Cleveland Idyll

Polite excitement tingled in the bosoms of a group of smiling ladies and gentlemen in Cleveland one night last week as they gathered in the smart offices of their city manager, William Rowland Hopkins. That day 97,000 Cleveland voters had chosen between city management and a return to the old mayor-and-ward-politics system. Manager Hopkins and friends were receiving election returns. Manager Hopkins was winning. A little moved by his success, he strolled to an open window, gazed long at a bright moon. The tight lines of his face relaxed. Coughing for attention, he spoke in blank verse:

"The future of Cleveland now seems to lie as straight and clear as yonder moon beams."

His lady campaigners arched their eye brows approvingly. A newsgatherer for the potent, manager-favoring Cleveland Plain Dealer felt embarrassed, sneaked out of the room for a smoke. He had been politely informed that it was not proper to use tobacco before so many ladies. Pickles, sandwiches, coffee, radishes and ice cream were served. With bows and smiles, blue and purple asters were passed to the ladies who had carried the day for the modern form of municipal government. The outcome of the election made round, gallant Manager Hopkins feel as exhilarated as a small boy who, expecting to fail at school, finds he has passed every thing on his report card.

Born in Pennsylvania 60 years ago, a Cleveland City Councilman before he was 30, Mr. Hopkins in 1924 left successful business enterprises which had amply enriched him to become Cleveland's first manager. Three times in almost three years Cleveland citizens have been asked to vote down the city manager plan by Harry Lyman Davis, onetime Governor of Ohio and mayor of Cleveland, who sought to restore "the city government to the people" -- and the politicians. To the defense of Manager Hopkins' government flocked the women. They campaigned for him. made house-to-house canvasses, got out the vote. They kept him in office last week against the vigorous masculine campaigning of Politician Davis.

Each special election on city management has, however, produced a smaller majority for Manager Hopkins. Last week he won by a scant 3,000 votes after Maurice Maschke, Ohio's National Republican Committeeman, had come to the support of Mr. Davis. Boss Maschke blamed Mr. Davis for their defeat. Had the latter promised the public not to run again for mayor himself, the plan would have won, felt Boss Maschke. A mathematician, Manager Hopkins on election night calculated that if his margin of victory continued to dwindle in the same ratio at future elections, he would be voted out of his job--which would otherwise last for life--within five years.

Cleveland is the largest of some 400 U. S. city-manager-plan cities. Next largest is Cincinnati where last week a determined effort was being planned by old-line Republican politicians to gain control of the city council at the November election, to restore politics to the city government, oust able City Manager Clarence O. Sherrill.