THE MOOD OF AMERICA

...Tenure laws must be more widespread, strengthened to prevent discharge for political activity under pretext...

...The news was especially shocking because genial Ed Kelly, for the first time since his enforced retirement from City Hall, seemed on the comeback road...

...Cermak, ruthless leader of the Czech bloc, first welded Chicago's heterogeneous ethnic minorities into a seemingly impregnable Democratic machine...

...One of the most interesting developments in liberal-labor thinking of late has been the growing realization that, whatever their faults, machine politicians keep their word and are frequently more reliable than conservative reformers, especially with regard to explosive issues such as housing and race relations...

...2) they may favor the status quo with the majority of the board and community...

...By law a mayor pro tern could be selected only from among the aldermen...

...So it was fitting that he should have started his career as Chief Engineer of that most humble contributor to the city beautiful, the Chicago Sanitary District...

...Nash and his nephews got $12,000,000 worth of contracts during Kelly's reign over the city's sanitation...

...In these days of urgent need for better teachers, salaries, and annuities—when school support and redistricting are political issues— the teacher's voice should be heard...

...Teachers were not "first-class" citizens, even on school issues...

...Democratic Governor Horner vetoed the bill...

...He was the last of the great bosses...

...No other Democrat can swing the Negro vote as he could, and Kelly's loss will be especially felt in this year's mayoralty campaign, especially because Mayor Kennelly's vacillating stand on racial issues has earned him a dangerous amount of unpopularity among Negro voters...

...that restrictions are necessary to keep school funds and reputations out of politics...

...Yes, Kelly was lost to the world—and to his party...

...And from this period dates Kelly's lucrative association with Pat Nash, a sewer contractor...

...Evil tongues wagged, and Kelly was indicted for bribery and conspiracy in 1930...

...and, interestingly enough, it comes not from the regulars but from Democratic auxiliaries among liberal and labor forces...

...He was the first Chicago politician to give Negroes the same breaks other groups received...

...Another Mid-western board of education resolved that "no employe or group of employes of the board shall initiate, aid, or present any state legislation without first securing the approval of the board...

...The day after an East Chicago teacher filed for the legislature, the board resolved: "Any school employe who becomes a candidate for any elective political office will be required to take a leave of absence without pay immediately upon filing, or declaring his intention to file...

...It was not he who changed or mellowed, but his former liberal opponents...

...These results convinced Kelly that he could control the nominations for state offices only with down-state candidates, a useful rule-of-thumb the machine has subsequently followed to its advantage...

...To secure such legislation, and to replace school boards careless with their employes' rights, all of us must recognize the serious effect of these undemocratic restrictions...

...He was the only Democratic leader who could generate genuine enthusiasm among party rank-and-filers...

...He was booed from the stage...

...One has no absolute right to be a teacher...

...One, Col...

...But this court held a Little Rock school superintendent not subject to dismissal for campaigning against the board of education...

...As Kelly slipped into semi-retirement during his declining years, his reputation mellowed...

...Such restrictions upon teachers, said Rep...

...but the permissable causes for dismissal—-insubordination, unprofessional conduct and inefficiency—were stretched to include almost anything...

...The Horner group also triumphed two years later, nominating Scott Lucas for Senator over the Kelly candidate...

...The bill was passed unanimously in the Senate and by voice vote in the House...

...The courts declare teachers to possess the same political rights as other citizens...

...Can't Teachers Be Citizens Too...

...Kelly set a record for logevity in City Hall: fourteen years...

...Such a philosophy is unacceptable to citizens interested in good teachers, good schools, and the preservation of the American tradition of academic freedom...

...II Only once was he seriously beaten, and he recouped quickly...

...We are told that politics will render the teacher partisan and inefficient...

...By Theodore C. Sorensen IN Grand Prairie, Texas, five teachers of long service participated with other citizens in the 1947 and 1949 school board and school bond campaigns...

...His death evoked sincere grief among Chicago's Negro community...

...No one denied that "politics" was the cause...

...Furthermore, full-scale PAC entry into electoral activity has taught them the value of ward politicians whose moves are predictable and whose word can be trusted...

...Mayor Kelly just died...

...Such legislation promotes educational quality, stability, and continuity, helping prevent student and community unrest...

...Exceptions: (1) On election day, teachers may vote...

...his mere appearance was enough to draw an enthusiastic and completely spontaneous crowd...

...Such restrictions, then, are not necessary for good government...

...He graced Chicago with public buildings, wider streets, a streamlined fire department, and a municipally-owned transportation system that features the shortest and most expensive subway in the world...

...To the end he remained a symbol—a symbol the machine reformers despised—of the machine whose accomplishments they have now set out to emulate...

...In the good old days, progressives sighed, Mayor Kelly would have laid down the law...

...The board president whom the teachers had opposed stated that they had caused community "disunity" and consequently had to be fired...

...tongues continued to wag...

...Congress thereupon amended the act in 1942 to exempt teachers, and allow them to participate actively in political campaigns...

...there is no one today of his stature...

...The city decided in 1936 to legalize handbooks, thereby in effect transferring to the city treasury funds which under normal circumstances are collected unofficially by party stalwarts and various minions of the law...

...Their friendship continued throughout Kelly's term as mayor— each partner finding it convenient to concentrate on a different political area...

...They needed a few politicians, men like himself who realized that the working men had the same right to transportation as he has to the highways and street lights...

...The ensuing student strike revealed their popularity, but could not alleviate the fear which broke the local teacher association and morale...

...It is for the teachers' own good, to prevent a school "spoils system," affecting their promotion and tenure...

...The public "owns" the schools, to be sure...

...This West Coast teacher consulted a lawyer...

...Faced with the loss of federal funds because of inability to pick sites for housing projects, and recognizing that Negroes, too, are voters, Kelly would have told rambunctious aldermen to put up or get along without machine support...

...His own family was desperately poor, and his formal education included only four years of grammar school...

...and the politician, in the best sense of the word, whose genius lent itself to the efforts of liberal and trade union forces...

...When it was attacked throughout the state as undemocratic, the resolution was withdrawn...

...They can hardly be mere spectators in campaigns jeopardizing the welfare, finances, or integrity of the schools...

...Robert R. Mc-Cormick, was instrumental in obtaining the position for his friend Ed Kelly...

...An exceptionally capable teacher in the Middle West gave public evidence disproving statistics prepared by his school board for a local school annexation election...

...For in late years there seemed almost to be two Ed Kellys: the former mayor whose record term ended in a rising wave of denunciations of graft and corruption...

...but since Democratic County Chairman Pat Nash wanted to reward his sanitary friend, Ed Kelly, with the mayoralty, a cooperative state legislature repealed this statute...

...II Moreover, a teacher's job is not comparable to those civil servants under the various "Hatch Acts...

...The teacher belongs to a profession whose academic responsibility is to truth and honesty...

...Even if teacher or school welfare is at stake, the teacher is still "just a teacher," and school boards, pressure groups, or superintendents insist that political participation is "unprofessional...

...Stories to this effect are legion...

...If tenure laws gave no statutory protection, did this West Coast teachers have constitutional rights...

...During the critical primary fight last spring, when every effort was necessary to turn back a well-financed party rebel, it was big Ed Kelly who toured the crucial precincts with County Chairman Jake Arvey...

...In the face of the problems besetting Chicago, the elimination of a few petty grafters from the city payrolls appears singularly unimportant...

...These effective arguments are analagous to those used before legislative bodies and courts to support the Hatch Act and state and local restrictions upon public employes...

...The first part of the Kelly career is best known...

...The standard reply is Holmes' oft-quoted statement: "The petitioner may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policemen...

...Kelly was subsequently approached by the federal government, but their concern was appeased by the payment of the $105,000 in back taxes they gave him to understand he owed...

...The other side of Kelly, the democratic boss, is less well known...

...The fact that a few might encourage coercion, self-promotion, or political spoils is not reason enough to deny the full fundamental rights of citizenship to all teachers...

...One pastor, whose wealth is probably equalled only by his conservatism, compared Kelly to those other "martyred defenders of our people" —Franklin Roosevelt, Wendell Phillips, John Brown, and Abraham Lincoln...

...Dewey Short, Missouri Republican, are "an insult to their intelligence and a slur on their patriotism and character as good citizens...

...The whisper quickly made the rounds...

...Instead, they bar from comunity political activity an intelligent and disinterested group...

...In Chandler, Ariz., active teachers fought the issue of low teacher salaries in a public meeting and school board election...

...Teachers remaining in Grand Prairie lost all courage to speak out as citizens...

...Coincidentally, it was made retroactive...

...Denying first-class citizenship to teachers, who pay taxes and serve their country like other citizens, mars our philosophy of equal rights and free speech...

...One of Kelly's passions, it would seem, was civic beauty...

...His contract was not renewed...

...It has been a long journey from this day to present-day liberal-labor longings for a Kelly in City Hall...

...Three days after the 1947 election, the board of education passed a resolution "requesting" teachers not to participate in board elections...

...The absolute power of boards of education over transfer, promotion, and dismissal, must be curbed if employes are to feel free...

...In a bitter primary, during which Horner invaded Cook County, calling the regulars "penthouse pirates and corruptionists," and charging them with "trying to vote butterflies, fence rails, and ghosts," Kelly, to everyone's amazement was licked...

...GREGORY VOTAW is a Chicago political reporter and free-lance writer . .. THEODORE SORENSEN is editor-in-chief of the Nebraska Law Review...

...Throughout the nation, school board employes, regardless of loyalty, party, or issue involved, are expected to refrain from participation in the determination of controversial community policies...

...Faced with the strong possibilities of veritable racial warfare, precipitated by the housing issue, liberal and labor groups now pray for a man who can act, and act decisively...

...He appointed them to patronage jobs, and he placed their Congressman, William Dawson, on the Democratic National Committee...

...Toward the end of his life it was the second Kelly who dominated...

...Subsequently he taught himself the rudiments of engineering at night school, for although Ed Kelly was never one to underestimate good connections, his phenomenal career may largely be laid to this initial desire for self-improvement...

...Angered by this, as well as by Horner's intransigence on matters of patronage and by his bill providing for a system of permanent registration of voters (thereby discommoding the machine, which had accustomed itself to annual personal registration), Kelly and Nash decided to dump their governor...

...Other courts apply this test of the effect upon the school board employe's work...

...She was theoretically protected by their teacher tenure law, prohibiting dismissal of teachers for political reasons...

...Although scornful of "pinch-nosed reformers", he had the common touch without being patronizing...

...Too often the words of prohibition are quietly given and fearfully accepted...

...The reaction of the public to such obvious restrictions on democratic government and speech is generally lethargic or uncertain...

...He built a great Democratic machine, which has not only survived many crises but also caried off a series of unparalleled coups...

...But what of Miss Blank, notified that she was "guilty of unethical and improper conduct in soliciting votes for the coming annual election of the school district . . . causing a division among the patrons of the school . . . enmities therein . . . defiant attitude toward the board and the taxpayers . . . dismissed for insubordination...

...The original Hatch Act was interpreted to apply to several hundred thousand teachers paid in part from federal funds...

...Still another prevented teachers from sending letters to the press concerning local issues...

...But shortly after the 1949 election, the five teachers were dismissed, without hearing, warning, or cause...

...Harmed most is the democracy these teachers preach...

...But too often these arguments are shams, concealing the belief that the teacher is the community "hired man," hired to set forth, not question, majority thought...

...On school issues in which they are not disinterested, teachers have an obligation to present school needs and problems to the voters...

...Finally, it is argued that schools must not expose themselves to protests from parents of varying political interests...

...As Justice Black said: "Our political system, different from many others, rests on the foundation of a belief in rule by the people—not some, but all the people...

...Two men figured in this appointment...

...In a country whose people elect their leaders and decide great public issues, the voice of none should be suppressed...

...No matter how high he rose, too, Kelly never forgot that the little men, from whose level he had lifted himself, were also voters and human beings...

...And in this fact lies the significance of his long career...

...The law does not require a surrender of first-class citizenship, despite those school boards that rely upon the law governing public employes...

...Without warning or explanation, they were dismissed...

...From their point of view the Kennelly administration has been a bust...

...And just when the reform spirit seemed to engulf the Democrats, Kelly gracefully retired, permitting his party to elect the reform mayor...

...And certainly some teachers may abuse their school positions for political exploitation...

...Our schools will be cursed with such restrictions—and our teachers second-class citizens—until certain changes are made...

...but it cannot own the teacher...

...Ed Kelly became mayor and entered upon a career so successful that for fourteen years, with one exception, he could boast that not one of his proposals had ever been turned down...

...Certainly, "Their zeal in political activity must not carry them to such a degree of offensive partisanship that their usefulness in educational work is impaired...

...III But it was as a defender of the racial minorities that Kelly's real genius showed...

...The indictment was dropped...

...Those why cry out against teacher oaths frequently overlook the danger here...

...The resolution kindly added that this would not affect "ordinary and legitimate" individual expression and voting...

...Kelly saw to it that the Illinois primary launched Roosevelt successfully towards his third term, and he spearheaded the fourth-term nomination...

...Yet his life and career formed an integral unit...

...The mayor remarked that the trouble with the transit board was that it was composed of businessmen, who thought about nothing but dollars and cents...

...For there is considerable opposition to the present mayor, Martin Kennelly...

...Political activity alone is insufficient cause for dismissal...

...He disburses no funds, controls no votes, nor is his tenure dependent upon partisan victories...

...Hours later, in the police station downstairs, the cops were still passing the news...

...Indeed, an old Virginia statute which prohibited political activities by school employes, was soon erased by the Virginia Supreme Court, saying: "These rights are guaranteed to all the citizens of the state . . . And because a deserving man has been elevated to a position of honor and trust is no just cause of his pd-litical degradation, but the contrary...

...Ed Kelly never pretended to be anything but a political boss...

...Upon becoming the servant of the dominant groups, he is expected to be neutral and colorless, without political opinions and interests...

...Yet only a strong citizens' protest, led by the local chapter of ADA, prevented passage recently by the Lincoln, Neb., School Board of a "little Hatch Act" for its administrative employes, prohibiting participation in any organized political or legislative activity of any sort...

...A Southern school board immediately discharged a teacher upon hearing the rumor that he might file for county superintendent...

...but teachers do have constitutional rights against arbitrary dismissals which deny due process of law...

...With the aid of his cooperative aldermen and friends in the contracting business, he set about to beautify the city—a project worthy in intent albeit somewhat costly in execution...

...He was elected in 1935 by an all-time majority of over 600,000...

...Only intelligent school boards, school patrons, and school teachers can give American education the quality of freedom demanded in these times...

...At the 1944 Democratic convention Ed Kelly stood at the rostrum and, in the face of ClO-promoted disturbances, begged only for the courtesy due the mayor of the convention city...

...During one of the periodic commotions accompanying a fare hike on the city transit lines, Kelly was asked for his opinion...

...He was shot as he stood beside President-elect Franklin Roosevelt, having gone to pay his respects and, incidentally, to atone for the sin, patronage-wise, of having opposed Roosevelt at the 1932 convention...

...Kelly's predecessor in City Hall, Anton Cermak, was assassinated by mistake in 1933...

...Only a public aroused behind a philosophy of free minds and widespread democracy can restore teacher citizenship...

...His reputation on the South Side is phenomenal...

...An assistant city prosecutor roared out of the judge's chambers, shouldering his way through the crowd of deputies, bailiffs, and clerks...