At the same time the gang, like all other political gangs, is not too scrupulous about its own personnel. It carried for years one life director while he was in Joliet prison for appropriating public funds. It did not hesitate to make use of a man who, while secretary of a state teachers’ association, charged the association for plumbing work done on his home, and then it was found that the plumber hadn’t got the money—the secretary had kept it for himself! And of course the gang leaders are all tied up with the book graft and with other Big Business in their own localities. The book agents swarm to the conventions, and they have their candidates, and if these candidates do not win, it is because some other book agent has been more active. At the last mid-winter convention of the Department of Superintendence, a prominent candidate for president was the school superintendent of Milwaukee, and Major Clancy boasted to a friend of mine that this great educator would surely win. He was favored by the American Book Company. Major Clancy is getting old, and somebody fooled him; the successful candidate came from the city where Ginn & Company has its headquarters! The first aim of the prudent school superintendent is to stand in with the “bookmen,” as they call themselves. For, whenever there is a vacancy in a desirable place, the book companies are the first to learn of it, and they know their own. So the N. E. A. is honeycombed with book intrigue and graft—especially the Department of Superintendence, the part which really counts. I shall tell you bye and bye of an especially crooked five year book “adoption” in the state of Indiana. Immediately after that event, it was noticed that a practically unknown superintendent from Indianapolis became president of the Department of Superintendence. That caused a scandal, and efforts were made to break the book companies’ hold; it is like the efforts to drive the railroads out of state politics. At the last meeting of the Department of Superintendence it was announced that no “bookmen” were to have rooms in the Cleveland Hotel, where the N. E. A. had its headquarters; but I am told by a gentleman who was present that the American Book Company had all the rooms it wanted. This same gentleman tells me that he was present at a convention in Milwaukee, some years ago, when it was discovered that the American Book Company had taken the entire second floor of the hotel in which the N. E. A. had settled; Cooley of Chicago, who happened to be president that year, moved his headquarters to another hotel.