Economy

New York, 1895

The Town Board is trying to cut down town expenses, and to that end has passed a resolution to cause the election printing to be done by contract. The Republican members of the board were as strongly in favor of this as the Democratic members.

When the price at which the work must be done has been established, the Town Clerk will be free to have the work done where he pleases within the town, so that the contract resolution passed by the Town Board in no way interferes with his control of the work. All that the Town Board seeks to accomplish is to have the work done at the least possible expense. The same thing has been done in all the other towns, except Newtown, and the consequence has been a large saving to the tax-payers. Take Oyster Bay as an example. The work was let without contract last year to the Hempstead Inquirer, and $10.50 per 1,000 was charged for the official ballots. This year, under the contract plan, the Glen Cove Gazette will do the work at $5 per 1,000, so that the town saves $6.60 on each 1,000 ballots. Jamaica wants to save money, too, and will.


Floodgates of Incompetency

This Legislature is passing a mass of special legislation, declaring the acts of notaries public legal and confirming the official deeds of dog-wardens and fence-viewers. It is to be feared that all the good work done by years of refusal by Democratic executives to approve such special legislation will be undone, and that the statutes will again become clogged with a job lot of hasty, inconsistent and half-baked laws. This is the more to be apprehended, as the State has no longer the able counsel of Prof. Collin and the old statutory revision commission to protect it against the floodgates of incompetency and conflicting enactment, now wide open and pouring in upon it.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 15, 1895, p. 4.