The Cosmopolis City Club Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 Excerpt: ...in the board reached the public; but days and weeks passed by, and nothing was done. VI Meantime the work of the club went steadily forward. The committee on Streets and Sewers made its report at the second regular meeting, and it was full of startling revelations. The paving contracts for the last three years had been carefully looked into, and the facts and figures presented were clear proof of corruption. It was shown, beyond question, that certain favored contractors secured all the work, and that other responsible firms had found it useless to compete. Expert testimony proved that the profit on most of these contracts amounted to fully forty per cent. It was shown that in a neighboring city a far better pavement of the same sort had been laid at two thirds of the cost of the Cosmopolis pavement. A break in one of the sewers had been repaired during the year, and the committee furnished an itemized statement of the cost of the job. As a sample of the neat manner in which this report was written, a few extracts are subjoined: "Mr. B. B. Allen was first put in charge, and superintended the excavation, shoring up, and preparation of the bed for the bricklayers. For some unexplained reason Mr. Allen was relieved on September 14, after completing the preliminary work at a cost of $2444.68. The job was then put into the hands of Mr. P. A. Charles. In his payroll, an item of $19,690.62, we find Mr. Charles personally entered for 100 days, Sundays included, as superintendent at $10.00 per day. Some of his men made from two and a half to three days' work on an individual day. Calculating from the pay-roll the various proportions of skilled and unskilled workmen, and averaging their wages at $3.00 per day for 94 days, we find that 66 men must have been conti...