The San Francisco call., 1898-05-03

Harry Piper, chief deputy under County Clerk Curry, has got himself and several other deputy county clerks into serious tangle with the money brokers. Auditor Frederick has been so exercised over the carrying on of these men that he is seriously consider ing the advisability of bringing their actions to the attention of the Grand Jury, and one of the brokers yesterday threatened to have three of the deputy clerks arrested to-day.
 The trouble is over the hypothecation or salary warrants. In one case Piper hypothecated one of his warrants to no less than four different brokers. This was the warrant for February The warrants for March and April have each been hypothecated to three differ ent money-len~ers. His salary is S250 a month. By his peculiar method of fin- anciering he succeeded in raising $500 on $750 worth of securities. But this was done without the knowledge or consent of the brokers concerned. Hence there is much anguish among those latter gentry.
 According to common report all of the proceeds have gone to swell the profits Of the "bOokieS." In other words, it is said that Piper has been going the Widber pace" This Piper denies, and claims that the money went to pay ex- penses in his family caused by illness.
 " It IS further charged that not content with what he secured by the manipu- 1at1on of his own demands upon the city % treasury, he induced three of the depu- ties in the County Clerks office to make double assignments of their warrants and also blew in'' the proceeds of these on the race track
 EiDerS salary for EPbr1larv WaS bu- -pothecated to F. L. Carpenter g. hampe, F. Smith and J. Olsen. Olsen rehypothecated it with the Columbian Ranking Company. When the latter 'aScertalned on the representation of the assignment of the warrant to the Audi tor: that the same warrant had been as signed to others, they forced Olsen to /" make. good the amount, and Olsen in turn compelled Piper to satisfy his claim, so that at the present time there are only three claimants'to the Febru- .,aFy warrant. The March warrant is as signed to J. Boas, F. Smith and s. >hampe. The April warrant is assigned to the same three brokers.
 = From Kampe Piper obtained s55o. from Smith $500, from Boas $500 and from Carpenter S250.
 '- Auditor Broderick will refuse to pay any of these warrants until there is but one claimant to each. He states that IT is a matter that the brokers and Finer
 
 Among the other offenders are depu- ties Thomas L. Doran, V. F. Northrop. JaTnes R. Barber and H. Barron The March warrants of Doran, Northrop and Barber, for $50 each, were as signed to F. Smith and also to J. Boas According to the statement of North .. rop the transactions were carried on : by Piper, who received the proceeds from their hypothecation According to, Northrop's explanation the hypothe- cation was first made with Smith. Then the assignments were sold to Boas the latter being told that the warrants as- signed to him were among those that had been held out on the suit brought by Mayor Phelan to enjoin the Auditor from paying certain of the deputies salaries. For this reason Boas did not flIe- his assignments with the Auditor until last Friday, Meanwhile Smith had obtained the warrants and drawn the money called for by them. Norttrop stated that he -as induced to make the second assignment on the representa- tion Of Piper that the latter had paid Smiths claim and had withdrawn the Smith assignment from the Auditors office.
 H. Barron, another deputy, is on rec ord as having assigned one of his war , rants to J. Boas and also to $. Kampe . Broker Kampe is indignant but philo- sophical over the manner in which he has been treated.
 'I loaned MT. Piper some money" he said, "and he gave me a number of as signments as security for the amount He made no statement to me as to what he did with ether brokers. It is a dis honorable act and no man of honor would do anything of that kind. As the matter now stands he cannot draw any of his warrants until the claims of all the brokers are satisfied.
 Mr. Kampe is a member of the Grand Jury He was asked if he intended to bring the matter before the in1uisitorial body He replied: T would not bring any of my business before the Grand Jury. I would rather be ,ne sufferer than do anything of that kind" Con- tinuing he said:
 "I had no knowledge of his intend ing to assign his warrants to any other broker If had known he intended to do so, he would not have got the loan from me. I have two rules that strictly observe. On is that persons do- ing business with me must not do buSi- ness with any other broker. The other is that I will not loan money to man who drinks. When I went to collect the warrant and was unable to do so, Mr. Piper came to me and told noe he was hard up and asked for time. Under the circumstances I could do nothing else than grant his request. What good would it have done if I had made trouble for him? ?"
 In the absence of J. Boas, who Is