The record-union., 1892-10-26
ETHICS OF THE TEXT BOOK
CAMPAIGN.

The Oakland Tribune while protesting
that it is championing the State series of
textbooks, declares that the Sacramento
press vituperates and "calls names'' in
referring to the book rings solely because
of ''local selfshness.' This is the very
latest and most amusing form of assault
upon the Capital.
We are well aware that every capital
city is common target for all. It is so
i in every State in the Union save one.
Massachusetts. People appear to think
that capital city is a State pensioner,
and hence a dependent that is the fit OBJ
iect for shafts of ridicule and abuse I'm
just as is such spirit, we fail to compre-
hend by what torturing of reason the
Tribune can attribute our school-book
advocacy to local selfshness.
AS a pioneer advocate of the system,
even prior to its adoption into the Consti-
tuition, this journal might claim without
vanity some right to indicate the plan of
campaign against the book rings. With
reason, which the Tribune has not to
fortify its impugnment of the motive of
the Sacramento press, we might retort in
kind, remembering the envy character
istic of the I1T6une's environment. But
that is pusillanimous order of attack to
which this journal never descends.
1.-THE offensive and abusive tone of the
Sacramento press" of which the Tribune
complains, is simply the expression of
the truth concerning the book rings. So
far as the RECoRD-UN MON is concerned it
has not used a word or term that it is not
prepared to repeat and to prove to be un-
exaggerated and strictly applicable.
The question is not one for dilettante-
ism or to be handled with gloves. When
Eastern agents are on the ground with
coin for distribution to corrupt legisla-
ton; when letters assailing the book
system as the result of anarchical teach
ings and threats, and the trucking of the
people to radical socialism, are written in
New York, but dated and printed and
serted in the press of the State for coin;
when the most outrageous calumnies are
INDUCED in and false figures given in
the attempt to prove that the text book
system is jobbery and robbery and is cost
ing the people outrageously too much;
when friends of the system and fair play
are denounced as cOrr11Dt and ad1zooa+iro.
the textbooks in the pay and interest of
political trieksters-when these things
are said, repeated and iterated day after
day; when Superintendents and Boards
of Education are approached and all pos
ssible efforts made to blind them to their
.duty; when prominent educators are
swheedled and fiattered and crammed and
brought over to assault upon the school
hooks; when these things are so flagrantly
,scandalous as at the present, the only
treatment for them is to expose them in
all their nakedness, sparing nothing.
The book ring and its coadjutors are
not sparing Of expletives or chary of
abuse of the textbook system and its
advocates, nor of the officials to whom its
administration has been intrusted, nor
yet of the people who voted it into the
organic law. Let the Tribune overhaul
its records and ascertain what the people
have done to merit the assault the agen-
cies are making.
Our Oakland contemporary need not
fear; the friends of the State textbook
system have not lost their tempers. They
are collected but determined, and pro-
pose to call a spade a spade. They
will certainly never be guilty of such
libel as the Tribune publishes of its own.
We protest in behalf Of the Alameda
teachers against the broadside charge of
ignorance and simplicity made by our
contemporary against them, when it says
that they do not understand public
sentiment on this question, and are vast
ing force in seeking to procure the aban-
donment of the State system and re-
turn to the old plan of competition which
means jobbery.'
This is outrageous slander. The Ala
media teachers do understand public sem
timent on the question; they do know