But you see, if you go directly to the manufacturers, you cut off the profits of jobbers and wholesalers, and these are prominent members of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, who “believe in reciprocity” and “the encouragement of home industry.” When you buy from novelty houses for $38.00 calendars which the local dealers are selling for $100, you are causing unemployment for a bookkeeper in Los Angeles, who keeps track of this transaction for the local business men. Still worse heresy, when you go to San Francisco and buy reed for $1.50 which costs $3.53 in Los Angeles, you are boosting the most bitter rival of our City of the Black Angels. When you buy lubricating oil for twenty-seven and a half cents a gallon, which meets the test better than that which the city has been getting for fifty-four cents a gallon, you have some oil men on your neck. Mr. Hansen had a long fight with his superiors before he was even permitted to sign his own letters asking for prices in transactions such as this. 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.”