Of course, strictly and legally speaking, Mrs. Ford doesn’t have the whole say-so of those forty millions a year; but in reality that is just what she does. Not one dollar is spent by the Board of Estimate upon the school system unless Mrs. Ford has looked into the proposed expenditure, studied the possible educational result, reported favorably upon it, and drafted (for the Comptroller to sign) a resolution authorizing it. Thus, you see, Mrs. Ford knows what every woman knows, how to keep the purse strings firmly and to let the man think he is really doing the spending. Mrs. Ford is the housewife of the city’s educational system, a kind of magnified housewife, simply doing on a huge scale and with marvelously sharpened feminine powers what any janitor’s wife in any schoolhouse under Mrs. Ford’s control does for her household. Take an instance. Mrs. Ford is now drafting the corporate stock budget for the educational system. The Superintendent of Schools has asked for forty-six new buildings in the five boroughs and named the sites that he wants. His requests have been referred to Mrs. Ford. All the requests of parents and neighborhood improvement clubs on the same subject have been referred to Mrs. Ford. In three months Mrs. Ford has found time to slip out of her office and go shopping on the matter of new schools. She has gone to every one of the proposed sites. She has studied the educational need of the given neighborhoods. Her judgment outweighing the Superintendent’s, she has, with her woman’s small hands, lifted some of the proposed buildings bodily out of the proposed sites and placed them elsewhere, where schools seemed to her to be more needed. In each case she framed up a report embodying her reasons, which the Comptroller solemnly signed without more ado, and which the Board of Estimate will act upon without much ado. Thus Mrs. Ford did about twelve million dollars’ worth of shopping. In the fall Mrs. Ford spends a great deal more money. That is the time for drafting the tax budget, or maintenance budget. Something over thirty millions of dollars are spent annually in maintaining the schools at their given efficiency. Last fall the Department of Education asked for thirty-three millions, submitting a detailed report of how they intended to spend the money. Mrs. Ford had to go over every item. When she got through she had pared down the estimate to thirty millions, and that was after she had allowed for a more liberal expenditure in some items where she thought the policy of the department niggardly.