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Get the Girls. Clough's idea was that graft from gambling and prostitution would disappear if the mayor just made it quite plain that these activities did not need special "protection." Last week Galvestonians voted. By 6.406 to 5,649. it was a victory for Clough and cleanly liberalism.
Almost immediately, troubles beset Mayor George Clough. George liked the gamblers but the gamblers did not like him. Said one: "We can't support a man who won't take money. If you can't cut him off, he's liable to get sore and cut you off."
More pressing, however, was the problem of Police Commissioner Johnston, who was re-elected despite Herbie's defeat. (The only reform candidate for police commissioner ran sixth in a field of six.) In defiance of the new mayor, Johnston, onetime friend of segregated vice, declared: "The bawdyhouse district will never open again as long as I'm police commissioner." Retorted the new mayor: "I am going to order Johnston to get the girls back in the district.
"In a seaport town," said Clough, "prostitution is a biological necessity." Christ tried to stop prostitution and failed, he said, "so why should I?" One-armed piracy, however, is not a sporting thing, thought the mayor: "I don't approve of slot machines. Most of them are fixed so they don't pay off anything."
* Named for gallant Count Bernardo de Galvez (1746-86), Spanish governor of Louisiana and viceroy of Mexico. His motto, now Galveston's: Yo solo (I alone).