The Sunday tatler and Jersey City express. (Jersey City, N.J.) 1883-1886, 1885-12-06

impression that the proposed bridge con-
templates the spanning of the narrow Kill
Won Kull that divides Bergen Point from
Port Richmond. 1t is Staten Island
Sound that the railroad magnates propose
to bridge. He describes this arm OF the
sea-Arthurs Kills is its proper name
as grand highway for local commerce,
carried on by canal-boats and barges,
lighters, river steamboats, and sailing ves-
sells; and gathering freight traffic from the
Delaware and Raritan Canal, the Raritan,
Railway. Passaic and Hackensack Rivers,
and from the Kill Won Kull and Newark
Bay. No body of water of It's
size IN the County presents so busy
scene, nor does any section of
equal size of any more pretentious bay.
The annual tonnage of the craft that move
over it is estimated at 1900, 600 of tons.
These craft afford facilities for cheap
freight handling and transportation that
are building up important manufacturing
and commercial enterprises on the Jersey
and the Staten Island coasts. A suspen-
sion bridge at this point would be lmprac-
ticable because of the want of shore eleva-
ton on both sides of the Sound; and
draw bridge would, by its obstruction,
block and retard and ultimately destroy
the business of the humble water craft.
This would be partly due to the unayoid-
able delays draw-bridge would offer to
their travel, and partly 10 the added ex-
pense of .towage, in approaching the
bridge abutments in certain kinds of
weather, and certain movements of the
tides. The enterprises for which these
boats do the carrying find their profit in
the cheapness of the transportation; and
if forced to pay the higher tolls demanded
by the railroads as they would be, they
would suspend operations altogether. The
bridge might lead to line of new store
houses and piers at little point on Staten
Island; but at the expense of twelve miles
of the New Jersey coast. Mr.. Phelps
calls attention TO the importance of this
channel of commerce by way of showing
the reasons why Congress should not
and for that reason will not-consent to
! the bridge. II is of more importance in
the calculation of the question whether
the Legislature of this State should lend
its consent to the mammoth enterprise.
Some of the papers are disposed to treat
the story of the Staten Island Rapid
Transit franchises, and the agitation Of the
bridge enterprise as big stock jobbing
movement to depress the value of Jersey
Central stock; and it may be nothing else;
but if the bridge is in serious contempla-
ton. the people of the State will have the
solution of an important problem on their
hands, and the information Mr.. Phelps
supplies in the quoted interview will aid
them in the solution
A mad dog ran amuck in Newark one
morning last week. He is credited with
having bitten five children and numberless
other dogs. Naturally enough there was
some excitement in the parts Of the city
he visited, and the newspapers have since
famed the fame with big headlines and
sensational stories of the exploits of the
roaming brute; while a certain physician,
thirstiug doubtless for notoriety, rushes
into print with letter advising that all
the bitten children be rushed post haste
across the ocean to France for treatment
by Pasteur, and calling for public SUBJ
scription to fund to send those whose
parents cannot afford the expense tits
safe to say that all this excitement is
causeless; and we would be willing to
wager our reputation as physician on
the prediction that if any of the unfortu-
nate little ones should be attacked by
symptoms of the rabies, it will be due to
the agitation of their fears by the sensa-
tional newspapers, and this hot-headed
medical humanitarian. Nothing is so
well calculated to stave off death after a
dog bite than the assurance that it will
never amount to anything. The fear of
death from hydrophobia frequently brings
| ON a nervous disease that SO closely simu-
late hydrophobia that only the keenest
scientific eye can distinguish it. During
the mad dog excitement that the New
York papers worked up some years ago
| four-ffths of those who died from So
called hydrophobia, died of this awful
nervous disorder. Their physicians de-
clared that they simply died of fright
They had been scratched by perfectly
harmless dogs at some period of their
lives, They believed themselves subject
| to rabies, and easily worried themselves
into its tortures. We have often said i,
| that if we were ever bitten by dog in our
lives, we would not have survived the ex-
| element Of that mid summer newspaper
sensationalism, TO edit the SUNDAY TAT
TIER. The newspapers at that time sacri-
feed no one knows how many lives to
their heartless competition for readers
Decent journalism frowns on that kind of
| work. We should feel guilty as murderers
If anything that appeared in the TATTLER
cost an innocent life. Instead of minister
| ing to craze that threatens households
with bereavement, the public duty of a
newspaper is to allay alarm. The editor
who recklessly lends himself to an agita-
ton that means death, is no ornament to
his professionl V
l.
''Whom Che gods would destroy they
| first make mad" and it would seem as
though the Fates had driven the County
Committee to the madness that comes
before destruction. 1t has never happened
in the history Of the party before, that an
election for new members of its governing
committee has heen held secretly and
under cover. But it was done last Mon
dav nirht No nuh1ic notice was oivan nf