St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1919-10-11

Bonds.
In the second place, the road propo-
sition had been held up for some three
or four years, and failure to sell
would no have entailed a serious dis.
aster.
In the third place, it is quite a diff
ferent proposition to sell $4,000 0 of
bonds and $4,000, 900, just as it is a
different proposition to sell a handful
of securities for investment and a
barrel or two for marketing. Those
houses or syndicates which buy bonds
for resale must allow for the expenses
of marketing the bonds, as well as
for the fact that, in order to get out
whole, the bonds must be offered at
figures which will be attractive to pur-
chasers who were al the anne time
offered other higher interest paying
securities, to a nothing of the U. S..
Government Liberty Bonds paying 4
ga per cent.
In the fourth place, it was expected
that the proceeds Of the canal bonds
would, at the rate the work was pro-
crossing, be drawn out within the
year, whereas, the expectation of the
bonus in respect to the road bonds,
judging from the past progress of
road building, ws that they would have
the use of the money or a part Of it for
a long time to~come.
Finally, "your" bonds were not
afflicted with the weakness of the
instability of organization, as was
the case in the Dock Board is
sue; which weakness you we'll
knew consisted in the fact that,
under the existing law, you or
any other Governor had the pow
err of removing the Board and de-
..moraIizing its work at which
weakness ! had some time before
urged you to cure by neces-
sary legislation and which you
had, for political reasons, declined
to do.
At any rate, / am willing, for the
sake of the arg uent, to admit that
your" dinky sale under the circum-
stances turned out better than our S.
100000 sale. | then ask, if, in case,
for any reason for market or other
wise, you" had fallen down or
your" sale, whether or not such fact
would have convicted you of ignorance
and incompetence and justified your
removal from the office of Governor?
Lethargic
You say that my board has been
lethargic and that / stated that the
canal would be completed by this time
or sooner. You state that but for the
slow and weak way in which the work
has been pushed, it would have been
completed before the safe and city
election next year.
I do not know where you get your
dates and data. I at no time told you
that the canal would be completed by
this time or soone On the contrary,
the earliest date mentioned for COM
pletion was January /, 1920. This
was the engineers estimte made be-
fore many of the subsequent Difficult
ties had been encountered. If you
will take the trouble to refer to the
record, you will find substantiation of
this statement. You have in this re-
spect merely gone off half cooked by
listening to the wild statements of
some of your political encourage.
In spite Of the natural difficult
ties of the project, the delays
labor troubles, the delays in Sc
curing machinery and material,
and the difficulties of the trans-
portation thereof, | venture to say
that in no case in the history Of
construction in Louisiana has as
much work been done in a little
more than a year than has been
accomplished on the canal.
I am entirely willing to leave this
issue to any reputable engineers or to
any d~isinterested citizen, but not to
a politician OF politicians seeking to
mislead the people of the state for
their own supposed advancement of
a red hot political campaign.
If there is any ground for the charge
of extravaganza against me and our
Board, it is because we made haste
in completing the work, the primary
consideration. But this is not ex-
trayagance in the end, because the in
terminable delays that have character
lied the work of the boards prior to
our administration has proved much
more costly than the expense of inten-
sified work.
! refer to the gross Hardness in
IlhlsnIng tne grain eleVatoF ana
cotton wharfhouse, entaiIing the
less of hundreds Of Thousands of
dollars under former administra-
tions, as contrasted with the ex-
petition with which we finished
these plants.
If you are not familiar with this
record, as l do not suppose 0 are, |