The San Francisco call., 1898-01-14

be forced to sell them at or below cost, and any number of such transactions could not raise the prices the following summer, unless the board begged them up. The small sales made by needy farmers of surplus sacks after harvest have no influence on market quotations, and if they had it would be to reduce the local prices.
 Regarding legitimate sales to actual consumers from every point of view if every small farmer applicant in the State. who came within the 5000 limita- tion of the Ostrom law, should have se- cured too many sacks, whatever dispo- sition he might make of his surplus could not inf1ate prices on him and his fellow farmers the succeeding year
 If the truth were told the board holds the Ostrom law in contempt. They have assumed erroneously that their particular function is to do as they please with the jute mill product so long as they can make good snow ing on the balance sheets. It does not contain a single provision of a restrlc- tive or mandatory nature they nave not at one time or another Vlolated' under spacious pretensions ana manifest nisapprehension of the obli eatiOns in,nOsed on them as public of- fcia1s If it is a bad law it remains to be proved such, and even if proved a bad law it is no part of the duty of the prison directors to repeal it or abrogate ft Legislatures are elected for the purpose of annulling, making and amending the statutes. Every time the board has appealed to the Attorney General for his official consent to dis regard certain specific provisions of the Ostrom act he has tried to recall them to their senses.
 The frequent reminder in the Ian guage of the law that the warden and the board should deal only with actual consumers meant that they should spare no vigilance and precaution in acting upon applications. It meant that they should closely scrutiniZe each and every affidavit, and see to 1t that the sacks sold were delivered to citi- zens needing them for the transporta- tion of grain from their wheat fields to market Confessedly tn e board did not bother their wits on this score. In several wheat sections, among them Yolo County The Call has taken pains to consult the farmers as to their experiencein procuring San Quen- tin sacks, and the divulgements con- firm the assertion already made that the supply is pretty largely controlled by middlemen. While they are guilty of no direct violation of the law. they have established a system which pro- duces that result. It is even shown that in furtherance of their plan for loading up each year with San Quentin stock, the middlemen secure the sig natures of farmers to affidavits for sacks in excessive number, without swearing the affiant before a proper of ficial. Farmers familiar with the law testify to having refused to make afti- davit to these inflated applications, knowing they would thus commit nisdemeanor. Afterward they secured without affidavit all the San Quentin sacks they needed from the very men who demanded of them an oath to false application.
 In those instances where farmers were persuaded to attach their sigma lures to affidavits heedlessly before the attest of a notary was affixed, or where they willingly testified to the re- quirement of many more sacks than they could consume, they appear to have been to some extent in the power Ol the JODD6IS as UtDlOIS. HS LCNSSoi- ties of these poor men were made the vehicle of the fraud so daringly prac- ttced. They were approached partic- ularly during 1897, when the big deal was put through, long before sacks were needed, in the month of Febru- ary, and told applications must be for warded at once or they might not be able to get their supplies when harvest time came. Thus informed, they made applications to suit the greedy plans of the middlemen.
 What The Call intends to prove posi- lively at this stage of the investiga- ton is cOllusion between Warden Hale, the board and at least one conspicu- ous middleman in Yolo County. The latter, MT. Diggs, is a personal friend of MT. De Pue and his fatherin-law, W. G. Hunt of Woodland, who has been sold jute goods known as bar leys," or defective sacks, without making affidavit. It will be found in following the inquiry that Diggs sold the sacks, and that farmers found them perfect.
 It has been asserted by The Call that middlemen have been favored, and it now remains to prove the fact. By those persons who have followed the exposure in progress 1t will be remem- bered that the Board of Prison Direct ors fixed the price of sacks at S4 75 per hundred February 3, 1895, and decided to sell on application to any number within 1000, ,000. A second resolution of similar purport was passed to cover the disposal of a second million. As has been intimated already, the sale for fu- ture delivery in the brief space of fif- teen days of 2,00O,OO sacks shows that certain friends and operators were, to quote vulgarism, put on."
 Diggs was one Of the protected mid dlemen, as will appear from the letter files at San Quentin. Three days before the plan of the directors matured, the Woodland middleman wrote to Warden Hale as follows:
 WOODLAND. Cal, Jan 30, 1897. w. E. Hale, Warden, San Quentin. Cal.
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