The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-18
sPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current 7 Topics-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
SIDEWALK DISTRACTIONS.

FroiH the N. !. World,
Now that we have a Superintendent of
Police whose energies are not entirely devoted
to the management of Federal politics at
large it may not be unavailing to direct his
attention to one of the most annoying of our
chronic public grievances. Nine-tenths of
our readers will at once correctly surmise
that we alude to the obstruction of sidewalks,
which is a rule almost without exception in
the business streets of New York. We would
not cautiously complain were the impedi-
ments to pedestrians confined to an occa-
sional frIit-stand we would bear in silent
suffering even on every corner barrel
organ with military attachment; but when
the intervals between these are impassably
barricaded with bales, boxes, barrels the
stock in trade of public venders and private
business firms, Christian forbearance gives
out, and we are prompted to ask if the un-
commercial traveller has no rights which mer-
camille men are bound to respect
Each locality has its own peculiar form of
obstruction. The narrowest part of Pine
street. for instance, presents Alpine ranges of
cotton bales and peaks of woollen attitude;
in Pearl street the prospect and progress are
impeded by tinware and house-furnishing
articles; William street runs chiefly to noun
famous packing cases of mysterious nature;
Ann street to indscriminate rags and waste
paper; the Swamp is rendered dismal by
multitudinous hides, through which one
vainly seeks way; in Vesey street the side
walk is divided between tea companies on its
inner aspect and peddlers of every unbought
thing on its curb, leaving a passage of a
scant yard wide for the double current of
voyagers, every alternate one of whom is
freighted with a large and obtrusively
angular basket. In the above-named
thorougbfares, however, only sturdy human
ity ventures, and all save the last are almost
exclusively trodden by business men who
cannot complain of their neighbors premises
for that of which their own are equally guilty.
But there are other public ways in more use
by citizens in general, and through which the
gentler as well as the ruder sex must pass to
reach frequented ferries, which are, if posi-
BILE, worse than those sacred to trade alone.
First among these, 2)TjnouS inter pGreS, is Dey
street on its southern side from Greenwich
street to the North river. Asif to preclude es-
cape from the intolerable stencil from chGrcu-
te'2e of questionable freshness and fish of un-
questionable sadness, the walks are filled from
morn to dewy eve, week in and week out
with the same boxes and barrels, six rows
deep and as many high the same impertur-
bable Hibernians lounging in theirinterspaces,
to the serious detriment of both the mind
and raiment of the many ladies who cannot
wade through the outer mud, and are
ashamed to climb but who must reach a
punctual boat at a given hour. Fulton
street, with its indiscriminate litter of earthen
and every other earthly ware, is not much
better, and the routes to the less fashionable
ferries are even worse, if worse can be.
The outside traffic of the peddlers is easily
removable by the police; and, although it
may be somewhat more difficult to reform an
abuse which by long tolerance has come to
be regarded as legitimate portion of a busi-
ness tenant right, it is evident that trade so
extensive as to overflow from its rightful
leasehold all over the sidewalks ought to be
profitable enough to warrant its conductors
in securing larger accommodations for the
storage of their wares.