AGAIN THE CRY

Once again the hue and cry has arisen, and head-lines of a new "red" drive splash across the nation. The latest variant is the American Federation of Labor's threat to drive from home its child organization, the Teachers' Federation, unless the latter "cleans house" and ousts local "communist-controlled" units. Even the most cursory examination discloses the fact that this outburst is in the nature of a red herring, and that, in all likelihood, no one concerned will take any positive action.

The threatened drive is best explained as a sympathetic vibration from a bitter controversy which has long ranged within New York labor circles. There, in an atmosphere much beclouded--perhaps almost completely conditioned--by personal and political factors, several local teachers' unions have been unceasingly persecuted by a few other teachers, a good many rival labor leaders, and the Hearst press en masse. Because of a personal connection between the New York embroilment and the A. F. of L. Committee on Education, which is responsible for the "red" scare, it is easy to conjecture the latter as a deliberate maneuver to obscure New York issues.

Granted this, the current fishing expedition appears unlikely to land anything. The Teachers' Federation will not oust a number of very powerful locals which could be classed under the catchall "Communistic," nor will the American Federation of Labor oust as important an organ as the Teachers' Federation.

Yet, the situation adds up, not to zero, but rather to a negative quantity. For the baiters are on the march, and the shout of "Communistic professors" again echoes over the land. There is little which can do more to harm the teaching profession than such recurrent campaigns. Not only do they destroy the faith which the general public must have in its teachers, but they also provoke the over-zealous watch-dogs of legislative chambers to blows at academic freedom. There is but one word for the whole episode: regrettable.