The San Francisco call., 1898-10-08
GOLD BRICK
 NUMBER 3648
 FOR THE CITY Board of Supervisors Has 1t Ready. WILL BE PRESENTED SOON THE ONLY LABEL ON IT IS CARRIAGE CONTRACT" The Merchants Association Takes Steps to Prevent the Municipal ity From Securing the
 Questionable Prize.

The Board of Supervisors will be fur nished with information as to the cost Of collecting garbage tn other cities The board itself has taken no steps in the direction of making inquiries, apparently considering 1t a matter of small import ance whether the people Of this city pay more or less than the people of other cities The Merchants Association, how ever. is bent upon having the Supervisors informed on this particular point, and yesterday sent in a communication 10 the board requesting that further action re- garding the proposed garbage contract be suspended until the Merchants spe- ciaI committee could send in mass or data from all sections of the Union show ing the methods and cost of collecting garbage.
 The association Is going at the matter in g buisness-like manner, securing tnfor- nation which the Supervisors should have obtained themselves before adFeruSlls for bids on garbage contract Naturally the first question Of men Of business m stincts is: How much does tt cost to do such work in other cities? Not so with the San Francisco Supervisors As long ago as last May the board had under con sideratiOn the scheme to get rid or the sCayenger system and to substitute con tract work. As a preliminary Clerk Rus sell was instructed to send d speclned usC Of questions to all large cities in the land, asking how garbage was collected whether by the municipality, public con tract or private scavengers- Not one word was said regarding the cost in this list of questions. Probably IL was because the OaJa were not desired
 In response to the inquiries replies were received from thirty-three cities, and are now on file in the Clerks office. These re- plies tabulated in a report to the board state that scaVengers only hold sway III three cities, while the other thirty cities have the work done by contract or oy the city authorities. This was the fact which the interested Supervisors wanted to be made clear to the public, althOuSn they knew the general facts m the case before the questions were sent out HdV- ing established a ba sis for future opera tions, the Supervisors took the next step, which was 10 draw up SpeclnCaIlOnS Tor a private contract to do the garbage col lecting. The public was purpoSely gwen no information as to the cost In other cities. What did it matter? The board proposed to let the contract to a certain corpOration, and so worded the spec1hca- tions as to practically bar out any other bidder Now the matter has reached the critical point, where a long-term con- tract is to be executed and over guar ter of a million dollars of the city's funds are to be paid out each year on an iron clad agreement, without any preYlouS IT, formation being obtained by the super vtsors as to whether the price IS mOder- ate or excessive. Such information could easily have been obtained by inserting a question to that effect in the list or queries sent to the thirty-three cities.
 Now the Merchants Association. per ceiving the gentleman of. color who IS doricfled in the wood pile, proposes to give the Supervisors some information on cornparative cost in other cities, which the board. in its financial wisdom, has not seen fit to acquire.
 Whether or not the Supervisors will consent to defer awarding the garDage contract to the chosen corporation Is something that cannot be determined be- fore next Monday. when the Supervisors meet in regular session