To return to San Francisco: there was an election campaign over the issue of reorganizing the school system, and this became of necessity an anti-Catholic campaign. The Catholics fought vigorously—some three hundred nuns were marched to the polls to cast their votes for the Catholic program, and the archbishop formally granted them absolution for the crime of taking part in politics! Nevertheless, the awakened people of San Francisco had their way. Mr. Addicott was reinstated, and Superintendent Roncovieri and President Gallagher of the school board retired. San Francisco now has a new board of education. The president of this board is a department-store proprietor and strong Chamber of Commerce man, who admitted that he had completed his scanty education in a parochial school. The grand duchess of the board is the mother-in-law of Congressman Kahn, one of our most ardent militarists, and a close friend of the archbishop’s. The rest of the board consists of the sister-in-law of the mayor’s secretary; a prominent tobacco merchant; a prominent lumber merchant; a labor official who is employed in a bank at a salary of $150 a week, and who sends his children to the parochial schools; and finally, Miss Alice Rose Power of the Catholic church. This board has imported a new superintendent from New Orleans, and I find a long article in the “Sierra Educational News,” state organ of the school machine, telling what a great educator he is. We shall see in due course how greatness is manufactured by these school machines, and for what purpose it is used. We shall see Superintendent Gwinn working with the gang when they stole the National Education Association away from the teachers; also we shall see him drawing up the “patriotism program” under which the N. E. A. turned its conscience over to the keeping of the American Legion. It is worth noting that he retains from the days of the trombones his deputy superintendent, who at the last election was caught taking eight hundred dollars from the Power Trust, for propaganda among the teachers against the public ownership bill. CHAPTER XXV THE UNIVERSITY GANG