We have now examined school conditions in nineteen of the largest American cities; the total population of these cities amounts to eighteen million, which means four million children subject to the education here portrayed. You have noticed how much alike these school machines are; it has no doubt occurred to you that such resemblance cannot be a matter of accident, there must be some centralized control, some bureau of standardization in charge of school systems in the United States. And this is true; the local school machines, in cities, towns and villages, are part of county machines, and these county machines are part of state machines, and these state machines are united and co-ordinated and standardized by the National Education Association, with the help of the United States Bureau of Education, and the Rockefeller General Education Board, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Let us begin with the counties. Under the American system a county superintendent of schools invariably has to be a school politician, and almost invariably has to be a political politician as well. His school gang is made up of his assistants and clerks and principals and other numerous appointees, all of whom depend upon his favor and are looking for promotion; also those teachers who serve him as bell-wethers, leading the flocks of teacher sheep. In order to preserve the self-respect of teachers, and make them think they have something to do with education, they are organized into associations or clubs, all of which are affiliated with the National Education Association, and practically all of which are run by the local school machine. These teachers’ associations thus occupy in the school world the same position as the company or “yellow” unions, in the labor world. In the great percentage of cases the officers in these teachers’ associations are the superintendents and principals and other members of the supervising force; in the remaining cases they are teachers who take their orders from this force. In the few cases where the teachers have dared to rebel and control their own organizations, their leaders have been browbeaten and persecuted, slandered and denied promotion.