Beggar Bespoken

"Education in the U. S. is a beggar with a tin cup!"

"The U. S. school is the forgotten institution!"

"Save our schools!"

So educators have wailed at the top of their lungs since early in Depression. On Government and public they have rained a constant barrage of statistics, growing steadily more formidable. By now 5,000 schools are closed and school terms shortened in one of every four U. S. cities & towns; $40,000,000 in back salaries is owed to 40,000 teachers; 100,000 teachers are unemployed: school enrollments have upped 960,000 while school revenues were falling $150,000,000; school building expenditures are down 80%, textbook purchases down 30%.

But statistics are cold and the same cry from the same voices soon falls on deaf ears. Last week educators tried a new tack when they got many a famed citizen to take up their cause at a "Citizens Conference on the Crisis in Education," sponsored by Ohio State University at Columbus.

An announcement from Washington last week that $12,000,000 of Federal Emergency Relief Administration funds had been set aside to keep rural schools open took some of the wind from the conference's sails but none of the thunder from speakers' voices. Sounded were the same protests against school economies, the same warnings of national disaster which have been heard at every educators' conference for the past three years. "It is quite as important to balance the nation's life as to balance the nation's budget," cried University of Wisconsin's President Glenn Frank. "It is quite as important to prevent a social deficit for the future as to wipe out a financial deficit in the present."

Senator Royal S. Copeland of New York was on hand with his favorite crime statistics. Crime costs the nation $13,000,000,000 per year, said he. "Cut crime 20%," declared Senator Copeland, "and teachers can be paid decent salaries, 3,500,000 children can go back to school and 300,000 families can move out of depressing hovels into sanitary, sun-lit homes." His remedy for crime: education. "While we are striving to deal with one gangster, a thousand criminals are in the making. We pluck leaves from the tree of crime when we should put an axe to the root."

Amid the familiar pleas and protests of educators' conferences, observers noted one significant difference. With the breakdown of local support, educators have turned almost unanimously to cry for Federal subsidy. Last week conferring citizens were inclined to think that Education's salvation lay in the State. Echoed by Indiana's Governor Paul V. McNutt, Citizen Alfred E. Smith called (by proxy) for State support of schools, warned against Federal control. Wrote he: "It is axiomatic in American Government that control follows support. Men may cry Federal aid without Federal control but so declaring does not determine the outcome. . . . Whoever pays the fiddler calls the tune."

Most famed citizen whom educators got to take up their cry was Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whirling into Columbus, she attended a tea and a banquet, chatted with students, educators, relief workers and Girl Scouts, addressed a convention of insurance agents, made a radio speech, then got up before 4,000 citizens to talk on her assigned subject of "Teachers and Their Proper Preparation." But she had warned conference sponsors beforehand that she would probably stray off her topic, since she seldom writes speech or notes. "I just speak," said she.

Just speaking, Mrs. Roosevelt plumped for: 1) interpretation of social changes by teachers; 2) school economy, but not in teachers' salaries, books or equipment; 3) well-lighted, well-aired school buildings; 4) equal rights for women teachers; 5) national cooperation for the nation's welfare; 6) reading aloud.

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