He said he had strict orders from "the proprietors always to 'go them a hundred better'", and his paper was in the lead when he left to file his report. He had gotten word that a representative of the "Union" had returned and increased their bid by a hundred dollars. He wrote, "It was provoking. … But I guess we'll make them hunt their holes yet, before we are done with them." The piece Twain filed that night appeared on May 18, under the title "Travels and Fortunes of the Great Austin Sack of Flour." At the time, the paper's editor Joe Goodman was away and had put Twain in charge. With no oversight Twain felt free to goad his paper's rivals, publishing his unsigned letter asking, "How Is It?—While we had no representative at the mass meeting on Monday evening, the UNION overbid us for the flour…we are told that the Union (or its employees, whichever it is,) has repudiated the bid. We would like to know about his matter, if we may make so free". If the piece was supposed to be a joke, the staff of the "Union" were not amused and would soon be letting Twain know of their displeasure. Historian Louis J. Budd points out that previously Twain was "usually following the line marked out by the "Enterprise" editorials…[while] he crisply judged the factional moves within the Union party", but by the time of Twain's remarks about the "Daily Union", "Nevadans [had] started drifting away from Union party harmony and toward Democratic and Republican poles" with the "Daily Union" and "Enterprise" in opposition to each other. While Twain was calling the honor of the staff of the "Union" into question in the May 18, 1864 issue of the "Enterprise", the president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary of the Sanitary Ball committee sent a letter to his paper denouncing his article as "a tissue of falsehoods…made for malicious purposes." When it arrived at the "Enterprise", Joe Goodman having returned decided to ignore the letter in hopes that the uproar would defuse of its own accord. Just as he did during the fallout from Twain's "A Bloody Massacre near Carson" hoax, Goodman continued to stand by Twain. The "Union" responded to Twain's piece wondering if they had rescinded their donation by publishing their own angry letter (presumably written by its co-owner and editor James L. Laird) on May 19 entitled "How Is It?