The mayor of the city of Greater New York is Judge Robert A. Van Wyck.
New York city has just been passing through the most exciting electionthat has fallen to her lot since she became a city.
This being the first election since the passing of the charter whichmade New York the second largest city in the world, each political partyhas been trying to get a man in for mayor who represented its ownespecial way of thinking.
You will remember our telling you about the passing of the charter lastspring, and remarking that the man who would be made mayor of this greatcity would have to rule over nearly three and a half millions of people.He will also have to appoint officers of the government whose salarieswill amount to five hundred thousand dollars a year, and to control NewYork's yearly income, which will amount to more than sixty millions ofthe people's money.
On January 1st, 1898, Greater New York will embrace Staten Island, thewhole of Brooklyn as far down the Bay as Rockaway Beach, extend as farnorth as Yonkers, and stretch across the country to the Sound, which itwill cross to take in Queens County on Long Island.
In the recent election one of the principal candidates for the mayoraltywas Mr. Seth Low, the president of Columbia University, who was mayor ofthe city of Brooklyn in 1881, and was re-elected to the same office in1883. Besides Mr. Low there were Gen. Benjamin F. Tracy, who wasSecretary of the Navy under President Harrison in 1889, Robert A. VanWyck, chief judge of the city court, and Mr. Henry George.
The contest was a very lively one, and each man who thus offered hisservices to his city had to endure a severe course of the abuse which itis the fashion nowadays to heap on any man who puts himself before thepublic gaze.
Accusations have been brought by each party against the others, until,to the unprejudiced outsider, it has seemed as if none of the candidatesselected was fit to hold office at all.
Judge Van Wyck and General Tracy have been accused of being so muchunder the rule of their party leaders that they could not possibly giveNew York honest government. Mr. Seth Low has been declared to be such anautocrat that he would rule the city according to his own ideas, werethey good or bad. Mr. George was called a visionary person, who wouldturn the world upside down if ever he came into power. These were, ofcourse, the opinions of the candidates' enemies. To their friends eachof them was felt to be the one man for whom the city had been waiting,and whose election would insure the best possible government at thelowest possible cost to the people.
You may judge for yourselves that all these opinions could not possiblybe true; and that therefore the candidates, as well as their parties,must have had their good sides and their bad sides. We can only hopethat Judge Van Wyck, who was elected to the position by a very largemajority, may prove to be the best man for the place.
A very sad and painful turn was given to the election by the suddendeath of Mr. Henry George, one of the candidates.
Mr. George was a man who had made a world-wide reputation for himself asthe originator of the Single-Tax system.
The Single T