The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-05-02
OF THE DEAD IN
 CITIES.
Burial Near Populous Towns Should be
 Prohibited.

Burial Near Populous Towns Should be Prohibited.
 Our barbarous custom of burial was initiated by the belief in the resurrec- tion of the living body. The conse- quent, natural desire to save it from destruction was strengthened by preju- dice of early Christians against the Ro- man pyre. But even the wonderful in genuity and lavish expenditure of the Egyptians have been unayailing to pre- serve mummies eternally, and, if we could, it is questionable whether We would make the dross we leave behind after a slow death, the permanent hab- itation of our immortal souls. The prospect of remaining in a body tor tured by disease or decrepit with senil- 1 ity is not alluring.
 Yet we set aside valuable tracts of land for the stowage of such bodies; until, regardless of the sacred promise of their perpetual rest and inviola- bility, municipalities seize the room when needed and filing the remains up- on dung heap.
 Almost every page of the records of London and Paris contains examples of the desecration of abandoned grave yards, and there is hardly city in the Old World that has not disturbed at least one of these resting places of their whilom inhabitants. In our towns of rapid growth the cemetery of to-day becomes the heart of metropolis to- morrow; the demolition of graveyards in New York and Boston has been frequent occurrence until it fails to at tract attention.
 When the Colon cemetery of Havana became overcrowded the Cubans found it necessary to clear it of skulls, and promiscuously shovelled them into common boneyard. It presented an aspect so ghastly that General Wood l concluded to cover the pit and to re- open it only for the next overflow Of 1 skeletons, expected in about five years. 1 In certain cemeteries in London corpses are buried in standing posture because no room is left to lay them down. Bod- ies of the poor generally are packed over each other in tiers, and the trench 1 is kept open until filled. In the pover- ty corner of Calvary cemetery this has 1 been the customary treatment of the remains of paupers.
 1 Newtown, where Calvary is situated J harbors eighty corpses to every living l inhabitant. The convenient villages e Corona, Elmhurst and Woodside, once parts of Newtown, which now are an- nexed to New York and constitute the geographical center of the enlarged city, might increase in population if it were not for the proximity of vast and l dreary charnel fields.
 l A law relating to public health pro- vided forty years ago that no grave be dug or opened south of Eighty-sixth | street, and that no cemetery be opened in any part of the city and county of New York. This law should be enforc- 1 ed and applied, not to Greater New York alone, but to the territory within a radius of one hundred miles around every populous town. People who ir- sist on their inanimate bodies remain
 ing inviolate should have them carried to a distance where they can neither inconvenience nor iniure the living, who need the room and are natural heirs of the departed. Famous inter- mural cemeteries, like Mount Auburn | (Boston), Greenwood (New Yor0 and Laurel Hill Philadelphia, could be transformed into admirable parks.
 Monuments of architectural beauty might remain undisturbed. Others might be replaced by trees, with suit able tablets to mark the spot of those upon whose dust they grow. The Turks, 1 10th to desecrate the grave of Mussul- man, have adopted similar custom, and thereby have made the cemeteries of Constantinople attractive to stran- gers.
 Two hundred city lots are now requir- ed to bury in the old-fashioned way the seventy thousand persons that an- nually die in Greater New York. We probably could save more than a hun dred and fifty of these precious lots if ashes of the seventy thousand were
 placed in urn cemeteries, preserved in
 inches of Columborium, or streWn on the waves of a river, As cemeteries are exempt from taxation the munich pality would derive an income from the lots which the living then would use, and from the improvements they would make upon them.
 Another important advantage would accrue to every needy mourner in saw ing him from useless extravaganza. He
 incurs at present the expense of $50 at least for plain funeral; land values in the suburbs of cities preclude a reduc-
 tion in the cost of burial. The expense of cremation is only $25, and could be largely reduced if the custom became more general.
 Let our intelligent population set the example, as it does in San Francisco, where almost a thousand bodies are an- nually creametd, and the ignorant masses will be sure to follow. Consid ering the marvellous progress we have made in every other direction, it is strange that we have failed to adopt 1 the most rational means for the dispo- sition of dead bodies. We hardly are abreast of Homer's contemporaries who realized that, however well cemetery may be managed, cOrpses can do harm, but ashes never can. True religion does not and never can teach that it is godly to injure those we leave behind when we die.-Louis Windmuler in Municipal Affairs.
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