Or consider this sentence: “If men constantly hear it said that they are oppressed and down-trodden, deprived of their own, ground down by the rich, and that the State will set all things right for them in due time, what other effect can that teaching have on the character and energy of the ignorant than the complete destruction of all self-help?” I take the liberty of answering this rhetorical question: such teaching can have the effect of making the ignorant realize that for the mass of the proletariat under the capitalist system individual effort is a pitiful delusion and snare, and that the one hope for the workers lies in class-conscious collective action. And when the ignorant have learned that lesson, they will be wiser than a professor who teaches economics under a Rockefeller subsidy, and produces poison text-books to be published by Mr. Barnes of the American Book Company, and sold to the schools of Detroit by the convicted henchman of Mr. Barnes’ brother-in-law, and purchased for the city of Detroit by the brother of this convicted henchman! I got another interesting sidelight on the schools of this metropolis of automobiles by talking with a group of citizens interested in the prevention of child labor. Because the workers of Detroit are taught by poison text-books to rely upon self-help instead of solidarity, they are so poor that they are unable to keep their children in school. The big business men of Detroit are charmed with this condition, not merely because it enables them to avoid paying taxes to build new schools in the slums, but also because it provides them with an abundant supply of child labor for their industries. In the effort to abolish such labor, the reformers of Michigan obtained passage of a law allowing poverty-stricken parents a sum equal to what the children might earn if they worked; also, they obtained a mother’s pension law, for the support of those children whose fathers are killed in the automobile factories. But what is the use of such excellent laws when there is no budget provided to pay the money? In the county in which the state capital is located some mothers are getting as little as fifty cents a week for the support of their children! A group of church workers, seeking to raise a fund to agitate against these conditions, had the bright idea of getting “society ladies” to assist them. The “society ladies” were to go about and collect subscriptions from the manufacturers; but for the first time the ladies found their charms entirely futile—they could not raise a penny! To enforce these child labor laws would destroy the prosperity of Detroit, said the great captains of industry. So every week the truant officers and child labor officers bring children into the Recorder’s Court, and the recorder investigates and learns that the reason the children are out of school is because in school they would starve. The recorder has to admit he does not know what to do with cases of this sort.