Next, Principal Olive Jones of New York, 1924 president of the N. E. A., also trustee and director. I asked two New York teachers to tell me about her, and the answer came: “She is small-minded, vindictive, not over-scrupulous, a self-advertiser and office seeker, a good, clever politician.”
Last but not least, the representative of Columbia University in our educational Tammany Hall. Before introducing him it is necessary to explain that for the first decade of this century our national school machine was run by Nicholas Murray Butler, who was president of the N. E. A. in 1895, and then head of the Department of Education at Columbia University. Becoming president of Columbia, Butler dispensed the educational patronage of Teachers’ College for his gang. How great this patronage is, you will understand when I tell you that Teachers’ College has officially announced that it furnishes more teachers than all the other universities and colleges of the United States and Canada combined. You will find half a dozen chapters about the dispenser of this patronage in “The Goose-step,” and I point out to you that the most bitter critics of the book did not find a single error in my statements concerning him; nor did one educator in the United States come to his defense.
“Nicholas Miraculous” was preparing himself to take charge of the American government, so he no longer had time to bother with the school world. He turned this detail over to one of his subordinates, George D. Strayer, professor of educational administration in Columbia University, and 1919 president of the N. E. A. It was during Strayer’s presidency that the great plot was hatched, and he received a year’s leave of absence from his university, so that he might devote his entire time to putting it through. He presided at the Milwaukee convention of 1919, where he failed. Then he was elected first vice-president, and sat at the right hand of the president at the Salt Lake City convention of 1920, and supervised her every move. Both Strayer and Butler are life directors of the N. E. A.; and so, as you read this story, you must understand it as one more of the Nicholas Murray Butler chapters of “The Goose-step”—it is the spectral hand of old J. P. Morgan, the elder, reaching out and seizing the minds of your children, and twisting them out of shape, so that Morgan’s heirs shall be able to pick their pockets without inconvenience.
Our story begins with the midwinter convention of the N. E. A. in 1918. Miss Frances Harden of Chicago was the first classroom teacher who ever attended a midwinter convention—and she had to pay her own substitute in order to do it! She saw the plot being hatched by the Department of Superintendence, and brought back word to the Chicago teachers, who got out a circular describing it, and pointing out what had happened in their own state of Illinois, which had just been “reorganized” and made a delegate body according to the new scheme. The first Illinois convention under this plan had been held in December, 1917; 1,360 teachers had attended, and the effect of the scheme had been that 1,193 of these teachers were disfranchised! There were only 167 delegates entitled to vote, and the occupations of these delegates were listed as follows: county superintendents, 42; city superintendents, 53; presidents of colleges, 4; principals of high schools, 12; principals of elementary schools, 24; teachers in colleges, 5; teachers in high schools, 13; teachers in elementary schools, 14. In other words, out of 167 delegates, 135 represented the supervising departments, and only 32 were teachers—only 14 of these being elementary classroom teachers!
This Illinois reorganization was the work of Owen of Chicago; it was his pet scheme. At the Pittsburgh convention notice was given of intention to apply it to the N. E. A., and the gang set to work to line up the school bosses.
Then came the Milwaukee convention of 1919; here Strayer presided, and the gang had a charming device to get rid of the teachers. The by-laws provided for the business meeting at 11 a. m. of the 4th of July. Milwaukee had a “sane Fourth” program for that day, and the teachers were supposed to be occupied in the parks; the gang, thinking to catch them off guard, called a “snap” meeting at nine in the morning. But the Milwaukee teachers have been trained in politics, and know its devices. They had arranged to have the “sane Fourth” program taken care of by those teachers who were “associate” members of the N. E. A., while the “active” members, who had votes, were to attend the business meeting. Some of them got wind of the 9 a. m. trick, and these went in and started singing “America.” They went right on singing “America” until 11 a. m.—they are so patriotic in Milwaukee, and that was their idea of a “sane Fourth!” To make sure of keeping it sane, these Milwaukee teachers omitted to eat any lunch, and stayed by the convention until it came to an end at 5 p. m.
The gang brought up their reorganization scheme, and Margaret Haley arose on the floor of the convention, and told them that they were violating their federal charter. The reply was that they would put the scheme through and get the charter changed afterwards. But Margaret Haley, who has a way of consulting lawyers, pointed out to them that any teacher could get a court injunction, and forbid them spending a penny of the association’s money for a year. So they dropped the proposal; Owen resigned from the committee and moved to discharge it; the slate was wiped clean, and the teachers thought the scheme was dead—except for a few who made note of a motion to appoint a committee to take up the question of amending the charter of the N. E. A!
The place selected for the next national convention was Salt Lake City. The classroom teachers made no protest—how were they to know that the gang had been conducting an “educational survey,” combing the United States with a fine comb, to find one place where they might be sure of getting their way? Said one teacher, when she got to Salt Lake and saw the frame-up: “We should have had notice of this.” Said H. S. Magill, field secretary of the N. E. A.: “You blocked us twice; this year we’ve come where your cohorts couldn’t follow us!” Said Strayer, strutting like a little bantam: “We took it where we could put it over.” And if that is not enough for you, a prominent official of the Milwaukee convention told Miss Ethel Gardner, quite naively, that Professor Strayer had a most wonderful plan, by which he was going to get all the big business men of the United States back of the N. E. A! (He did.)
When the minutes of the Milwaukee business meeting were produced, they included a notice of intention to amend the by-laws at the next convention, by repealing the provision which requires a year’s notice before a constitutional amendment can be adopted. No one could recollect having heard such notice given, but the minutes showed that it had been given by Professor Howard Driggs, the great Mormon educator. It was a peculiar kind of proposition for a great educator to make; whenever you mention the subject of constitutions and by-laws to such an educator, the first thing he praises is that system of “checks and balances” prevailing in the Constitution of the United States, which imposes restrictions upon the hasty passions of the masses and compels us all to stop and think before we act. Such a provision had been put into the by-laws of the N. E. A.; and now it was proposed to abolish it, and permit the hasty passions of the masses to prevail!
Professor Driggs apparently realized the strangeness of such a proposition, coming from a great educator; discussing the matter on the floor of the Salt Lake convention, he said he had not known the contents of the notice when he gave it. Somebody had handed it to him—he thought perhaps it was Mr. Magill, the field secretary—and asked him to give the notice, and he did so. Dear, innocent, trusting Mormon educator—you could hardly believe that he was forty-seven years of age! Before you decide what to believe about him, wait and see what use the gang made of that alleged notice.