Spasmodic Diary of a Chicago School-Teacher

VOLUME 152

NUMBER 5

NOVEMBER 1933

March 28,1933.—Lengthy discussion in the lunchroom to-day concerning the Adamowski House Bill and the Graham Senate Bill. One or two of the teachers asserted flatly that they cared not two pins who was Mayor or how he got the job, as long as we received our pay. The noise was deafening, the clatter of knives, forks, and dishes as terrific as usual. Fifteen hundred pupils and teachers eating and talking at once! I finally made myself heard at our table. They all listened, which was bad, for — encouraged — I found myself lecturing. I explained who the ‘vested interests’ were who were so anxious to give Chicago a hand-picked Mayor. And I made it clear that if the legislation passed and the powers kept their promises we should be pretty small and selfish to allow the people’s constitutional right to a primary to be sold for seven and a half months’ back pay, however desperately we needed the money. I discussed also the Sargent Committee’s five-point plan, and the sinister implication in such a statement as ‘I stress the necessity of maintaining the home, the common schools, and the churches, if representative government is to continue.’ On six different occasions, recently, members of this precious committee, addressing sumptuous banquets, have spoken of preserving the ‘common schools.’

Little Miss X, who has a tidy brain and a startling grasp of financial statistics, as well as a charming personality, went over the Budget. Sometimes we all talked at once. It was tonic and exhilarating, but ridiculously futile. I agree with Mr. Mencken when he says that the pedagogue is largely imbecile. We are imbecile, but not because we are stupid. Many of the teachers have an excellent grasp of the situation. But we do nothing except talk. We pay dues to organizations, and we talk, talk, talk! Just now, however, we are getting a practical if somewhat cruel course in current civics, and we have become inveterate readers of the daily papers. Slowly, I think, we are becoming intelligent readers. Rarely a day passes without some member of the faculty calling attention to another defaulted bond. This is significant. If our salaries are ever paid, I fancy fewer bond salesmen will live luxuriously on teachers’ money.

Copyright 1933, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

Three sets of papers yet to grade, and then to bed.

March 29. — Infuriated by the constant use of the phrase ‘unpaid teachers’ by the newspapers to force selfish legislation through Springfield, I stepped to the telephone to-night and asked to speak with the editor of the Herald and Examiner. I actually got him and talked for ten minutes before he summoned a reporter to take down what I had to say. I had expected to be told to reserve my ideas for the classroom. What I wanted, I said, was a radio broadcast by leading teachers urging citizens to wire their representatives at Springfield that the teaching body did not want the rights of voters jeopardized by the use of ‘teachers’ welfare’ as a screen. To my surprise I got it. In less than an hour and a half I heard my own words being hurled back at me by four speakers. They sounded a trifle hysterical, but all right. ‘Is the threat of starvation being used to force us to aid in stealing Chicago’s right to elect by popular vote those men who are to direct the destiny of the city in these dangerous times?’ Another said: ‘We as teachers have been urged to bring pressure to bear to help in passing this legislation. We have been fooled before in similar manner — with promises of pay. This time we are trying to keep ourselves from being misled.’ And another: ‘Citizens of Chicago, we are holding our line. We are refusing to be used for factional logrolling. We will not sell you out. ’

But will this turn the trick? Will the voice of the people now be heard in Springfield? I have been told that I have a ‘messianic complex.’ Perhaps it is this that makes me think that I have helped to-night to ensure a decent election and a decent Mayor. I know better, of course. There will be a lot of telegrams, no doubt — but the dear public is still peacefully sleeping, unaware of what is going on around it. Already between the political shambles and the current murder trial the headlines are singing the financial success of the Century of Progress Exposition, which will not open for another two months. ‘Already in March,’ says the lyric reporter, ‘the Fair has crowds equal to those of ’93. . . . When Charles G. Dawes went out . . . for subscriptions to $6,500,000 of the original bonds . . . right in the midst of the dark days of the 1929 stockmarket crash, the donors thought they were throwing their money away for civic pride. The fact is they are now aware with chuckles of relief that the Century of Progress 6 per cent bonds at par were the best investment many of them have made in the last three years. . . . Generally speaking, everybody in the United States has known there was going to be a fair in Chicago except the people of Chicago.’

Very true, no doubt; but I can’t help remembering that it was this same Charles G. Dawes who got millions of the people’s money out of the R. F. C. to support his bank, last June, and that he is one of a group of bankers who ‘cannot’ now accept at par, so that its teachers may be paid, the tax warrants of the very city which is celebrating its Century of Progress.

March 30. — We lose! The Graham Bill passes the Senate, and a handpicked group of aldermen depart for Hot Springs to select a Mayor acceptable to the Sargent Committee, the backers of the Fair-to-be, the politicians, and the lesser gangsters. Yesterday the papers said: ‘Loop banks agree to finance pay roll for last two weeks of June as soon as legislature validates Acting Mayor Corr’s signature.’ Today they read: ‘Find flaw in legislation.’ So the signature is still invalid. No pay in sight, not even the promised two weeks’ — and the primary gone blooey! The teachers are furious.

April 3. — Fred Sargent, head of the Citizens’ Committee and president of the Chicago & North Western Railroad, has gone to Washington to see the President about school loans. Little hope for any results. But I had results in class to-day. The discussion of current events was spirited and intelligent. It was splendid. I have hope for the younger generation. Some of the students look so shabby and so hungry. One more girl stopped at the desk to ask until to-morrow to hand in her work. The poor child is clerking, after school hours, at Woolworth’s. What a way to have to spend her leisure!

April 4. — A delegation of teachers has left for Washington. Szymczak too! The press says his trip is to obtain a loan for the teachers, but rumor has it that he wants a Federal Reserve appointment. As for Fred Sargent, I wonder if his trip to Washington was entirely in the interests of the teaching body. There is an infuriating editorial in the Daily News calling him our friend, but 14,000 unpaid teachers doubt it. He got a loan, all right, but it was not for us — eight million more for the C. & N. W., ‘to be drawn down as needed.’ Of the $426,300,000 total funded indebtedness of the road, thirty-two million was previously loaned by the R. F.C. The figures appeared in an article on the financial page of the News, only a step or two beyond the editorial department. And on page 1 the news about the further loan! This is the same Fred Sargent who as head of the Citizens’ Committee constantly howls for more economy in the schools. What a success the gentleman has made of his C. & N. W.

April 5. — The school strike has broken. It amounted to little at our school. An efficient engineer, who has frozen us systematically all winter and all spring, put his finger in the dike. My talks yesterday apparently had little to do with keeping my pupils in class; it was all the work of the engineer — he disconnected the electric bells so that no signals could be sounded. To-night’s papers are filled with strike news and pictures of the striking students. Black headlines: ‘Ten Thousand Students Quit Desks in Protest on Teacher Pay’; ‘Arrest Eighteen Student Strikers’; and more of the same. It is all very alarming. Another editorial in the Daily News, calling it ‘the inevitable consequence of the inexcusable treatment of the teaching force. . . . Thousands of them, underfed and distracted by intolerable anxieties, have been carrying the burden of their unpaid toil by sheer heroic resolve.’

These be brave words, and true; yet they would come with better grace from a newspaper whose proprietors were less staunch supporters of the infamous Citizens’ Committee. It is the Committee that is our enemy — made up of bank presidents, railroad presidents, packers, and directors generally of the wealth of the second city of the United States. There is no possible doubt of their intention; they are attempting to starve the teaching force into submission to their programme and to cripple the city’s educational system. They would like to reduce public education in Chicago to the ‘three R’s.’ There is ample justification for the labor station’s radio broadcasting of attacks on publicized respectability, naïve as it often is. It is 50 per cent hair-trigger, but it is also 50 per cent right. I am going to bed. What will to-morrow bring?

April 6. — The strike grows. Communism has been charged, of course. It is a nasty mess. Dead tired when I reached home. The pupils are jittery, the teachers nervous. But I taught my classes, and I really taught. In my room there was no discussion of the situation. Five teachers have been sent to asylums since January first, I heard to-day. My resources are pretty thin. I need spring clothes desperately. I should let Mrs. J—— go, but can’t bring myself to tell her. It is such a pittance I pay her, and yet she needs the money. Husband out of work — her boy in high school! Two more form letters in my mailbox were from loan companies offering me $300 or $400 without anyone knowing about it — at interest which approximates 41 per cent for the year. They choose such reassuring names, these companies. Much of their capital is borrowed from our five Loop banks and reloaned to us at these usurious rates. Many of the teachers are already in their clutches. Clutches! That word makes me wonder if I am losing my sense of humor — it sounds so East Lynne-ish! But the situation, too, is East Lynne-ish. Three postal cards from brokers offering to sell my tax warrants for me. Some of these young men are making a fat living out of needy teachers. The wealthy are buying our warrants at far below par and turning them in on unpaid tax bills.

April 7. — Headlines are so amusing: ‘Hope Grows for Teachers’ Pay’; ‘Parents of Strikers Subject to Fine’; ‘Take Back Expelled Reds’; ‘Teachers to See Ickes’; ‘Roosevelt to Hear Plea’; ‘Strong in Cash; Total Deposits of Chicago Banks Now One Billion and a Half.’ Still the timid bankers hesitate, overcome by their doubts of Corr’s signature. Many pictures of the aldermen at Hot Springs. A dispatch from Washington says Senator Lewis has urged appointment of M. S. Szymczak, Chicago city comptroller, to the Federal Reserve Board. So that is why he went to Washington!

April 8. — Tribune says to-day: ‘Fear Teachers’ Cash Pay Day Is Facing a Delay.’ At the bottom of the article one realizes why; yesterday’s strike of high-school students has petered out. Attendance was little below normal to-day, and by Monday, the authorities predict, all the pupils will be back in class. But the Tribune’s headline should have read, ‘Hope Teachers’ Cash Pay Day, etc.’ The animosity of the ‘World’s Greatest Newspaper’ is usually more explicit.

A rather lonely evening. My own fault — my pride, I guess. I was invited to dinner and the theatre and felt that I could not accept. But I spent a pleasant evening, nevertheless, with some English book catalogues that had come in. Have n’t bought a book in eight months! My sabbatical is due next January. If they pay me the salary I have earned, perhaps I shall be able to gratify my lifetime’s dream of wandering down Eastcheap in the footsteps of Irving — prowling the streets of Old London, the descriptions of which so amused me to-night in Stow’s account. But the bills hang heavy, heavy over my head — ‘ what shall I do to redeem them?’ My account book shows that, with salary to date, all bills could be paid and $1200 put aside for London and Oxford — and my Shakespearean research!

There was quite a fight to conquer self-pity to-night. I wanted so desperately a stunning evening dress, and to accept that invitation. Teachers who ‘ go places and do things ‘ occasionally, I have noted, are better teachers for it. But I did n’t want to go because I should be a better teacher. What rationalizers we are! Oh, to be a very tender apple blossom!

Walked off a bad temper induced by a bill from one of the department stores, and wrote an impertinent letter. ‘Dear Sirs: You solicited my account knowing me to be a teacher in the Chicago high schools. You know now (Or do you? It has been whispered in some of the papers) that the Board of Education owes us, etc., etc., etc.’ But I tore it up and began over again. ‘Dear Sirs: It grieves me to have to say that I am unable at this time to take care of this account.’ It was after this that I put on my hat and raincoat and walked six miles. After ten minutes the black mood passed. The rain dashing in my face, the white plumes on the angry lake, the delicate green velvet buds in the park, so soon to blossom, all helped to restore my temper. I love the city and its parks — and spring is coming. I kept repeating to myself Wordsworth’s lovely sonnet beginning, ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair.’ But it is too true that in Chicago all this loveliness is as a great brocade of beauty laid over a festering corpse.

April 9. — While I was walking off my ill temper on the lake front yesterday, repeating Wordsworth’s lines on the City Beautiful, fellow teachers were interrupting a flag-raising ceremony at the Century of Progress. The picture in Palm Sunday’s paper is a grim one — all the bigwigs, frock-coated and silkhatted, rode up in cars to take part in the ceremony. But it did n’t come off. There, ahead of them, were the same old shabby, nondescript teachers, singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and holding aloft their own banners — one of them reading, ‘Chicago, the Wonder City, Has 14,000 Unpaid SchoolTeachers.’ The officials did n’t care for the teachers’ ceremony and there was no room on the lake front for another one, so with disdainful glances they drove away. The flag was not raised yesterday on a Century of Progress.

More and more I feel myself being drawn to this more violent form of expression. Something in me cries out that it is bad enough to be poor, worried, and debt-ridden, but far worse to make a spectacle of myself. Nevertheless I am trampling down my pride, if that is what it is, and I too perhaps shall soon join the more radical elements of the teaching force in their demonstrations. With their nuisance technique they are getting results that I am beginning to realize could not otherwise have been achieved. At the least, they are calling attention to the deplorable situation in which we exist. Many of the teachers are actually facing starvation.

April 10. — Corr is off for Hot Springs. Not a vacation, he says; but to get action. Action? Well, to-day two thousand school-teachers stormed the City Hall and one of the banks. At the bank, guards were hastily stationed and the doors were closed.

One of the papers carries an article about McDonough, the county treasurer. The much-talked-about McDonough plan of tax collection has been abandoned. Each day the burden grows more intolerable. The city is perhaps legitimately two years behind in its taxes because of the reassessment. But the truth is that to date the total back tax bill amounts to more than $250,000,000. And statistics show that more than 90 per cent of taxes on property values of $10,000 or less have been paid in full. In other words, the lower and middle classes have been the good citizens in spite of the depression. It is the rich who cannot or will not pay. Appointing their Citizens’ Committees, they are dictating educational retrenchment. The schools, they shout, must economize. The sympathetic press runs editorials about a ‘soak the rich’ campaign; yet we know that locally and nationally the poor man pays his taxes while the rich man hires lawyers to defend his plea that he cannot pay. As Alice said, ‘Things grow curiouser and curiouser.’

But I must press my dress, mend the elbow, and sew in fresh collar and cuffs. I am beginning to be a little tired of vegetable soup, stews, and chopped meat for dinner; but one of these I shall have. Am I becoming a prima donna? Is it butterflies’ tongues that I hanker for? Come, come, my dear!

April 11.—There is a smell of spring in the air. I was quite warm to-day in my old winter clothes. I look and feel detestably shabby. And there is a bitterness creeping into me that I despise. I am neglecting the dentist, too. All silly and senseless, I tell myself — I should go to the dentist and pay him when I get paid; I should go to the shops and charge things to my accounts. School-teachers as a class were always good credit, because they paid their bills on time. Now they are made to feel like paupers. But I will purchase nothing as long as my income is nothing. The whole situation is fantastic — incredible! The city now owes me $2780, and God knows when I ’ll get a penny of it.

As a compromise I have made out a list of the bare necessities to replenish last year’s wardrobe: a cheap hat, — I hate cheap hats! — a pair of shoes, gloves, hose, and alterations on two of last spring’s dresses. I have lost weight alarmingly, I find. I suppose I should not have cut off the cream; but I could n’t afford it. The greenbacks in the old book are shrinking away — I have had no bank account for a year. If I let Mrs. J— go, there will be a saving; but I can’t do that. If only her husband could get work! It is unbelievable that it is she and her sort — the small home owners — who have for the most part paid such taxes as have been paid! Now she would like to sell her home. I know how she has scrimped and saved to meet her payments.

On the heels of these thoughts, a little while ago, I picked up the evening paper, and this is what greeted my eye: ‘We the citizens of Chicago, second city in population in the United States, metropolis of the West, greatest railroad centre in the world, extend to the public a cordial welcome to the greatest drama of human progress ever assembled in the tide of time — a Century of Progress International Exposition. We welcome you to the wisdom of the world in every phase of human endeavor. We welcome you to a city whose hospitality knows no limits, whose parks and drives surpass the cities of the world in acreage and mileage, the spires of whose churches, temples, and cathedrals challenge the clouds in their sweep and are a constant and perpetual reminder that this city bows in reverence and acknowledges that there is a Supreme Being that rules the Universe. The gates stand ajar, our hearthstones await your coming, our hands, etc., etc., etc.’

Comment is impossible! O God, O Rufus Dawes!

And this will be about enough of that. There are some runners in my stockings that demand attention. If they are mended with great care, perhaps no eye will detect that there now stands exactly $32.53 between me and —?

April 12. — Mr. Taylor, president of the Board, and, in private, attorney for the common stockholders of Middle West Securities, says: ‘Representatives of the bankers have informed me to-day that they will sever all connection with the school system if we issue warrants in excess of 50 per cent of the number permitted by the Budget.’ I attended a Board meeting to-day. One of the trustees proposed that the schools be closed, and the teachers cheered. They don’t really want the schools closed; but they are hungry and tired and they can’t go on without money. Action on closing the schools was postponed until to-morrow.

April 13. — I attended the Board meeting; a frightful jam at the entrance. Of the 14,000 teachers in the system, 75 per cent at least have the same idea I have — that the schools must be closed. I want it blazoned to the world that Chicago’s school-teachers have been forced into involuntary servitude. I want the country at large to know that we have worked for almost a year without pay in this beautiful city that invites the world to its celebration of a Century of Progress. But that is only a part of me — only an angry part of these really kindly, conservative people who have been so twisted by the politicians and the bankers and the press. We have been bullied and threatened for so long that we almost hope that, as a Century of Progress is ushered in, a wrecked and ended school system may be ushered out.

However, the schools are not to be closed. Teachers are to go on teaching. One of the trustees with banker affiliations smugly announced that it would be a disgrace to close the schools now. It would be very bad, it appears, in view of the coming Fair. The President of the Board also voiced his opposition. Who would feed the thousands of children who, as matters stand, are being fed in the schools, he demanded to know. He thought we might as well finish the school year on June 1 and give the children their credits. Did he mean, I wonder, that there would be difficulty with the parents of pupils if the children did not get their credits? That it was easier to put up with the unpaid teachers and their noise than to risk getting the children’s parents in the Board’s hair? One trustee actually suggested that the schools be closed at once — but he was a lone voice and quite powerless to gain his point.

When I reached home, dead tired, it was to read that Edward J. Kelly had been chosen Mayor by the City Council, under authority granted by the Graham-Adamowski Bill. ‘The workers must be paid! ’ he announced in his first press appearance as Mayor of Chicago. Must they? To-morrow is Friday — another pay day. We shall see.

April 14. — No checks to-day. The papers say we may get two weeks’ salary on Monday. A huge demonstration is planned for Saturday. Spent the afternoon grading papers, and most of the evening. To-morrow I shall parade. I ’ve come to it, at last. I loathe the idea, but the public must be awakened. I feel a little like Joan of Arc or Lydia Pankhurst. Was it ‘ Lydia’?

April 15. — ‘Civic Leaders Plan Huge Drive to Pay Teacher Salaries!’ The headlines are not convincing, however. Every effort was made to stop the parade. Checks for seven days’ salary were rushed to all the schools, and the word went round yesterday that teachers must report at school to get them to-day. Seven days! The Board still owes us for eight months. Most of the principals received the checks and brought them to the parading teachers. At a conservative estimate, 20,000 teachers and students paraded, accompanied by high-school bands and flourishing many placards. Some of the signs were clever, some bitter, some only dull; but all of them blamed the politicians and the bankers, and, of course, the Citizens’ Committee. The placard that amused me most read: ‘ I Regret That I Have But One Week’s Pay to Give My Creditors.’ The crowds of onlookers appeared sympathetic; and a few seemed to know what it was all about. It appalled me to find myself marching in a parade of protest, but I do think that only such methods will bring results. I ’ve been converted. Once I did n’t believe it. But all other methods have failed. Perhaps the bankers and the Board will pay us to keep us off the streets.

News-reel cameramen made pictures of the spectacle. Surely ‘big business,’ interested in the welfare of the Exposition, won’t care for this type of advertising. The papers to-night are filled with receivership scandals. A very nasty mess. One of the officials of the Chicago Title and Trust Company is a member of the Citizens’ Committee. Teachers are planning to picket the big corporation, as well as the banks which owe taxes and refuse to pay them.

April 16. — To-day is Easter Sunday. I shall spend most of the day figuring out how I may divide my week’s salary among my nagging creditors. Also I must get in a long walk. ... A box of roses from dear old L. W. The card asks, ‘How about having dinner at St. Hubert’s at five o’clock? Chess?’ The last is not his attempt at a joke. He means: Shall we play chess later? How about it, indeed! And by letting down the hem of my dark blue silk, taking it in at the waist and hips, and making a tricky little vest of an old sash, I can go. . . .

April 24. — A long gap! ‘Whisky’ prevented entries. I have n’t done much of anything but play with him. Dr. James brought him to me. He dropped in one day and found me a little below par, with a nasty spring cold. He said what I needed was a sea voyage! We both laughed at that. No doubt I do. He suggested that I was worrying about something. That was true. Then he reminded me that my father had helped him out in the early days of his practice. Could n’t I let him ... I could n’t, of course; but I broke down and wept all over the premises. He said he would bring me a tonic, anyway, the next time he came. That is how Whisky came to live with me — probably the most adorable wirehaired fox terrier in the world! A little thoroughbred — I did n’t need his London Kennel Club papers to prove that.

With some thousands of others, I spent the first days of my spring vacation ‘rioting in banks,’ as the papers headlined it. We did rather fill and overflow four of the large Loop banks. Our committees talked with some of the presidents, after they had been persuaded to see us. Mr. Charles G. Dawes came down smiling but perspiring and suggested that we just have patience. School Board tax warrants, he said, were not good bank collateral. Somebody asked him how Insull stock was as collateral. In view of the loan he obtained from the R. F. C., it was a telling shot, and he resented it. ‘I’ll have no heckling,’ he said; and began again: ‘We must all march like soldiers; we must coöperate—’ Again a group of teachers interrupted, and he shouted, ‘To hell with trouble makers!’ The whole episode was extraordinary.

What a situation! The R. F. C. has offered to lend money, through the banks, sufficient to take care of teacher pay rolls. The banks won’t accept tax warrants of the city until the taxes come in. Taxes won’t come in because the wealthy tax dodgers are refusing to pay them. It is a vicious circle.

April 26. — A delightful day. I devoted three hours of the morning to school work. Rumor has it once more that the schools are to close soon. I made out three plans to cover the work yet to be done, based on three tentative closing dates. This afternoon I played tennis. The air was glorious. And in the evening I had dinner and danced at the Yacht Club. There were ten in the party, all old friends. Dr. James asked me if I had been ‘biting any more bankers ’!

April 27. — Reported for teachers’ demonstration to-day. We decided to picket the homes of outstanding tax dodgers. There was a wild mêlée at the Chicago Title and Trust Company, and some of the teachers were clubbed. I did n’t happen to be one of them. Next time, maybe! From one point of view, we have no right to be doing this sort of thing; but from another, those of us who are still eating regular meals owe it to those who arc starving to force public attention to this situation. The headlines to-night are black and several inches high.

April 28. — Paul Schneider, a 41year-old school-teacher, a husband and father, committed suicide to-day. How much longer, O Lord? The New York Journal of Commerce gave us a fine editorial, praising our strategy and suggesting that we picket the homes of the leaders of the tax strike.

April 29. — The Skarda Bill has passed, and we have been treated to pictures of the County Treasurer: at the telephone, lighting a fat cigar, writing a letter, and — amazingly — in his office. Four hundred large delinquent taxpayers are to get the opportunity to pay up at once or be thrown into receivership under the Skarda Act.

April 30. — The Tribune continues its attacks on the Glass-Steagall Bill, the Industrial Recovery Act, the policies of the President. The Tribune is for reduced educational budgets, rugged individualism, and, in general, the old order of things. ‘New Delay for Insull Quiz, ’ say the headlines; but we teachers who must use electric light and gas find it impossible to delay the payment of our bills. City corporate employees have received their salaries for December, and are promised those for January soon. Kelly announces that teachers may expect $14,000,000 in cash before long. The city employees are four months ahead of us in collections.

May 3. — Taylor orders $10,000,000 cut in school costs. New Board members are announced. We now have, as members of the School Board, two presidents of coal companies, two bankers, two lawyers, a member of women’s clubs, and a receivership official who is prominent in the American Legion; also a hotel receiver who has not even a Legion connection to recommend him. The House has passed a bill to guard pensions if the teachers quit.

May 4. — Teachers meet with bankers to discuss pay.

Mayor meets with bankers to discuss pay.

Teachers meet with Mayor.

All demonstrations have been called off, and the Mayor has promised no further cuts. Immediate payment of salaries up to January was also promised. Friday is dead line, Kelly says. We may have the money before then. This is the result of our nuisance technique — the only thing that has been effective to date.

May 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. — Complete silence in the newspapers about teachers’ pay. The weather is warm and I am spending my spare time making a dress, which will take an eternity, as I have no sewing machine. No time for tennis these days. Mrs. J— — has offered to wait for her money. Whisky is sympathetic, and a dear little dog. He does n’t like to see me sitting still and staring into space. When he catches me at it he jumps into my lap and licks my face, or goes and gets me one of his chewed-up rubber toys.

May 10. — Even the Tribune has published an editorial shooting at McDonough: ‘The Collector Who Does n’t Collect. ’ One of the papers demands his immediate removal. Two weeks have elapsed since he screamed his intentions, and four suits, instead of four hundred as advertised, have been filed against tax delinquents. Some small ‘down payments’ have been made. The mountain labors and produces a mouse.

‘ Banks Blame Tax Cut on Homes for Delay in City Pay. ’ This is the latest, not the last, excuse. Nevertheless, the 15 per cent slash granted small home owners should be allowed to stand. Only these little fellows are paying their taxes at all. The papers have been filled with reports of cuts granted by the Assessor on Gold Coast property.

May 11. — I attended the Board meeting to-day. The Democrats now have complete control. The members have been hailed as ‘ hard-headed business men’ pledged to a programme of economy. I should like to see their school records. During one of the addresses I listened to the longest split infinitive I have ever heard in my life. Not one of them can produce an extemporaneous sentence of any length without losing his verb. The Board rooms looked like a setting for a gangster’s funeral; they were banked with flowers for the inauguration. The wife of one of the new members sat through most of the proceedings smoking a cigarette. She was in pearl gray, and when she did n’t have a cigarette in her mouth she chewed gum. I heard her complain on the way out because her husband had been given only a one-year term. ‘Kelly owed him more than that,’ she said.

No word about teachers’ pay was spoken, but it was decided that schools should close two weeks earlier than usual. A discussion about five boilers to be ordered for grammar schools developed an illiterate argument that bordered on idiocy.

The Hearst Examiner has a scathing editorial demanding a federal probe of the ‘midnight millions’ loaned to Dawes. ‘By the time the AttorneyGeneral and the Secretary of the Treasury get through investigating,’ it says, ‘perhaps they will decide that it is the Insulls, those who ran the Dawes bank, and those who ran the Stevens’ Illinois Life Insurance Company, who are the real causes of the present-day troubles in Chicago.’

May 12. — Received four months’ pay. The banks loaned $12,500,000 at 6 per cent for six months to make it possible. At the same time they limited the school loans so that the rest of the money owed us could not be paid in warrants. In my own case the money will have to go almost entirely to pay up my debts. Teacher organizations have warned us to pay only in part, since no more money is likely to be forthcoming; but I cannot do things that way. I shall pay in full, which will leave me a balance of $250 to last me until school reconvenes. I shall have to get a job for the summer to make ends meet. At least $30 must go for dental work at once. Many of the teachers are worse off than I. Some have taken jobs as waitresses, or plan to.

Nice Mr. C—of our own faculty was rejoicing that through a little influence he was getting a job at the Fair. He has three small children to support. To-day he told us that the Fair job paid only $50 a month and ‘tips,’ and he told us what it was. He is to be cashier in a pay toilet! Comment is impossible.

The city still owes us our salaries for January, February, March, April, May, and half of June.

May 21.—The Mayor has issued a warning through the press that there are to be no demonstrations on the part of teachers when the Fair opens. He will not countenance any ‘discourtesy’ to the visitors to our Century of Progress Exposition. And with this the school news vanishes from the newspapers. Demonstrations by teachers will be discouraged by policemen’s clubs, it is threatened, and we may find ourselves in the County Hospital if we parade to the banks again.

Three weeks are left us in which to complete two months’ work in our classes, and summer has set in with a vengeance. The $40,000,000 bond issue for payment of school salaries passed the legislature yesterday. No one expects it to become tangible cash before late fall or winter.

May 22. — Dog tired. After a stupid half hour reading the newspapers one wonders if the editors, too, are tired or if they ever read their own papers. One article with illustrations deals with the taxes due on the Palmer House. Honoré and Potter Palmer are listed as the responsible partners in connection with a delinquent tax of $517,247; and on the opposite page there is an article on official hostesses for the Century of Progress. Pictures of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr., and a perfervid account of the brilliant society matron who is to open the Fair! A nice juxtaposition indeed! For me, there are papers to grade and a dress to press. Ho, hum!

June 5. — The heat is terrific. Last night I worked until three, grading papers. Officially the temperature is 98 degrees, but in my classroom it averaged 111 for three hours. Examination weather! There is no word of any further effort to get us our back salaries. To-day the vice president of the School Board appeared in Judge Jarecki’s court to protest the judge’s appointment of a receiver for a building which owes $26,491 in back taxes. The judge asked him how many teachers’ salaries might be paid by that amount, and, getting no reply, he allowed the receivership to stand.

June 9. — The last day of school is always anticlimactic. To-day was doubly so. We were turned loose for the summer without pay and without hope of pay. What I need is to be turned out to pasture, but instead I shall have to find a job. The family is furious at my independence — two letters on the subject to-day. ‘ Come and spend the summer with us!’ Can’t be done, darlings, unless I can go like the wise men, bearing gifts. And I can’t.

July 10.—Yesterday the Board passed a so-called economy measure wiping out the junior high schools, closing the one junior college in the city, and abolishing all manual training and domestic science in the grade schools. Teachers’ classes in the high schools will be increased from five to seven, and there is to be one principal only for every two grammar schools. Swimming instruction, too, is wiped out, and the physical education department is halved. This is the second step in a programme designed to wreck public education. The first was to starve the teaching force into submission.

This action is in direct conflict with the National Recovery Act, since it adds to unemployment by throwing more than 1000 teachers out of work. The savings claimed by the Board are terrific exaggerations — indeed, the whole programme is based on falsehood and hypocrisy. How will the dear public receive this step? Apparently they have cared little that the teachers were being starved. Now that the real objective behind the activity is obvious, what will the people do? I had expected the blow to fall first on senior high schools. That will be the third step, perhaps.

July 21. — The clamor of the newspapers is deafening. For the moment even the big circus on the lake front has been crowded off the front pages. The Tribune openly defends the action of the Board; the Hearst papers denounce it. The News straddles beautifully. Two splendid articles in the Herald and Examiner, by President Hutchins, expose the cheat of it all and demand that the Board either rescind its action or get out.

To-night I attended the great mass meeting called by the Save Our Schools Committee. The Stadium was filled: 25,000 persons — parents, teachers, and citizens of every kind. The high spot was an amazing speech by Judd of the University of Chicago in which he proved that no deficit existed for the year 1933 — that an accumulated deficit of less than $7,000,000, dating back to 1929, is being met in a single year by this drastic and unnecessary cut in educational services. He said that the cut was advised by the paid agent of Fred Sargent, head of the socalled Citizens’ Committee, that the Board had merely acted under orders from the Mayor, and that the Mayor had accepted the policy dictated by the owner of the Chicago Tribune. He lashed the Board for its pretense of economy, when it refuses to adjust the costs of material maintenance.

Stench bombs were exploded in an attempt to break up the meeting, and, what with the heat, the whole affair was an ordeal; but the dear public certainly heard some truths expressed. My head aches furiously, but I am glad I went.

July 22. — One lovely bit came out to-day. The Herald and Examiner said editorially: ‘The public demands to know why the Board of Education members wish to measure the hours of schooling that a child is to have, while in the same breath they say that they will no longer measure the tonnage of coal purchased. ’ It has been reported that last winter orders were given to school engineers to cease measuring coal on its receipt at the schools, that figures of the coal dealers were to be accepted. The Board now has two coal company presidents among its members.

July 27. — The headlines to-night are pretty sickening. The school cut has been upheld. A petition signed by 350,000 citizens has been defied by the Board. The cut stands. The comments of one board member are given publicity. He is in his usual good form: ‘I ain’t got no axe to grind. I never had higher education, and, as God is my judge, the young people of to-day are getting so much education that they don’t know what they want to do when they get out of school.’ I should like to see a school established in one of the dismantled manual-training rooms to teach the Board members how to talk. Protest meetings are being organized all over the city. The best educators of the country have come to our assistance, and the action of the Board stands condemned from Maine to California.

August 12. — There are days like today when I doubt my sanity. Here I am in the frightful heat, spending a large part of my time sticking printed matter into envelopes and addressing it to people who will probably throw it into the wastebasket. I have donated my time to the Save Our Schools Committee. To-day I heard that a public official had frankly answered somebody’s question as to when we should get our money. ‘You don’t suppose anyone cares a damn, do you?‘ he replied. ‘The bankers, the Board, the Mayor, not one of them want the teachers to be paid. You’ve done your best to make it uncomfortable for us; now we’ll make it uncomfortable for you.’

Despite the efforts of the Save Our Schools Committee, dismantling has already begun. A censorship has been established at Board headquarters.

In the days of the Roman Empire the rulers provided free bread and circuses to keep the people happy. There’s little free bread now, and we pay for our circuses. Chicago’s schools are wrecked and its teachers are starving, but the world still comes to visit the great Century of Progress Exposition on the lake front. Sally Rand and the star Arcturus. . . .

I am tired. They say things must get worse before they get better. Certainly they are getting worse.

August 13. — Everyone I know has left town. I feel pretty aged to-day. No fight left in me. Unless I can recover a little spirit I shall not be fit for another semester of school.

The members of the Board appear to represent the thought of all ‘ big business.’ The last fight is on. Elementary education for the masses is their objective— and nothing else. As Pearsall Smith says of the Baconians, ‘they plunge squeaking down the Gadarene slope of their delusion.’ But the boys and girls of high-school age to-day are the voters of to-morrow. If we fail, perhaps they will take up the fight.

August 23. — A glorious, cool summer day. In the morning I went for a swim and in the afternoon to a meeting of the Board. Two sets of tennis in the evening. 1 am less depressed by the turn of events. The whole meeting today, incongruously enough, was devoted to plans for obtaining a government loan for the building of more schools. All they want is $14,000,000! No mention of the wrecking programme; and no discussion of the list of teachers and principals to be dismissed. The raison d’être of the School Board becomes increasingly obvious — it is the letting of fat contracts. They talked at length, and with their usual disregard of the English language, of the plasterers and carpenters who would be benefited by the building programme. ‘ Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax, etc.’ No mention of the Walrus. No whisper of the gravy destined to drip into their own mouths when the huge contracts are placed. However, I am not discouraged. I still have faith in the gentleman at Washington. Some part of the loan may go through, but there will be a federal watchdog on the job to keep an eye on expenditures. The days of the grafting politician are numbered.

The Board is protecting itself by uniformed policemen, fully armed, and by plain-clothes detectives — an incredible spectacle! The members are in no physical danger. It is their guilty consciences that frighten them.

I have a sense of well-being these days, possibly because I have had a few days of vacation. But the North Woods are out; my funds are too low, even with the check for the typing job. Anyway, my interest is centred on the local scene just now. The income-tax exposé involving Kelly, Nash, et al., is too good to miss.

September 7. — Another Board meeting yesterday; and the usual diametrically opposite headlines in the papers. ‘Trustees Repel Another Blow at School Economy’ was the Tribune’s idea of what occurred. The Herald and Examiner said: ‘Free Teaching Offer to Help City Spurned. ’ What really happened was that Mrs. Hefferan, the only member of the Board to vote against the wrecking programme, presented an offer by ten teacher organizations to work for nothing to the extent of any deficit in the 1933 educational fund. There was a condition attached — that the Board must permit an immediate audit of the school records, at the teachers’ expense, to determine the amount of the deficit, if any. It was the implication that a deficit did not exist that angered the Board members.

An attorney named Walker got up and roared at us. ‘This kind of stuff gets under your skin, ’ he said elegantly. ‘It exasperates a person who is trying to do something for the school children.’ When we all shouted with laughter, the policemen and detectives drew themselves up and waited for an order to stop us. The troubled Mr. Walker went ahead with his own uproar. Unless we had proper respect for the School Board, he said, he would insist on our disclosing our names and addresses as we entered the room, and he would personally prefer charges against us.

When he finished, Trustee Savage got the floor, red of face and neck, and added further threats. He said: £I will be the first one to vote to dismiss anyone, whether it be superintendent, principal, or otherwise, that does not see that our programme for the benefit of the children is carried out.’ So we ‘otherwises’ subsided, and in the end Superintendent Bogan was allowed to speak. He said he would go before the government advisory commission tomorrow to ask for the $14,000,000 loan.

September 8.—‘Obviously small comfort was given to representatives of the Board of Education this afternoon when they went before the federal advisory committee on public works and asked for an advance of $14,000,000,’ said the Daily News to-day. The early Tribune said that the committee had ‘voiced its favor’ of the proposal. I should have attended the meeting myself. Instead I went sailing. The lake was lovely, and it is seldom enough I get a chance to go sailing.

September 11. — I have had a glorious two days in the country. The news on my return is tonic, too. Something is going to happen soon, I think. The real fight is on, and the scene may move to Washington. The papers contain huge pictures of politicians departing in special trains. Ostensibly they are going to ask for relief for the unemployed, but the real purpose of the trip is clear. It has been intimated that the Administration is not in sympathy with the ideals of those who pull the strings of our local democracy. These gentlemen are asking for $117,000,000 to finance three hundred work projects, but I think they will not have the spending of it. ‘ ’T was brillig, and the slithy toves . . . ’

School opens in a week. I feel fairly fit, and I am ready. My finances are still appalling. The two weeks’ pay tossed us last week — a sop to Cerberus?— went to creditors, except for a few dollars. Sometime this week we are to receive a month’s salary in 1933 tax warrants — marketable at a 40 per cent discount or worse. A drop in the bucket of my obligations. To-day is gray and cold, and the leaves are beginning to fall from the trees. On days like these our Nordic ancestors went forth to fight. In the same spirit, I like to think, thousands of teachers are returning to their classes — prepared to serve, but also prepared to fight for a decent solution of the problems ahead. Heaven send us grace and courage to perform our tasks!