The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1878-12-22
What Is the Use OF the Board Of
Aldermen.

men have concentrated a certain degree OF
public attention upon that body, upon the
| powers that have been left to it by the sue
cessive charters that have come upon it like
! so many ''dispossess warrants" and upon
the fiagrantly dishonest use it makes of the
little power it retains. 1t is always un-
fortunate for the Board to come conspicu-
ously before the people and to attract any
more public attention than the citizen IS
compelled to bestow every day upon
crowd of nuisances, to the presence OF
which he has become habituated and to
| the necessity of abating which he has
not altogether made up his mind.
Honest people in the old times never
passed the row of mock auction shops that
occupied the range of houses face to face
with the Office of that illustrious leader of
the police, Matsell, but they wondered at
| the mystery of their existence and puzzled
their brains sadly as to why the police did
not shut them up; and people in these
days cannot have their eyes turned on that
political mock auction shop, the Alder
mems Chamber, without some wonder how
it is and why it is that this body fingers as
an element in our municipal government.
Ii an engineer finds that an important
wheel in his machinery has become crippled
and ineffective he gets new wheel and
puts it in or he substitutes for the
action Of that wheel the combined action of
q series of minor wheels. In either case he
takes the old wheel out and tumbles it into
the junk heap. Butwhat would be thought
of an engineer who should invite upon him
self confusion, annoyance, and perhaps
calamity, by leaving the rotten and used up
wheel in its place when he had completely
dispensed with it as an effective element in
his force? Yet this is what our charter en-
gineers have done. By the changes in our
system they have converted the Board of AL
dermen into political junk, and have by leav-
ing it in its place defed all the chances of evil
through simple contempt for the rotten trash.
Mayor Ely vetoed the other day resolu-
ton of the Aldermen to give railway COM
pany possession Of bridge over the Har-
lem River, which bridge is public property
and built for the accommodation of ordi-
nary traffic. He also vetoed their attempt
to force one of the elevated companies to
make changes in its stations to suit the
taste of the fine architects of the Board An
Alderman's recent attempt to give that
body jurisdiction in the parks will be re-
membered as peculiarly imbecile and
ridiculous demonstration Of municipal wis.,
dom. Another piece of Aldermanic
action that the public will not
Immediately forget is that with regard
to a railway in Forty-second street.
Perhaps railway in that street would be
an accommodation to the public. 1t may
prove for aught we can say to the contrary,
a substantial advantage to the city to have
a railway there. Moreover, the Aldermen
may have full legal authority to give the
right to lay it. But here was valuable
franchise which responsible men stood
ready to buy for a substantial sum Of
money, yet the Aldermen scorned that
proffered consideration and voted to give
cause, if they awarded it to the man who
proposed to buy it, his money, paid over
publicly, must necessarily 60 directly
into the city treasury, while if they
awarded it to another he was ready to
pay an equal sum, but could pay it covertly,
and so that il would find its way surrepti-
tiously into the pockets of the Aldermen?
Was that the explanation of their generos-
ity? Their conduct gave ground for such
an opinion. Another characteristic exhibit
ton of the Aldermanic ideas in municipal
government was that attempted exercise of
jurisdiction over the peanut stands, which
led to the project Of the indictment Of the
Aldermen hagitious and systematic vio-
lators of the law. In all of which the Alder
men are seen as greedy traders disposing of
public property, under forms of law, for
private advantage, without even the gloss
Of adroitness in roguery, without regard for
even coarse prejudices in respect to hon.
esty, without even decency.
And the Board Of Aldermen can present
itself in this phase when it is possessed
only of small remainders and forgotten
scraps of that authority which it once held
as the efficient governing body Of the city.
How, then, must it have appeared when,
made up precisely as it is, it possessed all
the power now held by the Boards of Com
missioners of Police, Docks, Public Works,
Fire, Health, Parks, Building Finance,
and even the Board of Apportionment and
the Supervisors? Any person of active
imagination who will picture to himself
the condition we should be suddenly put in
with all those powers given to the Aldermen
will have before him all the reasons that
led to the actual restitution Of the Board
of Aldermen as a political power. He can
comprehend the necessities of the case; for
all the boards of commissioners taken to-
gether constitute the series OF smaller wheels
that we're substituted in the machinery for
that one great wheel when it became rotten