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Mr. Hansen insisted upon getting competitive bids for the supplying of colored crayons. The business manager told him to “lay off this”; the city had been using Prang’s crayons, and there was none so good. The bid on Prang’s water colors had been forty dollars; when the competition started it came down to twenty-five; there were other brands offered for eighteen, and the art supervisor of the schools made tests, and could find no difference in quality between them. The old board split on this issue—the members of the “teachers’ ticket” stood out, trying to save the taxpayers $1,204.07 on this single purchase. The new board is now in, the city is paying the higher prices, and somebody is getting the “rake-off.”

And yet, in spite of this orgy of spending, the teachers cannot get supplies. I have before me the Los Angeles “School Journal” for October 24, 1921, giving a report of a committee of teachers which had been appointed to investigate the question of school supplies. Here are six pages of closely printed details, covering every sort of school material. Some forty or fifty teachers testify. No one knows when supplies ordered will be received, the time is usually from six months to a year. Tissue paper was “called for repeatedly for two years. First amount received one year ago.” Desks ordered in the spring of 1918 had not been received two and a half years later. Half a class in agriculture was idle, because garden tools were missing eleven months after ordering. Text-books in English for the teacher’s desk received “sometimes six months later, sometimes a year.” Again, “I have been asking for bookkeeping desks for five years.”