Life, 1892-11-03 · page 12 of 16
Life — November 3, 1892 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of "Protection to Infant Industries in Detroit" This satire mocks Detroit's school board policy requiring all public school teachers to have graduated from Detroit's own educational institutions, banning instructors from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other prestigious universities. The article uses heavy irony to criticize this "protectionism." It compares the policy to trade tariffs, sarcastically praising how it shields Detroit children from "effete" Eastern influence—whether Harvard's "dissipation and snobbery" or Johns Hopkins' "unorthodox science." The satire crescendos absurdly, suggesting Detroit will elevate local figures (businessmen Alger, McMillan, Baldwin) to the status of Washington and Lincoln, and transform Kalamazoo into "Paris" and local landmarks into classical temples. The underlying critique: Detroit's isolationism—keeping out superior educational talent—will produce provincialism and intellectual stagnation. By naming real prestigious educators barred from teaching, *Life* emphasizes what Detroit loses through this parochial policy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
254 PROTECTION TO INFANT INDUSTRIES IN DETROIT. . HE people of Detroit, Michigan, ia] g have worked out the doctrine of protection to infant industries to a beautiful conclusion. The Board of Education in that city of erudi- tion and freight car works, has decided that no one shall teach in the public schools who has not received his (or her) education in the public schools of that city. In January next all teachers who have not graduated from the gymnasia, colleges and universities of Detroit, Mich- igan, will be summarily ousted. In their places will sit thereafter the Hypatias, the Novella Andreas, and the Dorotea Boc- chis, of Detroit, Michigan—Detroit, Michi- gan, the city of Baldwin, of Alger, of Mc- Millan, and other Catos and Solons, whose fame as men of diverse, deep and broad scholarship it needs no mention here to recall. “Maxima debetur reverentia pueris,” sings Horace—some- one will please translate for Detroit !—but what unhallowed liberties are these educational Wolverines taking with the chil- dren of Detroit. Pickering and Childs and Palmer of Harvard, may not teach in the public schools of Detroit. Sumner of Yale, Whitney of Yale, Smith of Columbia, Gates of Am- herst—not even Janes, the President of the Ethical Society of Brooklyn—not even Chubb of the Brooklyn Institute, may lecture to those carefully protected puerile exotics of the De- troit public schools. That is protection to infant industries with a vengeance ! And what a beautiful system it is, when one examines it with care. No danger of the Yale foot-ball microbes creep- ing in among the unsophisticated little ones of Det: No riotous dissipation and snobbery from Harvard, tainted with horrid Unitarianism! No un-Algerian and stealthy Mug- wumpery of the Seth Low stripe from Columbia! No impu- dent and unorthodox science from Johns Hopkins! No un- Storrsian liberality from Andover! No, none of these, but safe in the arms of the concave-backed, convex-chested, acidu- lous vestals who have graduated from the Detroit public schools, these little lambs shall lie. To them Alger will be the George Washington, McMillan will be the Abraham Lin- coln. Ella Wheeler Wilcox will be the Sappho! To them Muskegon is as London, Kalamazoo the Paris, Detroit their world, and the great State of Michigan as the universe. Michilimackinac will be Thermopylae to them and Sault St. Marie their Salamis. Bagley’s famous chewing-plug, manu- factured by the descendants of the lamented governor of that name, will stand to them as the purple of Tyre, the china of Sévres, the clocks of Berne and the toys of Saxony. children the City Hall at Grand Rapids will serve for the Parthenon, the Post-Office at Marquette for their St. Sophia, the First Presbyterian Church (McMillan’s church) at Detroit To these - - LIFE: for Westminster Abbey. Oh, happy children! Oh, happy State! that protects its wards from the effete knowledge of Europe and New England, which has contrived a tariff to protect the Museum of Art at Detroit from the Luxembourg, the Opera House at Kalamazoo from Covent Garden, and its Algers, McMillans and Baldwins, its Bagleys and Luces and Winans from the humiliation of free-trade with Washington, Adams and Jefferson, and Webster, and Sumner, and Lincoln. Detroit for the Detroiters! Only Detroitism taught here! To know Michigan and to love Detroit, this is salvation! Glori- ous mottoes, happy people! Bully for the Board of Educa- tion of Detroit, and may the gods that watch over asses abide with them now and alway ! BETWEEN THE ACTS, ELL, what do you-think of it?” “ Oh, it's about as broad as it is long.” RIGGS: Just for a joke, I told Miss Elderly the other day that when she laughed it was all I could do not to kiss her. What happened ? : The next time I saw her she had hysterics. Aru attending services at Dr. Oldstyle’s church, Jacques remarked that he intended to amend the hymn, “ Sweet Hour of Prayer” to read “Sweet Hour and a Half of Prayer.” Party with Dog: YER SEE 1 MAD MIM DOWN, WID MY FOOT ON HIS NECK, AN' 1 COULD HA’ KILT HIM DEN AN’ DERE, WHEN HIS WIFE RUSHED IN AN' BEGGED ME FUR TER SPARE HIS LIFE, I wuz jus’ GOIN’ TER HIT HER A CLIP, WHEN I RECKERLECTED DAT IT WOULDN'T DO TO STRIKE A WOMAN, SO I SHOVED HER UP AGIN THE MANTELPIECE JUS’ EASY ENOUGH TO MAKE HER FAINT, AND AFTER I GOT HER POCKETBOOK, I LEF’ THE HOUSE WIDOUT MOLESTIN’ HER, AS I WANTED TO GIV' HER TER UNDER- STAN’ DAT A FELLER COULD BE A PRIZE FIGHTER AN’ STILL BE A GENTLEMAN, comicbooks.com