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JUSTICE
ter-Parerits of Our Children
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IT IS STRANGE that the generous-hearted American people, who poured
out their riches so prodigally in response to every patriotic, every charit
able appeal, and who accorded such enthusiastic and liberal support to
every measure and to every group that helped win the war, should have
neglected to properly encourage and reward the services of one of the noblest
professions in the field of human activities a profession that in lofty ideals, in
unselfish principles, in sacred responsibilities, stands! side by side with the
ministry of the Gospel itself.
We wish to bespeak, with whatever power and .authority we may have and
with such words as may be granted to us, some measure of consideration for the
foster-fathers and mothers of our children the school teachers of the United
States of America.
There is no class of workers of whom we demand so much. We commit
into their keeping the minds, the bodies, and the very souls of our children" in
the tender and formative years of their lives, and they, receiving these chil
dren, can indeed be said to hold in the hollow of .their hands the future of
America. We expect these devoted men and women to watch over and care
for our sons and daughters as though they were their very own, to drill them
in the arts and sciences, to train them for business and for citizenship, to in
struct them in manners and in morals, to do for them those things which we
would do had we the training and the leisure.
No class has assumed so heavy, so trying a burden and a responsibility
with such willingness as these consecrated men and women. No class has
performed its increasingly heavy tasks more devotedly, more conscientiously,
and with less thought of self. No class served its country more whole
heartedly, more loyally, during the trying and tempestuous times of war,
day by day pursuing its round of duty, day by day helping the young
people, and through the children the parents, to see the struggle inits true
light, thus securing the co-operation of the community in every measure
undertaken by the Government to win the war.
Truly they have made the nation their everlasting debtor. Truly had they
not done their work so well this republic would not outlast the span of a gen
eration. What then have the teachers received at our hands in return? They have
received little of honor and somewhat less of pay. Other classes have pros
pered; other classes through powerful organizations have secured generous
wages. The teachers have no spokesman, however, to demand even the simple
justice of a living wage, so to them we give their petty pre-war pittance, so
meager, so pitifully inadequate, that it places a burning brand of Shame and
disgrace upon this nation.
The men and women who are making the Americans of tomorrow are
being treated with less consideration than the janitors who sweep out the
buildings in which they are employed; they are earning, on the average, less
than the wages given to the scrubwomen employed in the p.ublic buildings of
the United States Government. Normal school graduates receive less salary
than street sweepers; high school principals and superintendents less than
section foremen; country school teachers less for instructing the farmer's
children than he pays his hired man to feed his hogs.
In a certain town of Illinois, for instance, the average wage of fifteen
miners for one month was $217, while the average monthly salary of fifteen
teachers in the same town was $55. In another town a miner, who, by the way,
was an enemy alien, drew more than $2700 last year, while the salary of the
high school principal in the same town was $765. We welcome with all our
hearts the long-belated recognition that is being given to the man who works
with his hands. We believe that this same workingman will be the first to join
with us in asking better pay for those who teach his children.
No wonder there are fifty thousand vacancies in the teaching forces of the
schools. No wonder the ranks are being filled with weak men and with imma
ture women who merely use the profession as a stepping stone to something
better. No wonder there are thirty thousand teachers in the United States
who have had no schooling beyond the eighth grammar grade. Small wonder,
indeed, that seven million of our school children are being trained by teachers,
mere boys and girls themselves, who have had no professional education
whatever.
When we consider that the 740,000 teachers of America are paid an aver
age salary of $630a year; when, moreover, we consider the fact that living
costs have actually advanced 103 per cent since the beginning of the war, there
by cutting the buying power of those insignificant salafries in half, we can
easily determine that only a fool or a martyr would choose teaching as a profes
sion, or would long remain in it unless these terrible conditions were swiftly
remedied.
What a crime is this! What an indictment! What an unpardonable sin
atthe doors of an enlightened people who now find themselves at the head and
forefront of the democracies of the world! How can we better prepare for the
great undertakings of reconstruction than by setting ourselves immediately
to remedying this perilous condition? In these trying and chaotic times when
the world is beset by unrest, by anarchy, by revolution, by the devil's brood
of appalling evils that follow in the train of war, we must make sure that the
foundations of our republic are set on a rock that it may stand against the flood.
The peace and security of the world of the future will be in the safe keep
ing of the generation now in our schools. These boys and girls must weave up
"the raveled sleeve" of civilization. Their hands must minister to the wounds
of the nations. Their minds must meet and solve the difficult and crucial prob
lems that will be their inheritance. The ir hearts must be so imbued with the
horrors of war and with the poverty and anguish that inevitably follow in its
wake that they in their time will enter upon it only as a last resort in national
self-defense or in support of some great principle of humanity.
Never has there been a more urgent need for high-minded, great-hearted, splendidly
trained, 100 per cent American instructors to drive home the vital lessons that these times
hold. Never has the future of the nation been so clearly committed into the hands of the
teachers. And ye thousands of men and women of ability who would prefer to teach are
reluctantly leaving their chosen calling, forced by the hard necessities of their very existence.
The teachers ask no largess at the hands of fortune. They enter their profession for
service, not riches. But they invest years and money in preparation for their life work, and
the knowledge they gain is shared with others who themselves use it to their own profit.
Teachers, then, by every right and in all justice expect a return that will permit them and
their dependents to live decently and in comfort.
In every community reached by THE LITERARY DIGEST there are readers of
foresight, of vision, broad-minded men and thoughtful women who will see nay, perhaps
have long since seen the critical and compelling importance of this problem. We are
directing this appeal to them. We urge them to compare the salaries of their teachers with
tfie wages of those who are doing work of equal value. There will be a challenge in the facts
'that will stir the community to action.
Let each community invest in schools' so that it may thereby invest in a trained man
hood and womanhood that can play their part in the great period of rebuilding and recon
struction that lies before us. Let each community set for its goal, as far as is practicable, a
minimum wage of at least $1000 a year for the teachers of America. This would cost the
nation perhaps as much as we spent so gloriously in but one week of the Great War.
We are not pleading merely for the welfare of some single profession; we are not
pleading for a special class; we are pleading for America: for her larger, her brighter, her
. richer future, for the fulfillment or her glorious promise. We are pleading for a coming race
of men and women ,who shall be qualified to make complete the work of our forefathers who
founded this nation and dedicated it to liberty, and who will bring to full fruition the new
victories that we have won in freedom's cause. We are pleading for a wider teaching of
the principles, the purposes, and the ideals of this nation that all men shall know her meaning
and shall have equal access to her opportunities.
that the light of Americanism shall so shine that it
shall Hood every home every heart, in our great land
Since This Appeal Was Printed in the New York Papers, May 5th
GOVERNOR SMITH has signed the Bill generously increasing the pay of the school
teachers, of New York State and in doing so wrote: "Neglect the school-houses and
you provide a fertile field for the spread of the doctrines of the discontented, who,
without a proper understanding of the benefits and blessings of our free country,
cry out from the street corners of our important cities for the downfall of our state,
and the dissolution of our union.
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