Life — September 17, 1925 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

SEPTEMBER 17, 1925 VOL. $6. 2237 “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING C MPANY $98 Madison Avenue, New York Cuartes Dawa Grason, President R. E. Suerwoop, Editor F. D, Casey, Art Editor R. HYLAN is not the worst man nor yet the worst Mayor that ever was, but he is not a good Mayor. Far Any one who wants partic- ulars about his deficiencies can get them very agreeably by reading Gov- ernor Smith's speeches. The Gover- nor’s mind is an extremely good picce of machinery and he knows the busi- ness of the State of New York and incidentally of the City of New York as very few people do. To read his impromptu discourses on Mayor Hy- lan is really a pleasant exercise, so intelligent his talk is, so informed, and so detached from abuse and noisy dec- lamation. As a campaign speaker he presents a very striking contrast to the Mayor. Further information about Mr. Hy- Jan may be had from Comptroller Craig, not so bland a campaigner as Governor Smith, but an able man, thor- oughly acquainted with the details of the Hylan administrations and more than willing to disclose what he knows. He is as good a man as there is to puncture the balloons that Mr. Hylan sends up about his great services to the city. To the ordinary observer the city docs not scem altogether ill run. The immense amount of building is a nui- sance, of course, but the city adminis tration is not to blame for that. The Streets are fairly well kept; the great traffic problem seems to be handled with ility. Mr, Enright, the police boss, is neither the best nor the worst police boss New Yorkers have had. He seems from it! Cuan Maxwett, Vice-President Lancnoane Gtrson, Secretary and Treasurer man and though neither life nor property is as safe or nearly as safe as it ought to be, one he: tates to say how much of that, if any, is Enright’s fault. But the impression that the police department is full of politics and considerably prevails, and is supported in strenuous language by various experts, among them James Dillon, lately Chief In- spector of the Department, who doubt- less does know how matters go in the police department under Hylan, though he may not be disinterested in reporting them, at least an able favoritism IX the great matter of the subways which Mr. Hylan has not built, and the construction of which he has undoubt- edly hindered, what can one say? More subways, well planned, would undoubt- edly increase the comfort of the crowds of people who throng in and out of Manhattan Island every day, but how long would the improvement last?) The population goes on increasing with in- credible rapidity. As fast as new means of transportation are devised they are overcrowded by passengers. Is it going to increase human happi- ness in New York to dump more people into the lower end of the Island than are dumped there already? When the Wall Street district is filled as tight with people as the roads of Long Island are filled with automobiles, what is go- ing to happen next? There are those who hold that Mayor Hylan’s greatest service to the town has been as an obstructionist of the subways. People who have this view believe that the town must be replanned and the less crowded parts of the Island developed, and that the new sub- ways when they are built must dump their loads in sections of the city that are not too crowded already. If anything like this is ahead of us Mr. Hylan is not the man for Mayor, We must have some one much more in- telligent than he is. But the mere cry of more subways and five-cent fares contains very slight promise of any welcome alleviation of Manhattan life. Perhaps when Governor Smith gets to discussing subways he will say some- thing edifying, as he certainly does when he discusses Hylan, 4. Uta Sahay fo. LL the same, important as it is to New York who shall be its next Mayor, it is a little early to get excited about it: less, indeed, it turns out that the primaries, on September 15, arc the main fight. The first of October is time enough to get excited about any- thing, but if we must begin before that, the coal strike is a fair subject. Is anybody excited about the coal strike? No, not yet. It is not cold enough, and besides, it is of no use to get excited about coal. The purpose of the strike is to get the country ex- cited, and not to get excited is one way to beat it. The newspapers in August seemed to have a hard and continuous struggle to keep people excited about things that were not exciting. The silly season was sillicr than usual. Regard that procession of young women who attempted to swim the English Chan- nel, and figured in the headlines as news and in the picture supplement as examples of anatomy! Were those girls exciting? Had they any valid claim to public attention? Or was it merely some nudity and more non- sense that got them next to reading matter? How many people were deeply stirred to read in the front-page headlines that Babe Ruth had been fined $5,000 by his boss for bad behavior, and sent back to the nursery? Was there much quickening of heart action over Babe? The effect of money on Babe is not fundamentally important, though the psychopathic features of his case brought out from Dr. Heywood Broun an in- comicbooks.com