The Survey,
Volume 30, Number 7,
May 17, 1913
[Pg 237]
THE COMMON WELFARE
THE PITTSBURGH
SCHOOL STRIKE
Pittsburgh school affairs are under a cloud butthe outside world should understand certainfacts, notably that the cloud itself is stirred up,to some extent at least, by interests using it as acloak for their operations. These interests aretwo-fold: the first, political, embracing the factionopposed to Senator Oliver; the second, partlypolitical and partly personal, embracing themen from whose hands the school affairs of Pittsburghwere wrested by the Legislature two yearsago. Under the old system school buildings andmaintenance were in control of petty wardboards; in some districts the schools wereexcellent but in others waste, mismanagementand graft were rampant. Under the new systemmany of the old directors secured election asward school visitors and, shorn of their spoils,have been bitterly opposed to the control of thesmall, centralized executive board appointed bythe judges of the Allegheny county courts.
Charges brought against Supt. S. L. Heeter bya housemaid gave politicians and ousted directorstheir chance to start an agitation for areturn to conditions under which they throve.These charges were given publicity by CoronorJamison, president of the old central board.Superintendent Heeter demanded a court trialand was acquitted. Afterward a committee ofcitizens, including the president of the chamberof commerce and two clergymen, was appointedto investigate the superintendent’s fitness to remainin office. This committee has not yet reported.
Whether Superintendent Heeter is retained inoffice or not is aside from the main issue—the revolutionin the conduct of the Pittsburgh schools inthe past year and a half. The new board hasbeen obliged to spend $150,000 in transformingindescribably dirty old fire-traps, with poor light,worse ventilation and unspeakable toilets, intoschools that could be used with decency.
The great mass of Pittsburgh’s good citizensrefuse to get excited. Not all the scare headsof the interested newspapers, the Leader andthe Press, or mass-meetings and parades of childrenarranged by still more interested individuals,have befogged the recognition by Pittsburghpeople of the improvement in school affairs since1911. The exaggeration of the children’s strikein the press of the country, however, has beenbroadcast. Collier’s Weekly, for example, thatusually accurate publication, prints a picture withthe explanation that “a strike of 50,000 schoolpupils paralyzed the Pittsburgh school system.”There was marching of children; but when aneffort was made to discover the identity of themen who the children reported were urging themon, the agitators quickly dropped out of sight.For a few days attendance dropped off in certainsections, but many parents had kept their childrenat home for fear of their becoming involved.
The situation has been tense, but social workersin Pittsburgh do not anticipate that the Legislaturewill respond to the manufactured agitationand put the schools back in the hands of the wardboards whose long regime left conditions thatcan not be remedied in years. A bill introducedthis week would make the central board elective.Theoretically there are arguments in support ofthe election-at-large of members of the centralizedboard, but the appointive board was regardedas a necessary measure if the schools were to