The Socialists came into power, and their first demand was for the building up of the school system. They called a bond election, and the interests defeated this; subsequently the bond issue was carried, and there was a possibility of several hundred thousand dollars being spent without consideration for the grafters. This, of course, would never do; so the political science department of the university was called on, and it drew up a plan, which the city council put through, to appoint a special committee to handle this money; a “committee of citizens”—that is to say, the business grafters of Berkeley, in sufficient number to outvote the Socialists! Mrs. Elvina S. Beals was a Socialist member of this school board, and also of the next school board, on which she constituted an unhappy minority. She has told me the story of her experiences, and put the documents into my hands. To become a Socialist school board member is like stepping into a lion’s den; save that there is no wall against which you can back up—the lions are on every side of you! There is nothing you do or attempt to do for the schools in which you do not encounter some business interest trying to make profit out of them. If you tried to obtain a fair price for a building site, you made mortal enemies of some fellow board member, whose relatives were expecting to retire with a life competence from this particular deal. If you insisted upon enforcing the law requiring bids for school furnishings, you made enemies of those board members who had “friends” among the wholesalers. If you tried to have the board furnish stationery to the high school students at cost, the merchants of your city came in a body to make a protest to the board—you were ruining their business. The secretary of the Chamber of Commerce made an eloquent speech, asking who it was that paid the taxes to support the schools, if not the business men. If you tried to establish school cafeterias, so that poor children could get wholesome food at cost, you were ruining the restaurant keepers and the bakers. All these people would combine and form a little local Black Hand; they would start a scandal bureau and fill the kept press with misrepresentations; they would start a “recall” campaign against you, and pour out floods of slander upon you, and make you spend a small fortune to defend yourself. And here is the most significant fact: at the very front of this campaign of rascality and falsehood would be the university machine! Here was a school board giving away old houses to real estate men without bids; here was a coal man on the board giving furniture contracts to a friend; and in every such issue the university vote would be on the side of the grafters! The Socialists brought up the question of fire insurance graft. It seemed that whenever the local insurance men got hard up and needed cash, they went and insured a school; they had even insured one building which didn’t exist!