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Page 132 ORGANIZATION OF
COUNCIL
ing, and prohibited the erection of tile flues on dwellings or other
buildings. This stove pipe and tile flue question seemed to be of a
very serious character and a committee of three citizens was
appointed to investigate and examine all the buildings in the
borough and report to a council meeting. This committee subsequently
reported a number of violations of this ordinance and they were then
directed to see that the ordinance was enforced.
Another ordinance passed was that relating to the
construction and operation of slaughter houses. There were four or
five buildings in the borough limits used for this purpose and one
or two very close to the center of the town. The operators of
slaughter houses seemed to be rather careless about the odor that
might arise from their property. When one knows that the butcher who
owned the slaughter house also kept a herd of pigs to eat up the
offal from his slaughter house, he will have an idea of why this
ordinance was passed. At that time meat markets did not exist as
known in 1931. Nearly all the butchers supplied their own meat
markets with animals dressed in their own slaughter houses and some
of them peddled the meat from door to door. There were no
refrigerators and people had not become educated to the use of ice,
so that it was necessary to dispose of meat as rapidly as possible
after it was slaughtered. For many years complaints came to Council
about the stench of slaughter houses. They were finally banished
from within the Borough.
In July, the question of finances reached a climax. The
Street Commissioner had presented a payroll for $384.30 and David
McIntosh had presented a bill for $100.00 for "pulling stumps out of
DuBois Street and Garfield Avenue."
On the 22nd. of July the Council discovered that money
was very necessary and a resolution was passed to borrow $2000.00. A
financial statement appears on the records of the Council showing
the valuation of the properties within the Borough at that time was
$226,520.00. This would permit the raising of $2265.00 by public
taxes, as the rate of tax that could be levied at the time was 10
mills for borough purposes. However, the minutes do not indicate
that any tax was levied. The resolution prevailing at the time was
for the borrowing of $2000.00, to be secured by bonds of the
denomination of $100.00 each. The first patriotic citizen to come to
the front was William Allen, who bought the first bond. However,
this bond issue did not relieve the stringency of financial affairs.
The Council had gone on the principle that a borough order was good
and therefore they issued orders, which did not have the value of
the scrip issued by Mr. DuBois, for the reason that there was no
store behind them in which merchandise could be purchased and
therefore the holders of these orders were compelled to dispose of
them at whatever discount a merchant might wish to take from the
holder. The merchants cannot be blamed, because a number of these
orders floated around for several years before a system of finance
was worked out by which
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