An Assault Upon Our Schools
Gottlieb, Edward P .
By Edward P. Gottlieb An Assault Upon Our Schools Bankers and Real Estate Speculators Waal Lower Taxes—And So the Schools Art Suffering—And Will Continue to Safer. UJ ACE CUTS,...
...Knowledge is a stimulus...
...a swipe at salaries, and on to still larger classes...
...then shrinkage of supplies...
...When she first went on it in pre-war days she gave practically the whole of her attention to the treatment of widows and children, and organized a campaign in Norwich which attracted considerable interest much further afield...
...He wsi working for the Government...
...Mrs...
...Alas...
...The casualties are piling up I Larger classes mean more than increased teacher load and diminished efficiency...
...On tko Old Norwich Board of Guardians shs sat aa a repre» —" sentative of Coslany Ward...
...And yet Education is being rapidly undermined today...
...We have a state income tax in Massachusetts which has no surtax rates, which taxes earned incomes...
...Equally well it will serve the slave struggling for civil and political freedom and the class-conscious worker striving for social and economic justice...
...Hen-, derson was for a good many yean a trustee of the Consolidated Charities, and a very active governor of the School for Blind and Deaf Children at Gorleston...
...Those close to Comrade Henderson knew that in everything he wrote he had his wife's cooperation and skillful aid...
...For the real campaigns in behalf of the free school we must turn to the Chartists in England, the Workingmen'a Party of 1829 in New York City or the General Association of German Workingmen...
...To understand the vital significance of present-day attacks upon the school we must first aak why the slaveholder of the South forbade the Negro to learn to read and write, and why the old Russian revolutionists were compelled to teach the Czar's peasants in secret...
...In my own branch the libraries expected no more periodicals other than those contributed free by religious denominations, and practically no mors new books...
...UJ ACE CUTS, Unmploymeot, Sales Tut...
...In our own country the very life of the democracy depends upon the school, and whether we live under capitalism or Socialism, the rule of the people is a mockery without continually progressive standards of education...
...For him retrenchment is irrevocable...
...Social sciences, vocational training and branches for tea adjustment of normal as well as abnormal children would be thrown overboard by our noble tax-dodgers...
...In the Naase ef Economy In the name of economy, patriotism and self-sacrifice a thousand and one attempts are made to hamstring our educational opportunities...
...Wes, McCooey wont be missing much...
...For Governor Ely's messsge to the legislature suggests the s as pension of oar oldage sssistance law, and asks that he be given the power to declare a moratorium on the state's protective labor legislation...
...Henderson exerted in that difficult work...
...Ultimately they tend to produce a teacher disciplinarian little bitter than a prison guard...
...Most of the teachers are grumbling, but only a few organizations •uch as the Teachers' Union, the KG-fiB Association, and the Teachers' Welfare League are fighting...
...Teaching will be subordinated to police duty...
...On his own hook Superintendent of Schools O'Shea is looking for victims for aaother $400,000 cut, and this in the face of continually increasing school-enrollment...
...of ths worst type...
...The only hope of advancement for the post boy who must leave school ti supplement the family earning) will be gone, and the money save...
...Bat some people never learn, and Communists continue to talk big and then to insist thst their talk is strictly constit...
...They who have always been able to send their children to private schools branded the first free public school with the stigma of pauperism, in much the same way as they have tried to label unemployment insurance "a dole...
...The "American spirit means free education, else how hollow the boast of equal opportunity for all," we were told...
...Some More Stool Pigeons WHEN organizations indulge in wild and reckless talk, look out for stool pigeons...
...The stumbling block to such competition has often been that our Marsachusetts labor legislation is undoubtedly better from the point of view of the workers than that existing in most Southern states, and the laws limiting th* hours of labor for women era better even than in other New England states...
...It's a weapon...
...One of the fundamental differences that caused the separation between Socialists and self-styled "left wingers" in 1919 was the little matter of emphasis in expression...
...Henderson did a great deal of valuable public work...
...Yet it seems that our Democratic governor prefers to force our destitute aged—who are now receiving if they have been granted old-age assistance at all an average of about $8 a week—to forego this tiny pittance, rather than use his influence with the legislature to increase the extremely modest income and inheritance tax rates...
...Those for whom the Socialist Party was "too tamo" wanted wild and wilder talk about "capture and destruction" of the "bourgeois state...
...It is not without reason that the Socialist Party draws most of its vote and still more of its memberbership from the ranks of the comparatively b e t t e r educated workers...
...This is one day's' batch...
...Of course, from the point of view of the nstion aa a whole there is nothing advantageous in this proposal...
...Public lectures long ago felt the axe...
...Modest Taxes Our inheritance tax rates are modest, rising from 1%, on estates above $10,000 going to children, to 7% on estates above $1,000,000, with proportionately higher rates up to a maximum of 12% as the degree of kinship becomes more remote...
...What one section gains ths other will lose, and the nation as a whole will gain nothing...
...It was the most effective piece of leverage to the better treatment of women and children that had been given to Poor Law administration in Norwich, and resulted in some national publications, dealing with the question of relief, taking her work in Norwich aa their text and example...
...In addition to this, Mrs...
...This was in 1920, when she again represented Coslany, the ward she had served for several years-on the Board of Guardians...
...By Alfred Baker Lewis The Raw Deal Appears The Massachusetts "New Deal" Is Unmasked—Governor Ely, Al Smith's Dear Friend and Nominator at Chicago, Wants Moratorium on Labor Legislation —For the Bosses, Against the Workers—Demand Workers' Rights Amendment A GREAT many thousands of Massachusetts' citizens voted for Roosevelt and our Democratic governor, Ely, in the hope of getting a New Deal...
...We who are the vanguard of class-conscious workers must recognize our fight...
...I haven't seen a recent issue of a daily paper without some new attack upon educational standards...
...And now a new menace, growing daily and everywhere apparent...
...It was almost entirely due to her personal efforts and impassioned advocacy of the cause of the widows and children that their claims to practical sympathy came to'be adequately recognised...
...The hundred other dollarayear "company union" organizations don't know how and wouldn't dare make a fighting campaign in defense of the institutions in their trust...
...The Comrades Henderson were an ideal couple, both wholly devoted to the cause of Socialism...
...on his education and on that oi his friends in continuation schooli or evening recreation centers will undoubtedly be spent in the next twenty-live years to reclaim hi» from delinquency...
...Then there la the vicious propaganda which characterises all progressive tsaasasiss in education as "frill...
...In one way Mrs...
...for the special propaganda of ths Communists, he is a Negro...
...The only net effect will bo that more of oar textiles will bs produced under inhumanly long hours and without adequate Workmen's Compensation protection than at present And ths action of Massachusetts in suspending protective labor legislation would almost certainly bs followed by a powerful movement in other states to do ths same thing, so that in ths long ran ths competitive position of Massachusetts, oven from the point si view of the hard-boiled exploiting manufacturer, would not be strengthened...
...The fesaLpress of Norwich tells the story of Mrs...
...As for Instance (out of a single issue of ths official Communist sheet): -- "All workers and workers' organisations are warned against the following swlndlsrs"i * Morris Bier, who has been "exposed" "as a despicable swindle...
...Henderson's Work For Human Welfan READERS of The New Leaders read last week of the death of Mrs...
...Share-a-Job, Foreclosure, maybe Starvation I Hardly a breathing t>pell between successive attacks on security and standards, with the end nowhere in sight...
...The career of Mrs...
...Not content with the damags already done to the schools the Citizens' Budget Committee of bankers and realty speculators, and the New-York State Budget Ad« visory Committee, representing the full strength of reaction, are goading Governor Lehman into cutting $51,000,000 more from the budget, over one-half to come from State aid to education...
...Even Socialists, who had braced themselves esrly in the depression against a long sirge, have been stunned...
...elimination of extra-curricular and extension activities...
...We must remember that it was not politically packed Boards of Education or Defenders of America or any crowd of politicians or patrioteers who gave this country the free and compulsory school system...
...About this proposal Governor Ely says nothing...
...If there was one thing we thought we ccnild take for granted it was the public school with its continuous progress in educational standards...
...They have farther handicapped the schools by compelling decreased appropriations for ordinary supplies necessary for school routine...
...One thing led to another, until large numbers were being Indicted for calling for violence (although not all of them were tried...
...This seems to show that he has surrendered completely to the doctrine current In big business circlet that the way to bring back prosperity Is to soak the poor and avoid as fsr as possible tsx bardens on the rich...
...The same pollyannas who were craning "around the corner" with Buy Now and Boost America cam* paigna have now 'become panicky and act as if they had no hope of their system ever pulling us out of this hole...
...In Alabama 828 \ural schools, one-half the state's contingent, have been abandoned...
...The library, like the school, has dons a' mors flourishing business since the depression, in Brooklyn 14% mors in 1932 than the year before, yet it faces the same mayhem as oar schools...
...There still is to be found the public man to challenge the statement that education is a basic necessity in a democracy...
...Henderson mads history...
...A recent eb> colar of the New York City Safes, intendent warns that h* may |* unable to replace textbooks...
...The oligarchy have thrown us their challenge and we must answer: Safeguard the Heritage of Our Schools...
...Dividends may be passed and regained, but the lad who has lost his schooling during the depression will never make it up...
...Naturally, the self-styled Progressives, headed by an officer of Boston's nationally famous Ford Hall Forum, who energetically sought votes for Ely on the ground that he was a Progressive, are bitterly disappointed...
...a complete halt in school construction, and on even to the very closing of schools themselves...
...Wa mast include in this meagti indication of the move to scuttle the schools still another threat to a free educational institution, oar public libraries...
...Another account said: "Mrs...
...As James Oneal writes in "The Workers in American History," the "educated" of those days ridiculed the public school "as an impractical dream and as class legislstion incompatable with the very organization and being of civil society...
...It is pretty obvious that there is nothing new In the attitude of our governor...
...JPj & Green (Greenbanm, the Communist sheet anti-semitically takes painl to point has) has been active la the various Communist organizations, subsidiaries, camouflages and "innocents'" clubs, tarns out to bs a "racketeer, petty swindler, snd very suspicious character...
...She was also a co-opted member of Norwich Education Committee...
...It now appears that the New< Deal is a Raw Deal, so far as the aged end the industrial workers fro concerned...
...N» branch of the system will ht spared, and those will be hardest hit who need the service most bat whose power of resistance is least The evening schools especially will suffer gross curtailment or perhaps even abolition...
...Fred Henderson, wife of our British correspendent, of influenza at the age of 68...
...The Workers' Rights Amendment The only way of meeting this problem is by the Workers' Rights Amendment to ths Constitution, drawn op by Morris Hillquit, designed to empower the Federal Government to pass labor legislation that will be effective in all the states, that will have the effect of jacking up labor laws in the states backward in labor matters to the somewhat higher standards prevailing in the more progressive states...
...Does It ever dawn upon the members of the Communist party that they might get wise to themsj selves and find out what it '» about their party that eausel racketeers, crooks, plants, - spies snd stool pigeons Just naturally tf gravitate to it...
...tional, and to denounce the Socialists for hinting that their ranks are lousy with stool pigeons, and to expose stool pigeons who worm thsir way into ths confidence of the gullible Communists by the simple expedient of seeing the Communists and raising them...
...Only those who were closely in touch with Poor Law administration during the early years of the present century could fully appreciate the great influence that the late Mrs...
...First it was larger classes...
...A Moratorium The governor's proposal to declare a moratorium on our protective labor legislation is apparently based on the Idea that such a course would make it possible for Massachusetts' to steal business from the Southern textile manufacturers...
...All workers are warned," ths sheet goes on to say, "against ths following two rats": George Brown, who has been expelled and exposed as a stool pigeon...
...And so the Democrats carried the state for these two candidates by substantial majorities, although the Republicans elected three-fifths of the members of the legislature and 11 out of IS congressmen...
...Mrs...
...Henderson was elected a member of the Norwich CHy Council In 1920, the first year women were eligible for such offices, and she and her husband were the first busband-and-wlfe team in public office In England...
...and those labor leaders who were aa usual on the campaign payroll of the Democratic Party during the election are in an uncomfortable position...
...The social services of Norwich have for a long time owed an Incalculable debt to one of the first of her sex to claim a right to take part in the publio administration of those services...
...Today's list may be eclipsed by a new broadside tomorrow...
...it's power...
...Bat the governor has become the darling of the more hard-boiled manufacturers who operate on the theory that the way to make profits in depression periods is to tske advantage of hard times to worsen the pay and working conditions of labor...
...Closing the three teachertraining colleges, restricting highschool students to three or four subjects, raising the bars against college entrants, a compusory $100 fee in all city colleges, closing of kindergartens, playgrounds, and summer schools, and a long line of other impairments follow each other in rapid succession...
...She was elected a member of the City Council almost immediately after women became qualified to do so, and she and her husband were the first married couple in thia country to sit together on the same Municipal Council...
...at l'A%, the proceeds of gambling on the Stock Exchange at 8%, and certain forms of unearned incomes at 6...
...On the other hand, there is no state income tax at all on other, forms of unearned incomes, such ¦ as mortgage Interest and dividends on Massachusetts corporations— including the electric light companies—most of which an paying dividends and many of which, like the Edison Eloetrie Illuminating Company of Boston, are extremely profitable...
...Henderson gives a picture of the work that is being done in hundreds of municipalities by tens of thousands of Socialist officials, work that in many ways is more important than Parliamentary activity, because it comes closed to the lives of the people...
...Henderson's life and work, an inspiring story of devotion to the welfare of humanity and the cause of Socialism...
...If these losses, crippling as they are, were the finals of retrench* meat wo might bo reconciled for the present, bat there seems to bs no reason for such hope...
...George Clark (alLs Thompson) "has been expelled from the Communist party as an unscrupulous scoundrel and disrupter, who managed to gaia responsible posts in the Unemployed Council and the International Labor Defense, where hi misappropriated fujids...
...Very early the class lines were drawn on the question of free education, and the same economic reasons for this clash exist today...
...and on trial they hired good lawyers and were busily engaged in explaining that the robust and resolute talk that got them into the toils of the law meant nothing more than an appeal to workers to unite and vote together —which was a sour joke on them and a belated vindication of the Socialists...
Vol. 15 • February 1933 • No. 6
