The Catholics, you see, have their system of parochial schools, in which the children are taught the priestly view of life. The church is enormously wealthy, and some of these schools are, as buildings, very fine. Manifestly, the priestly admonition to the faithful, to send their children to church schools, will be much more effective if the public schools are old and filthy and insanitary; and more especially if they are fire-traps! Tammany Hall is a semi-religious institution, maintained by the votes of Irish and Italian and Polish Catholics. Practically the entire list of public officials are Catholics—and this includes the majority of the public school board and of the superintending force. So, to the natural greed of the plutocracy is added the power of priestly intrigue. Mr. Stewart Browne, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, attends every hearing of the Board of Estimate, and of other public bodies having anything to do with appropriations for the schools. His one function is to prevent appropriations; and with the secret help of the Catholic prelates, he succeeds. Thus we observe, in full operation in our modern age, the ancient alliance between the secular arm and the spiritual; we see God and Mammon united to rivet the chains of wage-slavery upon the poor. CHAPTER XV HONEST GRAFT On the top of my desk as I work is a five-foot shelf of big envelopes, containing data on the school systems of various cities. I take one envelope, and sort out its contents, marking the material with the letters, G, F, P, and R. That is to say, Graft, Favoritism, Propaganda and Repression—the four products of education by Big Business. Under the letter F in New York City I find the grievances of scores of teachers with whom I talked. Their story was all the same: the system is brutal, the system is rigid, the system is honeycombed with politics and dishonesty.