But they couldn’t drop her from Chicago. The teachers there have power of their own, and they have just got the legislature to adopt the “Chicago teachers’ pension plan.” Under this plan the teacher gets a pension after having taught for twenty-five years in the United States, fifteen years of which must be in Chicago. Women are recognized as human beings, getting equal treatment with men. But the all-important point is this: the pension funds are under the control of a committee of nine, three of them being members of the board of education, and the other six being teachers elected by teachers. This is the only pension fund in the United States which is under the democratic control of those who put up the money; and it is hereby suggested that every teacher in the United States should set to work to make that Chicago law the “standard” pension law of the United States.
Next, let us consider the attitude of the N. E. A. on the equally important question of teachers’ tenure. Is a teacher a civil servant, with some permanence and security; or is a teacher a wage-slave, who may be “fired” without notice and without excuse? At Salt Lake City the committee on tenure handed in a report and a resolution. All the resolutions appeared in printed form—but that on tenure was left out. Margaret Haley fought for a whole day to get the floor, and finally one superintendent who had a sense of decency insisted that she should be heard, and she asked about this resolution. The chairman asked the secretary what had become of it, the secretary asked somebody else, and so they “passed the buck.” The resolution had been mysteriously “lost,” and nobody knew what had become of it. At Boston, in 1922, they passed a resolution to work for tenure in every state, but they have not done it in a single state.
They don’t want to be bothered with the teachers, they want the teachers to obey orders and teach. Miss Ethel Gardner told me of her experience at Salt Lake City, where she happened to be the only classroom teacher present at a conference of administrators. They told how they had been trying to improve their teachers by holding meetings every Saturday morning and talking to these teachers. But the stubborn teachers persisted in not improving, and even showed resentment at having their Saturday mornings taken in that way. The superintendents discussed the question whether the teachers might not become more docile if the school board would pay them for attending these Saturday morning improvement meetings. Finally some one asked Miss Gardner what she thought about it, and she asked if it had ever occurred to them to let the teachers talk at these teachers’ meetings. It was as if Miss Gardner had thrown a bomb into their midst. Not one of them had ever thought of such an idea! She went on to tell what the Milwaukee Teachers’ Association was doing for the improvement of teaching, and when she got through they thanked her quite earnestly for having made an entirely original contribution to their conference:
These were unusually polite superintendents. As a rule, they resent such interference, and take any suggestion from a teacher as an affront to their dignity. Margaret Haley is one of the most charming of women, a delightful companion, and on the floor of a convention the very soul of wit and good fellowship; but to the N. E. A. bosses she is a fiend in petticoats. They regularly ignore all her resolutions; and when she gets the teachers stirred up, and some action becomes necessary, they take her resolutions and write them over and present them as a contribution of their own. At the same time they diligently circulate slanders about her; she has been paid ten thousand dollars to deliver the Department of Classroom Teachers over to the American Federation of Labor; she received a salary of ten thousand dollars a year from the Chicago Teachers’ Federation. Such falsehoods as this are circulated and believed by most of the delegates at the convention—the facts being that Miss Haley gets the salary of a teacher from her own organization, and her organization is not affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.
At the same time the gang, like all other political gangs, is not too scrupulous about its own personnel. It carried for years one life director while he was in Joliet prison for appropriating public funds. It did not hesitate to make use of a man who, while secretary of a state teachers’ association, charged the association for plumbing work done on his home, and then it was found that the plumber hadn’t got the money—the secretary had kept it for himself! And of course the gang leaders are all tied up with the book graft and with other Big Business in their own localities. The book agents swarm to the conventions, and they have their candidates, and if these candidates do not win, it is because some other book agent has been more active. At the last mid-winter convention of the Department of Superintendence, a prominent candidate for president was the school superintendent of Milwaukee, and Major Clancy boasted to a friend of mine that this great educator would surely win. He was favored by the American Book Company. Major Clancy is getting old, and somebody fooled him; the successful candidate came from the city where Ginn & Company has its headquarters!
The first aim of the prudent school superintendent is to stand in with the “bookmen,” as they call themselves. For, whenever there is a vacancy in a desirable place, the book companies are the first to learn of it, and they know their own. So the N. E. A. is honeycombed with book intrigue and graft—especially the Department of Superintendence, the part which really counts. I shall tell you bye and bye of an especially crooked five year book “adoption” in the state of Indiana. Immediately after that event, it was noticed that a practically unknown superintendent from Indianapolis became president of the Department of Superintendence.
That caused a scandal, and efforts were made to break the book companies’ hold; it is like the efforts to drive the railroads out of state politics. At the last meeting of the Department of Superintendence it was announced that no “bookmen” were to have rooms in the Cleveland Hotel, where the N. E. A. had its headquarters; but I am told by a gentleman who was present that the American Book Company had all the rooms it wanted. This same gentleman tells me that he was present at a convention in Milwaukee, some years ago, when it was discovered that the American Book Company had taken the entire second floor of the hotel in which the N. E. A. had settled; Cooley of Chicago, who happened to be president that year, moved his headquarters to another hotel.
Many of the big chiefs of the N. E. A. draw royalties from text-books. Strayer of Columbia edits a whole series of “teachers’ professional books” for the American Book Company; also, it features one of his educational books. Then there are the elaborate systems of record cards which he edits; these are advertised and exhibited at every meeting of the Department of Superintendence. Also there are fees for surveying city school systems, and recommending buildings. I am told by one who knows Strayer that he is eager for money; and this is a part of his Columbia heritage—you may recall the three hundred thousand dollar residence, built out of trust funds for “Nicholas Miraculous.” Sometimes a great expert is summoned to survey a school system, and he tells the city that it needs many new buildings. Also he names the architects who know how to put up just the sort of buildings which he recommends. The architects get six per cent for their work, and pay the expert one-twelfth of that. A modern city thinks nothing of spending a million dollars for a new high school, so the expert’s rake-off will be five thousand dollars.
CHAPTER LVI
BREAD AND CIRCUSES
We have followed closely the business and politics of the N. E. A. conventions; let us now consider them in their educational and social aspects. They are imposing assemblages, and of course loom colossal to the cities in which they occur. To have thirty or forty thousand visitors spend a week in the city inspires the local merchants with a deep respect for culture, and the local boosters get busy to show the school-marms a good time. The N. E. A. politicians naturally make this a condition in the placing of the convention; they want to have the delegates occupied with scenery and entertainments, so as to distract their minds from political controversies. This wisdom has come down to us from the Roman Empire; then it was bread and circuses, now it is boat-rides, auto-rides, luncheons, and telephone calls.