The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1869-01-03
City Money.

hC S,IStO IOCStl Vi AuduCC, 1OT IuC
past year, has been what to do with city
money, so-called. Unfortunately it has
been not merely theoretical problem, but
one of immediate practical Importance.
Municipal operations occupy prominent
position in the business economy of the
community. They are on so extensive a
scale, and extend to SO many different par
ties, that if there is any stoppage in their
machinery, the whole financial status of
business is deranged. The disbursement
of three millions of dollars annually to en-
ployes, contractors, and bond holders
throws on the market very appreciate
element of exchange and commerce, while
the Withholding of that amount from cred
itors embarrasses them in their engage
ments as debtors.
The determination of Taxpayers to pay
into the treasury nothing but city money,
ought, properly speaking, to have put a
stop to the machinery of municipal govern
ment. The city could not, of course, be
expected to pay anything whatever from an
empty treasury, and its treasury was virtu-
ally empty with nothing in it but city bills.
Such bills were not a legal tender to cred
itors, nor money in any sense.
An unfortunate decision of the Third Dis
trict Court sustained taxpayers in their
position, and forced the city to suspend
payments. 1t is true that the city managed
to pay off some of it's current obligations in
this deprecated paper, where its creditors
<1>o%
were obliged to accept sixty cents on the
dollar rather than starve. Bnt this was not
a genuine payment. 1t was niggardly
compromise with debt, of which an honest
man ought to be ashamed, much less a great
and wealthy corporation like New Orleans.
There was nothing saved by the little job
after all, for of course the discount of which
these poor women and laborers were thus
swindled will, some day, be reimbursed to
them.
In the mean time, the virtual effect of the
above mentioned judgment of the Third
District Court was, with the eQuivocal ex-
ception just mentioned, to cause a suspen-
sion of payments by the city. Such deci-
sion was the more astounding, as the Su-
preme Court had distinctly and repeatedly
decided that no Indebtedness of the city
should ever be permitted to arrest the
wheels of municipal government, that is the
receipt of its taxes. To pay taxes with OBJ
legations, is not to pay them in the curren-
cy with which the law contemplates their
being paid, and therefore interrupts that
kind of a receipt of taxes which was intend
ed for the purpose of meeting current ex-
penses.
After this paralyzing blow, there benign
provisions of law for getting such decision
revised by the Supreme Court in less than
one or two years, the City Council now in
place, appealed to the Legislature for relief.
They asked to be permitted to reject every
evidence of debtas a payment of taxes, and,
not to repudiate such debts, but to have
time for their payment with interest. They
asked to have taxes paid in legal currency
which would be legal tender, and to be
authorized to legalize the unauthorized issue
called city money by replacing it with bonds
The State Legislature sat one hundred
and twenty days, and adjourned without
passing so simple a measure of relief. We
will do the colored gentlemen the justice to
say, however, that many persons believe
them to have been willing to adopt such q
measure, and accuse certain of their white
Democratic fellow citizens with having per-
sistently married the project
Various motives were assigned to this
movement. One was that brokers were in
terested in keeping city money on the mar
ket as another item in their list of opera
tons. Another explanation was that GER
tain large holders of real estate were desi-
rous of continuing to pay their taxes in de-
preciated currency which they could buy
very low, and thuss;,ve an honest penny out
of their taxes. A third rumor was that there
was powerful City Money Ring" which
was engineering the " five million" bill OF
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