The Goslings: A Study of the American SchoolsSinclair, Upton
History
The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools
Sinclair, Upton
Education -- United States
I went away from Chicago in May; and coming back in June, on my way
home, I discovered that this Chicago melodrama is a continuous
performance. A new act was on, and the business representative of the
Chicago Teachers’ Federation Was in the midst of another whirlwind. The
city was on the point of getting a new president of the school board,
and he was worse than the old one, if such a thing were possible. He was
a physician, Dr. John Dill Robertson, formerly head of the Bennett
Medical College, which had been exposed in the “Journal of the American
Medical Association,” February 7th, 1914. Margaret Haley had had the
article reproduced photographically, with its headlines: “High School
Credentials for Sale. Illustration of Irregular Methods by which
Commercially Conducted Medical Colleges Admit Students Contrary to Law.”
The article told how a student had applied to Dr. Robertson’s college,
presenting credits for a year and a half of high school work, and the
registrar of the college got him a certificate supposed to represent a
full four years’ high-school course. They got this signed by a county
school superintendent in Wisconsin, after the applicant had passed an
examination for which the registrar furnished him both the questions and
the answers! A copy of this article was mailed to every member of the
city council of Chicago—but Dr. Robertson was confirmed by this body
just the same!
Meantime the graft revelations continued. I have before me a pamphlet by
Judge McKinley, chief justice of the criminal court of Cook County,
detailing the devices by which the fake purchasing companies made their
millions out of the schools. There are pages of details about such
concerns, their imaginary offices, their contracts for every kind of
material which could be used in a big city school system. There was a
deal for a hundred thousand tons of coal, without any competitive
bidding; another deal of $244,000 for “surplus Shipping Board
boilers”—these being boilers offered for sale by the Shipping Board and
purchased by a dummy concern, whose head was a former school board
member. This man, Fitzgerald, had “never had a bank account until this
sale took place”; and the boilers were bought on the recommendation of
Davis, the president of the school board, described as “a nice little
fellow who did what he was told.” Says Judge McKinley:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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