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Show Philadelphia Throws Another Fit. Philadelphia is rapidly earning the reputation of being the most inconsistent and erratic city in this country. The impression that this big Pennsylvania Pennsyl-vania town is the home of conservatism, which prevailed pre-vailed fori years, has gradually been dispelled, and now the Quaker City stands before the public in all its shameful nakedness. With amazing complacency the people bare permitted as greedy a crew of political po-litical buccaneers as ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat to loot the city treasury, to ojerate a private license bureau in the interest of gambling joints, opium deus, speakeasies and disorderly houses from headquarters in the city hall. Time and again the citizens of Philadelphia have re-elected this gang of freebooters. Even when the Ashbridge Council made a present of ?o,000,000 worth of strt-et railway franchises to henchmen of the clique in power these conservative Quakers simply raised their eyes to heaven and tearfully protested; but when the time came to vote this thieving Council out of oOico thse public-spirited citizens remained at home and the gang was returned to the city hall by the usual majority. ma-jority. Every newspaper in Philadelphia exrept one, the oflicial organ of the gang, has made war on these pirates who were looting the city treasury. They have done a great work in the line of public service. While the slow-witted taxpayers stayed in their homes and read the papers, the staffs of these newspapers were doing things. But what is the result re-sult of tliene efforts to obtain an honest administration? administra-tion? The dispatches from Philadelphia bring us this item? "To force the issue on the blue laws the prominent and responsible members of the Sabbath Observance association have sworn out warrants for the arrest of several publishers of morning newspapers newspa-pers and the executive officers of a news company, a locomotive works and an ice cream company. The newspapers are being prosecuted for accepting advertisements ad-vertisements on Sunday, selling wares and doing a manner of labor prohibited by the act of 1794." What hope is there for a city whose people tamely submit to the oppression of such a gang as that Ashbridge Ash-bridge leads, and then attempt a work of reform by reviving blue laws of 1704, which among other things prohibit a man from kissing his wife on Sunday? Sun-day? Philadelphia always has been, and always will be inhabited by a Rip Van Winkle population. |