Everett's Economy Drive — While the City Kept Paying Boston for Its Water

Everett is in the throes of retrenchment. The air is surcharged with it. This department must economize. That department must reduce its force. We have decided to get along with six less policemen. Sight is lost of the fact that the knowledge that Everett's police force has been reduced to a minimum will soon trickle through the skulls of Seattle's vicious element and bring them in hordes to a field where they may burglarize and steal. Presumably the number of fire hydrants and arc lights will be reduced. Great is economy!

It is passing strange, however, that so far no one has suggested that we might achieve economy in another way, viz. by reducing rates. Is there nothing significant in the following figures: Bellingham and Everett are cities of such equal population that comparisons are apropos. Everett spent $8,308.37 in 1910 for city water. Bellingham spent in the same year $2,652 for hydrant water. Bellingham owns its own water system.

How about street lights? Everett paid for street lights in the year 1910 the sum of $17,061.46. The original estimate for street lights for the city of Bellingham for the year 1911 — an estimate made before Bellingham thought she had to retrench — was $10,000. Seems to us that these figures do some pretty loud talking. If economy is to be the word, well and good; we are willing, but it strikes us that economy on rates paid by the city would be about the proper place to begin. Complaint is made that there is not enough money to finance the city. If this is true, the fact that we have been industriously feeding it to Boston, Mass., may offer some explanation.