The ruling group held a series of meetings: Harry Chandler of the “Times”; “Eddie” Dickson of the “Express,” evening newspaper of the Black Hand; Captain Fredericks, congressman-elect of the Black Hand; Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation; E. P. Clark, proprietor of one of our biggest hotels, and principal financial backer of the Better America Federation—these and half a dozen others constituted themselves “the Committee of One Thousand” for the purpose of electing a “citizens’ ticket” of seven members for the school board. A little later they decided to expand into “the Committee of Ten Thousand”—this in spite of the fact that at no one of their meetings were they able to collect more than thirty-seven people! Their ticket comprised an assortment of hard-boiled reactionaries. At the top of the list stood Jerry Muma, their most active representative on the previous board. Mr. Muma runs a big insurance business; and just as the campaign was getting under way there was made public the affidavit of a prominent architect in the city, to the effect that Mr. F. O. Bristol, agent for Muma and likewise a candidate for the school board, had come to the architect soliciting insurance, and pointing out that Jerry Muma, as head of the building committee of the school board, controlled much valuable business of an architectural nature. “Mr. Muma believes in reciprocity,” said Mr. Bristol, significantly. This affidavit caused the Black Hand to take Jerry Muma from the head of its ticket; but they left Mr. Bristol! Also they left on their ticket Mr. Frederick Feitshans, president of the Los Angeles Desk Company, in spite of the fact that this gentleman admitted to a committee of the teachers that he was at present selling many thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture to the schools of Los Angeles, and that while under the law he could not sell it to the schools after he became a member of the board, there was nothing to prevent his selling it to an agent, and this agent selling it to the schools. As reward for Mr. Feitshans’ refinement of sensibility, the gang members of the old board did their best to jam through a contract with the Los Angeles Desk Company for seventeen thousand dollars’ worth of furniture before the new board came in! Also, there was Mrs. Lucia Macbeth, wife of the vice-president and general manager of our biggest cement company—and this with fourteen million dollars’ worth of new buildings to be handled by the new board! A terrible discovery concerning Mrs. Macbeth came out during the campaign: she smoked cigarettes! She admitted this to a committee of clergymen who visited her, but promised that if she were elected to the board she would give up smoking; and naturally the church people of Los Angeles could not lose such an opportunity to bring a lost sheep into the fold.