Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-11-05
MOORE'S BIG FIGHT
is ONLY HALF OVER
Public Support and Cooperation Among
His Supporters Necessary to Keep
Philadelphia Politics Clean

/ reputation of the Smith administration
! yesterday showed how the rule works at
one extreme. The failure OF Blanken-
! burg after matchlcss fight for lofty
purposes showed how it works at the
other.
BlankeuDurg was virtually deserted by
Il a2y-minded electorate, which did not
again wake up to a sense of its rcsponsi-
! bilities until new abuses in the Mayors
Office became intolerable. SO the cleo
ton of Mr.. Moore and the establishment
of safe majority representative of in
dependent sentiment in the new Council
does not end the matter.
The new Mayors difficulties will begin
when he goes into Office. The forces
opposed to him in the early stages Of his
fight were united. The elements that
supported him were scattered and at
times almost antagonistic to one another.
Out Of the situation that now exists in
the camp of the Mayor-elcct new and
difficult complications may easily arise
unless the various groups which united
to overthrow the Ware organization are
willing TO subordinate their own peculiar
interests to the interests Of the city.
1t is an axiom of politics that when
you make one appointment you make
twenty enemies. 1t will be difficult for
Mr.. Moore to satisfy all the hopes that
exist simultaneously in the committee Of
one hundred, the Town Meeting party
and the Republican Alliance. The wreck
Of Blankenburg's hopes began with ap-
pointments made in the interest of the
municipal service rather than to reward
political service.
There are politicians in plenty who will
wait patiently to make their own uses
of any trouble or division or unrest in the
new Mayors organization. That is why
it will be necessary for the people. to
maintain an active interest in Mr..
Moore's plans.
If the city relapses again into indiffer
ence and if the people who supported
Moore become unduly afflicted with the
itch for rewards and recognition, they
need not complain when, at some later
day, they feel invisible fingers in their
pockets and become aware of sinister
forces once more fighting for spoils at
City Hall.
To considerable degree the future
trend of municipal affairs will still de-
pend upon men like Brother Ed and
Brother Bill Uncle Dave Lane and
Cousin Dave Martin and their energetic
associates. The influence Of these men
will be felt in the new Council.
The new Council is an experiment.
For the present Mr.. Moore has ma
jority 1t is the stability of that ma
jority we need to be concerned about
If the lords and barons of politics
haven't seen the light there are sure to
be desperate scrmmages for advantage
and sudden lunges for control when some
shift or change in issues causes dvi-
sions of sentiment. 1t is not too much
to expect that there will be occasional
revivas of the tribal sentiment that still
holds powerful political factions together
and carefully plotted campaigns for new
conquests at the hall.
At such times it is not only the city
that will need to be concerned, The new
beginning now attempted in Philadelphia
has meaning larger even than the mu-
nicipality. The bosses in American
cities, who have made no secret of dis
regard Of honor and decency in election
processes, have been doing immeasurable
damage to the whole country. They
would be amazed if they were told that
they are in any way responsible for the
disloyalty and suspicion and unrest that
are general among millions of ignorant
people Yet political corruption as it has
been tolerated in Philadelphia and else
where is related fundamentally to an
archy and violence and systematic trea-
son.
1t is in the large cities of the country
that the election laws have been most
fagrantly violated. The ballot-the in
strument and symbol of free govern
ment-has been debased in broad day
light. There are bosses without number
who sneer at the whole theory of free
elections. And to suppose that this has
had no effect upon the morale of America
and no evil reaction in the minds of vast
masses of men who are new to the coun-
try is to prove that you are unaware of
the obvious.
Whoever wished to convince the ig-
norant and uniformed that the Ameri-
can system of government is hopelessly
faulty had only to point to the open cor
ruption of municipal elections. He could
show eminently respectabes, news
papers and even groups of business men
accepting that sort of thing TRANQUILITY
and without word of decent anger or a
twitch of conscience. Politics was organ
lied as a profitable trade, in which to be
prosperous you had to be without too
many scruples.
That was the America to which the
newly enfranchised foreigners have been
introduced-by ward heelers on the one
hand and by the apostles and propa-
gandists of revolution on the other. Any
one who wants to know why so many
aggressive radicals are convinced that
the American political system does not