The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-13

with grave thought to anotns
 speculation, extravaganza, and
 ing that preceded this one by
 years, surpassed in it's charao
 anything that the town had pre-
 known, and may be truthfully call
 Flash Age of New York; Lik
 age in which we live and which
 with the sudden loosening of purse
 that, followed the quick and eAs
 tories of the Spanish war, the flash age had its inception in carnage, for it was the civil war, with its attendant curse of inflated money, and the great rise in real and speculative values incidental to both, that gave it birth. But to treat the sub- ject with the rigid accuracy which it de- serves, the flash age really began in 1867, at a time when an over abundant greenback currency was giving a false and baneful impetus to speculative com merce, when the fortunes easily made during the war and the loose habits and morals as easily acquired at the same time, were asserting themselves in the social life of the town, and when the illegal naturalization and colonization of voters on a scale previously undreamed of, was laying the foundations of the great and interruptions power known as the New York ring.
 It was an age of great crimes against life and property, when cracksmen and other criminals were pointed out as citi- zens of distinction and when the boast was openly made that hanging was played out in New York" an age of cowardly, unsolved murders, of a corrupt judiciary, of bank robberies, of enormous pilfering from the public treasury, of riotous excesses in downtown dives and uptown gambling and dance houses, of shameless obeisance to Tweed and Fisk and the robber bands of the ring and gold market; an age that witnessed the final passing of many ancient social customs New Years calling among others-as con servative, wellbred society retreated in the face of the invasion of those Goths and Vandals begotten of the civil war, who formed the advance guard of the great army of pushers, boosters, climbers and self-advertisers who are so much in evidence at the present day.
 To conceive of the New York as it was at the beginning of this exciting and pivotal moment of its history. we must imagine city devoid of automobiles, hanson cabs, trolley cars, East river bridges, subway and elevated and de- ! clumsy omnibuses, slow moving horse cars and a fleet of steamboats that piled between Peck Slip and the Harlem river The city practically stopped at Forty second street, north of which were a few dreary blocks of brownstone houses, scattered through region of sunken lots, rocky heights covered with squat ters shanties, in some of which could still be found bronze clocks, costly shawls, rings and laces and other rem nants of the loot of the draft riots. Trains entering from the north stopped at the site of the present Grand Central depot and were taken by horse power through the tunnel to the station at Twenty street, where the Madi- son Square Garden now stands. The ter minus of the horse railroad on Fourth avenue was at Thirty-second street and the newspapers were clamoring for the paving ol MdulsoH avenue dpoNe forlS : second street and the opening up of the great region lying about that thorough fare. Lexington avenue stopped at Sixty fifth street; the entire postal business of the town was transacted in an old Dutch church on Nassau treet; the New York hospital. with it's five acres of greensward shaded by noble forest trees. was re- freshing sight for tired eyes on Broad