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Show AS TO SALT LAKE. For the last several months a good deal of discussion has been going on among the country papers as to the at titude of Salt Lake towards the other towns of Utah, in both a social and business way. The concensus of opinion is to the effect that in social matters the capital city ia proud, ar-ragant, ar-ragant, overbearing and inclined to that holier-than-thou air which can b? made very odious to towns and villages of less importance commercially aLd in point of population, riches, grace and culture. Unless Salt Lake needs the presence of the inhabitants of the outlying towns to increase her social importance upon occasion, they are never invited there and there is little or no attention paid them, even when invited upon some special occasion. When conference season comes the merchants of the city invite the country people by large and expensive adver tisements in the Salt Lake papers, to come into town. But it is beginning to percolate the heads of these same country folk that it is not altogether due to the great Interest felt by these merchants in their spiritual welfare which induces them to throw wide their doors store doors and to write eloquent invitations to them, in the newspapers of Salt Lake to be present in Zion at conference time. It is their retail trade these good merchants are after and when the countiy folk haye returned home and have opened their bales and bundles and they find tbey have paid from ten to twenty per cent, higher for their goods than theee could have been bought from home merchants, mer-chants, they are enabled to see very plainly that it was not tbeir spiritual good which the sleek and oily mer-inerchacts mer-inerchacts of Zion had in view when writing the aforesaid cordial invitations invita-tions to come up to the great temple and worship for a seaaon. A good big distrust grows up in the breasts of the deluded country people and a consequence conse-quence is that next year they will not carry as much money on this yearly or semi yearly pilgrimage as they have a been in the habit of doing. Does not all thiB hint at. the true explanation ex-planation of the gradual falling off of the "conference trade" in both volume and profit? It is always best to deal candidly and frankly with people of honest purposes, especially if one desires de-sires to retain their good opinion and trade. Trade goes by favor a good deal like other things, and if one contemplates con-templates trade and that permanent, too, he must give good goods at fair prices, and good treatment also. A bit of social atteition, a generous act something to cause the countryman to believe that there is something unselfish, unsel-fish, something other than the mere fleecing in prospective, in the mind or. the merchant or business man of the city of Zion and the trade will increase and the margins alBo. The railroads issue flaming circulars and in lovely bine and red lettered posters together with reduced rates-very rates-very little reduced gather the crowds into the gates of the Holy City preparatory pre-paratory to the skinning process. Just how the "divy" is made between the merchants and the roads we are not prepared to say, but the people may be sure that the old, time-worn principle princi-ple of "you-tickle-me-and-l'Il-tickle-you" prevails here as well as elsewhere, else-where, and it will obtain just as long as the people of the countiy leave their own merchants and tradesmen to starve at home while they carry their caeh to Salt Lake tu the annual conference. confer-ence. These lordly merchants of Zioa will not pay the papers of the country towns a marevedi for advertising, eimply because, under the arrangements arrange-ments we have spoken of above, they don't have to. The gudgeon-catching machineis eo improved that it is perfect and there is nothing left to be desired in this way. .Let the good people of the country go to Zion for the ostensible reason only, buy their goods at home, keep the money at home, or quarter upon the inhabitants of -Zion, eschew hotels and boarding houses upon the occasion of their visits there, and these same merchants and business men will sing another tune quite. They will be compelled to diyide their good things with ns while getting the lion's 6hare of ours in the easy and comfortable way they are now doing. We must teach these lordly would-be would-be Gothamites that Utah was not made for them exclusively, but that the outside out-side barbarians are entitled to some consideration at their hands, acd, if they don't get it, they ehall not have any more of our conference cash. . |