They wanted a flat raise of a thousand dollars a year, and they proved that this amount was not enough to raise the lowest salary to ante-war standards. The committee, when it finally emerged from its thinking-bee, endorsed this demand; but at once the business men set up a howl—and so Mr. Weaver wrote to the board of education that he regarded the thousand dollars increase for teachers as a great and noble ideal to be worked for—in the course of time! The committee went before the board of supervisors, which said that it would be impossible for the teachers to have that much money; the committee went before the board of education, which said there was no use asking what the supervisors refused. The discontent of the teachers burst into flame again; the committee retired and did more thinking; and finally it was announced that the taxpayers of Los Angeles intended to perform an act of unprecedented generosity toward the teachers—every single one was to have a raise of three hundred dollars a year! This amount made the average salary just one-half what it was before the war; and in a month or two rents went up and absorbed most of this. One landlord said to a teacher friend of mine: “You’ve just got a raise, and I’m going to have my share!” Recently the Chamber of Commerce of Hollywood invited the hungry teachers to a banquet, and informed them that for the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year they should learn to live on respect. On the place-cards of the hungry teachers they printed “A Tribute”: _To the Teachers of Tomorrow’s Manhood and Womanhood_: To you, who bless mankind by the devotion of your lives to a noble vocation, we declare our gratitude! In your charge we have placed the responsibility of tomorrow, and your performance of that sacred duty makes us all your debtors. Your calling is the highest in the social order; your reward is the most valued of possessions—respect. The advantage of this salary campaign to the teachers was not the money, but the education they got. For the first time a few of them began to think about their board of education, and who was on it, and why. Some even took up the suggestion that the teachers’ organizations should affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. What indignation this excited in our “open-shop” city should hardly need telling; the Better America Federation set forth its ideas in a two-column advertisement in the newspapers of San José: Teachers must keep aloof alike from politics and industrial discussions. Teachers are beginning to be regarded as wards of the State. Teachers, like soldiers, owe their first and only allegiance to the State.