OUR CITY FATHERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 15, 30 December 1911, Page 3

OUR CITY FATHERS.

(To the Editor “Stratford Post.”) Sir, —I am imagining the snort, or perhaps grin, with which my headline will ho greeted. Let it pass, and grant me a little space over a serious question, viz., the proposed loan by the Stratford Borough Council. 1 have refrained from openly expressing my opinion in reference hitherto, contenting myself with reading the pro and con in your columns on the matter. The discussions in the Chamber, in tho street, and I may say in the correspondence, provided some delightful comedy, at the same time a hidden tragedy. To the question! Why do our Borough Councillors not come up to the scratch with their promised proposal P The ratepayers, the real arbiters of its fate, are in the position of the sufferer waiting in the anteroom of the dentist’s operating chamber, with this slight difference, that they are going to perform on the “puller-out fellow.” Not only the Borough, hut tho County rates are too high already. It is good news that the Stratford County Council are wisely about to put their financial state in order, by foreshadowing their absolutely necessary expenditure, and rating accordingly, wiping out the overdraft, and then find at the end of twelve months a far healthier state— Mrs Spurrier was taiiang to her spouse on matters political, and incidentally brought in Council matters, thus wise:—“You think, John, that I’m going to show myself at political functions—-listen to the empty schemings of party politics—talk the unmeaning jargon of advanced Socialism. Ha! Not one of you advance! You scheme, you plot, you litter your lives with theories, and scatter yonc intentions like the co-operation men who throw gravel on slippery roads and water them just before a rainponr; hut one and, all of yon saunter into the house when obliged, crushing tho intentions under your feet, crumpling the litter of theories in your fists, and sit down, tied to your seats with convention, and discuss the old routine jbvor and over again. You’may he ! glorious, politicians in your sittingroom where there is no avenging press to report your speeches. • undoubtedly - you are nil- 'politicians after, well, meals; hut in the Cljam-, her yon are nothing hut Borough Councillors who have one common, conventional interest—to reduce rates.” John’s eyes danced with delight. “Crikey! what a whipping! And, by Jove! they deserve it—some of ’em. But you’re not right. Yon err in your deductions. To begin with, Borough Councillors. don’t re- ■ v duco rates. They don’t attempt to do it. 1 \L couldn’t tell you to what purpose they actually do sit in .'■.Council, hut during the course of the conclave it is an invariable item in tho minutes of the proceedings to raise the rates—conscientiously to raise’ ’em—but let’s get on to the electric light question. With your permission, I will furnish you with a. few startling comments on the statements of our King and Masters, next week.—Yours, etc., HUM SPIRO SERO. Stratford, December 30, 1911.