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

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In 1916 and 1917, something happened which shook the teachers of Los Angeles into action; their wages were suddenly cut to about forty per cent of what they had been before. Or, to put it in the more common formula, the cost of everything the teachers had to buy with their money increased a hundred and thirty per cent; and meantime their wages remained as in 1914. They were unable to live, and fifty-six per cent of them were forced to do additional outside work. So the teachers’ associations began a salary campaign, which for the first time brought them out of the classrooms and into contact with the real life of Los Angeles. The campaign lasted intermittently for four or five years, and the outcome of it was tragedy for the teachers and comedy for the reader.

One of the purposes for which Mrs. Dorsey had been made superintendent was to hold the salaries down; and in her effort to break the resistance of the teachers, she served notice upon them that they must sign their contracts for the next year before the end of the old term—and this although legally they had until twenty days after the end of the term. She would be very sorry not to see their faces next year, she told them, and smiled amiably. When some said that they did not want to return, her smile was still amiable. “You’ll be back,” she said. “Teachers have gone out before this and tried to do something else.”