Mr. BLACK. This creates an advisory group called the "National council of education," made up of the superintendents of education of the various States, bringing the States right into the Federal department. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Do you see any objection to the superintendents of the several States meeting from time to time and conferring with reference to the things that are of vital interest to the children of the country? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. No; but I can not see why that could not be done under the present Bureau of Education. I can not see why that would not accomplish the same good purpose and protect the schools and the State from the possibility of a Federal control, which an organized department is very likely to force upon them. Mr. FLETCHER. Then, outside of the secretary, you would approve of the rest of this bill? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. No; I have not said that exactly. I would not approve of this bill as it stands at all. Mr. BLACK. You do not think it is necessary? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. I do not think it is necessary to have a department of education. We might have departments for other things, but because a child has measles you would not treat whooping cough in the same way. Mr. ROBSION. Do you think we need any legislation at all? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. You already have legislation. Mr. ROBSION. But do you think we need any legislation? Mrs. MCGOLDRICK. Yes; I think we should have something, but I do not think we should experiment Mr. ROBSION (interposing). What is it that you think we ought to have, what legislation? Mrs. MCGOLDRICK. I have already said that. I said that I thought your bureau, as it stands now, if it were developed properly, is all the legislation that is needed. The CHAIRMAN. Would you object to the Bureau of Education having the powers given under section 8? Mrs. MCGOLDRICK. The Bureau of Education already has most of those powers, has it not, Mr. Chairman? The CHAIRMAN. Would you object to it as it stands? If it had all those powers, would you object to that? Mrs. MCGOLDRICK. I do not think I can answer that question and be fair to myself or to you, because I would have to think it over carefully. I think the Bureau of Education as it stands now could do all that is required for education. The CHAIRMAN. Would you be in favor of larger appropriations for it? Mrs. MCGOLDRICK. I think that would be the only possible answer to develop it. I think we do not need a department of education to harness us with more legislation. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. The present Bureau of Education is in the Department of the Interior, if I am not mistaken. Would you object to having an assistant secretary of education at the head of this bureau? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. I would object to anything that would open the door to having a Federal Bureau of Education that might eventually control our school system in this country. I think it would be a dreadful mistake for us to have any bureau or any department that would become a controlling influence over the schools in the various States. I think that right belongs to the States. Mr. ROBSION. Do you know about the Phipps bill in the Senate? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. No; we did not go on record as opposing the Phipps bill. Mr. ROBSION. Did you not send representatives and appear in opposition to that bill which proposed to enlarge the Bureau of Education? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. No; we never appeared against the Phipps bill. And I have been their chairman on much of the legislation that has been proposed, the various bills—at least, I have represented the organization. Mr. FLETCHER. Your chief contention is that you fear Federal intervention of some sort? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. Yes; and very earnest fears that a Federal bureau, a Federal department, would eventually become Federal control. We can not see what a department would do unless it had to reach out and exert more and more influence, more and more people in its employ, and more and more ramifications, and we think that is unwise and unnecessary for our American institutions. Mr. FLETCHER. But would you welcome all the scientific information that such a department might acquire? Mrs. MCGOLDRICK. Yes; that is a good thing. Of course, anything that the Government can do to help the various States in their school systems is a good thing, but to try and take any power away from the States, which a department like this must eventually do, else what would it do? I can not see that, and my organization does not feel that that is wise. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I do not quite follow you. As I stated before, I am in sympathy with a good many of the objections which you made to the things which went to other bill. Take, for instance, the Department of Agriculture. It sends men all over the world to discover new plants, new things that might benefit the farmer of the United States, and to bring that information back to him, to be disseminated through the Department of Agriculture to the several agricultural departments of the States. Do you see any objection to that? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. No; I think there is no objection to that. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Then if a department of education simply collected scientific data pertaining to what we have done, not only in the schools of this country but in the schools of the other nations of the world, from which much benefit might be derived by study and comparison by the school authorities of the several States, what harm could that do? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. What guaranty have we that it would stop there? Mr. BLACK of New York. The farmers are free to take it or not. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I belong to an organization that had one member that went wrong, and he was prosecuted and was sent to the penitentiary, but I do not feel alarmed on that account that the rest of the organization will go wrong. Mrs. McGOLDRICK. It is not a reflection on the men who are making our Government or the men who make a bill of this kind, but it is a reflection on some of those who may follow and abuse the authority given under a bill of this kind. We feel that vey likely such a department would be abused. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Might not that lead us to the point where, if we hesitate to pass the legislation, conceding it to be harmless as it is written, Congress would be in the position that it could seldom, if ever, legislate upon a question because there might be some harm come in the future, because some Congress 25 years from now might do something different? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. No; I do not think that is so at all. I think there are certain things that require certain types of legislation. I think education is not one of the things that requires Federal legislation. I think that you can have helpfulness from the Government but not control by the Government. Mr. BLACK of New York. This is proposed as a substitute for existing agencies and to do what existing agencies are doing, so there can be no possible excuse for this bill on the ground that it is necessary; therefore you have got a right, in view of the history of this whole legislation and in view of the possibilities and in view of the things that have been advocated by some of the advocates of this bill, to be highly suspicious of the future of this legislation? Mrs. MCGOLDRICK. Exactly. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I do not want this question to be misunderstood, because I think I perhaps feel stronger than you do upon the question. I deny the right of the Government to say to me whether I shall send my child to a private or to a public school, and I would fight to the bitter end any attempt on the part of the Federal Government, on the part of my State government, to deprive me of the right to send my child to a private school if I saw fit; but what I am unable to understand is why we should hesitate to pass this legislation because, if I interpret correctly, someone fears that at some time the Government might try to interfere with private education. Mr. ROBSION. Congress might amend the law. Mrs. McGOLDRICK. Is not your Bureau of Education doing all the things you want it to do now? What more would you have the department do that the bureau is not doing? Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Well, I understood you to say a monent ago that you were not in accord with the bureau. Mrs. MCGOLDRICK. No; I said that there are certain things about the bureau that I thought helpful and right; that if that bureau was developed to its possibilities it should be sufficient for the needs of education in this country. Mr. SEARS. Has the bureau at any time become offensive in any of its activities? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. I am not in a position to say at this moment that it has been or what it has done. I would not put myself on record as maligning the bureau. Mr. BLACK of New York. You would not be in favor of making another department to gather more statistics in addition to the departments that we now have gathering statistics on everything under the sun? 105682-28- -23 Mrs. McGOLDRICK. I do not know where we would stop; we are getting so top-heavy in Washington. Mr. BLACK of New York. Why should there be a department established just as a research and fact-finding proposition? Mrs. McGOLDRICK. Under the same argument we really should have a department for religion. Mr. PECKHAM. Mr. Chairman, the witness who was scheduled to appear next is Mrs. Jennie Bartley Green, chairman of the committee on legislation, Catholic Daughters of America. She had to catch the 5 o'clock train; consequently had to leave. She waited here in all good faith and she has left a brief written statement. The CHAIRMAN. You may file that for the record. (The statement referred to follows:) STATEMENT OF MRS. JENNIE BARTLEY GREEN, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON LEGISLATION, CATHOLIC DAUGHTERS OF AMERICA, BALTIMORE, MD. Gentlemen of the Committee: As chairman of the committee on legislation, I have been regularly delegated to represent at this hearing the organization of the Catholic Daughters of America. This is a national body of 200,000 American Catholic women, consisting of 1,200 individual units, existing in 45 States and also in the possessions of Panama, Porto Rico, and Cuba. I am instructed to register the unanimous disapproval of House Bill 7 now in consideration before this committee, the purpose of which is to create a Federal department of education. We oppose this bill as un-American in spirit and purpose; as opening the way to the standardization of curricula and methods, the value and expediency of which are questioned; as unnecessary and superfluous since we have already established, and in good service, the Bureau of Education which, with reasonable expansion and development, can offer all the advantages pledged by this proposed bill without its undesirable and dangerous provisions; as vesting in the Federal Government another of the powers essentially belonging to the sovereign States, thereby contributing in an immeasurable degree to the pernicious centralization of power so objectionable to the true American mind; as introducing into a field as yet fairly free from the obnoxious influence of national politics the trafficking of dubious politicians. Therefore, we deem this bill in its present form as detrimental to the best interests of American education. Mr. PECKHAM. Mr. Thomas F. Cadwalader, of Baltimore, is here and wants to go back to-night. The CHAIRMAN. We will hear Mr. Cadwalader. STATEMENT OF THOMAS F. CADWALADER, BALTIMORE, MD., CHAIRMAN, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, SENTINELS OF THE REPUBLIC I am Mr. CADWALADER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in view of the lateness of the hour I will be as brief as I can. chairman of the executive committee of the Sentinels of the Republic, an organization that has been mentioned here this morning. Mr. Warren, the first speaker at to-day's session, was one of our former presidents, and I think many of the members of the committee know what that organization is. It is an organization of public-spirited citizens all over the United States to support and maintain to the best of their ability by all legitimate means the fundamental American principles under which our Government was founded, to oppose undue contralization of power in Washington at the expense local self-government and the rights of the States, which members of our organizations believe essential to the preservation of ordered liberty. I had the honor of appearing before the joint committee of the Senate and House two years ago on a bill that was very similar to this, almost identical, on behalf of the same organization, and at that time I presented letters and communications from various men high placed in the educational world. I have letters from some of the same persons today. I want to say that then and now the educational leaders of this country who are not on the public pay roll-that is, who are not in the public-school system of any of the States-appear to have been almost a unit and to be still practically a unit in opposition to this or any similar measure. The educators that you have had before you, both two years ago and originally at the time of the SmithTowner bill, and to-day, are mostly, if not all, members of the National Education Association and drawing salaries from the taxpayers of the different States; whereas, the educational experts who have testified on our side against this bill are not beholden to the taxpayers of the country. The first letter I would like to read is a very brief one from the headmaster of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. The CHAIRMAN. Pardon me just a moment. There are very few of the members of the committee here and I do not want to foreclose you at all, I want you to take all the time you want, but if you want to put those into the record and save the time of reading them it will be all right. Mr. CADWALADER. I will just run through them very briefly and then put them into the record. The CHAIRMAN. Just as you feel about it. Mr. CADWALADER. This is from Alfred E. Stearns: Mr. THOMAS F. CADWALADER, MARYLAND TRUST CO., Baltimore, Md. PHILLIPS ACADEMY, Andorer, Mass., April 19, 1928. MY DEAR SIR: Will you permit me to register my vigorous opposition to the bills now pending before the House of Representatives and the United States Senate and by which it is aimed to create a department of education in our National Government. Several years ago I was disposed to favor the establishment of such a department, but the more carefully I studied the problem, the more, and definitely, I became convinced that the step proposed would prove not only dangerous but distinctly detrimental to the cause of education in general throughout the United States. I most sincerely hope that these measures will not go through. Faithfully yours, AES/G ALFRED E. STEARNS, Headmaster. Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., as the members of the committee no doubt know, is one of the oldest and most famous of the private schools in New England. Phillips Andover and Phillips Exeter have had a national reputation for a great many years. Now I have here a copy of a letter that no doubt, Mr. Chairman, you have in your files from President Stephen L. Penrose of Pitman College, Walla Walla, Wash., because he wrote to you and sent me a copy of the letter. So it is no doubt already in the file. |