Newspaper Page Text
10
county and city taxes one-third of all taxes paid in
the United States; they pay out every day over one
million dollars for running expenses; their indus
tries furnish a livelihood for upward of two and
one-half millions of people and pay every year for
LABOR over fifty-five millions of dollars.
Can we afford to allow the prohibition fanatic
to destroy the market for grain and labor and load
us up with additional taxes which w r e cannot afford
to pay ? An attempt is being made throughout the
country to build up a powerful political party at
the expense of the farmer and workingman. The
movement is backed by big political and financial
interests trying to gain control of affairs at AN ash
ingto n. BE WARE !
Every farmer, every workingman, every manu
facturer, every traveling man and every patriotic
and fair-minded citizen in the l nited States should
now assert his rights and use every effort to sup
press this growing evil of prohibition and hypocrit
ical humbug, which, if allowed to prevail, will create
SHALL SAVANNAH OR THE SAVANNAH ELECTRIC
COMPANY RULE THE LOCAL AFFAIRS
OF THIS CITY?
The people of Savannah are amazingly patient
and long suffering. This has been proven time and
again. The fact is perpetually in evidence in their
tolerance of that relic of government in the days of
Feudalism, the Star Chamber, which survives in the
form of the Savannah City Council caucus. Screened
from the public view, ordinances against the adop
tion of which there might be a public outcry, ii all
the ins and outs were known, may be exhaustively
discussed and their passage or defeat determined
upon in caucus, to be followed in open council by
what amounts only to a formal ratification of the
caucus action.
But the question of the caucus is but by the way.
The citizen is nearly equally culpable with the
Council for unfortunate consequences which some
times follow municipal legislation. I bis culpability
lies in the generally quiescent attitude on the part
of the Savannah people when matters are pending
in the city legislative department which are of such
importance as to deserve the uttermost degree of
alertness in order to conserve the best interests of
the city.
A case in point was the popular passiveness
toward the recent telephone merger, Cause for
THE REASON
a financial crisis such as the United States has never
; seen.
Don’t discourage American manhood, but elevate
it by encouraging self-respect among all. Restrict
license to those who can be depended upon to tran
sact their business on as clean and respectable lines
as a bank or public library, and then we can hope
to become a happy and contented family, with man
hood unimpaired, and happy womanhood “its bright
and faithful auxiliary.”
The gauntlet is at your feet. Within it is as
vital a question as that which produced the men of
’76, and their spirit is still with us. Come forth!
ye stalwarts of the nation! Break the apron string
fetters. Leave the W. C. T. TJ. to their knitting,
eroaning and back-biting. Do not forget that the
cardinal sin of earth is to be unproductive, and a
parallel sin is destruction, and prohibition is an old
granny, hobbling on two broken crutches: One the
destruction of manliness and freedom, the other the
production of unthinking nonentities and nits.
complaint against the monopolistic combine has
already arisen. This is no surprise, or ought not
to be. Wonder is that it did not appear sooner.
The prediction is ventured that telephone users have
as vet scarcely entered the kindergarten of the
course of oppression through which they are yet to
pass. The Bell Telephone Company is not a Georgia
institution, and will, therefore, be found difficult, if
not impossible, to reach through Georgia courts.
A local news item savs the Mayor has asked the
City Attorney for an “explanation of the contract”
between the city and the telephone company.
Rather a late hour, is it not, to have a contract ex
plained to the city administration which has already
put the contract in, perhaps, irrevocable force, and
which action) has already begun to pinch the citi
zens? The time to scrutinize the contract was be
fore its ratification, and the failure of citizens to
insist upon this at the proper time visits upon them
selves at least a share of the responsibility for any
ills they may suffer at the hands of the telephone
company.
Swiftly in the wake of this denouement comes
the attempt Wednesday night in open Council, on
the part of certain Aldermen, to precipitate action
