New Methods In Bond Selling

New York, 1895

The board of education of the village of Jamaica will once more try to dispose of $70,000 of school bonds. The advertiSement of the board is published in THE FARMER, and any one who reads it will be struck by its peculiarity. Bids will be received until the 7th day of May, but on April 23rd and 30th the board will meet and publicly open such bids as are in then and award the bonds bid for. We confess that we never before heard of such a method of selling bonds, and it is so unfair a method that bond buyers might well be suspicious of it. How can the board tell, until after the bidding has been finally closed, which bid is the most advantageous? Suppose that on April 23rd some person should bid to take the bonds at par, and on April 30th some other person should bid to take the bonds at 105, how could the board award bonds to the higher bidder after they had been awarded to the lower bidder? The way of selling bonds the world over is to fix a day and an hour when bids will be received and opened, putting all financiers on a level in the competition. Under the system proposed by the board of education it is possible to do the village a serious wrong. The complication is made worse by the advertisement in the Standard stating that bids will be received and opened on April 16th, and the bonds then bid for awarded. It puts everybody at sea.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, April 12, 1895, p. 2.