Philadelphia Pained

Although students of municipal government have long agreed that Philadelphia is afflicted with political dry rot, that its water supply and fire protection are decrepit ("Filtered filth!" the late Mayor S. Davis Wilson said of Philadelphia water), few Philadelphia politicians have ever admitted that anything is wrong with their fair city. But last week Philadelphia's bumbling mayor, Robert E. Lamberton, was forced to sit through two detailed and heavily documented indictments of Philadelphia as a place to live.

At a luncheon of the National Conference on Planning, he sat red-faced through a speech by Architect Walter H. Thomas, who declared: "Most of our American cities are a flop, so far as being decent places in which to live and work. They are encumbered with the two bad twins of blight and flight and an attitude of 'who cares?' Philadelphia is afflicted with all three. . . . Instead of cleaning out our slums we apparently are waiting for them to disintegrate."

Then up spoke Hugh R. Pomeroy, director of Virginia's State Planning Board: "I have examined slum areas from coast to coast and the slums of Philadelphia are probably the worst in the nation. . . . The heart of the city is decaying and the decay is spreading. [It can't be stopped] by buying streamlined garbage trucks."

Billows of cigar smoke obscured the mayor's sunburst face. He later told reporters : "I am very happy I wasn't called upon to speak. I would have called his attention to ... worse slums. ... A little information is a dangerous thing and Pomeroy has a little."

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