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Show AMERICANISM MAKES GOOD. The other day The Tribune had an editorial showing the advantage to I his eity of American control. Wo showed that from the moment of American ascendancy as-cendancy here the tide turned towards prosperity. Up to that time the city had been losing. But from that time ouwanl it has been not only on the gain, but has been gaining with a rush that is at once unprecedented and tremendous. tremen-dous. The Herald, yesterday morning, taking tak-ing notice of this Tribune editorial, suggested sug-gested that Mayor Morris began the Big Cottonwood water improvement in his administration. Which is true. But he made such a blunder of it, was in such a. hurry to get results that he could uso in his campaign for re-election, that he butchered the whole scheme and left it oven worso than before. be-fore. He had not secured auy water to put iu (he aqueduct, and, as a despairing des-pairing move, filed suit in condemnation condemna-tion of the Knudson water right, a suit which would have kept the city out of water until the present lime, and probably prob-ably a good while longer, and eventually event-ually would have failed. He obtained certain water rights lower down on tho creek, but Ihc water had to go down far below Ihe mouth of the aqueduct beforo it was available to Ihe cily, and Ihero was no way to got it up into Ihc aqueduct, except at tremendous expenditure ex-penditure of pumping. Tho American administration secured Ihc Knudson water right on reasonable terms, and as soon as il was necessary lo uso the water. In Ihc construction of Ihe Big Cottonwood Cot-tonwood conduit, also, the Morris plans and specifications were so vfaully that a test of tho work showed it lo bo leaky and impracticable as a conveyor of water. The specifications had to bo remodeled and tho inside plastered in order to make the conduit water tight. We will sa3 further, that it would have been a good job if the American City Council had abandoned the conduit altogether al-together as laid out. had adopted a new and straighter line for it. and had constructed it of a different shape. Wc do not consider under the circumstances that there is any obligation on our part to give Mr. Morris any credit in this matter at all. except as to the mere point of securing the water-relinquish-, i mcnt contracts from Ihe farmers. Those relinquishments contracts, however, gave the cif- no water at tho conduit poinl. And it was reserved for the. American administration to close the contracts with Mr. Knudson that gave us the water which was needed. Wo notice, further, that the Herald quibbles about our claim that it was the Amorican piirty initiative in improvements, im-provements, in metropolitan advancement, advance-ment, in street paving, sidewalk building, build-ing, sewer making, that started the great building activity in this city. What wo said in this line is exactly true. The acquisition of tho control of this c i 1 3- In' the American administration adminis-tration turned the attention of vast multitudes of people lo Salt Lake. Thouands came here and brought lens of thousands of money. This coming necessitated a large amount of building. And tho continued flow of newcomers kept the need of more and more building build-ing prominent all the time. The cit.y look on magnificent growth. Then Mr. Newhouso came in, seeing the great betterments bet-terments going on in the city, seeing the tremendous building activity and i a great opportunity, and conceived the project of his magnificent building enterprises en-terprises on South Main street. One thing led to another right along. The Herald sarcastically asks if wc claim that the plan of the Mormon j church and its associates in the big hotel enterprise on the old Descret ! News corner was becauso of the American Ameri-can control of tho city, and it affects to sec humor in (his suggestion. But that sarcasm loses sight of the intermediate inter-mediate steps. The Tribune slated expressly ex-pressly that the hotel move on the old Descret News corucr was the reply to the Newhouso hotel enterprise just launched. That hotel proposition was itself the direct outgrowth of the trc-meudous trc-meudous building activity which resulted re-sulted from the acquisition of power by the American part. So that while the splendid hotel project engineered b- the church and its supporters for the old Deseret News corner is uot caused directly or consciously by the Amorican control of this city, it grows out of that control just tho same, because be-cause it is the result of activities set in motion In the American triumph. And so it is the result of that triumph, although in a secondary remove. The church move for a big hotel on the old Deseret News corner is a move in tho direction of retaining property values and business activity on the north end of Main street in reply to the beginning of work on tho big Ncwhousc hotel on South Main street. And this, in turn, conies from tho general building ac-tivity ac-tivity which was the result of the American ascendance. No matter in what way this great progress of Salt Lako City may be looked at. there is no question in the world but if started with the acquisition by J tho American party of power and con- I trol in this city, and has received its great strength -land continued impetus from that continued control, livery onoof discernment knows this; every unprejudiced person admits it. There is no use of fighting facts, no use of donying those things that are in the public view and that every one knows and understands. It is Americanism that has matte Salt Lake City what it is today, and it is idle for the opposition opposi-tion to "kick against the pricks." |