Time passed, and there came another strike of the Colorado mine-slaves, and another curious test of Colorado education. I have before me an issue of a weekly paper published by the striking miners, the Walsenburg “Independent,” January 3, 1922. It bears across the top in large letters the caption, “This paper was censored by the Colorado Rangers.” Then follows a news item to the effect that Professor S. M. Andrews, school superintendent of Walsenburg, and also of Huerfano County, had addressed a teachers’ meeting in Denver, and praised the rangers and their martial law. That much I learn from the paper; then comes the statement: “Censor cut out report of his speech as printed in the ‘Rocky Mountain News,’ December 30th.” Of course I might hunt up this issue of the “Rocky Mountain News” and tell you what Professor Andrews said, but I don’t think it worth the bother. The point is clear: a superintendent of schools, supposedly a public official, drawing two salaries from a coal mining community, goes up to the state capital, and before a convention of teachers defends the state police in their abrogation of state and federal constitutions during a strike; and the commanding officer of these gunmen in uniform forbids the miners’ newspaper to communicate to the miners what their own superintendent of schools has said about them in their own state capital! CHAPTER XXXIV THE HOMESTEAD OF THE FREE We continue East and cross “bleeding Kansas,” where John Brown fought, and the old settlers came in their covered wagons, singing: /* We cross the prairie as of old The Pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free. */ Now in this homestead of the free the organizers of the Nonpartisan League are beaten, tarred and feathered, jailed or deported, for trying to address the farmers. Alexander Howat is thrown into jail for six months for advising coal miners to strike, and William Allen White, editor of the Emporia “Gazette,” is arrested for putting in his window a card stating that he sympathizes with the strikers. The principal organ of culture in the state is the Kansas City “Star,” founded by a brave and sincere liberal, and now turned into an organ of screaming bigotry and hate. Two years ago this paper flung wide the gates off the city to its darlings, the American Legion, and the boys gathered by the tens of thousands, and repaid their hosts by conducting a three days’ drunken orgy, in the course of which they wrecked the lobby of the city’s palatial hotel.