It appears that the Association of Commerce had asked that on Armistice day all the pupils should face the East, and silence should be maintained for one minute while everybody thought about the dead in France. But two students refused to face the East, and so the newspapers called them “Bolsheviks.” It was intended to implicate this brave woman teacher—although the two boys were not her pupils, nor even in her department. The boys were hauled up before the authorities, and questioned as to their “Bolshevism.” They admitted that they did not believe in war. As to facing the East, that was a Mohammedan custom, and one of them was a Jew, and neither a Mohammedan! I could tell you of another school in which the lunchroom, supposed to be operated at cost, has been used for money-making. I could tell you of cases of cruelty to pupils, and the abuse of parents. I could tell you of one of Chicago’s few real educators, Principal McAndrew of the Hyde Park High School, who was forced out because he refused to promote the incompetent son of a school board official. I have in my possession a statement signed by two Chicago high school boys, reciting how, at the instance of their principal, Mr. Lewis A. Bloch of the Marshall High School, they agreed to work for the board of education. They went to the office of the board at 460 South State Street, and Mr. Bachrach, in whose office they were put to work, agreed to pay them three dollars a week to cover their car fare and lunch. On the afternoon of the last day of the week Mr. Bachrach informed them that “suddenly and unexpectedly the Chicago Board of Education’s treasury had gone dry, and that the three dollars compensation could not be given us.” These boys ask me to withhold their names. Another boy states: “I have since found that this has been done time and again, and also with the same excuse at hand.” These Chicago schools are strenuous for the “Americanization” of the foreigners—which means despising the foreign children and calling them names. It meant in war-time the activities of spies—boys paid to report what this teacher has said, and that. Also, it means the repression of every kind of liberal activity. During the recent slaughter of the Jews by the Poles, the Jewish people in Chicago were stirred up, and organized a protest parade. Some Jewish children asked to be permitted to attend this parade; they got up a petition, and their request was denied. They argued that they had been allowed to attend all kinds of bankers’ parades and Association of Commerce parades; why not an anti-pogrom parade. The answer of their principal was that if they went to the parade they would all be “fired.” Nevertheless, the Jewish children went to the parade, and there were so many of them that they were not “fired.”