The Long Islanders and the Water Works

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THE LONG ISLANDERS AND THE WATERWORKS.

Our contemporary of the Flushing Journal¹ is grievously afflicted with the fear that the construction of the water works for this city will inflict irreparable injury on the rest of Long Island, and his wounded feelings are still further lacerated by the flippancy which he charges us with in replying to his former expostulations on the subject. We beg to apologise for having unwittingly aggravated the discontent which our friend experiences; had we thought he was complaining in earnest we would have written in a different strain.

Taking up the Journal’s lamentations seriatim, we fail to discover in them any serious cause for disquietude on the part of the inhabitants of the Island. The first allegation is that there are some fifteen paupers in the Queens County poor house who have been employed on the works. But Queens County tradesmen have reaped the benefit of a demand for the necessaries of life on the part of the laborers, and the county can afford, therefore, to grant temporary sustenance to a few of them who may be forced by sickness or other causes, to apply for public charity. New York and Brooklyn bear very heavy taxation for the support of paupers from Europe, yet thrive meanwhile; for there are a dozen valuable self-sustaining members of society added to them for every one who becomes a burden on the public funds.

The next annoyance specified by the Journal as accruing from the Water Works is that several mills will lose their supply of water, and many small farmers will have their homesteads cut up by the canal passing through them. But the Constitution of the State, which provides that no private property shall be taken or injured for public purposes without compensation, is a guaranty that no injustice can be done in these respects; and if the Journal had taken the pains to post itself on the subject, it would have learned that the contractors have been most liberal in their compensatory arrangements with all the parties whose rights they invade or whose property they injure or divert, in the construction of the works.

The Journal further asserts that the diversion of this streams “from the office which Nature has assigned to them” will damage the navigation of the creeks and the oyster interest. We do not believe that this anticipation is well founded. The quantity of water required to supply this city, large as it may seem, is but a drop in the bucket to the whole amount which flows off the Island into the sea. In fact a superfluity of water along the route is the greatest obstacle that the contractors have had to overcome. Hence the subtraction of the amount necessary for the supply of Brooklyn will not be likely to diminish the outflowing flowing volume of water to anything like the extent apprehended by the Journal.

The Journal winds up its tirade against Brooklyn by charging upon this city at large the attempt to drive the locomotives of the Long Island Railroad from Atlantic street. Here also it does us an injustice. Ourselves and our cotemporaries in Brooklyn have all defended the rights of the Company, and have supported, on the ground of public policy as well as of corporate privilege, the continuance of the use of the locomotives in Atlantic street. The municipal authorities, too, have rejected the unreasonable and factious demands of the hostile property owners on the street; and the latter have appealed to the Courts, where we hope they will ge their quietus.

Before quitting the subject, we would commend to the attention of the Journal the old fable of the belly and members. Brooklyn is the emporium of Long Island products, and its prosperity must reflect benefits on the rest of the Island. The small villages of the interior—Flushing, Jamaica, &c.,—should rejoice in the anticipation of the advantages which we shall derive from the Water Works, instead of swelling with impotent envy at every fresh evidence of our progress and development.

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