OCR Text |
Show STAND AND DELIVER. The Salt Lake Telegram of Tuesday contains a cartoon that speaks volumes. The picture represents a i" Consumer" seeking his rights, but between him and the coal trust, the food and the ice trust stands the United States district attorney, the state attorney general and the district attorney, all connected with the Salt Lake Herald. The members of the Herald "bunch" are armed with clubs with which to overawe the Consumer. The cartoon reminds us that the men who are in possession of the machinery of the law, by which the coal trust could be made to respect the rights of the people, are the men who are back of the Salt Lake Herald-Republican, and yet that paper is daily shouting anathemas at the coal producers and dealers. The campaign of the Herald-Republican is one of seeming contradictions con-tradictions and the public is beginning to inquire if there is not an ulterior motive. We do not like to think ill of our contemporaries, but the attitude atti-tude of the Herald-Republican on this coal question is so nearly a duplication of its notorious prohibition pronunciamento that we are half inclined to expect a repetition of that fiasco, ending in the spiking of the guns at the height of the battle, with the Herald-Republican going over to the enemy, to later deny that there was any intent to harm the coal trust, or, in fact, that there was a. coal trust or that the Herald-Republican had made an attack. The owners of the Herald-Republican are the office holders of this state and the representatives of the federal government to whom the people must look for relief from exorbitant charges for coal, and, if they are sincere and candid, they will cease prating through their paper and proceed to act according to the orderly process provided pro-vided by law, and they will thereby divest this fight for fair prices from all semblance of blackmail. There is something so incongruous in the Herald-Republican screaming for the powers that be to act, while that paper is owned and its policy mapped out and dictated by the state officers and others in power, that one is forced to admit there is an odor as of something rotten not in Denmark but in the dark corners of the Herald-Republican editorial rooms. It is a disgraceful thing for any coterie of highly honored men to convert the misfortunes of those who have honored them into a tainted stream of wealth, flowing from a polluted spring to coffers hidden in the filthy pool of politics. It is an outrageous perversion and a treacherous betrayal of a people. |