Year: 1870

The Arcade Hallway Outrage.


No greater fraud upon the people was ever
perpetrated than is planned in the bill for the
Arcade Railway. No more fagrant piece OF
wholesale robbery was ever attempted than
that hill Is counted upon to legaiize. Yet It
slipped through the State Senate, with nineteen
votes in it's favor, as quietly as If the members
of that body were not there on oath to guard
and protect the interests of the people; as If
they were so many clerks paid to do the bid
ding of the railway magnate who owns the
Hudson River Railroad and the Harlem Rail-
road, and who now wants Broadway, in which
to build feeder for these roads. 1t is, indeed,
scarcely an exaggeration to say that in the
light of such q transaction the Senate Cham
ber of the State of New York is nothing more
nor less than backdoor attachment to the
Offices of the railroads named-a place in
which the railroad is served first, the people
next, and in which the popular will, the law
and the right are Of far less account than the
railroad mans money. Jast as this most
iniquitous bill slipped through the Senate it is
now counted it will slip through the Assem-





Senators, with one infamous exception, voted
against it, and the city Assemblymen may do
the same; but it will pass nevertheless; for
the same purse-strings are loOsened for both
houses. It matters not, therefore, what the
people of this great city want. The questions
W hat they will pay for it. This is the point to
which our republican institutions have worked
themselves down in Alba0y. The needy
scoundrels who live by their wits in the poll
tics of the rural districts have the opportunity
before them to confiscate Broadway and share
in the plunder of its rich receptacles of
property. They can put in their pockets,
each one, perhaps, Broadway lot with
house on it-one of those grand marble fronts
that their country eyes have gazed at so often.
Who that knows the disposition Of these
fellows doubts that any bill will pass that will
pay as this one must? And to this point is
lawmaking come in the richest and most intel
ligent State of the Western world.


The only hope of the people Of this city is
in the honesty of the Governor. Let him OBJ
serve the remarkable fact that the names to
the petition against the passage Of this bill
represent six hundred million dollars worth
of property. Shall all this be weighed down
in the balance by the will of the plundcring
jobbers in railroad schemes? Six hundred
million dollars worth of property appeals
against law, and one schemer wants it. The
schemer has bought up his votes but it is


xbo nd 1xyt tbo
property owners that he cannot buy the Gov
ernor also, and upon the Governor, therefore,
all rely to defeat this tremendous swindle by
the veto power which he has already employed
80 often and 80 we'll. 1t is the fashion
in these days for railroad corpora
tions to grab the Inheritance Of the people.
In every part Of the country they are at it.
All the Legislatures are in the game. Congress
itself gives away public property-an empire
at a time-and lays upon future ages burden
that may destroy the republic. But the boldest
and most gigantic of all the grabs is certainly
this railroad grab for the city of New York.
This law to give the whole city into the hands
| of railroad corporation-to deliver the
people, bound hand and foot, into the posses
sion of an unscrupulous, grasping monopoly,
surpasses in its impndent injustice all the rail
road laws hitherto passed for this city, by which
vast property in splendid streets has been
given away, are as nothing to this law to dig
up Broadway to destroy the trade of tina
street; to render it useless TO the people fol
| ten years at the least and this for the interes
of railroad corporation. This bill must neve
receive the signature Of the Governor of thi
| State.