Excerpt from The Mayor's Message and Reports of the City Officers, Made to the City Council of Baltimore, for the Year 1877 Even our own city, as prosperous as we all flatter ourselves is its condition, has kept good pace in the augmentation of its indebtedness with the most progressive of its neighbors. We ought not to ignore the fact that, whilst it is true, as claimed by that portion of our public spirited citizens who are over anxious to embellish the city by liberal expenditures of the public funds, that the bonds of our city are in flattering de mand, the homestead and property of every man, woman and child in the community is mortgaged for their redemption. That there can be no permanent improvement in the value of property until confidence is restored, nor any general resumption of labor among our mechanics and workingmen until those having means to invest in building have reliable assurances that such investments will not be absorbed by the collection of taxes, are conceded and unquestioned facts. We are carrying quite a burdensome floating debt. Let us try and liquidate it by a judicious economy in our expenditures, and above all, let care be taken to make no new obligations for any purpose whatever, without first devising the means of liquidating them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.