Managers v. Mayors

STATES & CITIES

Indignation at the electoral government of U. S. cities has flared up this summer all across the land. New York, Chicago, Dallas have had scandals laid at their mayoral or aldermanic administration doors. Detroit ousted its mayor on graft charges, elected a reform mayor after discussing city managership (TIME, Sept. 22).

In Dallas, fortnight ago, citizens went to the polls and voted to have a city manager instead of their picturesque Mayor J. Waddy ("Hot Dog") Tate. Thus on May 1 they will join Cleveland, Cincinnati, Rochester (N. Y.), and 392 managerized U. S. cities where at present there is no major civic scandal. Grinning Mayor Tate was famed for his vote-getting campaign stunt of free hotdogs, promises of free donkeyrides for children, free City Hall sitting for bums, free potted plants for funerals. Long had he fought the manager-movement, contending that under such a system the Plain People who elected him would not get their due.

In New York job-buying judges continued the cause of citizens' disgust. To the charges against Judge George F. Ewald were added this month similar charges against Judge Amadeo A. Bertini of General Sessions Court, successor to deposed Judge Francis Xavier Mancuso (TIME, Aug. 25). One Sunday early this month Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, crusading civic leader, was advised by his doctor not to preach his scheduled sermon. He asked Norman Thomas, Socialist Congressional candidate and scandal-flayer, to speak for him. After Speaker Thomas had finished describing the city's condition, Rabbi Wise could contain himself no longer. He rose up and castigated Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker's regime in these terms: "I charge the men of large affairs in New York with lack of concern touching the welfare of their city. New York has no political, let alone moral, leadership. . . . What has the Mayor of New York done to uncover wrong or to enthrone right? Not one manly, valiant step on his part. Cheap gestures and cheaper words. . . . The affairs of the first city in the world are presided over as if these were a Coney Island Mardi Gras. . . . ! Such a city as New York deserves as mayor a Dwight Morrow, a Thomas Lament, a Herbert Hoover or an Al Smith."

Last week Mayor Walker spoke mournfully of his mayoralty. He said: "All the glory is gone, all the glitter is off. It is just a hard job, and somebody else ought to have it."

In Chicago many a charge against past & present city officials arose from the finding of Gangster Jack Zuta's record books (TIME, Sept.1). Since the first of the year the city's finances have been in dire straits. Last week 7,210 city employes were payless, despite the efforts of a citizens' committee headed by Banker-Lawyer Silas Hardy Strawn. Last week Mr. Strawn attended an investment-bankers' meeting at New Orleans, made a speech about municipal securities, raised a voice as indignant as Rabbi Wise's: "Have you ever contemplated the stu pidity of our people in permitting our municipal machinery to be run by politicians . . . who frequently are men who have no education, who know nothing about government, finance, sanitation, city planning or anything else that is vital to ... a great city?"

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