It is getting worse, you may be a supporter of public instruction or not, but if you approve the actions of our School Board, you must be a jack ass, a nitwit, or a lunatic. To Dr. James. F, Chvatal, a member of the committee on school management, which has control of instructing personel, it was the limit. He simply refused to serve as a member of the Committee, because at the meetings there was nothing done but talk. To quote his own words: "The committee gathers at 4 p.m. and talks, talks, and talks, until every one is hungry and then keeps on talking, until it is time for evening - tea. And when it is all done, then what has the committee accomplished? It speaks for itself that they love to talk and enjoy it, but such a Democratic talk fest is too much for me. I have enough of it." It is possibly superfluous to say that this committee has a chairwoman instead of a chairman. It is Miss Jane Adams, who is responsible for those coffee-klatches. But that is not all. The daily papers have been filled lately about the new "benefit plan", by which the instructing personnel gets increases in salary, not through being higher grade, but as the result of longer service. Naturally there is also a woman in this play. It is Margaret Haley, who took the initiative here, They called in aid of the Chicago Federation of labor, to help her in the re-organization of the "school - system", and as this concerned the introduction of union methods in the school system, this aid was soon available 2Under the so - called Haley plan, introduced by Trustee Post, the instructing personnel is divided in two classes, satisfactory and unsatisfactory.

As long as an instructor is not scratched off the satisfactory list and is not fired on account of that, regardless of how little knowledge he shows, his salary is raised from year to year, until the maximum is reached. The task of calling a teacher unsatisfactory, becomes through this, dangerous for the principal, who is responsible for them. And a principal, who has the courage to brand a member of the instructing personnel as "unsatisfactory" may prepare himself against a "strike" or "slugging". The result will be, that as long as a teacher, pays his or her monthly contributions to the union those teachers will stay on the list of the"satisfactory". For this the "union" will be responsible. If this is not playing with the interest of education, then we do not know. When a union card is sufficient evidence of the skill of a teacher, and is sufficient proof to assure the increase of their salaries, then the citizens of our city should ask themselves, whether or not they entrust their children in dangerous hands.

L. Holstein.