To justify his grievance at the committee's miscarriage of justice, Don Bosco insisted that his vocational school deserved a "gold-medal recognition for its accomplishments." In his letter he wrote:

1. For the past 16 years our school's Oratory press has published the popular Italian Literary Classics series. This collection of annotated and expurgated texts has exceed 300,000 copies.

2. Our low-priced and very popular Catholic Readings (Letture Cattoliche), now in its thirty-third year of publication, has reached the two million mark. It is printed in our school's print shop.

3. Our annotated series of Latin and Greek Classics for classroom use, which we have published since 1864 and which has gone through numerous editions, is also printed by the boys of our vocational school.

4. Our Latin, Greek, and Italian dictionaries, each with its own accompanying grammar, all edited and printed by the Salesian personnel and their shop students, are very much in demand and have received consistent high praise.

5. Our school's print shop has also produced numerous other educational publications including history and geography texts, and pedagogy manuals whose quality and modest cost are much appreciated and are in continual demand.

Here again I must voice my protest in regards to the criteria used by the awards committee, who made no effort to visit and evaluate our exhibit. How could they pass judgment on its presentation and merit if they did not even take the time to visit and examine it ...?