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Show 1 1 ' A TALK WITH THE EDITOR. "Mr. Editor," said an Ogdcn citizen. "I have come to make your acquaintance. ac-quaintance. You arc a candidate for mayor and I personally seek to i get your views so I may better prepare myself to vote intelligently! 1 for tie best interests of Ogden." ! The conversation that ensued touched on many of the problems of I j Ogden, with pointed questions and candid replies. "If I go into office," said the editor, "I will do so without obligating myself directly or indirectly to any one who may desire an appointive office. I will be untrammeled, and be under obligation to no one, except ex-cept the people as a whole. I believe that a candidate for mayor should be as careful as a judge not to compromise himself. No man can make a good mayor who is a creature of any class or kind, or who is a lickspittle or a clinging servant. He must be a free agent in the cause of exact justice. I am against machine politics because with the scheming and trickery of the political combines there goes 'pull and promise, and, worst of all are the parasites, the ward heelers, and the fellows who look for soft places as a reward. "Ogden today is very much in need of a chanige which will keep down taxes, and one way to attain that end is to weed out those in the pay of the city who feel that, in supporting a man for office, they are entitled to draw big pay and give nothing in return. Another is to put in effect, and rigidly live up to, a budget system, whereby no department depart-ment would be allowed to exceed estimated expenditures based on actual necessities. One of the big defects in our methods of city financing financ-ing and this is also true of the state is that, regardless of the amount of money raised by taxation, a way always is found to spend the last dollar and go deeper in debt. No successful business institution could operate on such a spendthrift principle. "Ogden also must look to other sources of revenue than direct taxa tion, and one of the most inviting fields is electric lighting, which is recognized as a public utility. Our waterworks has paid large sums into the treasury, and an electric distributing system, whereby the streets and homes would be served by the city at a reasonable cost, likewise should add to the financial strength of Ogden." |