Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1900-12-06
GOOD GOVERNMENT AND A PURE CITY
Philadelphia Press.

Philauelphla fress.
New York is passing through one OF
those periodic gusts of "reform" which
have come so often that men despair OF
their permanent effect or useful result
The usual stage is set. The public has
once more had its gaze turned on the fou!
alliance between the police and vice, an
alliance profitable to both and destructive
to public morals. Once more a clergy
man, Bishop Potter, is to the front. Tam
many Is again alarmed and talks reform.
The inevitable meeting at the Chamber OF
Commerce has appointed the usual COM
mittee, as it did thirty years ago to turn
Tweed out of power and into the penlten-
tiary, a precedent Richard Croker never
forgets.
But there is this broad difference be-
tween this outburst of public indignation
and all those that have gone before, that
for the first time-thanks to Bishop Pot
ters mastery arraignment of the forces OF
evil-men's minds are all awakened to
the final fundamental fact that no good
city government is possible without good
city. 1t is useless to make clean the out
side of the platter of administration and
CITY rule if the dish within is full of iniqui'
ty and uncleanness. Under universal
suffrage your city government Will be just
as good as the average life which good
men and women permit and accept In
city streets, and no better. If prostitutes
walk the streets the police will be cor
rupt. If gambling is permitted it will rot
the officers set to watch it. If triumphant
wickedness is allowed to affront the tene'
ment house it is idle for the respectable
and well.to-dC to expect to get reform,
civic economy, low taxes and an honest
administration of public affairs.
Either the whole city must be pure or
its whole government will be polluted. If
the poorest family is not protected from
vice on its tenement staircase the richest
has no protection against blackmail and
all the evils of a corrupt police in business
and daily life.
pimly this has been seen. 1t begins to
be understood as primal truth. A IRE
form movement" is no plaster to be
spread over the body polite. 1t will do
no good and but deceive men, unless the
running sores of vice are themselves
cleaned, cautelized and cured. No voting
at the polls will do lasting good unless
vice is taken by he throat and strangled.
The machine" here and in New York, is
no mere political combination. Its roots
strike deep into all the foul evils Of city
life. Illicit liquor selling, vice, gambling,
poolrooms and corrupt solicitation of the
respectable tax-dodger and graspng cor
poration give it strength. Unless there be
a cure for these the machine will endure.
The New York reforms, which begin
with an attack on vice and its Haunting
presence, is therefore right and hopeful.
So is the long series of righteous sentences
on speak,easies imposed by Judge Finlet-
ter for week past, the fleeing liquor
seller and the forfeited bail bonds. These
are each and all direct service in behalf
of good government Clean out this evil
and great step is taken toward honest
politics. Work like that of the Law and
Order Society, which brought about these
convictions, goes to the very root of the
reform, from which, and from which alone,
good government can come.