We shall see when we come to study our education from the national viewpoint, that these superintendents meet together in county and state and national conferences, to work out plans for the holding down of the teachers and the regimenting of the school system. This clean-sweeping Broome of Philadelphia put into effect an ingenious method of enforcing conformity; he has a group of what he calls “superior teachers,” who are given extra pay and promises of advancement for exceptional scholarship, writing of theses, and other outside activity. The result has been gross favoritism, and the wrecking of the morale of many schools by the forming of cliques and political gangs. Teachers who fall out of favor are treated like the policemen in New York; they are given jobs at the other end of the city from their homes—and Philadelphia is geographically the largest city in the United States. Three teachers were driven to suicide by such methods, and great numbers have left the service. In certain schools the system has now reached the stage of development with which we are familiar in the moving picture world, where promotion for women employes depends upon sexual favors extended to the men in power. Such is the reason which Philadelphia teachers assign for the sudden rise of certain ladies in the teaching force; and this condition is so common throughout the rural schools that the city teachers assign it as their main purpose in demanding tenure for all the teachers of the state. A great many of the schools, and especially the high schools, are organized politically; the alumni associations and parent-teachers’ associations are used, not merely to get favors for their schools, but to serve the political bosses and their interests. The principal of a South Philadelphia school not long ago circulated among his staff a “request” that no teacher should “flunk” a certain notoriously poor scholar, the reason being given that “his father is the police lieutenant of our district, and we cannot afford to antagonize him.” This boy passed triumphantly; and of course the same favors are extended to prominent athletes, who would otherwise be barred from the school contests. You will be prepared to learn that in such a city the feeble effort of the teachers to start a union was crushed by the discharging of some and the intimidating of the rest. (There were about a hundred members, and a prominent leader sold them out for a promotion.) You will be prepared to learn that the teachers get low salaries, and work all their lives without promotion, unless they belong to the “gang.” You will be prepared to hear that the Chamber of Commerce is strong, and has an “educational bureau,” which formulates the policy for the schools, especially as regards the training of Chamber of Commerce clerks and mechanics. You will also be prepared to hear that civil rights are things forgotten in this corrupt and contented city.