The Honorable Way or None

New York, 1895

The South Side Observer, George Wallace's newspaper, sneers at the local board of commissioners of the Normal School and mildly censures them for not proceeding to build a $150,000 school with $100,000, trusting to some future legislature to make an additional appropriation. Perhaps George Wallace can see nothing dishonorable in such a course, but Governor McCormick and his colleagues have clear minds and good consciences, and therefore preferred to proceed in an honorable way to discharge an important public function. it would have been extremely dishonorable for the commissioners to have proceeded on the lines indicated by the Observer. To build and equip such a school as the population of the county requires $150,000 is necessary, and the commissioners would have to contract for $50,000 worth of work with no money in sight to pay for it, and if later on the legislature or the Governor should not be in a mood to make an appropriation just when the money was needed, the building would have to stand in an unfinished state and useless for any purpose. On the other hand, if the commissioners erected an inadequate school by keeping within the limits of $100,000 it might be years before an additional sum of money for its enlargement could be secured, and public buildings erected piecemeal never prove satisfactory. The commissioners have taken the sensible as well as the honorable course.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, May 10, 1895, p. 4.