PUBLIC-SPIRITED CITIZEN 235 
on ‘Twenty-First street was originally in the suburbs, and his 
pasturing of a cow in Madison Square indicates the rural 
conditions there. As the city extended its streets uptown and 
absorbed the villages that had developed on Manhattan 
Island, there was need for coordinated municipal planning. 
The local politicians of the period, who were particularly 
dishonest, seemed incapable of supplying such leadership. 
New York was just freeing itself of the rule of Boss Tweed; 
this notorious politician was convicted of fraud in the autumn 
of 1874 and sentenced to twelve years in prison; he died in 
Ludlow Street jail in 1878. 
Slums had developed in the downtown sections of the city 
because the people who worked there had no dependable 
means of transportation that would enable them to live away 
from their work. The dreadful epidemics of small pox, yel- 
low fever, and cholera that periodically ravaged the congested 
sections demonstrated the need for the rapidly-growing city 
to spread northward, since, being an island, it could not grow 
in any other direction. ‘The population was now over a mil- 
lion and rising rapidly. 
The uptown stretches of Manhattan that had been dotted 
by farms, villages, and scattered taverns and stores—many of 
them disreputable and disgraceful—were altering into city 
squares. Shantytowns and squatters’ settlements had occu- 
pied some of the most desirable locations, especially in and 
around Central Park. In the ill-kept streets were pigs, goats, 
and piles of rubbish. A unifying system of development was 
needed. 
New York’s requirements for rapid transit then, as now, 
were perennially ahead of fulfillment. Delays have been so 
customary in supplying transportation that by the time a new 
system is built, there is need of additional service. Traffic 
jams characterized New York’s growth since the Erie canal 
gave the impetus for the city to excel its rivals along the At- 
lantic seaboard. ‘To be a New Yorker meant to be elbowed 
