Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/233

 I had no intention of recalling such things. Did not Jones say that when the Golden Rule would not work, it was not the fault of the Rule, but because one did not quite know how to work it? I have no intention of setting down the failures or the little successes of four terms as mayor. Nor shall I write a little history of those terms in office; I could not, and it would not be worth while if I could. I shall not attempt in these pages a treatise on municipal government, for if the task were rightly executed, it would be a history of civilization. Non-partizanship in municipal elections, municipal ownership, home rule for cities,—who is interested in these? I have discussed them in interviews—("Is there to be a statement for us this morning, Mr. Mayor?")—and speeches numerous as autumn leaves, and like them, lost now in the winds to which they were given.

After all, it is life in which we are all interested. And one sees a deal of life in a mayor's office, and in it one may learn to envisage it as—just life. Then one can have a philosophy about it, though one can not discover a panacea, some sort of sociological patent medicine to be administered to the community, like Socialism, or Prohibition, or absolute law enforcement, or the commission form of government. One indeed may open one's eyes and look at one's city and presently behold its vast antitheses, its boulevards and marble palaces at one end, and its slums, its tenements and tenderloins at the other. He may discern there the operations of universal and inexorable laws, and realize the tremendous conflict that everywhere and in all times goes on be