Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1897-11-21

ways the various divisions Of the vote
known to the practical politician. And
while the newspaper end is being
worked through the City Hall literary
bureau there are innumerable quiet"
workers who are circulating among the
people and making personal appeals
so desperate is the case of this close
little City Hall corporation.
For example, they cast their net for
the labor vote by telling the labor or
CARNATIONS that the refunding ordi-
nance will enable them to make i'm
provements that will give large en-
ployment to labor. This is not true.
There will be no Improvements made to
amount to anything for the next three
or four years unless there is heavy in
crease in taxation, whether the refund
ing ordinance is passed or not, and, if
it is passed, it will be more than ten
years before the city will be able to
appropriate any large sums for i'm
provements. Under the present system
of paying the principle OF the debt and
reducing the interest charge, in three or
(, four years we will have a large and
growing sum for improvements, which
will not be borrowed from the future.
So much for the bid they are making
for the labor vote.
They go after the saloon vote in an
other way. They go to the license
/ burdened saloon-keeper and tell him
| that he must DO all he can to help the
refunding ordinance through, because if
it does not pass they will be compelled
| to raise the saloon licenses. This is an
other falsehood. The City Hall people
dare not increase saloon licenses for
the very reason that if they did
| they would not get as much
money out Of them as they
| are getting now. It is a fact well
known to these City Hall workers that
| there are very many saloonists who
! are now, to borrow an expressive
phrase, hanging on by their eyelids. An
increase of license would promptly close
! them up and the sum total of revenue
| gained from this source would De re-
! duced instead of increased. There is
not the slightest intention Oh the part
t of the City Hall crowd, for more rea-
/ sons than this, of increasing saloon
licenses, refunding ordinance or no re-
| funding ordinance. TAey dare not.
They cast their Lives for the taxpayer
! vote by telling t1e taxpayer that unless
/ the refunding ordinance is passed they
will have to increase the tax rate. But
J they will hive to do this whether the
refunding ordinance passes or not, II
! they do what they say they will 3o,
! And moreover, let the taxpayer pause
I a dbment and think what is to become
OF him in the future if this refunding
ordinance is passed He will be com
PEELED to so on paying heavy annual
interest charge for the next ten years
until he will have paid a sum equal to
forty per cent. of the whole de,,t before
a dollar of the principle will have been
paid and at the end of that time he will
be in precisely the same shape he is now
with the same debt, as great as ever,
hanging over his head-7for the debt
must be paid in the end. Under the re-
funding ordinance it would take mill
ion of dollars to pay half million debt
and if in the next ten or fifteen years
the city should have occasion to borrow
two or three hundred thousand dollars
she would find herself unable to do so
because of the limit that is wisely
placed upon the amount to which she
may go in debt. Under the present
common sense plan the taxpayers will
see daylight in three or four years and
there will be a comfortable balance on
the right side in the city treasury. But
if the refunding ordinance is passed the
taxpayers will not see daylight for st
least fifteen years to come.
Which plan will the people support?
1t is not hard to tell, for the average
citizen is possessed of common sense