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Also, the Chief Spy issued a report full of charges against teachers. The Teachers’ Council, the “yellow union” maintained by the gang, enthusiastically adopted this report, and called for the barring of various persons from the school forums—the black-list including the names of Jane Addams and Lillian Wald! The State Department of Education addressed to principals of public schools a letter instructing them to prepare reports as to the loyalty of every teacher in the system. The principals were to list the names of teachers, and indicate those “for whose morality and loyalty as a citizen” they could vouch, and those “concerning whose morality or loyalty to the government of the United States or to the state of New York” they had reason to doubt. Weirdly enough, those about whom the principal knew nothing, were lumped in with the latter group. Every teacher was guilty until he was proved innocent!

And with these things going on every day—with school principals carrying step-ladders and peering over transoms to discover what their teachers were doing—Superintendent Tildsley had the nerve to stand up before an audience at the Civic Club and say in my hearing that there was no oppression of teachers for their opinions, and that no teacher in the system had anything to lose by being a Socialist! As evidence of the fact, he stated that he had a very good friend, a teacher of English in one of the high schools, who was a member of the Socialist party, and had even been a candidate for office on the Socialist ticket. This lady had never suffered any handicap from her political opinions and activities; Dr. Tildsley went on to say how he had been in her class not long ago, and had heard her explain to her pupils the meaning of the French Revolution, and he would not want the French Revolution explained to his own children any more fairly and intelligently than this teacher had done it.