The Treasurer’s Tab: Taxpayers Pay with Promises

There are no new developments in the Rogers affair, except that the treasurer has made public the names of most of the men whose notes he holds for taxes or borrowed money, mostly for taxes. The list includes a considerable number of well-known citizens, among them Hugh Eldridge and Edmund Cosgrove, who are the heaviest debtors, their notes amounting to thousands. Mayor Will D. Jenkins, the Populist editor; Gen. McPherson; H. C. Bell; George H. Engliston; Theo Gates; and J. D. Rocksberger are also named. Mr. Rogers' chief fault seems to have been inexcusable leniency with taxpayers who have played relentlessly upon his well-known disposition to be accommodating. Last year, he lent a willing ear to dozens of specious promises of speedy settlement, and during his first term issued receipts for $10,000 for which he did not at the time receive any money. His present troubles are the inevitable result of loose business methods and his too willing assumption of burdens that he was in no legal or moral sense called upon to bear.