As it had been authorized to do so by the State, the City Council of Toledo, April 29, 1889, ordered gas bonds to the amount of $75,000 sold, that work on the city pipe line might begin. Before proceeding with the enterprise confided to them, the natural-gas trustees gave the private companies an opportunity to save themselves from the competition of the city. They asked them in writing if they would agree to furnish gas cheaply for a term of years, or if they would sell their entire plant to the city? They did this, as they expressed it, as "an honorable effort ... to obtain cheaper gas without unnecessary expenditure, and without injury to established rights." After a delay of nearly a month a reply was received, refusing to enter into negotiations either for a reduction of charges or for the sale of the private plants to the city. The trustees then asked for a personal interview, but this was refused. Then when the city began preparations to sell its bonds, a cannonade was opened on it in the courts, the money-market, the gas-fields, the city government, the press, among the citizens, and everywhere. Injunctions were applied for in three courts, unsuccessfully in all instances. No injunction was ever granted in these or any other of the many suits brought for the purpose of enjoining the sale of the bonds. Courts will usually grant temporary injunctions awaiting a hearing on the merits when complainants will enter into ample bonds and indemnify defendants. But the parties instigating this litigation would not put up the necessary bonds. They thus could smirch the bonds without incurring any personal liability in so doing. An expensive array of lawyers was sent before the United States courts to prevent the issue of the bonds on the ground that they were illegal, and the law under which they were issued unconstitutional. The principle involved had been frequently discussed and always upheld both by the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Supreme Court of the United States.[517] "Does not your argument appear to be in conflict with the views of the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Supreme Court of the United States?" the judge asked. The counsel for the gas companies responded in substance: "If so, then so much the worse for the views of those courts." As it was through the suffrage that the people of Toledo were able to do this, the attack was widened from an attack on the enterprise to one upon the sovereignty of the citizens which made it possible. "Everybody votes in Ohio--in fact, too many people," said the lawyer who applied for an injunction against Toledo. If he had his way, he declared, there would be fewer voters, and he stigmatized the arguments of Toledo as those of John Most, the communist.