New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1875-03-26
OUR A IN PAWN.

We find a pail of very thin whitewash
prepared at the City Surveyors Office to
justify the Council for putting our wharves
in pawn to pay for repairs. The City
Surveyor is, .as we understand his duties,
an employee to execute such ordinances of
the Council as may require his services,
but the explanation and justification of
these ordinances must come from the
Council itself. With due respect to the
very competent surveyor, he has overrun
the guides when he volunteers to prepare
or put on whitewash for his employers.
He begins by stating that one of the most
important wharves of the city is so dilap-
idated as to be actually unfit for the
purposes Of commerce." and would soon
have to be abandoned. The City Council
could not raise sb, 0oo to repair it. Some
patriotic and public spirited individual
has come forward and advanced this
amount.
Another wharfis pawned to other patriots,
and a third and fourth takes the same
direction. We are told in each case that
this is a disinterested act on the part of
these public spirited individuals. 1t is
called "a praiseworthy liberality and in
the present impoverished condition Of the
city is worthy of emulation by Others"
We may expect, therefore, the same spirit
may actuate citizens to pay the expenses
of the Charity Hospital, or improve the
fare of the poor citizens in the city Jail.
These gifts-wharf repairs-are purely
~gratuities, dedicated in the fullness of the
commercial heart to the dilapidated COM
merce of this city. One pawnee only gets
a confirmation of a monopoly previously
bestowed; another only gets that which
''does not practically amount to any
thing" a third ''only concentrates his
ships at one wharf instead of their
being scattered" like those of his
competitors. Now, this whitewash
is not only too thin to con-
ceal the possible jobbery. but it will be
found to scale off in large fakes whenever
the sunlight of common sense shall shine
upon it. There is annually collected on
account Of the wharves more than two
hundred thousand dollars. All admit
that as the corporation has provided an
easement for commerce it has a right to
as much for the use of the accom-
mediation as will make and maintain it.
lawyer will say that the corporation
has a right to collect a cent beyond this
or for any other purpose. If, then, the
proper use of this fund is to repair the
wharves, why has it not been so applied?
It has been :gobbled; ever to the extent
in one or more instances it was retained |
by officers to compensate them for some !
deficiency or discount in their
They guaranteed themselves. |
But We reiterate the question, what has
gone with the amounts collected by the |
past and present administrations? Echo |
repeats, it can not answer, this
question.
Two Democratic administrations, and the |
wharves are unfit for and the
treasury unable to spare from the wharf
money enough to repair the wharves ! |
The public see through the Democratic
that the ''city has been ruthlessly
plundered by successive hordes of Radical
They did not rob the wharf
fund. Who did? That is the question.
Is this practice to go on? Shall our
wharves be pawred to particular parties,
md shall the stranger within our CONNER
,ial gates be compelled to go to them for
permission to land a boat or a vessel?
Here is a scope of monopoly, of favor
itism, of %ringopoly, which can not be
hidden beneath all the gratuitous white
wash of employees or of newspapers. One
Eject of this systematic employment of
nonopolists to do what the officers of the
:ity government are paid to do will be,
perhaps, to show that Administrators of
and Improvements are unnee.