The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-07-23
A NEW YORK PROBLEM.
The Wire Tangle and Tenement House
Missions

MISSIONS
NEW YORK, July 21.-Department mud
dies or bureau snarls are common enough
in city governed by common council, a
mayor, a whole nest of commissioners and
an Albany lobby. But no snarl ever quite
presented the same inextricable and absurd
deadlock that the question of diSpoSiug of
the boveground electric wires now pre-
sents. The whole thing would be unpreced-
entedly funny if the enormitv of it did not
occasionally strike people dead in their
shoes.
The more the community cries out for the
removal of the wires, the more the jam of
departments AMI commissions resembles
one of those log RATS when the ice breaks
up and the freshets begin. Everybody in
authority appears to be paralyzed at the
hopelessneSs of the middle. Gen. Newton
sticks out one way and Mayor Hewitt
another. There are layers upon layers of
deadwood all the way down. and the shores
are lined by an amused community, awe
struck at the limitless log rolling.
The attempt to put the wires underground
has embittered every department. CHASTITY
visions Of jobs fit over the columns of the
press. There is an open charge that the
subway commission Is in the hands of
powerful Geographic syndicate. who expect
to bury not only every other compsny'S
wires but every other company's charter.
Public opinion yells Bury the wires"
but there are three or four Companies that
object to being buried in the way the syndi-
cate has arranged.
Public opinion has also been bowling,
down with the dead poles Tho board
of electrical control decided that the pc es
and wires were nuisances and must come
down. The mayor, there corporation coun-
sci, chief engineers, the department of
streets, and the bureau of encumbrances got
into an additional snarl Immediately. The
United States Illuminating company
warned the bureau that the wires were not
dead, and the men of the bureau said,
"Strike me dead If touch EN-
Suppose" says Gen. Newton, 81 order
these poles and wires down, and the compa-
ny turns Oh the electricity, which one of the
many city departments will defend me if |
am accused of manslaughter"
In these deadlocks there is one resource:
Men rush to the corporation counsel; he
pigeon-holeS the latest application and
waits.
New York thus presents the astounding
spectacle of a city Gagged in from above
with wires, and tied up below with red tape,
and she lies like another Samson in the
Delilah lap of corporations, mingling
laughter and tears at her own helplesSness.
The latest fad here-a dead-seaSon fad
is the sending of flowers to tenement houses.
A few good-hearted but sentimental women
have conceived the notion that poverty will
be lghtened Of half its load if it can only
have poesy on the manuel and some carna-
tons in the window. My impression is
this is a mistake. Tenement-house life in
New York is for the most part the most
wretched order of domiciliary living in the
world. The houses are Vermin-infested
ovens, in which every order of vice and
virtue is herded. What tenement life &C
tually needs is more room, more air, mo
water, more exclfsiveness. To sprinkle
flowers on this municipal disgrace is very
much like throwing tlien into the grave /
cannot think of a hollow mockery more
exasperating than the hollow mOckery Of
sentiment when practical relief is needed.
Even the Sermon on the Mount would be
robbed of its iueffable beauty if you under
lake to read it to a man who was dying of
thirst, and there must be something trans
cendeutally puerlle in the visit of a bevy of
aesthetic DANES to home where the chill
dren are suffering with the pricl1ly heat
aud the summer complaint, and the mother
is worn out with care aud petulaut with
personal distress, for no other purpose than
to stick some buds around.
However, | sea tnat the flower mission
has stimulated another set OF danes ~ peg
higher on the practical scale, to a fruit mis-
sion. That is several degrees more seGslhle
and promises to develop into mutton pie
missions and cornbeef-hash missions before
long
If some one would Only discover method
of utilizing the sentimentalism of the mod
ern genteel woman, there would be a new
and powerful social motor added 60 the liv-
ing instrumentalities.
Only convince her that it is the proper
caper, 1.-THE cheese, the FORM" and she'll
go as a missionary, or stay in town in sum
mer as a martyr, singing hosannas while
she burns
There is a great mass of raw material ly-
ing unused here in this direction, and 20 far
unwol ked by anybody, butthe esthetic pas
tors and the champion tennis players.
NYM CKINKLE