The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-11-02
Some Pertinent
 Questions From
 A Times Reader
To the Editor, Evening Times:

To the Editor, Evening Times:
 Might I enquire, through the medi-
 unl of your paper, what kind of eff
 f1ciency the people of this city are
 getting from their elected servants :?
 A scare head line in a Sunday paper
 advises all and sundry that the man
 ufacturers had mulched the city of
 S109, 9,000,000 in taxes. And of course
 the obvious question is who allowed them to do this thing? Who, in au- thority, let them get away with any such sum? In short, who is the responsible party for such a derelic- tfon? And the only answer is the mayor and the assessors. If these men are not big enough to handle the financial business of the city and prevent any such leakage. is it not time we had a change. Be is ob- served I am taking the evidence of their own organ and am not person. ally admitting anything. Assuming, however. for sage or argument that the above contention is right surely we are also right in assuming that our f1duciary agents in the city gov ernment namely, the mayor and as sessorS, are weak sisters to allow any coterie to put it over on them like that.
 While we are considering the above aspect Of the case had we not better ask ourselves why the taxes keep go- ing up in face of a wage reducing market.
 Of course rents are high because taxes are high and taxes are high because we paid about one-third more for our Warrenite than one should have paid; because we are paying city officials wartime salaries and city expenses generally are from 50 to 100 per cent. higher than they should be.
 If the wages of the average factory employe have been reduced from 25 60 the nnTCh3S sing power of these wages Is a good deal lower because of the persistent action Of the city government in keeping up the wages of city employees and the care less manner of handling city finances generally Congress Street bridge one case in point) so that the necessaries of life, food and clothing have to be kept up to help pay the eXorbitant rents. If the people are to be edu- cated to come back to a peace basis the sooner the city employees realize they are people the better:
 And, by the same token, if we are l about putting the mayors and other inflated salaries back to a pre-war basis. We have got to get down the taxes, and, as we have ample proo1 administration can successfully | boast of Is that it has raised the taxes l beyond reasonable limits, it is time to try a change. True the other man I the face of the financial mess the city | is in, but if he can stop some of the | leakages to begin with, stop some of | the far too easy money making of l the city, stop the taxes from going 1 higher for the first year he will have done something in the right direction | and these things are worth trial 1 Never mind about the cheap little pie, | ayune back biting, mud-slingfng, per- 1 sona1 spite issues raised by some ill- | conditioned malingers they are utter ly beside the point. Search deeper | and you will find the promoters have some far different motive for the1l | scurrilous, half-lying propaganda | than that on the surface. In brief l they are afraid of the man, Atwater | because he is too straight for them
 1 His whole career proves it. His life l and work are an open book which he | who runs may read, and therein l:
 enough to show the world the caibel
 l of the man, four square and true
 blue. I hope the sterling qualities ot | Fred Atwater will appeal to the large
 | majority of the voters so that they | can honestly say 1T vote for th1:
 man because I believe he will do hi;
 best to reduce the taxes and the high
 l cost of living and help relieve the l city of it's burden of graft
 1 Bridgeport, Nov. l, 1921.
 l SALUS POPULI.