The public school problem in America : outlining fully the policies and the program of the Knights of Ku Klux Klan toward the public school system

The public school problem in America : outlining fully the policies and the program of the Knights of Ku Klux Klan toward the public school system

1924-01-01

Text

Internet Archive, crediting Duke University Libraries

https://archive.org/details/publicschoolprob00evan

Hiram Wesley Evans

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

The


Public School
Problem In
America


By
Dr. H. W. Evans, Imperial Wizard,
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan





Outlining fully the policies
and the program of the
Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan toward the Public
School System





Copyright 1924, K. K. K.








The Public School Problem
In American


Out of his boyhood has come to us the sub-
limely simple supplication of Abraham Lincoln:


“God help father, help mother, help sister, help every-
body Teach me to read and write Watch over Honey and
make him a good dog. And keep us all from getting lost in
the wilderness. Amen.”


While Lincoln was on his childish knees,

eee the phrophetic prayer that we be kept
rom getting lost in the wilderness, there lived

a man made in God’s image who preached and
practiced the solution to that problem. Horace
Mann, the immortal sponsor and patron saint of
education in America, believed that—

“The national safety, prosperity and happiness
could be obtained only through free public schools, open
to all, good enough for all and attended by all.”’

I have come to speak to you in support of that
fundamental American doctrine, to proclaim its
importance to every phase of our eet and
public life, to urge its complete and immediate
adoption as the most essential of all national
policies.

In his infancy Lincoln had experience with a
wilderness in which boys and girls, even men
and women, could lose their way—an uncharted
unpeopled expanse of woods and water in which
lurked the deadliest dangers. He lived to see
those perils disappear. Others, vastly more
vital, began to loom large and menacing. His
utterances contain many warnings with respect
to a new kind of wilderness in which, not citi-
zens, but society, might go astray.

There is no longer a frontier America, but we
have a wilderness in which predominates as
much of stealth and more of vindictiveness than
any jungle ever knew. It does not endanger
individuals so much as it menaces society. Out
of it crouching creatures no longer spring upon
humans to satisfy the pangs of hunger; instead
we have creations that prey upon humanity to
appease appetites and passions for power.

A spirit of lawlessness is endian the land,
and fast ripening into an anarchy that is none-
theless real because garbed in the ermine
of respectability and unconnected with red ban-
ners and black bombs. Our ideals and traditions


3


are being weakened by disrespect and inatten-

tion. The art and dignity of enactment is being

superseded by the unscrupulous science of legal

evasion and subterfuge. Our politicians seek

not the common welfare, but their own success.

Our schools are in every way inadequate; they.
have not the institutional standing to which

they are entitled; they do not prevent illiteracy,

nor always promote patriotism; too often they

teach a aided allegiance. Many of our churches

are becoming bickering centers and sources of
ceaseless, strife-engendering controversy, fight-

ing not the forces of evil, but each other, church

against church, creed against creed. Out of it

all, and because of it all, there has almost ceased

to exist that priceless boon to humankind known

as news; propaganda, the modern curse of civili-

zation that spawns prejudice and nurtures in-

justice, has taken its place. Our modern wilder-

ness is full of darkness. Truth, God's truth and
man's truth, has become a vagrant—ragged, distorted
and discredited by selfishness as never before in human

history.

In all things, public and private, truth must
prevail. Individually, that means intelligence,
health and virtue. Nationally, it means liberty
and justice, the safeguarding of our traditions,
the fulfillment of our ideals.

To civilization it means security and con-
tinued progress onward and upward. To attain
truth, we must adopt, without reservation or
evasion, not years hence, but now, the kind,
quality and quantity of education advocated by
Horace Mann.

Had that been done a half century ago, we
would not now be in a wilderness of chaotic
conflicts and confusing controversies. The re-
ligious wrangling that again threatens our
security and the peace of the world would not
exist. Instead af an already menacing growth
of divided allegiance, there would be national
solidarity. The separation of church and state
would be accomplished. Our patriotism would
be operative, rather than so generally inept
and purposeless. Had education been founda-
tionally established; had it been extended, and
kept free of every perversion; had there been
“*free public schools. open to all, good enough for all,
and attended by all,’’performing their function
of teaching ‘‘truth, the whole truth, and nothing but


4


the truth,’’ we would not today be in a life and
death grapple with propaganda.


I submit to you that all through the ages,
whenever and wherever God’s purposes have
been manifest in the affairs of men, resulting in
what we call an advance of civilization, that
achievement has had as its vehicle a temporarily
wholesome national life. Through some nation-
al entity has come every bit of ground gained by
and for civilization. The elements contributing
to every advancement have always been law and
order, enlightenment, unity, freedom and justice.
Interpreted in terms of today, the antithesis of
these fundamentals may be stated as Jawlessness,
illiteracy, disrupting strife and controversy, propa-
ganda instead of truth, and the economic inequities
that increasingly threaten the very stability of society.


I now advocate the adequate education of our
future citizenship through a free public school
system, as I have pleaded for a rigidly enforced
immigration, adapted to our ideals and needs.
The two remedies go together. Neither alone
can re-Americanize and safeguard our sacred
institutions, If this country continues to be
flooded by inferior peoples whose assimilation
is impossible, the task of enlightened advance-
ment will be hopeless. Our indifference of the
last three decades in this connection has already
made it extremely difficult; but if we now place
an embargo upon every alien element not in
harmony with our requirements, it is not yet
too late for the redemption of the Republic by
means of the public school for children and its
auxiliaries for adults. Let immigration of every
undesirable type be stopped, completely stopped,
until our own illiteracy and internal strife can
be superseded by a literacy based upon unselfish,
unshackled truth and patriotism built upon
eager, unqualified, un-coerced acceptance of the
principles that are the very foundation of our
government. In the meantime, with the further
over-burdening of our composite people through
unmergeable immigration at an end, we can,
with some assurance of success, give constructive
attention to the emancipation of America from
ignorance and prejudice. Wecan free our beloved
country from every darkness and danger.


Our Children the Cheif Asset of the State


You cannot disassociate citizenship from
civilization. We have a government, of by and


5


for the people. The great problem, then, concerns
two vital things; the character and the ability of
our composite people. Their development, hith-
erto neglected, is a public responsibility pas
mount to all other constructive duties of the
state.

We area Republic. The consent of the governed is
the underlying principle of our public life. That
being basic, the only sure highway to national
success is adequate democratic education.

Every statesman worthy the name has recog-
nized that its children were the greatest asset of
any state, and has based his hope for a glorious
national future upon their highest development
as individuals and as citizens. Out of each de-
cade from the Declaration of Independence to
this hour, I could summon the most notable
witnesses to attest the truth of that doctrine and
the necessity for its completest attainment.

George Washington, in his farewell address,
gave this council:


“Promote then, as an object of primary importance,
institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In
proportion as the structure of government gives force to
public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be
enlightened.”


Let me recall another voice from the days of
our infancy. The famous “‘Ordinance of 1787”
contains this historic declaration:


“Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to
good government and the happiness of mankind, schools
and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”’


That was our earliest educational statute on a
national scale. While it gave legal standing toa
mighty principle, it did not soe either the
means or the machinery of fulfillment. Two gen-
erations later, we find Daniel Webster paying
this tribute to its fundamental value:


“I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient
or modern, bas produced effects of more distant, marked
and Jasting character than the Ordinance of 17&7 . . . It
set forth and declared it to be a high and binding duty of
Government to support schools and advance the means of
education.


The greatest American tragedy was not un-
folded upon any battle field, or in any series of
catastrophies. It exists in the fact that neither
the advice of Washington nor the spirit of this
ordinance were carried out. That was why
Daniel Webster referred to it. In 1866, seventy-


6


mine years after, James A. Garfield, later to
occupy the White House, presented to Congress
an Education Association memorial from which
I quote:


“Your memorialists beg leave to express their earnest
belief that universal education, next to universal liberty, is
a matter of deep national concern. Our experiment of
republican institutions is not upon the scale of a petty
municipality or state, but it covers half a continent and
embraces peoples of widely diverse interests and conditions,
but who are to continue ‘one and inseparable.’ Every
condition of our perpetuity and progress as a nation adds
emphasis to the remark of Montesquieu, “ it is in a republican
government that the whole power of education is required.’ ”’


The occasion of that memorial was the fight
for more adequate public school education then
engaging the attention of thoughtful, patriotic
Americans. Of that attempt I shall speak later.
I refer to it here because you should understand
that this present battle began two generations
ago, and also that at no time, from Washington
to Lincoln, or since, have the educational
facilities of the nation been more than a be-
ginning of what were required for the safety
and advancement of a great Republic.

In his remarkable book on ‘“‘Child Labor and
the Constitution,’’ Mr. Raymond G. Fuller savs:


“What nation shall be greatest among the nations of the
‘New World’? That nation shall be greatest that puts
children first in its thought, in its politics, in its economics,
in its ethics The nation that accepts the leadership of little
children and sets them in the midst of its counselors, that
nation will lead all others in the health, intelligence, moral-
ity, efficiency and happiness of its citizens and in national
prosperity both material and spiritual. On the quality of
nations international peace and progress depend ”’


To show the extent of our failure, I present
the opinion of Dr. Alexander J. Englis, Profes-
sor of Education at Harvard University, who
said in 1922:


“In the first place let us recognize that in all parts of this
country public education is very, very far from being that
which we should all like to see it, that in parts of the country
it is almost unbelievably bad, that vocational education has
scarcely begun to be recognized, that the amount of illiter-
acy and of near-illiteracy is alarmingly great, that attention
to Oe education throughout the country is almost
negligible, that our large foreign population constitutes a
serious problem for education and for society, that most
country children do not have anything like a fair oppor-
tunity for education, that in many sections of the country
short school terms make effective education all but impos-
sible, that a large part of our teachers lack proper education,
training and experience—let us recognize all these and
many other defects of education too numerous to catalog.


7


They are conditions which cry aloud for reform in tye
appealing voices of children deprived of their rights as
American citizens. They are undoubted and indubitable
facts which cannot be ignored.”


Dr. Englis here speaks of “‘the defects of edu-
cation too numerous to catalog."’ My serious study
of the whole problem suggests one funda-
mental difficulty that is not in any catalog, a
aandicap that goes back to the beginning, ane
erore the beginning of the public school system.
in fact, who among you now can say when, or
how, our public school system began? The
public school is the most essential of all Amer-
ican institutions; we all know that; yet, unlike
any other great American institution, it did
not come into existence with clearly defined
distinctive character. No date or event marks
its birth. No national document ever bestowed
upon it specific principles and purposes. Nor
was the basic question of its relation to govern-
ment ever fully and finally determined. I
mention these things to show that in this
country public school education was never
rightly honored by a place in any organic act
like the Declaration of Independence, or the
Constitution; nor was it ever given deserved
recognition in any outstanding federal enact-
ment. It just grew, in almost haphazard fash-
ion, through a kind of vagrant evolution, into
what it is today, with only about one- -seventh
of the efficiency that our national needs demand.


For centuries education was exclusively of,
py and for the church. That was yet quite
largely the situation throughout Europe at the
time of American colonization. The first
evidences of change were in Holland and
Scotland, and among the Puritans and Hugue-
nots of England and France. Those earliest
liberals had a vision of universal education,
but there remained in their minds the idea of
a religious objective.

Then, in the eighteenth century, philan-
thropy took an interest in education. Next
there were charity schools. After that, thank
God, came the conception of the American
common school, emerging slowly and uncer-
tainly, because, as I have shown, it was an
organic orphan, and had to shift for itself.


As the colonies differed, so did their schools.
But gradually American education took on a
type of its own, although it was not until


8


three quarters of a century after the birth o!
the Republic that the public school, as we now
know it, was at all firmly established.

No one will deny that it was always the
intention to have adequate education in Amer-
ica. Private and public declarations of that
high purpose are abundant; but the trouble was,
and is, that the cause of public education was
mever given the sanction and standing, yea,
and the security, that could be obtained only
through basic recognition of its paramount
importance.

The truth is that half our national life was
lived without a general pub! c school system,
and that, during the last half, public schools
have been pitifully inadequate, to which
failures can be traced most of the national ills
that now beset us.

At the half-way mark two of our greatest
Americans entered the arena to battle for this
cause. They were Horace Mann of Massachu-
setts and Henry Barnard of Connecticut. To
them America owes the highest, grandest,
monuments ever erected to her most deserving
heroes.

Out of their statesmanship and the labors of
others of that period came the effort to give
public school education the standing it should
have had in the beginning. ,


In 1867, James A. Garfield sponsored legisla-
tion to create a Department of Education.
Henry Barnard became the Commissioner of
Education, but without a place in the Cabinet.
Through the influence of the enemies of Demo-
cratic Education, the Department of Education
was demoted to a mere Bureau, under the
Secretary of the Interior, which it has since
remained. Henry Barnard resigned. The clock
of true progress for America was set back, not
days, but decades.


The big thing, the fundamental, all important
thing to be accompolished for the cause of Democratic
Education in America is to give it the recognition, the
dignity, the established standing, of a high place in
the Cabinet. We are supporting a program to
establish a Department of Education, with a
Cabinet Secretary at its head.


Why A Department Of Education.


If there be the slightest doubt as to what a
Department of Education would mean to the


9


public school system, that doubt will disappear
when you understand the attitude toward it of
the enemies of democratic education. In a few
minutes I shall discuss the forces, or rather the


only organized force, that is opposing the —


American public school system. At this point
I desire only to show that this opposition by
the Roman Catholic hierarchy is aimed chiefly
at the idea of a Department of Education. That
is what they fear.


You will remember that there was but little
activity in behalf of the Smith-Towner bill
during the Sixty-seventh Congress, because of
the pending measure to establish a Department
of Public Welfare, with Education only a
bureau in it. With respect to that situation, I
quote in part a letter, issued on May 4, 1921,
by the National Catholic Welfare Council, as
follows:


“It should further be noted that other measures are now
under consideration by the leaders in Congress which may
obviate the need of opposition to the Towner Bill Should
the McCormic Bill be passed and the Department of Public
Welfare be established, the Bureau of Education would
simply be’ transferred from the Department of the Interior
to the Department of Public Welfare; it would not be erected
into a seperate department. In that case, the situation
would practically be what it is at present.”


In other words, the heirarchy does not
oppose legislation that leaves matters as they
are, with a poor, powerless, undignified Bureau
of Education, instead of a Department of
Education which would at once and forever
suggest to every American that at last our
public schools had been given the recognition
and standing that should have been their
governmental position from the very beginning.

Therefore, I say to you that this part of our
program is the all-important part; that there
must be no compromise upon this issue.

When we have given public schools organic signifi-
cance, as the creation of a Department of Education
will do, while that belated act alone cannot at once
remedy the enervating results of one hundred and
thirty-five years of neglected duty, of wasted citizen-
ship, it will ease the national conscience and be
followed quickly by a new and constantly accelerat-
ing educational vigor throughout the Republic. It
will mark the beginning of a rising tide of common
intelligence, health, and virtue among both the native
and adopted sons and daughters of America.


Io


The Shameful Inadequacy Of Education.


The indictment is that ‘‘the defects of educa-
tion are too numerous to catalog.’’ How much
more impossible is it to catalog the conse-
quences of those defects. When we face the
results of our inadequate public school system,
the situation becomes positively appalling.

Each year, there is made for taxation, an
apptaisement of our material wealth. An
inventory, On as exact and scientific a scale,
of the much more vital human values has
never been attempted. It happened, however,
quite incidently, that the nation was per-
mitted to get a glimpse at the menacing after-
math of educational inadequacy. When our
young manhood was conscripted for service
in the great war, they were examined, mentally
and physically; tests were made and recorded;
the results are known. At least we may look
squarely at the terrible truth about our com-
posite humanity, and relate its degeneracy
directly to the failure of our school system.

The census returns had been telling us that there
was six per cent illiteracy in America. The army
tests revealed that 20.9 per cent of the drafted men
were “unable to read and understand newspapers,
and write letters home in the English language.”

Remember that a majority of those young
men were less than a decade removed from their
educational days. This evidence is of failure,
not remote, but almost immediately related to
the civilization-destroying inadequacies of the
present public school system.

Today, in the United States, there is thirty
times as much absolute illiteracy as in Germany and
Denmark; there is twelve times as much illiteracy here
as in Switzerland; six times as much as in Norway
and Sweden; more than three times as much as in
England, Scotland and Wales.

At the present rate of diminishment, it
would take eighty-four years to eliminate
illiteracy in this country, taking absolute
illiteracy figures, instead of the more depressing
army tests. If we accept the latter as a basis,
fully five hundred years would elapse before
illiteracy were stamped out of our national
life.

There are in this country 2) aang
twenty-five million boys and girls of school age.
Were those of university years to be included,


It


the number would reach above thirty-three
million. In 1920, according to census statistics,
we had 23,042,637 children between the ages
of seven and seventeen. The grade and high
schools, then, should be providing the best of
educational opportunities for at least that
number.

In 1920, 4,405,437, a total of nineteen per
cent of our children between the ages of seven
and seventeen, were not attending any school.

At the ages of fourteen and fifteen, 20.1 per
cent were not in school.

Among those sixteen and seventeen, 57.1 per
cent were not in any school.

The teachers in the public schools of America
number 655,589. Fifty-four per cent of them
have not had normal school training. In the
rural schools, twenty-three per cent of these
teachers have had less than two years of educa-
tion above the elementary grades. Thousands
have had no training beyond the eighth grade.

In the face of such facts, I maintain that no
citizen can oppose Democratic Education in
America unless he be an un-American enemy of
our institutions.


Hierarchy Opposing Democratic Education.


It is apparent, then, that from every point of
view, except that of selfishness, the educational
doctrine of Horace Mann should be written
into the laws and into the life of this nation.
Patriotism demands it, common sense sanctions
it, every consideration of individual and nation-
al welfare pleads its necessity.

Why, then, has this fundamental program
not been adopted?

It is because of the opposition of one of the oldest
and the most powerful special interests in the world
today.

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church
stands against America on this issue. The
public school, in its every phase, atte and
result, is repugnant to the Pope and all his
priesthood. After a most thorough and un-
biased examination of the forces for and against
this program, I can say to you with absolute
certainty that, excepting only civic selfishness,
the Roman Catholic hierarchy is the one influence that
is successfully obstructing adequate public school edu-
cation in America. It is pursuing that course be-
cause the hierarchy that has both its govern-


Iz


mental and religious headquarters at Rome is
now, always has been, and perhaps always
will be, opposed to the public sponsorship
of institutions of learning. From its point
of view, education is a prerogative of the
church. I¢ refuses to accept secular control or to
countenance any result that can or may subordinate
the recruitive objects of parochialism, ‘Therefore,
through its political power, this alien hierarchy
says to America: ‘‘You shall not establish an
educational system that sets up in that field an
exclusive authority higher than that of the
church; public schools shall not be legalized
into a standing superior to those of the church.’


The hierarchy does not openly, honestly and
frankly define its opposition or the objects of
that opposition. Instead it resorts to camou-
flage. What it really says to you is that our
educational program for America would be
unconstitutional; that national aid to public
schools would violate states’ rights; that such
a system as we menos would be attended by
bureaucratic and political perversions. What
the spokesmen of the Vatican in America really
mean is that the further advancement of demo-
cratic education within this Republic would be
an insurmountable impediment to the papal
dream of world wide temporal dominion.


It is not possible to find a single intelligent
citizen, whatever his or her preferences, who
does not understand that the hierarchy is
unalterably opposing democratic education in
America. Therefore, in order more clearly to

.comprehend the causes and effects of that op-
position, it will be well at this point squarely
to face the fundamental differences between
Catholicism and Protestantism.


The Vatican For Church And State


The hierarchy believes in the closest connec-
tion between church and state. We demand,
in the name and in the interest of democracy,
that they be completely separated. Through-
out the centuries this attitude of the Vatican
has never changed. It never will. With the
hierarchy, and all its priesthood, always the
church is the primary consideration. Even
today in America, a hundred and thirty-five
years after the adoption of our Constitution
had made it the basic law of the land that
government should not interfere with religion,


Ly


nor religion with government, neither in the
pulpit nor in the press of Catholicism do you
ever find country mentioned apart from the
church. It is always ‘“‘church and country,”
with the ‘‘church’’ coming first. That is their
idea, not to have the church auxiliarate the
state, but to have civil authority and political
power serve the church. I do not criticise
those who adhere to that doctrine. I only
state the truth as it is, in the conviction, as
firmly founded as their opposing belief can
possibly be, that no religious organization can
even seek, much less attain, temporal character
without irreparable injury both to church and
state.


Church Control Of Education


Throughout the domain of education, it is
the theory of the hierarchy, as it is their prac-
tice, to teach what to think. We desire that the
young be taught how to think, that they be
encouraged to delve deeper and deeper into all
the hidden mines of imformation, in the hope
and assurance that the result will be an ever-
increasing output of helpful human and divine
attainments; that it will bring, at least within
the range of possibility, a harmonizing of hu-
manity upon the rock of eternal truth; that
finally ‘“‘peace on earth, good will to men’’ may
become a glorious reality, to atone for the long
darkness of misery and strife.

Not even in matters of religion does the
hierarchy encourage its subjects, either innocent
children or habituated adults, to exercise real
independence of thought or action. Bible-
reading by the laity is discouraged. I have
here a flippant and rather offensive reference to
this traditional attitude, by the Catholic News,
as follows:


“We Catholics have no apologies to make for our church's
Opposition to private interpretation of the Bible Every
Tom, Dick ans Harry isn’t allowed by the United States
Government to interpret the Constitution as he sees fit.
The U. S. Supreme Court says the Constitution means thus
and so. But no minister denounces Uncle Sam because of
that fact. And the Constitution of the United States is
much easier for the ordinary mortal to interpret than the
Bible. If Protestantism had a Supreme Court, there wouldn't
be so many varieties of religion among the brethern.””


Catholics regard education as the prerogative
of their religion. We believe that the agencies
and objects of education should be publicly


14


sponsored and controlled; that the training of the
young is the first duty, the most fundamental function,
of the state.


Here is another statement of it:


“The Catholic church ... towers above the ages,
above nations, above men, mistress of all the forces of
education and morality.”’


Those are the words of Clare Gerald Fenerty,
from an address before the Knights of Columbus
Dining Club at Philadelphia, as quoted in the
Catholic Standard and Times.


There is something far beyond the ethical
and moral in the Catholic attitude. Just as the
hierarchy seeks political influence in order that
more recognition and greater benefits may
accrue to the church, so does it have an identical
motive in demanding church-controlled educa-
tion. Here it is, as given expression in the
magazine called Ave Maria:


“Every Catholic school today means a dozen flourishing
parishes thirty years from today.”’


The hierarchy, as a religious organization,
demands the temporal right to dominate
education, high and low, because that control
would facilitate the spread of its own sovereignty
in every country affected throughout the world.


The assertion of that attitude is tempered
only by the measure of its present power to
enforce it. The hierarchy in America today
does not make an open stand against all non-
religious instruction because it does not at this
time dare go to battle on that issue. What the
hierarchy does seek to accomplish, through
camouflage, is the prevention of any further
advancement of Beote school education and of
any curtailment of the privileges of parochial-
ism. With the first opportunity, having re-
cruited the necessary prestige and power, the
Catholic hierarchy of this country would de-
throne democratic education entirely. They
would do that here, as certainly as the process
is now going on in church-and-state countries.


The Monarchist Idea


There is another fundamental difference, the
most basic of all. Catholicism is built and
maintains itself, in all its temporal and re-
ligious ramifications, upon the monarchical
idea of the individual as subject instead of


uy


citizen. The doctrine of democracy in its
every relation to humanity is exactly the re-
verse. It exalts the individual, clothing him
and her with all the attributes of sovereignty,
culminating in civilization’s greatest glory, her
only final, unfailing safeguard, “‘the consent of
the governed”’ inal] that pertains to public affairs.
Every theory, every condition, every hope, of
democracy centers in the development of the
individual, the sum total of which shall be
social strength, intelligence and morality.


Certainly, civilization cannot advance, nor even
continue its present influence, tf this nation, the most
important of all the universe, shall countenance any
departure, socially and governmentally, from the basic
principles of the individual as citizen instead of
subject.


Here is the issue. Public school education is
democratic education. The fight against that system
is being waged by and for Catholic parochialism,
which is the essence of monarchy.


Fundamental American Principles On Trial


How is it possible for any parochial power
to obstruct public schools in America? The
answer goes deep—to the very vitals of our
institutions. The truth, terrible and terrifying,
is that our institutions have not yet been solidly
and lastingly established. The basic principles
of Americanism are yet on trial. The failure to
provide, adequately and democratically, for public
school education lies not so much in the strength of the
opposition as in our own national weakness.


God knows that the cause of education,
standing alone, is sufficient to justify a life and
death struggle with the hierarchical elements
antagonizing its attainments; but this contro-
versy involves other fundamentals: Our triumph
over parochialism and propaganda must include
other and even more fundamental vanquishments.


In the present crises we are confronted by
conditions, rather than theories. Theoretically,
at the very beginning, this nation safeguarded
its institutions through the separation of church
and state. Actually that was never accomplished.


The pioneers who made America had before
them the tragic consequences of church control
of government. They, at least their immediate
ancestors, knew from personal experience the
perils and persecutions of religious controversy.


16





They saw clearly the fateful truth that religious
warfare was always the culminating result
whenever and wherever a powerful church left
the spiritual field and entered the governmental.
They knew that every temporal invasion by a
religious organization had invariably left a
blood-stained trail of selfishness, cruelty and
oppression.

Therefore, in founding this Republic, they
intended that there should not be, then or ever,
any religious interference with government,
nor any governmental interference with religion.
Somehow, the emphasis came to be placed upon
the second, leaving the first more a matter of
implication.

The Constitution provided for the utmost
religious freedom, which was wise and just;
it did not however, in specific, iron-clad
language, guard against religious license in
the field of government. It was no mote,
and no less, the intention to do one than the
other; but the fact remains that the basic law
was left too open, too much subject to abuse,
with respect to churchly encroachments upon
sovereignty. For generations, little harm re-
sulted. Now, suddenly, after half a century of
unperceived growth, the un-American power
that developed out of the one-sided freedom
has arisen to curse and confound our efforts in
behalf of democratic education.


In other words, we have not yet brought about the
separation of church and state in this country. If
you want proof, undisputable, unimpeachable
proof, it exists inthe fact that today, there is a
parochial power that can, and does, say to the
electors and legislators of America: ‘“Thus far
shall you go, and no farther on this issue of
education. Propaganda and propagation through
schools, are prerogatives of Pope and _ priest-
hood. Public welfare is subordinate to the
temporal interests of the hierarchy.”


I say to you then,—I say to all America—
that the winning of this fight for democratic
education involves vastly more than the im-
mediate result of such a victory. Standing
between us and that achievement is the re-
actionary, repulsive principle of church and
state, the civilization-destroying, war-engen-
dering power of church over state. The very
idea, and every influence, of that alignment
must be broken and buried beyond resurrection.


17


a
ft


In and around, above and below, this question
is the Vatican attitude fo superhuman, super-
national sovereignty. To that extent the cause
of democratic education is inseparably linked
with the issue of church and state. Both
battles must be fought, and won, together.

Otherwise all our efforts for an adequate public
school system will be transient and futile.

The only soil in which free schools can flourish is
that of a strictly American sovereignty, tilled by an
undivided allegiance, watered by a patriotism that is
undiluted and undefiled, with the sunshine of
democracy always and forever shining upon it.


Its Larger Meaning To Democracy


But that is not all. In this crucial struggle
for the Horace Mann kind and quantity of
public school education, we are fighting a
battle bigger even than for the final separation
of church and state. Democracy itself, the very
life of Constitutional government, is at stake.


I do not need to remind you that every great
misfortune that comes to humanity is followed,
immediately, by monstrous perversions of power.
Let democracy’s resistance to evil be weakened
by any far-reaching calamity, and in that
moment the ever alert forces of reaction will
spring upon it, seeking the selfish results of
oppression and enslavement. It matters not
in what form or in whose name the assault is
made. Whether the agency be priestly or political,
democracy must pay the price.

Today, in the wake of the great war, with
its terrible toll of death and debt, again do we
hear the voice of imperialism shouting that
democracy has failed, that democracy is reced-
ing, that its epitaph may now be written,
because its end is near. Sometimes that voice
is the voice of industrialism. Sometimes it is
the voice of ruling caste power; sometimes it
is the voice of the Vatican; but whether it
be predatory, political or ecclesiastical, always
that voice is attuned to the same shrill, snarling
key of special interest.

My voice is small, but it is an American
voice, and so far as it may reach, I would have
it carry to America and to all the world the
message that democracy is not dead, nor is Constitu-
tional government, based on ‘“‘the consent of the
governed,’ going to die. NWHumanity, especially
our humanity, will—it must—triumph over


18









‘every obstruction to the great and final accom-
‘plishment of freedom and justice. There can be
‘no freedom, nor justice, if the powers of privilege
in any form predominate. Our people them-
‘selves must safeguard their sovereignty and
‘employ it for the common welfare.
_ The great issue in this conflict with paroch-
ialism, then, is not alone the question of
building our composite people into the highest
‘social and political efficiency, nor of that
accomplishment plus the safeguarding of our
institutions through the actual SH ees of
church and state. To the doctrine of democratic
‘education and the principle of a religious freedom
that works both ways, must be added the cause
of civilization itself.
The eternal right of mankind to self-govern-
ment is being challenged throughout the world.
If the military forces of an alien power were to
enter America, we would repel them with the
last ounce of our common strength. But it is a
more subtle, more effective, more menacing
alien invasion that we are facing—an invasion
of military un-democratic ideas and ideals—a
slow, sure assault upon Constitutional govern-
ment.

There is but one unfailing defense against
every kind of alienism in America; it lies in
adequate, democratic, public school education.


The Vatican A Government


We must face the ugly and menacing fact
that the hierarchy seeking the uses and results
of propaganda in our schools is not alone a
religious, but also a governmental organization.

The Vatican itself has a governmental char-
acter. At this moment twenty-seven nations
have duly accredited diplomatic representatives
at the Holy See, seven of them bearing the title
and rank of ambassador. And more are to
follow.

What does all this mean to America?

Particularly, what bearing does it have upon
this present all-important issue of education?

I can tell you what the hierarchy does to
education, and out of the mouth of Catholicism
itself. Current History, for January, publishes a
laudatory article on Mussolini’s regime in Italy,
by Arnold S. Cortesi, Rome correspondent of
the New York Times, accompanied by pictures
of the Premier and the Pope, from which I quote:


uy)


“The most sweeping reforms of all have, perhaps, been
made by the Ministry of Public Instruction. The number of
schools has been reduced by suppressing those which became
superfluous in towns which have lost population in recent
years. The curriculum has been revised in such a way that each”
school, in addition to preparing the student for the next grade
school, also supplies him with a complete education, should he
decide to interrupt his studies at any given moment. Formerly his
education was not complete until he had finished his course
at a university. Religious education has also been made com-
pulsory; not only has the crucifix been ordered to be displayed in all
schools, but religious education must also be imparted by teachers
who have the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities . . . The
reform which has given rise, however, to the greatest con-
troversy has been the limitation of the number of students
who can receive free education at the expense of the state.
Not only has the number been limited, but also the number of
students who may attend each school, a minimum of thirty-
five for each class having been fixed If there are more
applicants than vacancies, the best students are selected
through competitive examination, the remainder being left
free to attend private schools. The principle underlying
this reform has been this: Formerly, when any one could
obtain free education, thousands of young men who would
have made excellent carpenters, plumbers or manual workers
of any kind, obtained degrees in law, medicine, or engineer-
ing, and then wasted their whole lives, because, having a
university degree, they considered it below their dignity to
return to manual labor, while they were, at the same time,
unable to obtain employment in their profession, owing to
the steady stream of graduates being turned out of the
universities each year The state, therefore, has decided
that only those students shall obtain free education who,
hrough competitive examination, show that they are worth
educating, leaving the rest to pay the fees demanded by
private schools. This reform, a course, does not apply to
elementary schools; indeed, the law making it obligatory
for every child to attend elementary school is being applied
more strictly than ever before.”’


Of course, what they call ‘‘this reform”
does not apply to elementary schools. The
hierarchy desires above all else that every
elementary pupil shall be taught Catholicism.
Therefore it imposes compulsory attendance
upon the youngest boys and girls. Also it
provides an obligatory religious curriculum
for all such pupils. An article printed in
the Catholic World, gives a summary of that
curriculum for preparatory and all elementary
grades. It is too long for insertion here, but
its meaning and influences are apparent.

Observe, now, how that church controlled
education is operating at this moment in Italy.


The Number of Free Schools Has Been Reduced


Each school has been made complete in itself. In-
stead of encouraging high and higher education,


20


he Vatican thus virtually invites every student
to end it all whenever a grade is finished.
_ Free school attendance has been restricted. Why?
_ To discourage the training of young men who
might better be ‘‘carpenters and plumbers.”’
| Do I need to ask how, in God’s name, is it
‘possible to peer into the future and determine
‘both the capacity and the career of any boy
‘ever born? Would democratic America tolerate
any such civilization-destroying injustice to her
Mext generation or continue to countenance any
‘influence that would sponsor such a monstrous
‘perversion of opportunity? No, instead, we de-
mand that the advantages of education be universal;
that no caste, class or creed be excluded.
| Teachers, in Italy, are approved by the ecclesias-
tical authorities. Why? In order that the minds
of the young shall be bent and biased by and
toward Catholicism. It can have no other
purpose. That is what church control means.
here parochialism is nationalized, which is
‘the ultimate aim of parochialism everywhere.
‘The hierarchy believes in its own exclusive right
|to ascendency, why should it not seek here the
‘educational situation that has now come to pass
in Italy? And having made parochialism a public
policy, why is it not equally logical for them,
as they are doing, to employ parochialism for
‘purposes of propaganda?
_ Church, parochialism, propaganda, politics—there
you have the complete circle of cause and effect in the
whole field of this discussion. Through parochial-
ism the church accomplishes propaganda, and
‘the two together—ecclesiastically controlled
schools, teaching the supremacy of the hier-
archy—lead directly, through politics, to tem-
poral power.












“Ecclesiastical Legislation’’


The Sentinel of the Blessed Sacrament, a catholic
publication, quotes a person whom it calls the
Venerable Peter Julian Eymard, as follows:


“The Christian, therefore, owes to Canon Law, to the
bulls, decrees and decisions of the Holy Roman church,
which are but the law, the teaching of the Sovereign Pontiff,
a filial obedience beyond all control by the civil authorities,
who in this regard are without force or sanction "’


Read that again, because, it expresses, as you
and I must learn, the attitude of the hierarchy
towards governments the world over.

Applied to this nation, it means that when-


21


a


4
ever and wherever the sovereign people of the
United States, by constitutionally established
processes, through duly elected representatives,
enact any statute in conflict with any “bull,
decree or decision of the Sovereign Pontiff’’—
who is the Pope—that the Catholics of America
are ordered by the Vatican to disregard that
law. In all such conflicts of legal enactment
and papal decree, their allegience 1s to Rome.
They are instructed to set against our soverignty
a higher and to them, more important, more
omnipotent alien sovereignty. Yet we have
boasted, and believed, for nearly a century and
a half, that the separation of church and state
had actually been accomplished in this country.

Our Constitution provides for religious free-
dom. As one result of that feature of the bill
of right, we did not insist exclusively upon
church marriage ceremonies; civil marriages
were made the law of the land. To Catholicism
and all its subjects that law is null and void.
To them it is wholly without “‘force or sanc-
tion.’’ Time after time has gone forth the papal
or priestly decree to ignore it, and today, to
them every American child born of a civilly
made marriage is illigitimate.

This attitude is by no means confined to the
marriage statute. It is the same with anything
and everything of a legal nature that may come
under papal displeasure. The Catholic maga-
zine called America, makes this announcement
to American followers of the Pope:


“Whatever may be affected by public enactment with
regard to the rights of men and women before the law, no
Catholic is free to admit any legislation which tends to destroy the
center of authority in the home.”


Why is no Catholic ‘“‘free to admit’’—and of
course to abide by—legislative acts of the
government of the United States? There is
only one answer. It is because his higher
allegiance is to a religious hierarchy, not even
American in domicile, whose alien decrees can
set aside all laws as easily as one law.


I say to you that without law and order
neither private nor public welfare is possible.
When established authority be undermined,
then the very foundations of society will
crumble. Only our government itself has the
right to say that this law or that law is null
and void, by repealing it or by establishing its
unconstitutionality.


79


|
For any law to be ignored, either by priest or
| politician, breeds a spirit of lawlessness, a con-
tempt for constituted authority which is civili-
-zation’s deadliest enemy, against which no
mation can long contend and endure. The Supreme
Court of the United States is at Washington, and not
in Rome.
No government can become imperialistic
without ultimate disaster to itself and to every
and it brings under subjection. That is the
verdict of history, to which there has never
_been an exception. The imperialism of a church
‘is even worse. When a religion attains and
“exercises temporal dominion, castatrophe for
all concerned is more swift and sure. That is
|what I condemn—not the American Catholic
‘citizen, but the Roman Catholic hierarchy.


For centuries education was almost exclusively
church controlled. Practically no other educa-
tion existed. That was the period of the great
religious wars. Religious education and re-
ligious warfare were simultaneous. Never in

all the annals of mankind was cause and effect

more closely related or more clearly defined.

_ It made no difference whether it was Cathol-

icism or Protestantism that had aggressively
or in self defense thus usurped this function of
thestate. Always it led directly and inevitably
to civil strife and martial conflict. No religious
Organization ever has or ever can dominate
education without an aftermath of disruptive
strife.

The degree to which the religious influence
prevails in schools will determine, invariably
and inevitably, the extent of the resulting
disturbance for humanity.

I do not for a moment contend that America
will ever submit to a degree of church control
of education which would lead to the battle
field, but I do say, with the tragic experiences
of centuries supporting me, that each and every
bit of ground gained by and for parochialism
in our schools will dilute truth, diminish democracy
and feed the flames of destructive controversy exactly
in proportion to the extent of that influence.

In the last century and a half religious educa-
tion has declined. Simultaneously religious
wats have disappeared. That is why I attach
such paramount importance to this fight for
democratic education. ‘‘The national safety,


5


prosperity and happiness’’—and peace—can be
safeguarded in no other way.


I know that if, throughout the ages, there
had been adequate education—public school
-education—conducted upon a plane high above
propaganda, ninety per cent of the miseries
and misfortunes that have befallen humanity
would have been averted.


And, likewise, as we are Christian citizens,
seeking the highest harmony and happiness for
all humanity, we must unabatingly and un-
compromisingly combat every other kind of
propaganda in our schools.


War is the great curse of mankind. War
always has its origin in religion, racial or
economic causes. Unless the world again
embraces the fatal folly of religious education,
church conflict will remain in its grave. To
bar parochialism and leave the gates ajar to the
teaching of racialism or industrialism, will not
insure peace. That blessing will never be
seein until education is completely and
everlastingly emancipated from every prejudice
and every selfishness.


Let Americans Get Together


This country contains no element that will not be
richly and increasingly benefitted by the development
of public schools, nor any element that will not be
injured, financially, socially, and Spiritually,
through a failure to adopt such a program. All
that being true, and it is true beyond dispute,
every element in America, Protestant and Catholic,
should stop fighting each other and unite for the


accomplishment of a correct and adequate public
school system.


There are hierarchies and political systems,
of alien character and alien domicile, which
would not profit by democratic education in
America. They are not of, by, nor for, America.
I speak not of them when I voice the hope and
prayer that the entire citizenship of the United
States may get together and labor together for


ie fulfillment of humanity's highest happiness
efe.


My condemnation has been of the political system
of the Roman Catholic church, not of its parish-
toners, nor of their religion. It is the hierarchy, not


the rank and file of Catholicism, whose attitude I
disapprove.


24


There is no feeling of intolerance, nor any
hatred, in my soul. I speak not in bitterness,
but out of love. I would that America might
‘be at peace. We and the world have seen
enough of religious wrangling and warfare.
At least in this country there need be no further
conflict. I say this to you because Protestant
and Catholic have identically the same in-
_terests at stake, and should be found fighting
shoulder to shoulder for the re-Americanization
*of our common Republic. All Americans are men

and women whose days upon earth are far too short
to be spent in any save the ways of amity and mutual
helpfulness. The common enemies of mankind
are sufficient to keep us all engaged. Let there be
at least one nation within which humanity may
attain and enjoy a blessed harmony of heart and mind. .
Humbly, and yet confidently, because the
combined experience of mankind throughout
the ages confirms both its soundness and its
necessity, I now make a Christian proposal for
the ending of religious and all other disruptive
controversies on American soil.
Let us establish a court for the settlement of
every case of falsehood and fallacy versus truth
and rectitude. In that court let every element
submit its opposition to the test and verdict of
unselfish truth.


It would take time to establish such a court,
but once it was in operation there would be no
delay nor any injustice in its judgments.

A generation would be required to impanel

the jury. That jury would be the electorate
of the whole country, not one of whom would
be permitted to serve until his or her complete
competence had been attested by a training in
which neither bias nor selfishness had had a

_ part. Once the common mind of such a jury
had been emancipated from every influence of
prejudice and propaganda, its decisions would

_ be divinely just. There would come out of it

anew kind of jurisprudence, so generally ac-
cepted that within a few decades all our human-
ity might live in harmony.

I propose, then, that all of us, Catholic and
Protestant, submit our differences to democratic
education; that is, a public school system in
which the mind of each and every student shall
not be bent and biased by any propaganda,—
industrial, economic, political, or religious.
Truth would come out of such a system—‘‘the


° 25


whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Factionalism and strife would disappear, be-
cause there would be no half truth and perverted
truth to give them abortive birth.

After all, education is but the means to an end.
In a higher sense, democracy is but the means
to an end. In the highest sense, civilization
itself is but the means to an end. That end is
the triumph of truth, God’s truth and man’s
truth, out of which alone can come the Heavenly
blessing of a harmonized humanity here on
earth.

America Must Leap Tae Way.