The Nome Nugget

Bartender Or Teacher?
(New York Times)

WAR VETERAN PHILIP LYNCH of Queens is a public school teacher by day and bartender at a tavern in Hollis at night. For his work at Jamaica Junior High School he receives $51.25 a week. For mixing drinks the pay is $60 a week. Although he has taken the night job as a sideline, it may be reasonably asked in view of its superior pay rate whether Mr. Lynch is first of all, a bartender or a teacher.

We do not mean to criticize Mr. Lynch. He is only one of a great many teachers in New York and elsewhere who find that a teacher's pay does not provide satisfactory living. The New York Teachers' Interest Committee has made a survey on this subject, finding that of women teachers in this city who answered a questionnaire, 22.5 per cent held outside jobs and of men teachers replying more than 70 per cent had such dual jobs. These percentages are based on only 3,500 replies; it is quite possible that they would fall if the whole teaching force were represented. But we know from this and other sources that more teachers are doing outside work now, in view of the high cost of living, than at any time recently.

A law now temporarily suspended by the Legislature forbids teachers to hold other city, State or Federal jobs. But there is no law that at any time prevents a teacher from spending his spare time working as a bartender, riveter, cashier, waitress, elevator operator, auto mechanic, or a dishwasher, as our New York teachers are doing. The public, which is the employer, must ask itself this question: Is it not getting the worst of the bargain when it pays teachers so inadequately that, in spite of the exhausting drain on their energies involved in teaching, they still find it essential to hire away time that should be spent on rest, professional training and cultivation of the mind and spirit?