The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools

by Upton Sinclair

The business gang had run our national capital for so long that they had forgotten the possibility of anything else. But President Wilson appointed two or three men of liberal sympathies to the District Commission, and also to the District Supreme Court; so for the first time some attention was paid to the public clamor concerning the run-down state of the schools. Probably seventy-five per cent of the buildings were old and unsanitary, and the overcrowding was unendurable, especially in the high schools and the schools for Negroes; many of the pupils had to do their work by artificial light. The way toward school progress was blocked by entanglements of “red tape”; there was, and still is, a triple control of school construction—recommendations for new building sites are made by the board of education to the District Commission, and from there go to the Appropriation Committee of the House of Representatives.

The movement for a new deal in school affairs came to a head in 1916. A Universalist clergyman, Dr. John Van Schaick, Jr., was appointed to the school board, and shortly afterwards became its president. He secured an assistant for his church, paying this assistant out of his church salary, while Dr. Van Schaick gave most of his time, without salary, to the service of the Washington schools. He was a man of culture and broad vision, a liberal of the finest type; and what the gang thought of him was revealed three years later, when he was nominated for the District Commission, and a congressional hearing was held. The first witness to take the stand was a Washington business man, who set forth that Dr. Van Schaick was neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but “a man who has been handling a few dollars in a church,” whereas “we want a man who has been in our city here, who has made a success of life.” Reading this, I could not help thinking of a story I was told, about a former president of this board of education who had made such a success. He remarked to a friend that he had sold for a school site a lot so steep that it had to be measured perpendicularly!

The war came, and Dr. Van Schaick obtained leave of absence from the school board and served as Commissioner for Belgium of the American Red Cross. He has written a book about this, “The Little Corner Never Conquered.” Returning, he again became president of the school board, and took up the fight for the public. The district commissioners were fixing the value of the traction lines, squeezing out a little of the “water,” and Dr. Van Schaick supported them. He opposed one of the traction mergers, which would give value to millions of dollars worth of this “water.” Also, there was a commission to reduce rents, and Dr. Van Schaick committed the crime of supporting one of its members who was trying to expose the high rate of interest charged by the banks on second mortgages. He had tried to get the new tuberculosis hospital located in a decent site, whereas the real estate interests wanted it in a swamp. As if that were not enough, this clergyman-educator advocated prohibition enforcement—and anybody who knows Washington life will understand how intolerable this would be to senators and congressmen. Also, he supported the commissioner of police, who was trying to clean up the “red-light” district; and this also would cause much inconvenience to our leading statesmen.

There was a superintendent of schools who was incompetent, but who stood in with the gang. He had made political appointments, he had fought the unions of the teachers and held down the teachers’ salaries; also, he was a local favorite, raised in our own schools, and supported by the Washington “Star.” Now Dr. Van Schaick and his board of education had the temerity to get rid of this superintendent by a vote of eight to one. The gang took up the challenge, and “Pat” Harrison of Mississippi introduced into the Senate a resolution for an investigation of school affairs. This investigation occupied a period of six weeks, during which time the work of the schools came pretty much to a stand-still.

Senator Harrison was not the chairman of the committee, but he took upon himself the rôle of prosecutor, and did ninety-five per cent of the questioning. He is the fighting type of statesman, who specializes in not very courteous wit. I don’t suppose that many of my readers will care to peruse the 1349 closely printed pages of this government document, but my sense of duty has carried me through it, and I report briefly thereon. It was a trial of four or five leading citizens for the crime of being public-spirited. Dr. Van Schaick was on the stand for two or three days, and showed himself a man of social vision and of the finest courtesy. The spirit in which he was questioned may be judged from one sentence of Senator Harrison’s: “And you have a very great admiration for your ability in answering the questions that have been propounded to you, have you not?” This caused the other members of the school board to submit a written request that they might be represented by counsel at the hearing; but the request was denied.

The next victim was Mrs. Margarita Spalding Gerry, novelist, widow of a former teacher in the Washington schools. Mrs. Gerry, a self-supporting woman, had given herself without salary. She was accused of the crime of owing Dr. Van Schaick a thousand dollar mortgage on her home, which compelled her to vote as he directed. She was able to prove, first, that Dr. Van Schaick did not own, and never had owned, any mortgage on her home; and, second, that her vote had frequently been opposed to his. There was a school teacher, Miss Alice Wood, who was accused of having answered some questions of her pupils on the subject of Bolshevism. Later on we shall hear her story; suffice it for the moment to say that the school board had punished her, but that Mrs. Gerry, coming to know her, had realized that injustice had been done. That constituted Mrs. Gerry a Bolshevik, and made it necessary that both she and Miss Wood be questioned minutely as to their political views. Dr. Van Schaick, on returning from Belgium, had persuaded the board to reverse its action in Miss Wood’s case; and that constituted Dr. Van Schaick a Bolshevik.

Then came the turn of Mrs. Coralie Cook, a colored citizen, representing the large Negro population of the city on the board of education. In Mississippi the Negroes do not get much education, and Senator Harrison felt it his duty to put this wife of a professor at Howard University in her place. He referred to her niece, a teacher, as “this Clifford woman,” and to a Negro teacher in the Washington schools as “a fellow by the name of.” At the same time the Senator was cordially cooperating with a Negro board member who had turned traitor to the liberal board.

It had chanced that prior to the war the Dutch consul had sent to Dr. Van Schaick a scientist from his country with a letter of introduction, and Dr. Van Schaick, as a matter of routine, and in the midst of many pressing duties, gave this gentleman a letter authorizing him to inspect the schools. Subsequently this man was accused of being a German spy, and it was proved that, as an anthropologist, and being interested in racial types, he had taken nude photographs of women. Whether these photographs were really obscene, I cannot say; but in any case, Dr. Van Schaick had known nothing about the matter. But there was that letter of introduction; and you can imagine what use the kept press made of such a chance! Professor H. B. Learned of Yale University and Stanford, having been so unwise as to serve on this school board, had to travel all the way from California to explain that the Dutch anthropologist had visited his home one evening and played on the piano and sung!

The city of Washington can claim the prize over all the capitals of the world for the degradation of its press. The leader of this man-hunt was Theodore Noyes of the “Star,” who has always run the school board; he is the brother of Frank Noyes, director of the Associated Press. Also Edward B. McLean, owner of the Washington “Post,” heir of one vast fortune and husband of another; Mr. McLean is notorious among Washington newspaper men for his defiance of the prohibition laws, and it takes some real defiance to achieve such prominence in Washington.

These two newspapers made the claim that Dr. Van Schaick was not eligible for the office of district commissioner, because he had not been a resident of Washington for three years. They published a photographic facsimile of a ballot alleged to have been cast by Dr. Van Schaick at his summer home in Cobleskill, New York. It was subsequently proved that this ballot had been cast by Dr. Van Schaick’s father, at the time when Dr. Van Schaick was busy with Red Cross work in Belgium. You will not need to be told that the newspapers did not feature this correction!