We move south to Philadelphia, the third largest city of the country, controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad and its allied banks, through an old-established and smoothly running political machine. Nearly twenty years ago Lincoln Steffens described it as “Philadelphia corrupt and contented.” For a while after that it ceased to be contented; there was a general strike, which was smashed by the mounted police. But then came the war, and Philadelphia is again at the apex of contented corruption and corrupt contentment. So far as concerns the schools, there has always been the usual hundred per cent plutocratic board, distributing patronage and financial and real estate favors. When I visited the city in 1922 the schools were under the care of what was called “the octogenarian board”; at its head Judge Beeber, president of the Commonwealth Title and Trust Company, who sees that a good part of the school funds are deposited in his bank. Next to him was Mr. Burt of the American Bank, and financial intimate of the Vare brothers, contractors and political bosses who had run the city for a generation. Next, Mr. Simon Gratz, the czar of the schools for a generation, and president of a real estate organization—you remember in “The Goose-step” what I called the “interlocking directorate”; next, an aged war-horse of the Republican machine, who was open in saying that he represented the Vare brothers on the board, and whose name was frequently mentioned in connection with female teachers and pupils, to whom he had displayed undue ardor in his private office. Several of these aged plutocrats have just been forced out by a popular upheaval, and the board is now run by Mr. William Rowan, who has a bank in Kensington, and whose other qualification for the office of school board president of a great city is that he is an undertaker. He presided at a banquet in honor of some distinguished Frenchmen, and one of these Frenchmen, a member of the Academy, made a speech in perfect English; Mr. Rowan in reply proposed that the assemblage should unite in singing the French national anthem, the “Marr-sales.” Also there is Mr. Boyle, replacing Mr. Burt as representative of the American Bank. Also Mr. Shallcross, a suburban political boss, whose son was recently president of the real estaters. Also Mr. Mitten, president of the Rapid Transit Company, and a nationally known union-smasher. Mr. Mitten has deluged the schools with his propaganda in favor of company unions; he sent so much that one high school returned it, marked “Send no more.” This traction company has been so plundered by the financiers that seventy per cent of its gross revenue goes to the bond-holders of underlying companies, which own no property and do no work. In the girls’ high schools some of the teachers of civics ventured to point out the significance of this, and so Mr. Mitten transferred this subject of civics to the grade schools, where the children are too young to understand high finance.