Life — November 1, 1917 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

NOVEMBER 1, 1917 “* While there és Life there’s Hope’* Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mitcuett, Pres’t. A. Mituzz, Sec’y and Treas, 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. 'HERE is convenience and also inconvenience about having so many voters of 4 so many different kinds of NY aspiration in New York. When you have a good candidate running for mayor, and would have him be all things to all men, it is inconvenient + to meet such varied ‘A. discrepancies of ex- pectation. But when ‘V \four candidates are running and only one is desirable, it is convenient to have the backing of the other three effective- ly distributed. So far as appears on the surface of things, Hylan does not look good to Hillquit’s followers, nor Hillquit to Hylan’s. Bennett, whose ruling pur- pose seems to be to beat Mitchel, might throw bis votes, if he could, to which- ever other candidate seemed stronger, and preferably to Hylan. But can he? The masters of political strategy who instruct us in the newspapers do not intimate that Bennett can give Hylan many Republican votes. So then if Hylan gets the Tammany support, and Hillquit the Socialists, pro-German and anti-war people, and Bennett the Re- publican sheep, Mitchel may get enough good-government votes to win. Mr. Morgenthau thinks he will. Mr. Morgenthau is thought to be a good judge of New York voters, especially Jews. He says New York contains 112,000 Jewish voters, of whom Hill- quit will get 60,000, and the rest will be divided among the other three can- didates. Of the total 670,000 votes, he gives Tammany 220,000, Hillquit 130,- 000 and Bennett 60,000, Which leaves 260,000 for Mitchel. He says the fight is between Mitchel and Hylan, and that Mitchel is the second choice of most of the Bennett, and most of the Hill- quit, men, So that if some of them conclude not to waste their votes Mitchel will get many more of them than Hylan does. So Mr. Morgenthau thinks Mitchel will have from thirty- five to cighty thousand plurality, Let us keep tab on these figures, and if Mr. Morgenthau turns out to be a good guesser on public events we can take him aside and ask him how many troops we have in France now and when the war will end. ‘AMMANY has sometimes nomi- nated fairly good candidates for mayor and elected them, and then got hardly enough out of them to pay for the trouble. So it was in Mayor Gay- nor’s case, and a good deal so with Colonel McClellan. This time Murphy has avoided that mistake. Hylan seems to be a man after Tammany’s heart, and if he can be elected Tammany will get something. So will Hearst. Heaven knows what William wants, except to gratify his spites, but if Hylan is elected he will be entitled to claim it, and nothing that has transpired in the campaign dis- courages the expectation that Hylan will settle as nearly in full as he can with all his supporters. The inspired riots of school children against the Gary system is the most discreditable detail of the campaign. The Gary system may be better than the old system or it may be worse, it may be a useful temporary expedient to tide over the shortage of school build- ings or it may not, but the rioting of school children against it has nothing to do with its merits or its faults, but is a disreputable political manoeuvre. The whole Hylan campaign has em- phasized the unfitness of the Tammany candidate to be mayor of New York, but a mayor who is unfit to be mayor is precisely what Tammany wants, A considerable majority of the voters of New York seem to want a man for mayor who is unfit to be mayor. What favors Mr. Mitchel is that they cannot agree on any common unfit candidate. It is a case of confusion against Fusion, and that makes one hopeful that Mr. Morgenthau's forecast will come true. EANWHILE, the chief news in the papers is the progress of the Liberty Loan, which has, at this writ- ing, a week left in which to complete itself, The rub-a-dub about it is tre- mendous. In the last five years in this country the science of getting money out of people has been carried to a re- markable pitch of perfection, and all that is known about it has been used to make this loan succeed. Tt must succeed, and of course it will, The chief machinery for supply- ing moncy is in the banks, and when all the loose cash has been gathered in, somehow the banks will have to supply the rest. If people more generally understood the art of borrowing on securities to buy bonds, these government loan jobs would not come so hard. To borrow on securities to buy mining stocks, or almost any other stocks just now, is a more or less hazardous operation, proper to be left to speculative persons whose concern is for their own profit, comicboo!