In other parts of the country the “four-term year” is being tried out; the children of the poor are to be rushed through, and delivered to their Big Business masters in six years instead of eight. Also, an enterprising superintendent from Oklahoma has taken up the problem of what to do with the teacher during the period that used to be the teacher’s vacation—a dangerous interlude, when she might read unauthorized books, such as “The Goslings.” The teacher is now to spend one summer term attending a university under proper supervision; the next summer she is to be sent to acquire culture by travel under supervision; the third summer she is to teach in the summer schools of the city; and during the fourth she is to be permitted to have recreation—if she has succeeded in passing the requirements of the previous three summers. CHAPTER LVII SCHOOLS FOR STRIKE-BREAKERS We have seen the National Education Association assembling in Boston, and welcomed by the Chamber of Commerce. We have seen them assembling in Oakland, and welcomed by the same organization. Wherever they go, they are welcomed with open arms by Big Business, and the school-marms hasten to this bear’s embrace. It is no exaggeration to say that from the earliest days of the public school system its worst enemy has been organized commercialism. I understand that there are individual business men of vision, who believe in and work for the schools; but the organizations, the class groups of the exploiters did all they could to block the establishment of public schools, realizing that to educate the lower classes was to prepare the overthrow of wage-slavery. What Big Business wants of children is their labor. Twenty years ago Margaret Haley was lobbying at the state capital of Illinois for a bill to abolish child labor, and she talked with the head of the Levis family, which owns enormous glass works at Alton. It was provided in the bill that children shouldn’t work in these factories earlier than fourteen. Said Mr. Levis: “If you keep the children in school till then, they aren’t of any use to us when they come.” This he said before the legislature; and afterwards Miss Haley went up to him asking: “Just what is it in the public schools which hurts the children?” The answer was: “All this literature stuff, and history and music. In the schools where they don’t have such things the children are willing to go to work.” Before the legislature Mr. Levis threatened that if this bill were passed the glass works in Alton would move to some other state. The work of the children was carrying bottles a short distance, and they couldn’t get men to do it—not at their price. The bill was passed—and immediately the manufacturers decided that the work could be done by machines.