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EXPOSURE
OF A
SEVEN YEARS’
CONSPIRACY
INFLICTING
GREATER LOSS AND RUIN
ON THE
CITY OF NEW YORK
THAN ALL OTHER CONSPIRACIES, TBEETS, FEALDS
AND PECULATIONS COMBINED.
NEW YORK:
1876.EXPOSURE
OF A
SEVEN YEARS’
CONSPIRACY
INFLICTING
GREATER LOSS AND RUIN
ON THE
CITY OF NEW YORK
THAN ALL OTHER CONSPIRACIES, THEFTS, FRAUDS
AND PECULATIONS COMBINED.
NEW YORK :
1876.
______________I.
^HE LITTLE KNOWLEDGE .REQUIRED, TO
UNDERSTAND THAT, A ^ONSPIRACT,
NOW PARALYZES THIS CITY.
■ ■	!■!, "TT./ UOTil ■■■»■>'. - .
The Rapid! Transit Commission profess to have
planned a railway upon which as many persons are to
be conveyed by locomotives in one day, one month
or one year, as have ever yet been conveyed by en-
gines on any three or four thousand miles of railway
in this country, within the same length of time. This
must be so if, it is to have a traffic equal to the average
of one of seven of the city horse railroads, which
averaged last year about 17,000,000 of passengers,
each. To gain an idea of the magnitude of this
work, if it is to be done by steam, on elevated tracks
of eight miles in length, it must be compared with
the similar traffic on some one or more of the existing
steam railroads of the country. There were 9,011
miles of railroad in this State in 1873, and less than
35,000,000 of passengers upon them. Thus, these
seven horse-roads averaged, very exactly, each one-half
as many passengers as were conveyed on all of the
steam roads of this State. Taking fifteen years
together, the Third avenue cars have conveyed as
many persons as the steam cars of the whole State,
although for several years past the passengers on the
steam roads have exceeded those on the Third ave-4
nue. Thus, in 1866, horses conveyed 20,000,000
passengers, on the Third avenue; locomotives, 18,-
254,633, on all of the steam roads.
But, let us look further into this matter. There is
now a steam railway in this city, four and one-half
miles in length, from the Grand Central depot to the
Harlem river. Ascertaining the numbers drawn by
steam power there, those anticipated on this first rapid
transit railway, and the conditions it will present, the
state of things on and about it, and the situation in
the Fourth avenue can be compared. And it will be
well to remember that, this Fourth avenue railway
is the united line of three of the most important rail-
roads, with as heavy a traffic per rod and per mile as
any other four and one-half miles of steam railway
on this continent. In 1873, these three railroads, the
N. Y. Central and Hudson River, the N. Y. and Har-
lem and the N. Y., New Haven and Springfield, 996
miles in length, had altogether, 13,486,115 passengers.
Nine of the city horse roads averaged more passen-
gers each, than these one thousand miles had, although
the latter exceeded in traffic any other one thousand
miles of steam railway in America. That is, the
passengers were less on these 1,000 miles than this
eight miles of elevated railway in a street is to have,
if it approaches the business done on any one of the
horse lines of second or third importance.
But, how many of these 13,486,115 persons came
south of the Harlem river? Leaving anyone to
guess, it can be correctly stated that, not 3,000,000
have yet been conveyed by steam on the Fourth ave-5
nue in a year. This, as the horse-cars show and, as
the incessant cry for rapid transit attests, is but a drop
in the flood of travel demanding it. And, as will
soon be seen, the real Rapid Transit, when it comes,
the genuine in place of the sham, will hold about the
same relation to the present business on the Fourth
avenue, and if a comparison is possible with the still
more trivial and imperceptible traffic on the Green-
wich Street elevated line, that the passengers by sail-
boats of former days do, to those now crossing the
Hudson and East rivers by modern appliances. But
without anticipating, let us deal with the facts we now
have, and there is this conclusion:	If the locomotive
ie to engage in local city conveyance, to produce an
appreciable result, it must do as much as horses on one
of the street railroads—say, the fifth in the number of
its passengers, and then the work will be five or six-
fold greater per rod and mile than it has yet done on
the Fourth avenue, or on any steam railway in this
country; and, between fifty and an hundred-fold more
than the average per rod and mile of our locomotive
railways. Not yet inquiring as to the effect on the
locality, or even whether locomotives can do this
great business so immensely more on a given length
of track than they have yet done in these United
States, one conclusion is inevitable. That is, if the
elevated railway of this Rapid Transit Commission
is to have this work done upon it by steam, it will
certainly require a durability, stability, and strength,
such as has not yet been exacted from any railroad in
this country.6
We now come to the inquiry, whether locomotives
can successfully engage in this enormous local traffic,
and whether they can compete with horses on these
short lengths of track*? To this inquiry, there comes
the answer from London that, last year, on a line not
so long as the Third avenue horse-railroad, there
were cenveyed over 50,000,000 of passengers by
locomotives, exceeding, one-third, of all the pas-
sengers on all of the horse-cars in the City of New
York. Of these, 44,118,225 were drawn by the
engines of the company owning the road, and an un-
known number of millions by three other companies
having the right to run through it, in all, much more
than fifty millions. Thus, on 7 miles and 124 rods
of a double track railway, the locomotives of one
company conveyed more passengers than all the loco-
motives of this state did, on between 9,000 and 10,000
miles of its railroads. Another short line in London
had about 25,000,000 of passengers by steam, and a
third, over 21,000,000. And this was but a portion
of the city conveyance by locomotives in London last
year.« Inquiring further, it is ascertained that, during
the first half of the year, 1875, on a part of these
Metropolitan Railways, only 16 miles in length, there
were one-half as many passengers by steam as there
were during the same time on all of the 120 miles of
horse-railroads of this city. These facts show that,
steam-power can, not only compete with horse-power
in city conveyance, where a city is not controlled by
horses or other dumb animals, but, that steam does
this business with a comfort, facility and economy,7
and with a profit greater than was ever before realized
from the use of the locomotive in England. All of
which seems to be as little dreamed of in this city as,
were its economy and power unknown in this state,
before we had a railroad.
If the public can now learn how steam does this
work, the requirements of the roadway and of the en-
gines that traverse it, in order to convey fifteen mil-
lions or twenty-five millions of persons on eight miles
of track in a year, they can ascertain, and children
ten years old can judge, whether the railway of this
commission is to give this city rapid transit, or whether
it was a device eminating from a source superior to
this commission to maintain horse-power in perpetuity.
There is no difficulty in understanding the whole
matter.
Ten years ago, when rapid-transit was an infant
compared to what it is now in London, the Transactions
of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science presented the evidence to the civilized world,
and New-yorkers can judge whether they have been
within or without the boundries of civilization in this
matter; and, when the first underground railway had
under 9,500,000, to its 50,000,000 now, showing that,
if the steel rail had not become a substitute for the
iron rail, this kind of traffic would even then have
been impossible. It is there shown, and will be found
so recorded in these Transactions that, with this trivial
business, though vastly more than locomotives had
ever before done on like lengths of track, the heaviest
and best iron rails to be had in England were ground8
up, smashed, and broken, about as pot-metal would
be under the traffic of an ordinary railroad.
Full and minute details are there given, showing
that the most powerful locomotives then known or in
use in England, were inadequate to do this city work.
If anything but the opposite of truth and fact could
have been known here during this last ten years, who
would not have known that, the railway companies
exclusively engaged in this business and, the others
partly so engaged, are using heavier and more power-
ful engines in it, than were ever before, or are else-
where used on railways.
And, but for a profound demoralization covering
this city, who would need at this day to be told that
the locomotives which are to transport as many per-
sons on a single railway through this city, as one-half
of all the locomotives engaged in passenger traffic in
this state have transported on four thousand five hun-
dred miles of railroads, must necessarily perform tasks
that no steam engines have yet done in this country?
They will have to start great loads and trains oftener,
stop them more frequently, impart speed to them on
shorter lengths of track, overcome this velocity in
narrower limits, and engage in these exacting efforts
of power continually. If local city conveyance by
steam was not a higher attainment, a greater mastery
of man over matter, unknown to-day on seventy-five
miles of ordinary steam railways in London,* why
did not this city have it, when for ten years locomo-
tives were run on the ground, from one end of it to
the other, from Chambers street and Centre street,9
north Yet, not the reality or even the conception of
it was then generated. So long as the locomotive was
tolerated on the ground, how infinitely superior to
anything proposed by this commission, with its pre-
tended terminal stations on posts and scaffolds in
streets. What monuments of civilization and art
Park Row and Printing House square will be with
such terminals! What sane man, woman or child
is required to go to London to ascertain how these
rapid transit railways are there located, in order to
understand that houses would be made uninhabit-
able and stables and barns untenantable for beasts,
with such a railway directly in front of them, raised
over their doors and in front of their windows, naked
and unobscured, with these terrific and unceasing
operations upon it.
The ordinary railways in and about London were
always placed above or below the houses or otherwise
removed from them. Not only, all of the elevated
lines, but every one of the elevated iron railway
bridges crossing over streets are required to be covered
with earth to deaden the noise, vibration and con-
cussion of running trains.
This commission had no need, therefore, to unite
two absurdities, one the location, the other the plan,
as either alone will be completely effective in making
this rapid transit railway a farce. The location, fif-
teen feet from the ground, in populous streets, between
continuous rows of houses, would, from the noise
alone, be destructive to millions of property, and to
five-fold the cost of the railway, were it a solid via-10
duct, covered with earth, and thus operated. But,
with this structure, a naked skeleton of bones, denu-
ded of flesh, of iron posts and beams, so as to preclude
the possibility of being ballasted with earth, or even
with peat, used on some of the weaker iron bridges
in London; the crude and childish plans of this com-
mission must be apparent to every one who has ac
quired or, can obtain, the humblest rudiments of
experience and knowledge pertaining to steam con-
veyance in cities, or even in the country, for which
this railway would lack stability, security, and strength.
There was, however, no occasion to go to London
to learn the delusive plans of this commission, when
the proof was before us. The same people who are
asked to accept this farce for a reality, but three years
ago joined in mass to aid and abet the imposition of
$3,000,000 on the city in order to have locomotives
expelled from sight and hearing in the Fourth ave-
nue. It was one of the widest, 140 feet, and not to
exceed 1,500,000 passengers had yet been conveyed
upon it in a year; that is,from one-tenth to one-twen-
tieth of what a rapid transit road is to have. This
expulsion was not merely that people were liable to
be run over and killed. It was the thundering and
jarring of trains, the rails yet resting on the ground,
the best known absorbent of noise, vibration and
concussion, which had made the whole district, from
Lexington to Madison avenue, a space 900 feet wide,
intolerable for residence. It was not the occupants
on the Fourth avenue, for there were none, where
locomotives had run at fourteen miles an hour, al-11
though, the first graded avenue up-town, and after
twenty-five years’ of waiting and opportunity for oc-
cupants, who shared in the responsibility of this
imposition on the tax-payers, to get rid of a local nuis-
ance. Mr. Buckhout, the engineer of the Harlem
Railway, stated in 1871 that, since he had known the
road, trains had not been run to exceed fourteen
miles an hour, while at Harlem, where there were
houses on this avenue, the speed had been from three
to seven miles an hour.
A short time since, it seemed to be believed that,
the best qualification for local office and public con-
sideration was to be a public thief. It was, however,
a temporary delusion. So now, the tolerance of a
local nuisance in Greenwich street is accepted as evi-
dence that, this kind of thing can be indefinitely ex-
tended and perpetuated. The fact that, it was as
great a nuisance to i s owners as to the locality, and,
the profound demoralization covering this subject, has
stayed that ultimate recognition and enforcement of
the rights of persons and of property, flagrantly dis-
regarded in Greenwich street, the protection of which
is the corner stone of civil society. However legal
these elevated railways in streets may be, the opera-
tions upon them are amenable to the regulations and
restraints of the common law. When these opera-
tions cease, if they ever do, to be, as they have been,
a nuisance to the proprietors, they must become an
intolerable nuisance to the occupants and owners in
the vicinity. Only those who were blindly led into
such an undertaking can be blind to the fact, that
sooner or later, these operations will be indicted and
suppressed as a public nuisance.II.
*jPHE pONSPIR^CY. pEoW, AND BY WHOM,
THIS piTY, HAS BEEN PI\OSTJ\ATED
AND PARALYZED,
----<jcn----
Having explained the way and the means whereby
steam is to become a substitute for animal power in
city conveyance, the next inquiry is, to ascertain the
causes which have defeated its introduction in this
city during at least seven years.
The knowledge of it was introduced from London,
in 1864, antecedent to which, it was not only un-
known, but undreamed of in New York. Persons of
ordinary intelligence, for some time after, did not for-
get its origin and cause, and not then mislead by op-
posing interests, as now, it was apparent that the
means for it here, could not be essentially different
from those that had produced it there.
There was, then, no well organized and powerful
combination, using the press and every other appliance
to prevent the introduction of this latest and greatest
attainment of civilization, now as necessary for this
city, and its continued commercial atfd metropolitan
supremacy, as houses and men are, and it won the
victory over its then less skillful opponents. The
economy and practicability of its introduction w7ere
established 5 public bodies, rapid transit, and other
commissions, exposed the impracticability of running13
locomotives unobscured through populous streets.
They pointed out the only suitable and the only known
location. The situation of the steam roads and their
history since, has confirmed the correctness of the
conclusions then reached. Concurrently, there came
the miserable rapid transit prostitute in Greenwich
street, a monumant of local ignorance and folly, on
the one hand, and the underground railways, a brood,
four of them, in the Fourth avenue, on the other;
each in their opposite ways of failure and success,
completing the demonstration, and where any one of
the four tracks in the Fourth avenue had cost less
per rod and mile than had been expended on the
Greenwich street abortion, which will never be com-
pleted until it disappears. The latter had earned
nothing after six years of trial. The sunken tracks
had secured an enormous income before completion.
There was, this year, as there had been for forty
years, the viaduct, and all the other railways in Lon-
don, showing the impossibility of locomotive railways
stuck up in the streets. There was the wonderful
success of local city steam conveyance there, in the
only way, location, and manner that ignorance or wis-
dom had ever heard of its being attained, and with
a pecuniary profit, as the managing members of this
commission knew, though the public did not, greatly
superior to other railways.
Now, why did this commission repudiate this over-
whelming mass of positive and negative demonstra-
tion of the means for rapid transit ? As will be seen,
it was because, years ago, the opposition discovered14
that the only way they could maintain the supremacy
of horse roads was, to foster every crudity, and cap-
ture and control all practicable agencies for introdu-
cing steam. Having done this, it was then necessary
to entertain the public with shams in order to conceal
the real cause of the paralysis. The organization of
a railroad corporation, which was the only legal ob-
ject of this commission, is admitted to be a farce, and
that nothing is to be done in the Third avenue. Very
curiously its business has been confined to two exist-
ing corporations, which, by law, were independant of
this commission, and when, by law, this commission
had nothing to do with these companies.
They were to white-wash and have white-washed,
two worthless devices for rapid transit, in order to
prevent any available methods for its attainment, and
so that any surplus energy and capital would go where
it would not endanger existing interests. The way
this was brought about, explains, when understood,
the past, present and future of rapid transit, and, as is
often the case, shows that which was to be the crown-
ing act to establish a wrong, turn out to be the means
for its overthrow.
It can be recalled that, for some time after the pro-
ject was brought to this country, the projector repre-
sented that the underground railway in London was
extremely profitable. The facts in that respect were
not fully presented for the reason that, too much had
been said already. Swarms of speculators, in num-
bers unknown before in the history of a project^
proceeded to take it from the projector. The firstbankers and merchants headed these associations,
drew their checks for thousands, and in several in- |
stances, up to ten thousand dollars each; sent their j
agents to Albany, and finally, by corrupt appliances,
succeeded in wresting the undertaking from those who
had brought and gained for it an unusual and great
public consideration. The press applauded this kind
of spoilation, unknown at least, in the land where the
locomotive had achieved its first, and this, its last and
greatest success—a public and private immorality,
which has cost this city more millions, as will be seen
than all the thieves have stolen from it. The state-
ments made concerning the profits of the underground
railway in London, Were true then, and have been
true ever since. When first opened, it earned in five
months and twenty days, 2\ per cent net on its cost,
with d£5,032 surplus. Nearly one-half of this cost
was for land. The profits have annually* increased.
It now pays the interest on its own capital and on over
three millions sterling expended elsewhere on unpro-
ductive or less productive works. It has been, and is,
the most productive and profitable steam railway ever
made and operated on, over, or under the earth. The
net income last year, 1874, from this first underground
railway, was over twenty per cent, on every shilling in-
vested in its construction and operation. Yet, take a
strip of London one-half mile wide, with this railway
running up and down through its centre, conveying
its fifty millions of passengers per year, and compare
this public travel with that on any space of the same
width, of a half mile, up and down through this city,16
and there is this year twice the number—one hundred
millions of passengers—-on a like extent of area,
without any decent facilities for conveyance. This, as
any child can understand, is because London is not a
narrow peninsula, with great bodies of water on each
side, crowding the travel—the tread of a great nation
—over a strip of land of but one mile in width. It
was thus apparent that, if the locomotive was profit-
able there, it must be more profitable in this city, aside -
from the fact that a right of way could be had for
nothing, that cost millions in London. The first thing
then to a correct understanding of the matter, is to
ascertain how, and by whom the controlling fact of the
great profits of this London underground railway was
suppressed, and its opposite, made to be universally
accepted as the truth.
It will be seen that, this misrepresentation came
from, and was established by, the managing members
of this Rapid Transit Commission, and that they en-
gaged in no new service when they entered it, to be-
tray rapid transit, It must now be stated that, it is
well known by a nuniber of persons here, and in
London, that, an underground railway, proved so
profitable there, has never yet been delayed for one
moment for the want of capital to engage in it, and
that it has been solely, through devices, if not planned,
run by Mr. Lewis B. Browh and Mr. Chares J.
Cahda, in connection with others, that capital has
been prevented from constructing such a railway.
Three of the members of this commission had been,
and two were, at the time of their appointment,17
directors of a company possessed of ample powers,
and of a free right of way of over ten miles in
length. Nothing approaching its adaptability and
* value was ever attainable in London, and anywhere
there,- it would be worth from two to three millions
sterling, while it is worth much more where it is, for
such a railway, running up and down through the
centre of New York.
This was the N. Y. City Central Underground
Railway Company, with more valuable franchises
and endowments than had before, or since been given
to any railroad corporation in this state, as it was
made to cover, control and defeat all practicable routes
for steam between the Third and the Eighth avenues,
occupying the controlling part of Broadway and also
the Fourth avenue. The Vanderbilt underground,
south of Forty-second street, and, the Beach, under
Broadway, are secondary and subordinate. The Cen-
tral Company had all of any value, of both. In
1869, its engineers estimated the constructions from
the City Hall to Forty-sixth street, at $5,000,000,
now known to be an ample, if not an excessive
allowance. Soon after, in 1870, mainly through the
zeal and devotion of this Mr. Lewis B. Brown for
rapid transit, chief manager, assisted by this Mr.
Charles J. Canda, treasurer, and since director and
treasurer, the company was favored by becoming
bound to pay $20,000,000 for this part of its railway,
from three to four times more than it could cost. In
this arrangement to prevent capital from coming to
the company, and for sinking^ any that might come,18
care was taken at the time to have a thoroughly
incompetant and irresponsible contractor, so that one
side of the contract should be as fatal to progress as
the other. This great fraud was not understood by
a majority of the directors but, learning its character,
they resigned and the whole thing was revoked.
Very soon after, however, a new Board was so consti-
tuted, Mr. C and A being one of the managers, that it
was reimposed and restored.
This device, good at the time, yet gave no per-
manent security that capital might not come in, get
control, and carry on the work, owing to the fact that
it was a transparent fraud, and as such might be dis-
regarded and the company freed from it. Capital
was tendered, legal proceedings threatened, and the
situation became critical. But, before more effecient
measures were taken to tie up the company, Mr. Joseph
Seligman, chairman of this commission, was brought
into the management and made a director. He was
in favor of mortgages, and none seemed too great for
him. So they abandoned the fraudulent contracts,
and put the company under the fetters of a mortgage
for $35,000,000, three-and-a-half times more than the
whole work, clear up to the Harlem river, could cost.
But, this did not give them complete security $ it also,
was a fraud, and legal proceedings were threatened
to get rid of it, and in less than a year after other de-
vices had to be invented to keep rapid transit dead.
These have done so until a recent period, but, it was
a foresight of their ultimate failure which made this
commission necessary, and the service of these gentle-19
men upon it. Going back, they met the new difficul-
ties by an apparent withdrawal of all opposition to
the company’s progress. They would give zealous
aid, and at last, open its doors to capital. The $35,-
000,000 mortgage was to be cancelled, and a new one
executed for $10,000,000. Months elapsed without
action but, entreated and threatened, and, it having
become dangerous to attempt issuing bonds under the
thirty-five million fraud, the new mortgage was finally
executed; but, it was for twenty millions instead of
ten millions, and the old mortgage was not cancelled.
They thus succeeded in delaying for years the for-
cible legal measures that were to cleanse the com-
pany from the conspiracy that has controlled it. And
thus, Mr. Seligman and Mr. Canda have aided in
imposing and in maintaining, up to the day of their
appointment on this commission, when they sent to
the company their resignation as directors, these two
mortgages for $55,000,000, five times more than the
railway would cost. They did this, in opposition to
legal proceedings to get rid of these frauds and, after
repeated tenders to take and pay for bonds to be is-
sued under a proper mortgage.
When they and their associates saw that these cor-
rupt devices for defeating it could be maintained no
longer, these devotees and conquerors of rapid transit,
left the company for new fields of conquest. There
was, however, no loss, unless the cancellation of these
mortgages since, to be seen in the Register’s office,
ineffacable records of the conspiracy, and the disap-
pearance of these gentlemen, is a loss.20
The fact was that, the ways and means, the right
and the power to provide rapid transit, years ago pur-
loined through the agency of this Mr. Lewis B.
Browr, who carried the bribe, and distributed the
money at Albany, were to be recovered and restored,
and new appliances, this new commission, was required
to meet the new contingency.
And, there was nothing incongrous in the circum-
stance that, the agent employed in 1868, to consumate
the theft, should, in 1869 and 1870, betray his em-
ployers by placing the company where it would do
him, and not them, the most good. It was a legiti-
mate example of that private and public virtue which
has made this city send forth, during this period, a
lurid light that has startled and arrested the attention
of the whole civilized world.
Was it an accident, and without design, that these
three persons with this record of having betrayed
Rapid Transit for years, in that only form and manner j
by which it was made known to mankind, or was pos- j
sible of attainment, should be picked out of the three j
hundred thousand men in this city, and be made a ;
majority of this commission? How happens it that !
they are the same persons who have for six years been
retailing the falsehood, until a deceived community
believed it to be true that, this underground railway
in London had not paid, did not pay, and that it
would cost so much to make one here as to be im-
practicable? This commission could open the doors
of its secret proceedings to send out and repeat this
misrepresentation about the railways in London after j21
the accident had occurred of allowing Sir Edward
Watkxnt to come in, in order to counteract some of
the facts which he, and not they, had placed before
the public. Again, who were the authors of the ex-
traordinary spectacle of having this pretended public
commission sit in secret session for three months, un-
der lock and key, thus assuming the form of a con-
spiracy, if it wTas not so in fact, letting in all the
rubbish, and carefully excluding all who had any
knowledge of the subject, and finally sending out a
whitewashing report of the Greenwich street elevated,
demonstrated for six years in the face of the public
to be a worthless device for rapid transit—once in-
dicted as a public nuisance, and as such to be sup-
pressed when law and order reigns, and recommending
the Gilbert elevated, known by all who are capable
of knowing anything about it to be of like inutility?
Finally, who caused this commission, in its secret
conclaves, to plan a commission railway, made up of
the crudities and the demonstrated worthless features
of these two worthless plans. If John Jacob Astor,
Moses Taylor, and Marshall O. Roberts could
be made to whitewash the frauds of the ring, was it
more difficult for those engaged in this conspiracy,
the authors of the law of last winter, and who ap-
pointed their own commission, to have it whitewash
the frauds which have delayed, defeated and betrayed
rapid transit for seven years ? There could be no
difficulty, when the persons engaged in it, or a ma-
jority of them, were thus to cover their own transac-
tions, and where a portion of the press was as ready22
to applaud this seven years betrayal of the city of
New York, as they had been, to applaud the Public
Thieves, although the spoliations of the latter were
a trifling injury compared to the loss and depreciation
this betrayal has occasioned. The German army and
the Commune did not inflict upon Paris a decay and
ruin so broad-spread as is visible from one end of this
city to the other, from witholding this necessity for its
continued existence and growth. The direct result
of the acts of a majority of the members of this com-
mission, and which qualified them for this appointment.III.
CITY FITTED TO MAINTAIN A SEVEN
years' CONSPIRACY FOR ITS FRUIN.
Only so much of a disgraceful record will be pre-
sented as is necessary to disclose the present situation.
We have to-day a city presided over by a Chief
Magistrate, who appoints as guardians of its supreme
interest, those, whose betrayal of that interest, was
the sole claim to the preferrment. We have a city
where a portion of its press has debauched common
sense and the public intelligence on this matter, more
important than other, to a degree hardly to be antici-
pated in the darkest days of superstition and igno-
rance—a press which now applauds this latest con-
spiracy and crowning infamy. We have a city where
its leading citizens have, by tens and hundreds, and
on more than twenty occasions, united to present to
public favor that number of prostitutes, as bearing
the concealed burdens of legitimate offspring. This
has occurred in every instance after, and in the
later cases, since the public exhibition for more than
thirteen years, in the centre of the civilized world, of
the most conspicuous thing to be seen there—local
city conveyance by steam—remodeling and transform-
ing a great metropolis, with ancient and confirmed
habits into a new creation. Doing this under diffi-
culties, encountering crooked ways, cutting, and re-24
moving old buildings that have no existence here,
showing to the lowest intelligence that the attainment
was the result of thirty-five years7 experience in the
use of the locomotive in a great city, and, disclosing at
once the origin, the cause, and the means, for rapid
transit. Our experience had been solely in expelling
locomotives frota our city. After twenty years of
effort in that direction, and when it is accomplished,
these wise experts are to bring it back, in a way, ten-
fold more conspicuous and annoying than it had been
before.
With an incomparable and wonderful adaptation for
the identical means used there, and an entire want of
adaptation for anything else, with no problem in ven.
tilation, construction, sewers, or other thing, for a
child ten years old, who can read, to solve, since the
name and conception was brought here; with an
unparalleled traffic already developed waiting for it,
and a cost demonstrated to be within the limits that
made enormous profits assured, we have had this im-
pertinence for eight or ten years of a local and preten-
tious ignorance solving the problems for rapid transit
where none existed, but the public debauchery and
infitness for it.
Only last Spring, a select body of leading citizens,
the twenty-third of its kind, were to create and con-
trol rapid transit. They proceeded by publicly de-
claring that they did not know what it was that they
wrnnted, what it was to be like, nor where it was to I
be located. Not content with this portrayal of capacity
they then proceed to exhibit their profound misunder-25
standing of every fact concerning it, not only abroad
but at home. They asserted that it was a worthless
necessity—a pauper enterprise—and that a sinking
j fund to cover losses to be incurred in introduuing it
i was necessary, and that, capital had refused to en-
! gage in it. There had never been the slightest evi-
dence to sustain any one of these allegations. When
or w7here has any corporation or individual authorized
to introduce steam conveyance into this city, in a way
known by any human being to be practicable, ever
invited or permitted capital to invest in it ? When
and where did capital refuse the engagement? No
one has ever seen or heard of the invitation or of the
refusal. On the contrary, the most worthless of de-
vices have not been paupers. Over two millions of
dollars have been buried in them and for no other
reason than that, the legitimate means for it were in-
accessable, betrayed or stolen, while these expendi-
tures were efforts of the blind and in darkness, to
find the lost.
The Pneumatic, the Arcade, the Improved Arcade,
the Three Tier, the Viaduct, the traveling Side-walk,
the Corrugated Iron, a swarm of Skeletons, only less
numerous than the locusts on our western plains, like
the Greenwich street and the Gilbert elevated, and
like these locusts devouring every green thing in
their way, have each received more money than pri-
vate or public welfare has demanded.
Such is the restless and accessable nature of capi-
tal that, the victims of these parasites are not yet
numbered. The public is now cheered with an assu-26
ranee that to these sinking and sunken funds for rapid
transit, another two millions is to be added.
The Romans had amphitheatres for witnessing the
destruction of strong men by wild beasts. This is
our amphitheatre for seeing the newly fledged finan-
cial athletes devoured by innumerably legged, articu-
lated, and elongated vermin, crawling through our
streets.
Last spring's sinking fund of three millions, to
cover the losses to be incurred in an undertaking
which has for ten years presented greater inducements
for capital to t engage in it, than any other railway
project on this earth, would have been less ridiculous
had not its promoters been confronted with the proof
of its absurdity, which was before them.
This was, that the first underground railway in this
city—the Fourth Avenue Improvement—to be used
for the secondary object of facilitating access to and
from the country, proved by experience to give but
from one-fifth to one-tenth of the profit of city con-
veyance, had for that object, and in advance of its
completion, a rental and income assured which made
the whole capital invested in it the most productive
and profitable railway investment in this country.
The fact was, that many of those engaged in this
nonsense of last spring, were previously engaged in
imposing one-half of the cost of this Fourth avenue
work on the city, in addition to the gift of a right of
way, worth, for railway uses, not less than a million
of dollars per mile. To maintain consistency for
that disgraceful transaction it was thus necessary in27
pretending to promote, that these public spirited citi-
zens should do as they did, insult and degrade rapid
transit, which was the beginning and end of that as-
sociation.
Thus, wherever the city is tested or examined its
moral claims to steam transit are similar to those of
the Five Points or any other degraded spot for the re-
formation it most needs. In this, as in other public
aims, all is prostrated with disease and helpless with-
in. Only external force, the slow but irresistible
march of civilization outside, which is to penetrate,
can save it from ruin and death.