MORE BONDS AND “HIGH FINANCE” 145 
during the coming ‘dull season’-—say June to August—at 
the same rate, 3.65, as before; and private sale, in my judg- 
ment, is the best way to accomplish the most favorable 
results. 
“You recollect Mr. Morgan told me he would take the 
whole two and a half millions at private sale, but he would 
not go into competition for an issue of that size. 
“There has been no perceptible change in the underlying 
conditions as to rates of interest in the moneyed centres. 
English consols touched the highest price last week they 
have ever sold for. The demand for high-class bonds was 
shown the other day, when Brooklyn’s million and a quarter 
loan, 3.50 bonds, were bid for two or three times over 
above par. 
“All there is in making a good sale of bonds now is, first, 
a good bond; second, the right method of handling it.” 
I was free to confess then, as since, my inability to grasp 
even the possibility of advantage to the taxpayers of Essex 
County from the proposition for them to pay in $5,250 
extra every year for thirty years (the average life of the 
bonds) in interest, for the privilege of having a sinking 
fund of $72,900 in the hands and under the control of the 
sinking fund commissioners of the Board of Freeholders, 
instead of the $5,250 each year being saved and retained in 
their (the taxpayers) own pockets. That the bonds of a 
3.65 interest rate were then saleable “at not less than par,” 
as provided in the park charter, was manifestly shown by 
the Messrs. Seligmans’ bid of 100.28 for the whole 
$1,500,000 issue. 
“MODERN HIGH FINANCE.” 
What the actual loss to the people of Essex County by 
the issuance of those bonds at four per cent. and the addi- 
tional $2,500,000 of bonds since issued for the parks at that 
rate instead of at the 3.65 rate, as with the first million 
issued, may, I think, be properly left to the future and for 
