Even the Pan-Americans protest that the streets of New York are dirty.
It is very comical, but it is true, that all our marvellous prosperity,
our genius of invention, our quickness of wit, and profusion of
resource; all our patriotism and pride, our great traditions of liberty
and heroism, our free soil, free speech, and free press; and all the
force and intelligence of our free government--cannot keep the streets
of New York clean. Miss Edwards, the most courteous and friendly of
visitors, is compelled to say: "I found on all sides nothing but holes
of mud, gutters, and dirt piles, an endless rush and a block of street
traffic. There are so many dangers and the state of the highways is such
as to make it incomprehensible to English people that enterprising
Americans would long endure it."
Miss Edwards is familiar with the dirt of Egypt, which is universal and
intolerable, but even that does not mollify or alleviate the awful
impression of dirty New York. Then a Pan-American, perhaps from Bogota,
from Callao, from Lima, from Santiago, from Buenos Ayres, from Rio de
Janeiro, from Guayaquil--cities in which we had not supposed impeccable
highways to be--politely flagellates us, and ignominiously discrowns
Broadway. "It was impossible not to notice the deplorable condition of
the streets. Our carriages plunged terribly into the holes which at
frequent intervals were met with, and the wheels at every turn sent
whirls of mud, which compelled the passers-by to keep at a respectful
distance."
We may indeed reply that this is the fling of a Pan-American. And who,
forsooth, is a Pan-American? Is he the superior--nay, does he presume to
be the peer--of a North American? Are we not notoriously the greatest
nation in the world? Does not our population reduplicate incalculably?
Have we not carried civilization from sea to sea? Have we not the
largest lakes, the longest rivers, the broadest prairies, the greatest
cataract, in the world? And shall the minions of monarchies and the
pigmies of tuppenny temporary republics snap their ridiculous fingers at
us, and presume to say that the streets of New York are dirty? The idea
is preposterous. It is contemptible. Moreover, it is insulting, and the
streets of New York are--
It is plain sailing--or slipping, as chance may determine whether we go
in the water or the mud--so far, but it is a little difficult to end
that sentence in the same key. Let us try another, possibly a little
less perfervid. The population of the United States is some sixty
millions. Taken altogether they form undoubtedly the most intelligent
community, with the highest average well-being, in the world. They are
self-governing down to aldermen and coroners. More than in any country
at any time in history, the will of the majority of the adult male
population determines the government. The city of New York is one of the
three or four chief cities of the world. It is confessedly the
metropolis of this blessed and absolutely self-governing country, and
the streets of New York can't be kept clean.
Is there any possible method of describing the unquestionable greatness
and undoubted glory of the country, its resplendent history and its
miraculous achievements, in an ascending and cumulative series of
epithets and epigrams which shall end truthfully in the resounding
allegation, "and the streets of New York are kept clean"? Indeed, is not
this little joker worse than that of the thimble? Does he not grin at us
from every pile of mud, and laugh out of every hole, and snicker and
sneer on every side of the unremoved and apparently irremovable dirt and
disorder?
It is absurd, as the boys say, to "blame" this situation upon somebody
else--some street commissioner, or scavenger, or other officer, or
employé. Nobody is ever guilty of misrule in this country but the
rulers, and the rulers are the people. The citizens of New York elect
the city officers who are to do the city work which the citizens pay
for. They give some of those officers authority to dismiss others who
are derelict in their duty, and the governor can deal with the chief
officers who do not obey the command of the people. If the taxes are
outrageously heavy, if the money is squandered, if the streets are dirty
and city government a farce, nobody is to blame but the citizens. They
have as good a government as they choose, and the kind of government
they desire.
Then they desire dirty streets? Certainly. That is to say, they don't
desire clean streets strongly enough to secure them. Then popular
government has failed in cities? Rather there are some things in cities
in which popular government is not especially interested. If there are
two hundred and fifty thousand voters in the city of New York, how many
of them really care enough for clean streets and proper municipal
administration to spend time and trouble to secure them?
Consider the lilies of the field--that is to say, look at the aldermen
and the municipal officers, the representatives in the State
Legislature and in Congress that the city of New York elects. Do they
represent what we call its intelligence and character? Yet undeniably
they are representatives of the majority of the voters, and if that
majority be corrupt or stupid, it is either because there are more
knaves and fools than intelligent and honest citizens among the voters,
or because such citizens do not care to take the trouble to vote and to
be represented; in which case the Aldermen and Co. that we see are,
morally speaking, true representatives of the city. The minions of
monarchies and the pigmies of tuppenny temporary republics, as they bump
and wallow and flounder, bespattered and contemptuous, through the
streets of New York, may truly say that they are such streets as the
citizens desire, because if the people desired clean streets, unless
popular government be a failure, they would have them. If the mayor did
not appoint officers who would clean the streets, they would require the
governor to deal with the mayor.
Does it necessarily follow, because popular government is, upon the
whole, the best government, that the governing people desire all good
things that government can supply? Liberty they want, and equality, and
fair play; but do they, because they are self-governing, desire
beautiful buildings and clean streets? Might not a good-natured despot
of fine taste and sanitary enlightenment and a sense of order give his
dominions nobler public works and a better municipal administration than
a republic which is neither tuppenny nor temporary, but in which there
is easy and indolent indifference to public beauty and public order?
"Above all," said the English bishop to the young catechumen, "don't
mistake zeal for knowledge." Above all, says the good genius of America,
don't confound national bumptiousness with patriotism.