Los Angeles daily herald., 1890-02-26
"WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY go, 1890.
Hard Times and the sewers.


Three elections come off next month
the purpose of which is to vote funds to
the extent of 81, 100000 in round num-
bers for a system of internal sewers for
the city, for an outfall sewer from the
city limits to the ocean, and for system
of storm drains in the city. There will
be an effort to carry all three PROPOSE.
tions on the part of the extrsvagant
political ring that is now in charge of the
city government. No means of any sort
that is available will fail to be used to
effect this end. One of the superficial
cries that will be raised to carry these
bonds is the dull times now obtaining in
business, and the needs of the unem.
ployed. There are two sides to this
proposition, and it will be unwise and
unjust to forget the more important side.
The unemployed lsborer is not the only
person who finds these dull times hard
to bear. There are others whose bur
dens are even more oppressive than his.
The taxpayers of the city should not
be forgotten. Ninety-nipe out of every
hundred of these property-hol have
been toilers in times past, and many of
them are hard workers still. Thousands
OF people in this city own their little
home, or partly own it. There may be a
mortgage on it whose interest is more
onerous than rent. There are vacant
houses in the city. and unoccupied busi-
ness premises. The interest on debts
must he paid So must the insurance
premiums and the taxes. Many tax
payers own vacant lots that are bur-
dened with the same undesira BILE loads.
These tax payers are working men in
the truest sense of the term. Their little
properties represent the difficult savings
OF lifetime in many cases. They are
the people on whom the country must
depend for its revenue in peace and it's
defense in war. They have at all stages of
the game of life been industrious, pro-
ductive, economical, peaceable, sober
citizens. They have cost the community
nothing to feed them in hard times, or to
provide free lodgings for them as drunks.
In good times they have saved dollar by
dollar little store for rainy day. They
have children who are well brought up
and trained to habits of industry. They
are educated, and it is the ambition and
aim of the parents to put them in
way of serving the world not
more honorably, nor in more
dignifed way than their own was, but
in way that calls for less risk, exposure
and effort, and in way where larger
returns for effort are found. All the
savings of years, and all the little hoard |
on which those ambitious dreams de-
pend are at stake in the present situa-
tion OF affairs, These interests ought
to be guarded. This cannot be done bt
excessive taxation. 1t is not merely
moonshine; it is base stupidity or it is |
criminal dishonesty to assert that the
piling of great burdens of taxation on
property is going to make the people of
this city rich. 1t may put few dollars
in the pockets of each of few hundred
people, but these dollars must
come out of the pockets of others.
They will not hatch like corn-fsd
chickens while passing through the
hands of the City Council, and produce
broods of other dollars.
The plea for work for idle people who
are willing to work and not able to find
work, is not without its force. But
the provident are not to be ruined,
robbed Of all their difficult savings for
the bsnefit of the improvident, who are
always in way to be dependent IN
the accumulstions OF ec,uomv IF the
interior system Is begun in the early
summer that will be enough. Then let
us rest until the times are better before
we heap another lead of taxation on
the shoulders of property-holders.
If this interior system is taken
hold of in earnest it will give
employment to all the idle men OF
the city if cheap labor is not rushed ia
from abroad. But the danger is extreme
that the deserving leborers of this city
will get nothing, or very little, out Of
any of these public Improvements. TIE
contractors as rule are not troubled
by much sentiment as to the needs of
the poor. excepting to take advantage of
their necessities to get labor cheaper.
An army of outsiders will in all proba-
bility be run in here to do this work at
starvation rates. There is this to make
one suspect that this will be the case
There is in the Republican ranks
a great revolt against the ex-
travagant ring that is running the
city and county governments. The hon.
est citizen, the overburdened taxpayer,
is up in arms against the way their
affairs are being mismanaged. The ring
knows this. The mutterings of dissatis-
faction are in their ears, ard they feel
the groundswell of a public upheaval be-
meath their feet. They are determined
at all hazards to hold their offices on
which they are feasting, and they do not
propose to be driven out on to the barren
moor OF hard personal ehdeavor
to batten on what they can
make by honest toll. II they can carry
these bonds and start all these gigantic
schemes before the fall, they can get