A Secret Order Comes for the Schoolteachers
In Shelton, the nativist A.P.A. is accused of purging old-line teachers—and an Equal Rights League organizes to fight back in the grove and on the platform.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
TACOMA, Aug. 16.—[Special.]—The rivalry between the A.P.A.'s and anti-A.P.A.'s seems to be hottest in Shelton, Mason county. Some time ago the A.P.A. influence was credited with ousting several old-line school teachers. This aroused the opponents of the secret order, and an Equal Rights League was organized. Overtures were then made for a joint debate. An A.P.A. preacher from Portland and another from Olympia were engaged, but the final details for a joint debate on the same platform fell through. Hugh Farley and a former councilman were picked out to do the talking for the anti-A.P.A.'s, who are known at Shelton as the Equal Rights League. They went to Shelton Saturday night and made speeches in the grove, and tonight there is to be a debate on the vexed question which the A.P.A.'s agitate. A state senator and another speaker will represent the Equal Rights League, and a preacher from Olympia the A.P.A.'s.
“This aroused the opponents of the secret order, and an Equal Rights League was organized.”
The A.P.A. was a nativist, anti-Catholic secret order that sought to purge public institutions of outsiders; its campaign against Shelton teachers and the Equal Rights League's pushback anticipate modern fights over schools, belonging and organized prejudice. Then as now, the classroom was a frontline of the culture war.
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