The San Francisco call., 1898-02-11

 charged with advertising for any such | supplies, shall state in their advertise | ment that such preference will be made
 In any such advertisement no bid shall be asked for any article of specific brand or mark nor any patent apparatus or appli- anceS when such requirement. would prevent proper competition on the part of dealers in other articles of equal value, utility or merit.
 In view of the developments in the Harbor Commission case and the fact that the board, as well as their spe- cial counsel, are charged especially with knowledge of the laws relating to contracts, it becomes interesting at this stage of the proceedings to ask whether they could have let a contract to either of the bidders under the treatments de- scribed as patented in the clauses B, C and D of the third set of specifications. Must they not have discovered, had the Paraffine Company not enjoined them and had bids been presentNd in accord ance with the last specifications, that 8 forgotten or hitherto unknown law prohibited them from entering into a contract with any bidder save one of
  clause, or A." as it is known.
 Here the second obnoxious or penal ty clause, previously not inserted in specifications of that particular nature, has bearing. The limit for the del1v- cry of piles to the Green-street Wharf was fixed at forty days. Failure to comply by so much as a day would have left it in the power of the board to cancel the contract. Ten days was named as the time when the delivery or piles must begin, and for every subse- uuent day thereafter on which at least twenty piles were not delivered pen atty of $50 was provided.
 With only one of two plants could the work be performed. The Dundon combine owns one; the Paraffine Com pany had arranged for the purchase of the other, conditional on securing the contract To remove the Bolton plant and get it under way in this city would take the Paraffine Company not less than fourteen days, fact of which the board was advised The threat was made that if the Paraffine Company got the contract the Dundon crowd would tie them up in litigation on the pretense that the Curtis & Isaacs patent was in fringed. That, whatever the merits of the question raised at law, would have enforced further delay, and prevented the completion of the contract within the specified forty days. Then, with s25, ,00O plart idle on their hands, the Paraffine C~mpany might have the con- tract taken away from them and turned over to the Dundon Company
 Mir. Holmes testified that when the bids were opened under the second set of specifications, which covered the pro- posed delivery of treated piles for year, G. s. Irving, representing the Paraffine Company, the lowest bidder offered to give an indemnity bond to the board to secure them from any pos sible loss from failure of contract.
 The witness stated that prior to MT. l COlnOn'S appointment on the board 1t 1 had been customary for the contractors on the water front to furnish their own | piles. Latterly the piles have been fur 1 nished the contractors by the board. 1 MT. Holmes had a check on the piles | ordered for contractors, but of the manner of checking the majority of the piles purchased by the board for use l in repairs under the direction of the superintendent, who is under the or ders of the board, he knew nothing. 1 Witness had suggested that the board establish a laboratory for testing the creosote used, but MT. Colnon said he was satisfied with the tests made by i the Southern Pacific for him.
 MT. Holmes believed that the creo- 1 soting treatment increased the inf1am- inability of piles and the wharf super structure. MT. COlnon disagreed with | him. 1t was the opinion of witness | that the least amount of creosote to be uesd in the tratment of piles was four | teen pounds to the cubic foot. The Dudon Company has been supplying 10-pound treatment, and this he did not deem adequate. The thousands of dol lars worth of piles of this kind thus far placed are an experiment. The para1f1ned pile, so far as 1t has been tested in San Francisco Bay, he re- garded as being equally serviceable with the creosoted pile. For his own part he preferred the cylinder pile. 1 Even Curtis and Isaacs had agreed with him as to the superiority of the 14-pound creosote pile. He admitted that the expense of treating was in creased by the injection of each addi- | tional pound of creOSOte, but he insist ed that ten pounds was inadequate. He had heard William Healy of Healy, l Tibbets &, Go. charge in an open board meeting that some of the piles deliv- cred by Darby Laydon & Go. for sec tion 1 or of the seawa1 were rotten. Nothing was done about the matter.
 It was developed by MT. Holmes tes- timony that 1S7 piles had been ordered treated by the Dundon Company since i the issuance of the temporary injunc- l tion The whole order was for 287 piles, 100 having been ordered before the date of the injunction. He had been instructed by the board to divide the order in this manner Counsel for the Parafflne Company sought to show that the plan was invented to evade the law restricting purchases of materials without contract to the value of less than 5000, the total value of this spe- cial order for a given purpose exceed ing $4000; but witness had no knowl edge as to the purpose of the board and merely obeyed orders.
 Judge Cope started off the morning session by introducing Harbor Commis- sion vouchers, showing that Attorney Stratton had received $500 fees from the board in the Pacific Pine lumber cases, in which he likewise had served Slade, and $500 in the Healy, Tibbits 6 Go. suits against Colnon, which was compromised. It had been shown al- ready, from Slades double action books, that $350 was paid by the Slade Dundon combine to Stratton for his services in the compromised Pacific 1 Pine lumber cases.
 The next morsel of evidence was an- other of the hundred and one links of 1 circI1r11 Stantial proOf of cOlluSiOn be-