Year: 1879

Safety the Best System.


When selfinterest and duty oppose each
other nothing is more difficult for corpo-
ration than to resist the temptation to de-
eide in favor of the former, and nothing is
apparently easier than to invent q multi
tude of plausible sophistries to make the
worse appear the better reason. But this
process, however pleasing and ingenious as
an essay in metaphysics, becomes utterly
inadmissible when the subject of discussion
affects the most vital interests of o great
metropolis. The New York rapid transit
companies cannot be too often reminded
that, just as there are no duties without
rights, SO there are no privileges without cor
responding responsibilities. Those great
corporations are in the strictest sense the
servants of the public. They derive their
very existence and all their facilities for
pecuniary profit from franchises granted
them exclusively in the public interest, and
they will be held strictly amenable in the
exercise of their great trust to the tribunal
OF enlightened public opinion. That the
HERALD is diligent and vigilant exponent
Of public sentiment upon this subject the
elevated railroad companies already know,
and one OF them has just given striking
illustration of the fact by receding, ''under
fire" as it we're. from an untenable position.
In adopting the HERALD's advice and ceasing
to tempt Providence by exposing thousands
OF passengers to incessant peril Of life and
limb the New York Elevated Railroad Com
pany has acted prudent part.


While we heartily congratulate the COM
panies and the public upon the prompt de-
cision to abolish the switch system, we must
and will sternly and emphatically protest
that no halfway measures in this matter
can be accepted or tolerated by the public.
The HERALD accepts the role of public pros
ecutor, and will not consent to the adoption
Of mere makeshift, q penny wise and
pound foolish compromise, upon matter
affecting the most vital interests of our me-
tropolis. That enlightened self-interest'
which our positivist contemporaries SO elo-
quently advocate should long since have
taught the rapid transit companies that their
only safety lies in the complete adoption Of
the system we have SO earnestly advocated
and illustrated in these columns The dis
continuance Of the branch lines ut Chatham
square and Forty-second street is o step in
the right direction, but the preparations to
operate them again upon different system
are far from satisfactory. Nothing less than
the entire abandonment of crossings and
switches can meet the requirements of the
case, and very ordinary discernment will
suffice to show that q perfect system will be
cheapest in the long run.


The companies naturally insist upon
their franchises when pressed by our argu-
ments about the danger of their joint lines
and multiplied crossings on the east side.
but we onoe more warn them that they had
better cease their contentious about com
mon rights of way and amicably divide
their routes in an equitable manner. There
must be no joint operation of single yard
Of elevated track in this city, but there may
and should be pooling of issues and o d.
vision of profits where the double franchise
already exists. This may readily be accom-
plished by arbitration. Sooner or later,
and the sooner will be the better for them,
the companies must adopt the plan which
was SO elaborately presented and illus
trated in the HERALD of the I'd inst. by
which the New York Elevated Railroad
should concentrate its energies to the de-
velopment of On uninterrupted line from
City Hall, via Third avenue, to Harlem, con-
ceding with as good grace as possible to
its Second avenue rival the section Of its
present line below Chatham square to
South ferry. The concession will come
with better grace now than hereafter, but
it must come soon.