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All this, of course, led the teachers to go thoroughly into the expenditure of school funds. Reports began to come to the federation from one source after another. The legislature had appropriated thirteen million dollars, for the schools, and the school board was spending it in a hurry, so that the business men would get it instead of the teachers. School principals were called on the telephone and compelled to order quantities of stuff—office furniture, chairs, desks, moving pictures, telephones, pianos, rugs, phonographs. A pamphlet issued by the Chicago Teachers’ Federation showed that the rate of increase of appropriations for “incidentals” in 1921 was ten times the rate of increase of the total appropriations for teachers’ salaries in 1921.

Then came the news of strange goings on among the “engineers,” the school custodians. It was charged that the vice-president of the school board had got increases in salaries for the engineers and they had generously paid to him the three months’ back pay included in the measure. The engineers came to the Masonic Temple to pay this money—between $75,000 and $125,000. Every man presented the exact amount, and they checked him up carefully. And later on they had a banquet, and presented with fulsome speeches a magnificent silver service. An amusing feature of this story is that the chief of police of Chicago furnished two “front-office men” to sit and guard the sums of money which the engineers brought in. You have to take every precaution, in a city where $10 is not safe anywhere!