Chicago, site of some of the earliest teachers’ organization, the Chicago Teachers Federation was founded in 1897, saw 14,000 teachers go years with virtually no pay–and no fight back–during the early Great Depression. Vera Stone urges teachers, many products of parochial schools, to drop their passivity, ‘professional’ and ‘patriotic’ pretenses, organize, and push back. They would. In the months following this articles mass protests, new unions, parent organizations, and militant oppositions all appeared in the district in sustained campaigns. It would take until 1934, and federal funding, for the teachers to get paid.

‘The Crisis in the Chicago Public Schools’ by Vera Stone from The Daily Worker. Vol. 9 No. 78. April 1, 1932.

The month of April marks the first anniversary of the crisis in the Chicago Public Schools. It is now one year that the 14,000 (fourteen thousand) teachers of our colossal, wealthy city have received almost nothing for their loyal services and diligent work. A year has elapsed, and yet the politicians of the Republican trenches are at war with the present political Democratic machine, a struggle between two capitalistic forces for the possession of tax graft. And the teachers remain the victims of political adventurers.

Only a few months ago the State Legislature assembled in Springfield, Ill. to find ways and means of extinguishing the present critical situation in the Public schools. The teachers sent carloads of petitions, pleading with their representatives to come to their aid, to pass such legislative measures that would yield immediate relief.

For days our “honorable” Republican and Democratic representatives fought among themselves, and when the day of adjournment arrived, nothing was accomplished. Once more trains full with teacher petitions sped to Springfield, demanding that the law-making body does not adjourn until relief is offered. These extra sessions cost the poor tax-payer thousands of dollars; yet, our representatives at Springfield smoked fat cigars, ate juicy steaks, and made whoopee in the cabarets.

Their final decision was to increase the taxes of the poor citizen.

And what about the teachers? Nothing! Have not the Public School teachers always been the most loyal advocators of capitalistic robbery and graft? Have they not always been the most devoted slaves of American “Democracy” and her laws? It is sufficient, therefore, to appeal to the teachers’ patriotism, to their idealistic mission, and they will not rebel, they will not strike, but continue their “sacred” educative work of molding a generation for the interests of American Capitalism and her Imperialistic appetites.

The radio brings to us daily the after-dinner speeches of the wealthy State Street magnates (the Kelly’s, the Cavanaugh’s, Mayor Cermak) and of the Board of Education grafters who assemble at banquet tables in the Sherman Hotel. These men praise the martyr, the brave and courageous teacher with words sweetened by high-balls and fruit salads, and—it is a year now that thousands of teachers and their families have had to live on the two week’s salary, a mere bone that the city throws to the teachers every few months to hush the beginning of a bark.

The obvious question arises: where is the fighting spirit of the teachers’ organization whose duty it is to protect the interests of its membership? Why is the Chicago Federation of Teachers silent in these days when voice and action are so necessary? The answer is simple. Faulty leadership. The leaders, molded of the same clay as the Schlesingers, the Wolls, the Greens of the American Federation of Labor, confine their activity to legislative lobbying and to fascist tactics.

For years the notorious Margaret Haley has been at the head of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation; her word equaled God’s word. And when on that morning of voting for Mayor, 14,000 teachers received Margaret Haley’s telegram, demanding that in the name of the teachers’ financial interests, they vote for Cermak, thousands listened to her command: Cermak become Mayor. So it is that the teachers’ union leader walks hand in hand with the political Democratic clique, and her compensations are many.

Thus far she has been successful in suppressing any initiative on the part of teacher groups to call demonstration meetings, claiming that such were not only a discord to professional ethics, but that any sort of a strike would effect their tenure of office.

She knows her teachers well. She is certain that the slaves of the Public Schools will not betray their patriotic mission. Devilish is her smile as all protests, demonstrations and strikers are shattered by her warning. Yet, often a fear creeps into her. Perhaps?… Perhaps the voice of poverty and hunger will endlessly tear off the masks of false leaders, and illuminate their faces in the proper light? Then Margaret Haley wires to “honourable” Mayor Cermak in California, where he went to cure his stomach indigestion, or to “Hot Springs” where he bathes his “weary, worn-out body” in the soothing warm springs of that country.

Wires travel quickly! The next morning the newspapers radiate with headlines: “Due to Mayor Cermak’s capable efforts, school teachers get two week’s salary.” For awhile stomachs become satiated, and teachers cease to protest. And Margaret Haley loudly acclaims: “Teachers, see what we do for you! Pay your union dues!”

The teachers remain impotent. There is not among them the necessary revolutionary element to head them on the road of organization and class-consciousness. Their lack of group solidarity is, of course, a result of their faulty education. The majority of the Chicago Public School teachers are a product of the Catholic Parochial Schools, where reigns the word of the Catholic priest, a word that justifies and upholds the Capitalistic world of exploitation and graft, a word that threatens with hell torture those who oppose and attack the possessors of might.

Twelve years of this education has doped their minds with religion motives, and lulled their brains with non-resisting theories. And from there the young spiritually-clogged persons enter the Chicago Normal College, a local institution that gives to the future teacher the tools necessary to hammer into the child the “culture” of the Public School, and to instill in the young citizen respect and love for the land of our fathers—Washington, Lincoln, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin.

Even that minority of the teaching force which is not exposed to the inquisition culture of the Catholic schools, has attained its education in the public schools, an education which is fundamentally based on a capitalistic-religious foundation, representing and defending the interests of the ruling class. Then, too, the greatest part of the 14,000 teachers is a product of the petty bourgeois middle class, who still mistrusts the organized worker and his strike tactics.

Yet, when hunger and cold appear on the doorstep, when teachers lack the means of paying for their mere necessities of living, when no one will accept the one month tax warrants issued by the Board of Education for their par value, then it slowly begins to dawn upon the teachers that “something is wrong in Denmark,” that there must be something wrong with the machine of a system that cannot pay its teachers.

And now and then, in the hells and lunch rooms of our schools, one can occasionally hear a word of protest, a glance of hatred and animosity for the fat bellied politicians of the City Hall.

“We are fools!”
“We are slaves!”
“Cermak gets his pay; let him give us our salary!”

One can even hear such radical words as:

“Let’s sabotage! Let’s go to the City Hall and demand Justice!”

In the classroom, too, is felt the effects of the crisis. The usual enthusiastic hymns of “My Country” and “Star Spangled Banner” become a silent procedure. There is simply no strength, no desire either on the part of the depressed teacher or on the part of the hungry child to shout patriotic hurrahs in times as these. Oftentimes, in conversations between teachers, Soviet Russia is mentioned, for they noticed in the newspapers that there, in the Communistic land, the teachers received a salary increase, whereas here, their wages were reduced ten per cent. Slowly this strange—to them—Soviet Union begins to gain their interest and sympathy.

It is inevitable, that with the growth of the economic crisis in the U.S. and over the entire world, the public school teachers will begin to apprehend, to conceive that the critical situation of the schools is not a local problem that can be solved by an “honest” Democratic or Republican administrative body. It will not be long before it becomes clear to them that the evil which has brought and will continue to breed suffering and hunger Is the present system of exploitation and graft; and the only solution is to annihilate, to destroy the class of parasites and whoopee makers—the capitalistic class, and to create on these ruins a structure of a classless society, a Communistic society.

It is time that teachers cease to listen to Cermak’s warnings against militant measures! We have had enough of Miss Agnes Clohesy’s and Margaret Haley’s ethical preachings and impotent leadership. It Is time that teachers emerge from the ethereal world and join the ranks of those who have found the path to the world-wide struggle of all workers for a new and better economic and Social system.

Let this crisis teach us the lesson of the necessity for organizing into a solid, class-conscious body! Let us show our strength, our solidarity!

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n078-NY-apr-01-1932-DW-LOC.pdf