Daggett

This is an original application to this court for a writ of mandate to compel the defendant, as controller, to draw his warrant on the state treasurer, in payment of a claim contracted and audited by the petitioners as members of the California World’s Fair Commission, in pursuance of the authority given such commission by an act of the legislature of this state, approved March 6, 1891. (Stats. 1891, p. 24.)

The act provides for the appointment by the governor, of a commission who “ shall have the exclusive charge and control of the expenditure of all moneys appropriated by the state of California for the construction of buildings and maintaining an exhibit of the products of the state of California at the World’s Fair Columbian Exposition, to be held in the city of Chicago, state of Illinois, in. eighteen hundred and ninety-three.” By section 3 of the act, the sum of three hundred thousand dollars is appropriated “to meet the expenses of erecting buildings and maintaining an exhibit of the products of the state of California at the World’s Fair Columbian Exposition,” at Chicago, and the controller is directed to draw his warrant on the treasury from time to time in favor of such…