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Show q Published Every Saturday BY GGODWIN8 WEEKLY PUBLISHING CO., INC. F. P. GALLAGHER, Editor and Mgr. L. J. BRATAGER, Business Mgr. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: Including postage in the United States, Canada and Mexico $2.50 per year, $1.50 for six months. Subscriptions to all foreign countries, within the Postal Union, $4.50 per year. Single copies, 10 cents. Payment should be made by Check, Money Order or Registered Letter, pay- able to The Citizen. Address all communications to The Citizen. Entered as second-clas- s matter, June 21, 1919, at the Postofflce at Salt Lake of March 3, 1879. Act under the City, Utah, Ness Bldg. Phone Wasatch 5409. 8alt Lake City, Utah. 311-12-- 13 PAID WORKERS BEG VOTES FOR BOND STEAL In an eleventh-hou- r attempt to carry the bond issue of $3,300,-00women workers are being employed at $3 a day to solicit votes for the proposition. A number of women who have been asked to accept the positions have indignantly refused. And attempt is being made to BUY success for the bond issue. Will Commissioner Neslen explain to the taxpayers who is paying these workers? Is it the citys money? Is it the money of municipal contractors, or of the interests to whom the municipal contractors owe money? Commissioner Neslen waxes ecstatic because the Mountain Dell reservoir is full and spilling over. The commissioner, with his customery illogicality, finds in this an argument for the proposed reservoirs. Millions of gallons of aqua pura are running to waste every day; build storage reservoirs and the city will have enough for the dry summer months this, apparently, is the gist of his argument. There cannot be the slightest doubt that in a wet season there is enough water for the present population of the city even without additional reservoirs. No one worries in seasons such as the present, but such seasons are rare. Of what avail would a hundred new reservoirs be in a dry season. If there is no water to store the reservoirs will be valuable only as monuments to the stupidity of municipal commissioners. The Citizen, taking the figures of the local weather bureau for forty-fiv- e years, has shown that if all the water in the valley were stored in a dry season there would be a supply sufficient only for a population of 245,000 inhabitants. Neither City Commissioner Neslen nor any of his experts have got around that fact. The taxpayers are not interested in knowing how much water can be stored in a wet season ; thev want to know how much water will be avail- able in a season of minimum precipitation. Though the vast majority of our citizens and officials see the fallacies of his dream, Commissioner Neslen continues to hug its futile promises to his bosom and to twaddle about millions and billions of gallons for a population of 500,000 people. The taxpayers, however, are not deceived. They know that even though the Mountain Dell dam be patched up so that it is higher by a hundred feet ghan at present it will have no more value than a watering can in a dry season. And all the other costly reservoirs will be equally useless. Commissioner Neslen is like a mad king who would build beautiful palaces and hanging gardens in the Sahara desert. Ilis reservoirs will be only magnificent ruins if there is no runoff with which to fill them in dry years. 0, m The whole proposal is at fault. No adequate water supply is provided for and if the $3,300,000 is granted to the present city commission we shall be building dream palaces in. a desert. First let us get an adequate water supply even though we go a hundred miles to obtain it. Meantime we have enough water and an adequate out plan distribution system until such time as a carefully-worke- d is presented for the construction of the taxpayers. The present scheme had its inception in the desire of certain financial interests to provide ways and means by which contractors who were owing them money could pay .their debts. And the city commissioners were glad enough to get their hands on a few millions of dollars. In that way they could enlarge their political organizations and pave the way for personal and party success at the polls. From the outset the plan was purposely veiled in obscurity. The commissioners talked generalities only. The Citizen, speaking for the taxpayers, demanded more light and reluctantly the commissioners were forced to give a few details. The revelations were sufficient to turn the city against the plan and the commissioners apparently dropped it. The report of three engineers indorsing some features of the proposal was seized upon by the commissioners to revive their plot. They told the public that the report was practically a complete indorsement; in reality it was a condemnation of most of the scheme. And when the time came to advertise the election again the commissioners simply divided their scheme into eleven parts. It was a fiction in eleven chapters, each chapter sheer buncombe. In this fashion, it is the hope of Commissioner Neslen, to force the scheme through. lie may succeed unless the taxpayers get out in sufficient numbers to offset the votes of the political machines. The bonds may carry by default. If so, the taxpayers will be guilty of squandering $3,300,000 on inadequate water rights and rathole reservoirs. The commissioners have not yet told us where they are going consideration. to place their dams and yet this is an As we have heretofore pointed out a variation of a few rods may mean the expenditure of additional hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Big Cottonwood and the Mill Creek reservoirs are utterly unnecessar) at this time, the engineers tell us. And these same engineers displayed only a lukewarm interest in the remainder of the project. And now that The Citizen, using the United States weather bureau figures as a basis, has demonstrated that the water supply in the entire valley will be insufficient in dry seasons, it is doubtful whether the engineers would sanction any of the project. all-import- ant |