Superintendent Cary of Wisconsin told me the details of his long struggle with the manufacturers. They informed him that if he did not obey orders, they would put him out; he must play the political game, and name the county superintendents selected by them. When he refused, they put up a candidate against him—whose son was an agent for Ginn & Company, book publishers. A little later on we shall deal with these book companies in detail; suffice it here to say that one book agent offered to put up fifteen thousand dollars for Mr. Cary’s campaign fund, and the offer was refused. The manufacturers, being unable to get the trade schools they wanted from Mr. Cary, went to the legislature and got provision for separate vocational schools, and put their man in charge of these. When the next election came round, they put up a man for Mr. Cary’s place, and set out to raise a campaign fund; one contractor sent out a letter to the others, the book companies rallied—and so Mr. Cary no longer has anything to say about public education in Wisconsin. The National Association of Manufacturers, together with the National Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers’ Association and the rest of them, now have a comfortable working majority in the Supreme Court, and they got a decision granting them the right to work our babies in their factories. They have several million now at work; and you recollect how in California the Better America Federation tried to force through the state legislature a bill providing for the dismissal of any teacher who should discuss with any pupil the desirability of any amendment to the Constitution. As an illustration of the conditions they want, take the state of Delaware, which has no compulsory school attendance law, and where children are bound out to employers on the old English apprentice system, which is practically the same thing as selling them into slavery. In Delaware the powder interests, owned by the Dupont family, have very kindly taken over the educational system of the state; they have established a School Association, which under the law does all the buying of supplies and the putting up of school buildings. CHAPTER LVIII THE NATIONAL SPIES’ ASSOCIATION