The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-09-20
THE PUBLIC BUILDING.

The citizens and taxpayers of this city
and county should rise in their majesty
and demand that work be resumed, and at
once, on the joint public building. They
should demand this in the interest of pro-
gress, and in the interest of the laooring
classes. They should demand it as they
would demand the fulfillmeut Of any other
contract entered into betw cen the authori
ties and the people. The officials of the
co2nty and those of the city are under a
moral il not legal obligation to proceed
with the building. BY both governments
the structure has beer authorized and ap-
proved, and in public mass meeting
The people have expressed themselves on
the subject, not only endorsing the scheme
but declaring in favor of it's immediate
execution Bad faith with the public has
been shown by the mayor and city govern
ment, who have for many months
stolidly ignored aud brazenIy defied the
people. The time has now come for the
community to demand that its wishes be
complied with and its orders obeyed. The
people who pay the taxes are not inter
ested in petty political quarrel between
the mayor and an architect. The taxpay-
ers don't care whether the architect voted
for or against the present city govern
ment; but the people do insist that
no such trifiing incident shall be
made to stand between them and
the erection of public building
ordered, and which ali admit is absolutely
needed 1t seems so childish that every
body is surprised if not disguised that
grown men presumed to possess ordinary
intelligence should place themselves in the
contemplate attitude in which the mayor
and councilmen are posing over this build
ing. 1t is positively babylsh.
But the people demand that the nonsense
shall cease and the public building be pro-
ceeded with at once. The city is full of
idle men who are willing and eager to work.
This fact has been demonstrated the pres
ent week, when in two days over five hun
dred men applied at one place for employ
ment at 81 per day In little
while many of the buildings now
in course of construction will be
finished and the ranks of idle men will be
greatly heightened We have invited
these laborers to come, have almost en-
ticed them hither, and there is more or less
of a moral obligation to look out for their
welfare.
Again, we are telling the world how we
are progressing, how much building we
are doing, how much money we are spend
ing for improvements, and ali the while the
countyofficials are damned and crammed into
arookery forty years old, and the city hall
is the same old structure that was erected
quarter of a century ago when Salt Lake
was quiet, easygoing village, containing
few thousand population, and thinking so
little about boom that the word, with its
present meaning, had not been invented.
When the governments are so slow and
non progressive, what kind of an impress
sion viii Salt Lake createl
Last spring, without authority. and for
no other reason, the public believes, than
because the architect had voted for his op-
ponent, the mayor stopped work on the
building An indignant public, without re-
gard to party or politics, ordered the work
to proceed. The bed for the foundation
was laid and the labor was again discon
tinued, the architect having failed to apollo
gize for voting as he pleased. Next week
another mass meeting will he held, when
another and more emphatic expression of
thepublic will should be given, and the
mayor and councilmen be told that there
must be no connection between the politics
OF individuals and public improvement.