A Pulpit Critique of City Silence
Rev. A. H. Harnhisel uses a memorial service to scold local newspapers for failing to report on city mismanagement, broken infrastructure, and public health threats.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The memorial services of the Ancient Order of United Workmen were held last night at the First Presbyterian church. Rev. A. H. Harnhisel preached the sermon. In brief, the pastor said: 'There are two distinct principles for which your order stands: the commercial and the fraternal.' While speaking of the need to 'keep one's self unspotted from the world,' the Rev. Mr. Harnhisel spoke concerning the newspapers of our city. 'They compare well with other metropolitan papers,' he remarked, 'but leave unsaid a great many things which the people ought to know. The cable cars have been running all winter with a broken cable that was a menace to hundreds of lives, and with open cars that endanger the health of all who rode in them, and not a word about it appeared in some of the papers.'
“The cable cars have been running all winter with a broken cable that was a menace to hundreds of lives, and with open cars that endanger the health of all who rode in them, and not a word about it appeared in some of the papers.”
The preacher’s frustration with media silence on 'broken cables' and 'open cars' mirrors the ongoing tension between local news coverage and the accountability of private interests in urban transit.
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