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Acknowledgements

Our contributors, whether new additions or longstanding stalwarts, have

provided excellent clear, careful and stimulating chapters and case studies. It
is obvious but nonetheless important to reiterate that without their hard work
the textbook could not succeed. Thanks to them all, including Paul
Billingham, who updated the online case studies excellently. OUP and
particularly our editor, Francesca Walker, have been a constant source of
patient and professional support for which we are similarly very grateful.
Finally, we would like to thank our families, who make all this possible in
another kind of way: Matt, Bria and Caelan; Nina, Max, and Lukas; and
Maria Carla.
New to this edition

• New chapters on liberty, global poverty, sovereignty and borders, and the
environment provide students with fresh insight on important debates in
political theory.
• A range of new case studies - including those on same-sex marriage, racial
inequality, sweatshop labour, and Brexit - demonstrate the relevance of
political theory to current real-world issues.
• Two new editors, Robert Jubb (University of Reading) and Patrick Tomlin
(University of Warwick), join the editorial team, offering new expert
perspectives on key political ideas.
Contents

List of case studies

Notes on the contributors
How to use this book
How to use the online resources

Introduction
1 Political obligation
2 Liberty
3 Crime and punishment
4 Democracy
5 Power
6 Equality and social justice
7 Toleration
8 Multiculturalism
9 Gender
10 Global Poverty
11 Human Rights
12 Sovereignty and Borders
13 War and Intervention
14 The Environment
Glossary
References
Index
Detailed contents

List of case studies

Notes on the contributors
How to use this book
How to use the online resources

Introduction
1 Political obligation
Introduction
Consent
Fairness
Community
Morality
Philosophical anarchism
Conclusion
2 Liberty
Introduction
Rival interpretations of liberty
Republican liberty
Liberty and equality
The value of negative liberty
Conclusion
3 Crime and punishment
Introduction
Consequentialist justifications of punishment
Retributivist justifications of punishment
Mixed approaches to the justification of punishment
Conclusion: punishment and beyond
4 Democracy
Introduction
Instrumentalism
Does democracy have non-instrumental value?
The problem of democratic citizenship
Democratic institutions
Conclusion
5 Power
Introduction
The concept of power and modes of power
Three dimensions of power
An alternative view of power
Power, freedom, and responsibility
Conclusion
6 Equality and social justice
Introduction: the history of social justice
The political rejection of social justice and its revival
Equality
Equality of opportunity
 Social justice and social relations
The capability approach
Conclusion: prospects for achieving social justice
7 Toleration
Introduction
The traditional doctrine of toleration
The moral analysis of toleration
The contemporary liberal theory of toleration
Toleration as recognition
Conclusion
8 Multiculturalism
Introduction
Multiculturalism: thick or thin?
Liberalism and cultural rights
Do cultural rights oppress the oppressed?
The politics of recognition
Multiculturalism: open-minded dialogue and a common culture
Conclusion
9 Gender
Introduction
What is feminism?
The sex/gender distinction
Feminism, liberalism, and the law
‘The personal is political’
The ethics of care
 Sex and violence
Conclusion
10 Global Poverty
The problem
Global political theory
The duty to aid
Uncertainty and ‘Why me?’
No duty of justice?
The duty not to harm
So, what can and should an individual do?
Conclusion
11 Human Rights
Introduction
Natural rights, the rights of man, and human rights
Analytical issues
Justifying theories
Implementing human rights
Conclusion
12 Sovereignty and Borders
Introduction
Sovereignty
Less or more sovereignty?
Who is sovereign?
Borders
The relationship between sovereignty and borders
 Conclusion
13 War and Intervention
Introduction
The just war tradition
Theoretical approaches to the ethics of war
Jus ad bellum
Jus in bello
Jus post bellum
Conclusion
14 The Environment
Introduction
The environment and its relationship to humanity
Justice, value, and the environment
Responsibilities to the future
Policies to protect the environment
Who makes the decisions? Democracy and governance
Conclusion

Glossary
References
Index
List of case studies

1 Conscription—by Jeremy Williams

2 Nudging
3 Preamble and Article 1 of the Rome Statute
4 Deliberative polling—by Jeremy Williams
5 Power and Racial Inequality in America
6 Social justice and disability
7 Same-sex marriage
8 Wisconsin v Yoder: the cultural rights of isolationist religious
groups.
9 Pornography
10 Sweatshops and You
11 Torture and counter-terrorism—by Jeremy Williams
12 Sovereignty and Borders in the European Union
13 Afghanistan and the ‘War on Terror’
14 Climate change
Notes on the contributors

Tom Campbell is a former professorial fellow in the Centre for Applied

Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), Charles Sturt University,
Australia. He has been a visiting professor in the School of Law, King’s
College, London, Professor of Jurisprudence at The University of
Glasgow, and Professor of Law at the Australian National University. He
retired from Charles Sturt University in 2017 and has settled in to golfing
and gardening in Canberra where his wife Beth Campbell continues to
serve as a magistrate.
Simon Caney is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Warwick.
He is the author of Justice Beyond Borders (2005) and the co-editor of
Climate Ethics: Essential Readings (2010). His research interests are in
global justice, environmental justice and climate change, and our
responsibilities to future generations.
Ian Carter is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Pavia,
Italy. He is the author of A Measure of Freedom (Oxford University Press,
1999) and the editor, with Matthew H. Kramer and Hillel Steiner, of
Freedom: A Philosophical Anthology (Blackwell, 2006). His articles have
appeared in Ethics, Economics and Philosophy, The Journal of Political
Philosophy, and Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. He is currently
working on the concept of basic equality and its role in a freedom-based
theory of justice.
Clare Chambers is Reader in Political Philosophy and a Fellow of Jesus
College, University of Cambridge. She is the author of Against Marriage:
An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford University
Press, 2017); Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (Penn State
University Press, 2008); Teach Yourself Political Philosophy: A Complete
Introduction (with Phil Parvin, Hodder, 2012); and numerous articles and
chapters on feminist and liberal political philosophy.
Thomas Christiano is Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of
Arizona. He has been a fellow at the Princeton University Center for
Human Values, the National Humanities Center, All Souls College, and
Australian National University. He is the author of The Rule of the Many
(Westview, 1996) and The Constitution of Equality (Oxford University
Press, 2008) and articles on moral and political philosophy. He is editor of
Politics, Philosophy and Economics (Sage). His current research is on
global justice and international institutions, human rights, fair exchange,
democracy, and the foundations of equality.
Sarah Fine is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College London. She
is co-editor (with Lea Ypi) of Migration in Political Theory: The Ethics of
Movement and Membership (Oxford University Press, 2016). Much of her
research focuses on issues related to migration and citizenship.
Helen Frowe is Wallenberg Academy Research Fellow in Philosophy at
Stockholm University, where she directs the Stockholm Centre for the
Ethics of War and Peace. She is the author of The Ethics of War and
Peace: An Introduction (Routledge, 2011) and Defensive Killing: An
Essay on War and Self-Defence (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Anna Elisabetta Galeotti is Full Professor of Political Philosophy at the
Università del Piemonte Orientale. She has spent several years as a
research fellow in various institutions abroad, including Cambridge
University, the European University Institute in Florence, the Institute for
Advanced Study in Princeton, the Centre for Ethics and Public Affairs of
St Andrews University, and the Safra Foundation Center for Ethics of
Harvard University. She has worked on toleration for many years, and has
published three books and many essays, including Toleration as
Recognition (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and ‘Female
circumcision’ (Constellations, 14, 2007). She is currently writing a book
on self-deception and democratic politics.
Keith Hyams is a Reader in Political Theory and Interdisciplinary Ethics at
the University of Warwick. He has held visiting positions at the
Universities of Toronto, Oxford, and Louvain, and is the winner of the
Inaugural 2015 Sanders Prize in Political Philosophy. He has published on
consent, distributive justice, and the ethics of climate change. He is current
 research interests include ethical issues in the governance of extreme
technological risk, and ethics in international development.
Robert Jubb is an Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of
Reading, and has also worked at the University of Leicester and UCL. He
has published on egalitarianism, collective responsibilities and method in
political theory, particularly ideal theory and realism.
Catriona McKinnon is Professor of Political Theory at the University of
Reading. She is the author of Liberalism and the Defence of Political
Constructivism (Palgrave, 2002), Toleration: A Critical Introduction
(Routledge, 2006), and Climate Change and Future Justice: Precaution,
Compensation, and Triage (Routledge, 2011). She is writing a book on
climate change as an international crime against future people.
Monica Mookherjee is a Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy at the
University of Keele. She is the author of Women’s Rights as Multicultural
Claims: Reconfiguring Gender and Diversity in Political Philosophy
(Edinburgh University Press, 2009) and the editor of Democracy.
Religious Pluralism and the Liberal Dilemma of Accommodation
(Springer, 2010). She is currently writing a book on the application of the
human capabilities approach to theories of multiculturalism.
David Owen is Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the University
of Southampton. He has also been Visiting Professor in Politics and in
Philosophy at the JW Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. He is the
author of Maturity and Modernity (Routledge, 1994), Nietzsche, Politics
and Modernity (Sage, 1995), and Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality
(Acumen, 2007) and has co-edited volumes including Multiculturalism
and Political Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Recognition
and Power (Cambridge University Press, 2007), as well as writing articles
on a wide range of topics. He is currently working on issues in the ethics
of migration.
Massimo Renzo is Professor of Politics, Philosophy & Law at King’s College
London. He has held visiting appointments at the Australian National
University, the universities of Virginia and Arizona, the Murphy Institute,
the National University of Singapore and the Nathanson Centre for
 Transnational Human Rights, Crime & Security. He is an affiliated
researcher at the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War & Peace and the
Honorary Secretary of the Society for Applied Philosophy.
Zofia Stemplowska is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the
University of Oxford and Asa Briggs Fellow of Worcester College,
Oxford. She was previously Associate Professor of Political Theory at the
University of Warwick. She writes on domestic and global justice and
mitigation of historical injustice.
Patrick Tomlin is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Warwick.

Jonathan Wolff is the Blavatnik Chair in Public Policy, at the Blavatnik

School of Government, Oxford. His books include An Introduction to
Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1996; 2006; 2016),
Disadvantage (with Avner de-Shalit; Oxford University Press, 2007),
Ethics and Public Policy: A Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge, 2011), The
Human Right to Health (Norton, 2012) and An Introduction to Moral
Philosophy (Norton 2018).
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speak. His right to speak was challenged, because he was not a
member; whereupon he paid his fee, received his membership card,
and made his speech. It proved to be a series of false statements
concerning Dr. Oxnam—that Oxnam had been in jail recently, and
that he had been barred from speaking in the city of Long Beach.
Some of the teachers objected, and succeeded in silencing Lacy,
until Oxnam could appear to answer the charges. Oxnam wrote,
demanding that Lacy produce his evidence, and challenging Lacy to
appear at the next meeting of the teachers. Lacy declined to appear,
whereupon the Teachers’ Club expelled him.
There were two sets of charges against Dr. Lickley, one set of
which they published, and the other of which they whispered. They
had been shadowing him with detectives for years; they had
followed him on train journeys and steamer trips, and wherever he
drove in his automobile. Sometimes there were as many as four
people devoting their attention to him; one of these men got drunk
and admitted that he was shadowing Dr. Lickley for the gang. They
were trying to get what they call a “woman story” on him; as we go
from city to city you will find this such a common device of the Black
Hand that you will learn to take it for granted.
The Lickley stories served their purpose—of helping to beat the
“teachers’ ticket.” The candidates of the gang were elected without
exception, and Dr. Oxnam came out next to the bottom of the poll.
The charges against Dr. Lickley were dismissed, on motion of the
attorney for the opposition; whereupon Superintendent Dorsey
informed Dr. Lickley that if he still stayed in the system she would
put him in a solitary room in the Grand Avenue School, with curtailed
duties, without a stenographer, and without even a telephone. It
happens that Dr. Lickley is a lawyer, and can earn far more at his
profession than he was getting in the school system. He had before
him a long and nasty fight, with the cards stacked against him. He
tendered his resignation, which the new board accepted.
Some maintain that he should have stayed and fought it out.
Suffice it to say that one of the factors upon which the Black Hand
counts, when it puts its scandal bureau to work, is the probability
that men of refinement will choose to go their own way as private
citizens, in preference to having slanders about them published in
the newspapers. If you take that to mean that Dr. Lickley was guilty
and ran away, all I can answer is what Mr. Bettinger tells me; that he
rented a room in the upper part of his home to a typist, who,
hearing him speak of Dr. Lickley, remarked: “Why, I typed all the
reports of the people who investigated his life; he didn’t do anything
wrong.”
 CHAPTER IX
THE REGIME OF RECIPROCITY

We now have the Black Hand in undisputed control of the school

system of Los Angeles; their seven dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries
meet, frequently in secret session, and carry out the will of their
masters. Let us see what this means for the schools, the teachers,
the children, and the public.
First of all, graft: it means that the handling of twelve million
dollars a year is in the hands of people who have no conception of
any other ideal in life but that of money-making. They would, of
course, deny this indignantly; while denying it, they will be teaching
the children in the economics classes that pecuniary self-seeking is
the only principle upon which a civilization can be built. They will be
glorifying greed by high-sounding phrases, such as “individualism,”
“laissez-faire,” “freedom of contract”; they will be ridiculing any other
ideal as “utopian,” the product of “theorists” and “dreamers.”
Here are more than nine hundred school buildings, and the system
has never had a real building expert. The best architects in the city
do not trouble to bid upon school buildings; they know that these
contracts go to those who, in the phrase of Jerry Muma, “believe in
reciprocity.” The whole business system of the schools is antiquated
and tied up in red tape, all of which is sacred because it represents
somebody’s privilege. The 1921 board ordered a business survey of
the schools, employing the financial expert of the State Board of
Control; a minute and detailed report on the school system was
made—and was turned down and suppressed by the gang.
Quite recently Mr. F. W. Hansen, purchasing agent for the schools,
resigned his position, stating that the system was “an institutional
mad-house”; all his efforts to save money for the taxpayer had been
thwarted by the business manager. Mr. Hansen had wished to go out
and develop additional sources of supply, as the purchasing agent of
any commercial organization would do. He went directly to the
manufacturers of ink-wells and saved from thirty to forty per cent.
He cut the price of waste-baskets from $9.60 to $6.85 a dozen; and
so on through a long list of savings.
But you see, if you go directly to the manufacturers, you cut off
the profits of jobbers and wholesalers, and these are prominent
members of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, who
“believe in reciprocity” and “the encouragement of home industry.”
When you buy from novelty houses for $38.00 calendars which the
local dealers are selling for $100, you are causing unemployment for
a bookkeeper in Los Angeles, who keeps track of this transaction for
the local business men. Still worse heresy, when you go to San
Francisco and buy reed for $1.50 which costs $3.53 in Los Angeles,
you are boosting the most bitter rival of our City of the Black Angels.
When you buy lubricating oil for twenty-seven and a half cents a
gallon, which meets the test better than that which the city has been
getting for fifty-four cents a gallon, you have some oil men on your
neck. Mr. Hansen had a long fight with his superiors before he was
even permitted to sign his own letters asking for prices in
transactions such as this.
Mr. Hansen insisted upon getting competitive bids for the
supplying of colored crayons. The business manager told him to “lay
off this”; the city had been using Prang’s crayons, and there was
none so good. The bid on Prang’s water colors had been forty
dollars; when the competition started it came down to twenty-five;
there were other brands offered for eighteen, and the art supervisor
of the schools made tests, and could find no difference in quality
between them. The old board split on this issue—the members of
the “teachers’ ticket” stood out, trying to save the taxpayers
$1,204.07 on this single purchase. The new board is now in, the city
is paying the higher prices, and somebody is getting the “rake-off.”
And yet, in spite of this orgy of spending, the teachers cannot get
supplies. I have before me the Los Angeles “School Journal” for
October 24, 1921, giving a report of a committee of teachers which
had been appointed to investigate the question of school supplies.
Here are six pages of closely printed details, covering every sort of
school material. Some forty or fifty teachers testify. No one knows
when supplies ordered will be received, the time is usually from six
months to a year. Tissue paper was “called for repeatedly for two
years. First amount received one year ago.” Desks ordered in the
spring of 1918 had not been received two and a half years later. Half
a class in agriculture was idle, because garden tools were missing
eleven months after ordering. Text-books in English for the teacher’s
desk received “sometimes six months later, sometimes a year.”
Again, “I have been asking for bookkeeping desks for five years.”
I talked with the head of a department, who had kept a careful
record, and had never got supplies in less than six months, and
sometimes had waited two years and a half. There were some
repairs to be done to laboratory tables, and application for this work
was made in the spring, so that it could be done during the summer
vacation. In the fall, after school had started, along came the
carpenters and the painters to do this work. Said this teacher: “The
city was paying me fifteen dollars a day to teach two hundred pupils,
and then it paid another fifteen dollars a day to workmen to keep
me from teaching the pupils.”
All this is petty graft; and the thing that really counts is Big
Business, which is not considered graft. This board has the placing
of magnificent new high schools which the city is building for the
children of the rich, and which determine the population and price of
real estate for whole districts. It goes without saying that these
schools are put where the active speculators want them; three such
schools are now going up in districts where there is practically no
population at present. Meanwhile the old, unsanitary fire-traps in the
slums are left overcrowded and without repairs. They have passed a
regulation districting the city, and compelling the children to attend
school in their own district. The children of the poor may not travel
and attend the schools of the rich! This year there are no schools at
all for many of the children of the poor, and sixty thousand of them
are on part time.
 The reason for this is the ceaseless campaign of Big Business to
starve the schools. In the columns of the “Times” you will read that
the “Times” is a friend of the schools; but the teachers noted that
this did not keep the “Times” from backing the treacherous program
of the “Taxpayers’ Protective Association,” which lobbied through the
state legislature the notorious Bill 1013, which forbade any
community to increase its tax rate more than five per cent over that
of the year before. The lobbyists of the association solemnly assured
the teachers’ representatives at the state capital that this bill would
not in any way affect the schools, and so they let it get by. Then, to
their consternation, the teachers discovered that it would completely
hamstring the schools! The tax rate of the previous year had been
unusually low, because there had been a surplus; now, under this
new law, most of the schools would have to close down.
The teachers got busy and circulated petitions, and defeated this
law by referendum. Then the Taxpayers’ Protective Association tried
to throw out the referendum, and the teachers had to pay an
attorney a thousand dollars of their own money to argue the case
before the Supreme Court. You will not be surprised to hear that the
principal backer of this Taxpayers’ Protective Association is Mr. E. P.
Clark, principal backer of the Better America Federation; in other
words, the association is simply one of the aliases of the Black Hand!
And now this Black Hand has elected its own governor of the
state, on a program of “economy,” which means the starving of
every form of public welfare activity. The school appropriations have
been cut to such an extent that the teachers’ colleges are crippled
and the whole system is in despair. You see, what money California
has to spare just now must go into a new state penitentiary here in
the South; the Black Hand is planning more campaigns against
“suspicion of criminal syndicalism.” A couple of months ago, while I
sat in my cell at the Wilmington police-station, my fellow prisoner,
Hugh Hardyman, quoted a remark: “I would rather be in jail laying
the foundations of liberty than at liberty laying the foundations of
jails.” In California you take your choice between these two.
 CHAPTER X
THE SPY SYSTEM

It goes without saying that in such a school system promotion

goes by favoritism. The system of examining and grading teachers at
the present time is a farce. These examinations are partly written,
partly oral, and partly references; the references are submitted as
confidential, and one of the assistant superintendents marks them,
without any assistance. So far as the oral examinations are
concerned, it is purely a question of getting before an examiner who
is your friend. Mrs. Dorsey, the superintendent, will say: “Send So-
and-so to my committee”; and it will be done.
Mr. Bettinger, while assistant superintendent, discovered that the
deputy superintendent was giving the clerk a list of names of those
who were to be passed as favored by people of influence. He tells
me how later on Jerry Muma, at that time “boss” of the board, came
to him with a friend whose daughter desired to take the examination
for high school teacher. Mr. Bettinger explained the routine; the
examination must be taken in such and such a way, etc. But Mr.
Muma was not satisfied. He said that he had heard these matters
could be arranged more expeditiously. Finding that Mr. Bettinger did
not take the hint, he said: “Wait a minute,” and went out. He was
gone five minutes, and came back, saying: “It will be all right; Mr.
Shafer (an assistant) will have this young woman come before him.”
Mr. Muma, you remember, is the dealer in life insurance who
“believes in reciprocity.”
Mrs. Dorsey is a very devout church member, and the churches
are strong in her support; so when a woman teacher came to her,
complaining of having been seduced by the principal of her school,
Mrs. Dorsey was greatly incensed. When the teacher’s story was
substantiated by the wife of the principal, Mrs. Dorsey—so I am
informed by Dr. Lickley—summoned the man to her office and
demanded his resignation. But she had been led in her excitement to
overlook the realities of politics in her school system. This principal
had a powerful friend, an ex-judge who was high in the councils of
the Black Hand. He called on Mrs. Dorsey and presumably explained
to her the concrete facts about the administration of schools.
Anyhow, the matter was suddenly dropped; and Mrs. Dorsey has
just been presented with a reappointment for four years, with a
salary raise from eight thousand to ten thousand a year.
The thing for which I indict this elderly lady superintendent is her
pitiable subservience to the power of wealth, and the glorifying of
commercialism in her school system. She has made the schools a
“boosting” agency for reaction; it would be no exaggeration to say
that she has handed them over to the bankers to be used as a
collection agency to get the children’s money. One teacher tells me
how her principal came back in great excitement from a meeting of
principals summoned by Mrs. Dorsey, at which the details of a “thrift
campaign” had been explained. All the children must start savings
banks at once; the Chamber of Commerce was furnishing the banks,
also posters, which must be put up in every schoolroom. Some time
later the principal came into a room much disturbed; there was no
poster up in that room, and what was the matter? The teacher
explained that the wind had blown it down; it had been up for two
months. The principal fussed about, and would not leave until it had
been tacked up again.
The children were hounded to start their bank accounts; some
were taken out and paraded around the block, with banners
reporting the percentages of bank accounts in each class. The
teachers also were hounded; you were a failure if your children did
not reach a certain percentage. A man from the bankers’ association
came around to make a speech: “The principal is going to give you a
bank; the superintendent expects that every one of you will have a
dollar saved up.” And every month there was a bulletin from Mrs.
Dorsey. Meantime the bankers’ association, in the literature it sent
out, was explaining that it was spending more than one dollar per
child upon this school campaign, but it would pay well, because the
children would get the bank habit.
Mrs. Dorsey has a formula of subservience which she is
accustomed to repeat to her teachers and subordinates: “We must
please the business men, otherwise they will not vote the bonds to
keep our schools going.” That she has grounds for her fears was
shown by the statement of Mr. Edwards, self-appointed financial
boss of the school board. The teachers and the public were
demanding a fifteen-million-dollar bond issue for new schools; but
when the proposition came before the board, it had been changed to
nine millions, and Mr. Edwards’ explanation was simple: the heads of
the Chamber of Commerce had drawn a line through the fifteen and
made it nine! “That’s what we’ll vote just now,” they said; and as a
result of those strokes of the pencil, sixty thousand children are now
condemned to part-time instruction!
If you think this a matter of small importance, let me tell you of
one teacher who had a class of incorrigible children. Out of nineteen
boys, seventeen confessed to her that they had burglarized houses
or stores. The ages of these boys were from thirteen to sixteen, and
in the majority of cases their mothers had been compelled by
poverty to go to work outside the home. The boys would take the
money they stole and go to beach resorts, and spend it all in one
night. These boys had had three years of half-day school sessions,
and told the teacher that they had started their careers of crime
while turned out on the streets instead of being in school.
As I finish this book, Mrs. Dorsey issues a bulletin, informing all
teachers that the schools are to celebrate a “Chamber of Commerce
Week.” It is solemnly ordered that “children of the first five grades
write to their father or guardian a letter on some phase of the work
of the local Chamber of Commerce, or on the benefits to the city of
the activities of that organization”; and teachers of all other grades
shall “use the functions, activities, or achievements of the local
Chamber of Commerce as suggestions for themes and orations.
Pamphlets dealing with the activities of the Los Angeles Chamber of
Commerce will be placed in the mail-boxes. The co-operation of
principals and teachers is urged.”
I have before me a copy of the pamphlet in question. The
Chamber of Commerce, which cut the school appropriation from
fifteen million to nine million dollars, and put sixty thousand children
on part time, now has the effrontery to state to all school teachers
and pupils: “The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce has worked for
every bond issue asked for by the Board of Education, until now the
city has more than 900 public school buildings for its 176,000
children.” Upon learning of this “Chamber of Commerce Week,” the
American Civil Liberties Union hastened to apply to the board for a
“Civil Liberties Week,” and in a written statement afforded the board
many reasons for making the children acquainted with the
importance of protecting civil liberties. It goes without saying that
the Board of Education of the Black Hand made haste to vote down
this riotous proposition; and likewise another for a “union labor
week.”
Of course there has been, and is, a campaign of terrorism to drive
out the few rebel teachers from the system. One high school
principal was told by Judge Bordwell that he would be promoted if
he would remove several teachers accused of liberal ideas. When the
principal said they were good teachers, the Judge said: “Can’t you
get something on their morals?”
That the Black Hand directs spying by the school children on their
teachers is something you do not have to take my word for; you
may take the word of Mr. Harry Haldeman, president of the Better
America Federation. Speaking at a banquet given by his supporters
in the Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles, Mr. Haldeman said in
substance: investigators have been placed in various schools and
colleges in this state and throughout the United States, whose
business it is to take note of the utterances of teachers, professors,
or students, and report to the headquarters of the Federation. If any
utterances are reported which are not to the liking of the Federation,
means will be taken to have the teachers or professors discharged.
So far as the students are concerned, they will be shown the error of
their ways. If they prove obstinate and fail to take heed, steps are to
be taken to prevent their getting employment. And if you should find
any of these statements incredible, let me add that Mr. Haldeman
made the same speech in many other places; he made it at the St.
Francis Hotel in San Francisco, and you will find in “The Goose-Step”
what the San Francisco “Call” published about it.
They control the board, the superintendents, the teachers, and
the pupils; they even control the parents. For twenty years Los
Angeles has had an excellent group of organizations called Parent-
Teachers’ Associations; the parents come to the school buildings for
meetings with the teachers, to discuss the welfare of the schools.
But this machinery has gone the way of everything else—it has been
taken over by the Black Hand. I talked with a lady who was
president of one of these branches, and saw the whole intrigue from
the inside. There are prominent women, paid agents of the Better
America Federation; while others are paid by the “Times” in the coin
of prominence and applause. If you support the politics of the
“Times,” you become “the distinguished Mrs. So-and-So”; your
picture is printed, your speeches are quoted, and your honors are
recited at length.
These agents of the Black Hand have their plans always laid in
advance; they are aggressive, they pretend to know the laws and
by-laws, and brush the ordinary parents out of the way. At one of
the general meetings of the association they rushed through an
endorsement of military training in the schools. There were only
thirty or forty people present; no one had any warning of the
program, nor any opportunity to discuss this important question; yet
next morning this action was announced in the “Times” as
representing the sentiments of thirty-one thousand parents! One
lady, objecting to this procedure, brought up a discussion of the
matter at her branch; she proposed that they should have speakers
to present both sides of the question. Her principal was “furious”
that she should have brought such a proposition up in his school.
In order to prevent the parents from having an effective voice,
they have amended the constitution to read that there shall be “no
interference with the administrative functions of the board of
education”; so now, if there is anything they want to hush up, they
simply call it “an administrative function of the board of education”!
In order to keep the teachers from having any voice, they frequently
call the business meetings at hours when the teachers are busy in
classroom. One teacher who has spent something like thirty years in
the system, tells me that he has never yet been able to attend a
business meeting of the association in his school. The
representatives of the school at these meetings are the principals
and their office staff. The teachers pay one-third of the dues, they
furnish the bulk of the program work—but they have nothing to say
about policy.
“Politics” is strictly barred; but, as everywhere else throughout the
system, this rule works only one way. The associations are forbidden
to endorse any candidates; but during the recent election the
“Times” announced that they had endorsed the candidates of the
Black Hand—and when the “Times” says a thing, that thing might as
well be true, because ninety-nine per cent of the public believes it.
On another occasion these political women rushed through an
endorsement of some of their judges, and Mrs. E. J. Quale, the press
chairman, handed in her resignation in protest. The executive board
accepted her resignation, but kept the fact out of the records and
out of the newspapers—thus concealing Mrs. Quale’s protest from
the membership.
“No politics in the P. T. A.” It was not “politics” when Harry
Atwood, author of “Back to the Republic,” came to talk about the
Constitution, and devoted nine-tenths of his time to attacking the
initiative and referendum. The “politics” began when some one
ventured to ask for a speaker who was known to favor the initiative.
There is an executive committee for the purpose of controlling
speakers, and no one could be permitted to speak unless his name
had been approved by this committee.
The biggest issue in the state just now is that of public or private
control of water power; the whole future depends upon this, and to
keep the public in darkness concerning it is the one big purpose of
the Black Hand, to which all other purposes are subordinated. So in
this water power fight the control of the Parent-Teachers’ Association
has been most clearly revealed. In the last election campaign the
proposal to issue bonds for public development of water power was
beaten by the corporations; subsequent investigation by the state
legislature revealed the fact that the Southern California Edison
Company, a private water power corporation, had contributed
$107,605 to carry this campaign. They had paid $26,000 salary to a
campaign manager, who had formed the “Women’s Committee of
the Los Angeles Taxpayers Association.” He had a professional
publicity agent, a woman, and “three or four other ladies who went
around making speeches.” There was one item of $4,019 for “special
literature,” signed with the name of the “Women’s Tax and Bond
Study Club”—and this, according to the admission of the campaign
manager, was for circulation among the Parent-Teachers’
Associations. During the campaign, the speakers for public
ownership were barred; but now, by order of the superintendent,
the Edison Company is taking its propaganda directly into the
schools!
 CHAPTER XI
LIES FOR CHILDREN

Needless to say, those who run this school machine for the Black
Hand are vigilant to keep modern ideas from the children. They
excluded the “Nation” and the “New Republic” from the high school
libraries shortly after the war; and they have recently refused to
rescind this action. There was a debate on the subject before the
Friday Morning Club, a ladies’ organization, and Mrs. Chester C.
Ashley, ex-member of the board of education, waved before the eyes
of the horrified ladies the current issue of the “Nation,” June 6,
1923: let them inspect the cover and see what poison was prepared
for the minds of their children:
UPTON SINCLAIR DEFENDS THE LAW

His Letter to the Law-breaking Chief of Police of Los Angeles

The Better America Federation picked out as its text-book of
patriotism for the schools a work called “Vanishing Landmarks” by
Leslie Shaw, ex-secretary of the treasury, a comical old Tory who
glorifies the Constitution as a bulwark of special privilege. “Only
Socialists, near Socialists, and Bolsheviki clamor for democracy,”
declares Mr. Shaw; and he says it is wise for representatives of
capital to be permitted to organize, and the only danger begins
when federations of unions are formed. Incidentally he denounces,
as part of the revolutionary program, the woman’s suffrage
amendment! The Better America Federation spent twenty thousand
dollars to put a copy of this book into the hands of every school
teacher; they wanted it adopted as a text-book in all elementary
schools—and this in a state where the women have had the ballot
for twelve years! As one teacher remarked to me, the slogan, “Votes
for Women,” is to be changed to “Lies for Children”!
For the Pilgrim Tri-Centennial the Better America Federation
prepared a beautiful text-book for the schools, full of reactionary
propaganda; this they gave away, and they had a list of eloquent
orators, also to be given away. Then they produced a text-book
“Back to the Republic,” by Harry Atwood, denouncing the initiative
and referendum as treason to our forefathers. The publishers
announce this as “The Outstanding Book of the Age,” and it was
distributed to every teacher. Let me quote you a few of its theses:
“Promiscuity, or free-love, is to the domestic world what democracy
is to government.... What gluttony is to the individual, democracy is
to government.... What drunkenness is to the individual, democracy
is to government.... What discord is to music, democracy is to
government.... What insanity is to thought, democracy is to
government,” etc., etc. And understand, this in a text-book! Teachers
were expected to compel little children to learn this by heart, and to
recite it!
Next came “The Citadel of Freedom,” by Randolph Leigh, a
product of Nicholas Murray Butler’s educational machine. It was
written as a Columbia doctor’s thesis, and is a panegyric of the
Constitution, in which every reactionary influence in our history is
glorified, and every popular influence sneered at. I have read the
galley proofs of this book, as submitted to the school board of Los
Angeles, and they bear at the top the tell-tale label, “Times.” Mr.
Leigh appeared personally before the board of education, offering to
put a copy of this book into the hands of every student orator. He
was backed by a committee, including Chandler of the “Times” and
Haldeman of the Better America Federation, who offered a prize of
fifteen hundred dollars, or “a de luxe summer tour of the
Mediterranean country,” for the best oration by any high school
student using this book and its references as source material. A
liberal representative on the school board objected, saying that the
students should have an opportunity to hear both sides. Mr. Leigh
said that he had done all the research work. The board member
answered: “Our students are trained to do their own research work.”
And Mrs. Dorsey sat there and did not say one word in defense of
her school system!
Reactionary teachers are appointed for the express purpose of
repressing originality and independence in the students. What are
their standards and ideals was charmingly revealed by one of them
who was discussing a certain pupil with a friend of mine. This pupil
was a “leader,” said the teacher; “I know she’s a good leader—you
give her something to do and she’ll do it beautifully.” The
consequences of such training are seen in the so-called “Ephebian
Society,” an organization formed to interest the high school alumni in
public service. The choicest of the high school graduates are picked
out each year, and this is a great honor—while you are graduating.
After that you discover it to be a farce; because the members of the
society meet and the authorities in control forbid them to take up
any vital subject whatever. The Ephebians meet in the rooms of the
board of education, and are permitted to spend their time raising
money for the Travelers’ Aid Society, or superintending the
Newsboys’ Christmas Dinner! I talked with this year’s president of
the society, Lee Payne; they will never get him again, he said.
This same young man told me of his experiences when he was
selected to deliver the valedictory of his class. He asked to have a
liberal teacher as his guide, but was compelled to have a reactionary
teacher. She assigned to him a commonplace theme, and he
rejected it, and wrote on the subject of “Labor’s Right to a Share in
Industry.” When he brought in his address, the teacher refused to let
him deliver it; it was “too Bolsheviki,” she said, and told him that
when he went into a garden he must see the beautiful red roses,
and not the thorns. She practically rewrote the address for the
student, and he took it off and wrote it again. The controversy
continued up to a day or two before commencement, when the boy
finally had to deliver an address which did not represent his own
convictions.
I have mentioned favoritism among the principals and teachers;
needless to say, also, that children who come from poor homes, and
especially the children of foreigners, are slighted. A boy came to see
me, Clarence Alpert by name, a sensitive lad, conscientious and
idealistic; with tears in his eyes he told me how he had been turned
out of Lincoln High School by the principal, Miss Andrus. I was
familiar with the name of this lady. In an address to the school
assembly she had referred to “that notorious disloyalist and traitor,
Upton Sinclair.” I wrote a letter to the lady in which I mentioned my
support of the war—you may find it in “The Brass Check,” pages
205-7. I served notice upon her that she would make a retraction of
her statements or face a libel suit, and she preferred the former
alternative.
The boy whom she had now expelled had refused to salute the
flag. He was a Socialist, and believed that the flag stood for
capitalism. Miss Andrus sent for him, and stormed at him; he was a
Russian Jew, and she knew his kind from her experience at Hull
House. They were dirty, rotten scoundrels; they were people with no
ideals and no country; they were cheap material, who could not be
made into good citizens and were not entitled to an education. Miss
Andrus tried her best to get young Alpert to name some of the
teachers who had encouraged him in his ideas; the boy was
threatened with immediate dismissal if he refused to name them,
but in spite of the fact that he had “no ideals,” he stood firm! Finally
he was given three days in which to make up his mind and salute
the flag.
Then—so the boy explained to me—one of his teachers labored
with him, explaining to him that he was under a misapprehension
about the flag. To be sure it was used by capitalism at the present
time, but that was only because it had been stolen; in reality the flag
stood for the highest ideals ever conceived by mankind, and it was
our business to preserve it for those ideals, and to take it away from
the exploiters and rascals. Alpert agreed to that, and went back to
Miss Andrus and told her that he had realized his mistake, and that
he was now ready to salute the flag as she required. But she
declared that he was a hypocrite and a coward, and should not stay
in the school. I went to a friend of mine, a wealthy man who
happens to be a liberal. He called up a member of the school board,
who went to see Miss Andrus; so in two or three days the boy was
restored to school, from which he has since been graduated.
 The schools are starting in this fall with what they call “codified
patriotism”; a whole outfit of flummery contrived by the American
Legion and the professional hundred percenters. The flag must be
exactly at the top of the staff, and you must raise it briskly, and
lower it slowly and reverently; you must raise your hat with your
right hand, and women must put their right hand over the heart.
The legislature has passed a bill, requiring that American history
shall be taught “from the American viewpoint”; no longer is it to be
taught from the viewpoint of truth! The children are to learn that
Alexander Hamilton was a good American, but the soft pedal will be
put on Thomas Jefferson. They will not be taught that the Mexican
War was a disgraceful foray of greed, and that Abraham Lincoln
denounced it in Congress. Instead, they will be taught all about the
“Red” menace—with the columns of the “Times” for source material.
At last commencement time at least six addresses by students,
dealing with this subject, were featured by the “Times” in its radio
service, which is devoutly followed by hundreds of thousands of
wage-slaves in our community. All these addresses, of course, had
been carefully censored; one or two of them were “repeated by
request,” and the announcement was made that you could have a
printed copy of them by application to the “Times.”
 CHAPTER XII
THE SCHOOLS OF MAMMON

What becomes of the children under this regime of the Black

Hand? I have talked with scores of teachers, and their testimony is
unanimous, that the children’s minds are on anything in the world
but study. I choose the great “L. A. High,” because that is where the
children of the rich attend. One parent, a woman of refinement and
sense, has tried to keep the tastes of her daughter simple and
wholesome, but she tells me it is impossible, because home
influence counts for nothing against the overwhelming collective
power of the mass. The child comes home thrilled with excitement,
telling of what the other girls have; and she must have what they
have, or her happiness is ruined. It is all money; their ideal is the
spending of money, their standard is what things cost. I know a lad,
who tells me gravely that a fellow can’t have anything to do with
girls these days; they have no interest in you but for the money you
spend on them, and unless you are rich you cannot “go the pace.”
About this school you will see the automobiles parked for blocks;
and, of course, the youngsters who drive these cars are the social
leaders, they run the school affairs, and they get the girls.
The schools are given up to athletic excitements and “assemblies”;
“Aud Calls,” the students term them—that is, calls to the auditorium.
They come to practice cheering; they follow the cheer leader, who
tells them: “That wasn’t loud enough. Now give one for the team.”
The young people come out from these affairs trembling with
excitement, and they have no mind for their studies the rest of that
day. Out in the halls are students waving balloons which they have
bought in the bookstore; on athletic occasions, you see, it looks so
lovely if everybody in the bleachers is waving toy balloons with the
school colors. They will just get settled in class with their toy
balloons, when there comes a call for “fire drill.” Or if such diversions
are lacking, the pretty young things take out their vanity boxes and
proceed to powder their noses and smear red paint on their lips,
while the poor unhappy teachers are trying to put something into
their silly heads. I have walked through the corridors of a high
school and counted a dozen of the young things performing these
toilet operations while chatting with their beaux.
How can the teachers combat such forces? There is only one way,
and that is by making the studies interesting, by taking up live
topics, which awaken the initiative of the students, and reveal to
them the delights of thinking. Several teachers have tried to do this,
and the stories of what happened to them are amusing; but
unfortunately I cannot tell the stories, because each would identify a
teacher, and no teacher dares take that risk! I can tell about a girl
who wanted to write a thesis on “The Social Motive in American
Literature.” Here was a real subject—but the principal of the school
forbade it.
Also I can tell how, during the war, seven high schools took part in
a debate: “Resolved, that the nations of the world should adopt the
program of the League to Enforce Peace.” You can look back now
and see that it was our going into the war blindfolded, our utter
failure to know anything about the issues of the peace, that made
the great tragedy of Europe. Do not get this League to Enforce
Peace confused with pacifist organizations like the Peoples’ Council;
this was a perfectly respectable organization, with ex-President Taft
as president! But Mr. Jack Bean, a member of the school board,
rushed to the “Times” with the charge that the high schools of Los
Angeles were carrying on propaganda for immediate peace! The
“Times” took it up, and for three days published scare articles
accusing two students, Lee Payne and Mildred Ogden, of being pro-
German. Young Payne assures me that their only mention of
Germany in the entire debate was to quote President Taft’s
statement that if the program of the League to Enforce Peace had
been in action in 1914, Germany would not have dared to begin the
war. But the solemn asses on the board passed a resolution,
solemnly forbidding the debating of peace; and the “Times” solemnly
printed their resolution under the caption: “Win the War!”
How far the Black Hand is willing to go in this program of cutting
out the brains of the school children you may judge by the fact that
in 1921 Assemblyman Greene introduced, and the Better America
Federation tried to jam through the state legislature, an act
providing for the expulsion from the schools of “any teacher who
shall disparage to a pupil in the school where said teacher is
employed, any provision of the Constitution of the United States of
America, or who shall orally make to such pupil any argument or
give to such pupil any written or printed argument in favor of
making any change in any provision of said Constitution.” And this,
you understand, in face of the fact that the Constitution itself
provides for its amendment, and has been quite legally and
constitutionally amended no less than nineteen times in our history!
Think of a school teacher being forbidden by law to discuss with a
pupil the desirability of an amendment prohibiting child labor!
A still more curious incident occurs while I am finishing this book.
There is in Los Angeles an organization called the Young Workers’
League, an educational society of the Communists; they held a
debate on the subject of Communism versus Capitalism, and not
being able to get anybody to defend capitalism, they appointed their
own speakers, who naturally didn’t do it very ardently. Three lads,
one of them a high school student, the other two just graduated,
attended the meeting and found themselves dissatisfied with this
defense; they rose up and said they could do better, and the result
was the planning of a debate. The Young Workers’ League hired a
hall, and the three students spent a good part of their summer
vacation preparing for the contest. Two or three days before it came
off, the Young Workers’ League distributed announcement cards in
the high schools, erroneously referring to the students as “three
representatives of a high school debating society.” Immediately
thereafter the one high school student was informed by Principal
Dunn of the Polytechnic High School that he must not take part in
the affair. Mr. Dunn did not take this action on his own initiative, he
explained, but under instructions from Mrs. Dorsey, who had
investigated the matter.
On the afternoon of the day set for the debate, the secretary of
the Young Workers’ League appealed to me. Being interested in the
cause of free speech, I went to see Mr. Robert Odell, attorney and
president of the school board. After hearing my account of the
matter, Mr. Odell said that the only objection he could think of was
that the debate might not be fair, the audience might be packed
against the students. My answer was that I would agree to act as
chairman, and see that there was no interruption of the speakers.
Mr. Odell agreed to ask Mrs. Dorsey to see me immediately.
It was then four o’clock in the afternoon, and I called on the
superintendent, and listened while she explained to me at great
length that the schools could not under any circumstances permit
students to represent them in public debates unless the students
had been selected by the schools. In reply I assured Mrs. Dorsey
that I agreed with her absolutely; but if that was all the school
authorities wanted, why not require the high school student to state
to the audience that he spoke as an individual, and without
authorization from his school? I offered as chairman of the debate to
make this announcement with the utmost explicitness.
I pointed out to Mrs. Dorsey the singular position in which her
schools would be placed by the preventing of this discussion. A large
audience would be sent from the hall convinced that the authorities
were afraid to let their students face the arguments of the
Communists. The students would have to meet Communists in
political life, so why not let them practice while in school? Mrs.
Dorsey gave me her answer, and I understood it to be that if I would
make the announcement as promised, the school authorities would
not concern themselves with the debate in any way. I then got the
three students together and gave them this information. They
reported themselves as anxious to debate, and greatly disappointed
at the outcome; but they were not willing even to come upon the
platform without first having talked again with their school and
college superiors. They would not go into details; but evidently
something had been said to them which had taught them caution.
Said one of them, significantly: “You know, Mr. Sinclair, the schools
can get along without us very easily if they want to.”
Then I tried to arrange for the affair to come off two weeks later,
and wrote to the school authorities. What happened between the
authorities and the students I do not know; one of the latter, in a
letter to me, apologized because he could not “go to the heart of it.”
He added: “This much I can tell you—that the determining factor in
this case is the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association.” That the
lads were wise in keeping out of the debate was shown by the fact
that I received from Mrs. Dorsey a special delivery letter, repudiating
the understanding of the matter which I had got from her. Said Mrs.
Dorsey: “You pressed for assurance that the boys would not be
punished by school authorities if they took part in the debate. This
assurance I declined to give, stating again that the schools were not
a party to the debate and must not, therefore, be involved in any
program of arrangements therewith.” So there you have the lady!
At the hour that I was chasing about Los Angeles, interviewing
school authorities and trying to save this debate, two enormous
bruisers were pummeling each other into insensibility at the Polo
Grounds in New York City. One was the champion bruiser of North
America, and the other was the champion bruiser of South America,
and the two Americas held their breath, awaiting the outcome. That
was entirely respectable; that did not threaten the capitalist system,
so no one stopped the pummeling, and no one stopped the school
children of Los Angeles from reading the newspaper bulletins about
the great event. But here were three serious students who were not
interested in bruisers; three self-supporting boys had put in all their
spare time during vacation, preparing to defend the faith of the
schools; and the school superintendent of the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association steps in and frightens these boys into
silence, and disappoints an audience of a thousand working people
who have assembled for an intellectual treat. Such is “culture” under
the Black Hand!
 CHAPTER XIII
THE TAMMANY TIGER

You shake your head and say: “I had no idea of such things; yes,
Southern California must be very bad indeed!” But I beg you not to
fool yourself in that way. Southern California is exactly the same as
the rest of industrial America. In the course of this book we shall
visit the Bay Cities of California, San Francisco, Oakland and
Berkeley; also Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, in the far
Northwest. We shall visit a number of cities scattered across the
continent—Spokane, Butte, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago,
Minneapolis, Detroit; on the Atlantic coast we shall visit New York,
Boston, Worcester, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington. We shall
have glimpses of many towns, and of the rural schools in many
states; also we shall not overlook the private schools and the big
“prep” schools, where our youthful aristocracy is made ready for the
gladiatorial combats and the social intrigues of college.
In all these regions we shall find the plutocracy in control of
business and politics; and we shall find the very same interests, and
as a rule the very same individuals, in control of the schools.
Whether or not they use the methods of the Black Hand depends
purely and simply upon one question—to what extent the subject
classes are attempting to protest. If the subject classes make no
protest, there is no violence by the master class. If the subject
classes attempt to protest, then there is whatever amount of
violence is necessary to hold them down.
I begin with New York City, because that is the headquarters of
our financial, and therefore of our intellectual life. It is from New
York that we are controlled, both in body and in mind, whether we
have any idea of it or not. As it happens, I know New York and its
schools at first hand, having spent my boyhood and youth in the city.
The Black Hand of the metropolis is known as Tammany Hall; and
under its shadow I went to school, and also to college—a free, public
college, full of Tammany professors. In my home the father of the
family was drinking himself to death; it was Tammany saloon-
keepers who sold him the liquor, it was Tammany politicians and a
Tammany police force which guarded these saloons while they
defied a dozen different laws. In that city hundreds of thousands of
children were wondering, just as I wondered, why all powers of the
state were used for their destruction, instead of for their aid. With
the dope-rings and the bootleggers flourishing as they are today,
there must be ten times as many children asking this question; and
with exceptions so few as to be hardly worth mentioning, all the
power of the schools and the colleges, as well as of the pulpit and
the press, is devoted to keeping these children from finding out.
They kept me from finding out until I had entirely come out from
under both the physical and the intellectual control of the Black
Hand of New York.
Tammany Hall is an old-style pirate crew, wearing modern clothing
and operating systematically at looting the richest of all modern
cities. Its symbol is the Tiger. In the days of my boyhood people still
remembered Tammany as it was run by Tweed, who carried off a
great part of its cash and sold a great part of its belongings. In my
day the chief was a grown-up gangster and bruiser by the name of
Richard Croker, who stated to a committee of the state legislature, “I
am working for my pocket all the time.” His method was to make
systematic collections from the brothels and gambling-dives and
saloons; also, of course, from the contractors who wanted to charge
half a dozen prices for the paving of streets and the removing of the
garbage, and other jobs for which a city has to pay.
Even in my day the Tammany chieftains, like other successful
bandits, were beginning to grope their way toward respectability.
Every bandit in America wishes to become respectable—the test of
respectability being that you get a hundred times as much loot. The
financiers of Wall Street—the banks and insurance companies and
the New York Central Railroad, which were organized as the
Republican party and controlled “upstate”—used to fight the
Tammany machine year after year, and be beaten, for the simple
reason that Tammany controlled the polling places in the East Side
slums, and distributed free coal to the poor in winter and free ice in
summer, and therefore could count upon loyal “repeaters” and
ballot-box staffers at election time. During my youth, the financiers,
finding that they could not oust the Tiger, came to terms with it;
such men as Whitney and Ryan, the backers of Tammany, were
making so many tens of millions out of traction steals that they left
the police graft as small change to their political subordinates.
I had an opportunity to observe this transformation at first-hand,
for the reason that part of the profits were at my disposal. A friend
of my boyhood was founder and president of a big financial concern,
which wanted to come into New York. He went to the chiefs of
Tammany, and took one of them for his New York manager, and
distributed generous blocks of stock to Croker and his henchmen. At
once his concern became the official house for that class of
business, and the word went out that every politician and every city
employe must patronize it. I remember as a lad sitting at luncheon
with this friend, hearing him denounce the evil-minded men who
criticized our business leaders, the master minds of our country;
then presently the conversation changed, and this friend told me
how he had just obtained the nomination of one of his managers as
state treasurer, and how much he was paying to the campaign fund
of the Democratic party, expecting to get it back many times over in
the form of business with the state.
Today the chiefs of Tammany Hall are great financiers, and the
efforts of the Republican party to win elections in New York City are
largely formal. How completely the two parties are one, you realize
the instant there is prospect of a Socialist candidate being elected.
Immediately the leaders of the two old parties get together and
agree upon a ticket, and their watchers at the polls unite to slug the
“Reds” and stuff the ballot boxes. Afterwards, when the Socialists
collect evidence of these crimes, the Democratic officials of the city
and the Republican officials of the state unite in doing nothing about
it. And so the Black Hand rules New York.
 CHAPTER XIV
GOD AND MAMMON

The education of a million children, and the control of twenty-five

thousand teachers in the metropolis, is entrusted to a school board
of seven people. The president of this board is a leading real estate
operator; the retired president, still a member of the board, is a
manufacturer of chemicals, who profiteered extensively during the
World War; the next member is a manufacturer of cigars; the next is
a leading real estate operator; the next is the private physician to
the mayor of the city; the next is a woman of wealth and leisure,
who represents the Tammany machine; the last is a lawyer. As
always, you will note that there is not one educator on the board.
There are few who know anything about education; but all know
about business—especially those kinds of business which are
transacted with school boards.
What are those kinds of business? To be able to pick the location
of handsome new schools is worth a fortune to real estate interests;
and that this is regularly done in New York is not my charge, but
that of the comptroller of the city. To be able to determine the
placing of contracts for school buildings and supplies is worth a
fortune to any member of a political machine; and I talked with a
former clerk of the school board, who told me he had seen so much
graft that he had run away from the sight. I do not mean that this
Tammany school board personally carries off the money, as it did in
the days of Tweed; the method now is “honest graft”—that is, the
placing of school contracts with companies in which your wife’s
relatives and the members of your gang are interested. The amount
to be expended in New York amounts to a hundred million dollars a
year, and Tammany gets it all. At least four of the members of the
board are “dummies,” having no function save to vote as the
machine directs. All of them are Democrats, and the majority are
Catholics; that is to say, the educating of a million American children
is in the hands of people who teach that public education is a crime
against God.
So it comes about that the principal indictment of this Tammany
regime is not the money it spends, but the money it withholds. New
York is the wealthiest city in the world; the masters of the city have
money for palatial town houses, for country estates many square
miles in extent, with homes as big as summer hotels; they have
money for private yachts as big as ocean liners, and for luxurious
motor cars by the tens of thousands; but they have no money to
provide a decent education for the children of the poor. While their
own children go to elegant private schools, the children of the poor
are herded into dark, insanitary fire-traps, some of them seventy-five
years of age; and even of these there is an insufficiency! Ever since
my boyhood the refusal of New York City to accommodate the
children who clamor for an education has been the blackest crime of
the Tammany ruffians. At present one-third of the children are on
“part time”; that is, they are turned out of school after two or three
hours, to make room for another relay. The rest of the day they pick
up the vices of the streets; and if they are made into young
criminals, the city is ready and able to build whatever jails may be
necessary.
Two years ago a committee of women representing a score of civic
organizations—the Women’s Municipal League, the Women’s
Department of the National Civic Federation, the Civitas Club of
Brooklyn, the Women’s City Club, the League of Catholic Women,
etc.—made a careful study of forty of the school buildings of New
York City; they reported that twenty out of these forty were fire-
traps, old wooden buildings with narrow stairways and no fire
escapes. Sanitation was reported “bad” and “wretched” in twenty-
one of these schools, and “fair” in eleven more. Twenty-one out of
thirty-six were in need of repairs, twenty-seven had only dark
basement playgrounds, and so on. I quote a few phrases, just to
give you the flavor of these reports:
Boys’ toilets terrible; no basins and towels.... Toilets old and in bad condition;
foul air unavoidable.... Plumbing too old to operate, inadequate and unsanitary;
few basins and no towels.... Garbage dump nearby, inexcusable menace to health
and comfort of the children.... Twelve toilets for twelve hundred boys, old, bad
conditions, bad odor. No repairs in years, furniture and woodwork almost falling to
pieces.... Fearfully dilapidated; paint and repairs needed on walls; stairs worn
down to danger point.... Buildings so old as to be beyond repair, should be
abandoned.... Insufficient lighting and ventilation; two rooms with only one
window, eight rooms with only two windows.... Fire escapes incomplete and badly
constructed.... Wooden buildings, no fire escapes reported.
These reports were given wide publicity; the ladies waited six
months, over the summer vacation, and then came back to see what
had been done. Out of twenty-three buildings reported dangerous as
to fire conditions, twenty remained unchanged. Only two out of
twenty-two schools had made any improvement as to provisions for
the comfort of the teachers. As regards sanitation, fourteen had
been improved, twenty-three had not been changed; and so on.
How much the public authorities were concerned about such matters
was shown by the experience of the Teachers’ Union, which
prepared for an exhibit of the Public Health Association a series of
posters and charts showing the physical condition of the schools.
“Over nine hundred thousand children suffer from lack of a good
ventilation system,” declared one of these posters. “No soap, no
water, no towels,” declared another; and so on. Privately the nurses
of the Health Department at this show all admitted that the posters
represented the truth; but for three days the man who was then
commissioner of health and the man who is now commissioner of
health sought desperately to compel the Teachers’ Union to remove
these posters; failing in this, the publicity agencies of the show cut
out all the press notices of the teachers’ exhibits.
What this means to the teachers was set forth to me by the
victims. One was teaching a class of children on a dark stone
staircase. Another was teaching in a room on a level with the
elevated railroad, with trains coming and going on four tracks; she