Weekly journal-miner., 1919-07-30
MULES OF TONY JOHNS
 ARE SUBJECT OF SUIT
(From Thursdays Daily.)

Failing to get consideration oi
 claims against the state aggregating nearly $20,000 toward the payment
 for mules and road grading equip
 ment, the Aubrey Investment com pany yesterday took the matter into
 the courts with the filing oi a suit against the state of Arizona. Thus
 are the mules of State Senator A. A. Johns again brought before the pub
 lie eye.
 Ire contention of the company that the equipment transferred to the state last winter is worth the money fixed for Ii in a contract is made iii the complaint. which recites the his
 tory of the case from prior to Decrm- Der 5, 1918, at the time the cOmmis-
 sion of state institutions, under Gov ernor Hunt, called for bids on sup plying road working equipment. up to
 the present time, when the state
 holds the mues and other, material,
 and periodically threatens to ship
 them back to the Yampai neadquar-
 ters.
 The equipment was sought for the
 state highway department, which was about to indulge in widespread road
 building operations. On December
 q, the bids were opened and the
 state went into a contract with the Aubrey Investment company for the purchase of the material for a stip- ulated sum of $2l l,2l9.50, to which was added the sum of $l,258.l4, rep resenting the prevailing Prescott and Phoenix prices of miscellaneous equipment, minus 30 per cent knocked of by the vendors.
 When Governor Campbell as cended the throne, he installed new commission of state institutions, which looked things over and decided that as the emptor, the old commis- sion hadn't CAveat-ed enough. The new commission got the impression somewhere that the equipment was most frightfully secondhand, and that if there was Pioneer Home for mules, most of the Aubrey mules would have no trouble getting into it. In the latter judgment, it is said the state veterinarian wrote a con curing opinion. He is said to have named all the ills to which mules are aeir, as afflicting the present mules
 Quite a hot controversy arose, then, over the mules. Mir. Johns, sec retary of the Aubrey Investment company, had by this time become president of the state senate and was said to have aspirations for the gov arnA-rh,r IIa 1a fh. for warm shots on the mule propO- sition, but countered by stating that the deal had been handled by J. A. Trenberth. president Of the company who knew mules Johns denied knowing anything much about mules, though he confessed he was ac- quaintcd with sheep, and that while l Trenberth handled the mule end oi the Aubrey company, he attended to | such details as the herds pasturing on the thousand hills.
 Mir. Johns was in Phoenix at the time the payment of installments on the purchase price of the equipment became due under the contract, and | in his capacity as an officer of the signed the demand On the state. An initial payment of $3,OO0 had been made and the balance was to be paid in two equal installments.
 The new commission considered the mules on one hand and the de- nand on the other, and concluded to reject the demand. This was done 5y formal resolution of the commits sion on April F, 1919. The resolu-'