The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-07-13
NEW YORK TOPICS.
DRIFTS AND UNDERGRADUATE OF
THE METROPOLIS.

hkh-.fOOgOOB ~ my
Side shows at COney IsIand-Why
Matches Sell Beat in Dull Times.
Daniel $. Lamont for Governor.
The $40 Wall street Office Boy
with the 81 200 Automobile.
New York. July 12.-New York is
full of ready money. Everybody has
it-not merely the fashionable every
body who is prone to consider himself
the only person entitled to the appel
lation and who always has ready
money, for publication, at least, if not
in good faith-but the everybody that
one sees crowding the streets, jostling
on the way to work, in every grade of
life from the cottage owner in the SUI
burbs to the month by-month proprie-
tor of a four by seven fiat with real
windows. Storekeepers are trans
ported with delight, for a striking
beauty about this money is that it is
not only ready but easy.
Where does it come from? There has
been no notable increase of wages, no
apparent press of business or work to
account for it, But it is here.
The trolley companies report that
never before have they had to cope
with such a rush of people bound to
the pleasure resorts. Indeed, the
stock of one company-and one that
never has paid a dividend and has
not even the nerve to promise one in
the near future-went up two points
i'm 10 oil old -k.a
Wall street operator asserted to me,
on the strength of it's enormous traffic
of the last ten days, The owner of
a miniature railway in Coney ISL
and reported to the police that his
treasurer had fled with $110, which
represented ) the earnings of one day.
And this miniature railway is one
of the smaller, less costly and not at
all novel side-shows in a place which
has probably about four hundred 9TH
er schemes to attract the money of
sightseers. Certainly the least of
them must have taken in fifty dollars
on the same day. 1t seems safe to
calculate that not less than thirty
thousand dollars a day has been spent
of late in Coney Island for the side
shows alone. No man dares try to
estimate how much was spent for
beer frankfurters, crabs, sandwiches,
pies and the other delicacies in which
the less CLASSICAL New Yorker luxuri-
ate there.
In one of the many down town din
ing clubs the cigar man showed me
the list of sales. For two days in
succession he had disposed of more
than 5000 worth of cigars daily-$207
in one day and 1902 in another. Yet
this is a notably quiet and simple
club whose members are mostly men
on salary. There are at least fifty
other dining clubs downtown, half of
which do things on an expensive scale.
That makes a pretty fortune pulled
into the air daily in cigar smoke. And
yet this is only one puff in a veritable
volcano of tobacco smoke for 1t ac-
counts for only an insignihcantly small
proportion of the business men down
town, the vast majority of whom buy
their cigars in stores, of which there
are uncounted hundreds and all doing
a rushing business.
1t is cheerful to note that New York,
while spending the money easily, is
careful to see that it gets a great deal
more of fun than usual out of it, The
restaurants are better, the entertain
ments are better and the general pro-
vision for the comfort of pleasure
seekers are better than they have been
in years. This is due probably not
to the initiative of the caterers-who
as a class have been blind to their
own and the public interests for years
but to the fact that a man with
ready money in his pockets has the
backbone to insist on having what he
wants.
OF course the money burns many
&c ~ to-
the police efforts to close poolrooms
have only the grand net result of the
equally respectable and equally futile
Mrs. Darlington and her broom when
she tried to sweep back the impudent
ocean. However the city, having
grandly dared and grandly failed in
the pool room question, has turned
undismayed from the field of defeat
and marched with flying banners to
victory in the field of craps. The mu-
nicipal governments most ponderous
legislative body, the Board of Alder
men, got together ponderously with
the Mayor and between them they
passed resolution, nobly framed, pro-
viding that the unbridled newsboy
shall not engage any more in games of
craps under the Mayors window. The
satisfactory effect of this deed of civic
virtue remains quite unblemished by
the one fact that the resolution was
unnecessary and Illegal because
state ordinance covers it, and the 9TH
er fact that the newsboys have not
shown an even distant inclination to
obey 1t. The crap shooting under
the historic window began almost inn
mediately after Van Wyck acceded to
the mayoralty. That always struck
me as a piece of unconscious and de-
lightful irony.
I met one of the many managers of
the match trust this week, and in
conversation he happened to say that
he was sorry that the coal strike
showed signs of ending. That surpris
ed me, for l thought as other persons
no doubt would think, that the less
coal the less matclsSs are burned. But
he said that the match business had
shown much improvement during the
strike and that it always was better
in times either of strikes or wide
financial depression and consequent
lack of work.
ITS one of those little things"
said he, that an outsider doesn't think
of, and indeed. wouldn't con-
slider probable if he did think of it
When men are at work they haven't
time to smoke. Indeed, most work.
men are not permitted to do so. When
they are idle, tens of thousands of then
puff away at pipes for ten and twelve
hours every day. And if you will fig
ure how many matches an average
smoker consumes in keeping even one
pipe-full going, you will realize why
the strike should have decidedly fav-
orable effect on our business -
The perSiStent hoor,,ipU of Doa,os