Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-05-08
IN \ TYPICAL CITIES.
Rudyard Kipling Sees Much
to Laugh About in New
York and St. Paul.
GOTHAM LOVES PRAISE.
If the Stranger Does Not Give 1t the
Townsmen Force Him To.
LONG, NARROW DIRTY PIG-TROUGH
Pen Pictures From the Residence Part of
Minneapolis Rival
GOTHAM LOVES PRAISE.
LONG, NARROW DIRTY PIG-TROUGH
A SCARLET FEVER SIGN UPON A DOOR

|
traversed, and for that reason we fingered
in New York till the city felt so homelike
that it seemed wrong to leave it. And
further, the more one studied it the more
grotesquely bad it grew-bad in its paving,
bad in its streets, bad in its street police,
and but for the kindness of the tides would
be worse than bad it its sanitary arrange
ments. No one, as yet has approached the
management of New York in proper
spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the
. shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and
reckless extravaganza. No one is likely to
do so, because reflections on the long, mar
row pig-trough are construed as malevolent
attacks against the spirit and ma esty of the
great American people, and lead to angry
comparisons.
GulIies, holes, ruts, cobblestones awry,
| curbstones rising from two to six inches
above the level Of the slatternly pavement:
| tram lines from two to three inches above
street levels; building materials scattered
half across the street; lime, boards, cut
stone and ash barrels generally and gener-
ously anywhere; wheeled traffic taking its
chances, dray versus brougham, at cross
roads; sway-backed poles, whitfield and un-
painted; drunken lampposts with twisted
irons; and, lastly, a generous scatter of
filth and more mixed stinks than the winter
wind can carry away are matters which can
be considered quite apart from the spirit
of democracy or "the future of this great
and growing country"
New Yorkers Look on the Bright Side.
In any other land they would be held to
cl
of capacity. Here it is explained not once
but many times, that they show the speed
at which the city is growing and the newt
able indifference of her citizens to matters
of detail. One of these days, you are told,
everything will be taken in hand and put
straight The unvirtuous rulers of the city
will be swept away bv a cyclone or a tornado,
or something big and booming, of popular
Indignation; everybody will unanimously
elect the right men, who will justly earn the
enormous salaries that are at present being
paid to inadequate aliens for road sweeping,
and all will be we'll. At the.same time the
lawlessness ingrained by governors among
the governed during the last 80, 40, or it
may be 80 years; the brutal levity of public
conscience in regard to public duty; the
toughening and suppling of public morals
and the reckless disregard for human life
bred by impotent laws and fostered BY
familiarity with needless accidents and
criminal neglect will miraculously disap-
pear.
If the laws of cause and effect that con-
troll even the freest people in the world say
otherwise, SO much the worse for the laws;
America makes her own. Behind her
stands the ghost of tine most bloody war of
the century, caused in a peaceful land by
long temporizng with lawlessness, by let
ting things slide, by shiftlessness aud blind
disregard of all save the material need of
the hour till the trouble long conceived and
let alone, stood up full armed, and men said,
"Here is an unforeseen crisis" and killed
each other in the name of their God for four
years
Cannot Get on Without Praise.
In heather land the three things that
are supposed to be the pillars of moderately
decent government are regard for human
life. justice, criminal and civil, as far as it
lies in man to do justice, and good roads,
This Christian city, where they think lightly
of the first - their own papers,
actions prove it-buy and sell the second
at price openly and without shame, and
are apparently content to do without the
third-one would almost expect the racial
sense of humor would stay them from ex-
pecting only praise, slab, lavish and slav-
ish, from the stranger within their gates.
But they do not. If he holds his peace
theyforge tributes to their own excellence
which they put into his mouth, thereby
treating their own land, which they profess
to honor, as a quack treats his pills. If he
speaks-buS you shall see. for yourselves
what happens then. And they cannot see
that By untruth and invective it is them
selves and themselves alone that they in
jure.
The blame of their city evils is not alto
gether with the gentlemen chiefly of foreign
extraction, who control the city. These find
a people made to their hand-a lawless
breed, ready to wink at one evasion of the
law if they themselves may profit by
another, and in their rare leisure hours con-
tent to smile over the details of clever fraud.
Then says the cultured American: 'tGive
US time. Give us time and we shall ar
rive" The otherwise American who is
aggressive, 'straightway proceeds to thrust
piece of half-hanged, municipal botch work
under the nose OF the alien as sample of
perfected effort.
Comparing GothamItes to Children.
There is nothing more delightful than to
sit tor strictly limited time with child |
who tells you whatAhe means to do when he |
is man; but when that same child, loud |
voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for
praise but thin-skinned as the most morbid |
of hobbledehoys, stands about all your ways
telling you the same story in the same
voice, you begin to yearn for something |
made and finished-say Egypt and conf
pletely dead mummy. 1t is neither seemly
nor safe to hint that the government OF the
largest city in the States is a despotism of
the alien by the alien for the alien, tempered
with occasional instructions of the decent
fol nn1y ho rt
linen of other lands
Yes, it, is very good to get away once
more and pick up the old and ever fresh
business of the vagrant loafng through new
towns, learned in the manners of dogs,
babies and perambulatsrs half the world
over, and tracking the1seasons by the up
growth of flowers in stranger peoples gar
dens. st. Paul, standing at the barn door
of the Dakota and Minnesota granaries, is
all things to all men except to Minneapolis,
II miles away, whom she hates and by whom
she is patronized. She calls herself the
Capital of the Northwest, the new North
west, and her citizens wear not only the tall
silk hat of trade, but the soft slouch of the
West.
How St Paul Differs From Now York.
She talks in another tongue than the New
Yorker, and-sure sign that we are far
across the continent-her papers argue with
the San Francisco ones over rate wars and
the competition Of railway companies. st.
Paul has been established many years and
it one were reckless enough to go down to
the business quarters one would hear all
about her and more also. But the residen-
tial parts of the town are the crown of it.
In common with scores of other cities, St.
Paul has reared for herself broad-crowned