Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1895-03-18
gives employment to hundreds of men.

gives employment to hundreds of men.
And these men sometimes make
strange ''inds" in the hidden places
where they work. Not only are lost
articles found, but booty, hidden by
thieves to avoid detection, and even
the bodies of the unfortunates mur-
dered and of hapless infants arobrought
to light by these workers in under
ground New York.
The demands on street railways
have necessitated an increase in the
extent and population of the under
ground city. There must be an under
ground channel to carry the moving
cable, and there is now in the city
seventy miles of such ways, enclosed
in metal, with a slot above through
which to communicate to the cars,
and drainage openings below connect
ing with the sewers. Every thirty
five feet along these lines are open
ings where men can enter into the
lower regions to oil the machinery
bearings and make repairs. Then
there are the great arched chambers
where the change is made from one
| cable to another--that are marked on
the surface by signs that say "throw
cable" and stake cable" Here are
men at work, and all along the lines,
particularly at night, are these under
ground workers seen going in and
coming out of the openings covered,
when not used, by iron plates.
Then the cable roads necessitate
the immense underground power
plants, like the ones at Broadway and
Houston street and Third avenue and
Sixty-ffth street. Here, far below
the surface of the street, are men
working amid powerful machinery
that moves miles of steel cable to which
are gripped dozens of cars with their
loads of humanity.
Besides the iron doorways that lea1
into the underground avenues are
smaller ones along the cables roads
cover signal boxes, from where cleo
trical communication can be had with
the power houses.
The extended easements and sub
cellars under the telegraph buildings
and power houses, from where COM
munIcation is had with the ways be-
meath the streets, and where men work
by gas and electric light are mere
suggestions to the underground rooms,
where thousands of men work, de-
pendent on artificial light, and ut
times on machinery for air that is cir
culated for their breathing. Under
all of the great Office buildings, whole
sale blocks and the large retail stores
of the city are floors under floors,
where machinery is busy, where pack
ing is done and manufacturing carried
on. Not only under the buildings,
but below the sidewalks, these rooms
extend, and the feet of hundreds of
thousands of pedestrians are daily
passing over the heads of the workers
in underground New York. Ground
is expensive, and humanity must bur-
row in the earth for the privilege OF
living.
These extended areas covered by
buildings, where men toll day and
night, constitute large part of the
underground city-the city of labor,
where men stay for time and then
leave for homes above the ground.
But in underground New York there
are homes below the pavements-
homes whero men and women sleep
and where children arc born and
reared; hlbitetions called home by
those too poor to have the free air and
light from heaven while they Insist
| upon living in q great CITY.