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Show CONSERVING COAL AND WATER POWER Our idea ia that the business men of Utah should prepare, sign and send to the secretary of the interior formal protest against recent rulings governing coal lands iu the weat. We are informed in-formed that such rulings have been in the interest of all the people of the United States. Can one of the bunch tell in what way the people fan be - btnefitedf Fr.m the first a hundred yt-ars ago ; men have located coal lands and paid tht govcrn-: govcrn-: ment $10 per acre. The men who have loca'-d ' such lands have sold them for what they could get, for tlje men who locate such lands can never make them producing properties. On an average ' it requires quite 4100.000 to make . a eual mine available ; that ia, tlx it for shipping coal. The lat : ruling of the interior department has advanced the price to prohibitive figures, in some raws to 2.12 pi acre. Now, who is going to buy coal lands at those figures J And when will the sales begin? There is already eoal enough discovered in the Cnited State to last, at th present rate of consumption, con-sumption, at. least twenty thousand years. This is official, from reports of the geological survey. When are the people going to begin to realise? Again, nearly all the coal areas are fenced off into reserves.- What fort. Why nhotild the pio- neer prospectors be shut off from locating anl, when they pa, for what they find, otlning it? '. Who elsejias any interest in it? It may be said the public domain belongs to all the people; that the mrfi of Massachusetts or Missouri have the same interest in a coal measure on the unsurveyed lands of Utah thf the men of V'ti h have. There ' ' ia neither sense nor justice in the statement. If ;i '- man from Mawa'lumetts or frnoi. Missouri pleases tit cnmo to L'tah and pleases to tea! his donkey , with a pick and shovel and a little coarse food, and start nut to try to find something, being his own em k, chambermaid 'and wash a-onian, ; ami does find something, what sense or justice would there bo in saying that his old neighbors in Massachusetts Massachu-setts or Missouri had an ejus I -iccuniary interest in the discovery that the discoverer has? The des-ert des-ert ia not settled in that way, neither were the ' woods felled and the land converted into glorified hfines on the Atlantic slope. Neither was the Mississippi Mis-sissippi valley redeemed that way. Thia innovation) innova-tion) ia something that the sense of justice of hon-' hon-' est men revolts against.. Again, water powera are fenced into reserves all oven the west." What for? ' When will be a better time to utilize them? The explanation is " to sae them from monopolies. I i the meantime - the water ia running to waste, with the resultant ' cot sequence that more eoal has to be burned? And when will the poor men for whom these water powera are being saved get the money to make th'. water powers available? The whole policy must havt been invented by a combine of educated idiots and accomplished thieves. |