THE OUTLOOK is a Weekly Newspaper and an Illustrated Monthly Magazine in one. It is published every Saturday-fifty-two issues a year. The first issue in each month is an Illustrated Magazine Number, containing about twice as many pages as the regular weekly issue, and many pictures. PRICE. The subscription price is Three Dollars a year, payable in advance. Ten cents a copy. POSTAGE IS PREPAID by the publishers for all subscriptions in the United States, Hawaiian Islands, Philippine Islands, Guam, Porto Rico, Tutuila (Samoa), Shanghai, Canal Zone, Cuba, Canada, and Mexico. For all other countries in the Postal Union add $1.56 for postage. CHANGE OF ADDRESS.-When a change of address is ordered, both the new and the old address must be given. The notice should be sent one week before the change is to take effect. DISCONTINUANCES.-If a subscriber wishes his copy of the paper discontinued at the expiration of his subscription, notice to that effect should be sent. Otherwise it is assumed that a continuance of the subscription is desired. HOW TO REMIT.-Remittances should be sent by Draft on New York, Express-Order, or Money-Order, payable to order of THE OUTLOOK COMPANY. Cash should be sent in Registered Letter. LETTERS should be addressed: THE OUTLOOK COMPANY Chicago Office, 1436 Marquette Building 287 Fourth Avenue, New York Copyright, 1905, by The Outlook Company. Entered as second-class matter in the New York Post-Office. After you have given the grocer's man your order for tea, sugar, flour, coffee, biscuit, breakfast food, eggs, and vegetables, add "And a quarter's worth of Ivory Soap." Ivory Soap is the handiest thing you can have around the house. You can use it in the bathroom, in the washroom, in every bedroom, in the kitchen, and in the laundry. There is no better soap than Ivory-none which is at once so economical, so pure, or which can be used for so many different purposes. A WORD OF WARNING.-There are many white soaps, each represented to be just as good as Ivory; they are not, but like all imitations they lack the peculiar and remarkable qualities of the genuine. Ask for Ivory Soap and insist upon getting it. Ivory Soap-990 Per Cent. Pure. SATURDAY, Municipal events happened with such rapidity in Philadelphia last week that even the hourly editions of the papers seemed to be inadequate to detail them. The "gang's" defiance of the Mayor in overriding eight vetoes of badly drawn or ill-advised ordinances as a preliminary to the passage of the seventy-five years' gas lease had a different effect from that intended by those who planned it as an exhibition of brutal and unreasoning political power. It aroused Mayor Weaver and enlisted him and all the great powers of the Mayoralty flatly and definitely on the side of the people and their long outraged rights. It is no longer a fight against the gas lease (although that is not being lost sight of); it is a clear-cut fight of the people against the Republican machine, with Mayor Weaver as the leader of the former. It had been known that he would veto the ordinance, but it was generally conceded that, unless extreme measures were taken, the veto could easily be overcome. Mayor Weaver took these extreme measures. He began by suspending a ward leader, who was an inspector; then he suspended the Assistant Director of Supplies, another ward leader; and then he removed summarily (after they had refused to resign unconditionally) his Directors of Public Safety and Public Works, who between them control nearly eight thousand appointments, including the police and firemen. The Mayor could not have hit a harder blow, because it deprived the machine of its control of the two most important departments of municipal activity. Colonel Sheldon Potter, a member of the Committee of Seventy, and Mr. A. Lincoln Acker, an Independent Republican, were appointed to fill the vacancies, but they had exercised the functions of their office but a very few hours when a temporary injunction was Mayor Weaver and the Philadelphia Gas Situation JUNE 3, 1905 granted restraining them from performing any duties. This was the machine's return blow, but it still further alienated public opinion and angered the people. In the meantime these two important offices were left without official heads. Mayor Weaver took possession of the offices, with an intimation that force would be applied if necessary, and announced that he would control these offices until the courts ruled on the legal questions. Mr. Weaver has retained Mr. Elihu Root, of New York, and exJudge Gordon, of Philadelphia, to represent him. He is fighting every single step, and intimates his intention to carry on the fight to the end. A Political Revolution Never, perhaps, in the history of an American municipality has there been such a complete enheartening of the people and so striking a response to a courageous act as followed the prompt and decisive measures which Mayor Weaver took. The lethargy is gone, and the people seem to feel as if they had come into their own. Mayor Weaver, who for two years has tried to keep in line with the machine and at the same time serve the people, saw that in Philadelphia at least there can be no such compromise, and, to his great credit, he came out on the side of the people in a way that has been likened by one of the papers in a cartoon to the "Spirit of '76." The opposition to the gas lease has grown with tremendous rapidity. Great mass-meetings of business men have been held in the Bourse. Ward meetings have everywhere been held. Committees have hunted up recalcitrant Councilmen and demanded an accounting. The Commercial Exchange hissed one of its members who voted for the lease when he appeared on the floor of the Exchange to do business. Several wards have been placarded with the pictures of 251-253 |