Steam on Atlantic Street

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Steam on Atlantic Street

STEAM CARS IN CITIES.—Seventy-two trains of cars arrive and depart daily from the immense depot of the New York Central Road at Rochester. Thirty-seven trains leave for the East, West and Lake, and thirty-five trains arrive from those points. These are all the trains of the New York Central Road, and do not include one or two trains each way daily between Rochester and Corning. At Syracuse, where the Oswego and Pinghampton Roads unite with the Central, a still greater number of trains arrive and depart. The Central Road passes directly through the city, and with the changing of engines, the wood and gravel trains, and other service of the road, about two hundred passages of locomotives across the main street of the city are made in 24 hours. At certain hours trains are passing almost constantly; the track is entirely open, and no warning is given, except by flag men and the bells of the engines; the streets through which the trains run are thickly built up with dwelling houses, and children play about the track without restraint; yet the killing or wounding of any person in Syracuse by reason of the trains, or even the frightening of horses by the monster locomotive is almost unheard of. It is all a matter of use. The people are accustomed to the engines, and keep out of their way; the horses are acquainted with their iron brothers, and scarcely move a muscle at their shrillest whistle; and so the miraculous river of travel flows safely and swiftly through the very centre of the town, irrigating its hotels and refectories, and leaving its rich deposit of silver and gold for the shrewd and enterprising landlords and traders of the City of Conventions.—[Tribune.

In the course of a week or two, the Common Council will be called on to determine whether the interests of the city demand from it a vigorous crusade against the use of steam on Atlantic street or not. There are two reports now before the Board; that made by Alderman Kalbfleisch,¹ on the part of the majority of the Railroad Com., pronouncing locomotives in public streets a nuisance in the abstract, but in this case regarding them as a necessary evil; and that of Alderman Pierson,² the minority, calling for instant measures to free the street from the “incubus.”

We trust that the minority report will be promptly rejected and that the Com. Council will not plunge into any such quixotic measures as its president suggests. We do not believe either that it can or should plunge the city into a contest at law with the Long Island railroad company—for this is in short what the Atlantic street people invite us to. Doubtless it may be more convenient to the persons residing on the street that they should have a line of city horse-cars there instead of locomotives; but the interest of the city at large points in the contrary direction. The railroad has contributed to populate the island, and to build up even Atlantic street itself. It needs no argument to prove that to abolish the use of steam would be to diminish traveling facilities on the road, and to avert benefits which every such line must confer on the locality at its terminus. Nor is this all: other public companies who might have been disposed to invest their money here will pause when they observe our municipal authorities acting harshly towards this company, and disposed even to stretch a point to annoy them. One of the best things that can happen to a growing city like Brooklyn is to have her affairs administered in a liberal and even indulgent spirit toward those who invest their capital and energies in building up her trade, and increasing her commercial importance. No greater misfortune can befall us than to have manufacturers snubbed and “monopolies” denounced and annoyed in every conceivable manner, at the whim and beck of every one who may deem himself injured by them.

We have too much of this already. Half the speeches in the Common Council consist of vaporing tirades against the Gas Companies, the City R.R. Company, the Long Island R.R. Company, and so forth. Some men clamor to have distilleries excluded from the city for fear of fires; others to have manure wharfs and works proscribed by the Board of Health, because the smell comes “between the wind and their nobility,” and so forth. It should be the policy of the Common Council, the Board of Health, and every one entrusted with authority in the city, to encourage and foster all sorts and kinds of enterprises which will give employment to the working men of the city, and add to its business or its material wealth. We regret to say that this has not been the policy pursued hitherto. We have driven one company (the Flushing Railroad Co.) already beyond our limits, and travel ebbs and flows between New York and Flushing as if Brooklyn did not exist. Let us be careful how we drive the Long Island Company out of the city, too, and not only lose the benefit accruing from the business it brings us, but gain the reputation of being governed by a set of short-sighted, small-potatoe people, who wish Brooklyn to be a fashionable suburb and dormitory for New York, and would legislate out of the city a dozen firms or companies doing a business of hundreds of thousands of dollars, rather than that the fashionable inmates of a four-story boarding house should have their aristocratic eyes affronted by the horrid sight of a “greasy mechanic,” or their delicate nostrils insulted by the smell arising from chemical, brimstone, phosphate of lime, paint, and other factories, as well as distilleries, iron foundries, and other vulgar but most useful establishments.

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