New-York tribune., 1908-03-25
HAPPY QUEENS.

In the matter of local government rural COM
munities are, by their very nature. normally su-
perior to cities. Where open fields and wide
lawns give free view from every point to
every other, and where everybody has leisure
to look around now and then. the loafer and
the malefactor never find chance to corrupt
the administration. By reason Of this familiar
fact we feel that the glowing reports about the
progress being made in public works over IN
Queens Borough must not be held up to Man
haitian and Brooklyn as a terrible Indictment
of their own mismanaged territories. The
Farmers Club of Queens. whose members have
lust made public the results of their municipal
research, understands the unfairneSs of a lit
eral. unqualified comparison between Its own
borough and the more cOngested ones. At its
recent meeting in Baysde the club discussed
the local administration with such admirable
abstinence from provincial pride that stranger
might almost have fancied that the country
folk were diScOntented WITH their mOuel ONCE
holders and employees
Farmer Powell, Highway Commissioner, arose
to testify that four laborers and two foremen
snent forty-one and q half days cleaning gut
fer eleven hundred feet long The scorn in the
worthy Commissioners voice showed the high
standards of Civil Service expected in his dis
trict The men of Queens apparently think q
wOrkingman ought to clean more than ten and
q half inches of gutter IN hour 81 q day
wage Out in the open country perhaps, diz-
zier speed than this is possible, but here in
crowded Manhattan, where street workers have
no elbow room. nobody complains If six men
spend four days mending less than fifty square
feet of pavement in a Harlem driveway.
Farmer Cornell bore witness to the efficient life
in Queens by telling about a whiskery dignitary
who drives over from WhtestoDe With weak
kneed horse every day to work on the highway.
Twice daily this servant of the people hauls
about wheelbarrow load of stone to the road
makers, and. this done heads his steed toward
the stable Farmer Cornell said further:
At this rate have estimated that it will take
Just IO40 years to complete the repairs tho
roads in the Little Neck district. One day the
horse fell down the hill, and the entire gang on
the work spent the afternoon getting the horse
back on its feet
The immense superiority of rural government
could not be better shown; in Manhattan the
repairs on any group of streets whose mileage
EQUALS that Of the Little Neck highways will not
be finished until the Esqumau1 get to picking
pomegranates off the North Pole; for a thou
sand years are as day In the sight Of q Tam
many repair gang, except in the timekeeper's
and paymasters departments. That Queens Of
fcials practise economies unheard Of by down
town colleagues appears in this deposition Of
Farmer Van Nostrand, onetme County Clerk: :
| want to tell you about steam roller that has
been standing in the roadway behind my house
all winter. Every morning a man comes around
and builds u fresh fire under the boiler, and
when he leaves at night another man takes his
place, who keeps the fire going all night This
steam roller has remained In one place all win
ter.
What Manhattan commissioner of steam roll
ers would have thought Of saving money
by letting the machine rest in one place all
winter? The Farmers Club has humiliated US
with the invidious comparisons between bor-
eughs which It's reports suggest. But we arc
glad to see that the ssricultuxisA ars mt luIed