Plea for Honesty

Paul Howard Douglas has spent almost half his 47 years teaching political economy and sociology at the University oi Chicago. Politics has long been his avocation. In 1932 he urged all non-conservatives to vote for Norman Thomas. Last year he was the principal speaker at an anti-Nazi mass meeting.

Not until last month did Reformer Douglas achieve political office. Then he was elected alderman by the town-&-gown black-&-white fifth ward, became the most sensemaking of the 50 members of Chicago's City Council. Last week Professor-Alderman Douglas, having encountered one of the things that make a politician's life hard, devised his own way of facing it To his constituents he issued a typewritten appeal:

"PLEASE HELP ME REMAIN AN HONEST ALDERMAN.

"Ever since I was elected alderman I have been deluged with requests for contributions from [religious and charitable] organizations who never before asked me for gifts Now I would like to post this question to the good people who are making these requests: How can an alderman satisfy them and yet remain honest? . . . With an alderman's salary what it is [$5,000], if he does make these contributions on any appreciable scale, he is almost literally forced into the 'racket.'

"I am therefore going to make an experiment which may be fatal politically. . . . I am going to be compelled to restrict the amounts which I can give. . . ."

His colleagues, good charitarians, chuckled, took no offense.

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