Los Angeles herald., 1909-01-31
VICE PROTECTION SAID TO
HAVE BEEN PROVED TRUE
SPEAKER ARRAIGNS PRESENT
MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES
Municipal Reform Is Discussed and
Local Conditions Are Said to Be
Worse Today Than Twenty
Years Ago
toontinued from Page Four

concentrated community, Wnere people
are not divided by long distances, where
every man has an opportunity to ac-
quaint himself with the conditions and
needs of every part, and ought to do it,
I have never been able to see why the
ward system should be adopted, and
have always regarded it as g. rule Of
barbarism.
1T is an effort to carry the local
representative system to an absurd
extreme. One can understand in a
state as large as California that a Sec
ton down here can have interests d.
verse from a section in the middle Of
the state or the end, but here we have
a city that can be traversed from one
end to another in twenty minutes in
an automobile, and, by the way, in the
matter of providing automobiles, the
city has proved liberal" Naughter.)
About Those Autos
A club member: Have you ever
been able to understand where the
council got its authority to provide
automobiles? %
Mr.. Gibbon: 81 am so entirely con-
WINGED that the present board of super
VisorS and city officials are above all
law, or below it, that have never at
tempted to solve that question. 1 don't
think it relates to them at all. But
our street cars, for five cents, will
transport these men to any part of the
city they desire to investigate within
ten or fifteen or twenty minutes of the
city hall. / have never seen any use
for the continuance of the ward sys-
tenn in the city council.
ut does seem to me that where each
councilman has to vote for the whole
city, where each man, no matter what
division of the city he represents, has
a right to cast his vote for the whole
city, the people of the whole city
should have a chance to vote for the
councilman. We have had men in our
city council here for years because
their wards were. sawed-off pocket
boroughs. They held their places by
appointing constituents to Offices They
would have been booted out if it had
not been for that. There have been
men in the council under the ward
system who in every instance in which
there were special interests on one side
and the city's interests on the other,
constantly and consistently betrayed
the city Yet, under the ward system,
the political life of these men has been
continued and apparently will be con-
tinued unless there is a reform in the
system.
For Direct Primaries
Another improvement I want to
see is amendment 4, providing for d
direct primary. I do not believe I can
say anything half as good on that sub
ject as I can supply by reading you
something that Governor Hughes IF
New York has said. Governor Hughes
is man for whom I have the greatest
respect and admiration When I
think of a man like Hughes 1 either
wish / was a Republican or he was n
Democrat, because he is an honor TO
his country, an honor to his state, an
honor to any party that produces him,
and he is bigger than most parties in
this country:
The system of direct nominations is
criticised on the ground that it is in
consistent with representative govern
ment. Representative govern
ment is government through represen-
tatives. We choose officers to do for
us what we cannot do, or do not think
it wise to undertake ourselves. For
example, we cannot well make our laws
directly and so we elect legislators to
make them for us We cannot as
people at large execute the laws and so
we select executive officers to repre-
sent us in their execution. We cannot
in an assembly of the people decide
judicial controversies and so we choose
judges to represent US in deciding
cases.
g But we do not elect men to choose
our governors and our mayors and the
members of the legislature for US. We
elect our governors, our mayors and our
legislators directly. They are chosen
by direct vote of the people. These
officers are none the less representative
and we have none the less representa-
tive government because we choose
them by direct vote. If anyone were
now to propose that we should elect a
body of men to choose our governor
for us we would laugh at him. If any
one saw fit to argue that this was
necessary to the maintenance of repre-
sentative government we would think
the argument ridiculous
"Reductio ad Absurdum"
"Yet we are told by certain people,
and by certain newspapers, that the
way to have real old-fashioned repub-
lican government is to select some peo-
pie to meet in convention and tell us
for whom we shall vote. That is SUI
ad absurdum' of the principle of repre-
sentative government, when you really
think of it. The direct primary permits
100 citizens to put mans name on the
ticket to be voted for, and when there
it does not depend for its position on
the political position he is running for,
but on the alphabetic letter of the
initial of the name"
ST think, gentlemen, you will agree
with me that politics in the city gov
eminent is also absurd. No really SEN
sible man. who is only interested in
having a government that governs
well, wants to have politics in the city
government. The custom of having
politics in the city government is the
basis. the beginning, the bottom of
every political machine, every bad ma
chine in the country, and especially in
the big cities, such as ours is very rap
idly growing to be. It's sunnorters want
it not because they want good gov
eminent, but because they want to use
the people, and today there is a head
quarters of machine government in the
Potomac building, where power is
welded by our distinguished fellow
citizen, Walter Parker, who has opened
headquarters for the sake of taking
wipe at these amendments. They will
try to wipe out No. /, but are princi-
palIy addressing themselves to No. A.
I think the idea Of No. is to do away
with such patriotic gentlemen as those
who devote themselves to the citys
business without any compensation di-
rectly from the city. as Mr.. Parker
and the gentlemen who compose his
machine In other words it is to let us
say whom we are going to vote for, in
stead of letting Mr.. Parker and men
Of that sort say 1t.
Two Reform Questions
$50 that we have before us today
two questions of municipal reform af-
fectfng ourselves. One is to heal the
condition which is becoming, to every
decent and honest citizen, an intoler-
able and revolving condition Of cor
ruption. such as has never existed and