Albuquerque Evening Citizen

CAUSE OF JOURNAL ANXIETY.

The Morning Journal is angry—so angry that unless some one holds it, it may bite itself as certain infuriated snakes in Africa are said to do when unable to reach the object of their attack.

The Citizen is sorry for its neighbor: but then, how could this paper have prevented the present condition?

The Journal, for interested reasons, attempted to aid the Albuquerque Water Supply company in getting an extension of its present objectionable and burdensome franchise to the year 1940. There was no offer of reduced rates to consumers, no promise of better service to the city. The demand was simply and without qualification that the water company should be permitted to continue for thirty-five years in compelling the people of Albuquerque to pay 35 cents per 1,000 gallons for 5 cent water.

The Citizen, of course, having no personal interest in the case whatever, other than its natural and proper interest in the city of Albuquerque, fought and defeated the suicidal proposal. The Journal felt chagrined at its failure and grew angry at the extremely probable loss of its financial interest in the question. Of course, it blamed The Citizen for both of its losses.

But the Journal is a periodical of many resources, and it would not submit to a single defeat. So when the governor came over to investigate the charges against some Bernalillo county officials, the Journal saw a good opportunity to slip out of the old controversy and yet, perhaps, advance its water interests. So, abandoning its year-old infant, the child of its former love, the purifying of Bernalillo politics, it began to abuse the governor for doing the very thing for which it had made the welkin ring for a year or more, and to declare there was no need for investigation, the time had passed, county conditions had been purified, and all things were now serene.

This was so proficient an act of the lightning change artist, that the papers of the territory saw it and commented upon it. But they did not see the water question as "the nigger in the wood pile." This The Citizen again exposed.

Reduced now to the last resort, the Journal's sleight of hand man will probably spring some new lightning change upon the public; but The Citizen forewarns it that no number of changes or contortions will enable it to secure the extension of the present water franchise for thirty-five years, or to sell the present inefficient plan of the water company to the city, when a new, efficient and up to date plant can be installed here for $75,000.

This is the conclusion of Col. Jastro, who operates such a plant in Bakersfield, Cal., a city a little larger than Albuquerque.