The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-02

Car-drivers and Car-conductors.
The time will come when the drivers and con-
ductore of city passenger-c will come in for
ehare of that sympathy which is just beginning
to be given to those who in other businesses
are over-worked and outraged in spirit. The
salesmen will, in the end, win the day, though
the day may be net just yet, and then perhaps,
another ill-paid over-worked, abused, and ill
treated class will begin to have a little justice
shown to it. / allude to the class of car-drivers
and csr-conductors who, probably, work more
hours for less money than any other class
which, as yet has now the sympathies
of the public Who thinks of plying
a car.driver? Who dreams of sympa-
thizing with car-conductor? Who ever says
a good word for either of these classes of men?
What newspaper lifts up its voice in their be-
half? What man or woman to whom sympathy
ought to have come with maturity, and who
make daily use of the car as OF a luxury that has
now become indispensable, ever seriously broods
over the pain, the annoyance, the woarisome-
ness, the wretched pay, and that lack of leisure
which is necessary to individual development
that car-drivers and car-conductors endure
silently year after year? Is it nothing to work
fifteen or eighteen hours day for wages vary
ing between fourteen and seventeen aud half
dollars per week? Is it nothing to be deprived
every seven Is it little thing never to enjoy one
hour of solitude, except the unconscious solitude
of sleepf Which of us would enjoy life, do his
duty well, and present wholesome pleasant,
and refreshing aspect, if he were compelled to
sIend eighteen hours out of every twenty-four
in 'riding on rail, being jolted along streets,
baking with the heat, or freezing with the cold,
or choked with DUST or drowned in rain, worm
ing his way in and out among herds of selfish
human beings, frowned at by one, sworn at by
another, and almost universally regarded as a
cheat and boor? If the car-conductor does
steal, it is because-like many men in better
circumstances-his moral sense is not fine
enough to lead him to prefer starvation to moral
error. If he is boorish, his passengers and
censors are often trebly so. All day long
the car-conductor has, in the ill-temper
and ill-breeding of his passengers,
to contend with an array of mean little annoy
ances that would try an angels temper. The
wonder is not that car-conductors are so bad,
but that they are not much worse. Suppose
you and l. my friend, place ourselves in his po-
stion for day or so--and men Just as good as
you or as am have repeatedly been compelled
to take up with just this employment-do
you think our tempers would sweeten, and our
spirits improve, and our belief in the goodness
of God and the heavenly tendency of humanity
grow larger the longer we remained in it? l
know mine would not, and hence l feel q
profound sympathy with the comfortless life
that SO many a car-driver, but particularly car
conductor, is obliged to lead. And among these
classes of men you see the same results in all
large cities, in Philadelphia almost to the same
extent as in New York The hours of labor are
very long, and the wages are very short, and the
comfort Is crushed out of the car-conductor's
of from
the public for whose convenience his employ
ment was brought into being. II this represeR-
tation be correct, all right.feeling people who
read these lines will unite in exercising little
more federation toward these followers of most
ihankless, harsh, and proftless employment.
''sad" Suicides.
Nowadays you can hardly pick up q news
paper without reading such headlines as "a Sad
Suicide" GA Melancholy Suicide" and so forth.
There is one thing which is almost as sad as the
suicide-and that is that the reporter of the
nineteenth century should have so little knowl-
edge of the privileges and limitations of Ian
guage. Where is the suicide that is not 'sad ?'
Did you ever hear of a cheerful suicide, or a
happy murder? Upon level with such express
sions are " heartless villain" and ''villainous
outrage" Who ever saw villain that was not
heartless, or an outrage that was polite and gen.
uemanly? While am on this point might men,
tion the ''memories of the past" which are so
frequently the theme of nOvelists, poets, and
dramatsts. "My fond heart teens with memo
ries of the past" eXclaims Alphonso to
Imogene. Did Imogene suspect that his heart
was teeming with memories of the future
What memories are there but memories of the
past2 1<he age may be one in which the school
master is abroad, but he has certainly left his
rhetoric at home unless he can teach pupils tC
write and speak q language representing sense
more correctly than the expressions ] have
quoted do.
''llan and Wife -
Mr.. Daily has his hands as full as he can rea-
sonably expect to have them. He is not only
the lessee and manager of the Fifth Avenue
Theatre but likewise the manager of Madlle
Janauschek, whom it is said he expects to in.
troduce to New York in English plays at the
Academy of Music. His season at the Fifth
Avenue Theatre commences with his own dra
matization of Man and Wife which differs
greatly from Wilkie Collins. Mr.. Collins il
pandering to the vitiated taste of the age
for realism, introduces real" hanson and
''real" horse into one of the final scenes
and makes use of the horse and cat
to kill off "Geoffry Delmayne" in manner very
different to that described in the book. In the
dramatization "Geoffry" is represented as Jus
about stepping into the CAB. Suddenly tn,
horse starts, and "Geoffry" is thrown down
run over, aud instantly killed This deaouemea
. might perhaps be effective the stage of
large London theatre, but it would never do TO