The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-01-18
The Great want Of tho City-Rapid
Transit an Immediate Necessity.

The city of New York is not at present in
condition creditable to the metropolis of the
United States. II stands in need of many i'm
provements before it can take rank with the
great cities of Europe. The docks are old
and insufficient for the proper accommodation
OF the commerce of the port; the southern
section OF the city is in want of widened
streets to relieve the lower portion of Broad
way; the uptown avenues and boulevards are
lying unfinished leaving large amount of
valuable property burden the hands of
Its owners; the roads everywhere, with few
exceptions are disgrace to civilization. But
the first and most pressing necessity-im-
measurably more important to the people than
all other public works put together-is that of
rapid transit" of steam railroads that will
carry passengers from the Battery to the ex-
treme limit of the newly annexed territory in
less time than it now takes to 60
by horse cars from the City Hall
Park to Fourteenth street. We may be
able to live for the next Ave or ten years with
ont new and improved docks to submit to
the delays and annoyances attendant upon the
choking up of our one great thoroughfare
to put up with roads that can only be trav-
elled at the serious risk of life and limb.
But the people who find employment in the
city, and who are compelled to live in the
city, cannot be for two years longer deprived
of some means of rapid transit which will
enable them to find residences in the upper
part of the island and in the new territory
without serious damage to their pecuniary in
terests, their health and their morals. For
the past five or ten years, during which period
we have really needed steam transportation in
the city. each successive State Legislature has
trided with this vital question. The object
of our Legislators has been to make money
out of great public necessity. Enormous
fortunes are believed to be in reserve
for those who may be lucky enough to
obtain the charter for steam railroad or
railroads in New York city; hence the
various schemes proposed from time to time
have been simply jobs, and have secured sup
port or encountered opposition according as
our trading Senators and Assemblymen have
been admitted into or excluded from the Ring
to be pro6ted by the success Of the adventure.
A law was passed few sessions ago which
had the appearance of honesty and which
authorized the construction of road by the
aid of the city's credit but this project,
although at one time promising fairly, was
destroyed by the overthrow of the old city
government and the paralyzjpg effects Of the
Tammany frauds. With this exception the,
rapid transit schemes concocted by the
Albany lobby have been mainly schemes of
plumber, and the few practical propositions
that have been placed before the Legislature
have found no favor because they did not
promise to enrich those who might enlist in
| their behalf. This disgraceful traffic must
now cease. Our citizens find that they can no
longer exist in New York without steam travel,
aud they demand that the present Legislature
shall take the matter in hand in an honest,
business-like manner, and give them a law
which will secure the desired object. It will
be dangerous to trife with the people on this
subject any longer.
The public works and improvements of the
city have not kept pace with its growth. The
last census, in 1870, showed our population to
be little under million but this was no.
toriously incorrect, and we then, no doubt.
had at least one million one hundred thousand
inhabitants. Taking our population at the
present time, including the newly annexed
territory, to be one million and quarter,
we find that we have increased in fifty years
more than a million that in the last twenty
years our population has more than doubled,
and that we have added nearly half a million
to our numbers in the last thirteen years, or
since the census of 1860. The shape of the
island, as has been repeatedly said, forces our
population in one direction away from the
business part of the city. The consequence
is that so long as we have no means of rapid
travel the poorer classes must be wedged
into small space and there compelled to
find such accommodation as they may in the
unhealthful and degrading tenement house,
crowded with human beings of both sexes,
constantly in danger of spreading disease
through the city, and always conducive to
sickness, immortality and crime. Clerks,
shopmen and all who live by work on small
salaries are driven to seek homes at Yorkville,
Harlem or tar up town the west side,
where rents are somewhat within their means,
and where the horse cars are within reach;
but the time they lose in getting to and from
their places of occupation is a serious damage
to them as well as q constant wear upon their
health. A man of family who lives in York
Vile or Harlem, cannot travel four times a
day between the City Hall Park and his resi-
dence without wasting from four to six hours
on the cars. This destroys large portion of
the working day and leaves him no time for
rest or relaxation at home Even those
who are better off men in business
for themselves or enjoying more liberal
salaries, are seriously incommoded by the
,y,nt of raDid CONVEYANCE Honses within