The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-09-28
THE BooDLERs UNNAMED.

The organ of the slums still maintains a
sullen silence as to the dishonest men in
the council and fails to say who are the
boodlers in that body. 1t confesses that on
one occasion it was manly and honest
enough to criticise the action of the cour-
Gil, but by implication declares that it has
ever since been ashamed of that solitary
break in a long record of dishonest journal
ism. But neither the councilmen nor the
public are interested in the organs apol
ogies for once having done its.duty. Four
of the former have been openly accused of
dishonesty, and until the four have been
named must not each member rest under
the suspicion of being one of the quartette.
We have heard individual members of the
council complain, and at a certain meeting
the entry body, with single excep-
ton, voted yea on a resolution
requesting that the four untrust-
worthy gentlemen be designated that they
might be dealt with as the law demands.
If we admit that the morning organ is for
once truthful, and that four out of the six
teen gentlemen comprising the municipal
government are really dishonest, does it
not necessarily follow that in the absence
of information as to the four, all are liable
to be considered as guilty by different
members of the community? Of course
the Tribune knows the four and therefore
runs no risk Of iniuring in its mind the
good names of the twelve gentlemen who
are innocent of boodelism. But the public
must grope in the dark, and owing TO lack
nf lodi hot
the slums sheet, is liable to do great in
justice to twelve officials. Another cir
cumstance which tends to befuddle the
people who are trying to pick out the
ong-doers, is the fact that the council
men have almost invariably acted
as unit on all measures in
which Doodle was possible. If
four had stood out on any proposition
suggestive of Doodle, that fact would have
been pointer which might have been fol-
lowed to the successful discovery of the
information sought. On the reckless vot-
ing away of street railway franchises, on
the extravagant appropriation of moneys,
on the multiplication of offices, on the
trebling of the city taxes, on the refusal to
listen TO the protests of IS per cent, of the
property owners against robbery in the
name OF taxation, on the suspension of
work on the public building on account of
the architects politics or because somebody
wanted different site--on pretty nearly
every proposition that has come up where
the people were to be oppressed or money
TO be spent, the fifteen councilmen have
stood as one man, thus bamboozling those
who have sought for an indication pointing
TO the boodlers.
The Triblnc's silence may be satisfactory
10 the organ and to the four dishonest coun-
cilmen, but it is anything but satisfactory
TO the twelve who were unassailed and to
the great public. Nor will the sheets
beating about the bush and talking about
things which happened ages ago divert at
tention from the question at issue or cause
anybody to forget that in a momentary
departure from the rule of its life the
paper asserted in so many words that four
members of its party, four men that it had
helped TO elect, are dishonest, and that in
the Liberal city council there are boodlers.