I talked with a group of high school teachers. At the Washington High School they have a Junior Chamber of Commerce; one of the teachers asked me to imagine a Junior Central Labor Council, but my imagination was not equal to this flight. Some of the teachers had wanted to discuss a teachers’ union, but the principal of the school forbade it. Finding it impossible to keep the high school students from sometimes hearing of modern ideas, the business men abolished outright the departments of economics and sociology. The students signed a petition for the restoration of these courses; a group of thirty of them went to interview Superintendent Grout and take him this petition, and he insulted them, informing them that the Portland schools were not being run on petitions of the pupils. This school was forbidden to debate the Plumb Plan, and also to debate Socialism. The teachers have been forbidden to allow any discussion of the creation, of evolution, of the Hebrews in history, and of the birth of Christ. The Portland forbidders, resolving to make a clean sweep, also forbade the “New Republic” and the “Survey.” A committee of teachers went to protest in the matter of “The Survey,” and were told that this magazine was “one-sided” in its treatment of capital; they were advised to content themselves with such publications as the “Outlook,” the “Independent,” and the “Literary Digest.” They pointed out that it might be possible to regard these magazines as “one-sided” in their treatment of labor, but no answer to this argument was returned. At the Washington High School the students, with the help of the history department, gave an entertainment for the benefit of the school library. They earned three hundred dollars, but they were not permitted to select their own books—the list had to be passed by the superintendent’s office. Also, the pupils are forbidden to invite outside speakers. I assume that this school is named after George Washington, so I recommend an inscription to be carved across the front of the building—some words taken from the letters of the Father of his Country, as follows: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”