Mr. Tigert is a great favorite at conventions of all sorts; he got his appointment at the hands of President Harding because of his charm as a teller of humorous anecdotes. He is able to keep sober enough to tell them—something which his predecessor in office was unable to do. At the 1919 convention of the N. E. A., held in Milwaukee, this gentleman was apparently lured into celebrating the last “wet” night in the history of the United States. An eye-witness writes me: He clung desperately to the desk in front of him, and babbled incoherently for two hours and a half. People clapped and clapped in the monotonous fashion they have when they want a speaker to quit, but he still went on. I don’t know where the efficient President Strayer was, but nobody stopped him. You ask if it is true that he was carried off the stage; he may have been for I got tired and left. I shall be called a vile gossip for publishing things like this. All I can answer is that I think it is of the utmost importance for the American people to know what kind of men the Black Hand puts in charge of the vast and increasing educational work of our government. At the present time the chiefs of the N. E. A. are concentrating all their energies upon the so-called Shepard-Towner bill, providing for a Federal department of education, with a cabinet member at its head, and an appropriation of a hundred million dollars. When they get it, there will be one more boot-legging politician in Washington, and one more source of reactionary propaganda for the kept press to broadcast. At the same Des Moines convention at which Commissioner Tigert spread himself, the chiefs of the N. E. A. showed their intellectual caliber by putting through two resolutions, the first urging disarmament, and the second urging military training in the schools! The business men got up a luncheon for the teachers and themselves, and invited Governor Allen of Kansas, who at that time saw a glorious vision of himself becoming president of the United States on the platform of putting all strikers into jail. Under his supervision the big business vigilantes had been mobbing and tarring and feathering the organizers of the Nonpartisan League throughout Kansas. Governor Allen delighted the lunchers by his wit, of which I give a sample: “The I. W. W.—I beg pardon, the Nonpartisan League—come in, and we deal with them.” The lunchers laughed so merrily that the Governor repeated this wit several times: “The I. W. W.—I beg pardon, the Nonpartisan League!” At an evening meeting John Gay, representative of the miners, showed again and again how Governor Allen had lied in his statements concerning the Kansas miners’ strike. He was booed by the audience, under the supervision of the chairman, Fred M. Hunter, superintendent of schools of Oakland and president of the N. E. A.