As a rule, when these high-up grafters purchase a political title they wear it with honor and glory the rest of their days; but it happened in this case that Newberry’s opponent was Henry Ford, who has money enough to have some rights, even in America. When Mr. Ford visited my home two or three years ago, he told me that he had some two hundred men at work investigating these election frauds, and he did not mean to quit until he had got Newberry out of the Senate. He kept his word; but all through the struggle the defense of Newberry was the first task of the gang in Michigan—and this including the school machine. Mrs. Otto Marckwardt, an instructor of swimming in the Detroit schools, and wife of a professor at the University of Michigan, was so indiscreet as to answer the questions of a pupil about the Newberry affair, and for this she was turned out of her position. How this could happen you will understand when I explain that Mr. Frank Cody, superintendent of schools in Detroit, has a brother, Fred Cody, who was Newberry’s most active henchman, and was convicted of election frauds along with Newberry. The cycle becomes comically complete when we learn that Fred Cody is agent for the American Book Company, whose president is Newberry’s brother-in-law! So here is the perfection of plutocratic education. You may learn from it what Big Business is going to do to all our children; in fact, you have already learned it—turn back to Chapter XXI, and read about Margaret Haley’s deputation of nine school teachers who came to Detroit to study the “platoon system” as there applied. I am told by an educator whom I trust that this system is fundamentally good; I am here discussing only what is found in the great metropolis of automobiles, the headquarters of all standardization. I remind you of its deputy superintendent, in charge of this Fordization of infancy, who tells us how “society” is certain to require more and more propaganda from the schools, and this is the system which makes it possible. Ask yourself, before it is too late, whether you are satisfied with your destiny, to breed human units to be turned into factory operatives and cannon fodder for the masters of the new American Empire. CHAPTER XXXIX BEETS AND CELERY