CHICAGO CLEANS HOUSE.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 242, 21 June 1928, Page 5

CHICAGO CLEANS HOUSE.

“ BIG BILL’S ” DEFEAT. Merely to chronicle a news event, it may be mentioned that Chicago held a primary election in April. Ordinarily such an event is regarded only as of local importance. But in this instance the circumstances were so unusual as to have attracted national and even international attention. William H. Thompson, popularly known as “Big Bill,” is mayor of Chicago. Within the last year he achieved considerable notoriety by reason of his claim that the pupils in the Chicago schools were being taught pro-British history. He created more or less excitement by discharging his superintendent of schools and threatening to bum not only school histories but books in the Chicago public libraries that he asserted had a British historical slant. Chicago became very disgusted with “Big Bill’s” tactics. While the incident added perhaps, to the gaiety of nations on both sides of the water, serious minded people were not unaware of the fact that even such buffonery carried within itself the germs of future danger in possible disturbance of amicable relations between two great countries. But Thompson was not to be stopped. In subsequent campaign utterances he proclaimed it to be his intention of keeping King George out of Chicago and out of the Chicago politics. This absurdity capped the climax. The unthinking laughed, but the majority of people in Chicago saw through the Mayor’s policy of dragging a herring across the trail in order to divert attention from a condition in local municipal administration abejut which the least said the better.

On the day of the primary election, Chicago rose and smote “Big Bill” and his cohorts hip and thigh. They cleaned house with a vengeance. Thompson will remain as mayor for a considerable period. His power, however, has been destroyed. Humoursly, it has been stated that King George won the election. Seriously, the decent minded people of Chicago did that. They were tired of seeing the city lampooned and derided in the domestic and foreign press, and even though the majority of the world regarded the issue as a joke, Thompson’s administration, with its proven association with underworld elements and crime was no joke. They showed their true sense of good citizenship and desire for good government by casting “Big Bill” into the outer darkness, where everybody at present seems content to leave him.