Friday, September 18 1908 –The “Solid Three” take a kick from the Fred Opper comics icon, Maud the Mule, which Herriman draws so well you’d think it was by Opper himself. 

The situation in a nutshell: County commissioners Patterson, Eldridge and Wilson, dubbed the “Solid
Three”, put together a bond issue for the county and sold it off,
probably to favored friends, at a high interest rate. They did this
without proper public meetings and without going through the normal
channels to determine a fair interest rate. On discovering this breach
of the public trust, Angelenos were, not too surprisingly, up in arms.