The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-08-04
SPEED MAN|ACSARE
 INVITING TROUBLE Writer Comments on Muni- cipal Business Methods SOME USELESS LAWS Does Not Understand How City Commission Which Cannot Enforce
 Simplest Laws Could Man.
 age Waterwokrs Plant
SOME USELESS LAWS

To the Editor of The Age-Herald.
 Now that the questions of municipal ownership and regulation of public ser vice plants are being so much discussed and the wise guys are busy explaining to the dear people how nicely things are going to work when the city owns and controls things, let us look about little
 This wonderful city government that can take hold of Birmingham's magniti- cent water supply and run it better than the water company and give us better water at lower rates cannot control the speed maniacs who are using some of our busiest and most beautiful streets for their mad and reckless racing.
 This wonderful city government has passed several carloads of ordinances and issued enough orders to reach clear around the whole of this great and grow ing town, regulating speed, muffler opera tion, horn blowing and smoking motors, and has never demonstrated it's ability to enforce any one of them for over an hour or two at a time, in a very small portion of the greater city.
 The speed, noise and smoke regulations are treated as a sorry sort of joke by our brave and bold-and pampered-negro drivers, who delight in making all the fuss possible to draw attention to their cars, and who run through our streets at so ter rife a speed that the only way the aver age man can keep from being run down Is to stay off the street.
 If things continue as they are, growing worse all the time, these negro (and other) lawless speed and noise fends will soon be playing ten pins with us, together with our wives and children.
 I would much rather follow Teddy into ba i11ng1aq of hltndfoldad and hands tied. than to turn a corner and ster off the curb in this town, without recon noitering-and even then you are taking desperate chances.
 And did they stop the parking of auto mobiles around the office buildings?
 Echo answers: Did the baldheaded man keep the fly from promenading where il wanted to?"
 Solution-Nix, kid
 Catechism: If they should turn out the waterworks company with its corps oi trained and competent experts and good business managers and take over and run the waterworks with a lot of politics and favoritism (sh!-no grafD mixed uI in the proposition, what would the city government do to us?
 Answer-When the water didn't fail ft would be so alarmed full of typhoid germs and other little microscopic pets that Wildi ICW Ol uS lii6 Spccu ltluS ilfbllt leave, here would want to be run over by an automobile or die some other noble and heroic death to get out of it all
 Aren't we doing pretty well under our water burden--132000 of us crossroads bud dies ?-and still they comei
 Answer-Bud, you can't buy 2. Smith & Wesson as cheap as you can some other playthings, but you know what you want when you want one.
 Moral-Let the water people alone. Le, 'em make money and furnish you witt Smith & Wesson"' quality water the same water that has helped wonder. fully to make Greater Birmingham.
 What should the good people Of Bir- mingham do if their beautiful city is longer allowed to be the stamping ground of lawbreakers of all kinds. and her own laws are to become a huge joke?
 Answer-Our prominent citizens should get together and call series of meetings, from which should be eliminated all fanat- ical prohibition and other like crazy fads These meetings to go Into the subject of enforcing at least a few of our many laws, just to ascertain whether or not there exists in Greater Birmingham enough brains and courage among the lawabiding people to wrest the situation from the grasp of the lawless element that is trying to gallop over us rough shod. Yours truly, w. D. WRYE.
 Birmingham, August 3, 1912