As today, 120 years ago Chicago teachers were leading from the front. The Chicago Teachers Union is currently one of the most important local unions in the country. The ancestor of the C.T.U. was the pioneering Chicago Teachers Federation led by Margaret Haley and founded in 1897, which affiliated to the A.F.L. in 1902, a first for a teachers’ union. Their founding campaign was to demand the taxation of the city’s wealthy in response to wage cutting by the School Board.

‘School Teachers Waking Up—Chicago Takes the Lead’ from The Worker (New York). Vol. 15 No. 13. June 24, 1905.

Those of Chicago Take the Lead in Recognizing Their Solidarity With Other Wage-Workers–The Capitalist Authorities Are Enraged.

(Chicago “Socialist,” June 10.) The Chicago school teachers realize that they belong to the working class; they are organized and affiliated with the Chicago Federation of Labor. Very naturally their sympathies are with the teamsters in their unequal struggle to maintain their organization. Why shouldn’t the teachers be in sympathy with their fellow workers? All intelligent, self-respecting workers are, despite the fact that the subsidized capitalist press states the contrary.

The fact that the teachers, through their organ, the “Teachers’ Bulletin,” give expression to their sympathies. thus publicly giving the lie to the capitalists’ subsidized press, has set the whole pack yelping like a lot of hungry wolves in pursuit of the life of the teachers’ organization.

The exploiters of the working class realize that they have full control of the Chicago Board of Education, but they see in the teachers’ organization a power that does not slavishly submit to all the dictates and sentiments ex- pressed by the dominant class. Therefore the plutocratic papers, from the blood-thirsty “Chronicle” to the smooth, diplomatic, Jesuitical “Tribune,” are demanding that the despots at the head of the Chicago School Board strangle the teachers’ organization in the same manner as they strangled the police and firemen’s organization, and as the Employers’ Association is attempting to wipe the teamsters’ organization out of existence.

What associated, law-protected thoroughly organized Capital demands is the privilege of dealing, bargaining. and contracting with unorganized, unprotected, helpless individuals. The capitalist class realizes the importance of surrounding the few school years allotted to the boys and girls of the working class with influences, sentiments and ideals that will best fit them to serve the capitalists’ interests when they are thrown on the “labor market.” It is now quite evident that the capitalists are going to demand the life of the school teachers’ organization in the near future. Already their retainers in college chairs, pulpits, and newspaper offices have set up the howl. After they have made a little more noise, summary action will be taken by the appointed School Board and the teachers’ organization will go the way of the police and firemen’s. organization. When this happens the little coterie of millionaires who pull the string will tell their controlled newspapers to announce to the world that “public opinion demanded it.” Then organized labor will protest, with strongly worded resolutions, unanimously adopted at a regular meeting of the Chicago Federation of Labor. and a committee will be appointed to wait on the Mayor and School Superintendent to do some more protesting, which will avail nothing.

When Labor learns to put its resolutions in a working-class political platform, and goes in a body to the polls and elects men who see life from the standpoint of the wealth-producers, their protest will count. Until they do that, mayors, police sheriffs, school superintendents, etc., will take their orders over the wire that runs from the Union League Club.

The general attack being made on the teachers’ organization by the minions of the capitalist class, because they have expressed their sympathies with their fellow workers in their hour of need, demonstrates once more the necessity of united working class action, both in our unions and at the ballot box, for working class control of the powers to be used in the interest of all who work, and against graft in all its forms.

(Chicago “Socialist.” June 17.) Miss Margaret Haley was for many years a teacher in the Chicago public schools. Some few years ago the city found itself short of funds to carry on the work of the schools properly. As usual, the capitalists’ favorite method of solving problems of this character was adopted. The School Board cut the salaries of the public school teachers. “What else could they do?” was they question they asked the simple minded wealth-producers of Chicago, who had been piling up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property for the big and little capitalists. And so far as most of the teachers and the great stupid working mass of the people could see there was nothing else “practicable.” They had always been used to that sort of solution of financial troubles.

Among the thousands of school teachers in the public schools at that time there were at least two–Miss Haley and Miss Goggin–who thought out a novel and original plan, which very much displeased the “legal possessors” of the hundreds of millions of surplus value created by the patient workers and exploited from them. Miss Haley and Miss Goggin set in motion an idea that instead of cutting the salaries of the hard-worked public school teachers, it would be better for all concerned if a lot of millionaires and corporations were compelled to quit dodging their taxes. The idea found favor in all quarters except among the “owners” of the untold millions of dollars worth of property in Chicago.

The agitation started by these teachers finally resulted in compelling the millionaires and corporations to pay more taxes. The teachers in self-protection organized the Teachers Federation, and elected Miss Haley as their business agent, which position she has held for the past four years.

The capitalist tax-dodgers have never been able to forgive the school teachers for the part they took in that fight. Through their servile press and pulpits they have continually kept up relentless persecution, and for a long time they have been looking for a pretext to exterminate the Teachers Federation. At last, they hope, they have found one.

Miss Haley is sick. Some of the teachers, whom she has served so faithfully, started a subscription for her relief. One of these lists has been found in one of the schools, so it is alleged. This act of mercy and common humanity has been attacked by the capitalist press as though it were a heinous crime. The “Chicago Tribune,” “Evening Post,” and “Chronicle” have lost no time in editorially demanding that the incident be taken advantage of to exterminate the Teachers Federation on the ground that Miss Haley is not at present on the pay-roll of the School Board.

Capitalism has resorted to many contemptible methods to crush any rising spirit of independence it sees in the working class. But to make this commendable act of humanity the pretext of an attack on the Teachers’ Federation exhibits the true nature of the Employers’ Association in all its naked brutality and beastliness.

The exploiters of labor may succeed in crushing the Teachers’ Federation, but we are of the opinion that their success will react like a boomerang. The capitalists have long done as they pleased with all our institutions. They have prostituted our colleges, pulpits, public press and schools, and made them all servile to their sordid greed.

But the great, sleeping giant of labor is awakening. Already a gleam of intelligence sparkles in his eye. He is reaching for political power. When he grasps it, the reign of greed will terminate. The sight on the Teachers Federation will hasten the day. Proceed, Capitalism. You are rushing on to your own destruction.

The Worker, and its predecessor The People, emerged from the 1899 split in the Socialist Labor Party of America led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit, who published their own edition of the SLP’s paper in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their ‘The People’ had the same banner, format, and numbering as their rival De Leon’s. The new group emerged as the Social Democratic Party and with a Chicago group of the same name these two Social Democratic Parties would become the Socialist Party of America at a 1901 conference. That same year the paper’s name was changed from The People to The Worker with publishing moved to New York City. The Worker continued as a weekly until December 1908 when it was folded into the socialist daily, The New York Call.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-the-worker/050624-worker-v15n13.pdf