In Atlanta

STATES & CITIES

Five years ago James Lee Key, a tall, angular Atlanta lawyer who looks like a beardless Lincoln, was elected Mayor of Atlanta. Last week he was still Mayor after roundly trouncing an incongruous political combination of red-hot Drys and disgruntled Wet labor leaders. Atlantans refused to recall Mayor Key from office, by the record-breaking vote of 17,178 to 11,744.*

Mayor Key first got into trouble with prohibitors when, junketing through France with other U. S. mayors last spring, he publicly opined that Prohibition did not prohibit, was in fact an "abysmal failure." The Greater Atlanta Prohibition & Law Enforcement League began to circulate a petition for a special election to oust him. Though the League could not get one-third of the signatures required for a recall vote, Mayor Key had to withdraw from his men's Bible class at Grace Methodist Church. Thereupon he began a non-denominatiorial Bible class in a theatre where he was free to excoriate his critics scripturally.

The Dry ouster move might have died away had not Mayor Key infuriated organized labor in his attempt at municipal economy. He accepted a low bid for the construction of an administration building at Atlanta's airport. Labor leaders, protesting that the wage scale was too low, got the City Council to pass a measure adding $4,300 as a workers' bonus. Mayor Key, determined to retrench, vetoed it. The Atlanta Federation of Trades picked up the Drys' recall petition, pushed it hard enough to secure last week's election.

The Mayor was pounded for "disgracing Atlanta," "half-staffing the Star-Spangled Banner," permitting Sunday cinemas for charity, approving cuts in municipal salaries (including his own).

Mayor Key is not in the best of health. His secretary has to help him up to the rostrum of his Bible class. At banquets he dozes wearily. But last week's vote displayed not only his political mastery of Atlanta but his determination to give his city economical government at any personal hazard. Last week his enthusiastic friends talked loudly of running him for Senator or Governor.

*A Mayor who recommended his own recall last week was Joseph C. Thompson of Wilmington, Ill. His reason: a commission form of municipal government would save taxpayers $1,030 per year.

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