The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1889-11-15
This paper is Democratic IN principles
and Is Independent In Its vdelps on @1
local questions.
The Elevated Railroad Scheme.

The Elevated Railroad Scheme.
Hardly any great scheme of public
Improvement can be devised which
does not cause somebody some loss or
inconvenience. In crowded cities, in
particular, change necessarily upsets
somebody's arrangements and there
fore there is always a certain narrow
selfish opposition to it.
The story of New York's elevated
railways is an old one 1t took years
to overcome the blind opposition of a
few abutting property owners. They
fought the project by every means
that the law allowed. They put it off
from one term of court to another,
and they carried their suits from one
tribunal to another until the patience
and determination of the projectors
was nearly worn out. Meanwhile the
development of the city was at a
standstill, the public was enraged and
nobody vas happy but the old time
horse car companies.
Presently ..the opposition vas ex-
hausted The roads were built and at
once they became an essential element
OF the city's life. One cannot imagine
how New York could get along with
out them, and the very first people to
reap the benefits were the factious
property owners who opposed their
erection.
Three-fourths of the growth of New
York in the last ten years is due to
them. They have built up the great
west side, and indeed the east side
too; they have created, one might
say, Harlem and Manhattanville.
They have added millions in rents to
the incomes of New Workers, millions
to the taxable values of the city
property, hundreds of thousands to
the annual tax levy. The health and
comfort that they have caused, the
relief to the Door and the moderately
circumstanced by tripping the habit
able area of the city, cannot be repre-
sented in money, and indeed words
cannot easily be found to picture it.
The Ease of Brooklyn is that of
New York all over again. 1t took
years of fighting in the courts before
one single pillar or girder of the roads
could be erected. When the opposi-
ton was overcome and the roads
built the wealth and population of
the city began leaping ahead with
giant strides, and today the blindest
Of the opponents would not dare to
think in the secresy of his own mind
of undoing the splendid work that
has been done
Now, somewhat tardily, a project
for the erection of a rapid transit road
in this city has been brought to the
point of practical promise. The old
opposition at nee starts up in its
way, and, forsooth, it is Of the old
purely selfish, blind, narrow sort that
kept New York a decade behind the
age. One nan opposes the projected
road because it will take a corner off
his lot; another because the noise will
injure his stable as a boarding place
for fancy horses; another because it
will darken his windows, and still
another because he fears the noise
will keep him awake o. nights.
What arrant nonsense this is. Be
cause Mrs. Jones does not want her
parlor darkened, Jones will oppose
the convenience Of fifty thousand per
sons. Because Smith is a light
sleeper, 1t is of no consequence
whether or not millions are added to
the city's wealth. All the kickers are
amusingly willing that the road should
be built along some other street-but
along theirs, oh, No.
Sentimental, fanciful and eccentric
grounds of opposition, the law cannot
notice, nor can the community at
large. If people do not like the vicin-
ity of the road they sal go somewhere
else. and that is all there is about it.