But a man convinced against his will
is of the same opinion still; we shall have to do that all over
again next. My pet scheme was to have trained oculists attached to
the public schools, partly as a means of overcoming stupidity--half
of what passes for that in the children is really the teacher's; the
little ones are near-sighted; they cannot see the blackboard--partly
also that they might have an eye on the school buildings and help
us get rid of some where they had to burn gas all day. That was
upset by the doctors, who were afraid that "private practice would
be interfered with." We had not quite got to the millennium yet. It
was so with our bill to establish a farm school to win back young
vagrants to a useful life. It was killed at Albany with the challenge
that we "had had enough of reform in New York." And so we had, as
the events showed. Tammany came back.
But not to stay. We had secured a hold during those three years
which I think they little know of. They talk at the Wigwam of the
"school vote," and mean the men friends and kin of the teachers on
whom the machine has a grip, or thinks it has; but there is another
school vote that is yet to be heard from, when the generation that
has had its right to play restored to it comes to the polls.
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