The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1877-06-10
New York's Greatest Need-RaPid
Transit.

| large and enthusiastic the new and ener-
getic management of the Elevated Railroad
promises well; but the opponents OF rapid
transit have their forces well in hand they
are determined men, as oil monopolists are !;
and they have serious advantage over the
people in the fact that their work is to pre-
vent, by delays, by causing false starts to be
made, by hampering and crippling every
Legitimate and promising enterprise
1t ought to be understood and it should
be kept constantly before the public that
the opponents of rapid transit are the enc
mics of our whole laboring population. Mr..
Charles O'Conor rightly wrote the other day
that steam railroads able to carry passen-
gers rapidly from the lower to the upper
end Of the island are necessary to enable
| our mechanics artisans and laboring people
| to live deceptly and comfortably; that rapid
transit, in fact, would lessen vice and pau
perism Nothing can be truer than this.
| Fifty thousand lots stand vacant in the
upper part Of the island, awaiting the occu-
pancy Of families now crowded into tene-
ment houses in narrow and filthy streets,
where it is impossible for mothers to bring
up their children in physical health, where
the death rate is abnormally high, and
where the industrious poor become hope
less and too many sink into squalor and
want.
| The distractions to rapid transit are there
fore crime against the industrious work
men and their families in New York. That
they feel it to be so is shown by the fact that
for years the most enterprising have left the
city limits and removed by thousands to
Brooklyn and New Jersey. Anywhere, to
get away from New York, they say, Through
the shameful Encouragement of our affairs
decent workingmen have come to regard
residence in the city as curse, from which
they escape as quickly MS they can.
speaker at Tuesday evenings meeting as
serted that we have lost in the last twelve
years, for lack OF rapid transit roads, at least
two hundred thousand people. We believe
that he was within the mark The census
returns show that New York has gained
less in ten years than any other city in
the country. But in that time dozens
of towns and villages have been built up in
New Jersey and on Long Island, because
merchants, clerks, professional men and
mechanics find it less inconvenient to go
out of town than to 60 up town. Almost
every man who gets his living in New York
would rather live here, If he could but if
he is able to house his family decently and
he is driven off the island by the inability
to get to the upper part of it except with a
ruinous loss of time and waste of strength.
New York is now one of the most incon-
venient cities in the world for men Of
moderate incomes. The result is that men
of moderate incomes fly from it, and we
lose every year large part Of the cream Of
our population. 1t is often said that
only the very rich and the very
poor live in the city; but this is
condition of things not only ruinous
in the long run, but in the meanwhile bar
barous to the very poor, who are, for no
fault of their own, degraded and forced to
live in ways and circumstances which are
necessarily demoralizing. If we compare
the growth of New York with other cities
in the census period 1SG0-1870, why do we
find that our city increased but SO per cent
and Brooklyn 81 per cent, Baltimore Al per
cent, Providence 100 per cent, Chicago 2G2
per cent? The reason is that q few corpora
tons having grasped the streets for their
own use-the streets. which belong, not to
them, but to the people of New York-now
resist in every way the building of steam
lines to carry people rapidly to the habit
able part Of the island. Judge Fithian
showed the other day that New York
loses not less than thirty-fve mill
ion dollars year by the slow
and inconvenient methods in use
for getting up town. But that leaves out
entirely the fact that great mass of people
are absolutely prevented from getting up
town at ALL 1t reckons only the loss of
valuable time to those who can afford or are
forced to lose it.
The Elevated Railroad is practical sue
cess. Thousands of passengers use it every
day. 1t is one of the greatest convenienccs
in New York, and every citizen ought to
rejoice that the mechanical problem Of
rapid transit was 30 cheaply solved. New
York needs not one, nor two, but at least
half dozen such lines, and needs them ut
once. 1t ought to have double line,
or both freight and passengers, run
ming around the whole water front
Of the city. 1t ought to have
at least two other lines on each
side of Broadway, all running the whole
length Of the island. We believe these
lines, if built, would all pay. New York
naturally attracts residents and visitors
we need only to make movement convenient
and rapid to bring back large part of the
people who have left us, and great crowd
museums OF art, picture galleries, the best