The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1920-01-28
SCHOOL TEACHERS AND SALARIES.

unions. and to affiliate with the American Fedora
tion of Labor con the ground that their duties 70
narents to pupils and to the public inconsistent
with coercive action by strikes, and on their re-
fusal to surrender their individual freedom of ac-
tion in instances where the obedience to strike or
ders might conflict with their conscientious convic-
tions concerning their duties as good citizens, COL
George Harvey, in Harvey's Weekly, contributes
the following 20 the discussion of the proper pay
for teachers:
Gail of which is highly commendable prin-
ciple 1t should have it's reward in full public ap-
probation. That appreciation should take more
substantial form than mere verbal eulogies 1t
should take the form of payment for services rem
dered in generous proportion to the value OF those
services. And what service is more valuable to the
country more vital to the enduring welfare of the
American people, than the proper education OF our
American children? Surely the and women on
whom falls this grave responsibility and who, in the
instances cited, have shown so patriotic an apprecl
alton of those responsibilities entitled to such
payment for their services as will enable them to
live as we'll as those in the countrys industrial me-
chanism.
"Surely, ifsthere is any group of workers whose
paw should permit them to live with some approach
to comfort and personal dignity in these days of
severe stress, the teachers on whom rests the re-
sponsibility for the right mental guidance and d.
rection of the oncoming generations are foremost.
Continuing, >Col. Harvey says:
"These teachers salaries are such washerwo-. .
men, janitors and teamsters would scorn. A BRICK
layer whose craft demands an obviously low order
of skill and intelligence, may earn nearly as much
in week as teacher is paid in month The aV-
erage school teacher says the Chicago trade survey
report is under twenty-five year handicap on the
basis Of lifetime earnings. The average teacher
will have to live to be 70 before her total earnings
are as much as plumber can make by the time he
is 40 Blacksmiths, shoe-store clerks, soda-foun-
tain clerks, under present wage scales, will have
earned as much at 40 years of age as a school
teacher would at g."
The result of it all as summed up in the Weekly
lis this
= I'm many cases their pay is low that they sim
ply cannot live on it. For such as these, the mat
ter resolves into the plain question of giving up
teaching or dragging out an existence of half
starved squalor So, it is not surprising to learn
that many hundreds of teachers are answering this
question by throwing up their work. In the last
three years. according to recent survey OF Chlca-
go trade conditions, 40 per cent. of the teachers
have abandoned the profession solely on account OF
the impossibity of living decently on the salaries
paid"
Again: "But living lives of half-starved pauper-
ism is also at variance with their ideas Of sef-re-
spect So they resign and take to occupations by
which they can make enough to live on in the way
thev should live They recognize their duties to
the public but they do not recognize starving to
death as among those duties"
A great deal of this may be taken home to them
selves by the people in this community. We have
paid teachers and school men and women, generally,
so little for their services in the past that when we
come to think of paying them wage equal to that
paid other people trained in their professions and
callings, we are shocked.
Only recently in Abbeville we had talk with a
representative citizen. He is in favor OF good
schools He would not have Abbeville have poorer
schools than the neighboring cities of like size. He
prefers that we have better schools than most
towns, But the idea of paying the Superintendent
of the Schools here as much as three thousand or
thirty-ive hundred dollars appealed to him on rst
consideration as something in the nature of confis
cation And so it would to us, had we not given
the matter more consideration, and had not
learned that teachers will not always teach for
nothing and that there other avenues for
earning living open to them, and many of them
are taking these ways.
We may take for comparison the engineers on
the Seaboard Air Line Railway. They serve an ap-
premiership but after few years of experience