NEW YORK’S MAYOR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2655, 10 November 1909, Page 4

NEW YORK’S MAYOR.

AIR- GAYNOR’S AUSTERITY

Air. Justice Gaynor, after a long career in exposing frauds, particu.arly Tammany frauds, suddenly became a Tammany candidate in the Mayoral election/ This seems hard to explain, but perhaps the fact that the- control of municipal government with a yeany budget of 150,000,090 dollars was at stake, and that Tammany wanted to win on anv terms, may explain a lot. Air. Justice Gaynor is said to be a man of the utmost- austerity. According to an American writer: “For fourteen years, Gaynor lias been wearing the robes of a Supreme Court justice. It is said that he has so expedited legal proceedings that he tries twice as many cases as any of his associates. He is regarded by many lawyers as harsh and severe upon them, but they admire his legal ability while denouncing his tempt”- Justice Gaynor says in his own defence: “It isn’t the lawyer I see in Court; it’s the litigant behind him, pale with anxiety and eating up his substance in dragged-out legal expenses. It is for his sake 1 use all my authority to compel a more rapid determination -bf cases.'Judge .Gaynor has been outspoken, despite ins judicial position, in denouncing corporate abuse and political chicanery. But he has been rigid in his demand that all movements in vindication of Law must proceed along lawful lines. Here is his creed : _ “Crimes and vices are evils t~T me community ; but- it behoves a free people never to forget that they have more to fear from the one vice of arbitary power in government than from all other vices and crimes combiiieu. It debases everybody, and brings in its train all other vices and crimes. Societies and private enthusiasts for the suppression of rice should read history, and learn the supreme danger of trying to do all at once by a policeman’s club what can be done at all only very gradually by the slow moral development- which comes principally from’ our schools and churches. It- would be difficult to speak with perfect forbearance of the strange pretence that the police could not enforce the law if they kept within the law themselves.” It- will be interesting to see how Air. Gaynor, as a Tammany Mayor, maintains Iris principles.