Seasongood Recounts Trials of Cincinnati in Dunster Speech; Flails Supreme Court Change

An interested audience was led last night on a detailed inspection tour of party politics as Murray Seasongood '00, former mayor of Cincinnati, talked informally on "Machine Politics and the Reformer" in Dunster House Common Room. Tracing the city from the 1884-1926 period, which Lincoln Steffins accurately depicted as "unbelievably corrupt," up to the present time, when it is generally conceded to be the "best governed city in the United States", Mr. Seasongood described the long struggle of the past twelve years as a constant warfare against party machinery and party patronage.

In viewing the progress which had been made, he said, "Civic and governmental improvements were plentiful, but despite continual expansion and expenditure, finances were carefully enough controlled to give Cincinnati a tax rate of only $18.88 per $1000, the lowest of any city exceeding 300,000 population in this country."

After the forum questions which he answered at the conclusion of his address, Mr. Seasongood stated in definite terms his opinion of the present administration, with particular reference to the proposed Supreme Court reform.

"I am bitterly opposed to packing the Supreme Court," he said. "I think that the idea of an executive appointing judges with a free hand is fatal, and to remove justices from the bench because they are of a different opinion from the executive's is equally unwise It is the subterfuge with which the whole matter has been surrounded which is objectionable.

Such a change in the Court set-up would have reverberations on the conduct of the state courts, which naturally take their cue from the example of the highest court, and this would be opening the way to vicious legislation. A great many persons do not understand that a large percentage of the laws which are voided are voided because of technical wording flaws or faulty draftsmanship on the part of the legislatures. It is the duty of courts to remedy these defects in the law, and any action which menaces this power is certainly undesirable at this time."

Asked what he would substitute for the two-party system which has led to such corruption here, Mr. Seasongood replied: "I do not disapprove of the two-party system in America, but rather I favor its being conducted as in England where the merit system has a more independent and more solid footing. This situation can be changed only by recognizing it. The matter is not hopeless. The main problem is that the people be gotten out of a defeatist attitude."

Mr. Seasongood will spend the rest of the week in Cambridge helping to arrange the operative functions of the University's new Graduate School of Public Administration. He was introduced last night by Professor C. H. Haring, Dunster House Master.