"This Ulcerous Thing"

When Chicago's William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson was loudly gunning for "stool pigeons of King George" eight years ago, the best he could bring down was William Andrew Me Andrew, the city's white-bearded school superintendent whom Mayor William Dever had imported from New York. "Big Bill" flung abuse at Superintendent McAndrew, made a great hullabaloo about "pro-British" history textbooks, finally got himself elected Mayor. Superintendent McAndrew watched the Thompson antics with fine disdain, stood a farcical trial for insubordination, finally retired to East Setauket, N. Y. There he edits the "Educational Review" in School & Society.

Last week Editor McAndrew found a subject to his taste in the cover of the Sept. 14 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Artist Norman Rockwell had depicted a young mother turning her unwilling son over to a hatchet-faced, spectacled schoolmarm, switch in hand. All the characters were dressed in costumes of the 1890's.

Wrote William Andrew Me Andrew: "Norman Rockwell, erstwhile giver of delight by his depiction of lovable and quaint rugged individualists, took the Evening Post's money to do this ulcerous thing. . . . No decent allegiance to the American ideals of education, as formulated by Washington, Franklin and other founders of the nation . . . can be maintained if public prints throw disrespect on education and on women. The cartoonists drawing teachers depict pretty women, now. The Saturday Evening Post's bad break is probably a relapse, a case of atavism, a recollection by some unhappy old man who told Rockwell what to draw. The proper thing is for you to write the Post. . . ."

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