New-York tribune., 1903-02-02
CANAL ENLARGEMENT.
What an Upstate Man Thinks About This
City and the Scheme.

To the Editor of The Tribune
Sir: New-York City is big. And 1t wants to be
bigger. 1t wants to continue the biggest city Oh
the New World. Indeed. it wants to be the biggest
city on earth. Because you see there is much
virtue in bgness The fad everywhere now is 1or
bigness. The spirit everywhere dominant IS ac-
cording to the motto BE big and you will be
virtuous be big and you will be happy. There Is
this kind of craze upon every man, woman ana
child in the United States; every business must De
bigger, every farm must be bigger. every church
must be bigger, and every college and university
and gel-o-rious country must be bigger. NO
one particularly about quality or about
character numbers ard size sought for as OF
sole Importance. New-York City up to three or
four years ago ruled by thieves during more
than forty years; were too busy making the
town bigger to how much Tammany stole
from them or to what extent vice and crime pre-
vailed. There parts of the great city now
where 1t is unsafe to so at night as among the
cannibals of New-Guinea.
But there is great virtue in numbers, so the busy
men Of New-York have always thought; millions
must be added to millions of the population, and
they never be otherwise satisfied What
though there are fostering and reeking masses Oh
corruption and vice in various purlieus of the
town? Still the cry is I'VE must have more peo-
pie to count in the census, no matter what sort
of trash they are; give another million or two.
So in disregard and defiance of the fact that vice
and crime are ahoundng and increasing in i'm
mensely greater ratio than the population. the
should keep growing bigger. And New-1ork is
intensely fearful lest Chicago get ahead in num-
bers. Every little while Chicago annexes an ad-
joining township overnight that she
may up a few thousands in her popula-
ton next day. and thereupon New-York thrills
with anguish and shrieks out: That hOrrid chi
cago will beat u.s. give us people. We must
keep getting bigger" Every little while some
new railroad line is projected toward the Gull OF
Mexico point the Atlantic seaboard
which would naturally divert from New-York some
portion of the Western products for shipment
abroad this plunges NeW-YOrk into frenzy of
despair. We are losing our supremacy in trade
Will soon be only second to Chicago we must
have railroads. more canals; must give
free transportation from the West, must spend
hundreds of millions canals. that trade may
come our way, and we may keep on being bigger
than any other city"
So the cry is for a 1OOO-ton barge canal, requir-
ing an expenditure of-nobody knows how much;
say $50 00OO0O others 2500oOOO and yet others
more than 500 000,000 New-York State must en-
large the Erie Canal and must spend the money
for 1t. no matter what it may cost Millions on
millions must be laid out in order to reduce the
cost Of transporting wheat as much as one cent
be for the heneft of New-fork Ctty-ali to make
New-York City big. Nothing more; But the big
Oh. no; the farmers of the state will pay half at
least You see what a charming scheme 1t IS Ihe
advantage since the West opened up for set
tlement seyenty-hve years ago bushel OF wheat
is produced so much more cheaply from the black
rich soil of the West that Eastern farmers are
nowhere in competition; yet the wheat produced
here at greater expense must be sold at the same
prices, transportation added, the cheaply pro-
duced wheat of the West. Every cut in cost Of
transportation is cut in the price of grain and
every such reduction means a lesser profit (where
there is any profit at alb to the New-York farmer
What delightful privilege is open to the farmers
of New-YorkI They are to have permanent re,
duction made in the prices of their cereals. and
they to half the cost of effectng that re
ductiOn. The scheme is sugar coated with the
years but that makes II all the more damnabie
and outrageous; for it means permanent de-
probation during fifty of the value of every
farm in the State. Do the machine politicians at
Albany and the transportation hOWerS of New
York and Buffalo think that the farmers of the
Empire have lost their senses, that they thus
with coolest insoence lay before them such an
idiotic proposition? JOHN II. OSBORNE
Auburn, n. y, Jan e. 1908