So it appears that this Detroit system is a contrivance to suppress every trace of individuality in school teachers, and make every one of them a phonograph, repeating formulas set before her in print; to prescribe not merely her words but her states of mind, and the “attitudes to be acquired” by her pupils. One teacher read me the specifications, and said: “It’s enough to raise the hair on your head.” What is the “central authority” which now shapes the minds of all the children of all the wage-slaves of our great metropolis of automobiles? We shall inquire before long, and find that it is the same interlocking directorate we know so well. And here is their master achievement; how well they know it, how proud they are of it, you may learn from their official statement, written by the man who has the job in charge—Mr. Charles L. Spain, deputy superintendent of schools of Detroit. Says this great educator: “During the war the public schools came to be recognized as a powerful agency through which to spread propaganda. It is certain that society will expect more from the schools in this respect than in the past.” And he goes on to explain that the “platoon system” gets the children all ready, and every child in the building can be reached every day! When this new scheme has been set up in all our schools, big and little—and it won’t take them but a few years—it will be possible for Judge Gary or Mr. Morgan to press a button at nine o’clock in the morning, and by twelve o’clock noon every child of our twenty-three million will be ready to go out and kill the “Reds.” CHAPTER XXII THE INCORPORATE TAX-DODGING CREATURES It is important to note that a great part of the opposition to graft and propaganda and repression in the Chicago schools has come from classroom teachers. That is the real significance of a struggle which has been going on for many years, over the question of the teachers organizing and being affiliated with labor unions. Eight years ago Big Business put in as president of the school board a gentleman named Jacob Loeb, who proceeded to enforce a resolution forbidding teachers to belong to unions. Sixty-eight teachers were dismissed, of whom thirty-eight were officers or active members of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation. So this federation was forced to withdraw from affiliation with labor, and is still withdrawn.