The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-05-16
Furnishing Street Washers.

1t is cheerful thing to be able to
work in an occasional word of praise for
full because it is so rarely possible to do
SO with truthfulness. But there is a
new way of matchmaking and furnishing
street Washers in New York that is wor-
thy all commentator. This new way
consists in punching the heads off the
Washers. A half dozen of them have
been so treated during the past week,
and in every case the puncher has been
warmly praised in the police courts the
next day by the magistrates. The i'm
pudence of the corner Washers over here
is almost unbelievable but the campaign
against them is on, and maybe they'll
disappear for time. They line Broad
way all the distance from Fourteenth to
Forty-second streets, day and night.
They do not stop at putting themselves
directly in front of passing women and
staring directly into their faces with
them, and make insulting remarks to
them. Many of them are cheap actors
out of work, but others of them occupy
stations in life where better manners
prevail. A fairly well-known sculptor,
for example, saw a well-dressed woman
walking along slowly in Broadway the
other afternoon, and he inserted HIM
self in front of her and smiled at her
quite killingly. She averted her head and
walked up to a show window. He fol-
lowed her and addressed her. Then he
got a belt on the side of the head that
turned him completely around, and the
woman's husband-who had simply drop
ped into tobacconist's to light a cigar
proceeded to wallop the MASKING sculp-
tor almost into insensibility. A police
man arrested both men for fighting on
the street-although the husband did all
of the fighting, and a beautiful job he
made of it. too-and they were in the
police court on the following morning
The magistrate listened to the husband s
story-for the sculptor was hang-dog and
had nothing to say.
A Wise Judge.
You did exactly right" said the mag
istrate to the husband 1T is a pity that
you could not lawfully have inflicted
even worse punishment upon the black
guard No man will ever be punished in
this court for protecting women from
insult, no matter if he oversteps the law
in doing it, and nothing would delight
me more than to see every street masher
in New York pummeled to a pulp, just
as you have pummeled this loafer''
Then the magistrate fined the sculptor
SO and turned him loose with some
scathing remarks and warning. Since
then the corner Washers have been get
ting bruised up a-plenty by wrathful hus-
bands relatives of insulted women IT
is a refreshing sign.
Poor Children.
The Cuban fair, for the benefit of Gu
ban children, was a pretty occasion. The
Metropolitan Opera House was ornately
decked out, the booths We're elaborate
the costumes of the society women who
presided at the booths still more elabor-
ate, and the articles they sold brought
ten or twenty times their intrinsic value.
as usual in affairs of this sort MANY
thousands of dollars, therefore, were
raised for the benefit of the Cuban chill
dren. Now, it may be that the children
or Cuba are pretty badly off, although it
has been understood that since the close
OF the war down there conditions have
vastly improved, and that there is no
actual suffering. But there are several
tens of thousands of children right here
in New York that are pretty badly off
too. Some of the poverty on the east
side of this town, in the tenement dis
trlcts, is narrowing enough, and vet
there does not seem to be any elaborate
fairs. managed by society women, for the
benefit of the poverty-stricken children of
New YORK. There are several thousand
children in the heart of the New York
tenement district that never saw a blade
OF grass or a tree, and some of them are
more than five years of age c. l.. G.