CHAPTER XIV

A Year At The Whitewater Normal School

You and Mr. Salisbury are two of my best and most loyal friends, and I very much want you to like each other. His is a rugged personality, often rough and harsh, never purposely unkind. Very direct and to the point, he tramples flower beds, metaphorically, where he would never think of doing so literally. He will never say worse of you than to you. and you don't have to study deeply into his utterances to know what he thinks. He would be more nearly esteemed as he deserves, if he thot more about putting the best foot forward; but his oldest friends are his best and that tells you a good deal. By the end of the year you will have things in better perspective.
[Signed] T. B. Pray

This is a good characterization by one who had worked with Mr. Salisbury for many years, and seems to meet my needs here, better than anything that might be said. I had never known Mr. Salisbury intimately. Everybody in Wisconsin who had attended state conventions had heard his eloquent plea for the cause of the feeble-minded, knew of the long, persistent fight he had set up for these unfortunates; and that the Home for the Feeble-Minded at Chippewa was due to his efforts more than to those of any other person. But I rather dreaded him, remembering that he had once in a convention drawn attention to "a woman in the Kenosha high school" who was recommending graduates to go to Oshkosh when there was a normal school nearer by to which that section owed allegiance. Once at Stevens Point soon after my promotion to the place of supervisor of practice there, he had asked me how I had come without a degree to the position I was holding. The bluntness and aggressiveness of his question stung me like an insult, and he was promptly referred to Mr. Pray for his answer. So I was really surprised at Denver to be asked to take a position in his school, and my feelings toward him caused considerable hesitation before accepting.

I shall never forget the morning of my arrival at Whitewater. Mr. Salisbury had at that time acquired an automobile and met me at the station to convey me to his home, where I would stay until I found a boarding place. The automobile was one of the buggy sort--one in which although the shafts for the horse were lacking, other ancestral traces quite as useless were retained. There was the regular old dashboard, lacking only the socket for the whipstock. I mounted and sat in the regular buggy seat with the driver, who took hold of the handle at the end of an iron rod bending upward from the floor, touched something with his foot and off we started. Mrs. Salisbury proved very congenial, and friendly relations with her were immediately established.

About my work in Whitewater, little need be said. It was the same sort of position as that held at Stevens Point--supervision of the Practice School, with a daily class of students in the subject of elementary methods.

Miss Grace Potter, primary; Miss May Kay, intermediate, and Miss Nettie Sayles, grammar grades, were my immediate associates. I came into very pleasant relations with the faculty, several of whom I had known before, and two of whom were Stevens Point graduates of my day.

I heard frequent comments from the older members of the faculty about the change that had come over Mr. Salisbury. A year or two before, he had been sent on some sort of an educational commission to England. Upon his return he had introduced a surprising innovation into faculty meetings. We assembled at scheduled time--once in two weeks, if I remember rightly, and the program began with the serving of tea and crackers or cakes, different committees of the faculty successively taking charge of this delightful social feature of the occasion. It is easy to imagine what a really nice thing that was. Relaxation came after the strain of the day's teaching, pleasant conversation and social contact dispelled the teachery attitude, and after the rest of a half hour, we were in a better mood to hear the business of the day.

There was another thing that bespoke the liberation of his soul from the formalism of his old ideals, the expression perhaps of a long repressed desire. He learned to manipulate a player piano and to do it with a fine appreciation of the feeling to be expressed, which even a careful following of the interpretative instructions does not alone enable one to do. I remember a social evening at the president's home when he contributed much to our entertainment by his playing of good music.

This was the year in which State Superintendent Cary asked me to revise the reading work of the Manual of the Course of Study for Common Schools, written at Stevens Point in 1906. Not an hour of school time was allowed for this piece of service for the state, and again it had to be done evenings after busy days. It cost me needed time for sleep. I got nothing for it--even the privilege of paying for the typing was not denied me--and I should have been allowed time for it. It was known to have occurred that people writing books from which personal benefit was expected, took school time for it. Women have much to learn from men in these matters! But I lived through it, and have I not just found this compensatory note of appreciation from Mr. Cary dated March 18, 1910? It says:

We are under great obligation to you for the work you have put on this outline in reading. I have not yet had an opportunity to look it over, but knowing as I do how successful the first outline was, I am prepared to believe that this will be even more successful.

In the spring of 1910, a letter was received from a member of the school board of Kenosha saying that there would be a vacancy in the superintendency there and asking me to apply for the position. This I did, and received an acknowledgment from G. H. Curtis, president of the school board, dated April 20, 1910. When in Milwaukee that week, Mr. Salisbury heard about it, and called me in or an interview. This is the gist of the talk that ensued: "I heard in Milwaukee yesterday that you are an applicant for the superintendency of the Kenosha schools. Is it true?" I answered that it was. Whereupon his nostrils dilated as was their wont when he became excited, and he told me that I was foolish to think that I could manage such a job. Superintendencies were for men--not women. A woman couldn't do it! He acknowledged that I had made something of a reputation in Wisconsin, and now I would "spoil it all by a failure at the end." He would try to get my wages raised if I would remain at Whitewater. I recalled that he had promised the same thing in Denver. Then he bluntly asked, "How much will you get at Kenosha?" I said, "Probably $2,000." He abruptly turned his desk and by an impatient gesture and with an air of utter disgust indicated to me that the interview was at an end.

Let us look for a moment at some of the influences that affected this very unusual act of the Kenosha school board.

I was well known in Kenosha. There were two men on the school board who had been pupils of mine in the high school years before, and another's wife had been at one time a pupil of mine. Mrs. Ella Flagg Young was then the superintendent of the Chicago schools, and this had lodged the idea that a woman could do it.

A telegram from Kenosha called me for a Sunday interview with the Teachers' Committee and I went. I well remember the general purport of the conversation and that in the course of it I had reminded the members that times had greatly changed since I had left Kenosha, sixteen years before. That then the school board ran the schools, but that now specialists had come into the field, whom the school boards hired as their executives, while they attended to the administrative end of things; that three important special duties belonged to these executives--the notice of teachers, the selection of textbooks, and the formulation of the course of study, all of which duties a properly qualified superintendent would do, and with only the best interests of the schools in view. Of course, I was not anticipating trouble about the second and third of the prerogatives named, but felt pretty strongly about the first, having heard that my predecessor had not always had his say about the selection of teachers.

Having been "called" to the position, and not being anxious to leave the normal school field, I met the committee, feeling sufficiently independent to lay down the conditions upon which I would accept: (1) That I should receive the same salary that they expected to pay a man. (There were about fifty candidates in the field); (2) That the selection of teachers should be an undisturbed prerogative, for the execution of which my long experience in training school work had qualified me; (3) That Kenosha children should have teachers with normal school training or the equivalent.

There was strong opposition to the last named condition. My argument for it that counted most was this: Kenosha had for years been paying taxes to support normal schools to train teachers for other cities, towns, and villages, and had received little in return. Their own children were in charge of untrained high school graduates or those of less scholarship. I named little crossroad towns in the woods of northern Wisconsin that for years had had nothing but the trained teachers whom Kenosha had helped to prepare for their work.

The official notice came under date of May 11, telling me that I had been unanimously elected the superintendent of schools of Kenosha for one year. The same letter announced the resignation of P. J. Zimmers, to take effect June 1, two weeks before the close of the school. This resignation had been expected, but not his sudden leave-taking. Another resignation at that meeting was a surprise and much regretted. It was that of W. J. Hocking, principal of the high school since 1904, about whose work I had received most favorable reports.

And that's how I came to go back to Kenosha as the superintendent of schools. I regarded it as a great opportunity to do two things which I determined to work for: to improve the school system of my native city, and to demonstrate that a woman could do it. The death of Mr. Salisbury occurred June 2, 1911, when the proof had only begun. How I succeeded is another story. It is sufficient to say now that I was able to ward off or evade the "shafts and arrows of outrageous fortune"--at least fatal ones--for the period of eleven years.

I am glad to make the following correction of a mistake made on page 306 about the architect of the Stout Institute Building, Menomonie, Wisconsin. It is based on information received from Dr. Robt. L. Charles, of Denver, Colorado, under date of Aug. 20, 1932.--M.D.B.

"My father, John Charles .... was the architect of the first manual training building which was destroyed by fire, and of the second (present) one, and also of the present high school building."