The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-05-09
WHAT KIPLING SAW.
The Filth and Misgovernment
of New York City.
GOVERNMENT BY FOREIGNERS.
Rudyard Likes the st. Paul Suburbs,
With Pretty Houses and Shade Trees,
and large Dogs on the Lawn,

An entire continent was waiting to be
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 in its sanitary
arrangements. No one as vet has ap-
preached the management Of New York in
proper spirit; that Is to say, regarding it
as the shiftless outcome of squalid b4rbar-
ism and reckless extravaganza. No one is
likely to do so, because reflections on the
long, narrow pig-trough are construed as
malevolent attacks against the spirit and
majesty Of the Great American people, and
lead to angry comparisons. Yet, if all
the streets of London were permanently up
and all the lamps permanently down,
this would not prevent the New York
streets in lump from being first-cousus
to Zanzibar foreshore, or kin to the -
proaches of a Kaffir kraal Gu!lies. 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 generously any,
where; wheeled traffic taking its chances,
dray vesus brougham, at crossroads; sway
backed poles whitfield and implanted;
drunken lamp-posts with twisted irons;
and, lastly, generous scatter Of filth and
more mixed stink5 than the winter wind
can carry away, are matters which ca be
considered quite apart from the Esprit of
Democracy" or ''the future of this great
and growing country" In any other
land they would be held to rep
resent slovenIiness. sordidness and
want of capacity. Here it is ex-
planned. not once, but many times,
that they show the speed at which
the city is growing, and the envi-
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 by cyclone or
tornado, or something big and booming,
of popular indignation everybody will
unanimously elect the right man, who will
justly earn the enormous salaries that are
at present being paid to inadequate aliens
for road-sweeping, and all will be well.
At the same.time the lawlessness lngrained
by governors among the governed during
the last thirty, forty, or it may be fifty
years; the brutal levity of public con-
science in regard to public duty; the tough
ening and suppling Ofpublic morals and the
reckless disregard for human life bred by
impotent laws and fostered by familiarity
with needless accidents and criminal neg
lect, will niraculousiy disappear. If the
laws OF cause and effect thai control even
the freest people in the world say other
wise, SO much the worse for the laws.
America makes her own. Behind her
stands the ghost of the most bloody war
OF the century, caused in a peaceful land
by long temporiZing with lawlessness, by
letting things Slide by shittlessness and
blind disregard of all save the material
need of the hour till the trouble long con-
ceived 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.
In heather land the three things that
are supposed to be the pillars of moder-
ately decent government are regard for
human life; justice, criminal and civil, as
tar as 1t lies In man to do justice, and
good roads. This Christian city, where
they think lightly of the tirst-their own
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 radical
sense OF humor would stay them from. ex-
pecting only praise-slab, lavish and
slavish, from the stranger within their
gates. But they do not. If he holds his
peace they forge tributes to their own ex-
cellence which they pat into his mouth,
tch
they profess to honor. as a quack treats
his pills. If he speaks-but you shall see
for yourselves what happens then. And
they cannot see that by untruth and in
.vective it is themselves and themselves
alone that they injure.
The blame of their city evils is not alto
gether with the gentlemen, chiefly of for
cign extraction, who control the city.
These find people made TO their hand,
lawless breed ready to wink at one in
vasion of the law il they themselves NAV
proht by another, and in their rare leisure
hours content 10 smile over the details of
a clever fraud. Then says the cultured
American: Give Us time. Give Us time
and we shall arrive" The otherwise
American, who is aggressive, straightway
proceeds To thrust piece of ha!f-hanged
municipal botchwork under the nose of
the alien as a sample of perfected effort
There IS nothing more delightful than to
sit for 4 strictly limited time with child
who tells you what he means to be when
he is a man; but when that same
child, loud-yoiced, insistent, unblush-
ingiy eager for praises, but thin
skinned as the most morbid of hobblede-
hoys, stands about all your ways telling
you the same story in the same voice, you
begin 10 yearn for something made and
linlshed-say Egypt and completely
dead dummy. 1t is neither seemly nor
safe to hint that the government of the
largest city in the states is despotism of
the alien. by the alien, for the alien, tenn
pered with occasional instructions OF the
decent folk. Only the Chinaman washes
the dirty linen Of other lands.
ST. PAUL. Minn.-Yes, it Is very good to
get away once more and pick up the old
and ever fresh business OF the vagrant loaf
ing through new towns, learned in the
manners of dogs; babies and perambulators
half the word over, and tracking the sea-
sons by the upgrowth Of flowers IN
stranger peoples gardens. ST. Paul.
standing at the barn-door OF the
Dakota and Minnesota granar;es. Is
ali things TO all men except TO M!nneapo-
lis, eleven miles away, whom she hates
and by " HON she is patronized. She calls