was unwilling to do that, he is out of the schools, and the gang leaders are secure in their grip upon the teachers’ associations of Southern California. But California is our most reactionary state, you will say. Very well: then let us skip to Wisconsin, which is our most progressive state. Let us see what has happened to the Wisconsin Teachers’ Association. There is one significant detail for you to get clear at the outset: In state after state we find the people taking over their political government, but they cannot get hold of their schools. The school machine is intrenched behind entanglements of “red tape”; the supervising force has “pull,” sometimes it is protected by civil service—anyhow, the machine is tough, and hangs on until the reactionaries come back. We shall see that happening in North Dakota, in Minnesota, in Wisconsin. Senator LaFollette carried his state last time by the biggest plurality ever known in America; but Mrs. LaFollette was barred from speaking in country school-houses! The state educational machine, the county machines, and most of the city machines in Wisconsin are still in the hands of the gang. The situation in Milwaukee is especially interesting. Before the war Milwaukee was under the eye of Victor Berger, while the schools were under the eye of Victor Berger’s wife; so there was one American city with no graft in its school affairs. But during the war the gang came back, and they still have the schools—Mrs. Berger was for years the lone Socialist member, and the board is run by the so-called “Voters’ League,” which consists of exactly seven men, the chiefs of the Black Hand of Wisconsin. These seven picked the candidates for the school board at every election, and the newspapers printed the list conspicuously, and told the people to “cut this out and take it to the polls”; and, like good, patriotic Americans, they did so. In the effort to bludgeon the Teachers’ Federation, this Voters’ League proposed a bill making it unlawful for public employes to organize. But this bill failed, and the teachers of Milwaukee have stayed organized, and what is more, they have kept the control of their own organization. They went over the heads of their reactionary school board, and appealed to a progressive state legislature, and got the school taxes in Milwaukee conditioned upon the payment of a minimum salary of $1,500 to grade teachers, running up to $2,400. Imagine a school board unable to terrify its teachers by threats of salary reduction, and you will understand the fury with which the educational gang regards the Milwaukee Teachers’ Federation!