The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools

by Upton Sinclair

In the text which follows I learn about this wonderful secretary, the daughter of a “patriotic instructor” of the G. A. R., who now maintains an office in New York, and is the “personal friend” of the seven hundred thousand school teachers of the United States. Many of these teachers do not know much about the Constitution; being afraid to reveal the fact to their supervisor, they are glad to write for advice to a specialist in patriotism. In the past five years a quarter of a million teachers have had either direct or indirect relationship with this system. Twenty-six states have passed laws requiring the teaching of the Constitution in the schools, and this secretary is right there with the dope, especially prepared for children of every age. For example: “The Supreme Court is the greatest contribution to free government ever made, in that it exists to protect the people from the tyranny of the government they themselves set up.” In other words, nine venerable gentlemen, seven of them the lifelong hired men of great corporations, have usurped to themselves the power of annuling laws of Congress—including a law intended to save several million children from slavery in glass factories and cotton mills and enable them to go to school.

There are numerous other great organizations of Bolshevik hunters supervising our schools—the American Civic Association, the “America First” Publicity Association, the International Association of Rotary Clubs, the Inter-Racial Council, the National American Council, the Sentinels of the Republic—a whole universe of Babbitts! The New York “Commercial,” a daily newspaper of Wall Street, makes a regular feature of Bolshevik hunting. It has an “expert” who publishes a daily department, “The Searchlight,” all got up in official fashion, with index numbers ready for filing in your spy cabinet: “File No. 21, Report No. 7, November 21, 1923, Schools and Colleges, Radicalism In”—this kind of thing gives delight to the Babbitt soul, like a stuffed cat to a baby. This particular report deals with the National Student Forum and its branches in the colleges, particularly the Harvard Liberal Club. It quotes me as approving these organizations. The passage is taken from “The Goose-step,” page 466, and appears in the New York “Commercial” as follows:

As an illustration of the activities of this group I mention that the Harvard Liberal Club, during the year 1922, had sixty luncheon speakers in five months, including such radicals as Clark Getts, Lincoln Steffens, Florence Kelley, Raymond Robins, Frank Tannenbaum, Roger Baldwin, Percy Mackaye, Clare Sheridan, Norman Angell, and W. E. B. Dubois.

The New York “Commercial” stopped there, and stopped, according to the rules of punctuation, with a period. But, as it happens, that period constitutes a lie; for in “The Goose-step” the punctuation mark is not a period, but a semi-colon, followed by the words:

Properly balanced by a group of respectable people, including Admiral Sims, Hamilton Holt, President Eliot, and a nephew of Lord Bryce.

You see what a dirty piece of work! The Harvard Liberal Club is what its name implies, an organization believing in free discussion and a hearing for both sides. I gave an account of its activities which proved it to be that. The New York “Commercial,” desiring to prove the Harvard Liberal Club a “radical” organization, deliberately mutilates my sentence, and represents the Harvard Liberal Club as inviting only radicals, and myself as endorsing such a procedure in colleges!

Now skip one or two thousand miles, to where the Sioux Indians once chased the buffalo, and the capitalist Indians now chase professors through college halls. The legislature of Iowa passed a law providing for a course in “citizenship,” and the state superintendent appointed a committee to prepare a course, the chairman being Harry G. Plum, professor of European History at the state university; a Columbia Ph.D., author of several historical works, and an entirely respectable person. Professor Plum, with the help of his graduate students, prepared a syllabus, in which he made so bold as to discuss American problems on the basis of facts. So Professor Plum became a target for the arrows of the Ottumwa “Courier,” which insisted that high school students ought not hear about such a topic as “the English Industrial Revolution.” Said the editor of the “Courier”: “To the teacher of history industrial revolution may mean a change in mechanical methods, but to the radical it means overthrow of government.”

Furthermore, Editor Powell objected to the use of such words as “problem” and “difficulty” in connection with our civilization. High school students ought not to know that there are any problems or difficulties—unless possibly it be the problem or difficulty of compelling college professors to obey their masters! Also Editor Powell would not permit Professor Plum to list the I. W. W. among labor organizations; he would not let the professor make frequent references to “the capitalist group” and to “capital and labor”; he would not let the professor state that the farmers were responsible for the Populist movement and the Nonpartisan League; nor would he permit the suggestion to be made that high school pupils should “participate in the working out of problems.” Editor Powell was so determined about all this that he carried the matter to the state legislature and forced an investigation, at which Professor Plum was grilled, and the university faculty was made unhappy. As Editor Powell put it in his paper: “Iowa City does not want any question to arise as to the brand of teaching at the university, while the big appropriations for the institution are pending before the legislature.” Needless to say, the wicked syllabus was thrown out of the schools of the state.

CHAPTER LX
THE SCHOOLS OF SOCONY

Among the great capitalists who have been making over our schools, the most active has been Mr. John D. Rockefeller. Mr. Rockefeller established the General Education Board, an institution with an endowment of a hundred and twenty-five million dollars, for the purpose of exercising supervision over American education. Of course this is all supposed to be entirely altruistic; its purpose is to improve our standards of education, and has no relationship whatever to the fact that Mr. Rockefeller is engaged in collecting tens of millions of dollars every year from a long list of our biggest industries. I have discussed this matter in detail in “The Goose-step”; but it is of such overwhelming importance to the schools, that I must repeat the facts here. The Rockefeller General Education Board is without doubt the most powerful single agency now engaged in keeping our schools subservient to special privilege. Dr. W. J. Spillman, of the United States Bureau of Agricultural Economics, tells of the efforts of the Rockefeller board to control the agricultural colleges in the different states, and of the activities of their agent, David F. Houston, ex-president of the University of Texas, and Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson, to keep the farmers of the United States from learning anything about how they were “deflated” by the Federal Reserve banks.