Baltimore Evening Sun (6 July 1911): 6.

“What do you think of Preston?” asked the ambulance chaser, as he and the tall man met in front of the Courthouse.

“To tell you the truth,” replied the tall man gloomily, “the more I think of him the less I think of him.”

“But cert’ny you gotta admit he done a good thing when he fired them silk stockings off’n the School Board,” ventured the ambulance chaser.

“Oh, pooh, pooh!” said the tall man. “Pooh, pooh—and tut, tut! You make me sick with your talk. Out goes a college professor and in goes a bank president. One pair of silk stockings goes into the wash—and another pair comes out’n the bureau drawer. As for me, I don’t see no difference. Them new board members will bounce Van Sickle, and then turn around and elect some other fellow with side-whiskers. What we need is a clean sweep. Turn out the whole gang, from top to bottom—and then let all jobs be apportioned. fairly, and to them that deserves them.

“All this up-to-date monkey-business—believe me, there ain’t nothing in it. To hear them college professors talk, you would think that teachin’ school was one of the hardest things in the world—as hard as jumpin’ through a six-inch hoop or swimmin’ with your pockets full of sash-weights. Don’t you believe nothing of the sort. Teachin’ is one of the easiest things you ever seen. You could hardly call it work at all: what it really is is a sort of lady-like graft. Compared to layin’ carpets or washin’ windows, or doin’ a hard Chooseday’s ironin’, you might say it was next to loafin’.

“But the trouble is that them college professors makes it hard. When there’s a job open for some young gal to teach the A B C’s to the baby class—what do they do? Do they pick out some likely-looking Democratic gal, ask her if she knows her ABC’s, and then put her to work? Not on your life! What they do is to examine her until she’s black in the face, askin’ her all sorts of fool questions that ain’t got no more sense in them than so much bar-room talk—Who discovered Ethiopia? If a is to b, what is c to d? If a cow and a half lays an egg and a half in a week and a half, how many onions make a pound?—and all such bughouse stuff.

“And what is worse, they don’t let her alone after she gets the job. You would think that when she was once on the work, teachin’ the A B C’s to her class, they would let it go at that. But they don’t. No matter how good she teaches the A B C’s, they keep haulin’ her up to see what she knows about algebra, geology and all that other bunk. Say she is putting her class through ‘A-B is Ab.’ Well, in pops a superintendent and bawls at her ‘Who was King James the First?’ or ‘How much is one-half of 3,457,896,724?’ or ‘Bound Sardinia!’ or some other stinger like that. What happens? Why, the poor gal goes to pieces, of course. No human being in the world, I don’t care how sharp he was, couldn’t answer no such questions right off the bat. I couldn’t do it myself.”

“But such things have to be taught,” ventured the ambulance chaser. “When a teacher has got to learn them to her scholars, then she has to”— —

“Who said they had to be taught?” demanded the tall man. “On what grounds do they have to be taught? Show me one reason why they had ought to be taught. You can’t do it. There ain’t none. What a child goes to school for is to learn how to read and write and spell and figger, and not to study algebra and crocheting and such fancy branches. When you send a bill to a customer you don’t send it in algebra, do you? Of course not. What you do send it is in plain figgers. Even if you understood algebra yourself and could make out bills in it, the chances is your customer couldn’t understand it, and so what good would it do you?”

“That’s the whole point—what good would it do? The A B C’s have got sense in ’em, because a man who don’t know ’em can’t spell, an’ a man who can’t spell can’t read, an’ a man who can’t read ain’t good for nothin’ but laborin’ work. I know smart fellers who can’t read, but it stands for reason they would be even more smarter if they could. It’s the same way with figgerin’. A man that can’t figger is bound to have it put to him by them that can. Figgerin’, in other words, is a useful trick, but what use is to know algebra an’ knittin’ and basket-makin’ and suchlike?”

“You forget,” suggested the ambulance chaser, “that some of the things is useful, too. My brother Herman has a kid in school and the teacher learned the kid how to make a chair. That is what you call manual train”—&mdash

“Bunk!” bowled the tall man. “All bunk! Not worth a darn! I know all about that manual trainin’ foolishness. They turn the schools into sweatshops, and put all the children to work makin’ baskets and sashaybags an’ armchairs and baby-dolls—but what good does it do? Suppose a child learns basket-makin’? Is basket makin’ a good trade? Maybe it was once, but not no more. Basket-makers get $9 a week. Think of that! The ideer of sendin’ a child to school—and then have it learn such a bum trade.

“Besides, what right have the school commissioners to learn a child a trade, when maybe its parents don’t want it to learn no such trade, or maybe they have some better trade picked out for it. For instance, there is my sister’s brother-in-law’s boy. They sent him to school, and one day he come home with a great big thing made out of wood. He said it was a music cabinet. Well, the joke is that the boy’s father wants to make a plumber out of him, not a musician. What good does it do a plumber to make music cabinets? If they taught the boy how to plumb, there would be some sense in it; but if a boy is going to be a plumber, why try to make a musician out of him?”

“Well,” said the ambulance chaser, consolingly, “them days is all done. Once Preston gets goin’ you won’t hear no more about such nonsense.”

The tall man sneered an audible sneer.

“Preston!” he ejaculated. “Preston! What a false alarm! What a cheap fake! I voted for him an’ I worked for him—and me what I’ve got for it. I don’t ask nothin’ extra, fine. I don’t want to be no City Collector, or anything of that kind. All I want is a job in the Water Department. Have I got it? I have not. Some rotten Republican has got it—an’ I can whistle for it. That’s what a man gets for workin’ for Preston!”

“Give him time,” counseled the ambulance chaser.

“Let him give me my job,” replied the tall man savagely, “an’ I’ll give him from now to doomsday.”

H. L. Mencken