Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 38

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In nearly all cities of 75,000 to 150,000 population, there are usually many thousands of dollars due the municipality in old claims, unpaid assessments, and all sorts of overlooked accounts in practically all departments. These have been allowed to accumulate until they amount to a sum large enough to materially reduce the tax levy for several years, but incoming administrations, having all the difficulties incident to their own tenures of office to meet, and having no disposition to overcome the shortcoming of their predecessors, pay no attention to these delinquencies, and the city’s debtors are thus allowed to escape payment of bills they justly owe.

It was under such conditions in a well known city of the Pacific Northwest that a young lawyer, just admitted to practice, discovered a field of activity that promised to bring him prominently into public notice, and at the same time to secure him a revenue that but few young attorneys are able to command in several of the earlier years of their practice.

He had previously examined the records in most of the departments, and thereby gained a close estimate of the enormous amounts still due the city on old accounts, which no effort had been made to collect for so long that many of them were outlawed and not legally collectable.

He then interviewed a number of city officials and submitted a proposition to collect these accounts, on a basis of commission dependent upon the relative difficulty of getting the money. His proposition was accepted.

A closer examination of the records showed that the amounts still due the various departments ranged from $13,000 to $60,000 in each, the aggregate being $200,000.

Having carefully laid his plans, his first step was to have himself interviewed by the city hall reporters of all the daily papers, in which he made it clear that he would bring suit against every one of those who owed the city anything on old accounts. This caused considerable uneasiness among the delinquents, many of whom came to the treasurer’s office and made settlements in full. Many of them, however, hung back, awaiting developments, and thereupon the young attorney brought a number of suits in the city’s name, in all of which he secured judgments against the defendants, and nearly all of them were paid.

In some special cases, where the debtors felt that they were safe, since the claims against them had been barred by the statute of limitations, the attorney, called upon the parties in person and gave them so fair an outline of the entire situation, laying special emphasis upon their moral obligation to pay even an outlawed claim, that more than half of those old claims were paid into the city treasury.

There are hundreds of cities in which other young attorneys can follow the same plan, with equally good results.