704
PARTISAN REVIEW
Perhaps it became more ingrained because it had nothing to show. Its
money is rigidly administered by trust funds (a Philadelphia invention),
which do not allow of the kind of speculation that can make rich
people richer and sometimes poorer. And it
is
money that
is
saddled
by taxes. The newer Philadelphia tycoons thus have names which bear
no resemblance to the BiddIes and the Drexels which, for the outside
world, were so long identified with Philadelphia power and money.
However, these people still pursue their polite, vaguely snobbish, almost
English ways. They shop in Wanamaker's and Strawbridge's and in
Bailey, Banks and Biddle on narrow Chestnut Street-a street that
is
by
no means Fifth Avenue, but quietly luxurious nevertheless. And, should
you think them lacking in social consciousness, note the fact that it was
a group of Main Line subdebs who recently went down to City Hall
and began sweeping its musty corridors with actual and symbolic
brooms.
Some Main Liners like to think that the "real" Philadelphia has
moved out to where they are. In a partial sense they are right, for the
above mentioned exodus has taken some of the middle class out to the
environs, and also some of those who labor in the ship yards, the BudJ
works, the Philco, Bendix and RCA plants. It is as though there were
a general gasping for air (unlike New York, where residents grouch
about the crowding, but stay firmly, even sentimentally attached to
their warrens) and not even the Negroes-who make up a high 13,%
of the population-can be contained in the squalid areas that fenced
them in before the war. There is an undercurrent of resentment towards
this continuing encroachment upon "white" territory, and while no
violence has broken out over it, a real tension exists. Philadelphia is a
city that has a little of the south in it, and a bitter transit strike was
fought over the policy of hiring Negroes for motormen and conductor
jobs.
To get back to Dr. Weygandt, we may use him for our authority
on old Philadelphia and its ways. "My Philadelphia is to be found here
and there," he writes. "You see it at . . . the concerts of The Phila–
delphia Orchestra, most pure and unadulterated at the flower shows
in Convention Hall." I have never browsed through a flower show at
Convention Hall, but I think he is right when he goes on to mention the
fact that it is "in the country towns within an hour by car from the
city that you will today meet most folks that have still Philadelphia
ways." You will find the last of the Quakers in communities like
Haverford, and the Pennsylvania Dutch (Philadelphia variety) out
