Pavements, sewers, and reservoirs of
some sort must be had at once, even if inadequately planned and
imperfectly constructed; and so, before a great while, the work must be
done over again. Such conditions of imperative haste increase the
temptations to dishonesty as well as the liability to errors of judgment
on the part of the men who administer the public funds.[10] Then the
rapid growth of a city, especially of a new city, requiring the
immediate construction of a certain amount of public works, almost
necessitates the borrowing of money, and debt means heavy taxes. It is
like the case of a young man who, in order to secure a home for his
quickly growing family, buys a house under a heavy mortgage. Twice a
year there comes in a great bill for interest, and in order to meet it
he must economize in his table or now and then deny himself a new suit
of clothes. So if a city has to tax heavily to pay its debts, it must
cut down its current expenses somewhere, and the results are sure to be
visible in more or less untidiness and inefficiency. Mr. Low tells us
that "very few of our American cities have yet paid in full the cost of
their original water-works.
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