The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-11-15
NEW YORK LOSES
 HER MORAL CENSOR
Dr, Parkhurst RetireS As Watch
 Dog of City Government
NEW WONDERS IN SURGERY
Legs From One Person to Another. Legs From Person to Another. Interesting Figures on the
 Country's Wealth.

CountryS Wealth,
 New York, November 14-(Special )-In the excitement of the last few days before the election New York lost sight of the announcement that her censor of public morals. the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Park hurst, had retired from activity. In 1891 Dr. Parkhurst became president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, and since that time he has brought about more disclosures of municipal ills and furnished more copy for the newspapers than any one man or set of men in town. Now that pr. Parkhurst has resigned as the head of this organization, New York is curious to know who will continue the work.
 Hardly a week has passed since pr. Parkhurst took up the work of reform without some word from the city's cen sor. He has watched over mayors, police commissioners and municipal government in general. Perhaps his greatest work was the Lexow investigation which proved the alliance between the police and the brothels of the Red Light District" His war on these resorts has been relentless and inactivity upon the part of the police was the signal for the Parkhurst raiders to get busy.
 He has always believed in publicity, and many of his epgrams contained in attacks on municipal officers or conditions in gen eral have become famous. Hell with the lid off''-his description of the city after iuin tad the word Hid" in it's colloquial sense. Probably Mayor Mcclellan will never for get the day he was pictured in this phrase: Were Mcclellan an angel, he'd still be Murphy's angel" On another occasion pr. Parkhurst said the city was so bad that ''hell ought to take vaca- tion.' Of District Attorney Jerome he once said:
 "Jeromes funny fellow. One of his distinctive features is undigested eccen- tricity."
 Later he expressed his opinion of MT. Jerome thus:
 "A painful illustration of the vicious ignorance of the supreme potency of scriptural principle in the administration of events''
 When Mayor Lowe was defeated by Mcclellan Dr. Parkhurst said to his con gregation: With January l will com mence two more years of hell on earth. We are going to have 24 months of open city. People are going to have all the gambling, all the whisky they want. Oh, yes, there was great preaching on Tues 1 day. God took the lid off hell"
 Speaking of MT. Bryan during the cam paign Dr. Parkhurst said: When Bryan came east I was inclined to join him, but he tied up with Tammany and that settled | me-"
 The Society for the Prevention of | Crime has devoted it's efforts to city mat ters, but pr. Parkhurst, in his preach ing. has been by no means confined to that limited field. His sermons attacking the national governments policy toward the F'ilipinos, the doctrines of Christian Science, the divorce evil, and the south ern attitude toward the negroes have been widely quoted He has not participated as a campaigner In national politics, as he said each time that no moral is sues' were involved.
 Frederick Townsend Martin is the new leader of the -Four Hundred" the sue cessor of Mrs. William Astor, whose long social reign ended with her death. It Is no exaggeration to assert that for we'll nigh half a century the threshold of the salon of Mrs. Astor in New York was the
 
 succeeded in crossing it could boast that they had conquered a place among the stupidly nisnamed 400" In fact, cards to , Mrs. Astor's dinners and dances were re- garded here much in the same light as are commands to court functions abroad, and conferred greater social ad vantages and distinction, while by de- butantes, presentation to Mrs. Astor at her annual ball at the beginning of Jan uary was looked upon much in the same manner as presentation to the late Queen of England at drawing room at Buck ingham palace was by the young girls of the so-called Upper Ten Thousand in England.
 But if Mrs. Astor exercised sagacious catholicity in the acceptance of recruits to New York society, she was equally wise in frowning upon those who had vio- lated the ethics and the laws of the world over which she ruled so wisely. In her earlier days she set her face strongly against divorce, and complicity in a scan dal of that kind was sufficient to cause her to remove the offending names from her visiting list. Her example in this re- spect was followed by leaders of minor :anlx, and in this way divorce was feared by reason of it's social penalties. But to- ward the end of her re,gn she was com pelled, like Queen Victoria, to adopt a more indulgent attitude, and for the same reason. For, just as Queen Victoria found 1t necessary to consent to the sev- erance of matrimonial bonds that had become ntolerable among her own grand | children, so was Mrs. Astor obliged to submit to the divorce, not only of one of | Her grandchildren, but also of one of her ] own daughters.
 In fact, one of the sources of worry and distress to Mrs. Astor in the closing | years of her career was the difficulty | which she experienced in persuading New | York society to assuage in the case of | her daughter and of some of her other | relatives the severity or the very laws | which she herself had instituted against | dlvorces.
 | Perhaps the time is not long off when a man so unfortunate as to lose a | leg may have some other mans leg put in place of the missing member so with the kidneys and other organs. Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller institute an exporent of the new advance in medicine and surgery, has conducted experiments as a result of which the tneejoint of a dead man has replaced the injured joint of a living person; the arteries of hus- band and wife have been successfully joined, so that the wife might endure the shock of surgical operation; an in- fant's blood has been revitalized by the blood of it's parent. and a human artery and jugular vein have been inter- changed and are fulfilling each the other s function. Dr. Carrel has replaced the lidneys of one cat with the correspond ing organs of another, and living fox 4o..,;o, ,,ou frielxc ahOut lnOn the leg