Arizona silver belt., 1890-05-03
mAnIooPAs B. n. SUBSIDY DOOMED.

The action of the President in veto ing bill recently passed by Congress authorizing the city of Ogden, Utah to assume indebtedness in excess O the limit fixed by the Harrison act probably foreshadows the fate of tht bill, reported favorably from the Sen ate committee, to authorize Marlcop: county to pay subsidy of S4000 pel mile for the construction, within the county, of railroad connecting Phe nix and Prescott. The subsidy is ''ir the soup" unless a two-thirds vote ot Congress can be induced to override the presidential veto.
 Governor Zulick, when in Washing. ton, is credited with being an ardent advocate of the passage of the Territo. rial restrictive financial law, here al luded to, which blocks the strong de- sire of the citizens of his adopted county (where be is now being groomed for seat in the Territorial legislRture) to obtain northern and southern rail connection. To be char itable, we will not question his reason for wishing to financially put Arizona Tn leading strings, or deny her the right of governing her own affairs in that respect. It is, however, fair to presume that even without Zulick' s potent aid, this seminal principle of mischief, which has since become a law, would have taken root and be- come, as Zulick must now regard it, a bar to intercommunicatlon necessary to the development of the different sections of the Territory which are wholly dependent upon dirt roads, often impossible, and generally as nature made them, as the mode of transportation.
 We, however, do not wish to be un- derstood as favoring a Territorial tax for the advancement of any particular locality, but when a county, by vote of its people, as was the case with Maricopa, has duly considered the ad- vantage likely to arise from the use of her credit, she should not be restrained for making the venture with a view of developing her resources.
 It is quite different in the case of a State where the legislature has the power to pledge the pubic credit without an expression of the will of majority of the people. As case in point we cite Missouri, when the rail- road bee-hived Tn her bonnet. After the Missouri Pacific road had received a subvention from the public purse, there arose demand for other trunk roads, to each of which the State was expected to lend assistance. In quick succession the Southwest Branch (as the St. Louis and San Francesca was then called). the Iron Mountain, and the Northern Missouri were chartered; {; and in the short space of eight years, including the sum voted to the Han nibal and St. Joseph, these different roads received from the State, in the shape of guaranteed bonds, leans amounting in the aggregate to about twenty-four millions of dollars. Upon this sum the roads were expected to pay the interest, but inasmuch, with one exception, as they failed to do so, the State became bound for the entire sum, upon which default was made, amounting to twenty millions of dol lars. The dedication caused serious temporary embarrassment to the State and lamentations of tax payers were heard upon every hand in consequence of increased taxation. Mlssourl's mis- take was in permitting herself to be- come handicapped for the furtherance of local interests, but net so in the in- stance of Maricopa's proposition winch it IS morally certain, the Harrison act, (now part of the organic law of the Territory will defeat.
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