Show PARTY LINES All the people of Utah know that in the days before the division on party lines we had no politics in the sense of the word as generally understood but that in place thereof there were local lo-cal issues of a burning nature When these old issues were finally disposed of there came the division on party lines and it was hailed as a great and glorious thing for Utah and her people and so it was That division on party lines did more to put the state in sympathy sym-pathy with the rest of the Union than anything else ever did What are the people of the state wit nesing today A concerted movement to make municipal elections nonpartisan nonparti-san The specious reasoning in favor of it is that the administration of a citys affairs is a matter of business and hence should be conducted as a business busi-ness matter but that this cannot be done by a party The same reasoning applies to the affairs of the counties I and of the state itself The people of this city are familiar with the argu men > in favor of nonpartisanship urged by its promoters They are all I based upon the bad condition of the citys financial affairs and that that I condition is the result of party government govern-ment and hence cannot be straightened out and put in the condition as they should be by party government They make the fatal mistake of confounding party government with a partys government gov-ernment of condemning a whole system sys-tem because of a failure on the part of a few to administer it as it should be But supposing for the sake of argument ar-gument that the condition of affairs I in Salt Lake City Is such as to call for a nonpartisan government still no one will have the Kirdihood to claim that alike a-like condition of affairs exists in all the towns and cities of the state to declare that party government in the various towns and cities of the state has been I a failure and that nonpartisan govern ment must now be tried But this movement for nonpartisan municipal government is extending to every town and city in Utah It cannot be that party government everywhere throughout through-out the state has broken down Then why this almost universal movement for nonpartisan government Is it i such a very strange thing as to make people pause and wonder at it Are they not Justified in asking if nonpartisan nonpar-tisan city government is so highly desirable de-sirable now is it not a mistake to ever have had any partisan city government govern-ment perhaps any nonpartisan government anywhere If party lines were once desirable In all politics in Utah why are they not desirable today to-day It took the people more than forty years to grow to them Has their progress been so great In less than a decade and considerably less that they have outgrown them All these are matters for most serious consideration and it should be remembered remem-bered that when once the letting down of bars is begun no one can tell when it will stop Tls better to bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know notof |