The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1890-08-14
His Frandulency's Salary overdraft

4NSoSeSHc'
His Frandulency's Salary Overdraft.
Not a man in the town was sur
prised by Yesterdays announcement
that His Fraudulency had overdrawn
his salary account-it seemed to be SO
much in keeping with what the peo-'
pie expect of him. That he would
consent to be pilloried for a pittance
Of $3.50 shows how utterly lost to all
sense of self respect he has become
The details furnished by THE NEWS
yesterday are the freshest illustra-
ton of the extent to which every
little device is resorted to by the
Ring that has the city in its grasp to
''work" the city treasury. There is
enough legal coloring about the steps
by which he transferred this un-
earned money from the vaults of the
tax payers to his own pockets to serve
as a pretext. Those who do not
know him may be deceived by his
pretence that he supposed it was all
right.
But those who know him cannot
but be convinced that, SO far from
supposing it to be all right, he knew
it to be absolutely wrong. April 10,
1889, an act was passed by the Legis-
lature permitting the legislative body
in any first-class city to fix the May
or's salary at not less than So, 500 nor
more than $5, 900. That act did moth
ing towards fixing the salary, except
to confer the right on another body
to determine the figure. 1t was not
complete as an operative law till the
Aldermen here acted on it. Our local
Board took no action till May Z,
when it passed a resolution placing
the salary at So, 900. But the act of the
Legislature had not even yet been
made operative; for theresolution had
to go to the Mayor for approval. AS
he had been chiefly instrumental
first in passing the act and then in
inducing the Aldermen to act under
it, it vas not to be expected that he
would veto it; but he did not openly
approve it. He was seized with a
sudden spasm of modesty, and he let
it lie, Enacted on, till it had become
operative by lapse. Thus it happened
that the twenty-tifth of May had
dawned on the calendar before the leg
islatiye act of April 10 assumed the
force of law. The adoption of the
Aldermanic resolution, and the steps
through which that resolution reached
maturity were just as much a part of
the proceedings that made the act of
April 10 law as was the introduce
ton of the act into the Legislature,
its passage through both branches
and its approval by the Governor.
Till it had been perfected into law by
the completed action of the city
authorities the act was as though
it had never been passed.
For the Board of Finance to pre-
tend. as under Cleveland's selfish lead
It did, that the salary commenced at
LIZ ILL VI uhO Poooo5N VI 80 wy ~
therefore too thin a disguise for their
unwarranted attack upon the public
treasury. The Board Of Finance
must have known, as Mr.. Cleveland
certainly did, that there soas no law
for 1t. They might as well pretend
that they had a right to date the new
salary era back to the day when the
bill was first introduced into the AS
sembly, Or back to the day when
Cleveland first had it DRAWINGS,
even back to the day when he made
up his mind that he would like to
have his income enlarged.
Whatever delusions Cleveland may
have imposed on the fnanciers in
connection with the subject, His
Fraudulency must have known that
they had no right to take the action
they did for his enrichment. The