New-York tribune., 1867-04-08
MYSTERIES OF LEGISLATION.

Of the dozen persons most inuentially con-
nected with this journal, about half have homes
in the County of Westchester, fifteen TO thirty
miles from the heart of the City, where they
nominally live. They would like to maintain
at least a visiting acquaintance with their
families and some of them manage, for the
most part, to do so. But the serious and
increasing obstacles TO rapid transit out of
town renders this exceedingly difficult. For
merly, the Hudson River and Harlem cars
received passengers near the City Hall
Park; now, they must be sought two
to three miles up town; and formidable
clamOr now urges their banishment several
miles further 1t is already papabe that such
thoroughfares rs the Fourth Avenue cannot
long be practically mOnOpOlized by steam-drivcu
trains of cars-that these will have to be with
drawn or run at greatly reduced speed. 1t is
already a much slower job to get out of town
nOrthward than it was; and, without radical
change, it will require much longer time five
To ten years hence.
Not one of us owns, or ever did own, any
stock OF bonds of any City Railroad, nor do we
wish nor expect to own any. What we seek is
Il quick way of getting to and from our homes
We should like to travel i'll light and air, as
was promised us by the Metropolitan Transit
Company; but we are willing to be whisked
Though cavern or tunnel if that is the best
that can be done. The indispensable matter is
that we be conveyed from the City Hall across
the Harlem River in twenty TO thirty minutes,
instead of the seventy or eighty now required.
Our wants are OF consequence to the public
Olfly a3 they indicate those of others We csti-
mate that ut least fifty thousand persons are i'll
business which requires their daily presence III
this City, while their homes Gn Summer, at
IeasU are in Wcstchestcr and other River Coun-
tir, These would b. rapidly doubled, trebled,
quadmplcd, If proper facilities existed for
getting them into and ont OF town. We
should have bOUntifuly filed hourly trains
from @ a. IN. TO II p. III. hence to- Peelskll
and White Plains, and az least four Uay-tialns
daily to and from Croton Falls and Newburgh.
Such facilities would have saved to car State
many Millions of taxable property which has
been banishcd TO New-Jerscy by the difficult
ties OF transit northward Wcstchester County
will have at least 100000 inhabitants by 1850,
if the means of reaching every part Of 1t shall
speedily be improved Us they should DC.
We are setting forth what all intelligent
persons hereabout comprehend and know.
While there are not q thousand persons III this
City eager for Broadway "CrO3s- Town,
and other horse railroads, we never yet heard
a human being ayow hostility to some form of
depressed or underground road, whereon
passengers may be swiftly brought into ana
taken out Of town and we doubt that any such
exists There may be misery tenement
landlord who fears chat hrs wrctched rookenes
will cease to pay him twenty-five per cent.
aftcr we have quick transit ont OF town but
even he dare not proclara his meaaness.
How comes it, then, thar the Legislature has,
by great majorties, authorized tgo new and
most extensive Horse Railroads, which every
one but the grantees detest, yet failed to
authorize any form Of depressed or under
ground steam road, which every body wants.
We say, Simply and only because the Horse
Railroad grantees will pay liberally for such
legislation as they seek, while nobody wants To
buy she privilege Of constructing underground
roads. Capital, it is affirmed, can be foand to
construct them; but nobody can afford to
bribc the legislators to grant the privilege oil
SD doing; whereas, the Broadway Surface grant
alone is worth at least million dollars. So
the roads needed by the public fail to be
authorized, while those that enrich the grantees
at the public cost surely pass
If there be another explanation of the phe-
nomcna, what is it Who speaks
Most surely, there is no difference of opinion
here as TO the infamy of such legislation. No
intelligent person living in this City imagnes
that the Broadway Surface road received half a
dozen votes in all, for which those who cast them
had not been, or did not confidently expect to
be, paid in cash or its equivalent. Dare the
Legislature attempt to purge itself by an
honest and searching investigations