Los Angeles herald., 1910-01-25
POOR SAM FRANCISCO

II VERY decent, 1aw-abiding citizen
III of Los Angeles who believes in
- a clean city fit for clean people
to live in must sympathize profoundly
with our sister city San Francisco on
account of the evil days upon which
she has fallen.
When the election of the present
mayor of that city was announced, and
before he took office, he stated that he
proposed to make of San Francisco
the Paris of America Some peoples
idea of Paris is that it is a place where
all sorts of vice flourish, and where
every gross passion and evil appetite
can be gratified without trouble and
without stint This must be the idea
that the mayor of San Francisco has
of the French capital, judging from
the way he has begun his career as the
chief executive of that unfortunate
city. When he took office he delivered
a long address containing many
significant statements. and none prob
ably more significant than the follow
ing:
THE Chinese have pastimes and
pleasures peculiar to themselves, and
prefer to be left alone in their enjoy
ment and in their seclusion. the same
as the whites. 1 propose to extend most
liberal treatment to them"
Investigation of the Ruef- Schmitz
administration in San Francisco showed
that one of the most prolific sources
from which that administration ex-
traeted its graft was the lottery joints.
opium dens and other unspeaka BILE vices
that, when left alone" fiourished in
San Francisco's Chinatown. 1t would
have been difficult for the present
mayor of san Francisco to have given
more positive encouragement for these
former sources of municipal graft to
resume business. 1t will be hard to
convince any sensible man that this
resumption of business will not also
be accompanied by the resumption of
the payment of graft.
One of the first official acts of Mayor
Mccarthy was to appoint to the only
vacancy upon his police commission a
saloonkeeper-a man who is said to
have earned the appointment by coll
lecting from the saloons and brothels
of San Francisco a large campaign
fund, which he devoted to the cleo
ton of the mayor who appointed him.
Another early result of the Mccarthy
administration was the appointment to
an important deputyship in the
sheriff's office of a man who is said to
have been arrested many times in the
last dozen years of his career in San
Francisco for bunco steering and to
have recorded against him more than
one conviction in the courts of that
city.
If these utterances and acts of the
chief executive of San Francisco and
his subordinates may be taken as an
example of what is in store for that
city during the next two years. such
fate for a great city is appalling to
good citizens.
| But it is a remarkable fact that
many of the citizens of San Francisco
rejoice in McCarthy's election and his
! declaration in favor of a wide-open
town, for the reason, as they say, that
wide-open town brings money to
San Francisco. If these people would
give a little consideration to the fact
that San F'r-ncisco as a wide-open town,
since the census of 1880 was taken,
has not grown 100 per cent while Los
Angeles as a fairly well regulated town
no in, Ia ia1
than 1000 per cent, they might change
their minds as to the advantage to
business of a wide-open town.