It is sad to have to report that after six years of devoted service to the city, Lynn Thompson and Mrs. T. F. Kinney were defeated for re-election to the Minneapolis school board in 1923. The teachers supported them solidly, and they were able to show the voters how they had saved the city more than a million dollars. But the Black Hand was out to put down Socialism, and they did it in the usual way—with their money. The contractors raised a campaign fund; Mr. Purdy wrote to the vice-president of the First National Bank, pointing out the perils of radicalism and appealing for support. The club women turned out with their automobiles—and the wives of workingmen did not turn out, and that tells the story. Out of ninety thousand votes the Big Business ticket won by four thousand majority—and at the head of the board was the Citizens’ Alliance candidate, a man by the name of Gould. It has since been revealed by a senatorial investigation that this man was holding a clerical position in one of the departments at the state capital, drawing a salary of four hundred dollars a month from the state, while doing the work of the so-called “Sound Government League,” an organization of the Black Hand formed for the purpose of evading the corrupt practices law of the state. This league had spent half a million dollars in order to re-elect the candidate of the Black Hand as governor of Minnesota; and now its secret agent, Gould, is on the school board of the city, doing everything in his power to overcome the accomplishments of Lynn Thompson and Mrs. Kinney. What does this mean for the teachers? I have before me a letter from a Minneapolis teacher, who has ventured to speak out against school autocracy. He explains that he has not been able to send me data, because he has been loaded with a double amount of work, as punishment for his opinions. I dare not tell you what this work is, because that might lead to the teacher’s being recognized. He tells me of the struggle of the teachers’ organizations, and the plan which they are now agitating—to be permitted to experiment with a school without a principal. He tells me also how the high schools are on a “six-hour day” plan, against which the teachers are in opposition. Says my friend: