The San Francisco call., 1898-08-13

<: :~9syThere is. a carrion smell in the atmos- "Rhere
 IT. *iTll5s new proposals for street improve .u16nts; and repairs, given out by the '.-i3Q Qilrtl of Supervisors, are tainted with an '~~oYI0r+ of corruption easily discernble by :.aIsy' one with an ordinary nose. For years. past San Francisco has suffered '>froGn bad municipal smells, traceable to .the local halls of administration, but just ';<hoW the odor Is more offensive than usual.
 :: me Call has been making a quiet but ..thorough investigation to locate the :-eXact. source, and has some startling in :f9rT1ation to present.
 ... Last Monday the Board of Supervisors .rerpfved another batch of proposals from :coQfractors for repaving and repairing ;. -b1 t$9Ininized streets of the accepted class. No notice was taken of unaccepted :Stzeats.
 It was the second attempt within a FIllc.nth to let this work, and in view of the latest developments a concise state rqent of the manner in which the matter . is proceeding will be of interest to tax : payers and citizens generally.
 .>"' For q long time the business or street 'Tepairing has been carried on apparently as a. source of private revenue to certain
 officials. and the fraud on the city was Ebold-faced. It did not seem to matter ' whether street repairing with bitumen :: cost 10 or F or 24 cents per square foot, ::so long as 'one of the boys" got it-and -::''whacked up' with somebody else. While 1t was a fact easy to demonstrate that
 such repair work, even with new bitumen.
 cost less than cents to lay, the prices mentioned above were paid at various
 times, and are matter of record. One
 of these ''divvies'' was exposed by a con- :tractor about six years ago, when the latter went before a Grand Jury and com plained that the officials were pressing :. him too hard for private payments Then there was a howl of injured virtue from the accused Of4cia1s-and the crooked
 work has been going on since.
 :. Under Superintendent of Streets Ash = worth the repair work was let out to a :. man eputed to be friend of the official. :. he streets then cost for while about ;. $sOu0 year and were kept in lair con =. Under Superintendent of Streets Am .- prose the repair work cost the city $lo,l4i per anuum as shown by an averaging up of the books The Call at the time pub : lished the fact that the work was not let @+.out by contract, and Superintendent Am Erose denied that he was in any way re- SpOnSible, but admitted that the Street :: Committee had instructed his chief dep~ uty, Donovan, to have the City Street Inn proyement Company Go the work at E Iz cents a square foot The Call exposure :: resulted in the diScontnua9ee o5 the method for the time being, and the. super intendent of Streets was fnstrueted 70 rent 9 plant and do the Work hiInseiI lS.ia with the result that more politicians were given tobs An investigation of the rec '' CTds of the Street Department made by The Call shows that during the month of .Tune. 1898 the Superintendent paid out for material and incidental items the fol- lowing amounts;
 Wood, coal 5S
 Rent of plant 19g ~ : Btumen, etc 46t ~
 Labor ......'.''....t'. '''''''.'-''-''--- 4s1 VV .' Total s97O 5s :. As the records failed to show the quan- . tity of work performed, an inquiry was
 rkncW tod hot flET-
 ures had not yet been entered on the
 books. LateT-in fact, last Tuesday-the query for information was again mades and The Call representative was told that
 the man who measured up street-repair :. work for the Superintendent had been
 discharged and that he had not turned in
 the figures in his possession. Perhaps he would and perhaps he would not.
 = The Call has, however, @ basis of com putation upon which to proceed. Bitumen ...Costs B 70 per ton. That quantity will lay
 eighty square feet two and half inches thick, as is required. The SlS7 IS spent
 for bitumen in June would purchase about fifty and a half tons, which spread out on the streets, eighty square feet to the ton, would cover an area or 4V4O square
 feet SuppOsing that the whole quantity
 was laid during June, one can get the average cost per foot by dividing the total
 cost of the repair work for the month
 s970 5S-by the number of square feet :4940-the result being 24 cents per square
 The only po@ sible explanation of this ex- cessive cost is found in the employment of worthless labor. Regular contractors,
 who were required to maintain plants and
 do the work at previous times, were very
 willing to do 1t at much less than A cents per square foot; Why shoulg IL cost LIle '.~ city more? If the claim be advanced that the old material torn up from the streets
 was used over again, an effectual obJec-
 ton arises: Can the city use old material
 for repairs. when it expressly forbids such a thing in its specifications for contract lids? Hardly. The department cannot,
 therefore claim that 1t performed more repair work in June than Is indicated by the purchases of material A number or comparatively idle men, politicians on the pay roll. will be a better explanation.
 Tae city thr4neh hhq9nh tRe superysors to do the repairing for anything like reasonable figure possibly not an unex- .ceyned the Street Committee now finds it eXpedient to suggest bids for the repair work by outsiders. This old plan, has the additional charms held out by the pros pect for profitable "divvy."
 Accordingly some interesting specified tions for bids were published by the Su- .peryisors' committee early in June, calling for bids on repair work and expressly Stimulating that the bituminized streets ~ of the city should be kept in proper repair -'by the contractor to the complete satis- :: faction of the committee.
 :: The string which the committee pro- posed tO lie to the s1Iccessfti1 bidder was clearly apparent to the initiated. In real -:3ty the work to be required from the con- -tractor under his bond was of a most = .tndennite character, the committee re- serving the right to make him do either :" 2. lttle or a large amount of Work TOT the same money! Unless he was disposed to be liberal with his money there was noth- Ing to prevent the committee from mak- :tng his contract unprofitable by ordering ". him to do two or three times as much ..fepafring as would be considered suff- .: cient If he divided. The beauty of these specifications will be seen at a glance. :: A plain warning was conveyed to contrac- tors to keep off, unless they expected to ':H pay the price of protection. Five bidders :. appeared, and an outsider J. H. Bfng- ham, was by far the lowest in his offer, which was s30,000
 =: The Street Committee did not know
 Bingham very well There was n long and anxious deliberation over the award. His. bond was good. and no technicafities
 could be found at first glance The bid der was summoned before the commit tee He was asked if he understood all ; the possibilities of the contract Bing- :. ham bluntly said that if the committee .9r it's expert on streets s, attempted to force iri.ni1IA pn into the courts