One man, an athlete and debater at college said to me: “I think the plan is a failure.” “Will you say so when you are asked?” I inquired. “I think the administration will not look kindly on anyone who does,” he replied. “But do you, a man, mean to tell me that you will not say what you think?” His rejoinder was that he did not want to be thought a “knocker.” What can be expected when such things prevail? Before the war it was considered uneducation to make large classes: the big men now demand “economy,” and force election of administrators pledged to guarantee it. These administrators, instead of saying to the people: “We are doing a reactionary thing,” declare: “We are now, by new schemes of efficiency, getting one teacher to do the work of two; and the teachers like it—as witness So-and-so!” CHAPTER XXXVIII NEWBERRY PIE Next we visit Detroit, headquarters of our automobile industry, where we find the usual struggle to hold down union labor, and the usual school board of business men and politicians, engaged in protecting the interests of their crowd. I sat chatting with a group of newspaper reporters, one of whom has been specializing in school affairs for many years. “I suppose you have the regular school board graft,” I remarked; and he hesitated: “No, I wouldn’t say there was much graft.” “Well,” said I, “you have a committee which selects sites for the schools; do you mean to say the members of this committee haven’t relatives and friends among the big real estate speculators, who want the schools in the neighborhood of their subdivisions?” The reporter looked at the rest of the company and grinned. “Oh, the dirty son-of-a-gun, he’s right on to the whole thing!” He went on to explain—of course they had that, but nobody would call that graft in Detroit. It was in the power of the school board to make the city grow any way it desired; there were thousands of people forced to live in the suburbs, because rents everywhere else were too high, and in making up their minds which district to go to, the first thing they thought of was the nearness of a school. Then I went on to ask about text-books, and the first detail to come out was that the principal of the Northern High School of Detroit had written a text-book on English literature, and the superintendent had been unable to refuse it, because the principal was so “well connected.” “Is it a good book?” I asked, and an educator replied: “It is one of the rottenest in the world!”