65o 
SEPT. 5 
AN INCIDENT OF NEW YORK LIFE. 
Probably most of the people in this coun 
try have by this time read something about 
the fearful fire and disaster in this city 
last week. Perhaps a few words from one 
who was within gunshot of the building 
when it fell may be of interest. The scene 
of the fire is almost within sight of The 
Rural office; but for one corner of the big 
post office which juts out near Broadway 
one could have looked out from the office 
directly upon the fire. The big markets 
are about the same distance away in an¬ 
other direction. I happened to be in the 
city that day and when, shortly after 12 
o’clock, a great column of thick smoke 
belched up from Park Place we merely re¬ 
marked—“ There’s another fire 1 ” Fires 
are so frequent in New York that only boys 
and young men or excitable old men with 
little to do run very fast to look at them. 
It was not long before rumors of a terrible 
loss of life began to fly about and then 
people ran to see the place. I can’t under¬ 
stand what impulse prompts men to run 
and look on scenes of death and horror. 
They can be of no use, for the police keep 
the crowd away, yet there they stand for 
hours—just looking. 
It was a terrible sight—a great heap of 
ruins with flames licking every part of it 
and dense blinding smoke pouring up as 
thick as the smoke from a straw stack. 
There was nothing horrible about that— 
the horror came in the thought that under¬ 
neath that flaming and smoking pile were 
over 100 people with no possible chance for 
escape 1 The firemen were drenching the 
ruins with water, but every one knew that 
it would be hours before any living man 
would dare to face that fierce heat and 
tear away the bricks and rubbish. What 
then could they hope to find down under 
that red hot mass ? That is what flashed 
through the minds of the silent crowd- 
many of whom had relatives that were last 
seen inside the building. No need for 
words from such a crowd. The deep si¬ 
lence that fell over them was more pa¬ 
thetic and affecting than the screams of 
madmen would have been. 
The building that fell was six stories 
high, and contained four stores on the 
ground floor. One of these was a cheap 
restaurant where workingmen and others 
ate their dinners. On the upper floors was 
a lithograph company’s office where heavy 
printing presses ran constantly. 
In other parts of the building were a 
book bindery, drug store and other busi¬ 
ness concerns. All seemed secure. It was 
shortly after 12 o’clock. The workers were 
getting ready for their Saturday half-holi¬ 
day. The restaurant was crowded with 
men eating dinner. The cooks at the back 
of the room were busy over the stoves. One 
waiter stood in front drawing a glass of 
milk from a can. In the book bindery up¬ 
stairs the girls were chatting at their lunch, 
laughing merrily with one who was to be 
married next week and had come to bid 
her mates good bye. The presses were run¬ 
ning up-stairs. Men and boys leaned from 
every window on the street. A truckman 
sat on his wagon in front of the drug store 
eating his dinner from a tin pail, while his 
horse munched oats from a feed bag. A 
group of little children played some game 
beside the wagon. All was well. Suddenly 
the waiter at the milk can heard a fearful 
noise—it was an explosion or some fearful 
crack—he could not tell which. The whole 
building shook ; the very earth seemed to 
give way. He rushed across the street with 
the glass in his hand. As he reached the 
opposite sidewalk, bricks struck him in the 
back and arm with a force that drove him 
headlong into a doorway. Looking back 
over his shoulder a fearful sight met his 
eyes. The apparently substantial building 
he had seen before was now a tottering 
ruin. The whole front wall trembled for 
an instant and then pitched forward into 
the street—down upon the truckman, the 
horse and the little children with a crash 
that chilled the heart. For an instant he 
saw the men in the restaurant, and then 
the upper floor gave way. Down it came 
forced by over 80 tons’ weight of iron 
presses. Floor after floor gave way beneath 
it; the whole five crushed at last with al¬ 
most inconceivable force upon the restau¬ 
rant and other stores. There was only a 
shapeless mass of ruins heaped between 
three high brick walls 1 Almost before the 
dust begun to settle a tongue of flames 
shot up by one of the big presses at the top 
of the ruin. Another a ad another fol¬ 
lowed. Before human thought could com¬ 
prehend the awful situation the space 
inside the three walls was a mass of 
fire. When the great Pemberton mill fell 
years ago the ruins were set on fire br a 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
man who carelessly dropped his lantern. 
No such fearful carelessness occurred here. 
Many of the gas lights were burning when 
the building fell. Dozens of pipes were 
broken off and the whole ruins were charged 
with gas. At the lightest spark it flashed 
into a fierce flame and burned and roared 
until the space inside the three brick walls 
was like an old brick oven. And to think 
that somewhere under these printing 
presses 125 people were lying 1 
It is a merciful thing that such accidents 
are rare. Once in a lifetime is often enough 
for the ordinary person to come face to 
face with such an appalling fact. We can¬ 
not expect policemen, firemen or soldiers 
to be strong enough to handle such scenes 
without shaking nerves. And yet there 
were so-called men in New York black¬ 
hearted and base enough to take advantage 
of this terrible scene to rob the bodies of 
the dead and ply their horrible trades in 
the heart-stricken crowds who watched the 
overhauling of that ruin. These men were 
foreigners—scamps of the lowest type who 
never should have been permitted to set 
foot on American soil. It was a sad and 
horrible job that digging over those ruins. 
Painfully slow and yet all too fast to the 
wives, mothers, sisters, sons and sweet¬ 
hearts who stood in the rain waiting f r 
a chance to identify the dead. We can 
leave such scenes to imagination, thankful 
that they are so rare that when they do oc¬ 
cur the whole, great, busy nation stops to 
sympathize with those who received the 
cruel blow. 
But who is responsible for all this horror 
and misery ? Have the poor and the help¬ 
less no redress ? Shall men in authority be 
permitted to pass such things with a mere 
shrug of the shoulder P There was too 
much weight in that building. It was 
crowded beyond its capacity and it fell. It 
is probable that there are thousands more 
like it in this city. Some day, they too will 
go down—may they be empty of human 
life when they fall I The trouble Is that 
men are cursed with an insane aeslre to 
grind money out of the poor or the help¬ 
less. There are too many who go just as 
far as the law will let them. The landlord 
jews the tenant out of every cent he will 
stand. In many cases the tenant Is himself 
forced to make the few repairs that are 
made and the cost of them comes out of 
his helpers. There are too many men who, 
in order to make an extra dollar, will take 
risks that may mean loss of health or even 
life to helpless ones under them. In a 
crowded city like New York the poor must 
take the accommodations the rich may give 
them and stand their chances. It is true 
that we have laws to protect the poor in 
such cases, but what are laws good for un¬ 
less strong public sentiment pushes be¬ 
hind them ? There is supposed to be a de¬ 
partment of government in New York city 
charged with the special business of in¬ 
specting buildings and condemning those 
that are unsafe. Why was not this build¬ 
ing inspected T This playing with chances 
of human life has gone too far. The longer 
I live the more fully do I realize that what 
the poor need is not so much new laws as 
the strict enforcement of good old ones. 
JERSEYMAN. 
A LISTENER’S NOTES. 
Some Things that are Talked About. 
How Will They Pay ?—It seems certain 
now that Europe will be forced to buy mil¬ 
lions of dollars’ worth of our bread stuffs 
in excess of former years. It is also prob¬ 
able that our foreign markets for meats 
and dairy products will be greatly ex¬ 
tended. Europe will have to pay for all 
this; what sort of “money” will she use 
to pay the debt ? The big balance may 
come back to this country in three forms— 
coin or its bullion equivalent, manufact¬ 
ured goods, or a return of American rail¬ 
road and other securities that are now 
held abroad. Europe will probably send 
us gold only as a last resort. Gold is 
needed abroad more than here, and people 
will hang on to it as long as possible. 
Probably rather than pay heavily in gold 
European bankers would prefer to send 
American stocks and bonds and place them 
on sale in New York, using the money ob¬ 
tained for them to pay trade balances. It 
is evident that many American brokers ex¬ 
pect this and look for a season of active 
speculation as the result of it. This would 
result in transferring much of the Amer¬ 
ican stocks now held abroad to American 
hands while still retaining the money here. 
As regards manufactured goods, these 
could only get over the McKinley tariff by 
cheapening the cost of manufacture so that 
the duty would still leave a profit. They 
could not compete with American made 
goods on better terms than at present, un¬ 
less foreign governments should conclude 
that it would be cheaper to pay their debts 
to America in manufactures than in gold 
or securities. In that case they might 
make a temporary system of bounties for 
exported manufactured goods, that would 
enable manufacturers to flood this country. 
Of course the people of these foreign coun¬ 
tries would ultimately be called upon to 
pay these bounties in increased taxes, but 
it might be assumed that even this would 
be cheaper for the nation, than to buy gold 
for debt payment. 
Legality of a Shave. —A curious law 
case is threatened over in Connecticut. A 
man went into the only barber shop of the 
town to be shaved. While In the chair he 
got into a political argument with the bar¬ 
ber which waxed so hot that the latter re¬ 
fused to finish his shaving. He shaved one 
half the face and left a week’s growth of 
beard growing on the other half. The 
victim was made the sport of the town. 
He consulted a lawyer and was informed 
that he might sue the barber for breach of 
contract! The learned man states that 
when the barber lathered his customer’s 
face he entered upon a definite contract to 
shave him and if he willfully refused to 
finish the contract, therefore submitting 
the customer to trouble and humiliation, 
he is liable for damages. Another case in 
which a barber scraped acquaintance with 
a court occurred in this city a few weeks 
ago. A negro entered an Italian barber 
shop and took a seat in the chair. The 
proprietor shaved him. When he came to 
pay he was charged 20 cents more than the 
usual price—the proprietor claiming it was 
worth that much extra to “ shave a nigger. ” 
The negro went to law about it, with the 
result that the barber was arrested and 
sent to prison in default of paying his fine. 
“Sectional Prejudice.” —A friend 
sends us a local Mississippi paper giving 
an account of a picnic at which speeches 
were made and a debate held. The subject 
for debate was, “ Resolved, that sectional 
prejudice should be removed.” The judges 
thought the negative speakers had the bet¬ 
ter argument. Their chief argument seemed 
to be that wbat was vaguely termed “ sec¬ 
tional prejudice” held the Southern peo¬ 
ple true to their old traditions of simple, 
economical government and the sacred 
rights of the States. We would like to 
have heard that debate. In view of the bet¬ 
ter feeling everywhere between Northern 
and Southern men who are brought into 
business relations, there must have been a 
sad and pathetic humor about these argu¬ 
ments ! 
(Continued on next page.) 
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