Pinchot Passes

A tall, lean man stands up before the Pennsylvania legislature. He is 61 and something of a fighter. His name is Gifford Pinchot (although the late Senator Boies Penrose once suggested that it be changed to "Pin-shot"). He is Governor of Pennsylvania and he is reading his farewell message. His audience becomes restless as he recounts the departmental doings. Suddenly he switches to "gangs"; there is a hush, followed by a buzz. He says:

"After four years in a position to learn the facts I am going out of office with the most hearty contempt not only for the morals and the intentions but also for the minds of the gang politicians of Pennsylvania. . . . Any machine must include a body of the lowest politicians, such, for example, as the Mellon machine in Pittsburgh and the Mitten machine in Philadelphia, men who depend for their living and their power, on liquor, crime, vice. These are the men the magnates buy. These are the men they protect from time to time against the revolt of honest citizens who would otherwise destroy them.

"That is one wing of the city machine. The other consists . . . partly of such of the ostensible respectable elements of the communi- ty as are willing (in Pittsburgh, for example) to shut their eyes and make common cause with gangsters, vote thieves, dive keepers, criminals and harlots, because of the social and financial eminence of the Mellon name."

Jeers and hisses, mingled with spasmodic applause, interrupt Governor Pinchot. He has been jeered before; he proceeds: "I refused to support Mr. Vare in the election on the sound and proper ground that his nomination was partly bought and partly stolen and I have no doubt that he deserves to be and will be excluded from the Senate."

With such words, Governor Pinchot passed out of Pennsylvania politics last week. He will be succeeded on Jan. 18 by John S. Fisher, a Republican who is less of a thorn to the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia stalwarts. It will be remembered, however, that Mr. Pinchot has passed out before. Once a favorite of Theodore Roosevelt, he quarreled with President Taft in 1910 and was ousted from the important chairmanship of the U. S. Bureau of Forestry. Years later, in 1922, he arose like a ghost of a rebel past, surprised everyone by being elected Governor. His administration has had its successes: he gave the state a budget system, cut expenditures, reduced the number of departments and bureaus from more than 100 to 18. To the public he is known chiefly as an ardent Prohibitionist and one of the pacifiers of the anthracite coal strike of 1923. Last spring he aspired to be a U. S. Senator, ran a poor third to Messrs. Vare and Pepper in the primaries. Now Mr. Pinchot is without a job; perhaps he will retire to the philosophic pleasures of old age; more likely he will prepare for the next opportunity to do his phoenix trick.