OCR Text |
Show PAVING WHILE THE CROPS ROT Goodwin's Weekly, under its new management, Is devoting attention to the business end of Ogdon, and, Incidentally, Inci-dentally, Is being employed as a medium me-dium to get before tho people of Ogdon Og-don a number of political boosts. Why it Is necessary to resort to this roundabout method of building political politi-cal totem poles in Ogden is not at present made plain, but a little later the Impelling motive may be disclosed. One thing which seems to worry Goodwin's Weekly Is why, with labor so scarce that orchardlsts cannot gather gath-er their fruit, and farmers are handicapped, handi-capped, the city shquld be carrying on a most unusual campaign of paving:, Not less than should be out in the orchards and in tho cannories, are laying asphalt in Ogden. Og-den. They could do this extra paving a year from now, but tho city has diverted di-verted the men from the work of saving sav-ing the crops and insists, over the protests pro-tests of a great body of tho people, in doing more paving In ono year than has been done in a number of years in Ogden. The labor situation in Ogden is so serious that a number of big Industries Indus-tries have appealed to the school boards to close the schools in order to prevent a calamity. And all tho time, with this cry for help resounding, resound-ing, tho city proceeds to keep an army of stalwart men engaged on street improvements, im-provements, as though to say: "Go, got your children to work in the fields. We have a greater task on hand than that of saving crops!" The city authorities cannot plead their inability to release the men, now that the work has started, for they were warned before they began their plastering of tho city with asphalt that what Is now happening would orrnr city am an averago yeart of paving, no ono would have complained because that would have been normal, and in keeping with a policy of maintaining business on an even keel, but this desperate straining to do the spectacular, whatever the cost and however great the drain on labor, has stirrorl this community, and no clever explaining b. nnrlwin's Weekly can fool the people. There are thousands of Ogdenltes who are trying to fathom the real meaning of this extraordinary paving campaign during a period of war. They are searching for the motive, for they know it is out of accord with the best sentiment of the country. Salt Lake refused to vote bonds for a similar purposo and the argument which prevailed pre-vailed was that patriotic duty demanded demand-ed the employing of every available man on work which could not be deferred. de-ferred. Wo all want good streets, but in a time of stress such as Is now upon tho country, wo first want food conservation. conserva-tion. As one of our most' prominent men has said: "When a conflagration is on, every available man should be mobilized to fight the flames." -oo |