Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1877-04-07
CORPORATE EMBARRASSMENT AT
MEMPHIS.

The city of Memphis seems to be in
a more deploIable condition as regards
finances than even the rest Ofthe State
The city has become unable to collect
money enough to pay either her cur
rent expenses or interest on her debts,
and the last Legislature provided tor
the appointment of a Receiver to su-
persede the Mayor and General Coun-
Gil, in the reception and disposal of
the taxes, the bill to go into operation
provided that the creditors sue out
mandamuses to the amount of $3.50, 600.
All this intimates a ruinous condl-
ton of the city finances; the truth is
that without legislative provision of
some sort, the city is entirely unable
to grapple with her debts; large por-
ton of any taxation she may impose
become at once unavailable, because
her creditors can settle any amount of
taxes imposed upon them by ledger
balances"
Thus the plank roads without which
her streets used to be utterly impassa-
BILE in winter, were paid for in scrip the
coupons of which are by contract re-
ceivable in payment of taxes, and when
they are thus thrown into the city
treasury, they are utterly worthless
from the fact that no money is ever
paid on them and no one therefore
wants to hold them. Debts again un-
funded to an overwhelming amount,
are outstanding and the creditors pay
no taxes but simply balance them by
receipting thus much of their accounts.
The practical result is that the city
has neither money nor credit, and is
in fact bankrupt.
1t may seem idle to enquire what
are the causes which have led to this
deplorable condition; as the effects
cannot be now prevented and investi-
CATION looks like search after split
milk; but we cannot afford to let such
disasters as this pass by without study
ing the lessons which they teach.
Two of the landing causes of en-
barrassment have been.
[. The rapacious frauds Of the
BrownioW government.
II. The recklessness Of expenditure
incurred in anticipating and discount
ing the future.
The first of these causes was purely
a misfortune to the city and calls for
nothing but sympathy. The shame
less plumber of the carpet-bag rulers
before 1868, is known to all who know
anything of Tennessee affairs, from
the close of the war to that period.
The expenses of the metropolitan pO-
lice alone pressed with a crushing
burden upon the principal cities of the
State; that police through whose
agency the Radical thieves hoped to
make their dynasty perpetual as Pack
ard and kellogg in Louisiana have till
now succeeded in doing by similar
device. So that altogether, when the
people of the State recovered the con-
troll of their own affairs, heavy debt
and an empty treasury were found to
be their capitol in hand.
But from this point we are unable
to exonerate the city authorities them
selves from a large responsibility 10
increasing their corporate burdens.
As industry revived from its long de-
preston, and production approached
its former dimensions, and cotton ac-
cumulated on the bluffs of the city,
indications of future prosperity became
manifest. Memphis it was predicted
was to become a vast commercial me-
tropolis, capable of shaking off her ex-
isting liabilities like a dew drop from
a lions name. Unfortunately, those
who directed her affairs were too i'm
patient to wait for these commercial
developments, and adapted their ex-
penditure to the imagined future rath-
er than to the actual present. Her
improvements were projected on
scale BETTING population of quarter
of million and there were only thirty
thousand people to pay for them.
That is the trouble in a nutshell
individuals as well as corporations
have only one way of becoming en-
barrassed and that is by spending more
than they make.
We have no doubt yet of the ulti-
mate prosperity and greatness of Mem
phis, but her present embarrassments
are calculated to defer for a long time
her progress towards it by discourag-
ing capitalists from taking stock in
her, and she has nothing for it, but to
bear her present troubles with what
patience she may in hopes of brighter
future.
Mayor Flippin procured the passage
of two laws in the last Legislature
which were intended to obviate the
impossibility of collecting taxes which
arose from public creditors giving re-
ceipted accounts instead of money for
taxes. We here subioin his own ac-
count of these laws, and the purpose
contemplated in passing them:
/ Two laws were passed upon this sub
I ject. One oftheSe laws has reference to the
/ collection of city taxes. II provides that
hereafter, If the compromise OF the debt of
| cities having over thirty-five thousand in
/ habitants be effected, all taxes are 60 be col
| lected in cash or in recognized compromise
! law will prove beneficial to Mem phiS. for
! nv collecting taxes in ledger balances itcostS
the city OF Mem his one hundred thousand