Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/273

 spirit of Puritanism that has made the cities of America so ugly, or permitted them to be ugly; such conceptions as beauty and ugliness are per-*haps impossible to minds that know no distinction but good and bad, and for this reason it has been difficult to make an æsthetic appeal with any effectiveness.

During three of my four terms in that office the nasty quarrel about morals raged. As I look back and think now with what virulence it did rage, it appeals to me as a remarkable psychological phenomenon. Of course it was bad for those who engaged in it, and bad for the town as well, for such an exaggerated idea of conditions was given that the police in neighboring cities, clever rogues that they were, could always excuse and exculpate themselves for any of their delinquencies by saying that the thieves that had come to town hailed from Toledo, or that those they could not catch had gone and taken refuge there. But I did not engage in the discussion nor permit the police officials to do so. There was no time, since there was so much other work to do, and we went on as well as we could with what Tom Johnson used to call the policy of administrative repression, improving moral conditions with such means as we had. We did succeed in eliminating the wine rooms, in closing the saloons at mid-*night, and finally, after a tremendous effort, in extirpating professional gambling. It was of no consequence that it did not have any effect upon criticism, for we did not do it to stop criticism, and the discussion went on until I had been elected for the