The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-09-07
PIER HOMES OF MILLION RATS
 TO BE RAzED
Hordes of High and Low Caste Rodents Will Be Elected Found to Men ace Health.
lBv international News seruice

(By International News Service)
 New York, Sept 7-An army of homes beneath the old wooden wharves of lower Manhattan bv the advent of the concrete pier, has met it's collectoive doom in the cold waters of the Hudson and East rivers
 A rat will soon be a raraity along Gothams waterfront. Hordes of high and low-caSte rodents from every land on earth have infested New York's seawaIl for decades. With the ad- vance of modern construction health officials foresee the passing of the bubonic plague peril and the elimina- ton of the most ignominious of dis ease carriers. Pity the New York waterfront rat, homeless and friendless. Not that we | would suggest drive to relieve their | increasing sorrows. But a tinge of | pity would not be out of place in view of the old residence that the rat has enjoyed beneath the keyboard of Man | hattan's shore-Hne. Eventually what | is left of this breed will have lost so- | cia1 standing among the punier in- | land hordes that are satisfied to infest stables, old tenements and to frolic beneath kitchen floors
 Rats from Everywhere
 The New York rat is different from | his brethren. He is cosmopolitan to begin with. They have no Blue Book among them, it is true, but had they | one it is certain many famous rats would be enrolled therein. Huge TO- | dents from the aromatic wharves of | far Sumatra, pirate giants from the l Chelsea piers, quaint rats from San | FranciScO'S picturesque waterfront, to which they came perhaps from far | Ceylon or the dimly-lighted wharves of Shanghai Rats from Java and
 Edinburgh, rats from Calcutta, Bonn | bay and Colon, more rats from Per 1 nambuco and Stockholn-aH these grace, or disgrace. the thousand alleys | beneath the wooden Battery wharves. IO,r< vrNf
 million rats has so far permanently disbanded. Armies of many more mil lions of rodents remain to be van
 quished by the builders of concrete piers. According to Health Commis- sioner Dr. Royal Copeland, the evacu- | atiop and eternal retreat of the wa
 terfront rat is a necessity and end
 to be brought about at the earliest | possible date. For it is aSSeverated
 that the greatest potential peril to the
 lives of New York's seven million, and
 for that matter, the lives of all who
 dwell within the borders of the na-
 ton, is the peril of the great white
 plague. The germ of this terrible
 disease is borne by the rat flea.
 Piers Harbor Disease.
 | 1nasmuch as Manhattan Island is
 entirely surrounded by piers, few of
 which are rodent free, pr. Copeland $ fadm onition is considered timely by
 many physicians.
 The modern concrete pier, or rath-
 CT the method of constructing the
 concrete pier, will be responsible for | the passing of the dread carriers,
 according to Dock Ctnmissioner Mur-
 ray Hubert. Rats reached their pros
 pective homes beneath the floors of
 old fashioned piers by way of sup
 ports nailed to ths wooden piles to
 keep them in p1ae. These supports
 are the stairways pr runways of the
 rats, which jump ovehboard from the
 ships and swim few feet under the l piers to their future abodes. But a rat cannot climb a concrete pier, be-
 cause supports are not necessary be-
 tween the conercte piers.
 Modern pier experts declare that ) had the buildes of the old wooden wharves deliberately planned to pro- vide homes for the cosmopolitan rats and their prolifr broods they couldn't have done better by the rats.