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10 PUBLIC LEDG
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ESTABLISHED 1836.
PUBLIC [image: logo] LEDGER
GEORGE W. CHILDS
Editor and Proprietor from 1864 to 1894.
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PHILADELPHIA, FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1913.
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KILL THE MUNICIPAL COURT BILL.

The movement for a municipal court
was originally undertaken by disinter-
ested men and business organizations
with the intent to relieve congregation
and thus expedite the administration
of justice. This movement has been
perverted by politicians in the Legisla-
ture and their henchmen in the city
into a noxious spoils scramble until the
legislation proposed is farcical and ob-
viously designed to defeat the legiti-
mate purposes of those who aimed to
improve conditions. This lamentable
result is accompanied by proposals
which unreasonably increase the ex-
pense to the city.

A municipal court was needed for the
purpose of providing an efficient tri-
bunal to do the work which the 28
Magistrates do very badly, and also to
handle minor causes to prevent them
from choking the five Common Pleas
Courts. The intention was to increase
the total number of Judges in this
county by one compact court of seven
or nine Judges sitting in a municipal
court and exercising a limited criminal
and civil jurisdiction. One of the most
cogent arguments for this court was
the certainty that the anachronistic
Magistrate courts would fall into des-
uetude, to be eliminated sooner or later
by a constitutional amendment.

What has happened is this: The
gang Legislature has created five addi-
tional Common Pleas Judgeships which
were not needed, but were created
through a political deal. This bill was
enacted by sheer machine force in the
Legislature, and the Governor was ap-
parently lulled into weak acquiescence
either through fear or the promise of
support for his favorite measures
coupled with some understanding that
the demand for a municipal court
would be met.

The machine Proposes to carry out
that part of the bargain in a most
ludicrously unscrupulous manner. It
has saddled five new Common Pleas
Judges upon the community and now
it proposes to emasculate the munic-
ipal court bill in such fashion that it
will provide for additional unnecessary
Judges under legislation that will ac-
tually nuilify the entire purpose of a
municipal court and obstruct the ad-
ministration of the law.

The advocates of a municipal court
wished to provide a court that would
be more trustworthy and efficient than
the Magistrates' courts, and now the
machine will amend the municipal
court act so that the Magistrates may
not be interfered with, but shall re-
ceive further legal perpetuation. The
municipal court is not to be permitted
to handle minor criminal cases; the
poor who deal with the Magistrates
are still to have their political justice;
the Organization is to have its out-
posts in every part of the city.

The municipal court was to relieve

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senting practically all of the Protest-
ant denominations of Philadelphia, in
their conference in this city in June of
the same year, and the Evangelical
Ministrial Alliance of Atlanta, Ga.,
in September, 1911. The concensus of
these conferences was, that there is a
universal disposition to exclude negroes
from the fields of honest employment
and that it is the bounden duty of the
Church to secure for that race an equal
chance in the struggle for existence.

The most imperative secular prob-
lem that confronts the Church today is
that of establishing just relationships be-
tween man and man. Its very first
duty in this connection is to stand be-
tween the defenseless negro and the
powerful agencies which are rapidly
effecting his economic submergence.
For example, there has never been an
industrial strike in the country which
was not dependent upon public sym-
pathy and support for success. With
few exceptions, the most relentless of
these strikers have been in the interest
of workers who have consistently re-
fused to recognize the rights of negro
citizens to the opportunities which they
themselves employed, while some of
them have been directed against
negroes in the limited fields where they
have found recognition.

What more reasonable or just or
equitable proposition could the Church
take to all such strikers than that
they recognize every other bread-win-
ner as having rights coequal with their
own before demanding and expecting the
support and sympathy of the Church?
When it is considered that neither the
masses of thinking workers nor of em-
ployers are at heart averse to a just
recognition of competent negro labor
the comparative ease with which this
suggested stand on the part of the
churches could adjust this situation
at once apparent.