Steam on Atlantic Street
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STEAM ON ATLANTIC STREET.
Legislative Bodies and Public Corporations have one point of resemblance, and a great many antipathies. They are alike in the determination to extort as much as they can from the public, and in their occasional disregard of the comfort and interests of the community; but nevertheless each regards the other as its natural enemy. The corporate body is forever setting the legislative body and its resolves at defiance; while the latter is perpetually making ruinous and preposterous demands upon the former.
The attacks made every now and then in our Board of Aldermen on the Long Island Railroad Company relative to steam on Atlantic street, furnish an instance of this. Here we have locomotives passing through a not overcrowded or populous avenue of the city, at a carefully regulated pace, and with a signal man in front to prevent accident and warn pedestrians of the approach of the train. The width of the avenue affords ample passage room for vehicles; and no more danger occurs, nor accidents result, from travel on that street, than any other. Nevertheless the Aldermen of the 3d ward, in which the street is situate, whenever an election approaches, feel conscientiously impelled to make a demonstration against the use of steam thereon.
If we thought the Common Council intended anything more than vaporing on the subject, we would take the trouble to recapitulate at length our reasons for deprecating these vexatious assaults on an institution the presence of which is purely a benefit to the city. But we need only mention that the subject is again referred to a Committee “for report,” to show that the Common Council do not intend anything beyond throwing a sop to quiet the barking of the residents on the street, whose property has been made valuable by the presence of the railroad, and who now wish to kick away the ladder by which they have risen.
It is well that our representatives in the Common Council should cherish a respect for the wishes of their constituents, but this feeling, laudable as it is, may be carried to excess, and the interests of the city may be permanently injured, by too great a subservience to momentary popular clamor. If the Common Council are always to consult the wishes of the people in the sense in which they did last evening, we may as well call a mass meeting weekly to conduct the city affairs. Not only this Atlantic street matter, but the firemen’s squabbles which occupied two thirds of the meeting, were uncalled for in the regular order of business. These subjects were introduced solely to make capital for the ensuing election; and they were discussed, not with an eye to the general good, but solely with reference to the wishes of the voters concerned.