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$5,000,000. A year later his indictment was mysteriously
quashed. The prosecutor sought a fresh batch of indictments, got them
against all but Engineer Kelly. Four trustees, headed by Timothy Crowe,
were convicted after a trial which brought out amazing tales of corrupt
extravagance. After 1927 the Sanitary District's expenditures had
jumped from 38 to 55 million per year. Its payroll was padded double
with nonworkers. It spent $1,000,000 on a useless bridle path along
McCormick Boulevard ("From Nowhere to Nowhere") which should
have cost less than $300,000. It set up dummy concerns to buy and
sell building materials at outrageous prices. With his indictment
quashed, Engineer Kelly was technically outside this Chicago scandal.
But its shadow was enough to bar him from serious consideration as a
candidate for high elective office. In 1931 "Tony" Cermak was
overwhelmingly nominated for Mayor. At Cermak's death old Boss Pat Nash
who succeeded him as Democratic National Committeeman wanted to be
Mayor. Young, aggressive State's Attorney Thomas Courtney backed
Corporation Counsel William H. Sexton, chief Cermak adviser, for the
job. They compromised on Ed Kelly. As soon as the new Mayor was
installed in City Hall, the old Sanitary District scandal was raked up
and rehashed. One of the chief rakers and re-hashers was a South
Side apartment house builder and real estate reformer named John Joseph
Mangan. He urged householders not to pay their taxes until the city
government was purged. Cried he: "Kelly goes around with a prayer
book in one hand, an empty bushel basket in the other." Mr. Mangan
put out a tiny blue pamphlet called "Sanitary Kelly."
Excerpts: "They call the new Mayor 'Sanitary Kelly' because he's
so pure, clean and wholesome. He goes to church on Sunday. . . . BUT
he was chief engineer of the infamous $1,000,000 bridle path . . . was
never brought to trial so he didn't have to go to jail. . . . 'Sanitary
Kelly' will never finish his term as mayor." The Chicago police,
on orders from City Hall, ferreted out all available copies of the
Mangan pamphlet, destroyed them while Chicago sniggered. Last week's
tax disclosures did not help Mayor Kelly's already poor standing with
President Roosevelt who as Governor of New York ousted Sheriff Thomas
("Tin Box'') Farley because he could not adequately explain his
large income. Governor Roosevelt laid down this rule: "Where a
public official is under inquiry and it appears that his scale of
living or the total of his bank deposits far exceeds his public salary,
he owes a positive public duty to the community to give a reasonable or
credible explanation of the sources of the deposits or the source which
enables him to maintain the scale of living beyond the amount of his
salary." The Federal administration to date has given the Kelly
administration little or no patronage. Carter Harrison, longtime
Mayor, son of the 1893 World's Fair Mayor, was made a Collector of
Internal Revenue over the Cermak-Kelly candidate for that job. Ed Kelly
will probably be remembered principally as the World's Fair Mayor of
1933. In that difficult job he has handled himself with grace and
dignity, made a good host to millions of visitors.*** When nudity on the
Fair's midway became a public issue Mayor Kelly inspected the gay
midnight shows,
