Life — November 18, 1909 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

No. Wz Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY Prevte inty.first Street, New York. 1A. strrener AL MILLER, See’y on Trea HE late election in N York was remarkably | fair. The police kept good order and properly helpful in all efforts to pre- vent dishonest voting. There were no signs of an organized attempt to put in bad votes and very little in- dividual cffort in that di- rection, All hands accepted the count as substantially fair. All that was excellent Tammany got a whaling. That is very Some of the Tammany candidates, like Roesch and Sullivan, were per- sonally unfit or stood for particularly bad influences, and deserved to be beaten on their personal merits. But the chief Tammany candidates were personally pretty good. The Tammany nominces for Judges of the Supreme Court were declared by most of the lawyers to be better than the success ful Fusion candidates for those offices. Mr. Battl for Distri Attorney, is very well spoken of. Mr. Haag, who ran for Borough President in Manhattan, was commended as a well-qualified official, What has been accomplished is no sweeping substitu- tion of sons of light for sons of dark- ness, but the introduction of officials who will not have to pay Tammany for the chance to serve the city. The Fusion officers hold the strings of the city’s purse. They have a better chance to do good work than Tan use they are were wholesome. who was up many offi- cers would have had, beca not the representatives of an organi tion that is in politics for business rea sons. They will not have to waste the city's money to enrich the powers that govern in Fourteenth Street. As for Judge Gaynor, he is an ex- traordinary speculation. Before the campaign he was a sort of Brooklyn gi) (clea oa rumor, believed in more or less vaguely, by a good many people and indorsed by Edward M. Shepard. During the three weeks he ran for Mayor we got to know him pretty definitely as a man Perhaps we saw him at his worst in the campaign. We can't tell yet. We haven't had him as Mayor. The law- yers were pretty well agreed that he was a bad judge, but we are prone when we take the opinion of the law- yers about a man to hold it off a little “lawyers’ opinion” which the laity ought not to accept without fur- ther investigation. This particular opinion was extensively confirmed by the candidate himself in the campaign. It was a considerable gain in the late campaign that Mr. Bannard was dragged out of an office Broad Street and exhibited to the people of New York. A good many of them got to know him. He talked to them pretty steadily for a fortnight, and al ways to the point. If the voters had clected him Mayor they would got a great bargain. He is the type of man who ought to be Mayor of New York, and a very likely individual of the type. have ink that Tam- many could have been beaten without the help of Mr. Hearst. Mr. Hearst is in luck. He ha and he has not got to be Mayor. Nobody seems to. thi s done a good act SW YORK is an cor poration, employing a huge num- ber of people, busy all the time with huge undertakings and spending a bil- lion dollars four years. The management of its concerns is divided up a good deal, nevertheless the serv- ices of a man qualified to be its ad- ministrative head would be very cheap at fifty thousand dollars a year. We expect to get such a man for fifteen enormous every thousand dollars a year in money and the privileges of having two lamps in front of his house, having his picture in the paper. walking at the head of processions when he wants to and re- ceiving foreign visitors. He should be quick at figures and of exper large financial transactions, a judge of character and capacity in discriminating nce in sound men, a observer of newspapers, regardful and regardless of them by turn. His heart must beat true to nearly a million Jews, half million Italians, and to Celts, Saxons, ‘Teutons, Turks, Greeks, assorted Asi- atics, Africans and Americans to the number of four millions more. He must feel for all of us—houscholders, shopkeepers, churchgoers, street-walk- ers, saloon-keepers, taxpayers, union- laborers, other laborers, woman-suffra- gists and millionaires—and try to see that we get a fair run for our money. T will be scen by comparing the Mayor's salary with his dutics that the office is not on a business basis. It is a good job for a politician, or a phi- lanthropist, or a grafter, or a rich man who needs the pressure of duties to keep his faculties in working order and his spirit healthy. The government of New York is as unsuited as possible to be ac: A large force of men must be on it every minute, and should be under continuous direction of astute minds, working out definite problems through long periods of time. In fact, however, it is pretty casual, the chief clement of continuity in it being Tam many Hall governs New York most of the time and tries hard to make the city pay duly for being governed. It succeeds a good deal, but has to make such serious sacrifices of civie ¢ and virtue to make its services duly profitable that the population it serves is always in a state of more or less active conspiracy to pitch it into the street. The alter- native to Tammany rule is the service sural job. Tammany onomy its own of consecrated citizens who are willing to work for the ¢ plemented by aspiring politicians and hy folks who envy Tammany its op- portunities and would like a turn at the offices The trouble with the service of the consecrated altruists is that it is apt to be inter. mittent, whereas Tammany never lets up. Imnerfect as the alternative or- ganization is, it is wonderful what it omplishes. It is wonderful, more- over, that New York is governed as well as itis. Its best hopes lie in the improvement in the intelligence of the electorate and in the increase of avail- able consecrated citizens. nmon good, sup- themselves, comicbooks.com