Rescue

A super-government of businessmen to rescue Chicago from its mire of municipal debt came a step closer last week with the selection of an advisory commission of 27 bankers, lawyers, merchants to serve as experts in this crisis. The movement toward such an organization of potent citizens has been taking shape for the last six months (TIME, Jan. 21).

Last week Chicago officials admitted that the city faced bankruptcy, that it had borrowed up to the legal limit on anticipated revenue, that only a Businessman's Commission could prevent financial disaster. Taxes were far behind because of assessments rank with favoritism. Fifty thousand city employes, chiefly firemen and policemen, were threatened with a prolonged suspension of pay. The extravagance of the Thompson administration was directly blamed. The Businessman's Commission, said the Chicago Tribune, was "a confession of moral and intellectual bankruptcy which is far more serious than fiscal bankruptcy."

The nominees for the Commission, which has yet to be called into official existence by the city government: Alfred S. Austrian Augustus Stephen Peabody Francis X. Busch James D. Cunningham Charles Piez William Ruggles Dawes George McClelland Reynolds George 0. Fairweather John Fitzpatrick Carl Richter Harold Edwin Foreman J ulius Rosenwald Earl George Gubbins Herbert D. Simpson J. L. Jacobs James Simpson D. F. Kelly Albert Arnold Sprague Clayton Mark Silas Hardy Strawn Charles Edward Merriam A. W. Swayne Melvin Alvah Traylor Joseph Roberts Noel Frank F. Winans Victor A. Olander George Woodruff