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Show THE HERALD IN ITS BLINDNESS. The Salt Lako Herald gave yesterday morning a conspicuous examplo of the peril of meddling with things it dooH not undorstand, and of results to bo obtained ob-tained through ignorance in jumbling the difforent funds of tho cit3 and in arriving at conclusions through unjustifiable unjusti-fiable ends that wore designedly misleading mis-leading nnd wrong. It govo correct' the balance of .3,80.1.40 iu tho contingent contin-gent fund on January 1, J006, and tho adverse balance on Dccomber 81, 1006. It failed, howovor, to cany into this reckoning the $34,814.01 of ovcrduo and unpaid accounts which tho Morris administration ad-ministration shouldered off on tho American Amer-ican partj' to pa3r, and which were paid in the ilrst four months of tho American management, vor3' much to the disadvantage disad-vantage of the balance sheets struck at tho end of that four months. The Herald Her-ald also jumbled up tho other funds of the cit3T, making balances that liavc no application in fact, and that, as wo showed yesterday morning, have to be adjusted, ns the American administration administra-tion is adjusting them, before thoy state tho truo condition of the funds. It is, of course, a plain case of ignorant igno-rant dabbling with things that it knows nothing about, or so littlo about as to amount to nothing. So far as tho Herald Her-ald is concerned, it has a good will to bo mean, vicious and false in all its presentations, but it is so blundering in handling the figures that it docs uot perceive how it is giving itself awa3". An instance of this is iu point; tho balance bal-ance in tho street fund, as given in the Herald, was tho item which stated that this fund had on hand $58,S2'1.69 whou the Morris administration wont out of power. But of that total, $17,707.1S should have been transferred from tho street fund to " special improvement" ! accounL in December, 1905, as the then auditor asked to have douc in order to propeny adjust his accounts. The Mor-i Mor-i ris'Couucil, however, refused to do this, I and the full amount of $58,824.69 was carried as a balance, instead of the $11,-117.51 $11,-117.51 which properly remained there. Two similar adjustments have bocu made as to this fund besides this specific spe-cific one, sinco the bookkeoping figures which the Herald relics on were compiled. com-piled. It is thus seen that these special funds have nothing whatever to do with the case; ihey arc subject to adjustment be-foro be-foro they will roallj- tell the facts as tho3 exist. The inefficiency of the Morris Mor-ris administration in bookkeeping vras ns conspicuous as its failures in other respects. re-spects. So much was this so, that when 111c i.nxpu3'ers in tnc winter 01 j-juj uc-mauded uc-mauded their mone3" back on improvements improve-ments that it was admitted could not bo made for months, it was opcnl3' stated that the i,ooks of the city were in such a condition that the, proper amounts which each property owner could claim could not be ascertained; therefore, the payments could not be made. After that, of course, there was no use talking about the condition of this special fund; and thcro is uo use talking about it now, because it practically prac-tically states nothing. In largo degree these balances transmitted from the Morris administration were bookkeeping , fictions. The American administration, by its better system of accounts, is got-ting got-ting theEO funds straightened out so that hereafter thc3' will actually tell something some-thing besides mere thcor3 Tho main public concern, however, is with tho contingent fund, and not with these other funds. Tho effort of the Herald to mix up these other funds with the current expenditures and income in-come of the city must ucccssaril3r fail, because tho3' have no relation whatever to the current or contingent fund, either ior income or for outgo. That the Herald Her-ald is unable to senso this is merely one of the evidences of its blindness and of tho utter futility of its efforts to make a case against tho Americuu party b3' its foolish array of irrelevant, jumbled, and imperfect balances. |