The San Francisco call., 1898-01-16
WHY ?

@ BRITAIN members of the Prison Board
 seem to be punishing themselves with the de- >/ fusion that The Call has malicious polit- ical grievance against them that its exposure of the g,aring and inexcusable subversion of the Ostrom law has sinister and shrouded motive to njure, to bemish willfuly, their individual good
 Nothing in intent could be further removed from the purpose of the inquiries made to the manage ment of the San Quentin jutemill and the disposal of its product.
 Let there be no plausible misunderstanding of the interest of The Call in this matter It privately informed of illegal transactions which received the approval of the board, and urgently requested to de fend the law. The informant of The Call is reput able citizen of the State; indeed officer of the law himself, to whom the conspiracy of violations of the Ostrom act was brought home in his capacity as a public servitor.
 Alter painsta1ing investigation covering a pc riod Of two weeks, the msmanagement of the prison jutebag product, and the reckless juggling with the statutory restrictions supposed to govern its sale, were so plainly proved that The Call felt in duty bound place the subject in its various phases be- fore the people It has been prompted by desire to. create sensation defame public officials.
 Evidently the Prison Directors have mistaken notion their duties and powers. It is no suf- cient apology for their actions that they, and not Senator Ostrom devised the statute of 1893. This they assert. Why they should have drafted a law and urged its enactment only to violate its provi- sons in detail and condemn in their report of 1896 is not explained.
 Selling sacks to middemen and favored commits sion houses might have been prudent expedient in 1897 ii the process of such safes nured to the benefit of those whom the law should forefend
 An unprejudced review of the situation will sat sfy any tyro in business affairs thar the board was conscious in the early spring of 1897 that prosper ous year was promised to the farmers, that grain sacks would be in full demand and that the Calcutta Big Five particularly and peculiarly inter ested in advancing the prices
 The speedy exhaustion of the San Quentin sur plus for future delivery and the subsequent fxation of price by the board at a higher point than was begged for the surplus sales facilitated the upward movement Asif this werenot going far enough in the wrong direction, the board on March 20 before the sack surpusage had been delivered and paid for, and while the Calcutta middlemen were dealing ac- lively in future deliveries raised the price to $ 10 per hundred, a rate in excess of reignng Calcutta quotations.
 If any sound business principle actuated the Prison Board in this course it has not been pre- sented to the attention of The Call. The inflated price into which the board seem to have blown a goodly quantity of what the epigrammatic Emory Storrs described as least wind" fixed by them in the products of the mill. Their own ex- pert accountant shows that the average cost of that product was S4 24 per hundred The law distinctly restraints the board from fixing price in excess of cent per bag above cost. They marked bags up I6 cents per hundred above cost figures Why?