NEW YORK MUNICIPAL FRAUDS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 888, 16 November 1871, Page 3

NEW YORK MUNICIPAL FRAUDS.

The storm of public anger which so suddenly burst upon New York promises really to sweep the municipality clear of fraud for some time to come. Meanwhile New York is still in a ferment over the city accounts. These, so far as they can be got at, are indeed a perfectly bewildering study. Mr Gladstone, in his famous speech on the taxing of charitable institutions, declared that the history of the mismanagement of some of these establishments possessed a " positively romantic interest." The history of the civic management of New York is full of romantic and even dazzling interest. The imagination luxuriates in the gorgeous amounts that array themselves in these astounding pages. Compared with these illustrious frauds all other historical embezzlements shrink into vapid insignificance. Tweed, Conolly, and Sweeney seem, as the German poet says, to be in advance of every possible future, in the way of misappropriation of public uionoys. Poor Fouquet shows small

and pitiful beside Conolly ; nor did his worst foes ever accuse Olive of such audacious feats as those which seem to have been commonplace performances to Tweed. Let us try to dazzle our readers a little with some details. Let us briefly recount the history of the new Court-house. At the lower part of Broadway, on the open space which we in London should call a square, but which is there known as the Citypark, are seen the white walls of a large unfinished structure, having no greater pretension to beauty than any of the newer warehouses of Manchester, or the Charing-cross Hotel. This building, quite unfinished yet, was begun seven years ago, and when it is finished is to be the new Court-house. The building was originally to have cost £50,000. We give in "all cases the amounts in round sums of English money. Already there has been spent on the bare walls and roof £750,000. But that is nothing. The walls thus expensively raised were always somehow in need of repair. Accordingly, during two years alone a certain firm received for repairing the walls and roof rather more than half a million sterling. Another firm charged for plumber's work during the same time £250,000. But the furnishing of this unfinished palace called for a yet more liberal expenditure. A New York firm received for furniture supplied during two years one million one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. More than a million's worth of chairs and tables for a building not yet finished ! The item of safes alone for the county offices—merely a portion of the building—is put down at £IOO,OOO, paid to one firm. The amount assigned to a company for printing and stationery, quite irrespective of advertising, reached in the two years to nearly half a million sterling. The carpets in the new Court House are set down as having cost £70,000 — a competent authority has just announced that their actual value must have been £2500, and no more. No wonder that the iVew York papers demand that the firms whose names are put down for these stupendous sums shall be called to a strict account, and compelled to say whether this money was all received by them; whether they have any secret partnership with any irembersof the Bing; and whether any person in office received a share of the money. There are overcharges so extravagant that the bare statement Jof them carries conviction. No one in his senses believes that over a million of money can be honestly laid out in two years on the furniture of a building not yet near completion ; and the New York papers ask in amazement how many miles of carpeting can be bought for £70,000. A respectable Democratic paper, the •' Citizen," the property of Mr Eooseveltundertakes to say that eventhe disclosures now made will prove to be five millions'sterling short of the actual truth. This journal offers to prove that the present administration has run New York—a city not one-third the size of London, and wretchedly paved and lighted—into a debt, after all its revenue has been absorbed, of twentyfive millions sterling. Comment on such figures as these would indeed be superfluous ; if they do not tell their own tale and carry their own moral along with them, nothing else could. There was, of course, a lavish and even a reckless expenditure in Imperial Paris when Baron Haussmann was Prefect of the Seine. But it was modest when compared to the expenditure in New York ; and there were results both solid and splendid to show for it. There was a whole city newly created. One might have his own opinion touching the artistic beauty of the vast stretches of broad white glittering streets, but accepting M. Haussinann's point of view, it could not be denied that he had carried out his purposes magnificently. He made of the dirty old Lutetia, whose filth Beranger deplored, the most superb spick-and-span toy city in the world. But New York has literally nothing to show for these few recent years of enormous expenditure. The money has simply gone to keep up a base organization and to enrich a gang of swindlers.