Salt Lake Telegram | 1937-07-24 | Page 6 | Looking to the Future

Looking to the Future SOME time possibly in their next session Utah's lawmakers will take time out to become be-come calm and collected, then to write a gasoline gaso-line law that will be expressive of their high intentions in-tentions an- stand up in a court test. Meantime Mean-time the public must possess its collective soul in patience, keep hope high and "cooperate." When the legislature passed the old gasoline Jaw it meant well enough and thought it was doing do-ing a good deed to the consumers of the volatile propellent, but it seems it delegated to the road commission the power to fix standards so that tricky b'and names would not prove a delusion and snare. But this was held to be an improper delegation of power, so the law, speaking Win-chellianiy, Win-chellianiy, Phfft! Then th last legislature thought it would have a track al it II wanted lr "p business o' standards once and for all, so that buyers would know just what and how many octanes and vitamins they were getting per gallon gal-lon and per dollar when they pulled up at a service station to revictual their chariots. So the lawmakers wrote the standards right into the law itself. So far so good. Then they wrote in a requirement that dealers post the brand names of their petrol, which they seem to be proud to do anyway, on their pumps right out where everybody could see them, not mistaking Ethyl for some other girl with a penchant for spelling her nam.) fancifully. But and this is the sad part the vicars of the sovereign electors forgot to require also that the standards be posted. Thus the motorist is in exactly the same fix he was before the ' old law was enacted. He may know his favorite gas by her first name, but as to her past environment, en-vironment, her bringing up, her atomic and molecular mo-lecular attributes and her disposition to get up and go or take it easy, he may still be in the dark in so far as the legislature has extended the helping hand. That is why the state road commission "appealed" "ap-pealed" to consumers to buy their gasoline only where "retailers comply with the act." What the commission probably meant was where retailers re-tailers comply with the spirit of the act. This would seem to be something of a departure in the administration and enforcement of law. If the retailer posts the trade name of his gasoline gaso-line he is complying with a limping law, and it is not his fault that it limps. It is not the fault of the road commission, either. It all becomes matter of all hands getting together for the common good, looking hopefully to the future when the next or some other legislature will undertake un-dertake to polish off a law that will realize the original Intention.