Repository: UIHistories Project: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 3 [PAGE 14]

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in some cases. The work of the two departments has been coordinated. The tire department has been trained to render "riot service" o the belief that a powerful stream of water is frequently as efficacious in dispersing an irresponsible mob as is the machine gun, and does the work with less danger to human life. The prevalence of incendiary fires has led a few municipalities to give the power to arrest to firemen so that suspicious characters at the scene of conflagration may be apprehended with the least possible delay. Stricter ordinances have been passed to control the possession and use of explosives; contractors, for example, being compelled to keep their stores of dynamite at night under the protection of armed guards. A vigorous, steady and just enforcement of the law is a great preventive of crime and disorder. It is needed now as never before. Cooperation with the federal authorities for the discovery and suppression of sedition, treason and sabotage is the duty of every municipality. Throughout the country and especially near the military encampments every available means should be employed for the stamping out of the evils of vice and intoxication. No efforts made by the national government for the control of the moral conditions surrounding the army posts can be so effective as to render unnecessary all the help which the administrations of nearby municipalities can render. In short, in all these matters, no matter what the state or nation may attempt to do, on the city itself must rest a very large measure of responsibility for adequate home defense and protection, effective law enforcement and vice control. Before leaving our discussion of the kinds of war work which municipalities have in the past, or may in the future undertake, it may be well to suggest that now, if never before, the American city must realize the necessity of subjecting every enterprise and activity to the most rigid tests of efficiency and economy. This is no time for slipshod work, partisan patronage, careless accounting and extravagance. In the city, as everywhere, retrenchment is the slogan. Waste is no longer merely foolish—it has become criminal. This does not mean that there must be a sharp reduction in the expenditures for necessary public work and the ordinary municipal undertakings. Municipal economy is sometimes to be judged perhaps not so much by the purposes for which the public funds are spent as by the value received for that expenditure. One of the luxuries which the American municipality must forego, as a war measure, if for no other reason,.

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