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At this time Henrietta was organizing the high school teachers, and the principal forbade them to meet unless he was present; so it was that the principals took to carrying step-ladders and peering over the transoms, to see if the teachers were violating orders. Said Henrietta: “One might think, if we are fit to teach the children in the schools, we are fit to meet and discuss our own problems and ideas. But, no! Here are a million children and twenty-five thousand teachers, and all the thinking for the whole system is to be done by twenty-two men. If anybody else presumes to think, that is impertinence.”

She explained the situation to me; teachers as a rule are people of quiet tastes, not good fighters, and the community knows nothing about how they are treated. For example, during the war-time, New York City agreed to cancel all its contracts for the purchase of school supplies, because prices had gone up, and it would not be fair to make the contractors fulfil the old contracts. But no one thought about the contracts with the teachers, and what was fair to them. The teachers suffered in silence, or retired to some other occupation, giving place to less competent people. And who gave a thought to the children, who were now to be taught by the incompetent?