1 , , inn Touting the Xoelephones in Hill 15oten. 119 The telephone franchise monkey business still hangs fire, and with every fresh delay the Bell people get the worst of it. From their proud position po-sition of masters of the situation they have tumbled tum-bled to the ignominious attitude of accepting the crumbs that fall from the councilmanic table. They first wanted a long term franchise with no maximum rate limit. The council made a play for additional concessions to the city. The Bell people peo-ple conceded every demand only to find themselves them-selves being plucked without making any headway toward a new franchise. The company dickered back and forth with the council until patience ceased to be a virtue, when the sly city dads rubbed it into the poor telephone people by limiting limit-ing the term to thirty years and fixing the maximum maxi-mum rate to be charged at ?5 Wasn't that a corkerina. The Bell people were completely knocked out. They came up asking for the earth, and they are tendered a quarter section in Greenland. Green-land. There may be an explanation of why this is thus, but just at present It is not In sight. tiX cv tJ After all, while there may be some motive In the passive hostility of the council, it is certain that the Bell company deserved better than they received. There is something coming to whoever is responsible for the humbling of the telephone company, and the punishment ought to be worse than being compelled to take a junketing trip east at the expense of the company. Come to think of It, the Bell people sort or depended on the Mayor of Billtown to deliver the goods. At least that is implied by the position taken by Deputy Manager Davis of Salt Lake. Why has not Bill made good? If he is the nigger in the company com-pany watermelon patch, by all means let him come forward and explain why he has permitted the company to get bumped. If Bill is responsible there may be a righteous reason for the action of the council. There are people who think Bill had nothing to do with it, and I am one of them. My address is Joplin. t,5 O S& Once there was a Mayor who owned a street supervisor. One Saturday the Mayor got a hunch from a popular Weekly that the streets of Bill- In' i-mSlH town were desperately in need of medical atten- 1'llsB tion, with Sapolio added, so he ordered his super- arlSB visor to get a move on and haul the sweepings up 1 kiflH Twenty-fourth street and dump the loads on the flfl north side so the lawn would grow green and & liiH grassy around the house that Tom built. The su- P'yiH pervisor was a nice man with a wink, and he did m H not need to be told a thing twice. Some wicked ftvlH reactionaries saw the free doin's, and they gath- m 139 ered on knockers' corner and did a hammer quar- nHJlsfl tette. The Mayor was not phased. He knew a good m 11H thing when he both saw and heard it. He offered If- fljflfl to pay the man with the hoe for tne guano, but t m'llB the supervisor was on, and there was nothing do- M-'waaM ing. So the Mayor wrote a long message to the IftiflfH city council offering to pay the city for the patent tmflfl lawn-sprouter which had emigrated into his lot. v'13h It was a Heroic play to the grandstand, and It h iljnfl worked. Afterward he published it in his own if'i8i9fl paper witn his name at the bottom, and the people fffwafl who read it said it was better than a circus. fjl 6B Moral Renominations come high, but we must K l&flfl have them. S'sH