From the Mire

For 65 years Philadelphia has suffered its Republican city government as it has the water it drank. Both gave off a faint but unpleasant smell, but a true Philadelphian got used to both. This year, after the exposure of graft, extortion and embezzlement in nearly every city office, the smell from City Hall became too much even for torpid Philadelphians.

In a record off-year turnout, they booted aside four Republicans and installed four Democrats in the posts of treasurer, controller, coroner and register of wills.

The triumphant Democrats were led by Richardson Dilworth, firebrand Yale-trained lawyer, ex-Marine major, and local leader of the Fair Dealing Americans for Democratic Action (A.D.A.). Working with him was Joseph Sill Clark Jr., a Chestnut Hill socialite. As treasurer and controller respectively, two new Democratic officials will take charge of the city's much-abused purse.

Republicans, trying to reform their party under fire, had ditched the machine professionals, persuaded four outstanding amateurs in politics to be their candidates (TIME, Sept. 26). Less wisely, the Republicans launched what the Republican Philadelphia Inquirer labeled a "false" and "vicious" campaign against Dilworth, trying to prove that he was a crony of Communists. Philadelphia's two major news papers, both staunchly Republican, endorsed Dilworth & Co.

Elated Democrats were already setting their sights on 1951 and the mayor's office, where a Democrat has not sat since 1884.

That was big talk in a city where voters are registered nearly three to one Republican. Said the Inquirer: "It was not a matter of being a Republican or a Democrat; it was a matter of trying to redeem the city from those who had sunk it in the mire."

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