At the close of the 1923 convention, held in Oakland, it happened that I was in the locality, and said something to a newspaper reporter about our school Tammany Hall. Some of the gang leaders made indignant reply; and I received a letter from Mr. Joy E. Morgan, editor of the official “Journal of the National Education Association,” who said that I was misinformed concerning the organization, and asked me to have lunch with him. I am shy about breaking bread with the enemy, but I am always glad to talk with him, because he never fails to give me better ammunition than I could otherwise get. So I went to call on Mr. Morgan after lunch, and we had a pleasant chat of an hour or so. He is a young man, and friends assure me that he is well meaning but uninformed. I will pass no judgment, but my story will make clear his amazing ignorance, not merely concerning his own organization, but even concerning his own paper. Mr. Morgan started off with the ancient formula that the N. E. A. is “democratic”; all the teachers of the United States were welcome—in fact, they were implored to join their professional organization. I asked Mr. Morgan about this matter of having honorary members who were ex-officio delegates and endowed with votes. Here was a representative body, purporting to be democratic, but which started out with 23 life directors and a long list of ex-officio delegates, the president, the treasurer, the 12 vice-presidents, the 5 members of the executive committee, 52 state directors, 52 state superintendents of public instruction—and, to cap the climax, all the past presidents, a new one added every year! The total of these ex-officio delegates was 151, and out of this total just three were classroom teachers! That constituted a handicap against the teachers of 145 votes; and since it took 100 classroom teachers to elect one delegate, and in big cities five hundred teachers, it took somewhere between 14,500 and 72,500 teachers to overcome the handicap against them in every N. E. A. convention! Was that what Mr. Morgan understood by “democracy”? The young editor did not use the phrase, “oil-domes,” but he did assure me that the interests of superintendents and teachers were not opposed, and that the teachers of the country, many of them, elected their superintendents to represent them; moreover, there were great numbers of teachers who were delegates—probably a majority of the convention, Mr. Morgan actually said that; and then I handed him the tabulation of the Des Moines convention, which showed 188 teachers, as against 297 members of the supervising force. He studied it, and was obviously embarrassed. “I don’t know just what to say,” he replied. “I hardly think it can be accurate. The tabulation must have been made by some interested party.”