The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-18
District Attorneys Suit Against
 Editor for $2OO,0O0 Libel.
Promises Interesting Developments Proposal to Abolish Chinatown storm Center--he Hepburn BiIl and Gotham's Food suppIy--white Slaves
 of Darkest New
 York.

suRpty-~Wmite StuSeh of Darkest New
 York.
 New York, March 17.--Now that the Mann -HApgood libel case has passed Into social history and the bewhiskered editor of Town Topics has been indicted for perjury and steps have been taken { to oust bis colleague and proof -reader, Justice Deuel, from the bench, New York is about to be entertained by am other suit for libel which promises to be scarcely less interesting. .Goaded by the constant atacks of the Hearst newspapers, which assert that he is ! neglecting his duty in falling to push certain delegations against the life in- surance magnates and the Metre poli- tan Street Railway, District Attorney | Jerome has now brought libel salts against Hearst's morning and evening papers for S100,009 each. It Is psoo= able that the District Atorney's action will worry MT. Hearst not little, for the editor Is an avowed candidate for 1 Governor and all sorts of things may happen in the course of libel suit. Ths last libel suit brought by q nu olic | officer in New York occurred several | years ago, when James W. Osborne, l late Tammany candidate fer District | Attorney, at that time First Assistant District Attorney, thought The New York Sun had injured him $50,o0o worth. | He got verdict of cents.
 l Meanwhile, in respect to the case of the Metropolitan Street Railway, which controls all the surface ear lines in New ! York, Mir. Jerome has been placed n rather peculiar position. William H. | Tillinghast confessed that he had been professional jury "fixer'' for the Metropolitan. was convicted and sent | to prison. Mir. Jerome declared that | there was no :--round in the Tiliinghast case for proceeding against men higher | up in the company, but Judge Ssabury | of the City Court started an invsstiga- | ton on hts own hook, the result of | which has been the arrest of Lawyer | Ambrose F Meade of the legal de- partment of the Metropolitan. Other l developments are expected in Judge 1 Seabury's investigation which promise | to put In the shade Mr. Jerome's claims l to strenuousness. A lawyer who mas l been prominent in several city reform movements recently explained to the writer the seeming iaconsistenciss of the District Attorneys character by the phrase: '@rhe trouble with Jerome is | that his conscience has not been re- l prosecute a man of the class he meets at one of his clubs with the same vigor | he employs in getting after dive keeper or delinquent police captain" |
 A proposal has been made and is sup
 ported by Comptroller Metzz, to de- stroy tha. tangle of crooked lanes, back alleys and tenements, known as China town, and turn 1t into public park. If the plan Is carried out, 1t will do away with one of the most picturesque sec
 tions of Eew York, and at the same time one of the greatest sources of trouble to the police, Were 1t not for the two rival societies, the Hip Sing Tong and the On Leong Tong, China town would be a comparatively peace 1 ful oasis in New Yorks turbulent East Side; but these two organizations, 1 which have long been Fivsis In gam
 bling affairs in the district, ind 1t im- possible to live together in anitg. oc- oasionally. q member of one of the sov cities is mysteriously stabbed in thu back, and thereafter, for several days, Chinatown's streets are dangerous to pedestrians; for at any moment a
 horde of lighting yellow men. adhe-
 rents of the rival tongs, are likely to
 pour out of the tenements, scattering
 pistol bullets like hail. It is difficult | to get evidence against individual mur- 1 deFefS or tne lonBS, not oHly Dccauhs they have subterranean channels of disappearance, but also because of the constitutional inability of the average Irish policeman to tell one "Chink" from another.
 Much comment is being caused in the
 metropolis over the fact that the bulk
 of the demand for conservative acton | on the railway rata question comes
 from a solid group of Senators repre- senting the North Atlantic States, while
 the brunt of the fight for the passage of the Hepburn bill in it's radical form is borne by Senators from the South and West. The North Atlantic area,
 comprising, as 1t does. New England,
 New York, New Jersey and Pennsyl-
 Yania, contains about one-seventh of
 the farm land of the United States
 Products from these farms are now
 shipped to the cities at high rates in
 comparison with the rates charged on
 similar products from the South and
 West, the railroad theory being to let
 all producers into the markets of the East on equal terms, irrespective of
 distance handlcaps, Should the rate
 making system be revised on distance
 tariff principles, in accordance with the tenets of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 1t Is inevitable that hum
 dreds of farms in the West and South
 would be wiped out. So New Workers
 are wondering if all of the radical Sem ators are truly representing their farm
 CT constituency. Incidentally, New
 Workers are interested in the prospect 1 of higher prices for food.
 Peculiarly shocking to the moral
 sensibllittes of the town have been
 the nature of the disclosures that q systemic trade in white slave girls has
 been carried on in New York city for several years. Some of the girls were | kidnapped practically from the thres-
 hold of their homes. locked in negro
 dens. and kept in pitiable state, half
 starved and clothed in rags, There is evidence that several of the girls were
 so ill-treated that they became ill, and
 then, being useless for the purposes
 of their captors, were beaten to death
 and carted away to an obscure grave
 yard outside of the city. One of the
 chief prisons of this extensive system
 was within a few doors of the Tender
 loin police station, and there is the 'I usual wretched implication that the
 police were passive to what was gGing on practically before their eyes. nlsr
 trict Attorney Jerome has secured the
 evidence in the case so far with his
 own men--and carefully kept his ac-
 tions secret to the police. Of course 1t Is difficult to get evidence in eases
 of this kind. as the traflc Is conducted
 with diabolical cleVerness. The last
 series of similar outrages in the city
 r1a1rfs a