years of devoted service to the city, Lynn Thompson and Mrs. T. F. Kinney were defeated for re-election to the Minneapolis school board in 1923. The teachers supported them solidly, and they were able to show the voters how they had saved the city more than a million dollars. But the Black Hand was out to put down Socialism, and they did it in the usual way—with their money. The contractors raised a campaign fund; Mr. Purdy wrote to the vice-president of the First National Bank, pointing out the perils of radicalism and appealing for support. The club women turned out with their automobiles—and the wives of workingmen did not turn out, and that tells the story.
Out of ninety thousand votes the Big Business ticket won by four thousand majority—and at the head of the board was the Citizens’ Alliance candidate, a man by the name of Gould. It has since been revealed by a senatorial investigation that this man was holding a clerical position in one of the departments at the state capital, drawing a salary of four hundred dollars a month from the state, while doing the work of the so-called “Sound Government League,” an organization of the Black Hand formed for the purpose of evading the corrupt practices law of the state. This league had spent half a million dollars in order to re-elect the candidate of the Black Hand as governor of Minnesota; and now its secret agent, Gould, is on the school board of the city, doing everything in his power to overcome the accomplishments of Lynn Thompson and Mrs. Kinney.
What does this mean for the teachers? I have before me a letter from a Minneapolis teacher, who has ventured to speak out against school autocracy. He explains that he has not been able to send me data, because he has been loaded with a double amount of work, as punishment for his opinions. I dare not tell you what this work is, because that might lead to the teacher’s being recognized. He tells me of the struggle of the teachers’ organizations, and the plan which they are now agitating—to be permitted to experiment with a school without a principal. He tells me also how the high schools are on a “six-hour day” plan, against which the teachers are in opposition. Says my friend: