The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-05-23
Low Debt IS | Greatest Need
 Of Any City
Governor Baldwin Declares People Should go Slow in In- curing Bond Issues

New Haven needs most to go slow in the direction of mourning debt, said Governor Simeon B. Baldwin, speak ing before the Civic Federation. at it's annual meeting, in the Elm City, last night. Governor Baldwin came out strongly against the issuance of bonds for public improvements where the cost Is not too large to be borne by taxation and cited the recent agita- ton against the county tax imposed for the new county building, saying that he was glad the county represen- tatives refused to agree to a bond issue for this project. The others to speak on the subject, What New Irving Fisher of Yale, who scored the present Health Board as inefficient and proposed a number of new health regulations, and Rev. Dr. Watson l.. Phillips, who urged a stiffer code of ethics and an uplift of the church.
 Governor Baldwin spoke but briefly, but his recommendation for the pay as-you-go" policy is especially inter esting, in view of the recent agitation for various bond issues. He spoke of the county building as one of the greatest buildings in the world, and said that it was credit to the county commissioners whom you have heard about tonight" referring to Dean Rogers address earlier in the even ing. The Governor spoke, in part, as follows, on What New Haven Needs Most'':
 'I should say just now, that it needs most to go slow in running farther into debt. It is an easy thing to spend other peoples money for them. It is an easy thing to spend our posterity's S money for them. We have only to draw a bill of exchange upon them, and 1t is good without acceptance. We do this by issuing long time bonds for them to pay.
 ''The general law of the land has provided an effective check on the natural tendency of the voters in mu- nicipal corporations to borrow money to pay for local improvements. It is that they cannot do it without special authority from the State. Why not? taxation, that is. by taxing themselves. Pay as you go is the general rule of law for cities.
 "I was glad for one that our county representative assembly ordered the expense of our new court house to be raised by taxing ourselves, and not our grandchildren. We get the bene- fit of it. Let us pay for it. Let us pay for it just as the first settlers of New Haven paid for the Green. They laid it out, to start with; put part of their scanty capital in it, and left it free and unencumbered to us, to enjoy after two or three centuries what they had paid for, for our benefit even more than for their own.
 "The way to raise money by taxa tion, without being weighed down by the burden of 1t, Is not to spend too freely. Get what we really need, and then stop
 we are getting for instance, what we really need in the new court house. But there are some of our citizens who are not for stopping there. They down whatever stands in the way of seeing the new court house from every side. They want, in short, to pull down the Trowbridge house, which we have bought and paid for out of taxes. It would be useful to the city for housing city officials, like the Board of Health or the Board of Education, but no, pull it down, they say, to inn prove the view. I think we can af- ford to wait awhile, and let posterity do the pulling down, if they decide in favor of such course.
 We are bonding ourselves for contagious disease hospital and it is right. We may have to bond our selves for sea walls on the harbor-for more park or playground SlCeS-Dut let us look carefully before each step in that direction.
 Many a taxpayer in this city is hanging on to his house lot by the hardest work. He is pressed here by an assessment for a widening, or sewer, and there by an order to relay a pavement, which is now in tolerable condition. not quite so handsome as a concrete one, but likely to outlast two of them. He wants no more inter- est charges rolling. up on city bonds. Let us let up on him and his children after him, by borrowing only when we must, and taxing for what we need"