The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1879-07-18

passed over the city, fortunately without
the occurrence Of the startling fatality from
the heat that sometimes makes the report
of these atmospheric events read like the
report of battle. For about forty-eight
hours the temperature was constantly very
high During the severer part of Tuesday
and Wednesday it remained in the imme-
| diate neighborhood of one hundred de-
| grees Fahrenheit, and there was not,
either on Monday or Tuesday night, the
ordinary alienation of the burden that
we commonly get from the western or
southern wind. Tuesday night was espe-
cially breathless, yet in this forty Eight
hours only about forty persons were over
come by the temperature and only two
cases were fatal.
Doubtless an experience like this may be
taken as an additional evidence that 1t is
not merely the heat as recorded by the
thermometer that is the destructive ele-
ment in our days of deadly weather. On
days such as they had in Charleston last
week or such as they had at this time last
year in st. Louis and such as we have
often had in this city, there is some other
element besides the merely heated quality
of the air that strikes down the street
laborers, the omnibus drivers, the letter
carriers, or all persons enfeebled by illness,
poor diet or indulgence in various excuses.
1t does not appear that any ordinary indus
tries were interrupted in the two days on
account Of the heat; there were as many
laborers in the sun as usual, but the sun
did not kill them
Much has been done this year that
tends to directly improve the quality of the
air that city people breathe, and it is GER
tainly not loaded with the oppressive and
destructive carnations of filth to the ex-
tent to which it has been in former years.
Our desperate fight for clean streets, though
it has not done all that is to be desired, has
not been without very perceptible effect.
Formerly, at almost any time in the sum-
mer in the seething temperature of one
hundred degrees, the surface of the streets,
covered with an even layer sometimes with
heaps-of putrid animal and vegetable sub
stances, gave off in clouds an offensive
vapor as deadly as mephitic gases
ment that the sunshine touches, and if
that reflects and repeats the heat at
least the ray does not return loaded with
poison. Our reporters can still find very
bad places in the city-places where the
garbage accumulates, where dead animals
decorate the pavement, where pools of stag
nant and odorous fluids evaporate in the
sun-so that it will not do to say that the
authorities have done their whole duty.
1t is our purpose to continue to publish q
daily directory which will tell the authori-
ties where these bad places are; but it is but
just to say that they are fewer than before,
and that the publication of the city, due to
one reasonably we'll conducted attempt to
clean the streets, has been far effective
that the difference is smelt by everybody,
and felt in the hot days by the crowds of
poor and laborers, who ordinarily are the
victims Of the filthy fumes.
In the tenement houses also there is an
improved condition of things Here and
there one is perhaps in the same old state
of absolute and horrible flthipess in which
they were nearly all kept in the days before
there was any public opinion on this SUBJ
ject before sanitary inspectors had taught
the tenement house population the danger
of dirt before the man VIII kept his wife
and four or five children in the corner of
some noisome cellar had any doubts as to
his right to live as horribly and as filthy as
he might choose. All that is very different
now, and though the tenement house is vile
enough at it's best-as any crowded recep-
tacle of little-washed humanity must neces-
sarily be--yet the constant exposures of the
condition of these places which the city
press has made Tor years together have
finally had some fruit These places are
watched F; somebody is to blame if they be-
come mere cesspools Of filth, as they tend
to- and the vigilance of the newspapers
forces the responsibility home. Conse-
quently the people who inhabit the tene-
ment houses do not become victims of an
extreme temperature SO readily as they
formerly did, and even the tenement house
children--that army of little martyrs to
filth, privation and heat-do not supply
now such rates of mortality as were for
merly common in the summer weather
New Workers have also within u very short
time entered into the full enjoyment of the
advantages that our proximity to the sea
should naturally give us. Excursions on
the river are made accessible to those who
never before experienced such an ex-
hilarating and health giving delight, and
who of course, are, OF all parts OF the popula.
ton, the ones to whom these trips are of the
greatest advantage. The beautiful charities
of our good women never labored more
effectively than in their sch emes to give the
chi dren OF the poor regular sail or to
overworked girls an actual rest by the
seaside. But to the great mass oil
the people not in need of charity