Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/186

912 the management of the business. My work has succeeded because it has been done for its own sake alone. The same success awaits any competent man who will manage any other of the city departments on the same principle.

If the whole city is ever so managed the people will be glad.

Whatever the cause, no one will now question that the former condition of the streets was bad—very bad. No one can question the truth of the following description:

Before 1895 the streets were almost universally in a filthy state. In wet weather they were covered with slime, and in dry weather the air was filled with dust. Artificial sprinkling in summer converted the dust into mud, and the drying winds changed the mud to powder. Rubbish of all kinds, garbage, and ashes lay neglected in the streets, and in the hot weather the city stank with the emanations of putrefying organic matter. It was not always possible to see the pavement, because of the dirt that covered it. One expert, a former contractor of street cleaning, told me that West Broadway could not be cleaned because it was so coated with grease from wagon axles; it was really coated with slimy mud. The sewer inlets were clogged with refuse; dirty paper was prevalent everywhere, and black rottenness was seen and smelt on every hand.

The practice of standing unharnessed trucks and wagons in the public streets was well-nigh universal, in all except the main thoroughfares and the better residence districts. The Board of Health made an enumeration of vehicles so standing on Sunday, counting twenty-five thousand on a portion of one side of the city; they reached the conclusion that there were in all more than sixty thousand. These trucks not only restricted traffic and made complete street cleaning practically impossible, but they were harbors of vice and crime. Thieves and highwaymen made them their dens, toughs caroused in them, both sexes resorted to them, and they were used for the vilest purposes, until they became, both figuratively and literally, a stench in the nostrils of the people. In the crowded districts they were a veritable nocturnal hell. Against all this the poor people were powerless to get relief. The highest city officials, after feeble attempts at removal, declared that New York was so peculiarly constructed (having no alleys through which the rear of the lots could be reached) that its commerce could not be carried on unless this privilege were given to its truck-men. In short, the removal of the trucks was "an impossibility."

There was also some peculiarity about New York which made it inevitable that it should have dirty streets. Other towns might be clean, but not this one. Such civic pride as existed had to admit these two unfortunate drawbacks.