The San Francisco call., 1898-01-08

VerS lair daughters. The sister is
 the union was soon severed by his d. init to the proprietor of the Bulletin an ultimatum. There was much talk In the meeting of presenting the mat ter to the Grand Jury.
 The committee appointed to prepare and submit the ultimatum consists of William Metzner, c. A. Chase and Dr. Charles s. Haley. There will be a meeting of the committee next Monday forenoon and every account will be considered.
 The fact has come to light that sev- eral merchants paid after they re- ceived the threatening letters from Jennings, the legal luminary engaged by the Bulletin to collect money from the so-called advertisers. The money so paid must be refunded. The com mittee will insist on such payment. Confession and restitution must go hand in hand. In fact, Brothers, in his letter to MT. Dohrmann yesterday, throws up his hands. He says: You will also remember that I advised and you agreed that the better way would be that these parties come to the office individually and we will go over each case, and if there were any good grounds of complaint adjust matters to their satisfaction. You will also re- member that in stating your own case you informed me that you had paid the amount in question and were speaking for the others. I replied that the fact of the payment was inmate rial The Bulletin would not permit an injustice. but that if any were found, if paid, the money would be re- funded"
 The foregoing sentence is slightly awkward, obscure and ambiguous, but the English Is so much better than that commonly used in the Bulletin that the reader can guess that Croth- CTS intends to refund money. Information was received from an authentic source last evening that the proprietor of the Bulletin was begin light. For the first time since his recent troubles began he was convinced that the merchants them 1 selves were the first to complain against his paper. He had all along supposed, so he said, that The Call was responsible for all the remonstrance and indignation. Now being convinced that The Call is not responsible for his bad plight, he is willing to make an end of the whole controversy by re- funding all the money he collected on account of the bunko contracts and make no claims on accounts unpaid. One can hardly credit the statement
 
 shamefully deceived and betrayed by the men who have had his confidence, but the story comes to The Call very straight.
 The Bulletins assault last evening caused many of the merchants who were at first inclined to temper justice with mercy to recommend investigation by the Grand Jury as suggested in the language addressed to the business manager of the paper at the meeting of the Merchants Association yester- day forenoon.
 The twists and turns of the Bulletin are grotesque. Its accounts of yester- days meetings is full of contradictions. In the opening paragraph it said that "the meeting was in no sense a meeting of the Merchants Association nor was it called by that body.' In the same paragraph it mentions the name of the president of the associa- tion as the presiding officer, and also mentions the name of the official sec retary of the association as the secre- tary of the meeting.
 Further along the Bulletin says that the management of The Call urged the business men represented to the action they have taken. The truth is that the merchants called the meeting on their own motion, and that the call for the first meeting was issued before The Call published a line of the robbery.
 It was said incidentally in The Call yesterday: There was a period in the history of the Bulletin when a half million dollars placed for it's conductors on the side of infamy and dishonor could not as much as tempt them to swerve from the path of Journalistic honor"
 The Bulletin can only conjecture what this means. Since the Bulletin wants to be enlightened the light will be given. When the Bulletin was con- ducted by Fitch and Pickering it did not hold up the Republican State Com mittee and demand money for sup porting the National Republican ticket. It did not promise merchants free write-up and then charge them a dol lar a line and threaten a lawsuit if they did not pay instantly.
 The Bulletin, under its present man. agement, sought to hold up Frank Mc- Laughlin, chairman of the Republican State Committee, and when he re- fused to pay the money demanded, the paper turned about and reviled the committee.
 agement, employed a string of solici- tors to promise a hundred or more merchants of the city a free write-up of their respective business establish ments. The ink on the paper was hardly dry when the Bulletin sent It's collectors, backed by an attorney, with a demand that each merchant men, toned should instantly pay $1 a line. Fifty-six merchants of San Francisco will subscribe under oath to the truth of this charge against the Bulletin, and some of them are ready to go before the Grand Jury and demand that the fatn nf he Dull 1a4f, Eo