The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-05-16

ter which is now estimated to amount
 to 1oo,o0o.o0o galions daily. and incl
 dentally to add to the municipal reve-
 nues, a measuresis now under consid-
 eratioh by the local lawmakers which. if passed. will amount to tax on cleanliness. putting that virtue ahead even of godliness. in the matter of cost at least.
 The proposed tax which will be Ie- | vied not only on regulation bath tubs, but also on bowls and stands which may be used as substitutes, is graded from sl a year for one In house or building having a frontage of sixteen
 feet or less. to s24 year for one tub | in a building with a frontage of from ninety to 100 feet.
 There are other unidue features to the ordinance, which proposes to make
 stance. if church requiring immer.
 sion of it's converts maintains fount for the baptism of new members 1t will I have to pay tax of $f0 to the city. To this clause. however. one Alderman
 has objected on the ground that if
 amounts to putting tax on desire to 20 to Heaven.
 Every field in which the city.s water
 is used is covered by this remarkable. ordinance, even to the mater trough in the horse stall or the pile of mortar
 requiring water for its use as build
 
 wettinR down buildings in the course
 of demolition to prevent the spread of
 dust. and a tax of s5 year is also to
 be applied to canal boats for the water
 which they use on board for domestic
 purposes while tied up at city docks. T Even saloons incongruous as 1t may
 seen. will be taxed for the water which
 they serve. While the city is plan
 ming to discourage waste in the use of :. water among It's residents 1t Is setting
 them a bad example in this respect fnr
 1t has just been brought out that over
 4.000.000,0o0 gallons Of water has been
 allowed to run to waste over the dams
 of the Croton water supply during the
 past few weeks. or enough if properly
 stored to obviate for several years to
 come the need of the Catski1i water
 project in which nearly s2ooooo.ooo ts
 being spent.
 Thus New York appears to afford a ] literal illustration Of the old proverb } about saving at the spigot while vast ] ing at the bung-hole. !. The announcement this week that , the famous Koch farm in the Bronx ] will be sold at auction next July. com pletes an interesting. story of the ] growth of the city in the past sixty { years.
 The farm is famous because it is the , sast stronghold of Farmer" Koch. it's , owner, who. ever since 1S4a. has car- | ried out his policy, at Increasingly f greater distances, of farming in the I city at the closest possible point to the downtown markets. ' For more than half a century the f growth of the city has been chasing
 northward the man who farmed near : est to its center. until at last 1t has . driven him out. His first farm, leased . from the Astors in 1S4s. covered the v H~A fAkx nsn AwxyA ur.H
 Eighth Avenue and Forty fourth and : Forty fifth Streets. where the big Ho- tel Astor now daily consumes the pro- duets of the hundreds of farnas and his cows were pastured on the land now covered by the pavements of Long . acre square, the center of the theatre
 and club district of the city.
 When the lease became too valuablS O for agricultural purposes, Farmer Koch s moved on to Harlem. where he again a leased q tract from the Astors at 136th I Street, where lots which now sell for . S100.000 could be had for s200 each and f corners for S400. Again In 1867 MT. c Koch was forced northward and went 0 on to the Bronx, where he bought a q farm. This has now become so valu- l able that the city's veteran farmer is a going to sell 1t and reiinquish at S2 2 years of age his ambition to end his 2 1 fife as metropolitan farmer. ' Spite fences, so called are not un- !. known in various parts of the coun- a | try but it has remained for a New i Yorker to erect the first skyscraping g structure of this sort on record. \ This remarkable fence. built of steel
 construction. Is already forty feet in height, a figure which will be more . lthan doubled before 1t Is finished. The cause for the erection of this 100-
 foot fence, said to be the highest in the world. may be laid at the door: or entrance. of the Williamsburg Bridge, When the city bought up whole blocks of tenement houses to make room for the approaches to the new bridge one Silberman was among those who were forced to sell. It so hap pened that the city didn't want all his property and left him strip 5of land 100 feet deep with frontage of only eighteen inches, 6 bit of real estate for which MT. Silberman could see no use and regarded as small white elephant. He attempted to sell the
 half yard wide property to the owner of the tenement next door and was
 refused. Next he offered to buy the tenement and was again refused. Then he began to get angry, and as re-
 suit a company has been formed to erect a fence which will shut out all
 the light and most of the air from the windows on the adjacent side of said tenement.
 The fence will be used for adver- Using display and aside from paying { the taxes on the property will prove an attractive investment.
 Meanwhile the tenants of the apart ment house who see their light and air eliminated are talking of leasing space on the fence and cutting holes through 1t opposite their windows.
 A memory of the man who is now
 private citizen Roosevelt was awak-
 ened the other day when heap of old funk was sold at auction at police
 headQuarters for fifteen dollars
 Unimportant as the transaction
 seems, 1t marked the end of an inter
 estinR chapter in police history. Among
 the old stoves which formed the main
 part of the junk were some boxes
 filled with the remains of the old dial
 telegraph system which for forty years
 formed the means of communication
 between the police station and police
 headquarters before Commissioner
 Roosevelt abolished 1t in 1897 for a more modern system. The old dial
 svaten was a peculiar simple and very 1 cumbersome device not all dependent 1 on the Morse code
 The sending apparatus consisted of
 A face dial on which were printed the ] letters of the alphabet and the num-
 bers, and opposite these was row
 of push buttons connecting with two
 indicator needles. The police station