S. O. S.

In 1930, although every U. S. State had laws requiring that all children be schooled, some 800,000 U. S. children of elementary school age had no school to go to. Most of them were in poor farm areas that could not maintain a school. Hard times and a slump in real-estate tax collections (still the public schools' chief source of support) increased the number of unschooled children. The nation's public education system rallied from Depression three years ago, but this year was struck again by the backlash of the 1937 Recession. By last week so many distress signals flew over U. S. schoolhouses that educators were thoroughly alarmed.

In Ohio, where the State school fund was $17,000,000 in the hole, several cities knew not how long they could keep schools open. School funds were low in Colorado, Michigan, Illinois, the Dakotas. The most desperate S. 0. S. came from schools in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Georgia owes its schoolteachers $5,000,000, sees no way of paying them before June 30--and after that date they cannot collect because of a State law prohibiting debt carry-overs to the next fiscal year. Unofficial calculations were that 200 Georgia schools, with 20,000 pupils, were closed. In many a Georgia village and town, worried citizens met to talk of ways & means of educating their children. Some decided to keep the public schools open by charging tuition. In Lamar County, white children's school term was shortened to eight months, Negro children's schools were closed. At Villa Rica, a mass meeting raised $2,000 to keep schools open four weeks. Among the contributions: from the Villa Rica high-school senior class, $25 that its members had saved for their annual trip to the Georgia seacoast.

In Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia Record reporter, David Greendrug Wittels, recently toured the schools of eight coal counties, returned with a grim tale. With mines shut down and coal operators owing millions in local taxes (Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Corp. alone owes $3,000,000), about one-fourth of the school districts could not pay their teachers. Some 6,000 teachers all told had received no pay for one to ten months. Hundreds were on relief. To support their families, others worked after school hours as undertakers, night watchmen, store clerks, life-insurance salesmen, coal bootleggers.

While the Pennsylvania Property Owners Association warned that "Pennsylvania's public school system is doomed to early collapse," Pennsylvania's educators pleaded with economy-minded Governor Arthur H. James to replenish the special State fund for schools in distressed areas, now exhausted. Having pleaded in vain, nearly 200 teachers last week marched out of 27 schools in Northumberland and Schuylkill Counties, declared they would not go back until they were paid.

Meanwhile, in Spokane, Wash., National Education Association's President Reuben T. Shaw lamented: "The U. S. is farther from universal education, to which the public looks for preservation of the fundamental traditions of democracy, than it was 100 years ago."

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