In his political doldrums the Mayor did not have a kindly
eye to reformers; but he was not always able to make them out in
petticoats.
[Illustration: The School of the New Day.]
The women prevailed at Albany by the power of fact. They knew,
and the legislators did not. They received them up there with an
indulgent smile, but it became speedily apparent that they came
bristling with information about the schools to which the empty
old Tammany boast that New York "had the best schools in the world"
was not an effective answer. In fact they came nearer being the
worst. I had myself had an experience of that kind, when I pointed
out in print that an East Side school was so overrun with rats
that it was difficult to hear oneself think for their squeaking
in the dark "playground," when the children were upstairs in their
classes. The Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which comprises
the important officials of the city Government with the Mayor as
presiding officer, took umbrage at the statement, and said in plain
words that I lied and that there were no rats.
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