I found this short editorial on page 4 of the the August 7, 1914, State Journal. This was four days prior to the “Bum Walks” city council meeting report that has given me so much joy. Evidently, the subject of sidewalk construction contracts was an ongoing controversy. I will reproduce the article here, as I believe it is out of copyright.

The State Journal‘s recommendation that the city do all of its own sidewalk construction work was clearly not adopted, at least not for long, since otherwise this blog would be 100% Department of Public Works/Department of Public Service/O&M stamps. On the other hand, this has caused me to look over my records and notice that there are certain spans of time in which I do not have any non-DPW stamps recorded. All the stamps I have from 1910 and 1911 are Minnis and Ewer, then I have no stamps collected from 1912 through 1918. The 1918 and 1919 stamps are all DPW, then from 1921 until 1924 there are quite a lot of DPW stamps mixed with a small number of Wm. Meister. Another notable period is 1941 through 1945, during which time all the stamps I collected were DPW.