City Council Caught in Railroad’s Pocket

The city council considered at length the railroad ordinance, and after three hours spent in deliberating succeeded in adopting several amendments. The company has reduced its request for thirty to twenty feet for a right of way on the streets running east and west; it asks the council to give it six months in which to select a route through the city, and two years and a half before beginning operations. On this basis the ordinance passed its second reading. The Herald is strongly in favor of a railroad owned and controlled by local capitalists, but the amendment giving the company two years and a half in which to commence work looks as though it did not intend to prosecute the work as the urgency of the case demands. The council is supposed to be composed of intelligent men, but one certainly would not think so when he sees the attorney of the railroad corporation in their midst handing the members from time to time such amendments as his company desires made to an ordinance granting it a franchise. There was not one amendment offered by the attorney in question that did not pass the council. It is certainly an invigorating and refreshing sight to the taxpayers to see the attorney of a railroad corporation sitting with a city council and directing its deliberations.