Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1901-06-29
and the wonder thereof Is assuredly not
great
FLOATING heath


great
Floating Death Traps.
The almost miraculous escape of the 500
and odd passengers of the steamboat
Mortified of the Staten Island ferry line
the other day had its usual effect of bring
ing out the TRADES of the New York news
papers against the sort of old tubs that
are permitted to ply the waters in this
nefghborhood. The Northfield, for all OF
her gay painting. was such an old shell
that when she was jabbed in the nose by
an almost completely stopped ferryboat of
another line she broke up like a child's
Noahs ark under mans foot She had
been In the ferry service around here for
more years than there was any record Of,
and she had been long in the business
that she was strained to the breaking point
under her own weight and her own shak-
ings from her engineS-riding on any part
of her was like trip on a hand-car on a
newly-constructed railroad. Yet every day
she carried more than 10000 passengers,
and her trips were, of course, of much long
er duration than those OF the ordinary
steamboat that crosses a comparatively
narrow channel, for the ride between
Staten Island and New York often involves
no little bit of sea in rough weather
The New York papers have again, for
the fortieth time, got together lists OF the
scores of miserable pots OF steamboats,
operated both on ferry lines and on long
distance river trips from New York ports
that are barely kept from falling to pieces
by the coats of paint to which they are
treated two three times a season to
!reshen them up, but the newspapers show
ing up of this state of affairs has never
nad any effect in previous years when the
hEes OF thousands of persons are endanger-
ed, nor Is there any reasonable ground to
suppose that their renewed attacks upon
the ofhcials who permit this state of things
Will have any effect whatsoever Not only
are there many boats plying these waters
that are scarcely fit for the junkrnen's
piles. but even the seaworthy craft are
habitually and criminaIy overcrowded
Inc boats-none of them really seaworthy
-that travel between New York and Coney
Island, for example. often carry actually
l,ooo more persons than their most
stretched capacities permit them. accord
ing to the law. to carry, and IL is a COM
mon thing to see one of the old things
with such list to port or starboard-
according as the passengers flock to one
SIDE or the other to follow the music
that her turning turtle seems almost mo-
mentarily imminent.
No Lasting Results.
1t is not to be supposed that even a great
accident in connection with the rotten old
boats or the overcrowding of the fairly safe
ones would have any actual effect in cor
rectlng the abuses. New York's bark is
VIGOROUSLY worse than her bite. Expe-
rlence doesn't teach this town. Her Wind
SCR Hotel fires and her Hotel ROYAL fires
cause her to stand aghast"-as the yell
escape from fires in New York hotels. b,,t
she only stands aghast for a very little
While, and then she casts about for some
thing else to talk about before ANYTHING TO
remedy the evil has been done. Another in
stance: When those docks of finder over
in Hoboken took fire last year. causing the
destruction of hundreds of lives, not to
mention millions of dollars worth of steam
ship property. New York was going to i'm
mediately tear all of her wooden docks to
pieces and put steel ones in place of them.
Not alone was she going to do that but
she was going to walk over to New Jersey
and compel the Jersey folks to rip out
their piers and put in steel ones.
Well, they're building quite lot of new
steamship piers of wood on both of the riv-
ers swathng the sides of New York right
now, and there has been no protest The
whole thing has been forgotten.
New York ChivaIry.
To revert to the panic on the Northffeld
the way the male passengers treated the
female passengers on that occasion was
eminently characteristic of New York The
brave things in trousers kicked and
punched and fought the women tooth and
nail, and trampled upon them in their
struggle to save their own carcasses even
at the time when it was seen that all hands
had fair chance to be taken off. There's
many woman passenger of the North
field who will carry to the end of her days
the effects of the smuggling she got at the
hands and feet Of the chvalrous New
Workers on that occasion. When the tug
boats finally got alongside and began to
take of the passengers they did everything
but commit mayhem upon the tugboat
men in order to be the first to be taken Off |
1t is satisfactory to relate that the tug
boat men handled these half-men with
capstan bars and marlinspikes and Delay
ing pins and little ships toys of that gem
eral character. When the larger vessels
got alongside the Mortified for the pur-
pose of aiding in the work of rescue it was
seen that there was positively not a single
solitary woman in one of the Northfield's
boats. They We're all persons with panta-
looms.
Things like these don't happen in Ameri-
can cities. There have been some appaIl-
ing steamboat accidents on the great lakes
accidents in which the great bulk of the
people in jeopardy were from purely Amer
lean towns like Detroit and Cleveland and
Buffalo. and there is yet to be related a |
single in which the men haven't come
to the front with their manhood at the mo-
ment of greatest danger and shown their
allegiance to that traditional idea among |
real men which is shortly summarized by |
the phrase:
The women and children first"
WaskinstOnians in New York.
The writer has never seen so many Wash |
ington folks in New York as there are |
just now. They make the Broadway hotels |
look like home, they are in force at the |
beaches there are so many of them on the |
roof gardens that one begins to feel that |
he is going to wake up in Washington. and |
they thick in the shops that one has |
F street in mind at every stop. And a |
comparison of the outward aspect of these |
Washingtonians. men and women, with the |
New Workers right alongside of them sug- |
gests a few things. The New Workers |
may be-they certainly are-more fiashy |!
sSsAN m,..