Arizona Sun

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

GUEST EDITORIAL By MRS. M. CONAN

ATTENTION, "PROFITEERING LANDLORDS" AS MAYOR MURPHY CALLS YOU:

Outside toilets (modern, of course) are much more sanitary than indoor ones. If all plumbing were outside instead of inside, people would be a lot healthier. Our City Health Department evidently does not know this, but typhoid fever can be caught from sinks or toilets. And, doubtless, other disease germs are thusly carried.

Can our Health Department explain why the children of "slum dwellers" as people in poor districts are called, are fat and rosy and the children in rich districts are pale and skinny?

If proposed Housing Code goes through and you cannot make the ridiculous changes required, your property will be confiscated. You will be jailed and fined $300 for such offense and then $300 for every additional day that you do not comply.

So you may spend your entire life in jail. (The City will have to build larger jails.)

It does not pay to be thrifty or industrious in Phoenix, Arizona. If you are poor and want to get ahead in the fine old American way of our fathers, go to some other town.

Here you will be persecuted if you try to use your individual initiative in any way.

Phoenix, most of it near agricultural areas, has many transient workers. When weather is bad, these migrants cannot work, which means they cannot afford high rents. And, rents will have to be doubled or maybe even tripled if this imbecilic housing code is passed. We know many people flock here in the winter because of our warm climate. Now, working people, if they are wise will avoid Phoenix.

Working people, or I may say the roots of our economic system should be tenderly cared for, not destroyed. When you destroy the roots the tree will die also. So remember that, you profiteering politicians, when you act against the little fellow, for he is the producer. The world could not move without the little fellows. Do you suppose the millionaires are going to produce our food and other necessities? Not on your life, they will sit back in their swivel chairs and let the rest of the world go hang.

When I came to Phoenix in 1917, ours was a land of equal opportunity and the prevailing policy was "live and let live". But things have changed now. The little fellows are not wanted in Phoenix. Now, in order that the rich may grow richer; that building contractors may sell their projects, little property owners are to be made paupers. "No down payment" say the ads, but they do not tell you that it will take all your own lifetime and perhaps that of your children to get the junk paid for, so in the end you will be paying three times what it is worth. No, in Phoenix, the little fellows are not to be allowed to do their own planning and building or engage in the clean, honest business of rentals, that is all for the rich. These same little fellows built Phoenix into a big, prosperous city, but that does not count with the "City fathers."

Talk about gratitude!