Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools онлайн

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Meantime the graft revelations continued. I have before me a pamphlet by Judge McKinley, chief justice of the criminal court of Cook County, detailing the devices by which the fake purchasing companies made their millions out of the schools. There are pages of details about such concerns, their imaginary offices, their contracts for every kind of material which could be used in a big city school system. There was a deal for a hundred thousand tons of coal, without any competitive bidding; another deal of $244,000 for “surplus Shipping Board boilers”—these being boilers offered for sale by the Shipping Board and purchased by a dummy concern, whose head was a former school board member. This man, Fitzgerald, had “never had a bank account until this sale took place”; and the boilers were bought on the recommendation of Davis, the president of the school board, described as “a nice little fellow who did what he was told.” Says Judge McKinley:

There was “the phonograph deal” of the Hiawatha Company, headed by State Commerce Commissioner P. H. Moynihan; “the six skinny cows” sent to the parental school, as milk producers for the three hundred little truants confined there; the stationery and school supply contracts between the board and Davis’ nephews; the tearing out of expensive plumbing in school buildings to “make work” for Metzger’s “steam heating and ventilating company”; the sale of coal in certain districts to the schools by certain firms who made contributions of 50 cents a ton to board officials; the “sale” of buildings on school property by Bither, the attorney for that board, and the “splitting” of the rents collected from tenants who continued to live in them for two years after they had sold them as additions to the Forrestville and Wendell Phillips schools.