University of San Francisco - USF Don Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

Page 21 text:

THE SMITH-TOWNER BILL 19 a Federal educational program, conceived and formulated, not by an angel, not even by an acknowledged genius, but by a very ordinary, fallible, uninspired, political appointee,— titled Secretary of Education. He shall be the dispenser of wisdom! He shall be the arbiter of our destiny, our life and our thought! I’nder other circumstances it would be prosaic, trite, unnecessary to state that our Federal government is a government of limited and delegated power. But the profound ignorance or the deliberate evasion of this fundamental principle, manifested by proponents of the Smith-Towner Bill, provokes an argument in reply. The Federal government, being a government of delegated powers and holding of its own right no original jurisdiction, may legislate, may operate, may control, only in matters enumerated and granted by the people in the Constitution. But never have the people either by express grant, by implied concession or by judicial interpretation, delegated to the Federal government an authority to control in the matter of popular education. W as it by oversight that the framers of the Constitution refused to confer such power upon the Federal government? Ah. no! There in old Independence Hall matters of education engaged the attention, the talents, the superlative wisdom of those men. What was the decision of Washington, of Madison, of Franklin, yes. even of Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist? Simply this: A matter so intimately affecting the welfare of local communities should be reserved entirely to the States and is not a proper subject for Federal control. Easily seen then is the logical conclusion from these premises. Whatever legislation seeks to vest educational control in the Federal government and to deprive the States of their traditional prerogative is inconsistent with the theory of our policy and subversive of the American Constitution.

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18 THU GX ATI AX central government. Men of the confederacy tore themselves from the embrace of loved ones in their southern homes, marched off, and stumbled to their death in the blood-stained ruts of honorable battlefields! Not so these modern extremists. Theirs is not the courage and the faith of the rebel, but the cunning and duplicity of the traitor. Not in masterful debate, not beneath the hot, scarlet sky of battle do they challenge the right of the States to govern themselves in matters which the States long ago reserved to themselves. Hut by means of deception and propaganda they wax strong. In the vehicle of ambiguous and indirect legislation they advance their pernicious schemes, all the while lulling us into complacent optimism with their siren songs of Americanism, placating us with their evasive explanations, deceiving us with their protestations of regard for constitutional rights. Vet. when we decline to accept these assurances, when we wake ourselves from apathetic indifference, when we delve with inquiring mind for the truth, what do we find? We find a menace to the Constitution, an instrument of autocracy, a document capable of creating in America the most oppressive, the most odious of all monopolies—a monopoly over the human mind. Fraught with just such possibilities is the Smith-Towner Bill pending in the Congress of the I’nited States today. The Smith-Towner Bill proposes to organize a new and powerful Bureau of Education at W ashington. Tt further provides that Congress shall grant to this educational department an annual appropriation of a hundred million dollars. The Bureau of Education shall have power to dispose of this Federal gold to the States for educational projects—on one condition. The States must surrender the privilege of local education. The States must submit to Federal control. The States must accept

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20 THE IGXATLW Such Federalization may be accomplished directly—or it may be accomplished indirectly. I do not assert that the Smith-Towner Bill in its present form is a positive usurpation of control bv the Federal government or a direct denial of the right of the State control. (Ostensibly the bill is a generous effort on the part of the Federal government to assist and encourage State education and. apparently, makes acceptance of the Federal educational programme optional with the States. But I do assert that the Smith-Towner Bill is an attempt to accomplish, indirectly, that which would be. if accomplished directly, flagrantly violative of the Constitution. The bill makes it possible for the Federal government to arrogate and assume educational control by means of the potent compulsion of Federal finance. It depends for the attainment of its purpose upon a truth constantly demonstrated in recent years—what the Federal government finances, the Federal government will ultimately control. A proper understanding of the spirit of the Constitution compels us to admit that the proponents of such legislation are seeking to undermine what they can not safely overthrow; they are ignoring that ancient maxim of jurisprudence which says: “That which may not be done directly may not be done indirectly.” Advocates of the Smith-Towner Bill flaunt their banners of Americanism through the nation. Vet they are supremely inconsiderate of every American institution and the spirit of the Constitution itself, when it obstructs the scheme by which they hope to Federalize the education, which rightfully belongs to the people and to the States. They are encouraging, instead of discouraging, a modern, un-American tendency toward centralization of power. Do you not recognize in such legislation a typical effort of self-constituted, ambitious infatuated reformers to satiate their wilful passions for state paternalism?