OCR Text |
Show 4 . THE CITIZEN the governor and other industrial chieftains want a railway into the Uinta, country in a year or two. The question is, how to remove the mountains? The answer is so simple as to be almost laughable and we herewith beg to laugh before giving the answer. The old way, of course, was to tunnel through the mountains at a cost ranging from a few millions to a hundred million or so. When Harriman found a hole in the bottom of Salt Lake he refused to give over his plan for the Lucin cutoff and proceeded to fill up the hole, determined to achieve his object even if that hole reached to the old Moulmein pagoda looking eastward to the sea, somewhere beyond Suez. We have a plan which, in our humble opinion, will remove the mountains by ignoring them. Why should anyone think of digging through mountains and laying steel rails in tunnels, when one can fly over the mountains without either rail or roadbed? Airplanes ? Not at all. Dirigibles ? There you have it. Not only can we open up the Uinta Basin, but the marvellous St. alGeorge country with its wondrous fruits, its unequalled soft-she- ll monds, its wheat and oats and corn, its cotton, its tobacco and all the other temperate, tropical and products of that paradise of the western world. a British dirigible, crossed the Atlantic The other day the ocean and landed on our shores. It recrossed the ocean and landed in Think of it ! tons: England. That dirigible carried sixty-fiv- e An airship carrying 130,000 pounds of freight ! And it can move at miles and more an hour. a speed of seventy-fiv- e A dirigible could fly to the Uinta Basin and back in five hours and tons. could make at least four trips a day carrying sixty-fiv- e Uinta folk could hook their freight cars specially made to the dirigible and the contents could be landed in Salt Lake two and a half semi-tropic- al R-3- 4, all-tol- d. hours later. No roadbed, no rails, no tunnels, no block signal systems, no section gangs. Of course, a dirigible costs money. The Germans built them for $600,000 before the war. Perhaps they cost more now. One authority says the British blimps cost $2,000,000. Five such dirigibles, therefore, would demand an outlay of $10,000,000. We would not need such an expensive dirigible. No doubt, we could obtain a satisfactory blimp for $250,000, one that would carry or thirty tons. twenty-fiv- e But why talk about costs at this early stage of our organization? By the time Governor Bamberger or the church or a stock company completes the organization a few months hence some Henry Ford will be selling just the blimps we need for $75,000 each or less. Right at this juncture in our aerial progress we can hear the sneer of the skeptics. But we brush them aside as easily as we brushed aside the mountains a moment ago. We soar over them. Let others tunnel into them, if they wish. They will find sawdust where gray matter is supposed to lodge. The man who cannot see that the day of the dirigible is here has not studied the significance of the flight of the British dirigible. It was half a century after the first steamship crossed the Atlantic that the first regular steamship service was established. Whatever the causes of delay, there seems to be no such handicaps to the development of the use of the dirigible in transportation. Those who are backing railway projects should beware. There is danger that railways may become obsolete. Certainly there are regions to which railways can be built only at prohibitive cost. In an airline the St. George country is only 300 miles distant. The trip to and from that region can be made by a dirigible in less than ten hours. Land flying is not as dangerous as flying oversea and the British did not think they had been in much danger on their trip across. They ploughed their way through fogs, storms and adverse winds and apparently were as safe as if they were on one of the ocean liners. In Utah there are no fogs ; the wind is seldom high and our storms quite comfortable and not at all threatening. Moreover, a noninflammable helium gas, invented by an American during the war, is being used in the dirigible gas bags. And think of the advantage of dirigible transportation in winter ! There would be no such thing as a snow blockade. There would be no snowslides across the right of way. There would be no snowshed or snowploughs. It would be easy sailing, winter or summer, rain or shine. We have not spoken of passenger traffic, but we are sure that for a long time there would be overcrowding. A passenger dirigible could carry only 300 or 400 persons at a time. It need hardly be added that the tourist travel in Utah if dirigible lines were established to the more inaccessable places would increase enormously. All over the country there are thousands who, attracted by the descriptions of Little Zion canyon, are yearning to make the difficult trip. They could do it in six or seven hours in a blimp and could enjoy life aboard the airship while exploring dining car service, barber, ho and cold water, baths, music on the promenade deck, etc. If Utah fails to take this tip it will be its own fault. We advise our financiers to call a meeting at once and make plans for the dirigible lines to Uintah Basin, to St. George and to any other region which can be opened up with advantage at this time. We believe that as Utahs energtic, forceful, brainy business men talk it over they will be able to devise ways and means. Where pessimists and cynics see only difficulties they will see glorious opportunities of success. Costs will not deter them because the costs will be trivial compared with the costs of building railways. And even the costs which they would list today probably would begin to shrink a few months hence. Each succeeding dirigible probably would cost less. are just average storms PILLAGING BY PACKERS only has the Democratic administration failed to curb the trust but it has actually introduced something like the old system of rebates to aid in the pillaging. The National Wholesale Grocers association has filed a petition with the Interstate Commerce Commission at Washington praying for relief against the special favors shown to the packers by the railroads. Years ago the Standard Oil company obtained rebates from every railway over which it shipped and thus was enabled to drive the independents out of business. Today special favors amounting to rebates are granted the beef trust enabling it to carry on a produce business not at all connected NOT with the meat industry. The packers have a special expedited service in their peddler cars. If these cars were used solely for the transportation of beef at the meat freight rate there would be no complaint, but the packers place a little meat aboard their cars and fill them with products which should carry a higher rate. Butter and eggs have been shipped at the lower meat rate. The packers secure the same expedited service on cheese, rice, cereals of all kinds, dried fruits, peanut butter, soap, soap powdg talcum powder, canned fruit, canned vegetables, pickles, olives, catsup, beans, prunes, tables sauce, preserves, jams, syrups, crushed fruits, grape juice, canned milk and a long list of other commodities. The grocers complain, not because of any particular sympathy for the consuming public, but because their business is injured. The system interferes with their gains and helps the packers to swell their enormous and exorbitant profits. In a large part of the country' the packer can guarantee delivery' within a day or two of the time the order is received, while the shipment from the wholesale grocer is delayed from two to ten times as long in transit. In their complaint the grocers say : The maintenance of these unjust and discriminatory provisions in the tariffs of the defendant carriers has enabled the packers rapidly to extend their powerful influence outside of the sale of the products of slaughtered animals. That if these provisions be permitted to continue in effect, the packers will gradually acquire a dominating |