Violator

Like Omar, slick William Harding Johnson, $15,000-a-year superintendent of Chicago's school system, has been content to take the cash and let the credit go. He has made good money by co-authoring textbooks for Chicago's schools and from his tutoring school for teachers. By changing the requirements on the eve of exams, Johnson ensured passing grades for his students. (Of 155 successful candidates for jobs as principals, 122 were Johnson pupils.)

For most of his ten years in office, Chicago's teachers, good-government groups and most of the city's newspapers have fought Johnson--but he was safe in the protection of Mayor Ed Kelly, one of the most potent of New Deal bosses. In 1944 Chicagoans called in the lumbering but prestigious National Education Association to investigate. A four-man N.E.A. committee representing some 900,000 U.S. teachers poked into the smelly cellars of Chicago's school system, even though they were barred from its classrooms and denied access to its records. The committee charged Kelly's Johnson with favoritism, intimidation, venality and of operating a spy system which he openly bragged about.

Last week the N.E.A.'s ethics committee met in Washington, offered Johnson a chance to testify (which he refused). Then, for the first time in its 76-year history, the N.E.A. solemnly fired a member for "flagrant violations" of its code. Said Kelly's Johnson: "I'm glad they've had their little Roman holiday."

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