Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools онлайн

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I ask myself, therefore: How can I do better, at the beginning of this book, than to tell you what I saw at the harbor? This strike was a blazing searchlight, thrown into the very vitals of our invisible government; if you will follow it, you will see the whole system, and understand every detail of its mechanism. So I ask you to set aside for the moment all questions of labor unions, criminal syndicalism, anything of that sort; come with me as a plain American, believing in the Constitution, believing in the people, and their right to run their own affairs. Follow the story of this labor struggle—and before you get to the end of it you will magically find yourself reading about the schools, and learning who has taken them away from you, and why they have done it, and what it means to you and your children.

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The first step in this narrative is to explain how it happened that the writer of this book, a muck-raker and enemy of society, was in the office of Mr. Irwin Hays Rice, president of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Los Angeles, and chief of the Black Hand, at the very moment when Mr. Rice was conspiring with his fellow chiefs for the smashing of the harbor strike. This story is amusing in itself, and not altogether alien to education.