Excerpt from Annual Reports of the Several Departments of the City of Allegheny, With Acts of Assembly and Ordinances, for the Year Ending December 31, 1870 I have been requested by some prominent business men, to recommend to councils the necessity of discontinuing the city business tax, for the reasons that it had a tendency to stagnate the business already in the city, and prevent others from com 111g in. It appears from the best information that I can get, that this tax is not levied in any other cities in the country except Allegheny and Pittsburgh. It would therefore proba bly give more satisfaction to the citizens if this tax was discon tinned, and the amount fixed more directly on the property; but since the amount is very small, and by no means burthen some, I would respectfully leave the whole matter for the consideration of the incoming councils. I desire to congratulate your honorable bodies on the ad vance of the credit of the city during the past year. At the beginning of the year 1870 our bonds were sold at some dis count, but for the last three months of the year the city has received par for all the seven per cent. Bonds offered. The policy which has been pursued by the city during the past few years, is, I think, a good one. It is certainly best always to make some provisions for the retirement of a loan, at the same time it is incurred, and by doing so, confidence is given to the creditor, and the city never embarrassed by any large portion of its indebtedness maturing at once. 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.