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Common Council

About This Item

  • Title: Common Council
  • Date: 24 September 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00693
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 24 September 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Elva Moreno Del Rio Conner Lynn Thara Michaelis Stephanie Blalock Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Common Council." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00693.xml (TEI)
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COMMON COUNCIL.—

In case a quorum of this body is present this evening, a vigorous effort will be made to obtain leave for the Water Commissioners to sanction the expenditure of $135,000 beyond the original contract price. Until we hear the arguments pro and con, it would be premature to express any opinion as to whether the conduit should cost this amount more than the canal; but it should be borne in mind that though the mere expense of building the conduit would be greater than that of excavating the canal, yet the contractors would have, in making the latter, to purchase a wider strip of land, build bridges, and put up miles of fencing, all of which items of expense would be saved by building a conduit. Bearing in mind these things, and also the difficulty of making a water-tight canal in so porous a soil, we are inclined to think that the contractors can as cheaply build the conduit as the canal, and hence the $135,000, if voted, would be a clear bonus to them. This would account for the anxiety they exhibit to get the alteration sanctioned.

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