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About The Falls City tribune. (Falls City, Neb.) 1904-191? | View Entire Issue (May 28, 1909)
Reminiscences of a. Wayfarer Some of the Important Events of the Pioneer Days of Richardson County and Southeast Nebraska, as remembered by the writer, who has spent fifty one years here. KAI.I.> t ITY’S MI'MCII’M. HONIlS When 1 determined to write my recollections of people and events in the early days. I in tended to confine myself to the territorial period of Nebraska history, and close with the ad mission of the state into the Union and its habilitation as an independent political autonomy, which was not complete until the close of the tirst session of the legislature under the con- j stitution, which met at Lincoln, j the new capital, in the winter! of IrttMl. A circumstance, which will sufficiently appear as this paper progresses, has induced me to make a slight alteration of my original plans and in this in-! stance to write of some matters' of public interest that occurred a few years after Nebraska had ceased to be a territory, and to which public attention has been] called by a recent publication in one of our local newspapers, it is from the pen of Mr. A. R. Keim. who has passed at least forty years of his life in Falls City, and as lie is not probably much above the age of fifty, his residence here covers therefore, the greater part of his earthly existence. The sub ject of his editorial in the Falls City Journal, of which I am in formed he is editor, of the date of May ltitli, instant, was cer tain municipal bonds alleged to have been issued by the city of Falls (’ity about thirty si \ years ago, to assist in building our present county court house; and cejtain bonds of the school dis trict, in which Falls Uitv was then, and yet is, located, upon which to procure money to biuld a school house, and which were issued two years after the court house bonds were issued and put on the market. The issue of those bonds and the circumstances attending the transactions from their ineep tion, and what followed, are en tirely consonant with my gen eral purpose in writing these reminiscenses, a n d t h o u g h events of a time 1 did not e.\ pect to write about, I embrace this opportunity to give to the public the real and indisputable facts concerning them, which ]Ur. Keim has not done. The editorial 1 refer to com * mences thus: “Falls City has an easy fash ion of voting bonds and also a convenient way of repudiating them.” This statement has not the slightest foundation in fact, and it is the purpose id' this article to make that plain to the “new comers in town and some young people”(1 use Keim'sown words! “who have grown up who have never heard<d our escapades in that respect." It is not a com mendable bird that will foul its own nest, and even if what he has written about Falls’ City were true, which it is not, it comes with a bad grace from one like himself, who has passed most of his life in the town, and whose father and uncle were among the most influential busi ness men in the city at the time the bonds lie mentioned were issued, and were the active fin ancial agents in the disburse ment of the funds received from their sale in furtherance of the enterprises they were intended to promote, to make a wholesale charge of dishonesty against the people of the town including his own flesh and blood. But that aside I make a further quo tation from his editorial of the 19th: “This is ancient history and the story no doubt will be fully and interestingly told by the ‘Wayfarer.’ ’ Whether interestingly told or not, I accept the task, and wil proceed to give the /arts as i know them to exist, and which others in Falls City at this mo ment, know quite as well, to lie named as I proceed. At the session of the legisla ture in the winter of 1*75, an act was passed authorizing “Falls City precinct to issue bonds to aid in the construction of a court house for Richardson county” in the sum of $15,000. That act was prepared by Mr. E. S. Towle, who was a mem her of that legislature, and passed into a law through his active exertions. Mr. Keim is tolerably correct when he said that the object of the law was to permanently locate the coun ty seat at Falls City, and end the long drawn out tight, which had disturbed the peace and quiet ol the people for more than fifteen years I was not in the country at the time, but Towle informs me that he introduced and passed that act at the ear nest solicitation of all the busi ness men in Falls City, includ ing tht' proprietors of The Falls City Rank, Mr. C. K. Keim and Mr. H. R. (irable, father and uncle of A. R. Keim, our city’s present critic. The bonds were issued accordingly and sold in the market, and 1 am told by Mr. John Hinton, who was also a banker in the town at the time, that the money was dis bursed through the Keim and (Irable bank, gentlemen who were as anxious to promote the Welfare of the city as any two men who ever lived in it. In the course of a year and a half perhaps, the court house was completed and formally pre seated to the county and the ap parently interminable struggle over the county seal question was in fact ended forever. Matters stood in that attitude till the 2nd day of duly, 1 "77. when an action was commenced in tin1 district court of our coun ty by dudge K. S. Dundy, an ex tensive property owner in Falls City precinct, against Diehard son county, to enjoin the collec tion of certain taxes that were alleged to have been illegally levied, among which was the tax to pay interest on the court house bonds. 1 have the record ol that case before me, and besides 1 was at torney for the plaintiff and my knowledge of what was done therein is full and complete. < hi the hearing in the lower court the contention of the plaintiff as to certain matters of tax, was sustained, but as to the court house bond tax, his bill was dis missed. From that decree an appeal was taken to the supreme court, where it was very fully argued on both sides, and on the 22ml day of April, I'-Td, an opinion was handed down by the court sustaining the district court in all its ruling in the case, except as to the court house bond tax, and as to that the de vision below was reversed, the tax held illegal and the bonds issued by the precinct absolute IV void, and for the following' reason I quote from the opinion of the court speaking bv Judge Maxwell: “The court house tax was levied for the payment of the bonds issued under a special act ol the legislature, approved February 14, l"7o. “to authorize Falls City precinct to issue bonds to aid in the construction of a court house for Richardson County.” Have such bonds any validity under our constitution? Sec. 1, Art. VIII of the constitution of 1S67, prohibited the legisla ture from passing any special act conferring corporate pow ers. This being the case, the act in question conferred no authority whatever to issue the bonds in question, and they were absolutely void in whom soever hands they may be." That was all the litigation that was ever had over these bonds. The validity of the tax levied to pay interest on them was not attacked by Falls City, or by Falls City precinct, but by a taxpayer. He had a ri^lit to do so, and the court had jur isdiction to decide the point. Of course that decision did not bind tile holder of the bonds for he was not a party to the suit, and besides the bond bold er bad a double remedy, for if the bonds were void for the want of power in the municipality to issue them, he could throw them aside and proceed against the municipality as for money had and received, and the courts have uniformly in all proper cases allowed a recovery. V old bonds cannot be issued, money obtained by a sale of them and the money kept by the municipality simply because the bonds are uninforcible as valid securities. The bonds are not the debt, but only the evi deuces of thedebt. Nosuit was ever brought on the bonds against Falls City precinct, or against any other corporate en tity, nor was any action insti tuted for the money obtained from their sale. The holder of the bonds is alone to blatne for the non-at tempt to enforce the obligation of Falls City precinct to repay the money it had received from the sale of its void court house bonds. The right of action to enforce that obligation became, barred by the statute of limita tions by such delay of the bond holder, and that is all there is of it. Nobody repudiated any-; thing, nor could it be done by anybody, or corporate munici pality. It is a thing impossible iii our government. Now as to the school bonds issued t wo years laterunder an other spe cial act of the* legisla ture empowering School Dis trict r>r>, the one in which Fails City was and is yet located. 1 l.a'. e conferred with Mr. .1. K. ( am. Sr., who was a member of the school board at the time, and he- remembers the.facts sub stantially as 1 do. Bonds to the amount of s?:M,ooo were issued by the school district under the authority of the special act above mentioned, and a contract let to .1. B. Burbank to build the school house. The bonds were in the Falls City Bank. This was sometime in the year l"7f>, probably about mid sum mer. Before the school board could negotiate a sale, it was discovered that there was some doubt as to their legal validity, and talk of an injunction pro ceeding to prevent their sale was rife on the street. This somehow came to the knowledg ot the contractor, Burbank, and by some means unknown to me, and Mr. Gainsays was unknown to him and the other numbers of the school board, Burbank procured possession of the bonds from the bank, spirited them away to St. Joseph, Missouri, and sold them, but for what price nobody, T think, but him self in Falls City, ever knew. This gave fraudulent currency of those securities in the mar ket. The board was powerless. The contract was already let and the bonds were sold. A strong pressure was brought on the board to 'let matters pro ceed. The country had been eaten up by grasshoppers, the people were idle, and no pros pects ahead. In that state of public necessity it was urged that the expenditure of fifteen or twenty thousand doll a r s among the people for material and labor would be a godsend to j the community and the argu ment prevailed. Later, when it was ascertained that the build ing was built in a flimsy and tin. substantial manner, some of the board rebelled, and all were dis satisfied. Mr. Robert Clegg, a member of the school board,now deceased, but who is remem bered by our people as one of our most active men of affairs, was determined to probe the whole business to the bottom. He had become convinced that the bonds were void, aad that the school district had been swindled in their sale; and be sides he didn't like the house Murbank had built, and he set on foot a scheme of his own to have an adjustment of matters between the bondholders and the school district, on a basis of equality and fair dealing. To that end he purchased one of the detached coupons from a school bond and brought suit on it in the district court against the school district. It was intended as a test case. The court held that the coupon and the bond from which it had been detached were void for the reason that the act under which they were issued conferred cor porate power on the school dis trict against the express prohi bition of the constitution. In order to have an authoritative judicial expression on the sub ject, Mr. Clegg carried the case to the Supreme court, where the, judgment below was affirmed. That case is reported in Volume s, Nebraska reports, at page 17s. The Dundy case against Richardson county is reported in the same volume at page 50b. The school board was then in position to talk to the holders of the bonds and said to them substantially this: “The bonds are legally void, but we don’t want something for nothing, we are willing to pay you what the school house is worth.” And • ' "M — I ■ nraiww IM they did, and it was received in full acquittance of the obliga tion. It is proper to say that a like holding on the question of Ille gality of the school bonds was had in the Untied States Cir- ( cuit Court at Omaha, a short time before and which was later affirmed by the United States Supreme Court at Washington. Clegg wanted a decision by our own Supreme Court. It will thus be seen that there was no repudiation by Falls City, or by any other corpora tion, of either bonds or debts, and besides Falls City did not issue any of those bonds. As the holders of the precinct court house bonds never made any ef fort to enforce them, or to re cover the money uaid for their purchase, it is impossible now to say whether the court would have allowed a recovery as for money had and received. There was already authority in the In ternai Improvement act or lHt><), ^ for a precinct to issue bonds to aid in works of internal improve ments—and our supreme court lias decided that a court house is such a work—but it required a vote of the people, while this one did not. It is not profitable to speculate as to probabilities The bondholders never put the matter to a test and that, as one William Shakespeare once said, is the end of the heart ache. It should be remembered that a people or a community has its life precisely like its component individuals, and that this ap prepate life is as much an indi vidualitv, as thouph the whole mass, great or small, were a single person, and may be made the subject of detraction and unfriendly criticism in the same way. In any case, the censor of the public morality should be cei tain of bis facts before he charges business immorality on a whole community. _cl It wasn’t the name that made the fame of Ur.eeda Biscuit It was the goodness of the crackers that made the fame of the name < Uneeda Biscuit Sold only in Mots turd* Proof Packages NATIONAL BISCUIT COMPANY