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Show 4 r W- . THE CITIZEN they traded him out of everything of value in consideration of letting him have his way about the League of Nations. They bought his goods and sent him the bill. If such dear friends as the British and French premiers would take advantage of the President's absurd idealism is it any wonder that the wily Venustiano Carranza, leader of a Mexican faction hostile to the United States, should seek to advantage himself and his faction by overcoming idealism with the customary weapons of practical diplomacy and by a show of firmness which is in constant contrast with the President's weakness? Instead of recognizing Huerta and thus shifting to him the task of bringing Mexico back to order and tranquillity, the President, abandoning all the rules of the game, preached a holy war on him and succeeded finally in undermining him and rendering him an outcast. The result was that all the burden was shifted back tQ the United States. We had had a chance to arrange friendly relations with a strongly entrenched Mexican president capable, if recognized by the United States, of tranquillizing all Mexico and , WA TER BOND restoring a regime of law and order. Instead of adopting: this course, the President, although repeatedly snubbed and insulted by. Carranza, who tickled the Mexican populace with his tactics, finally recognized the impossible Carranza and secured for him and his faction a power that has been directed almost always q to the injury of the United States. Compelled to intervene twice, the President timorously drew back each time and offered a specious excuse. The last time he was able to cite the proximity of war with Germany as an excuse for not making the intervention in Mexico final and decisive. But whatever the excuse, the result was always some act that put off the day of settlement and provided for intervening days, months and years of bitter relations and outrages. That a definite settlement must be reached is emphasized by Carranza's continuing policy of affront. And when the day of set tlcment approaches a President of the United States who fails to measure up to the crisis with firmness, dignity and power will be anathema. bull-baiti- ng PROPOSITION ABSURD weeks ago we suggested that the city commissioners lay cards on the table in the matter of the $3,300;000 bond issue proposed to enlarge the water supply of Salt Lake City. Now that most of the cards are on the table the proposition appears to be absurd and chimerical, in no sense what the people of Salt Lake City demand or need. The Citizen has stood consistently for a greater water system that would furnish a water supply for a city of many hundreds of method of thousands of inhabitants and it has decried the quart-cu- p adding a little water here and a little water there. The only satisfactory system will be a vast flow of pure water obtained from a few sources and preferably, if possible, a single source. As the cards have been laid on the table, the water commissioner and those commissioners who side with him have made it apparent that they are trying to repeat the blunder of former years. Waters of doubtful purity are to be impounded and kept standing in mountain reservoirs until they become unfit for culinary use. No great source of pure, flowing water is included in the preposterous plan. We hear the old, familiar jargon about providing a sufficient supply for a city of 400,000 or 500,000 people. If our memory serves the same city engineer who is back of the present scheme made the estimate at the time the water system was enlarged a few years ago. As a result we obtained two nicely rounded teapots in Parley's canyon and every summer the 140,000 inhabitants of Salt City are put on water rations while Commissioner Neslen of the water department employs various kinds of hysterical cries and Cassandra-lik- e warnings to let the people know that they are on the point of dying of thirst unless they obey his SEVERAL The trouble with some, of our commissioners is that they have forgotten all about business methods if they ever were familiar with them. Perhaps neither Mayor Bock nor Commissioner Neslen come under the designation of business men and perhaps they may plead ignorance. Commissioner Green, however, was elected on the theory that he was a business man and we cannot bring ourself to believe that he approves of the silly scheme. To ask for any kind of a bond issue at this time shows poor business judgment. Even if the bonds should be sold at par during the next twelve or eighteen months the money would buy less than a similar sum ever bought in the history of the nation. Despite war taxes, luxury taxes, excess profit taxes, state, county and city taxes and special taxes the commissioners propose to add $3,300,000 to the city's indebtedness to obtain a water system which will turn out to be almost as inadequate as those systems which have from time to time been pieced together by our political during the last twenty-fiv- e years. The obvious remedy is to get along with what we have for a couple of years and take advantage of falling prices. We shall suffer some inconvenience, perhaps some positive distress, but better that than another costly mistake. If we give the commissioners the $3,300,000 to squander we shall have nothing left for paving improvements and, in a few years at the farthest, we shall be compelled to spend other millions for a real water supply system. toy-make- rs tin-dipp- er regulations. As a result the water question has become a grim joke to the people. Now the city commissioners who favor the $3,300,000 bond issue are striving to delude us into the belief that we must accept their proposal or suffer dire consequences. We are warned that if we do not give the commissioners the $3,300,000 they are yearning for we must either give them $10,000,000 for a bigger project or die of thirst next summer. If we are not deceived it is a frame-uand a hold-uTrue, the present supply is not what it should be, but it can be made to do until such time as we shall not be fleecing ourselves to provide the city commissioners with money which will be squandered at the peak of high prices. If we wait two years we should be able to save a million dollars or more. If we use the money during the next seven or eight months we shall be paying the highest recorded prices in the nation's history for material and labor. The new plan will not provide water for 500,000 or 400,000 inhabitants and Mr. Burton has shown that even the water we get will not be all pure running water but that much of it will be impounded for long periods and will stagnate. p. p. A TRUST WITH A HALO the majority opinion of the federal supreme court the United BYStates Steel corporation has been awarded, so to say, the white ribbon of righteousness. And the same opinion proclaims that thf Tobacco Trust and the Standard. Oil companies, as they existed before dissolution, were reprobates. The distinction is between a corporation which engages in fair competition only and a corporation which employs unjust, dishonest, and brutal methods of driving independents out of business.' The steel trust was not always as pure as it is today. It began life with the stigma of illegitimacy upon it, so we are led to infer. It grew up addicted to the vices of its day, but suddenly, in 1911, it got religion, turned over a new leaf, quit its bad practices, and entered upon a sober middle age. It would not accept or grant a rebate ; it would not undersell until a competitor was annihilated and then raise prices ; it would not even lure competitors to Gary dinners. as it did in its dissolute youth, and drug them with cold champagne and hot birds until they lost their moral reckoning and agreed to fix prices. The steel trust reformed just in time. Nine months before the government began its dissolution suit the prodigal son returned to |