There is no such thing as an honest election in St. Louis. The ballots are changed by the political gangsters, who are the election officials at all the polls. I visited a large number of the polls at the last school election, and in some found only one individual sober; some were lying with head on the table, dead to the world, others maudlin. The large mass of the people are criminally negligent toward their civic duties—they do not vote, and this makes it all the easier for the ward-heelers. This is for your private information, for it would work me much harm here in my position if anything of this appeared over my signature. The Catholics of St. Louis have a complete educational system of their own, replacing the public school system. The German Catholics used to send their children to the public schools, but now the archbishop says, “You will be damned if your children attend the godless schools”; and the Irish and Italians and Poles, who compose the new Catholic population, bow to this threat. You might think the Catholics would at least be willing to let the “godless schools” alone, but they are not; on the contrary, seventy per cent of the teachers in the public school system are Catholics, and a good part of the board has been for a long time made up of Catholics. The purpose of this is the same as we have seen in New York and San Francisco, and shall see in Boston and Baltimore—to starve the public schools. The extent to which this is done in St. Louis you will find difficult to believe. The people want to have good schools, and go to the polls and vote the money—and then the board of education refuses to spend the money! Recently the people passed a bond issue of three million dollars for new buildings; while I was in the city the board decided to spend only one million and a half. The people have voted an education tax of eight and one-half mills on the dollar, but the board again and again has voted to spare the poor taxpayer and save his money. There were six millions available for buildings, and no move had been made to spend them. Ten grade schools and two senior high schools had been authorized by the board the previous year, but they were not yet off the drawing-boards; and meantime all the residence districts of St. Louis are dotted with Catholic schools and high schools, and a new half million dollar Catholic high school is near completion.