Teachers, Rubes

Last week the chief excitement in the world of education was provided by that horrendous figure, that national scapegoat. THE BANKER. He was twice flayed.

First in Milwaukee, where met the Federation of Teachers, a trade union with 8,000 members affiliated with the A. F. of L., Vice President Abraham Lefkowitz screamed: "The bankers produce a financial crisis and then manipulate that crisis for their own further financial gain. . . . They then hypocritically cry for reduction in taxes and hence for reductions in wages." Cried President Henry Richardson Linville: "We can easily believe that a great banker may develop a supreme contempt for education, while with one hand he compels the legislature of the Empire State to reduce the salaries of teachers, and with the other . . . avoids the charges of Federal income tax laws." On and on it went.

Next in Chicago convened the National Education Association. Retiring President Joseph Rosier Leduoff: "When as a condition of making loans, the banking interests of Chicago, Boston, New York or any other community attempt to tell the educational authorities how to run their schools, they are stepping outside their sphere." Said NEA's Publications Director Joy Elmer Morgan: "America is in the midst of a struggle between Democracy and the caste system fostered by the great financial czars. . . ." On and on it went.

Despite salary reductions, more than 10,000 teachers got to the Chicago convention and, as the high point of the week, flocked around a loudspeaker to listen to the voice of Owen D. Young.

Five years ago, when the old schoolhouse in his native Van Hornesville. N. Y., burned down, Mr. Young gave a new one whose eventual cost may be $1,000,000. The handsome, well-equipped school, with teachers' homes across the way, was built by local artisans without the aid of contractor. On a bronze tablet listing the builders Mr. Young appears as "Rocking Chair Consultant." In his speech last week he called his school, with its radio, cinema, library, swimming pool and playgrounds, "the social centre of the community." Said he: "In that field it is doing what our churches used to do. Regret it as we may . . . the churches . . . have lost their cultural emanation and social discipline which was so effective and so dominant in our earlier days. In the country the school is their legitimate successor. ... It is a social instrument.

"I know the little red schoolhouse. . . . It was the companion of the log cabin. Both were the magnificent creations of a pioneer people fighting a great frontier, not of physical hardships alone, but of intellectual sparseness as well. . . . Literature and art should celebrate their glory, and there we should leave them. They are the outworn instruments of an earlier day.

'Tn those early days . . . the city was a place of culture, the country a land of 'rubes.' . . . Today this may all be reversed. The country may be the land of culture. . . . But we will not get this change in country life without good schools . . . the key which will unlock the country for modern living. . . .

"A neighbor of mine, to whom I had loaned some money, explained that he could not repay it on its due date by saying: 'It is all Owen Young's fault. He made my boys and girls want a bathroom.' "

President Glenn Frank of the University of Wisconsin in remarking the battle royal between the forces of "inflexible tradition" and those of "flexible intelligence," counseled the teachers to bring the latter to bear upon their problems.

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