Two & None

Due to confusion about the date on which its brand new council form of city government was to begin, Toledo last week had two mayors for the first six days of 1936. At that, Toledo was better off than Cincinnati, which began the new year with no mayor at all.

In 1924 honest Cincinnatians freed their city from boss rule by voting a new city charter, entrusting municipal affairs to a nine-man council which elected one of its number mayor and chose a city manager. Only the dreamiest idealists expect an aroused citizenry to burn with reforming zeal all year round. But, as successive city campaigns have shown, Cincinnati's voters are not very excited about their reform government even on election day. Last November the City Charter Committee (reform) Administration again excited the admiration of less fortunate U. S. communities by floating $2,000,000 worth of long-term loans at an interest rate lower than that on similar U. S. Government securities. Same day Cincinnati's voters went to the polls, virtually repudiated the Charter Committee's candidates by returning only four

Charterites to the nine-man council. Four Republicans were elected. This gave Cincinnati's balance of power to a lone Independent, a dismissed Congregational minister who is now one of Father Coughlin's biggest Protestant apostles, an old-time Pacifist and Single Taxer named Herbert Seeley Bigelow.

Born in Elkhart, Ind. 66 years ago, Herbert Bigelow went to Cincinnati in 1896 as pastor of the Vine Street Church.

He got into difficulties almost at once by mingling on the walls of his church the sayings of Henry George, Count Tolstoy and Jesus Christ. Soon thereafter he leased the church for 99 years to a theatre company, with the result that the old Vine Street Church is now a burlesque house. This deal resulted in Preacher Bigelow's being ousted from the Congregational ministry. But seldom did a season pass that Herbert Bigelow did not make some sort of spectacular news for Cincinnati papers. In 1912 he was president of the Ohio Constitutional Convention, sponsoring initiative, referendum, municipal home rule. In 1917, while speaking across the Ohio River in Kentucky, he was brutally beaten by sheeted men who said they had horse whipped him "in the name of Belgium's women and children." In 1924 he was sponsoring a charter reform when the City Charter Committee was just getting under way. The two movements merged, but not until the last election did Preacher Bigelow get a seat on the municipal council. Meantime he had worked up a hub bub against utility companies. He had also joined Father Coughlin's National Union For Social Justice, sitting on the platform at meetings with the Detroit radio priest and vigorously proselytizing members of his own private "People's Church."

Last week Councilman Bigelow produced a deadlock by refusing to vote either with the four Charterites or with the four Republicans for a mayor, ostensibly because he wanted Cincinnati to get its power from TVA. In vain did the city manager explain that TVA would not be ready to deliver power for five years, that the city already had contracts with private power companies which the electorate had apparently considered satisfactory. To this Councilman Bigelow replied: "It's not a struggle over rates in Cincinnati, but an important section in the great fight of President Roosevelt."

Actually, charged popular, three-time Charterite Mayor Russell Wilson, the reward demanded by Councilman Bigelow for supporting the charter was three important city jobs for his friends. Rather than pay that price, Chartermen would apparently dicker with the Republicans. Meantime, Councilman Bigelow blithely observed: "Perhaps we may never get a Mayor. What's the difference? A Mayor is only a ceremonial figure, a sort of political parsley to adorn ceremonial dinners. Why shouldn't the Councilmen take turns at this sort of punishment, eating meals without money and making speeches without meaning?"

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