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Show THE CITIZEN 4 a travelling man in such places was a curiosity. The whole nation is now dry and it can truthfully be said that we appear to be in a state coma. The past vitality, that getuptiveness, that hustle and bustle appears to have faded. What is the matter? The truth of the matter is that we take all our surplus money and spend it in foreign countries. We just save enough to cross over the border or to go to Europe and there we stay until the last sou has been spent. No, we dont want the return of the saloon and the former hell dives which subsisted upon the wages of our hard workers, but we do want to be able to purchase a little liquor, especially in case of sickness, without being legally termed a criminal, but morally a good citizen. The law can never make a man a criminal because he takes a drink. The law can convict and put in prison those who do drink, but that does not make the person a criminal. It is a man made law, it is made by a faddist and it is kept alive by a fanatical propagandist, the majority of whom are making a good living from the funds collected to preach prohibition. It does not take long for unpopular and fanatical laws to ruin a community or a country. People will not stand for it and unpopular laws make good citizens move to a place where they can enjoy personal liberties. Witness our present exodus to Canada where we are paying dearly just to take a drink. Let us get back to the good old Constitution of the United States which made every American a freeman and not a slave to some propagandist, or to some politician who saw where he might get a few votes by taking the other side. ! CRIME ( This city was never infested with more thieves h and yeggs as at the present time. Are our civil service unequal to the occasion or are they just watching the antj traffic? It appears to the average citizen that there should roundup of all who are not gainfully employed to see if thing cant be done to stop this nightly plundering of onr blowing up safes and holding up citizens, many of themi heart of the city. Dont expect the police to catch every but they should pick up one occasionally. From the used and the descriptions of the holdups, it is a well ora gang that is doing all the work. Surely this is not a protected yegg town in which ther pilfer? There was some talk last fall when a crook ij rested that he was pinched because he did not come throm that would be quite natural for him to say in order to p police in bad. Our police personnel appears to be o. k. boys will have to cinch up their belts and make a driven crooks or the people will lose confidence in them. No pawn shops should be allowed to keep open oclock in the evening and a closer check should he made them. The experienced crook sends his plunder out of far seldom is any of it recovered. There appears to he much for improvement in checking up the crooks. Our pardon boards could help the police a little by to the convicted crooks in the penitentiary their full time. As a rule people look for more crime during the hard months, but at this time of the year it is an unusual thine. God-give- co-operati- on t fo aftn OUR FISH The people in the western states are intensely interested in the fight being made in tlieir behalf by Fish and Game Commissioner Ross of Portland, Oregon. Mr. Ross is taking the position that fish and game including shell fish of all kinds, belong to the people of the state primarily. However, in Utah, the rule lias been that all game, fish and wild game birds and animals belong to the market hunters and market fishermen, with the result that we now find ourselves at the lowesf ebb in the history of the state. Even the lowly cat has become so scarce that the average catch per person is one or two a day, whereas two years ago, the fish were caught by the hundreds. The ordinary citizen does not realize how the great salmon industry and other sources of sea food supply, such as the clam beds on the beaches, bays and rivers, and the king crab, crawfish and shrimp, are being destroyed by the ruthless march of commercial fisheries. Mr. Ross has made himself a heroic figure in the Pacific northwest in battling against wholsale destruction by fisheries, crabberies, and elammeries, where the power boats, dragnets and every destructive device, carloads of these products are procured and shipped all over our country, and to the big cities of the east, actually exterminating and destroying these great phases of sea life. Hundreds of miles of our sea coast, mud flats in our bays and shores of our great rivers emptying into the Pacific ocean have been literally denuded of every vestige of these marine food supplies. n Shall all these delicious supplies of ocean food, bred on the Pacific coast and all its estuaries and great rivers, go the way of the buffalo, to be seen only in aquariums, written about in books and told about by the pioneers? It remains to be seen. Ways and means must be provided so that inwith the state, will replenish our sea dustry in food supplies to offset the amount taken in commercial pursuits. If marketmen eliminate the ocean supplies, we ask the reader how can the small supply we have in our streams and lakes survive under conditions where men are allowed to commercialize our fish? ( PUBLIC OWNERSHIP One of the Seattle aldermen who was sponsor for the venture into municipal development of electric power, in g a reason why costs have been doubled over estimates sap is no fault of public ownership, but is due to the a! estimates of the engineers and to deplorable wastes during i struction. The councilman could have given no better indict municipal ownership policies than this statement. The government of. Seattle which is in the hands of its aide! appointed the men who estimated at $4,800,000 the cost plant which, so far, has cost about $11,000,000, who built ati crib dam in place of a masonary dam, a single line of v poles in place of a double line of steel towers, who fi build city substations and rearrange the distribution? within the higher estimate, and who provided 50,000 horse? for only four, instead of 12 months of the year. This ms be any fault of public ownership but it is the fault of officials who constitute the management under public 1 ership. Private enterprise employs one engineer to check w mates of another. Seattle officials in charge of this m owned undertaking acted on the first erroneous estimate when that proved too low, acted again on a further ejjj which has also proved too low. It is now estimated full execution of the original $4,800,000 plan will cos allowed $17,000,000, to $27,000,000 some $10,000,000 is $17,000,000 and $27,000,000, as a margin for error. be Iti' Private enterprise could not figure that way. able to stockholders and cannot fall back on taxpayers 1 up deficits. The history of municipal undertakings is that on? is estimated lowT in order to secure votes for the pi P en After the unfortunate taxpayer is launched on the he is bled white by taxation to continue the project. What would happen to the Seattle alderman i an c started a private development on cost such as that proposed for Seattle, had dragged hydro-electri- P |