The Saint Paul globe., 1899-12-13
M,cARDY AND HIS HATBAND.

M'CARDY AND HIS HATBAND.
1t is related in the G o b report OF
Mondays meeting of the conference
committee that as the marvellous disserta-
tion of McCardy on how to govern and
not to govern this people progressed,
Mayor Kiefer, looking intently at our
, municipal Pooh Bah, exclaimed in amaze:
Wonderful! Wonderful
And we'll indeed might our city execu-
tive have so exclaimed. For more en-
tirely wonderful exposition of political in
fallibility or of eIl-embracing knowledge,
wisdom and power on the part of public
servant of any grade from constable to
president has never, we apprehends been
offered to the world since representative
government was devised.
Mayor Kiefer should resign instanter.
He is but the nierest tail to the municipal
kite. The conference committee, en-
bracing the agg: egate wisdom of all the
departments of our many-sided city gov
ernment, the city attorney, the city coun-
public works should forthwith hide their
diminished heads and apologize for the
accident of their being on the earth con-
! temporaneOusly with this wonderful
wizard of figures and Of constitutional
and architectural lore.
Had We the permission of McCardy we
might, even at the expense of having 1t
pointed out by that great man that we
consider public problems only in their
party political bearing, suggest to the
members of the charter commission that
if they do not now regard themselves as
being perpetually restrained and enjoin-
ed from proceeding with their work, they
might draw us a charter whereby all ex-
ecutive authority might become vested in
| this resourceful official. 1t would simplify
/ things, at least until the legislature could
take under consideration the calling by
him of constitutional convention where
by all things municipal should be ordered
as he wills.
And in the meantime we would have
school houses galore, and they would be
maintained in the most complete condi
ton Of repair; our school teachers, having
sitten themselves on the stool of repent
ance for a sufficiently long period, might
draw their wages with becoming reg
ularity. and any lawyer who happened to
appointee of our municipal director,
might bask in the rare sunshine of his
smile and win a professional repute
which would occasion all the corpora
other in their efforts to secure his invalu
able services; provided, of course, that
whenever any question, might arise in
volving the powers of the chief director
his legal adviser was found to be as COM
plaisant a gentleman as the present in
cumbent
Until all these needed changes are in an
immediate way to be wrought, and at the
risk of being convicted of the crime of
lese majestic, the G l o b takes occasion
to suggest to its Republican brethren
that the present hatband or the city
comptroller has for some time past been
subjected to a severe strain, and that the
great party policy Of expansion, especial
ly when its operations are confined to the
human Uranium, is not at all unlikely to
be followed by disastrous results unless
the proper precautions are taken. Our
present wonderful city charter may in
time, If left undisturbed long enough, dis
appear In the process of spontaneous
combustion, and the community still sur
vive; but to have the very dome Of our
city system, confined, it is, within the
precarious limits of a single hatband,
shatter itself under the exacting
pressure to which it has been so long
subjected would indeed bring disaster to
city and party alike.