Years passed, and Mrs. Bauernschmidt continued her wayward course. She took up the fight for the new school at Locust Point, and did not stop for the Catholic priest, nor yet for the political machine and its political superintendent of schools. She went to speak before a Parent-Teachers’ Association; a teacher asked her, and the superintendent rebuked this teacher, saying that she had made a grievous mistake, that Mrs. Bauernschmidt must not speak in the schools of Baltimore, and a teacher ought not even be seen on the street with her. He added words to this effect: “I know my business so well that I never give promotion to a teacher who doesn’t stand in with the powers that be.” So Mrs. Bauernschmidt went to war with this superintendent. She put him on trial before the school board—when you have money you can do that kind of thing. The gang was greatly exercised, because a teacher and a principal who had been witnesses to the superintendent’s statement, told the truth before the board; and that was a violation of the first principle of gang ethics, it meant the end of discipline in the school machine. The upshot of the controversy was that my native city got one or two new board members, and the old superintendent was dismissed. You see how it pays to keep track of the fillings in the teeth of your politicians! There is the same story in Baltimore that we saw in San Francisco, St. Louis and Boston; the people appropriate money for their schools, and the representatives of God, Mammon and Company refuse to spend it. They even get the courts to forbid them to spend it! The schools were discovered to be fire-traps—and what better way to make Catholic parents send their children to the parochial schools, than to have it generally rumored that there is danger of fire in the public schools? So the money for fire-escapes was not spent; and a delegation waited on the mayor, one from each of the twenty-five schools which lacked fire-escapes. Mrs. Bauernschmidt went along, and the Baltimore newspapers reported the “wallop” which she delivered to the mayor: “History tells us about a ruler who fiddled while the town burned, but I don’t remember reading of his re-election, and I’ll bet you he couldn’t be re-elected mayor of this city!” So the schools got some fire-escapes—but not all. Last year the politicians returned an “unexpended balance” of $104,000 out of $600,000 appropriated for school repairs; and so Mrs. Bauernschmidt’s organization, the Public School Association, went after them once more. Now it is promised that all the schools will be safe; and the Catholic priests, realizing that they have to come up to the new standards, pay visits to the Francis Scott Key school—a dozen of them in the course of a couple of months—to find out about modern education!