Understand, there was a thousand dollar maximum, and the teachers had been trying for ten years to get it, in vain. And now somebody worked out a new arrangement; they were to get a raise if they got five points of credit in five outside courses of study. This was supposed to take three years—and keep them waiting meantime! But Margaret Haley discovered a loop-hole, an institute at which the teachers could take five courses in one year. The board had intended to change that regulation, but the teachers beat them to it; they rushed to the institute and registered for five courses at once. The teachers regarded this as a great lark; they swarmed into the place, and studied till late every night. The authorities pretended to be out of application blanks; but the Teachers’ Federation had some printed in a hurry! Sixteen hundred teachers thus got in, and this broke the back of Superintendent Cooley’s scheme. He had assured the big business men of the city that he could hold down the salaries, but now he had a pain in the head and stayed in Europe; when he came back, he was made president of D. C. Heath & Co., one of the big school-book publishers. After that, the Commercial Club of Chicago made him its “educational commissioner,” and for five years paid him a salary to study the training of wage-slaves in Europe, so that he might come back and take charge of the “continuation schools” of the city. Make note, please that this gentleman was a past president of the National Education Association; we shall meet these “great educators” one by one in their home districts, and observe just what their greatness consists in. I have mentioned how Margaret Haley made the corporations pay their school taxes. This happened in 1900—there was a shortage in the school funds, and the board of education went so far as to take away from the teachers money which had already been paid to them. The income of the schools was supposed to be derived from taxes; and Margaret Haley discovered that there were no assessments on franchise valuations being levied against corporations in Chicago. They were not even filing schedules, as under the law they were required to do. So the Chicago Teachers’ Federation set to work to bring mandamus proceedings against five public service corporations, and after three years of agitation and legal controversy, these five corporations paid six hundred thousand dollars in one year—of which nearly half went to the schools. Somebody composed a poem on the subject: /* Mandamus proceedings were brought by the teachers Against the incorporate, tax-dodging creatures; “No, no,” said the ladies, “you cannot flim-flam us, We’ll keep up the fighting though every man damn us.” */