272 F. 698 | D. Maryland | 1921
There can be no difference in principle between the rent of cars to be used in doing work under a government contract a„nd the hire of a boat for the same purpose. Whether you shall call the transportation and the hoisting part of the materials in place, or part of the labor in putting them in place, seems to me to afford opportunity for interesting exercise in intellectual gymnastics, but in this case it would scarcely seem that it would make any difference how it was answered.
If a subcontractor had undertaken to deliver the material in place for a total price, his undertaking would have been covered by the bond. The -work might have been done by putting the stones by hand on rafts or galleys propelled by oars. Hand power might have been used to lower the stones into place. That is doubtless what an ancient Egyptian contractor would have done. The pay of the rowers and of the laborers in putting the stones where the government wanted them would have been labor supplied under the contract. Whether, on the whole you prefer to call it the one or the other, would not affect the result.
The plaintiff is entitled to a verdict in the sum of $848.92.