So great was the public excitement over these matters that on September 15, 1921, a crowd of five hundred women stormed the city hall. A Mrs. McCarthy declared that children at the Portola and Buena Vista public schools, from which desks had been sold, were having to sit on soap-boxes; another woman declared that her own child was sitting on a soap-box. The newspapers reported the incident, but briefly, and without mentioning the dread word Catholic. The grand jury took up all the charges, and conducted very thorough investigations.[E] ----- Footnote E: So many people have expressed incredulity concerning these matters that at the risk of repetition I quote one paragraph from the report of the school committee of the grand jury, the chairman of which was Mrs. Samuel Backus, wife of General Backus, former postmaster of San Francisco: “Mr. Conkling, store-keeper, testified that School Director Miss Sallie Jones condemned the furniture and sold the same to private parties and schools, and the same were at once put into service. Miss Sallie Jones testified that she had ordered the sale of old desks, etc., and that the same were sold at private sale, and at the same time the Department was buying new furniture for the schools, as she would not put old desks or chairs in new schools built by bond money. This is in strict contradiction of the Charter. First, the furniture was not useless, and second, it was not sold at public auction. Most of the sales were made at 25 and 50 cents per desk, and replaced by new ones costing from six to ten dollars.” ----- Nor was it desks alone. Thousands of sacks of cement, intended for the public schools, were stolen from the board of public works, and other material, wood, steel, etc., was likewise delivered to the parochial schools. Because of the overcrowding in the public schools, the city had built over five hundred temporary shacks, costing one or two thousand dollars each; and it was estimated that more than half this amount had gone into graft. A school official in the course of his duties sent a cement man to estimate on cement repair work; the price asked was two hundred dollars; the official told him to add fifty dollars, “And you know what it is for.” On another job the man estimated two hundred and fifty dollars; he was told to add fifty dollars for the official; then he was told to add ninety dollars to this. A former storekeeper of the schools received fifty reams of paper, and was asked to sign for one hundred; because he refused to do this he was discharged from his position. It was shown that the city had furnished its Catholic board president an automobile costing over five thousand dollars. Other members of the board had had homes built at the expense of the city; the material was taken from the board of public works, the employes of this board helped to construct the buildings, and the time was charged to “school repairs.”