Cross Purposes: Pierce V. Society of Sisters and the Struggle Over Compulsory Public Education by Paula Abrams

Abstract

 Reviews the economy of the Pacific Northwest, Native Americans,Asians,European immigrants,and native-born white workers — whether men, women, or children — were essential to the successful harvesting of these crops. That diversity of labor extends to the Southwest, where Wyman examines the westward expansion of cotton from east Texas. As farmers adopted different strains of cotton that could handle the growing conditions of the arid region, temporary, seasonal laborers again proved necessary for crop cultivation and harvest.Building on a tradition of AfricanAmerican labor, cotton farmers, especially in west Texas and Arizona,used Mexican labor to fill the labor void.Mexican workers found work picking cotton as well as laboring in railroad construction throughout the Southwest. With the introduction of sugar beets in the Great Plains, Mexicans as well as European immigrant families supplied the necessary labor for that industry to be successful. Moreover, California farmers, who have developed the most diversified agricultural system in theAmerican West, employed the full ethnic spectrum of laborers in fields from the Imperial Valley to the upper reaches of the San Joaquin Valley. Wyman rounds out this study with an examination of the one labor union that sought to bring this polyglot of workers together into an organization that could better their condition and change the economic system that relied upon labor exploitation for its success. Of course, the federal government, with the support of state governments and farmers’ associations,crushed the IndustrialWorkers of the World. With the advent of the automobile and the flood of Mexican labor into the West in the 1920s, the modern era of farm labor was poised to change the social narrative.What did not change, however, is the inherent nature of worker exploitation in western commercial agriculture Greg Hall Western Illinois University Cross Purposes: Pierce v. Society of Sisters and the Struggle over Compulsory Public Education by Paula Abrams University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2009. Illustrations, notes, index. 280 pages. $65.00 cloth. The Oregon Compulsory School Bill of 1922 was a controversial initiative measure corrosive in its origins and historic in its consequences. PaulaAbrams,Professor of Constitutional Law at Lewis and Clark Law School, has written a detailed account of thebrief lifeof that measure and its legacy after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1925.AsAbrams follows the bumpy journey of the School Bill and the legal battle that followed its passage, the book becomes a case study of the interplay of politics, culture, and law. Few observers could have predicted in May 1920 that a resolution by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite Masons, Southern Jurisdiction , proposing mandatory attendance at public schools for children between the ages of eight and sixteen, would become a legal milestone in Oregon and American history. The reaction was muted when the Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon endorsed the proposal in June 1920. But the issue soon erupted into a bitter struggle that divided churches,organizations ,and communities and contributed to the dramatic growth of the Ku Klux Klan, which entered Oregon in 1921.Ultimately,the Oregon initiative was the catalyst for the lawsuit Pierce v. Society of Sisters. The school fight began quietly and escalated rapidly.During his unsuccessful primary campaign for governor in early 1922, Republican State Senator Charles Hall, with Klan support, introduced the compulsory school idea,which coincided with the national Klan’s “One Flag, One School” campaign. In July 1922, a small group of prominent Masons and the leaders of some patriotic societies in Portland filed the School Bill initiative for the November general  OHQ vol. 111, no. 3 election. Private school advocates, already on the defensive,mounted an aggressive campaign against it.Catholics,who comprised only about eight percent of the state population, financed most of the local opposition. The Lutheran Schools Committee, which had waged a successful defense of private schools in Michigan, pursued a parallel path separate from the Catholics , while other denominational schools and Hill MilitaryAcademy played only minor roles. The book’s strength is its description of the interaction of local churches and organizations with national institutions and denominational hierarchies on both sides of the issue.Disagreements about strategy and goals were frequent. Some opponents...