Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/771

Rh and with ample power for its important purposes. Appropriations for this department have increased from year to year, until the enormous sum of $1,787,774.51 was estimated by the commissioner as necessary for the year 1891, and $1,584,250 was the amount appropriated; changes in the chief officers and employés have been made; various methods and devices have been adopted and tried; but the fact remains and is universally recognized that the streets are unclean. Some attribute their condition to insufficient appropriations; others to the inefficiency and incapacity of those intrusted with the work; others to political influences and to the use of its offices and appointments as political patronage; and others to the system and methods employed in conducting the details of the business. But, whatever the cause, the cry is universal, Is there no remedy or relief?

It is confidently asserted that none of the different plans proposed for cleaning the streets, nor an appropriation for that purpose double the present amount, nor a Commissioner of Street-cleaning of ideal business ability, fidelity, and integrity, can give New York clean streets, so long as householders and housekeepers sweep or throw their dust, dirt, ashes, garbage, or refuse, or any part of such material, into the streets, or allow anything to escape from their garbage receptacles upon the sidewalk or upon the street, nor so long as carts conveying dirt and refuse are allowed to drop any part of their contents on the streets. A walk in the principal streets and avenues from seven to nine o'clock in the morning will convince the observer that, whatever the shortcomings of the Street-cleaning Department, storekeepers and housekeepers are primarily and incidentally responsible for dirty streets by allowing their employés to sweep into the streets the dust of their houses or stores, and the dirt and refuse found upon the sidewalk. If the walk is extended to the tenement-house districts at any hour of the day, it will be noticed that it is quite the custom to throw ashes and garbage into the streets, and to allow these materials to escape into the street or upon the sidewalk from insufficient, improper, or overflowing receptacles. It will also be noticed that, soon after a street has been cleaned, it is again defiled by the refuse and garbage from the neighboring buildings, and that the carts which transport street dirt, ashes, and garbage, sand for new buildings, earth from cellar excavations, and the dust and dirt from buildings torn down, scatter some part of their contents into the street as they proceed to their destination. A student of the problem of street-cleaning has only to make the above observations to learn the primary cause of dirty streets in New York, and that, without a thorough reform in this particular, relief is well-nigh hopeless. This simple solution of the problem is only the application to the streets