In apologizing for telling so much about the harbor strike, I promised to prove that the same men who smashed this strike were running the school system of Los Angeles, and smashing the teachers. Now comes the proof. As it happened, the campaign for the election of the school board was going on all through the harbor strike and the formation of our Civil Liberties Union; and among the few who came forward to stand for this union was the Reverend G. Bromley Oxnam, pastor of the Church of All Nations, and candidate for the school board on the “teachers’ ticket.” At our first mass meeting of protest, held in Los Angeles three days after the release of Hopkins, Hardyman, Kimbrough and myself, Mr. Oxnam was asked to lead the singing of “America” and to open the proceedings with a prayer. This he did; and so all the fury of the enemy was turned upon him. The kept preachers of the Black Hand denounced him from their pulpits, and also before the Ministerial Union, and before the City Club. Nothing more was needed to defeat a candidate for the school board than to associate him with Upton Sinclair, notorious Socialist and muckraker. Day after day the “Times” pounded upon this theme, both in editorials and in news. The Better America Federation circulated alleged stenographic transcripts of speeches by Mr. Oxnam, which “transcripts” were made up in their own offices, and were the opposite of Mr. Oxnam’s beliefs. Understand, Mr. Oxnam was not the head of this ticket; he was only one of seven. But from the day he stood upon the Civil Liberties platform, the ticket became the “Oxnam ticket,” and his candidacy was an effort of Upton Sinclair and the “soviets” to take possession of the schools. All the minor organizations of the Black Hand, the business clubs, the women’s organizations, the little educational bosses—all these adopted resolutions denouncing the conspiracy to turn the schools of the city over to the “Reds.” There is very good reason to believe that the praying of a prayer for the Constitution of the United States not merely cost Mr. Oxnam his election to the school board, but cost his associates their election as well. So, at the risk of making my story too long, I print the prayer that Mr. Oxnam prayed, and that a stenographer took down for his protection: Our Father, we lift our voices to Thee in Thanksgiving. We are thankful that Thou hast created us thinking beings. We are thankful that we are not mere automatons, but that Thou hast given to us freedom of choice, and that in large measure our own destiny and that of our brothers lies in our own hands. We pray Thee, that just as Thou hast granted to us the right to think and to speak, so too we may grant to our citizens the right to think and to speak, to the end that that glorious day may come at last when all men share the abundant life Jesus of Nazareth died to bring to men.