The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-10-29

III reply to the question, Are
you a Communist" asked by one
of the Congressman, l stated that
at the next election, in common
with hundreds of other college
teachers and students, was going
to vote Communist for the first
time. This declaration, reported in
the World and other New
York papers, must have come to
the surprised attention of City Col
lege'S president. I did not antici-
pate, when l opposed Secretary of
Labor Doak's persecution of the
foreign born, that within half a
year he and Ralph M Easley would
launch an attack on the entire
school system of the United States.
Yet this reverbiration of the poll
teal revolt in American colleges. is
the clear meaning OF Doak's re-
cent decree against foreign-born
students who work their way thru
school, and of Easley'S campaign to
use the Doak order in kicking out
radical college teachers and stu
dents. My dismissal is an incident
in the fascist efforts to suppress
every vestige of free speech in Am
erican colleges.
| ASSISTED also, in the John Reed
Club, signature campaign among
intellectuals in protest against the
Dies Bill, 1 was a member of the
delegation which visited Secretary
of Labor Doak in Washington, to
demand the release of Edith Berk-
man, and investigated and public
ly reported on the Kentucky mine
strike and the Detroit Dearborn
massacre activities which did not
endear me, certainly to the Tam
many controlled capitalist admin
istration of City College.
The brazen abuse of the educa-
tional system in the interest of cap
italist politics should not be a mat
ter of surprise. The popular illu-
sion that the schools are detached
from governmental corruption must
be diSpelled. The schools under
capitalism are capitalist institu-
ton, and are means of perpetual
ing capitalism by imposing its idea
logy on the children of workers,
and by discouraging all revolution
airy thinking. The capitalist bias
of the courts and the police are well
understood by most workers and
intellectuals, so that there is no
question among US when we see
workers in hunger demonstrations
dubbed by policemen, or watch the
steady attempts of the courts to
send nine innocent Negro children
to the electric chair: We know
that here the face of capitalist JUS
tice is in plain view. But when COL
leges are involved, we are apt to
forget that capitalism is boss
among them, too.
AT this time, the crisis sharpen
"A ing from week to week, we see
that not only is the school system
openly used as weapon against
revolutionary workers and their
Oylll DuV GIldG OllG uCSCllCA~
alton of education itself proceeds
at an amazing rate. Every day cuts
in teachers wages are announced,
schools are reduced in force and
equipment, a month or so is cut
from the school year, departments
and even whole schools are closed
down, all in the interest of econ
omy." The continuation high school,
for instance, on And st. near Third
Ave, is to be closed to all adults
above the age of IT; the Garfield,
New Jersey, teachers have not been
paid since last April; teachers in
Flint, Michigan, receive contracts
for one month only, since the
schools may have to be closed at
any time; Chicago teachers get
paid, like miners and share-crop-
pers, in scrip; thousands of
teachers are unemployed. Along
with this, students are forced to