The affair created a tremendous scandal, and during the administration of Mayor Dunne there were some school board members not under Big Business control, and these attempted to have the leases declared invalid; whereupon the “Tribune” and the “News” started a crusade of slander against the school board and against Mayor Dunne, who appointed the school board. The “Tribune” calls itself “The World’s Greatest Newspaper,” and is undoubtedly the most powerful newspaper in the Middle West. The “Daily News” is the most powerful evening paper; and the two of them, according to William Marion Reedy, “rallied to their support all the corrupt and vicious element of the Chicago slums, likewise the forces that could be controlled by the street railways and other public service corporations.” They elected a mayor who was their tool, and he, in defiance of law, turned some school board members out of office, and the courts upheld the leases! Here, you see, are two bands of highwaymen, operating under the cloak of “patriotism” and “hundred per cent Americanism,” and robbing the school children of Chicago of sums beyond estimate. Every politician and office-holder in the city knows that, and follows this high example; and so it comes about that $10 is not safe anywhere in Chicago. The first place to which I went was Margaret Haley’s office. She gave me a chair, and started to tell me the news, but the telephone rang; it rang every few minutes during our chat, and I listened, and little by little this scene became unreal—it wasn’t a business woman’s office in Chicago, it was an act from one of those old-fashioned “muck-raking” plays which used to be written by Charles Klein and George Broadhurst and others, twenty years or so ago. You couldn’t produce such plays in America today, you would be sent to jail for “suspicion of criminal syndicalism.” In these plays the hero, an upright young politician, or maybe a newspaper man, would be hunting a band of grafters, and tied up in a tangle of plots and counter-plots. You would see him in his office, with breathless messengers running in; or at the telephone in swift conversations, giving orders and thwarting the moves of his enemies.