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Show THE CITIZEN 4 of appointment could be vested in the mayor with a provision that all appointments should be confirmed by the commission. Or the could have full power and could thus be held fully respon- - Important as these matters are they are, after all, matters of detail. The principal issue is the restoration of responsible govern-mayo- r sible. ment. HOW UTAH TRUSTS DESTROY INDEPENDENTS How trusts are permitted to operate in Utah is illustrated by the treatment meted out to a young man who started as an independent in the wholesale grocery business. H. S. Anderson conceived the idea of starting a cash wholesale grocery business, and formed the Wasatch Wholesale Grocery Company. He sells at cut rates to such grocers as pay cash. It has proved a popular business with many of the grocers in Utah because it has enabled them to sell cheaply at a time when everyone is complaining of high living costs. Soon after organizing his business Mr. Anderson applied by Wholesale Grocers Assoletter for membership in the Utah-Idah- o ciation which maintains offices in Salt Lake and has a secretary who looks after the affairs which wholesale grocers of Utah and Idaho assume to have in common. The independent dealer received no reply, but about three months after he had filed his application the secretary informed him orally that he could not be admitted to the association because he was not conducting a legitimate business. The only difference, he maintains., is that he sells for cash at cut prices. One of the commodities he deals in extensively is sugar. When the association members were selling at $10.82 he sold at $10.50 a hundred-poun- d sack. For a time they endured the competition, but finally some of the sugar companies refused to sell him and explained that they took this action under duress from the trust. At about the same time several grocery concerns refused to sell to him and he has come to the conclusion that the trust is determined to drive him out of business. A few days ago the trust concerns reduced sugar at wholesale to $10.32 and Anderson reduced to $10.10. The margin to him on each bag of sugar is 28 cents and to the combine 50 cents. While the competition lasts the public, no doubt, will benefit to some degree. If the retailers cut their prices similarly and the competition goes on for an entire year there will be a saving of $150,000 on sugar alone to those who use the trusts sugar. But the purpose of the competition is to put an end to competition, that is to say, to drive the independent out of business. The result will be that those who are then in a combine can, through their secretary or otherwise, agree on a high price. As there will be no competition the public will then begin to be gouged. Mr. Anderson says that lie will fight to a finish. He is getting his sugar of the Interstate Sugar Company and has found sources of supply for all the other commodities he deals in. In view of the stringent anti-trulaws we have on our state books, how is it that every trust, big or little, that decides to operate in Utah, can form an association to fix prices and proceed unhindered to drive independents out of business? The laundry trust practiced that kind of tyranny for years. Xo sooner did an. independent start in business than the laundry trust began a war of extermination. The result was that the trust soon owned all of the companies and a number of courageous independents were reduced to poverty. It is about time that Utah should enforce its anti-trulaws. We believe that the public needs only to be informed of what is in progress to begin an agitation which will rid the state of price-fixincoihpetition-exteriminatin- g combines. st st g, BACK OF LYNCH LAW IS PUBLICS MORAL COLLAPSE After each lynching a district attorney, feigning to voice the public conscience, employs some such stereotyped phrases as those which the district attorney of Santa Rosa, California, used to express horror and condemnation of mob violence. Each prosecuting attorney also declares that nothing will be left undone to bring the lynchers to justice. And there the farce ends. Lynch law usually is resorted to only when the penal laws and the authorities have failed. But back of the penal laws and the authorities is another and a greater failure the failure of the people themselves. Our police are not to blame if laws are unenforceable. If police controlled by politics the people who permit that control machinery-iare blameable. If our judicial system is faulty the original fault is with the public. We get just about as good an administration of justice as we deserve. The Sonoma county mob probably is no worse than the public of the county or of any county in California. Lynch mobs are the indirect result of moral and political anarchy. An explosion of lynch violence is due primarily to the failure of the people themselves to compel law enforcement. We pass futile laws and then wash our hands of them and expect the police to achieve the impossible. Almost always the police and the other officers of the law are just as dishonest and hypocritical as the public.. If wre have scores of laws that arc unen forcable even the laws that are most essential will not be enforced. If the public condones bootlegging it will grow careless about murder, not that bootlegging and murder are regarded by the public as equally vicious, but because there are so many laws to violate and so much violation of them that the public grows inured to lawlessness. Some day the condition s becomes so bad that the public arises in its wrath not in its virtue and holds a lynching bee. The mob is their mob. They may condemn it in a sudden and unexpected rush of virtue to the heart, but they are responsible for the mob. We have had no lynching in Salt Lake in many years and probably our best people plume themselves on this record and fancy that we never will sink to the level of the little town in California. But there are things afoot in Salt Lake every day and night that may lead to a lynching any time. Xot long ago a nurse was murdered. She may have been slain by degenerates like the San Francisco pugilists who were lynched at Santa Rosa. There is evidence that she was the victim of a strangler. At all events the investigation brought out the fact that another woman, at about the same time, had been dragged behind a billboard by a strangler who had stationed an automobile near at hand. Women are insulted on the downtown streets of Salt Lake eery night by men in automobiles. Arrests seldom arc made. Thi- - is due in part to the fact that respectable women are anxious to esaic notoriety and even when they make a report to the police they arc loth to prosecute the case in court. Among the degenerate mashers is the proprietor of a notorious gambling house who obtains protection most of the time. A po iceman who is afraid to arrest him as a gambler is equally afraid to arrest him for insulting women on the streets. As long as the public is quiescent the police will be quies cut Gambling, bootlegging, drug vending and viciousness generally arc able to defy the law and the officers of the law. Is it to be wondered |