The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-12-18
ELECT ONLY
DECENT MEN
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Continued from Page One.)
terested myself in this corporation and
found that it was paying dividends and
at the same time borrowing money, pay
ing dividends to the stockholders while
it had a large floating debt. This wor-
ried me, and I Succeeded in getting my
self elected a director in that corpora
ton. In my capacity as a director | en-
gagged chartered accountants and had
the affairs of the corporation investi-
gated. | found out that we had on our
payrolls many men who did no work,
political hacks, whose only use was in
the few votes they were supposed to
control. I found one man who drew a
large salary from us whose only work
was to go to the city hall once month
and collect the city gas bill | in
quired why we paid the man for that
small service, and was told that we had
to have man who was acquainted with
the city officials, and that through him
the bills were paid promptly and there
were no questions of overcharging or
poor service. I had that man dis
charged. and our bills were collected
just the same. There were some OBJ
iections made at times, but we always
found that if our bills were correct
they were always paid.
81 discovered too that the city gas
inspector never paid his gas bill I
wanted to know why that was His
bill was sent to him regularly every
month, but he never paid any attention
to it. 'Why,' they told me he s the
city gas Inspector; he never pays his
cvac hill 7 - I
was told that if we made him paw his
bill he would make all kinds of trouble
for us; find the gas not up to the legal
requirements and other things. I said
that if we were supplying gas honestly
in accordance with the charter speci-
fications, we could not be interfered
with and had always remedy in the
courts. After that the gas inspector
paid his bill.
''These objections of mine made me
unpopular with the management, and
after | had talked over the matter with
the directors of the corporation and
wanted a new management 7 found that
I was talking to men who didn t want
to have trouble. Then I took it upon
myself and undertook to secure the
cooperation of the stockholders. The
results surprised the directors and as a
result of the surprise we had a change
of management.
1t was shortly after this that I first
met Mr.. Abraham Ruef. After the
change in the management Mr. Ruef
called on me in my office. accompanied
by prominent stockbroker. The stock
broker introduced us and retired and
Mr.. Ruef got right down to business.
He told me that he was an attorney
of ability and that he thought it would
be to the benefit of our corporation if
we retained him when we needed a law
yer to do legal work or other things.
told him that I did not question
his ability, but that we had our own
lawyers to do our work and would not
need him, and as for other things we
expected to have no use for them or
for him. He withdrew and I thought
! had seen the last of Mr.. Abraham
Ruef.
~ had a subsequent call from him.
however. This time he said that he
had called to direct my attention to the
fact that the city. was going to issue
eighteen million dollars worth of bonds.
which We're expected to sell over par
He said that he wanted me to organize
a syndicate for the purch base of the
bonds and stated that if | would head
such a syndicate he would guarantee
that our bid need not be above par
and that ours would be the only bid re-
ceived. l questioned his ability to car