Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-03-05
THosE YAlWNING CHAsMs.
Even Patient New York Won't Stand
 Everything.


 What used to be the streets of New York and are now rapid transit ditch- es and railway lines on stilts will some day in the dim and distant fu- ture resume their old-time appearance when the great underground line is finished, the last gaping hole IS filed and the public on wheels are given AMck what the surface car lines have not appropriated.
 The citizen on foot who for the last two years has been lodging blasts, scrambling over piles of excavation debris or steeplechasing over impro- ivised bridges; the merchant who has seen earthworks piled about his door way, his business temporarily ruined and customers warned away by such cheerful signs as "Dangerr' and "No thoroughfare!' the Householder who, owing to open sewers and malaria breeding trenches, has had to keep his windows closed except when they were 1 opened by a rock or two, forewarned l by gentleman waving a red flag up I the stfeet-these and all other good citizens fond of quiet life and ordin- ary everyday means of street travel will rejoice when at last the volcanic rapid transit upheavals are at an. end 1 and New York is itself again
 I Their happiness, however, may be short lived. It is proposed to have a. new set of street upheavals occur. The commissioner of public works in his annual report says that as a result of rapid transit and other operations of 1a sf fyrxyrN 4lx o Hr-- York are in such condition that a re- construction of the entire system wiu be necessary if typhoid and other dis eases are not to visit New York in ag- gravated form and fmperil the general health. What he says of the present leakage from the pipes is perhaps true at least, experienced travellers on the Rhine, who have been considered ex- perts in differentiating the seventy two, more or less, odors to be had in Cologne have declared that they found them all and q few to spare along>the subway trenches of New York That the pipes are leaking, and leaking bad I ly, Is no doubt so. That it is a men, ace to health Is undoubtedly true, and whatever is necessary to do, in order to protect the public from ill results. must be done.
 What the people are particularly i'm terested in, however, in connection with sewer operations and possibly ne cessary reconstruction is this: Are we to wait until the holes are all. filled and the thoroughfares are again given over t0e travel. and then is there to be a grand upheaval of the streets and a repetition of the whole blessed busi- ness of excavation over again?
 The patience of this Moses-like city is proverbia1. It puts up with almost anything. The subway contractor metaphorically smites 1t on one cheek and it turns the expansive other one for his heavy hand. It has borne with rapid transit miseries in manner that, by comparison, makes Job seem to have been an impatient gentleman who could not bear ills gracefully But if the streets of New York, once down are to be ripped up in the future for any sewer manipulation, even that worm Father Knickerbocker will turn and in manner that will bode i'll to those responsible for the comimotion.- : New York Herald.
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