WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH BOSTON?

"Has Boston any decent citizens?" The answer of the New Republic, where this question has recently been raised, is apparently in the negative. Boston's election shook, its various political scandals, its banking irregularities, are raked out into the sunlight and made to appear typical of Boston's public affairs during the past few years. The police strike, too, is dragged out of the retirement it was beginning to earn, and colored with recent cases of constabulary misdeeds, it is set up as the vane that should have shown which way the wind was blowing several seasons ago. The conclusion reached is an interesting one, and seems logically sound. Boston people are perfectly aware of these conditions; if they not only tolerate them, but encourage them by electing such men as Peiletier, Tufts, and Curley, they must be "that kind of people" themselves. In other words, they don't choose bad government and dishonest politics because of ignorance, but because they want it.

Boston has but one defense. Perhaps the New Republic's observers credit our neighbors with more intelligence than they really have. Perhaps they tolerate such conditions not through choice but through lack of an agency to cure them. Perhaps they elected Curley not because they like his record for "crooked" politics, but because they admire his personal traits of gameness and determination--the instinctive feeling of sympathy for the under dog, right or wrong. At any rate, it comes in the end to this: either Boston's citizens are all crooks, or they are fools. The New Republic decides the former; Boston can take its choice.