The Portland daily press., 1892-09-24

from Chicago, and was never in=New
| York till last June.
| At this juncture am afraid l was IN
mannerly enough to smoker behind my
cigar. Silence reigned for few mo-
ments, and then the New Yorker born
and bred remarked that it was time for
| him to go to bed.
This Broadway is a remarkable thor
| oughfare. It's New York. Manythe
sands of people virtually live on Broad
way, rarely going farther from it than
| to Fifth avenue on the east or Sixth ave-
| nue. on the west. It is their world. l
speak now of the up town Broadway,
from Twenty third to Forty-second
street, about two miles.
| This main street of the Dutch village
Of New York starts at the lower end Of
the island-at the Battery. There are
the shipping offices, headquarters of the
steamer lines. Then come office build
ings-two or three of them as fine as a
score to be seen in Chicago-insurance
offices, banks Then the postofice,
Printing House square, City Hall park
After this the dry goods district.
For two miles Broadway is, a COM
mercial Palestine. Ninety-nine signs
out of hundred bear Hebraic names,
many of them names which is SYM
bolic of great wealth, business: probity,
| good citizenship. 1t is remarkable how
| everything has become specialized in
| this region of trade. There aresfew gen
eral dry goods or clothing houses. One
| handles hat trimmings, another corsets,
| a third straw frames, a fourth hosiery,
fifth suspenders, a sixth artificial flow
ers. Mems and women's wear is sub
divided thousand times, each article
being the sole stock in trade of one or
dozen or a hundred houses. One is
amazed to see a six story building de-
voted wholly to merchandising in but
| tons. *
Broadway is very commercial for these
two miles. Nearly all the houses are
wholesale. There are no alleys in the
rear or at the sides of buildings, and the
receiving and shipping are all done on
the front dewalks. The street is packed
with trucks, and it is about all pedes-
! trianor vehicle can do to get through.
The lost time in single year would de-
fray the expenses of cutting alleys for
shipping purposes. But to have alleys
| for the facihtation of commerce would
not be like New York. There are many
alleys in town, but all have been made
streets of. II 81 4;
At Fourteenth street one enters the
shopping quarter. For three blocks
east: andSwest is the pretense of having
in the town some street besides Broad
way. The same thing occurs half a mile
farther lip. at Twenty street, For
| d short distance, where it is very near
Broadway, Fifth avenue takes on some
| shopping importance. But these are all
the divergences there are worth men
tioning. Everything else is Broadway.
Take this thoroughfare out of New
York, and there wouldn't be enol J, n left
to make Kansas City. Broadwaygto
New York is what Main street is to the
country town Northward and aslittle
to the west sweeps this great thorough
fare. At Harlem, ten miles from the
Battery, it is still all important. They
tell me it runs twenty miles farther into
the country, lined with roadhouses,
suburban settlements, villas and occa-
sional stores.
So important is Broadway as metro
politan artery that the rapid transit
commission found on investigation that
the travel by parallel elevated rail
roads is great or small in proportion to
nearness to or remoteness from the CEN
trail highway. The only means ofstravel
along Broadway is horse car. Tits the
most profitable horse car line in the
world. Ten miles long, there are cars
every minute and all crowded. They
are driven at breakneck speed Only the
best horses are used, and their stlife" is
year and a half It. takes as much
courage to drive a Broadway car as to
run q locomotive.
The stranger who has two or three
miles to go walks to the L and climbs
the stairs. The New Y orker knows bet
ter and takes a Broadway car. You
see, a Broadway car takes him from his
starting point directly to his destina-
ton. There are other streets with horse
and cable cars, but so far as I have OBJ
served three-fourths of the people want
to go from some place on Broadway to
some other place on Broadway. The
result is,many short ,riders'n';Iz-sthe sort
of passengers who enrich street car
owners. r. the cars had to carry all
passengers from Harlem to Battery at a
nickel apiece, owners would not get
much in the way of dividends. But in
stead of twenty-five passengers, the ca
pacity of car, $50 are often carried in
the course of a run one way.
The Broadway line carries half as
! many passengers as the elevated line
nearest it. When the cable cars are
started-the cable is already init will
carry nearly as many. Old Jake Sharp
knew he was getting the most valuable
street railway franchise in the world
when he gobbled Broadway. The effort
put him first in jail and then in his
grave, but if he had lived twenty-five
years it would have made him as rich as
Vanderbilt.
Rapid transit is one Of the greatest
problems in New York. There are four
elevated railways and five or six surface