Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/382

378 long experience as trained observers of public opinion in their respective localities) comes this message:

We have been unable to note any effect upon municipal activities in Los Angeles because of the European war. I do not anticipate any material diversion from municipal affairs nor does there seem to be any indication that the war will hurt public improvements, unless it be for those projects which depend upon the sale of bonds.

Pasadena, Cal., reports:

So far as we have been able to learn, the European war is not affecting municipal conditions in Pasadena. The development work of the city has not been retarded. To the contrary, several large projects are under consideration. It is expected that these will be carried to completion within the next few months.

From Santa Ana, a small California city of 12,000 people in the midst of a purely agricultural section of country, remote from the great industrial centers and with very little connection or relation with them, we hear this testimony:

We have no large municipal or private enterprises under way and so far as I can see the European war is not affecting municipal conditions here at all. However, judging from a general survey of public sentiment and expression, I should think that if, for instance, we undertook to vote bonds in any considerable amount for public improvements, it would be more difficult to carry them, than if a state of war did not exist; likewise I think if any large private enterprise were undertaken that sought subscription to its stock and purchasers for its bonds among the people at large, more difficulty would be encountered now than before the war broke out.

In San Francisco at first there was

a very pronounced diverting of interest and attention among the citizens, and business of all kinds suffered; the Exchange was for a time daily thronged with business men, but that soon became the usual old story and the normal attention to other duties was resumed.

Another editor in the same city writes that:

There is at present a good deal of municipal improvement work under way in this city, the funds for which are provided by the sale of bonds. These were authorized some time ago, and thus far there has been no impediment to carrying out the original plan, although there is a prospect in the near future that it may be difficult for the city to sell its bonds at the rate of interest which they bear. Up to this date, however, we have not put a stop to anything on account of the depression due to the war, which has extended itself to this city, as to other parts of the country.

A Portland, Oregon, editor writes:

that the people of Portland, like those in all other cities, are giving a good deal of attention to the stories that appear in the papers about the war. But I do not see that the war is retarding development. Development is retarded just now by hard times and the consequent fear that investment in new enterprises will not be safe.

Another declares:

The chief effect of the conflict appears to have been the depressing effect upon the sale of city bonds. Eighty per cent, of the street improvements in