TEACHERS HUNGRY

Hokitika Guardian, 19 March 1932, Page 6

TEACHERS HUNGRY

NO PAY FOR MONTHS

CHICAGO’S CIVIC MUDDLE.

CAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 2

The city which will play host to the Republican and Democratic national conventions this year, and will also be host to thousands of visitors of the World’s Fair next year, is having a difficult time keeping the wolf from tlie door through which it will welcome its visitors.

Seven thousand Chicago school teachers are going without lunch many days at this trying period of. the Windy City’s history. That number is half the 14,000 men and women who teach in the city schools, , and the estimate is by Board of Education officials. They base it on answers to a questionaire, and on knowledge of bitter facts.

The teachers have been going hungry at lunch time because they could not afford even soup and a roll. They have been paid for only six weeks in the last seven months they have taught, and many of them are experiencing hard times in only scanty dinners. Thousands of policemen, firemen, librarians, truck drivers, inspectors, clerks and other municipal employees are in equally precarious plight. All work for thfe fourth largest, and probably the third richest city in the world. It cannot afford to nay their salaries • >

Bankers, bewildered schoolmistresses and slow-speaking policemcnt, fathers of large families, all agreed there had .been some error somewhere, but none knew just where. “It’s the taxes,” explained a teacher, graduate of the University Qf Illinois. “The city cannot collect taxes and there is no money to pay us.” “It was because-of tlie greed of those that sat in the saddle that never should have been there,” said a grey haired traffic policeman whose five children probably know to whom he referred. “There are many reasons. Perhaps there lias been executive mismanagement, waste, inefficiency. It is hard to say,” said a banker.

There the problem rests. With forty thousand million dollars of assessed valuation, - with two hundred thousand million of tangible wealth, Chicago is penniless. The Mayor, Anton J. Cermak, predicts “anarchy,” “martial law,” “chaos”, unless relief is immediate. Th© special session of

the State Legislature, con veined to solve Chicago’s money problem, divides into Chicago ancl “down State” groups. Unless Cook County legislators agree to the State income tax that the down Staters want it to look dark for Chiago .relief .'bill's. Meantime misery, reigns in Chicago. Here are some actual cases: Mrs J. B. is an elderly grade teacher, eligible to retire in four years- He l ' husband lias been an invalid for five years. Mrs B. lias paid half of 6000 dollars she owed on their home when

salary cheques stopped. She .borrowed money from, a loan office at 42 per cent to meet the payments. Later she had to borrow from two other loan sharks and now she owes all three, while all the money she lias is three dollars. She probably wiljl lose her home by foreclosure. Mrs A. L. is a widow. Her husband died of tuberculosis, leaving her three children to support. She has to care for a niece who is ill. She has kept on teaching, but she has had to accept charity to fond and clothe her children. Mrs S. •VI., a high school teacher, supported her mother and father and contributed to the support of her unemployed brother’s family of five. Her savings were lost in a bank failure: Her father sickened and died, and his illness and funeral took all that could he borrowed.