Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1893 — IT OUGHT TO HAVE HIT ‘EM SOONER [ARTICLE]

IT OUGHT TO HAVE HIT ‘EM SOONER

Inasmuch as tha JacLHiaiLJbi Town Board of Rensselaer saved four large dollars by cutting The the Washington street improvement matter has been paraded before the public, we think it well, before the hearts of the members of the Board become too much puffed up with vainglorious pride over that achievement, to call attention to the fact that their spasm of economy and caution struck them a little too late to be of much benefit to the property owners of the street and to the town tax-payers, generally. Of course $4 is $4; and if the old proverb is true * ‘s4 saved is $8 earned;” or at least the Board earned pretty nearly that much, for themselves in salaries, while saving it

The spasm ought to have hit them before they agreed to pay at the rate of $1.98 per cubic yard for crushed rock on t he two westernmost blocks of the street; and $2.50 per cubic yard for the other two blocks, when they had previously been getting the same kind of material gt $1.25 per cubic yard. It ought to have hitihem before they paid 20 cents per lineal foot for grading the two eastern blocks and then allowed the stone to be put upon such rounded-up grades, that in many places where the $2.56 per yard stone ought to have been 8 inches thick, it was only sor 6.inches thick. It ought to have struck them before they paid 15 cents per lineal foot for the tile drain down the center of the street when any farmer can get similar work for less than oue third that sum; and which, allowing liberally for the hardness of the digging, was at least twice as high as it should have been.

It ought to have hit them before they spent SSO or S6O in having the stand-pipes, or catch basins along the north side of the Btreet torn out and replaced by larger ones when even a school boy ought to have known that the catch basins ahead}’ there would let vastly more water into the small and badly constructed sewer below than it could carry away. It ought to have hit them before they compelled the writer of this article to pay sls for two of those new catch basins, one of which stands 4or 5 inches too high to admit any water, and the other of which is so badly put in that the water instead of going in at the gr ated top finds admission through the uncemented joints below. It ought to have hit them before they permitted the gutter in front of the public square to be constructed over the newly made and unpacked sewer beneath, and thus saved the cost of rebuilding the greater part of the gutter, this 6priug. It ought to have struck them beforo they fallowed the $2.56 per yard crushed rock to be placed above the newly made 15 cents per foot tile drain, and thus saved the SSO to $75 worth the rook aforesaid, which will settle down into the [ditch, when the ground “breaks-up” this spring. In fact, nothing but that four dollars saves the spasm from having struck the Board everlastingly too late, in every respect; and we don’t believe that even the four dollars would have been saved had not certain members of the Board <had it in” for us for having been rather too outspoken injegard to some of the matters above mentioned.

I have often thought that the the people, speaking of them generally, have never yet understood the value of good roads. They are not only matters of convenience, but they are really matters of great economy in every community. —l7. S. Senator Wm. A. Peff’er, Kansas, in Memorial to Congress on Road Exhibit a 1 World's Columbian Exposition.

Blankets, yarns, flannels in fact all winter goods, in abundance. , , \. . B. Fkndio ‘■ •4 ' '■ 4 n