[59]
| Sealer of weights and measures | 1,491.29 |
| Sewers | 87,553.59 |
| Sinking fund | 106,940.00 |
| State aid | 23,159.91 |
| Stationery and printing | 2,843.14 |
| Street department | 223,205.21 |
| Treasury | 13,471.50 |
| Water-works | 758,054.81 |
| ———-- |
| Total | $2,520,579.11 |
The state census of 1895 found the population of
Cambridge to be 81,643.
At the close of the half century, therefore, we find the municipal expenses to be $30.87 per inhabitant, as compared with $3.13 for the first year.
There were in 1895 extraordinary expenses for the extension of the water-supply system and for parks, which raise the total municipal expenditures above the average of the years immediately preceding; but yet this sum of $30.87 may fairly be set against the $3.13 as illustrating the extent which has been reached in the municipalization of the people's energy and resources.
It is also necessary to state in this connection, that the city at the end of its fifty years of charter life owns
real estate valued at about three millions of dollars.
The net funded city debt, exclusive of the water debt at the close of the fiscal year of 1895, was $2,244,183. The tax rate in 1895 was $15.70 on $1,000 of full valuation, and the total amount of real and personal property was $80,911,060. The tax rate in 1846 was $5; the total valuation $9,312,481, and the city debt $22,000. In 1846, the municipal debt amounted to .0023 of the wealth of the city; in 1895, the debt amounted to .0277 of the city's wealth.
It was not intended that this chapter should be a compilation of figures, nor even a mere directory of municipal improvements.
It seems necessary, however, that these comparative statistics which have been recorded should be set down in order that the main purpose of the chapter may be carried out.
Mr. James Bryce, in his elaborate review of the workings of American municipal government, says: ‘Two tests of practical efficiency may be applied to the government of a city: What does it provide for the people, and What does it cost the people?’
The facts which have burdened this chapter will answer to a considerable extent, so far as
Cambridge is concerned, these two practical questions.
