Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1900-10-24
MORE
 BOND HISTORY

the 'OlQ hellaDle With the santa c company and a whole lot ot rubbish which has no bearing on the question of the legality of these bonds. But even in this it fails to state the whole truth, and that after two or three miles of the s. F., P. X P. railroad had been graded, work was suspend ed pending negotiations for the pur- chase of MT. Bullock's road. What our contemporary is pleased to call the ''taxless and political" road made Mir. Bullock an offer of a cash bonus for his road, agreeing to protect the holders of the bonds of the P. X A. c. railroad. The offer was rejected and right there dates the commence ment of the downfall of that railroad. Had Mir. Bullock accepted this offer the s. F., P. & P. railroad would not have been built. The P. & A. c. railroad -ewould have passed to the control of the other company and would have re- mained as a tax-paying road and there would have been no taxless road between Prescott and the Santa Fe system and the road between Prescott and Phenix would have been com pleted year or two sooner. By the rejection of the offer the bond holders of the P. & A. c. railroad lost every dollar of their investment and the county lost the taxes from the old road. The difference between the amount required to build the S. F. P. and P. railroad and the purchase price and rebuilding of the old road would have justified the former com pany to have paid the annual taxes on the road. As already stated, this question has no bearing whatever on the legality or illegality of those bonds, but since it has been intro duced as a side issue the public may as well know the true history of it. Our contemporary then says: Now, then, the P. X A. c. had ceased to operate, had been taken out of the country, and had practically ceased to pay taxes-all of which conditions were brought about by the taxless political railroad, which later on took upon itself the task of forcing our people to pay for these bonds, which the highest court in the land had in effect decided illegal" Here We get at the date when the bonds became illegal. For seven years as admitted by the Courier mo one ever dreamed of their being illegal" but when the P. & A. c. road ceased operation, an opportunity for the repudiation of these bonds presented itself and the question of their illegality was raised as an excuse for repudiation. The memory of the writer of the aforesaid article again shows weakening and unreliability in the statement that the highest court in the land had in ef- feet decided the bonds illegal. As a matter of fact, the highest court in land, evidently the supreme court of the United States, had never had the question before it, hence could not have rendered any decision whatever. Hence the above is misleading in this respect.
 With a charming frankness rarely seen in our contemporary, it says:
 "When the taxless political brought about this bad condition in the P. x A. c. affair, the people, as a matter of equity and self-protection, looked for an avenue of escape, and this escape was found in the acknowledged il- legality of the bonds"
 The acknowledged illegality of the bonds was only for political purposes, and the personal acknowledgement by any individual did not make them il- legal.
 As a matter of fact the validity of the Maricopa county subsidy bonds, issued exactly under the same condi- tions, as the Yavapai bonds, has never been questioned and there would be just as much sense and jus tice to raise the question of their va lidity as those of this county, yet no one has ever dreamed of doing so.
 Our contemporary quotes an article from the Enterprise in which the Pima county bonds are coupled with those from this county. There is no similarity between the two at all. No railroad was ever built under the Pima county subsidy, and hence the bonds were never earned. That county never admitted the legality of those bonds, and has never to this day paid a cent of interest on them or recognized their validity in any way, whereas in this county the railroad was built, the interest on the bonds was paid for seven years, as the Cou- rier admits, without ever dreaming of contesting their legality, and in ad- dition thereto S27,0O0 of the principal was paid.