The Adjutant General, the Tent Dealer, and the Missing $175

O'Brien and Jack Holleran. (Tacoma Union.) Adjutant General O'Brien was in the city Friday. He says he is not yet out of office, and probably will not be. However, he says, if it is for the best interests of the guard to make a change, he is willing to step out.

"It is said, general," a reporter of the Morning Union said to him, "that you instructed Jack Holleran, of this city, to vote for you for the office of adjutant general by making certain promises to him and ordering certain guard goods of him. Is it true?"

"Certainly not. I never have spoken to any member of the guard about voting for me. So far as Holleran is concerned, he was in the tent business, and I always maintained that when a member of the guard was in business in which he could supply anything to the guard he should be favored. We purchased some tents of him, and in talking it over Holleran told me he expected to vote for me for adjutant general. I thanked him, and that was all there was of it. I never asked him to vote for me."

"It is also said that you paid him for voting for you, or in some way arranged his accounts so that it amounted to the same thing. How is it?"

"I did not pay him, of course. I did not pay any one to vote for me. Such a thing is absurd. I had dealings with Holleran, and he ran away and left a $175 bill on my hands, on which there is now a contest. We ordered certain tents of him, and he afterwards said he would be broken up in business if he was not paid at once. I presented the matter to the emergency board, and it was arranged so that he could be paid. He afterwards left for California, with a girl, I understand, and the last trace I had of him he was in Chicago. The matter is still unsettled."

Jack Holleran disappeared recently and no one seemed to know just where he had gone. He was elected lieutenant of Company G a year ago and was engaged in the tent and awning business on Pacific avenue.