New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-03-26
MIXING IND MUXING.

Mr.. Jarvis Lord took the floor yesterday in
defense of the Canal Ring, and resorted, like
Speaker Mcclure, to the tlme-honored device
of abusing the plaintiffs attorneys. Whether
there ever was such a thing as fraudulent
canal contract he was not prepared to say /;
| but he seemed to have no doubt at all that the
Governors Message was a brutal outrage. AT
one moment Mr. Lord was understood to be
disguised that the Governor should have said
anything at all; and minute afterwards he
complained that Mr. Tilden had not been
more personal and precise in his accusations.
In short the Governor had $50 mixed and
"muxedn things, by the confusion of ordi-
nary and extraordinary expenses that there
was no sense at all TO be made of his state
mcnts.
If Mr. Lord is eager for details and names
he may possess his soul in patience, for he
will not have long to wait. We shall continue
our publication of the contracts, and in the
course of the inevitable Investigations yet to
come we have no doubt that information re-
soecting extraordinary expenses will be sup
piled in an abundance and with minuteness
of detail which will leave some of these gen.
tlemen at Albany a great many things to
desire. 1t will then appear-if it does not
appear already-that the whole science OF
Canal Frauds consists in what Mr.. Jarvis Lord
so happily calls Mixing and Mixing. When
Mr.. Henry j. Mowry for instance executes
contract for the improvement of Black Rock
IIarbor at tho price of only S234,000 whereas
his bids amounted to S2j2,00O it might seem
to an unsophisticated citizen like Jarvis Lord
that the State had saved money and the con-
tractor had proved himself man OF uncom-
mon honesty. Bat it was only case of Mix
ing and Muxing. We look at the contract
with q little care, and we find that Mr.. Mowry
reduced the total expenditure by leaving out
items for which he was to have been paid
only fair or a cheap price. OF rock excava-
ton he did only half the quantity called for;
of hemlock timber he furnished only half the
quantity; of certain jobs of masonry he did
nothing at ALL These were portions Of the
contract upon which there was little or no
profit. But when it came to earth excavation
at double price, then the genius of MIR. Mowry
asserted itself, and he got $4,000 instead of
$4,000, while for white oak timber he got
$4,000 instead of $500. A man can make a
great deal of money sometimes by not doing
his work. There is large class of contracts
so Mixed and Muxed that they cannot be in
terpreted without private cipher known only
to the contractor aud the engineer. 1t may
DO said of them, as rule, that the offer
OF the contractor is always very much
less than the estimate of the engineer
much less than the necessary cost of
the work under any honest plan of
construction. There are two ways of making
money on such bids, and we shall see in
the course of our inquiries that both of them
have been pursued. Ole is to increase in
definitely the profitable items the other is to
keen somewhere within the limits Of quantity
but omit all the improbable items; and where
circumstances are propitious the two methods
are combined.
We cannot see that the distinction between
ordinary and extraordinary expenditures has
ANYTHING to do with this question, for that
after all is more q matter of bookkeeping than
of practical administration. Call the outlay
what you will, the shameful fact remains
that in five years the canals have
not only swallowed up S15,O)O,OOO of tolls, but
have called for $1J,0O),00) more of taxation,
and a very large proportion OF this sum has
been expended upon canals which the State is
preparing to abar don because they are not
worth keeping. Now it needs no argument to
convince sensible men that such sum as this
could not by any moral possibility have been
honestly expended upon the insignificant re-
suits which we have obtained. 1t is equally
manifest that the work never could have cost
half or quarter of that sum if it had
been fairly let, as the law directs,
to the lowest responsible bidder. We
hot Ia 41nf M fn flla
lowest bidder, ard we might go further and
say that it Is not done by contract at all. We
shall charge fraud in no particular case until
fraud has been proved; but any one can SEQ
that in these Ring contracts the quantity
sheets are not intended to specify the work
to be done, and the bids are not intended to
specify the cost. 1t is all q Mixing aud q