The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1919-06-03
SCHOOL TEACHER SOB STUFF

wants them paid minimum wage of
a thousand dollars a year. The Tam
pa Tribune, we suppose, endorses the
argument, as it reprints the article in
full, giving it an entire page of large
type in wide measure.
There is no doubt In the world that
most teachers should be better paid,
and there is some good reasoning in
the Literary Digest article. but a
good deal of the argument in it is
fallacious, and more of it is pure sob
stuff. Let's take some of it to pieces
and see what makes it tick. To begin
with, let's consider that thousand
dollar year minimum.
Marion is as well of as any county
in the state, and what it would do to
Marion to pay its teachers minimum
wage of a thousand dollars year
apiece any taxpayer can decide by
figuring for perhaps two minutes.
The county employs on an average
IT'S teachers, and with minimum
wage of $1,000 year apiece, and, of
course, better wages to the best
teachers, the county could not pay
anything but school teachers. and it
would crush it to the very earth to
pay them. It would be an expensive
as to have the county occupied by a
German regiment.
School teachers, like most other
people, are obsessed by their calling,
and of course can't be much blamed
for thinking that all there is neces-
sary in the life of child is school
teachers, schoolhouses and books, but
other people. particularly newspaper
men, should understand that homes,
clothing and food are also necessary,
and that parents can't provide these
il they are taxed beyond their ability
to pay.
The Literary Digest speaks of the
teachers as "the foster parents OF
our children" This is the leading sob
and sobbiest-and slobbiest. There
are indeed some teachers devoted to
ali the children. There are some
that try to be just to all the children
to play no favorites, tho few of
them entirely succeed. But the ma
jority, being entirely human, favor
some scholars, disfavor some and are
entirely Indifferent toward most of
them. IL you want to know about
that foster parent business, ask the
school children. They know. You
can't work any sobstuf off on them.
And as far as that is concerned. just
remember back to the time you was a
schoolchild yourself. How many of
your teachers were foster-parents
Weren't they more like step-parents
But the prize piece of sobstuff is
this:
an a certain town in Illinois, for
instance, the average wage of fifteen
miners for one month was $217, while
the average monthly salary of fifteen
teachers in the same town was $55.
In another town miner, who, by the
way, was an enemy alien, drew more
than $2700 last year, while the salary
of the high school principal in the
same town was $765."
Let's analyze this proposition. Last
year, if every school in the United
States had shut its doors, the country
would have been little harmed. But
if the mines had shut down, the coun-
try would have been ruined, and the
world would have been ruined, because
the war would have been lost. What
made the power that drove the ma
chimes that made the guns and am
munition, that manufactured and pre-
pared the food. that brought the men
and supplies to the ports, propelled
the steamships, that carried them to
Europe? Coal-dug from the earth
by toiling men who risked their lives
to dig it, while the school teachers,
even If slenderly paid, held safe and
easy jobs in comfortable surround
ings. And last year, in the life of
a coal miner. had to go to balance off
several years during which he made
less than enough to keep his family in
the necessities of life.
Before the sobsisters kick on a coal
miners wages let them go down in
the bowels of the earth and WELD pick
and shovel with death constantly be-
tween them and daylight.
Now let's take the case of the miner
who was an enemy alien and made
$2700 while the school principal who
was ch AhAC1AGa1u AAhuG Only Y1OOs
We don't know either the miner or
the teacher, but we know the average
experiences of men in their callings,
so we may dope out an average life
and work for each.
The enemy alien" was probably a
Hungarian or Slav, and also probably
was friendly to America. IF he was
enough of an enemy to make himself
conspicuous, he would have been in
termed. His enmity probably consist
ed in his being born somewhere in the
Austrian empire, which he couldn't
help. IL SO, he had a childhood of
'privation and work. He came to
America huddled in the Storage of b
ship, amid surroundings that no Am
erican negro could view without turn
ing sick. He took a job in a coal
mine, where he worked ten times
harder than the average teacher
works. This probably lasted three or
four years, as no enemy aliens who
work in coal mines came here after
July, 1914. If he came to America
several years before the war, during
some of them he worked for very low
wages, and was out part of the time
on strike. It was not until the late
autumn of 1914 that wages for coal