Public Utilities' Propaganda in the Schools

Report Outline
Development of Contacts with Schools
Contacts with Colleges and Universities
Utilities' Reply to Propaganda Charges

A recommendation that the National Education Association, national organization of public school teachers, denounce the purpose and efforts of the utility service bureaus to carry propaganda into the schools and that it appoint a committee to investigate the propaganda situation in general, will come before the Association's annual assembly at Minneapolis on July 1. The recommendation follows wide-spread discussion among public school teachers and administrators of evidence relating to contacts between utility corporations and public schools and colleges, brought out in the investigation of the power and gas industries by the Federal Trade Commission.

July 7 has been set as the date on which the Commission's hearings on efforts to influence public opinion will end. The greater part of the significant data relating to schools and colleges appeared however to have been introduced by June 27.

J. W. Crabtree, secretary of the National Education Association, in his annual report summarized the findings of the Federal Trade Commission and pointed specifically to testimony given by utility agents showing that much attention had been given -to what was being taught in the schools, to the elimination of undesirable texts, and to securing the adoption of satisfactory books.