It is time we gave some attention to the fate of the children, in this city where $10 is not safe anywhere. Let me take you to one Chicago high school as portrayed to me two years ago. This school gets up entertainments, which take the boys out of the class-rooms; pupils often fail in their classes, because they have been playing in an opera “to make money for the school.” Money is collected at such entertainments—and replaces scholarship as an aim. The school takes part in industrial exhibits; the boys work to prepare these exhibits, and prizes are collected, and the money goes into the general fund. When the state stops giving cash prizes, the school at once stops competing. The school publishes a paper; it is a wretched paper, of poor literary quality; the “boosters” have charge of it, and it makes money “for the fund.” A certain teacher in the school has become an artist, and has painted a beautiful picture; it is proposed to purchase this picture for the school, and some of the school funds are to be used for the purpose. The teachers and pupils have been working under heavy pressure to earn this money, but they are not permitted to have anything to say concerning the purpose for which the money shall be expended. The boys know of such conditions, and so do the teachers; the school is, to use the phrase of one of them, “a hell of hate.” Poor and foreign-born parents, coming to the school, are insulted and abused. Teachers are scolded before their classes. The teachers take the matter up in a faculty meeting, and the principal is interviewed by a committee from the faculty, and hears a strenuous and detailed discussion of his conduct. The teachers object among other things to having their efficiency judged by their ability to sell tickets. The principal promises to reform, but does not, and finally thirty teachers sign a petition to the superintendent. Before delivering it, they have one more conference with the principal, who admits his faults—and then sets out to avenge himself, by demoting three of the teachers, and marking down the rating of another from the highest to a very low grade. A woman member of the committee is summoned to a “grilling”—in the course of which she hears all the other members of the committee berated. A day or two later there breaks out into all the newspapers of Chicago a scandal story, and the principal gives an interview hinting that “there is one example of radical teaching in the school.”