Seventy Percent of Washington's Schoolbooks Came From One Publisher
A new textbook law forces Olympia to throw out most of the books Washington children use. One agent demanded a private hearing with the state board; the board opened the doors and he walked out.
OLYMPIA, June 1. — Special. — In view of the great depression, and the hardship thereby entailed upon the people, it is much to be deplored that the state board of education will be compelled to make radical changes in the list of school books at present in use. For this state of affairs the board will be in no wise accountable, as it is to a great extent the result of the law passed by the last legislature.
Of the books now in use in the public schools in this state only the following named were entered in the present competition, at least on such terms as to bring them within the provisions of the law: Franklin Readers, Modern Spellers, Welsh's First Lessons in English, Welsh's Grammar, Welsh's Complete Rhetoric, Civics for Young Americans.
Following is a list of the books now in use that were either not entered at all or at such rates as to make them exceed the price provided in the new law, and which therefore cannot be considered: geography, arithmetic, language books, histories, civil government, copybooks, physiologies, word analysis, dictionaries, bookkeeping, natural philosophy, composition.
Of the books at present in use it is calculated that the American Book Company supplies about 70 per cent in value, but it is quite evident to observers that if that great concern supplies the books under the new contract it will be on account of merit and price, and not by force of arguments or methods peculiar to that institution used in the past in Washington, as well as in other states of the Union.
Representatives of all the book concerns have been treated with uniform courtesy by the board, but when a day or two since one agent was inclined to insist upon an exclusive hearing and the absence of all other agents from the room, and was informed by the state board that he would, in common with others, be compelled to make his talk with open doors, he indignantly left the office of the superintendent of public instruction.
Each individual member of the board has been laboring incessantly since Monday last and will continue to do so until the final vote on Tuesday.
“He would, in common with others, be compelled to make his talk with open doors, he indignantly left the office of the superintendent of public instruction.”
Then it was a single New York publisher holding roughly seventy percent of Washington's textbook business and a salesman who wanted the door closed; now it is consolidated curriculum vendors, digital platform contracts and school-board procurement fights. The mechanism is identical: a state law sets the price, a board picks the books, and the public pays for whatever percentage of the classrooms the biggest bidder can capture. Olympia has been arguing about this since 1895.
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