CHAPTER XX.
“BONDS SELL WELL.”
JOBE haint got that tax money yit. Times seem awful hard. But Jobe says they jist seem that way; they haint hard at all. “Times are never hard under a gold basis,” Jobe says.
Jobe was a argyin last nite that “times is better than they was jist arter the war.”
“‘Hadent we all ort to be satisfied so long as bonds sells well?’”
Says he: “Hadent we all ort to be satisfied so long as bonds sells well?”
Now, I dont know. Maybe we had.
“‘Times are never hard under a gold basis,’ Jobe says.”
But Jobe and me have been a keepin house for nigh onto thirty-six years, and of all the crops we have raised to try to make a livin at, Ive never seen Jobe plant a single government bond at seed-time nor harvest one at harvest time; so whether government bonds bring high prices or low, good prices or bad, I cant see what benefit it is to Jobe and his likes so long as they haint got any to sell. And if government bonds are like bridge bonds, I think the lower they are, and the fewer of them that are sold, the better it will be for him and his likes.
I guess it is really so that them iron tubes under the Dover bridge cost the taxpayers of this county jist what stone butments would a cost.
I hear the contract was fust let for stone butments, and then the same contractors persuaded the county commissioners, “by word of mouth or otherwise,” to let them put in them little iron tubes, and was paid the same pay as if they had put in stone butments.
They dont do things that way down in Pennsylvania. My aunt Jane’s son Charles is a workin down there. He sent me a paper from his town, and here is the way they do it down in that State:
“Hollidaysburg, Pa., June 24.—The Blair County Court, this afternoon, declined to order the release from custody of County Commissioners John Hurd and James Funk on a writ of habeas corpus. The accused officials were required to furnish bail in three different prosecutions for malfeasance in office. The grand jury reported to court this afternoon that the two commissioners had unlawfully let two important bridge contracts to the Groton Bridge Company at a loss to the county of $1,490. The jury requested that the court interpose its power to prevent such loss.”
You notice that it would be dangerful for county commissioners to let a bridge contract, like the Trenton bridge, contrary to law, without advertisin, if they were down in that State.
Jobe hasent time to discuss this bridge question now, nor wont have till arter tax-borrowin time is over. He is bizzy.