The Chairman: We were voting on section 9 then: we were voting on the amendment to section 9.
CHAPTER LIV
THE FRUITS OF THE SOWING
So now our National Education Association is what the gang wants it to be. Let us see exactly what that is.
The next convention was held at Des Moines in 1921, and here were the first fruits of the sowing. I have before me a tabulation of the delegates to the Des Moines convention, classified according to their occupations. Statistics make tiresome reading, but in this case the statistics are the heart of the argument, so I beg you to consider these figures carefully. There were present at this convention a total of 553 delegates having votes; among them were: state superintendents, 33; county superintendents, 21; city superintendents, 104; presidents of colleges and normal schools, 28; principals of high schools, 34; principals of elementary schools, 54; supervisors, 23. That makes a total of 297 delegates belonging to the employing class—297 out of 553, a comfortable majority. But note further: the tabulation includes 14 miscellaneous, 46 not classified, 6 editors of educational journals, and 2 agents of book companies; if we set these to one side, we find that the 297 members of the supervising force were figured upon a total of 485 delegates.
And now, to balance this, consider the representation of the teachers: special teachers, 8; teachers in colleges and normal schools, 34; teachers in high schools, 65; and teachers in elementary schools, 81. That makes a total of 188 teachers, including college professors; and this to be balanced against 297 members of the supervising force! In our schools the teachers outnumber the supervising force by ten or fifteen to one; but in this national body, as between the two groups, they have thirty-nine per cent, while the supervising force has sixty-one. Such is “democracy” in the great educational organization of the school world!
At the close of the 1923 convention, held in Oakland, it happened that I was in the locality, and said something to a newspaper reporter about our school Tammany Hall. Some of the gang leaders made indignant reply; and I received a letter from Mr. Joy E. Morgan, editor of the official “Journal of the National Education Association,” who said that I was misinformed concerning the organization, and asked me to have lunch with him. I am shy about breaking bread with the enemy, but I am always glad to talk with him, because he never fails to give me better ammunition than I could otherwise get. So I went to call on Mr. Morgan after lunch, and we had a pleasant chat of an hour or so. He is a young man, and friends assure me that he is well meaning but uninformed. I will pass no judgment, but my story will make clear his amazing ignorance, not merely concerning his own organization, but even concerning his own paper.
Mr. Morgan started off with the ancient formula that the N. E. A. is “democratic”; all the teachers of the United States were welcome—in fact, they were implored to join their professional organization. I asked Mr. Morgan about this matter of having honorary members who were ex-officio delegates and endowed with votes. Here was a representative body, purporting to be democratic, but which started out with 23 life directors and a long list of ex-officio delegates, the president, the treasurer, the 12 vice-presidents, the 5 members of the executive committee, 52 state directors, 52 state superintendents of public instruction—and, to cap the climax, all the past presidents, a new one added every year! The total of these ex-officio delegates was 151, and out of this total just three were classroom teachers! That constituted a handicap against the teachers of 145 votes; and since it took 100 classroom teachers to elect one delegate, and in big cities five hundred teachers, it took somewhere between 14,500 and 72,500 teachers to overcome the handicap against them in every N. E. A. convention! Was that what Mr. Morgan understood by “democracy”?
The young editor did not use the phrase, “oil-domes,” but he did assure me that the interests of superintendents and teachers were not opposed, and that the teachers of the country, many of them, elected their superintendents to represent them; moreover, there were great numbers of teachers who were delegates—probably a majority of[of] the convention, Mr. Morgan actually said that; and then I handed him the tabulation of the Des Moines convention, which showed 188 teachers, as against 297 members of the supervising force. He studied it, and was obviously embarrassed. “I don’t know just what to say,” he replied. “I hardly think it can be accurate. The tabulation must have been made by some interested party.”
Now the tabulation had been given to me by Frances Harden, who is in Margaret Haley’s office, and I could not deny that Miss Harden was “interested” in the problems of N. E. A. representation. I said to Mr. Morgan: “I will investigate and find out just how that tabulation was prepared.”