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Show THE SAUNA SUN, SAUNA, UT Aft U. E. A. President Answers Letter (Continued from page 1) pie the truth. Members of your committee issued a signed bond election statement on a circular which is before me as I write, which says: As taxpayers, citizens, and patrons of education, we have gone into the records of our school district. We have analyzed our financial statements. We have studied the whole question of graduation. " Then can our students graduate? . Yes. " Dare the superintendent withhold certification of graduation from our grade or high school students? No. Is there any connection whatever between the bond issue and graduation? No. This statement is signed by the following men who now sign your letter to me: Countryman, Walker Alcorn, Allen and Rundquist How do those statements sound in the light of what really happened? Not .a single student was graduated from the Jordan schools. It was impossible to graduate them. President George Thomas says in a letter to Siipt. D. C. Jensen: As to certifying to full credit when you are actually short some eight weeks, I am very sure, to begin with, that you would not lend yourself to any such policy. That is not a question of school policy; to! my notion, that is just a straight question of common honesty.' You had misquoted President Thomas ' and the University on this . . . point. What answer have you for the people? You told the public that the University of Utah, would accept Jordan students as full accredited graduates and declared in bold type that statements to the contrary were not true! But immediately after schools closed, President Thomas issued a statement which declared they were only too true. No Jordan High school senior of this year will be accepted by the University "of. Utah as a graduate. I attacked hired . In my address, .agents who deceived the people. I reiterate that attack. And I say again that if and when it becomes necessary to modify our whole educational program, the people have the right to know the facts. Let us lay all 'our cards on the' table taxpayers, board members, teachers, patrons. Let us, however, ' exclude paid propagandists Who qre so anxious to save money for the corporate wealth of the state that' they will deceive the people. It develops' now that the Jordan bond issue would have cost. 75 per .cent of- the taxpayers less than 30-- : cents a year, for five years. The richest school district, in. the state, with the lowest tax levy, and not in debt a single dollar, has niined a school year because the' voters were deceived by the hired agents- of big business. '"And you are struck speechless because I dare tell the truth- - you who would take the burden of taxes from the shoulders of the rich, and saddle it ' upon the. backs of the poor. In your letter you make much of a resolution .which you wrongly attribute to. me, concerning the borrowing of money on delinquent taxes, to complete the school terms. The first time I heard that suggestion it cdme from members of your committee, after the failure of the bond, You then wanted to continue school because apparently you were afraid of the wrath of the people,- You came to the Jordan board and admitted you had been mistaken in your audit of the books, which declared there was $59,133.41 in' the treasury on March 1, 1932, and you admitted in my hearing that the boards audit of $7,928.92 was correct. Some of the members who now sign your letter advocated borrowing money because you knew it would .'have to be repaid out of next years .funds, which will be less than this years? The mines are taxed on net proceeds, which will be very, low this year. So funds that must be repaid .immediately will have to be paid by the farmer and small home owners. How is it that you were unwilling to borrow money on a long time bond which would have been paid back largely by the mines when they shall have recovered, but were willing enough to borrow on a short time loan that the poor people would have been compelled to repay, even before the country has had time to recover from the depression? Is that your idea of protecting the people? When you found it impossible to borrow money, you conceived the brilliant idea of the teachers rounding out the year with free service. You had conducted a campaign of unparalleled and unjustified vituperation and abuse against them. Members of your committee had held them up to merciless ridicule and had stated publicly that they ought to work for less than sheepherders wages and be glad to get it. You dared the teachers to refuse to render free service. Now, you accuse me of agitating against their doing so. Let me tell you that no agitation was needed. Let me assure you . '. . . - : - that when the proposition was put to the Jordan teachers by their local officers, it was voted down with an emphatic and unanimous No. Teachers have given some free service in this state, but never in a place where a group like you was in the saddle. My principal offense seems to be that I accept a salary for teaching school. I admit that that is a major crime, but a family of six, even though it belongs to a teacher, seems to require support. There are such minor items as food, clothes, fuel, light, telephone, and books, not to mention taxes, interest, insurance and payments on the mortgage. If I were a magician 1 would dispense with these mundane things. Being only a man, I scratch my head like a thousand of my brothers in the profession and wonder how in the world a meager income can be made to satisfy so many needs, and by what miracle I can sursummer. To vive the long money-les- s one who attempts to live up to all of the demands upon the resources of a modern school teacher, life is one long financial humiliation. To hear you talk of our ease and wealth would be funny if it werent so tragic. For you to expect us to be cowed and bullied by a group like yours is asking too much. You talk as though we were pensioners, living on your bounty. Why dont you wake up and use a pencil for five minutes? Our fixed expenses have been reduced to less than those of any other calling or trade and we have been cut in every department. There is no group in America who have earned their money by greater effort of mind, body and spirit, not excluding the farmers themselves. But when I talk to you, I am not talking to the farmers. You know as well as I that the farmers organization will have nothing to do with yours, even though the Utah .Taxpayers association calls one of your members President of the Agricultural ' Economy League. Economy for whom? Surely not economy for the fanners and laborers. Economy for the big fellow at the expense of the little one; Forget the teachers for n moment and think of the taxayers. Not the few big corporations, but the rank and file of common folks who pay taxes in greater or less .amount and who send their children to the schools to be educated. They are the ones to be considered, because in this America of ours government is not by property, but by. people. Was it economy for them to have the work of an expensive school system disrupted when the work was little more than half completed? The expense involved for most of them was almost negligible. But it would have cost the big corporations at least three times as much as it 'would have cost all the rest of the people put together. This is not: unfair, to them, either. They have taken from our borders the wealth of a kingdom and will take millions more. Part of that wealth belongs to the state and to the people. We have taken from them, in taxes, less than they would have been required to pay in many other states. In the future, we shall take more, rather than less, and the tax burden of the farmet and struggling worker will be correspondingly lower. It is a subterfuge of the wealthy to hide behind the skirts of the common people in a tax fight. They say, Come on, lets save ourselves some money. While saving a few dimes for the poor man, they save thousands of dollars for themselves, at the same time depriving the. poor man and his family of goods and services which they greatly need. Any little group of persons can band themselves together and call themselves a taxpayers association. But the fact that they have formed such an association does not give them the right, to speak for the taxpayers of the whole state. A few disgruntled, selfish members --of the dominant church in Utah could not band together and speak in the name of the officers and all of the people of that church. A few carpenters calling themselves the Utah Carpenters associate could not speak for all the carpenters of the state. I know of a Utah cafe, a Utah Shoe Shining parlor, a Utah Pool hall. There is no law which prohibits the use of the fair name of our state by any organization, and so we have a Utah Taxpayers association, consisting of a powerful inner circle of big industries, which concentrates its power in one person of sleepless energy as he describee himself. They make him their executive secretary, and pay his enormous salary. They hire helpers for him who labor with a singleness of purpose to exempt their masters from their just obligations to the state and its people. Roads must be built, government must be maintained, and children must be sent to school. The natural wealth of the state should be compelled to pay a generous Bhare of the bill. In these times, they deceive many people who are staggering under an unbearable tax load, particularly on farm property. But the farmers and the laborers are learning that the way to relief lies in three directions: (1) Reform of tho tax laws, (2) the ousting of corrupt politicians from pew- . . . JL NAUTICAL NOVELTIES The following Nautical Novelties" are furnished by the U. S. Navy Re- cruiting station at Salt Lake City: The U. S. S. Constitution, Old Ironsides, as she is called, never lost her commanding officer. She never went agTound. The largest number of men she ever lost in a fight was eight. She was in commission more than eighty years. The dirigible Los Angeles was, on June 30th, decommissioned and placed out of service as a training ship. Two years ago the board of inspection and survey placed the possible life of the airship two to four years." The Los Angeles is eight years old. The crew of thus airship will be used to man the new Macon," now under construction. An ensign is a flag flown on ships and small boats. On board naval vessels the flag Is always referred to as ensign, or the colors. The maximum speed of the U. S. S. Akron is 84 miles per hour. She can cruise 10,500 miles at 50 miles per hour without refueling. During the past eight years the U. S. S. Henderson, naval transport, has covered 345,471 miles and in addition to the east and west coasts of the United States has viited the following countries: Cuba and others islands of the West Indies, Mexico, Nicaragua, Canal Zone, Hawaii, Philippine Islands, China, Guam, North Africa, Italy, Yugoslavia and Gibraltar. The U. S. S. Akron, which recently returned to Lakehurst after operating away from her home base for a period of 38 days,, made during that time a total of 10 flights, covering 16,585 nautical miles in 3,336 hours and 29 minutes. During the Akrons trip to the west coast, six hook landings were made by the airship planes. Commander Dresel, the Akrops new flight commander, was the first passenger to be landed aboard in flight when he was carried up to the ship. He was landed aboard five times and was a passenger during the initial emergency hook-armin- g - experiments.Spike Webb, popular boxing coach of the U. S. naval academy, has been appointed head coach of the American Olylnpic boxing team for the. fourth straight time. For the month ending May 31, 0 men applied for enlistment in the navy. Of this number, only 291 were accepted, an average of 2.9 per cent of the whole number to apply. The German cruiser Karlesruhe recently visited San Pedro. The cruiser is now on a cadet cruise enroute from Alaska to the Panama. Canal. The Karlesruhe was built under peace treaty conditions and is the first German cruiser to visit the Pacific coast since the world war. 10,-05- . er, (3) tnie economy in every branch of public service. The need of the. hour is courage in every line of human endeavor in business, in government, in politics, in education. Patrick J. Hurley says we are a nation that has temporarily lost its nerve. He thinks we need a little of the do or die spirit of the pioneer. He is puzzled to see a hundred million of the children of God acting like a bunch of locoed cattle. I do not deny for a moment, he says, that we are in a bad jam. But 90 per cent of our troubles are due to all of us deciding to lose our nerve at the same moment: The courageous man fears God and his wife and his mother-in-laand all that. But a courageous man is not afraid of poverty or marriage or black cats or short salesmen or the devil Least of all is he afraid of his own skin business in the United States of America. He may know perfectly well that he is going to be broke tomorrow, but he will bet his immortal soul that nobody on. earth is clever enough to starve him or his family. He will give you odds of a hundred to one. that five years from now he will be up and coming stronger than ever If some of us do not stand up for the schools now, groups like do the Btate irreparable damage. The need for courageous educational leadership was never bo great. We pray for courage to speak the truth in the face of the disaster which now threatens. Very truly yours, E. E. GREENWOOD, Education AssociaUtah President, stock-mark- at any time attacked the taxpayers of Jordan district Irdo tot even attack you uptil you were the aggres' E. E. GREENWOOD. No matter where you go or what you do, the galleries always seem to A1 Smith. All Kinds of ll tion. P. S'. I have just-- learned that the same group which wrote me the letter which this answers has circulated a petition for my removal from my position. If men of your calibre I mean those who signed the letter to me are to run the schools of Jordan district, I shall not need to be removed. Gentlemen, do your worst. Nobody knows better than you that I have not be for on et yo-wi- sors. service m |