THE MAYORALTY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 736, 8 April 1910, Page 6

THE MAYORALTY.

Mr. Wilford opened his campaign for the Mayoral seat at Brooklyn last evening under favourable conditions. He had a fairly large and apparently sympathetic audience which followed his address with interest, and which at the close of his re-marks accorded him the customary vote of thanks and confidence. Mr. Wilford, . however, has seldom been seen to less advantage. At the outset he promised to place before those present and the public generally new thoughts on municipal questions. The only new thought that he made known' was a suggestion that the ugly galvanised iron fence surrounding Parliament grounds should be pulled down and the grounds made more attractive and thrown open to the public—an excellent enough suggestion, but one unfortunately not within the province of the municipality. The property belongs to the Government and the matter is one for Ministers. But if Mr. Wilford had little that was new to put forward he certainly introduced something that was novel in the way of a Mayoral campaign address. He had evidently been gathering information from the officials of the City Council, and had made a particular heavy, levy on the City Engineer's Department. He was brimming over with technical information on a whole host of subjects. He discoursed on the advantages of forro-concrote as applied to rcßervoir works with all the confidence of an engineer who had made a life study of dam construction; he described in detail the drainage system of the city and told how when gravitation failed to carry off the sewage it was lifted by means of pumps to a sufficient height to start it anew on its course to the sea; he told, in tones thrilling with admiration, of the uses to' which the heat generated in burning rubbish' at the destructor was put in working this pumping system; and he dwelt. in eulogistic terms on the acumen of the City Council and its officers in turning waste tramway electrical energy to use in pumping water to the high levels distributing reservoirs. All this apparently was quite new ground to Mr. Wilford, and he did not appear to have the slightest i'lea that he. was merely describing municipal undertakings with which citizens are quite familiar. He certainly described them very well, but what the greater part of these references had to do with the Mayoral contest or his own candidature he did not trouble to explain; At a later stage he went to great pains to show how somewhere about the year 1914 ratepayers may expect to obtain some ; substantial relief frbm the burden of the city's rates owing to the balance of the reclaimed land leases falling in about that time and being renewed at greatly advanced rentals. Mr. Wilford appeared to regard this also as a discovery of his own and one entitling him to some special con r sidcration at the hands of the electors.■ ~ Yet as-a matter of fact the position he described has been discussed over and.over again.in the Council and in the press for years past. .. v Tho platform put forward by Mr. Wilford was almost as weak as the rest of'the speech, and yet strangely enough, he seemed to regard it as outlining something really momentous. He informed his audience that he had had it written out'to hand to the press iii order that'there 1 should not be any chance of any error creeping in—he had just told them that he had "new thoughts", to'put before them.' And these are the two planks which he places first and second in this platform: '

(1) Advancing on safe lines having regard to immediate necessities and obligations .already incurred. (2) Safeguarding tho ratepayers' by watching every interest. Our readers will no doubt recall these venerable pronouncements; they probably date back to the first Mayoral election ever held. There is one point, however, on which' Mr. Wilfokd is certainly to be congratulated. He is coming to recognise, somewhat grudgingly it must be admitted, that the public-want a Mayor who is unfettered by other ties. He announced last evening that if elected Mayor of the city he would resign the Chairmanship of Committees of the House of Representatives. This concession to public opinion is in one respect a stop in the right direction. It is an admission of what we contended when last discussing the question, viz., that the calls on the-time of the Mayor of the city are so great that it-is impossible to do justice to the office while holding other public positions involving any appreciable amount of work. Mr. Wilford has undertaken to relieve himself of one of his ties, but he is still at a serious disadvantage. Moreover, this dallying and playing fast and loose with high public offices in order to serve personal ambitions is not a thing to bo passed off in the light and airy fashion adopted' by Mr. Wilford. Last year, in contesting the Mayoralty, when pressed in the same fashion he said he would resign the' Chair-: manship of the Harbour Board if elected Mayor, and now he is equally ready to throwover the Chairmanship of Committees, the attaining of which a few months ,ago he informed Parliament he regarded as so high an honour. We hardly think that this is the sort of spirit citizens admire 'in their public men—there is an unpleasant suggestion about it that tho public interest is a very secondary consideration to the personal ambitions of Mr. Wiword.