New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1864-06-03

ing what Tor n very long PERIOD ever, BODY ~
been asking everybody else TO do, with tn
usual unsatisfactory result. For years we have
suffered City Hall swindling and street smells,
and we all said, II these men or those men, Il
men of property and standing, would only come
forward and inaugurale a reform, We should no
longer suffer under these rlscalities and re.
pyoaches. Unfortunately the men did not come
forward. Fortunately, the evil at length
reached such a hight that honest men, who wish
20 live in New-York and to invest their money
here, have been forced to make their influence
felt, as it is being felt already. Annual taxes
20 the amount of $40, 600, 900, with the prospect
of an agreeable augmentation to Sl5, 900, 600,
are iorcble reminders of civic duties But other
than pecuniary motives, we are glad to say,
have impelled these gentlemen to undertake.
these labors. They not only seek to diminish
taxation, but frghtful waste of human life.
They would renovate not only the Municipal
offices, but thousands OF homes which are full
of squalor and disease and Indebtedness. They
would reform our Judiciary, but they would
also purify the atmosphere of the city.
Of course, in so comprehensive a scheme as
theirs, the Public Health occupies very prom
inent place. 1t is estimated that We fairly muir
der ten thousand men, women, and especially
children, every ycar-murdcr them through the
want of decent sanitary precautions. We pay
nearly 100000 annually for cleaning the
streets, and as our noses, and our lungs, and
our graye-yardS testify, they are not cleaned,
but left TO be trodden in discomfort by thou
sands and tens of thousands all walking to most
unt:mey tombs. II is in this way, and by the
fragrant aid of bone-boiling establishments and
saughter-houses, that we get rid of the afore-
said most unnecessary ten thousand, without
reckoning the infinite discomfort Of the living.
People say that the City is too unclean ever to
be made clean. The Citizens Association says
that it is not. Already those who are
familiar with the statistics of mortality
say that the rate in New-York is terribly
high. Why should it be ! in 45 in Lon
don, | in Al in Liverpool in "a in Philadel-
phia. and in 50 in New-Yorkl Medical men
of the highest standing, moro than a score of
them, write To the Committee that from its
locality "New-York ought to be one of the
most healthy cities in the world" Besides, it
has a great influx of vigorous and healthy
population from the rural districts and from
foreign countries" Yet there is that feariully
high death-rate still High not because God
has sent to us a desolating pestilence-high
not because We are suffering from the
priyatons of a siege-high not because We cam
not escape malaria but high because we abso-
lutely WOO the presence of death and 60 on
from year to year in the same course of williul
and criminal carclessness And We not only die
i'll this absurd way, but We do not even live
without needless discomfort and alarm The
doctors tell us that we have in New-York, every
year, upward Of 200, 900 cases of preyentabe
and needless Sickness" bringing an amount Of
distress and suffering and of material loss al
most incalculable. Somebody stated. the other
day, in a city newspaper, that ''no child born
in New-York can expect 10 live more than
fifteen years" Then, TO put il in another way,
"eyery other baby born in the city dies before
il Is five years DID," This is civilization with a
vengeance. Poor creatures, in the very begin
ming coming into the world with nnumcrable
curscs-nurtured in dens which Gods
air never enters and Gods light never cheers
with less chance of life than if they had been the
offspring Of wandering sayages Who wonders
that the Citizens Association found it necessary
at the very first to have Council of Hygienei
and Public HEALTH"
Considering evils like these, and how much
could be done by 4 judicious expenditure OF
money to alleviate them, il is with. a sort OF
ferocious dissatisfaction that one turns TO our
Tax Levy for 1864, and, noting how much
money we spend, reflects upon the way in
which we spend il. Take single instance We
pay as the salaries Of our judges over S3l5, 600
annually Does that secure us good Judges
In the opinion of the Committee of the Citizens
Association, it does not; for we find that the
reform of the Judiciary is one of the labors
which they have in hand. And from this, with
ont going into statistics, We may come to other
most unsatisfactory conclusions. We pay
always about five times the honest cost OF q
good article, and we invariably get bad one
Bad schools, bad streets, bad this, that, and the
bad Putting out Of the case life,
comfort. morals, and happiness, we might have
a far better Government at great deal less
cost. We believe that, at some future day, we
shall have it, and if We ever do have it, it will
be when the best portion of our population,
fully aroused to the pressing exigencies of our