Philadelphia's Hole

While Kansas City lost an old mayor, Philadelphia got a brand new one. On New Year's Day heavy-jawed ex-Judge Robert Eneas Lamberton stood in the hoary Academy of Music, where he scarcely ever goes because "I don't understand music," and took the oath of office.

Beneath the new mayor's new shoes was the empty, sealed-up, $6,000,000 tunnel of the Locust Street subway. Outside, down Broad Street cavorted Philadelphia's spangled, jingling, slightly cockeyed annual Mummers' Parade.

Place and circumstance might have been used as a symbol by a more rhetorical man than former football guard Mayor Lamberton. For while the city jingled, beneath the mayor's feet was Philadelphia's deep, dark financial hole.

Because Philadelphia had run out of funds with which to buy rails and cars, two other subways under the city streets, like the Locust Street tunnel, were sealed up. Fire trucks, most of them over 13 years old, have lately failed to arrive at many a fire.

The police force, whose superintendent, Edward Hubbs, was indicted for perjury a year ago (indictment quashed), demoted last week, was undermanned. Only 248 policemen were patrolling the city's 129 square miles at any one time.

So many street lights had failed or been turned out in eight years that total illumination of city streets was less than one-third of what it was in 1931.

Drinking water was so nauseous the mayor's office had to be provided with bottled water; thousands of citizens went daily to Fairmount Park springs to collect their drinking supply. Last week a bluish-black liquid stinking of chlorine, puckery with alum, gushed from many a tap. "There must have been a severe storm in the coal regions," the water bureau explained.

Philadelphia's great ache came from the great void of its treasury. For 55 years the city has been under the uninterrupted control of a Republican machine, its destiny in the hands of "Gas House" Jim McManes, Boies Penrose, the late Ed and Bill Vare. In the '20s a City Hall spending crew, whooped on by Contractors Vare & Vare & Jerry Louchheim, built subways, parkways, museums, public buildings, sank $50,000,000 into the Sesqui-Centennial.

The city's borrowing capacity vanished, its net funded debt jumped nearly 200% in twelve years, while its assessment valuation increased only 45%. Meanwhile, whole sections of its great textile industry moved south, plants like the Baldwin Locomotive Works shifted to nearby counties, thousands of families decided they preferred the suburbs, migrated.

By the end of 1938, if interest were paid on loans, sinking fund charges and the accumulated deficit, little more than $500,000 would have been left to run the city government in 1939. The emergency was met then by hocking the city gas works to the RFC, obtaining a $41,000,000 loan and clearing the slate of past deficits. But sacrificed by this legerdemain was $4,200,000 a year for 20 years to come which the city would have realized from renting its gas works to the operating company.

Socialite Thomas Evans, with the support of some Republicans, worked for two years on a new city charter to provide a more efficient government. The charter died in the Republican-controlled State Legislature. Charterites formed a Fusion ticket with the minuscule Democratic party, this fall put up for Mayor Controller Robert White, a Democrat. White and the Fusionists were defeated.

Beneficiary of this triumph was Robert Eneas Lambert on, who took the oath of office while the Mummers' theme song, Oh, Dem Golden Slippers, jingled down Broad Street.

Plucked by Boss Pew from a judgeship in a Common Pleas court, Mayor Lamberton has four sons, one daughter, raises roses, likes dogs, is an attentive Presbyterian, and is rigidly honest, stubborn and sincere. His one shaky plank across the deep, dark hole was a new flat 1 1/2% income tax on all wages earned in the city (TIME, Dec. 25). The tax, expected to raise $18,000,000, was sponsored by Mayor Lamberton, who said in his inaugural address: "I never yet knew of a tax that I liked. And yet . . . there is no other way." Of his appointments honest Mayor Lamberton said: "I'm going to favor Republicans in giving jobs, because my administration is Republican. If it fails, you can blame the Republican Party."

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