The San Francisco call., 1898-02-27
A WORD TO MAYOR PHELAN.

of rest by passing in review certain acts of his official life and testing them by the standards of conduct which he accepts and honor ably strives to live up to in private. A es- tmabe citizen should be equally estimable as a Mayor. He who acts with decorum at home and in the clubs should act with dignity in office.
 Mayor Phean knows right from wrong He dis tingushes clearly the difference between propriety and impropriey in all social affairs and it IS reason- able that if he will give the subject some consideration he will be able decide with an equal clearness what he should do and what he should leave undone in the highest function to which he has yet been caed-that of acting as the chief execu- tive of the city.
 Mayor Phean of late has permitted himself to be held up before the public the friend and ally of the most disreputabe gang known to San Francisco. He has allowed himself to be made the pet, as it were of yellow journalism and has shown willing to pose in that attitude before the public He has even stopped to become something like an ad- vertsing agent and solicitor of money for dis reputable newspaper, and has undertaken in public and Mayor to promote one of its schemes for ob- taining money from the people to be held fin trust
 When committee to be selected to take charge of the entertainment to be given by the Min ing Fair for the benefit of the families of the sailors Oy MT. Phelan, Mayor of the city, of course ap- pointed a member of that body It was supposed that he would attend the meetings of the committee in something of official character and would act for the municipality far as that was possible in the work with which the committee was charged It was therefore with amazement the members of the com mittee saw the Mayor appear before them to solicit that the money raised by the entertainment should be given not to the immediate relief of the needy families of the heroic dead but to monumental ad vertisng fund to be held in trust by the New York Journal as self-appointed trustee.
 The action of the Mayor in this affair is the more regretted by his friends and the more condemned by the general public because the monumental adver- tising fund for which he appeared as solicitor has already become scandal. The Call has published the information that the New York Journal in seek ing to get to take up contributions for this fund sent to Seattle correspondent this dispatch:
 Can you get among the wealthy people of your city who will organize local committee for national monument to the Mane's heroes on basis of 10 per cent on all he collects!"
 "Wealthy people" who solicit money from pa riotc and generous people ostensiby for patriotic purposes and with seeming liberality of their own but with the secret understanding of 10 per cent rakeof are not esteemed by public sentiment either from political social point of view Mayor Phelan citizen, as gentleman, as a man of honor in private life, would never ask popular con trbutions for that appeals to the nobest sen- timents of humanity and then pocket 10 per cent of all he obtained.
 Why, then, as Mayor of the city and in his official capacity does he allow his to be enrolled with such men? Why does he act with them? Why does he personally urge that money to be raised in San Francisco for the families of the nations heroic dead should be turned from their immediate relief and de- voted to trust fund which wealthy persons" are collecting a basis of 10 per cent?