Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1897-02-03
THE BETTER NEW YORK.
Reforms that Have Been Adopted In
the Metropoiis.


the Metropolis.
Upon the road which New York has
been treading this half-score years there
Is at last no turning back. The streets
evacuated by the trucks have been oc-
cupied by the children, the truckman's
with the rest, for the want OF better
Fairgrounds, and the truckman has
abandoned the fight; and where they
crowd thickest, Fairgrounds of their
own are being fitted up for them In
school and park Hereafter no school
house shall be constructed In the city
of New York without an open play
ground attached to or used In eonnec-
tion with the same" says one of the
briefest but most beneficent laws ever
enacted by the people of the State Of
New York. 1t Is all there is of 1t, but It
stands for a good deal, No child of
New York, poor or rich, shall hereafter
be despoiled of his birthright--a chance
TO play; and as for the streets, does any
one Imagine that New Workers will
ever be persuaded to barter away their
clean and noiseless pavements and pure
air for the whirllng dust -clends, the
summer stenches, and the winter
sloughs of old, seasoned with no mat
ter what mess of political pottage? Ii
SO, he Is grievously mistaken. Col
Waring has shown us that the streets
of New York can be cleaned, and any
future city government, no matter how
corrupt or despotic, will have to reckon
with him. And right we'll the enemy
knows 1t; he may not refrain from
picking our pockets In future, but he
will at least have to do II with due re-
gard to the decencIes of life.
Mulberry Bend Is gone. and In Its
place have come grass and flowers and
sunshine. Across the Bowery, where
S24, 900 human beings were shown to
live out of sight and reach of green
spot, four of the most crowded blocks
have been seized for demolition, To
make room for the two small parks de.
manded by the Tenement House Com
mission. Bone Alley, redolent of filth
and squalor and wretchedness, Is to go,
and the children of that teeming neigh
borhood are to have a verltable little
Coney Island, with sandhills and shells,
established at their very doors. Who
can doubt the influence it will have
upon young lives heretofore framed
In cutters?
question whether the greatest wrong
done the children of the poor in the past
has not been the esthetic starvation of
their lives rather than the physical in
jury. Against the latter, provision has
been made by stringent tenement house
laws, by the vigorous warfare upon
child labor, by the extension of the
laws protection to stores as to factories,
and by the restriction of the sweat-shop
evil. In the park to be laid out by the
Schiff fountain, in the shadow of the
Hebrew Institute-one of the noblest
charities-a great public bath Is to rise
upon the site of the present rookeries,
harbinger of others to come. All about,
new school houses are going up. on
plan of structural perfection and archi,
tectural excellence at which earlier
school boards would have stood aghast.
The first battle for the schools has been
fought and won. and though there be
campaigning ahead without stint on
that score, the day is in sight when
every child who asks shall find seat
provided for him in the public school,
and when that scandal OF the age, the
mixing of truantS and thieves in a jail,
shall have finally ceased, even as it Is
now forbidden by law.-Century.