Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

=

[blocks in formation]

cost all the people of this city for all that was done in 1896, including the removal of snow and the renewal of "stock and plant"? The total sum is

Health itself credits a great share of the $3,283,853.90. And how much is that? gain to this department. It is almost exactly three cents per week for each one of us!

46

THE INCREASE OF COST.

An effort has been made to account for the better work done on the streets solely by the larger amount of money expended. But in the matter of cleaning there has been no such increase of cost. In study ing this it is proper to exclude the cost of snow removal," and of the purchase of 'new stock and plant," bought for permanent use and to repair waste due to the work of previous years. The expenditure for all other items, for all really "streetcleaning" accounts, was as follows for five years past:

66

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Furthermore, during this administration the employment of private ash-carts and private sweepers has greatly decreased, as people have found that the department service could be relied on.

However, suppose the work has cost more. It has been well and honestly done, and it has produced the results cited above. I accept cheerfully full responsibility for the outlay, and I should gladly spend still more if it were needed for the good of the people. And, after all, how much did it

* Includes $140,000 secured in judgments against the city for increase in wages.

SOLDIERS OF CLEANLINESS AND HEALTH.

The progress thus far made is satisfactory. An inefficient and ill-equipped working force long held under the heel of the spoilsman has been emancipated, organized, and brought to its best. It now constitutes a brigade three thousand strong, made up of well-trained and disciplined men, the representative soldiers of cleanliness and health-soldiers of the publicself-respecting and life-saving. These men are fighting daily battles with dirt, and are defending the health of the whole people. The trophies of their victories are all about us, in clean pavements, clean feet, uncontaminated air, a look of health on the faces of the people, and streets full of healthy children at play.

This is the outcome of two and a half years of strenuous effort-at first against official opposition and much public criticism. Two and a half years more, with a continuance of the present official favor and universal public approval, should bring our work to its perfection. It should make New York much the cleanest, and should greatly help to make it the healthiest, city in the world. By that time its death rate should be reduced to fifteen per thousand-which would mean for our present population a saving of sixty lives. per day out of the 140 daily lost under the average of 25.78 (1882–94).

I venture to predict a recovery, from half the cost of the whole work. the sale of refuse material, of at least one

Editorial Note.—Colonel Waring is at work upon a book that will deal more at length with this subject and contain the result of his observations and study in foreign cities. The volume will be published in the fall by the Doubleday and McClure Company.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Said England unto Pharaoh, "I must make a man of you
That will stand upon his feet and play the game;
That will Maxim his oppressor as a Christian ought to do."
And she sent old Pharaoh Sergeant Whatisname.
It was not a Duke nor Earl nor yet a Viscount—
It was not a big brass General that came;
But a man in khaki kit who could handle men a bit,
With his bedding labelled Sergeant Whatisname.

Said England unto Pharaoh, "Tho' at present singing small,
You shall hum a proper tune before it ends,"

And she introduced old Pharaoh to the Sergeant once for all,
And left 'em in the desert making friends.

It was not a Crystal Palace nor Cathedral,

It was not a public house of common fame,
But a piece of red-hot sand, with a palm on either hand,
And a little hut for Sergeant Whatisname.

Said England unto Pharaoh, "You've had miracles before,
When Aaron struck your rivers into blood;

But if you watch the Sergeant he can show you something more—
He's a charm for making riflemen from mud.”

It was neither Hindustani, French, nor Coptic;

It was odds and ends and leavings of the same, Translated by a stick (which is really half the trick), And Pharaoh hearked to Sergeant Whatisname.

(There were years that no one talked of: there were times of horrid doubt;

There was faith and hope and whacking and despair;

[graphic][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

While the Sergeant gave the Cautions, and he combed old Pharaoh out, And England didn't look to know nor care.

That is England's awful way o' doing business;

She would serve her God or Gordon just the same; For she thinks her Empire still is the Strand and Holborn Hill,

And she didn't think o' Sergeant Whatisname.)

Said England to the Sergeant, "You can let my people go!
(England used 'em cheap and nasty from the start)
And they entered 'em at Firkeh on a most astonished foe-
But the Sergeant he had hardened Pharaoh's heart
That was broke, along of all the plagues of Egypt,

Three thousand years before the Sergeant came—
And he mended it again in a little more than ten,
So Pharaoh fought like Sergeant Whatisname!

It was wicked bad campaigning (cheap and nasty from the first),
There was heat and dust and coolie work and sun,

There were vipers, flies, and sandstorms, there was cholera and thirst,
But Pharaoh done the best he ever done.

Down the desert, down the railway, down the river,

Like the Israelites from bondage so he came,

'Tween the clouds o' dust and fire to the land of his desire, And his Moses it was Sergeant Whatisname!

We are eating dirt in handfuls for to save our daily bread,
Which we have to buy from those that hate us most,

And we must not raise the money where the Sergeant raised the dead,
And it's wrong and bad and dangerous to boast;

But he did it on the cheap and on the quiet,

And he's not allowed to forward any claim

Though he drilled a black man white, though he made
a mummy fight,

He will still continue Sergeant Whatisname—
Private, Corporal, Colour-Sergeant, and Instructor-

But the everlasting miracle's the same!

Copyright, 1897, by Rudyard Kipling

A MAN FIGHTS BEST IN HIS OWN TOWNSHIP.

BY ROBERT BARR,

Author of "In the Midst of Alarms," "The Mutable Many," etc.

UNDER the hot sun Tom Stover rode which he offered his hand to the new

slowly across the Texas plains towards the collection of shanties which he saw ahead of him, some miles away. He meditated deeply as he rode, for he was on the eve of a momentous enterprise. As he approached the group of buildings they resolved themselves into items; first, a long, low, wooden building that served at once for freight shed, telegraph office, and station house of Chapman's Junction; next to it on the east was a shanty with a stovepipe sticking through the board roof, where Peters, the station agent, lived. On the other side, near the track, were fenced-in enclosures, all whitewashed, with slatted, inclined planes up which the cattle traveled to be wedged side by side in the stock cars of the trains going East.

Tom tied his horse to the topmost rail of the whitewashed enclosure, and walked up the steps to the broad platform that surrounded the station building.

The station was on the south side of the straight track, the two converging steel rails of which, like lines without a turning drawn on the level plain of Texas, disappeared into the eastern horizon on the one hand and into the western horizon on the other. The overhanging eave of the northern side of the building threw a grateful shade upon the broad platform, and in that shade, upon a chair tilted back against the side of the house, his heels on the lower rungs of the chair, his back resting against the wall, sat a man with his broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes, apparently sound asleep. His slumber was guarded by the outstretched arms of the red signal boards: one to the east and one to the west of him, up and down the iron lines.

"Hallo, Peters!" shouted Stover. "You are a hard-worked laboring man."

Peters slowly shoved the brim of his slouched hat back from his brow and stared up at the interloper.

"Hallo, Tom!" was all he said; then he tilted his chair down on its four legs again, rose, and stretched himself, after

comer.

"Say, Peters, you haven't another chair about the place, have you? I want to sit down and have a talk with you."

66

"No," replied Peters. There isn't another chair within ten miles, I guess, but there's a box in the telegraph office that'll do just as well; so you sit down in my chair and fire away. I've got something a mighty sight more practical than chairs, and that is a bottle of good Kentucky.'

"Now, you're shouting," rejoined Tom with undisguised glee. "Some people might think it a little too hot for drinking whisky, but I can stand it if you can."

"Oh," said the station master, in a tone of authority, "that's one thing I like about whisky, it suits any climate.

Saying which, he dragged a square box out of the telegraph office and sat down upon it, after handing the bottle over to Tom, who took a pull, wiped the mouth of the bottle on his coat sleeve, and passed it solemnly back to the station master, who, echoing his sentiment, "Here's to you,' turned the bottom of the flask toward the clear Texan sky. "Well,” said Peters, setting the bottle down an equal distance between them, "I'm mighty glad you came in. I was getting a bit lonesome."

[ocr errors]

"I should think," said Tom, “that seeing you are station master and telegraph operator and switch tender and freight shover, all in one, you would have enough to do to keep you awake at least.

"You

"Well, I haven't," said Peters. see, with about one train in twenty-four hours, for the night express doesn't count, there isn't much excitement around the junction; in fact, Chapman's Junction isn't even a junction, because the line they surveyed from here was never put through, on account of the panic coming on. And then the city those speculators staked out -well, there's some of the stakes left, and that's about all. No there isn't much excitement round here.'

"That's so," admitted Tom; "and for

« AnteriorContinuar »