The San Francisco call., 1898-05-21
Serious OverCroWding
 on the Picking.
MILITARY MAKE MISTAKES.
DELAY OF MANILA EXPEDITION
 BLAMED ON THE ARMY.
All Stores for Transports Have Been Received From Mare Island, but Little Has Been Placed
 Aboard.

great barrier of secrecy has been drawn around the Pacific Mail dock for the past few days. The curious sight seer and the eager newsgatherer have been alike excluded, and 1t requires boundless ingenuity to elude the eagle eyes of the watchers who guard the gate. There are dock officials and policemen and soldiers, and no kind of pass yet in vented will satisfy their requirements.
 When once you get on board the ships you see how marvelously little has been done toward making the soldiers com fortable during the long and trying voy- age to Manila Take the City of Picking. She IS a inc, big, roomy steamer, one of the most comfortable passenger vessels of her class afloat. That is, for saloon people; the steerage doesn't count for much in the eyes of money making steamship companies. Yet no corpora ton, however grasping, would expect pas sengers to accept the accommodation pro vided for the troops. Even cattle or horses would not be shipped under such conditions The mortality would be too awful. Fortunately, soldiers can go on deck, and it is there that they will have to live during the greater part of the
 The steerage of the City of Picking. now to become the troop deck, is below ghe saloon deck, and but feebly lighted by small ports. These are so near the water that 1t will be impossible to keep them open while the ship. is at sea, and what little ventilation is provided will have to come through the hatchways and wind sails. Above Is the saloon, cheerful and airy, where the officers will have no req son to complain of their quarters.
 Even the steerage deck, however, could have been made fairly habitable, had not some amateur in office, who seems never to have seen a troop-ship before con- ceived the idea that standing hunks were necessary for the soldiers existence at sea- On board European troop-Ships such
 
 taught the nations which have long been in the habit of conveying troops by sea that hammocks are infinitely more con- Venient and healthier.
 The result of this mistake is that a large force of carpenters have been at work during the week filling up the troop deck with cumbrouS mass of wooden framework AmidShips and on each side the hunks are erected, leaving only two narrow passages for the circulation of light. Ordinarily the Steerage deck is used for the conveyance of cargo, so it is very low, yet the carpenters, with an in genuity worthy of a better cause, have managed to squeeze three tiers of hunks into this narrow space. Each tier in the central row contains six berths, that eighteen full grown men will be com peIled to sleep on space about the size of a large billiard table. Unless a man is lucky enough to get an outside bunk he will have to climb over two or three of his comrades to reach his sleeping place.
 As an ingenious method of getting the greatest number of men into the least possible space this system may recOm- mend itself. but IL has no other attrac- tions. The condition of these troop decks when the vessel gets well into the tropics will be something too awful to contem- plate. It must be remembered that there is no mess deck, no place where the men can sit and eat their meals and enjoy their leisure. The unlucky soldier who ships on one of these steamers must either be in his bunk or on deck; there is absolute ly no other place for him. It does not seem to have occurred to the officials who planned the expedition that a soldier re- Quires at least some of the rudiments of civilized life, a table to eat off and a bench to sit on. even if they be made but of plain wood.
 No doubt the soldiers will be fully pre- pared to rough it. The discomfort in- Volved by these arrangements would not be such @ serious question in time of war, were it not for the sanitary danger in- VOlYed. If an epidemic should break out on these crowded troop decks it might rapidly develop into a national calamity. Certainly there is hospital on board, but 1t can only accommodate a limited number of patients, and beyond a certain way by which the decks can be cleared and fumigated; it will be impossible to remove the bedding and air it, and dis ease, once it gains an entrance will have everything it's own way. The only re- deeming feature about the whole affair is that the City of Picking has a fine, roomy upper deck and most of the men will find it necessary to sleep up there during the voyage.
 A similar condition of affairs exists on board the City of Sydney, though per- haps the berths are not quite so crowded. In addition this boat has a covered hur- ricane deck, which will provide shelter during bad weather. AS long the voy- age is fine and the men are enabled to live in the open, things may go on all