Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1898-02-05
THE PATERNAL CITY
What the Progress of Municipal Reform
May Come To.
The Many Ways I'm which Life May
he Made More Healthful, Safe
and Enjoyable.

From the Minneapolis Tribune.
That the city Of the future is to be a very
different thing from the city OF the present
Is as certain as that the human race is to
advance. Nobody believes that our extray-
agant expenditures for light, for instance,
are to be kept up, because a time is coming
when the people will demand the same sort
and amount Of service for themselves in a
mass as for themselves individually. No.
body believes that the operations of the
board of health will be so feeble as to al
low barking dogs, braying donkeys, crow
ing cocks. jangling bells. shrieking steam
whistles and smoking chimneys to be har-
bored in the quarters of dense population,
or watered milk to be sold, as 1t now is, or
things intended to be used for food to be
put on the sidewalks, exposed to the dust
ana NTH OF the streets, and the friendly
attentions of every passing dog Nobody
believes that quarts of things will be OMEN
ly sold that only measure a pint or LIQUIDS
sold in bottles that have a big hump under
meath that will crowd out a couple of gills,
or coal be sold as ton that weighs 500
pounds. Nobody believes that In fifty
years from now a whole street will have
TO De torn up whenever a drain is to be re-
paired, or water Is to be put into house.
or gas or sewer connection is to be made
or telephone wires to be introduced No
body believes that in fifty years hundreds
or thousands Of people will be living as
AoAAhoS III Single TOOmS IN our Dig cities,
some Of the rooms unlighted and none Of
them sufficiently ventilated. When it is
SHOWN, as 1t Is by statisticians, that the
death rate among people in the tenements
Is over 163 to the thousand, as compared
with rate of less than five and one-haIr
In the thousand among the people who live
In clean houses, 1T becomes a question of
immediate Importance whether the city is
doing its duty by not at once closing these
moral and political as well as soc.u. and
material pest holes.
Americans are slow to accept any more
government than is necessary, but once it
IS resolved upon, no people are more obeuI-
ent to 1t. That many Of the evils under
which the cities suffer are capable of
amending, and at slight expense, is clear
enough. When it is realized that the neg
lect OF obvious duty has a deterrent effect
upon right as In the case of the grocer or
butcher and milk merchant, who are al
lowed to cheat or to offer soiled and tainted
food; when it is shown that it has an i'll
effect upon health to confine children in
oVercrowded school rooms and unventilated
factories; when it is shown that it operates
against life itself to tolerate the tenement
system and the sweating system, free
people Will insist upon the stricteSt regula-
ton of those things by law.
reform Is coming in many ways. Our
principal streets are no longer made hid
eous with ragged poles and overhead wires
In rev years more We shall have the
Paris system of tunnels beneath the streets
Tor the accommodation of sewers, water
pipes, steam pipes, gas pipes, telegraph,
telephone and electric wires, so that re-
pairs and extensions can be made without
stopping travel or permanently marring the
smoothneSS al neatnesS of streets. these
are but examples and indications - many
reforms that will soon be compulsory in
all our American cities.