Los Angeles herald., 1909-01-20
HARPER's SPEECH
N HIS speech at the Merchants and
1 Manufacturers association dinner

T.
in discussing the growth of the city Of
Los Angeles, is quoted as saying:
In those early days of the citys
history we had no reactionaries nor
defamers of our city. but were all, in
cluding the press and pulpit, united in
our object Of sincerely wishing good
speed and Godspeed to Los Angeles.
We did not assume the cant of the
Pharisee in lauding our own purity
as individuals and in pointing out the
secret defects and blemishes of our
city. We covered these defects
with mantle OF charity"
This comes with peculiar grace from
Mayor Harper, who in his capacity as
chief executive Of the city has, we
venture to say, done more to defame
1t than any other citizen who has ever
called Los Angeles his home.
So far as we are advised, no other
mayor of the city Of Los Angeles has
ever deliberately made himself and his
police commissioners, who are directly
charged with enforcing those laws in
tended to suppress the vice and protect
the decency of the city, partners in
business with the very elements which
are most dangerous to city's life and
reputation.
So far as we are advised, no other
mayor and police commission Of the
city Of Los Angeles have ever, as a re-
ward for men having become their
business associates, permitted those
men to maintain such places as Co.
ings and "Chowder House Jim" Dunno
have maintained and are maintaining
in the city Of Los Angeles.
Does the mayor think any mantle of
charity is broad enough to cover the
open maintenance Of places like Goings
wine room from which girls in short
dresses are taken staggering upstairs
to the hideous home of vice run under
the name Of hotel?
Does he think any mantle Of char
ity'' broad enough to cover the main
tenance by the same man of a gam
bling hell for the destruction Of men
such as has been maintained by Frank
Goings?
Does he think any mantle of char
ity'' wide enough to cover the main
tenance of a place like the Manhattan
hotel, where the employees are called
upon to protect innocent girls who have
been lured there for their destruction
and are told by men upon leaving to
go up to a room and give attention
to a girl whom they have left behind
them because she is doped or drunk?
Shame upon any man who has sunk
so low that he invokes the Christian
virtue of charity to cover scarlet
which have been fostered and per-
mitted to grow because he has deliber-
ately gone about corrupting the ad-
ministration of laws in that city which
were intended to prevent just such
things. and, in preventing them, to de-
fend from wrong and evil the young
girls and the young men of the COM
nunity!!
Does he think any mantle of char
ity' broad enough to cover the ap-
pointment to the city's most respon-
sible position of a man who, tried in
two official positions before, has been
found wanting, as Chief of Police Ed
Kern had, both as councilman and
chief of police?
When he was councilman he deliber-
ately voted to give to the special in
terests which are now striving to get
control of the Owens river aqueduct,
and without compensation, a property
Of the city worth million dollars.
When he was chief of police he per-
mitted the law to be openly and no.
toriously violated by men who were
his associates in business by virtue of
being owners with him of the sugar
stocks which The Herald has shown
was so industriously disseminated by
members of the police commission.
Mayor Harper has done a good many
things since he was, unfortunately,
chosen as the city's chief executive
which deserve reprobation, but he has
never done anything more deserving of
condemnation than in presenting his
special plea for immunity for the evils
which he has brought upon this city to
congregation of respectable Los An
geles business men.