Year: 1878

"n ieei lnat tney nave ample
ground for their impatience that is more
and more taking the form ofindignation
: as weeks lapse into months and months
, into years, and there is no apuarent
move made to undertake the work for


which comparatively large appropria-


tons have been made, some of them


more than two years ago, and thus fur


nlsh labor and give business a fresh
Impetus And it is not easy to feel


otherwise than that those entrusted


with the work for which these appropri-


atoms haye been voted are supremelv


indifferent to the distress everywhere


prevalent, else those works had been


undertaken long ago and pushed to


completion. July 9Th, 1876, Congress


still prompted by the patriotism and


other inspiring things imblbed ON the


occasion of the members visit to the


Centennial Exposition the day previous


voted 100000 wherewith to complete


the Washington Monument. After


good deal of dilly- -dallying among the


officials, including survey by an Army


Engineer whose conclusions were subse-


quentiy found all wrong, it was decided


an additional $4,000 was required to


strengthen the base that the imposing


superstructure might be entirely safe.


It was voted and early last spring it was


announced that everything was in read


mess and that the work was to 60 right


on to completion But beyond tearing


OIL the old work left on top the marble
shaft when work was discontinued near
ly 20 years ago, and carting a little earth
from one part of the ground to another,
giving employment to only handful of
laborers, nothing seems to have been
done; and at the rate ofspeed manifested
by the custodians of this fund in push
ing the work, George Washington will
have been forgotten many thousand
years before the monument is completed
if only that is requisite to Keep his men,
ory green. This illustrates the spirit
that seems to have governed relative
to other public works for which appro-
priations were made months ago. Our
well paid, luxuriously lodged, and over
fed officials seem too intent on their
own ease and pleasures to spare little
of their squandered time to the duties
made by law incumbered on them and
whose prompt execution would afford
vital relief to scores who seem their
superiors in everything but official posi-
ton. There is also growing fear that
in our change of District Commission
ers, we have fallen into the hands of
modern reformers or at least that a
majority of the new Board are Justly
entitled to the kind of distinction i'm
plien by that designation. Burdened as
we are with debt,while advocating rigid
retrenchment by cutting down the sal
aries of school teachers. policemen and
other aOorkers, and while looking on with
apparent unconcern, and self satisfied
complacency, at the effort to reduce the
rate of day laborers to SOC a day, they
are reported as ransacking the law for
to increase the District Attor-
ney's salary to 5000.


Recent investigation by those largely
interested in the shipment of cattle to
Europe, seems to have aroused new in
terest among business men of Baltimore,
and New York, in new
railroad enterprises, having among their
other special objects, the furnishing of
better facilities to this trade and its
larger developement. The direct ship
ment of cattle, though of comparatively
recent beginning, has become business
Of considerable magnitude. Lack of
facilities seems about the
only bar to its almost indefinite expan-
sion. Coupled with the "hard times"
the arbitrary course and exorbitant
rates demanded by our only railroad to
the Pacific, have served to confne the
limits within which it could be profta-
bly, carried on, as has been the case with
ordinary kinds of business that has been
forced to seek market oyer Hunting
toms road. As intimated heretofore,
many hostile to the new lines projected,
and large class of business men who
were Indifferent so long as they were
furnished fair accommodations even
though at high rates, seem about to
unite with the advocates of competing
lines, to free themselves from the e1ac-
tons and intolerably tyranny of the
existing monopoly. MAXWELL.