tract was duly entered into between the Arkansas Chair Factory, a corporation, and the superintendent and financial agent of the State Penitentiary, with the approval of said Board of Commissioners, whereby the convicts of the State were hired to said corporation at price of fifty cents per day for each man worked, for a period commencing on that day and ending January I, 1909; that, according to the terms of said contract, it was agreed that forty able-bodied convicts were hired for the first year, and as many thereafter as needed, not exceeding two hundred; that the board should furnish all necessary buildings to be used under the contract (except certain ones specified), and also clothe and feed the convicts; that prior to July 31, 1899, said Arkansas Chair Factory, with the consent of said board, assigned said contract to plaintiff; that on the last-named date said contract was by mutual consent of the parties amended so as to permit the working of convicts by plaintiff outside of the walls of the Penitentiary in manufacturing, agriculture, railway building and other pursuits, and that said board should furnish to plaintiff three hundred able-bodied men on demand of the plaintiff after January 1, 1900, and that plaintiff should work not less than one hundred men at all times; that plaintiff complied with its part of the contract, and at great expense prepared to work said convicts; that the Board of Commissioners complied with said contract except that after January 1, 1901, they failed to furnish the number of convicts required by the contract, and only furnished a far less number; that since the first day of January, 1900, and up to the time of the commencement of this suit, the plaintiff has continuously demanded from said board the amount of convict labor called for by said contract, but that the board and superintendent at various times and under various pretexts failed to furnish the amount of labor so demanded, but that in each instance, when the requisite number were not furnished on demand, said Board of Commissioners represented to the plaintiff that it would subsequently make good the deficit thus caused by furnishing to said plaintiff such an amount of convict labor as to make it receive eventually the aggregate number of convicts called for by said contract, and that "in each instance the said superintendent and board expressly promised to make good said deficit and adopted resolutions to this effect, which were spread
