Chapter 35

[Picture: A FIRE IN NEW YORK.]

The life of a fireman is very arduous and dangerous, but the applicants for vacancies in the department are numerous. The men are often called upon not only to face great personal danger, but they are also subjected to a severe physical strain from the loss of rest, and fatigue. Sometimes they will be called out and worked hard every night in the week, and all the while they are required to be as prompt and active as though they had never lost a night's rest. They are constantly performing deeds of heroism, which pass unnoticed in the bustle and whirl of the busy life around them, but which are treasured up in the grateful heart of some mother, wife, or parent, whose loved ones owe their lives to the fireman's gallantry.

During the recent visit to New York of the Prince Alexis of Russia, a pleasing instance of the efficiency of the department was given. The Prince had just reviewed a detachment of the department, and had returned to his hotel (the Clarendon), in Fourth avenue, just out of Union Square. One of the Fire Commissioners proposed to him to test the efficiency of the force he had just inspected, and accompanied him to the alarm box at the corner of Fourth avenue and Seventeenth street, about half a block from the hotel. The box being opened, the Prince gave the signal, and immediately returned to his hotel. Before he had reached the balcony, the sharp clatter of wheels was heard in the distance, and in a few seconds several steamers clashed up, "breathing fire and smoke," followed by a hook and ladder detachment and the Insurance Patrol. Within three minutes after the alarm had been sounded, two streams were thrown on the Everett House, and within five minutes ladders were raised to the hotel windows, and the men were on the roofs of the adjoining buildings.

Thanks to the model department, New York feels a security from fires unknown until now. The hopes of the friends of the new system have been more than realized. The fire statistics speak more eloquently than words could, and they show a steady decrease of the loss by fire. In 1866, there were 796 fires, involving a loss of $6,428,000; in 1867, the number of fires was 873, and the loss $5,711,000; in 1868, the fires were 740 in number, and the loss was $4,342,371; and in 1869 there were 850 fires, with a loss of $2,626,393. In the last mentioned year, only 43 out of the 850 fires were communicated to the adjoining buildings, a fact which speaks volumes for the exertions of the department.

The Headquarters of the department are located at 127 Mercer street, in a handsome building known as Fireman's Hall. Here are the offices of the Commissioners, the Chief Engineer, Secretary, Medical officer, Telegraph Bureau, Bureau of Combustible materials, and Fireman's Lyceum. The Lyceum contains a library of over 4000 volumes, and a collection of engravings, documents, and relics relating to the old Fire Department. All fines exacted of firemen, and those imposed on citizens for violating the ordinances relating to hatchways and kerosene lamps, are paid into the treasury of the "Fire Department Relief Fund," for the maintenance of the widows and orphans of firemen.

XXXI. THE BUSINESS OF NEW YORK.

New York is the commercial metropolis of the Union. Its local trade is immense, but its foreign trade and its trade with the rest of the country are much greater. The port is the American terminus of nearly all the steamship lines plying between the United States and foreign countries. About two-thirds of all the imports of the United States arrive in New York, and about forty per cent. of all the exports of the country are shipped from the same point. In 1870, the total imports amounted to $315,200,022. The Customs duties on these amounted to $135,310,995. The imports are given at their foreign cost in gold, and freight and duty are not included in this estimate. The exports for the same year (including $58,191,475 in specie) were worth $254,137,208. The total of imports and exports for that year was $569,337,230, the value of the foreign trade of New York.

The domestic trade is also immense. During the year 1864 some of the receipts of the port were as follows:

Barrels of wheat flour 3,967,717 Bushels of wheat 13,453,135 " oats 12,952,238 " corn 7,164,895 Packages of pork 332,454 " beef 209,664 " cut meats 268,417 " butter 551,153 " cheese 756,872 Tierces and barrels of lard 186,000 Kegs of lard 16,104 Barrels of whiskey 289,481 " petroleum 775,587

New York has many advantages over its rivals. Merchants find a better and a more extensive and varied market, and as they like to combine pleasure with business, find more attractions here than elsewhere. New York is emphatically a great city, and it is entirely free from provincialisms of any kind. The narrow notions of smaller places are quickly replaced here with metropolitan and cosmopolitan ideas, tastes and habits. Moreover, the city is the chief centre of wealth, of art, of talent, and of luxury. These things are too firmly secured to be taken away, and strangers must come here to enjoy them. Merchants from other States and cities like the liberal and enterprising spirit which characterizes the dealings of the New York merchants. They can buy here on better terms than elsewhere, and their relations with the merchants of this city are generally satisfactory and pleasant. Besides this, they find their visits here of real benefit to them in their own callings. The energy, or to use an American term, "the push" of New York exhilarates them, and shows them how easily difficulties, which in less enterprising places seem insurmountable, may be overcome. They go back home braced up to their work, and filled with new and larger ideas.

Between ten and fifteen millions of strangers annually visit New York for business and pleasure. All spend large sums of money during their stay, and a very large part of this finds its way into the pockets of the retail dealers of the city. The hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, livery stables, and places of amusement reap large profits from these visitors. Indeed, the whole city is benefited to a very great extent by them, and it thus enjoys a decided advantage over all its rivals.

Everything here gives way to business. The changes in the city are, perhaps, more strictly due to this than to the increase of the population. It is a common saying that "business is rapidly coming up town." Private neighborhoods disappear every year, and long lines of substantial and elegant warehouses take the places of the comfortable mansions of other days. The lower part of the city is taken up almost exclusively by wholesale and commission houses, and manufactories. The retail men and small dealers are being constantly forced higher up town. A few years ago the section of the city lying between Fourth and Twenty-third streets was almost exclusively a private quarter. Now it is being rapidly invaded by business houses. Broadway has scarcely a residence below the Park. The lower part of Fifth avenue is being swiftly converted into a region of stores and hotels, and residents are being steadily driven out of Washington and Union Squares. Even Madison Square is beginning to feel the change. But a few years ago it was regarded as the highest point that New York would ever reach in its upward growth.

Enterprise, talent, and energy are indispensable to any one who wishes to succeed in business in New York. Fortunes can he made legitimately here quicker than in many other places, but the worker must have patience. Fortune comes slowly everywhere if honestly sought. There is also another quality indispensable to a genuine success. It is honesty and integrity. Sharp practices abound in the city, but those who use them find their road a hard one. No man can acquire a good and steady credit--which credit is of more service to him here than in almost any other place in the world--without establishing a reputation for rigid integrity. The merchants of the city are keen judges of character, and they have no patience with sharpers. They will deal with them only on a strictly cash basis.

The city abounds in instances of the success which has attended honest, patient, and intelligent efforts. John Jacob Astor was a poor butcher's son. Cornelius Vanderbilt was a boatman. Daniel Drew was a drover. The Harpers and Appletons were printers' apprentices. A. T. Stewart was an humble, struggling shopkeeper. A well-known financier began by blacking a pair of boots. Opportunities as good as these men ever had are occurring every day. Those who are competent to seize them may do so, and rise to fortune and position.

Many of the colossal fortunes of the city have been created by the rise in the value of real estate. The rapid growth of the city during the past twelve years has greatly increased the value of property in the upper sections. Many persons who but a few years ago were owners of tracts which were simply burdensome by reason of the numerous and heavy assessments upon them, and for which no purchasers could be found, have become very wealthy by the rapid increase in the value of their property. Many persons owning property of this kind sold at a heavy advance during the real estate speculations that succeeded the war. Others leased their lands to parties wishing to build on them. Others still hold on for further improvement. The Astors, A. T. Stewart, Vanderbilt and others have made a large share of their money by their investments in real estate.

A farm near the Central Park, which could not find a purchaser in 1862, when it was offered at a few thousand dollars, sold in 1868 in building lots for almost as many millions.

In 1860 a gentleman purchased a handsome house in a fashionable neighborhood. It was a corner house and fronted on Fifth avenue. He paid $50,000 for it, and spent $25,000 more in fitting up and furnishing it. His friends shook their heads at his extravagance. Since then he has resided in the house, and each year his property has increased in value. In 1869 he was offered nearly $300,000 dollars for the house and furniture, but refused to sell at this price, believing that he would be able in a few years to command a still larger sum.

XXXII. THE SABBATH IN NEW YORK.

On Sunday morning New York puts on its holiday dress. The stores are closed, the streets have a deserted aspect, for the crowds of vehicles, animals and human beings that fill them on other days are absent. There are no signs of trade anywhere except in the Bowery and Chatham street. The city has an appearance of cleanliness and quietness pleasant to behold. The wharves are hushed and still, and the river and bay lie calm and bright in the light of the Sabbath sun. One misses the stages from Broadway, and a stranger at once credits the coachmen with a greater regard for the day than their brothers of the street cars. The fact is, however, that Jehu of the stagecoach rests on the Sabbath because his business would be unprofitable on that day. The people who patronize him in the week have no use for him on Sunday. The horse-cars make their trips as in the week. They are a necessity in so large a city. The distances one is compelled to pass over here, even on Sunday, are too great to be traversed on foot.

Towards ten o'clock the streets begin to fill up with churchgoers. The cars are crowded, and handsome carriages dash by conveying their owners to their places of worship. The uptown churches are the most fashionable, and are the best attended, but all the sacred edifices are well filled on Sunday morning. New York compromises with its conscience by a scrupulous attendance upon morning worship, and reserves the rest of the day for its own convenience. The up-town churches all strive to get in, or as near as possible to, the Fifth avenue. One reason for this is, doubtless, the desire that all well-to-do New Yorkers have to participate in the after-church promenade. The churches close their services near about the same hour, and then each pours its throng of fashionably dressed people into the avenue. The congregations of distant churches all find their way to the avenue, and for about an hour after church the splendid street presents a very attractive spectacle. The toilettes of the ladies show well here, and it is a pleasant place to meet one's acquaintances.

The majority of New Yorkers dine at one o'clock on Sunday, the object being to allow the servants the afternoon for themselves. After dinner your New Yorker, male or female, thinks of enjoyment. If the weather is fair the fashionables promenade the Fifth and Madison avenues, or drive in the park. The working classes fill the street-cars, and throng the Central Park. In the summer whole families of laboring people go to the park early in the morning, taking a lunch with them, and there spend the entire day. In the skating season the lakes are thronged with skaters. The church bells ring out mournfully towards three o'clock, but few persons answer the call. The afternoon congregations are wofully thin.

In the mild season, the adjacent rivers and the harbor are thronged with pleasure boats filled with excursionists, and the various horse and steam railway lines leading from the city to the sea-shore are well patronized.

Broadway wears a silent and deserted aspect all day long, but towards sunset the Bowery brightens up wonderfully, and after nightfall the street is ablaze with a thousand gaslights. The low class theatres and places of amusement in that thoroughfare are opened towards dark, and then vice reigns triumphant in the Bowery. The Bowery beer-gardens do a good business. The most of them are provided with orchestras or huge orchestrions, and these play music from the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.

Until very recently the bar-rooms were closed from midnight on Saturday until midnight on Sunday, and during that period the sale of intoxicating liquors was prohibited. Now all this is changed. The bar-rooms do a good business on Sunday, and especially on Sunday night. The Monday morning papers tell a fearful tale of crimes committed on the holy day. Assaults, fights, murders, robberies, and minor offences are reported in considerable numbers. Drunkenness is very common, and the Monday Police Courts have plenty of work to do.

At night the churches are better attended than in the afternoon, but not as well as in the morning.

Sunday concerts, given at first-class places of amusement, are now quite common. The music consists of masses, and other sacred airs, varied with selections from popular operas. The performers are famous throughout the country for their musical skill, and the audiences are large and fashionable. No one seems to think it sinful thus to desecrate the Lord's Day; and it must be confessed that these concerts are the least objectionable Sunday amusements known to our people.

It must not be supposed that the dissipation of which we have spoken is confined exclusively to the rougher class. Old and young men of respectable position participate in it as well. Some are never called on to answer for it, others get into trouble with the police authorities. One reason for this dissipation is plain. People are so much engrossed in the pursuit of wealth that they really have no leisure time in the week. They must take Sunday for relaxation and recreation, and they grudge the few hours in the morning that decency requires them to pass in church.

XXXIII. THE POST-OFFICE

I. INTERNAL ARRANGEMENTS.

Strange to say, the great metropolis, in which the largest postal business in the country is transacted, has never had a building for a Post-office, which was erected for that purpose. It has been compelled to put up with any temporary accommodation that could be obtained, and for many years past its Post-office has been simply a disgrace to the nation.

In the days of the Dutch, letters were brought over from Europe by the shipmasters and delivered to some coffee house keeper, who took charge of them until the persons to whom they were addressed could call for them. This custom was continued under the English until 1686, when the authorities required that all ship letters should be placed in charge of the Collector of the Port. In 1692, the city authorities established a Post-office, and in 1710, the Postmaster-General of Great Britain removed the headquarters of the postal service of the Colonies from Philadelphia to New York. The first city Post-office was located in Broadway opposite Beaver street. About the year 1804, the Post-office was removed to No. 29 William street, corner of Garden street, now Exchange Place, where it remained until 1825, when the Government leased the "Academy building" in Garden street, now Exchange Place, and opened it as a Post-office. In 1827, the office was transferred to the basement of the Merchants' Exchange, the site now occupied by the Custom House. Wall street was then just undergoing the change from private residences to bankers' and brokers' offices. The Merchants' Exchange was destroyed in the great fire of 1835, and the next day a Post-office was extemporized in a brick building in Pine, near Nassau street, and shortly after was transferred to the Rotunda, in the City Hall Park, which had been offered to the Government by the municipal authorities. The Rotunda, however, proved too small for the business of the department, which had been greatly increased by the establishment of lines of railways and steamboats between New York and the various parts of the country, and in 1845 the Post-office was removed to the Middle Dutch Church, in Nassau street, between Pine and Cedar streets, its present location, which was purchased by the Government for the sum of $350,000.

[Picture: THE OLD POST-OFFICE.]

This building has always been entirely unsuited to the needs of a Post-office for such a city as New York. It was dedicated in 1732, and was used for worship by one of the Dutch congregations of the city. In 1776, the British having occupied the city, it was converted into a prison by the conquerors for the incarceration of their rebellious captives. It was subsequently used by them as a riding school for the instruction of cavalry. After the British evacuated the city, the congregation reoccupied it, and refitted it for religious worship. After paying for it the large sum mentioned above, the Government was compelled to make a further expenditure of $80,000, to fit it up for its new uses. Since then many changes, some involving a heavy outlay, have been made in the building, but even now it is not capable of meeting the demands upon it, and the Government is now engaged in the erection of a new building expressly designed for a Post-office.

The Pine street front is devoted to the reception and departure of the mails. The street is generally filled with wagons bearing the mystic words, "U.S. Mail." Some are single-horse vehicles, used for carrying the bags between the main office and the numerous stations scattered through the city; others are immense wagons, drawn by four and six horses, and carrying several tons of matter at a time. These are used for the great Eastern, Western, and Southern, and the Foreign Mails. The Pine street doors present a busy sight at all hours, and the duties of the men employed there are not light. Huge sacks from all parts of the world are arriving nearly every hour, and immense piles of similar sacks are dispatched with the regularity of clockwork.

The body of the building, by which is meant the old church room itself, is used for opening and making up the mails. This work is carried on on the main floor, and in the heavy, old-fashioned gallery which runs around three of the sides. Huge semi-circular forms are scattered about the floor, each divided into a number of open squares. From each of these squares hangs a mail bag, each square being marked with the name of the city or town to which the bag is to be sent. A clerk stands within the curve of the form, before a table filled with letters and papers, and tosses them one by one into the squares to which they belong. This is done with the utmost rapidity, and long practice has made the clerk so proficient that he never misses the proper square. The stamping of the office mark and cancelling of the postage stamps on letters to be sent away is incessant, and the room resounds with the heavy thud of the stamp. This is no slight work, as the clerks who perform it can testify. The upper floor is devoted to the use of the Post-Master and his Assistants, the Superintendent of the City Delivery, and the Money Order and Registered Letter Offices. A wooden corridor has been built along the side of the church along Nassau and Cedar streets, and here, on the street floor, are the box and general deliveries, and the stamp windows. This is the public portion of the office, and is always thronged.

The visitor will notice, in various parts of this corridor, the slides for the depositing of letters and papers intended for the mails. The accumulation of mail matter here is so great that it is necessary that letters designed for a certain part of the country should be deposited in one particular place. Letters for New England must be placed in a certain box, those for the Middle States in another, those for the Southern States in another, those for the West in another. The names of the States are painted conspicuously above each box, so that there may be no mistake on the part of strangers. Letters for the principal countries of Europe and Asia are posted in the same way. Newspapers and periodicals have a separate department. The mails of these journals are made up in the office of publication, according to certain instructions furnished by the Postmaster, and go to the Post-office properly assorted for distribution. This system of depositing mail matter saves an immense amount of labor on the part of the clerks, and also hastens the departure of the mails from the office.

The Box Delivery contains nearly seven thousand boxes, on each of which the enormous rent of $16 per annum is charged. Considering that the box system is quite as advantageous to the Government as to the box holder, this rent is simply extortionate.