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support for his favorable 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
the upper courts; it was to provide for
the eventual elimination of 28 Magis-
trates; there was to be efficiency, and
in the end even economy. The plan as
the gang now shaped it includes
five new Common Please Judges; the
addition of nine municipal court
Judges, deprived of power to help the
city adequately, and the retention of
28 Magistrates. Against nine new
Judges which the reformers proposed
to take the place of 28 Magistrates the
gang proposes 14 new Judges and the
perpetuation of the Magistrates. The
reformers were to save 19 judicial of-
fices; the Organization proposes to con-
firm in office 28 and to add 14 more,
and so to shape the law that the con-
gestion cannot be remedied by the 42.

It is thus demonstrated how an hon-
orable aspiration to improve the public
service may be defeated and perverted
to base uses by the political schemers
in the Legislature, and it is time for
real reformers to wash their hands of
the entire proceeding.
________________________________

THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO.

The series of editorials which the
PUBLIC LEDGER has been publishing
relative to certain restrictions which
are being placed upon the negro race
set one to pondering as to how these
conditions can best be overcome. No
medium suggests itself as being so po-
tent to this end as does the militant
Church. Not only is it the duty of the
Church, as the highest exponent of
Christian civilization, to apply its
teachings to the negro problem of
his country, but, by virtue of its wide
influence and its hold upon society,
can perhaps do more than any other
agency to establish and maintain
whatever standards of relations be-
tween the races are found to be just
and expedient.

The various religious bodies are grad-
ually awakening to their duty and
power as arbiters of social and eco-
nomic conditions. Not only are they
increasingly applying themselves to the
everyday problems of the less fortu-
nate of soclety, but many of them have
within recent years seriously consid-
ered the grave need of creating broad-
er industrial opportunities and more
even-handed justice for the colored
race.

Notable among such councils were
the Presbyterians in their General As-
sembly in Atlantic City, N. J., in May,
1910; the Home Mission Council, repre-

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