It was not without hope that I might be able to forward in the
public school system the solution of some of these problems of
delinquency so dependent upon truancy and ill-adapted education
that I became a member of the Chicago Board of Education in July,
1905. It is impossible to write of the situation as it became
dramatized in half a dozen strong personalities, but the entire
experience was so illuminating as to the difficulties and
limitations of democratic government that it would be unfair in a
chapter on Civic Cooperation not to attempt an outline.
Even the briefest statement, however, necessitates a review of
the preceding few years. For a decade the Chicago school
teachers, or rather a majority of them who were organized into
the Teachers' Federation, had been engaged in a conflict with the
Board of Education both for more adequate salaries and for more
self-direction in the conduct of the schools. In pursuance of
the first object, they had attacked the tax dodger along the
entire line of his defense, from the curbstone to the Supreme
Court. They began with an intricate investigation which uncovered
the fact that in 1899, $235,000,000 of value of public utility
corporations paid nothing in taxes. The Teachers' Federation
brought a suit which was prosecuted through the Supreme Court of
Illinois and resulted in an order entered against the State Board
of Equalization, demanding that it tax the corporations mentioned
in the bill.
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