Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-12-31
WHAT THE GANGS LEAVE

IN THIS city - and in others, for that
matter-there are great many people
who prefer to view the general question of
vicious politics and its cloud of attendant
evils as they view the question of interna-
tional peace. They will tell you that being
sophisticated and without any of the weak
neSSes OF sentiment. they think of gangs and
the works of the gangs as inevitable and as
influences that are not without some value
when measured in the terms of dollars and
cents. This point of view is adhered to
wherever there are organized movements for
what the heelers call an open town. 1t in
spires much of the political gospel of Tam
many as well as the philosophy of the gangs
that have come along in regular succession
to fight any administration pledged to clean
government in Philadelphia.
More irrational and irritating deductions
are not easily imagined. Vice and gambling
and the social degradation of a given part
of any city'S population do not pay Owners
Of real estate who used to draw inflated
rents from tenderloin saloons and from build
ingS used for other questionable purposes, as
well as small class of business men who
established themselves in the fringes of the
underworld. once thought that reform
administration was somehow inimcal to
business and property interests. They know
better now
To understand what a Liberal admins
tration' of the law means in the long run
' it is only necessary to consider the present
stat" of property in the areas of the old
tcndcrloin. The region that once was the
center of what your gang leader calls gaycty
appears now nS if fires had passed over and
through it. \ blight is upon a part of the
city that was once imposing and prosperous
1t seems utterly without the energy or the
ability to begin life over again. Wherever
til" forces OF vice penetrate there is n sort
Of paralysis and in the end even the values
of real estate go down and never 20 back
again.
1t is interesting 70 remember all this now
when IN" Mayor has assigned Lieutenant
Marpl" to clean up the Fifteenth ward The
Fifteenth ward is a penrosc ward 1t has
been informally governed during previous
administrations by the licutcnants of poll
ticianS who were not ashamed to go out at
elections and present themselves as cham
pion> of clean politics. And for years il
has been experiencing a steady infiltraton
OF tA" influences that made a waste of resi-
drntial areas on the other side of Broad
street. If Mayor Moore should fail to hold
the whiphand during his term of office some
Of tn" fine streets north of Spring Garden
and west Of Broad may yet suffer the fate
of IN" Franklin Square section which not
many years ago was one of the richest and
most beautiful in Philadelphia The small
clubs and gambling houses and the less rcpu-
table resorts are forever on the move. They
seek the safety and quiet of respectable
! noighbOrhoodS. Invariably destruction fol-
| lows in their wake. Yet these are the insti.
| tutions that the liberal mindcd'' enemies
! of the Mayor would turn loose in new re-
| giQns for III" sake Of the graft that the
underworld is always ready to give up in
return for protection.
Residents in the Fifteenth Ward ought to
| spar" no pains in the effort to 60 operate
with police officials assigned to check the
| poisonous lid" that furtivc and hypOcritical
| politicians hRv" turned loose upon them.