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Show itable employment and furnish their families a comfortablo livelihood. liveli-hood. To be able to do this it is not enough that they should earn good wages, but it is essential also that they should get the maximum, returns for their money. In brief, living expenses must be reasonable or the value of the money earned will bo diminished. In some respects, as in rents, the economic law of supply and demand regulates prices while in others it is undoubtedly a perverted business condition that determines de-termines them. Salt Lake City is yet in her swaddling clothes and the multiplicity multi-plicity of her andvantages are only beginning be-ginning to be appreciated at large. By the time the next census is taken her population will be expressed in six figures and there are many of us who will live to see the city exceed a quarter million of people. All the conditions con-ditions combine to fix the future of Salt Lake beyond a doubt unless it is unduly interfered with by ourselves, And so long as the present prodigious growth continues houses will be scarce and rents correspondingly high. Indeed In-deed that is the best criterion of a city's thrift. But why should we, surrounded as we are by a magnificent farming country and neighbors to a fertile state, pay tariff on everything we consume? Why should living expenses be so much higher in Salt Lake City than they are in Kansas City, Omaha or Portland? That is a question which old-timers old-timers and new-comers alike are asking themselves and each other. One answer, but not the only one by any means, is that we tolerate a system sys-tem of free and easy credit which taxes tho solvent customers to pay the bills of the insolvent or dishonest. ' Merchants Mer-chants tell us that if they could collect their outstanding debts more readily they could afford to sell goods at closer margins. Tho philosophy of the thing is plain, but not so the justice. It hurt the reputation of the city no less than tho exchequer of the individual who h:i to pay the bills of some other fel-hw. A LOCAL TAU1KF. While the nation's Solons discuss the intricacies of the tariff, and incidentally inciden-tally furnish our esteemed contemporaries contempora-ries a bone of contention, let us examine exam-ine a littlo into a specie of local tariff that the peoplo of Salt Lake are called upon to pay and which, protectionists aud free traders alike must admit, will, if long persisted in, militate against the prosperity of the city. A community grows In the propor- tion as its wage workers oan find prof- |