The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1903-08-13

ness is NOBODY UuolUoSS. IL 1e@N0o
a great deal of discussion and agita-
ton TO arouse the people to reliza-
ton of the fact that public business
is being mismanaged and the public
funds misappropriated, but when the
people once become convinced that
their interests are being neglected or
sacrificed, they do not hesitate to
strike and to strike hard. However,
the blow is often misdirectei and
strikes the wrong man.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says:
"Of course, every nOn-criminal
citizen of every city greatly desires
the highest possible standard of pro-
lection to life, person and property.
Any police official who should prove
himself notably inefficient in prevent
ing murders, assaults and robberies-
at least in the respectable districts of
d CIly-WOulu UlluS upou ul"SCiI q
storm of public Indignation that
would endanger the political future
of any higher official who retained
him in office.
ANY similar inefficiency in the
heads of the fire department or any
corruption that lessened it's ability to
save property would provoke a SINH
lar public clamor for the removal of
those responsible for such conditions.
Amy actual, technical embezzle-
ment of the public funds or any de-
gree of corruption among municipal
officials which should greatly raise
the tax-rate has also always been fol
lowed by an outburst of the peoples
wrath, very real and very destructive
"All this is merely the working of
the universal instinct for the preser-
walton Of self AMI property.
But when we come to the things
that do not so directly affect the skin
and pocketbook of the citizen do we
find the same keenness of feeling as
to faults of government and fOibles-
or worse-of officials? Even in these
former cases, is there not a strict
Does the news of brutal,
repeated and undetected murders, as
saults and robberies among the sub
merged tenth of the sIums arouse a
civic Indignation that need cause any
alarm to officials?
But if it becomes known that some
member of a city government who is
popular, genial, open-hanled, a good
fellow, has received a large block of
stock or a valuable option or a posi-
ton in company or any like consi1-
Grafton, for putting through some city
prisilege or franchise, or stopping
some proper investigation for any like
consideration on the side, what are
the average citizens feelings about
it? Of course, he thinks it is wrong,
but how much does he feel about it?
How deeply is he mortified in his
spirit of civic pride? How strong and
sincere is his determination to Sc
cure the punishment or the retire
ment from public life of the grating
good fellow?
Suppose he learns that by some
juggling of contracts, some ingenious
framing of the specifications the city
in which he resides is paying for
certain supplies 10 per cent more
than the market price, how closely
would his feelings approach, not only
in degree, but in kind, to those that
would be his on learning that his cook
has made a like boodling arrange
ment with his butcher?
IF he finds his city's pay-rolls pad
ded with men who are doing ten
cents worth of work for every dollar
they receive, does the discovery affec
him at all as would the ascertainng
that the manager of his business had
in his absence, established a force o.
clerks on a similar basis? Or does
he shrug his shoulders and say, oh
well, some poor chap needed the sal
airy and the city's rich enough to pay
it