Lights and Shadows of New York Life Part 11

Perhaps the most restless, care-worn faces in the city are to be seen on this street. Women clad in the richest attire pa.s.s you with unquiet face and wistful eyes, and men who are envied by their fellows for their "good luck," startle you by the stern, hard set look their features wear. The first find little real happiness in the riches they have sold themselves for, and the latter find that the costly pleasures they courted have been gained at too dear a price.

[Picture: THE NEW RESIDENCE OF A. T. STEWART, ESQ.]

Families are small in the Avenue, and Madame Restelle boasts, that her wealth has been earned in a large degree by keeping them so. Fas.h.i.+on has its requirements, and before them maternity must give way. Your fas.h.i.+onable lady has no time to give to children, but pets lap-dogs and parrots.

Well, the Avenue mansions have their skeletons, as well as the east side tenement houses. The sin of the fas.h.i.+onable lady is covered up, however, and the poor girl must face the world. That is the difference. Madame married her husband for his money, and her love is given to one who has no right to claim it; and what between her loathing for her liege lord and her dread of detection, she leads a life not to be envied in spite of the luxury which surrounds her. The liege lord in his turn, never suspecting his wife, but disheartened by her coldness to him, seeks his "affinity" elsewhere; and, by and by, the divorce court tells some unpleasant truths about the Avenue.

Contemplating these things, I have thought that the most wretched quarter of the city hardly holds more unhappy hearts than dwell along the three miles of this grand street; and I have thanked G.o.d that the Avenue does not fairly represent the better and higher phases of social and domestic life in the great city.

XI. STREET TRAVEL.

I. THE STREET CARS.

The peculiar shape of the island of Manhattan allows the city to grow in one direction only. The pressure of business is steadily bringing the mercantile district higher up the island, and compelling the residence sections to go farther to the northward. Persons in pa.s.sing from their homes to their business go down town in the morning, and in returning come up town in the evening. Those who live in the better quarters of the city, or in the upper portion of the island, cannot think of walking between their homes and their business. To say nothing of the loss of time they would incur, the fatigue of such a walk would unfit nine out of ten for the duties of the day. In consequence of this, street railways and omnibuses are more necessary, and better patronized in New York than in any city in the Union.

The street cars are the most popular, as they const.i.tute the quickest and most direct means of reaching the most of the city localities. There are about twenty-two lines in operation within the city limits. The majority of these run from north to south, and a few pa.s.s "across town" and connect points on the North and East Rivers. A number centre in Park Row at the new Post-office, and at the Astor House. The fare is usually five cents below Sixty-fifth street, and from six to eight cents to points above that street.

The Street Railway Companies are close corporations. Their stock is very rarely in the market, and when it is offered at all sells readily at high prices. The actual dividends of these companies are large, often reaching as high as thirty-five per cent. This, however, is carefully concealed from the public, and the companies unite in declaring that the expenses of operating their roads are too heavy to admit of even a moderate profit. This they do, no doubt, to excuse in some degree the meanness with which they conduct their enterprises; for it is a striking fact that the heavier such a company's business grows, and the more its profits increase, the more parsimonious it becomes towards its employees and the public.

There is not a line in the city that has a sufficient number of cars to accommodate its patrons. More than one-half of those who ride on the cars are obliged to stand during their journey. As a rule, the cars are dirty and filled with vermin. The conductors and drivers are often appointed for political reasons alone, and are simply brutal ruffians.

They treat the pa.s.sengers with insolence, and often with brutality.

One meets all sorts of people on the street cars, and sometimes the contact is closer than is agreeable, and keeps sensitive people in constant dread of an attack of the itch or some kindred disease. Crowded cars are much frequented by pick-pockets, who are said to be frequently in league with the conductors, and many valuable articles and much money are annually stolen by the light-fingered in these vehicles.

[Picture: NEW PALACE-CAR IN USE ON THE THIRD AVENUE LINE.]

If the drivers and conductors are often deserving of censure, they have their grievances also. Their employers are merciless in their treatment of them. They lead a hard life, working about fifteen hours out of every twenty-four, with no holidays. The conductors receive from $2.00 to $2.50 per day, and the drivers from $2.25 to $2.75. In order to make up the deficiency between their actual wages and their necessities, the conductors and drivers have fallen into the habit of appropriating a part of the money received from pa.s.sengers to their own use. Many of them are very expert at this, but some are detected, discharged from the service of the company, and handed over to the police. The companies of course endeavor to put a stop to such practices, but thus far have not been successful, and plead as their excuse for the low wages they give, that this system of stealing prevents them from giving higher pay. Spies, or "spotters," as the conductors term them, are kept constantly travelling over the roads to watch the employees. They note the number of pa.s.sengers carried during the trip, and when the conductors' reports are handed in, examine them and point out such inaccuracies as may exist.

They soon become known to the men. They are cordially hated, and sometimes fare badly at the hands of those whose evil doings they have exposed. This practice of "knocking down," or appropriating money, begins with the conductor, as he alone receives the money paid for fares.

Those interested in it defend it on various grounds. The President of the Third Avenue Railway Company, the princ.i.p.al horse-car line in the city, once said to a reporter for a morning paper:

"We try and get all honest men. We discharge a man immediately if he is found to be dishonest. You see, conductors are sometimes made more dishonest by the drivers, who demand so much a day from them. You have no idea how much a driver can worry a conductor if he wants to. For instance, he can drive a little past the corner every time when he ought to stop. He can be looking the other way when the conductor sees a pa.s.senger coming. He can run too fast, or let the car behind beat his, and so on, annoying the conductor continually. The only way the conductor can keep friends with him is to divide every night. . . . The conductors 'knock down' on an average about thirty-five or fifty cents per day. . . . I don't think the practice can be entirely stopped. We try all we can. Some will do it, and others think they have the same right. We can't stop it, but discharge a man mighty quick if he is detected." The Third Avenue line runs 200 cars, so that the loss of the company by the "knock-down" system is from $70 to $100 per day, or from $25,500 to $36,500 per annum.

A conductor gave his explanation of the system as follows:

"Well, I'll tell ye. When a conductor is put on a road he has to wait his turn before getting a car; it may be a month or six weeks before he is regularly on. He'll have to know the ropes or he'll be shelved before he knows it. He'll have to be a thief from the start or leave the road.

His pay is $2 to $2.25 per day. Out of that sum he must pay the driver from $1 to $2 a day; the starter he has to conciliate in various ways. A lump of stamps is better than drinks and cigars, though drinks and cigars have a good deal of influence on the roads; and then the 'spotter' has to get $5 every week."

"Why do the conductors allow themselves to be imposed on in this way?"

"Why? Because they can't help it. If they don't pay the driver, the driver will not stop for pa.s.sengers, and the conductor is short in his returns; if they don't have a 'deal' with the starter, the starter will fix him somehow. You see the driver can stop behind time, or go beyond it if he likes. The latest car in the street, you understand, gets the most pa.s.sengers. So it is that the drivers who are feed by the conductors stay from two to five minutes behind time, to the inconvenience of pa.s.sengers, but to the profit of the driver, the conductor, the starter, the spotter, and for all I know, the superintendent and president of the company. It is a fine system from beginning to end. The amount of drink disposed of by some of the fellows in authority is perfectly amazing. I know a starter to boast of taking fifteen c.o.c.ktails (with any number of lagers between drinks) in a day, and all paid for by the 'road;' for, of course, the conductors saved themselves from loss. Oh, yes, you bet they did! The conductor's actual expenses a day average $5; his pay is $2.25, which leaves a fine tail-end margin of profit. How the expenses are incurred I have told you. What ken a man do? Honesty? No man can be honest and remain a conductor.

Conductors must help themselves, an' they do! Why, even the driver who profits by the conductor's operations, has to fee the stablemen, else how could he get good horses? Stablemen get from $1 to $2 per week from each driver."

"Then the system of horse railroad management is entirely corrupt?"

"You bet. 'Knocking down' is a fine art, as they say: but it is not confined to the conductors. The worst thing about the car business though, and what disgusted me while I was in it, was the thieves."

"The thieves?"

"Ay, the thieves. The pick-pockets, a lot of roughs get on your car, refuse to pay their fares, insult ladies, and rob right and left. If you object you are likely to get knocked on the head; if you are armed and show fight you are attacked in another way. The thieves are (or rather they were until lately) influential politicians, and tell you to your face that they'll have you dismissed. Ten to one they do what they say.

I tell ye a man ought to have leave to knock down lively to stand all this."

II. THE STAGES.

The stages of New York are a feature of the great city, which must be seen to be appreciated. They are the best to be found on this continent, but are far inferior to the elegant vehicles for the same purpose which are to be seen in London and Paris. The stages of New York are stiff, awkward looking affairs, very difficult to enter or leave, a fact which is sometimes attended with considerable danger on the part of ladies. To ride in one is to incur considerable fatigue, for they are as rough as an old-fas.h.i.+oned country wagon. Unlike the European omnibuses, they have no seats on top, but an adventurous pa.s.senger may, if he chooses, clamber up over the side and seat himself by the Jehu in charge. From this lofty perch he can enjoy the best view of the streets along the route of the vehicle, and if the driver be inclined to loquacity, he may hear many a curious tale to repay him for his extra exertion.

The stages, however, as inconvenient as they are, const.i.tute the favorite mode of conveyance for the better cla.s.s of New Yorkers. The fare on these lines is ten cents, and is sufficiently high to exclude from them the rougher and dirtier portion of the community, and one meets with more courtesy and good breeding here than in the street cars. They are cleaner than the cars, and ladies are less liable to annoyance in them.

Like the cars, however, they are well patronized by the pickpockets.

The driver also acts as conductor. The fares are pa.s.sed up to him through a hole in the roof in the rear of his seat. The check-string pa.s.ses from the door through this hole, and rests under the driver's foot. By pulling this string the pa.s.senger gives the signal to stop the stage, and in order to distinguish between this and a signal to receive the pa.s.senger's fare, a small gong, worked by means of a spring, is fastened at the side of the hole. By striking this the pa.s.senger attracts the driver's attention. A vigorous ringing of this gong by the driver is a signal for pa.s.sengers to hand up their fares.

All the stage routes lie along Broadway below Twenty-third street. They begin at some of the various East River ferries, reach the great thoroughfare as directly as possible, and leave it to the right and left between Bleecker and Twenty-third streets, and pa.s.s thence to their destinations in the upper part of the city. The princ.i.p.al lines pa.s.s from Broadway into Madison, Fourth and Fifth avenues, and along their upper portions traverse the best quarter of the city. As the stages furnish the only conveyances on Broadway, they generally do well. The flow and ebb of the great tide down and up the island in the morning and evening crowd every vehicle, and during the remainder of the day, they manage by the exertions of the drivers to keep comfortably full.

The stage drivers const.i.tute a distinct cla.s.s in the metropolis, and though they lead a hard and laborious life, their lot, as a general thing, is much better than that of the car drivers. They suffer much from exposure to the weather. In the summer they frequently fall victims to sunstroke, and in the bitter winter weather they are sometimes terribly frozen before reaching the end of their route, as they cannot leave their boxes. In the summer they protect themselves from the rays of the sun by means of huge umbrellas fastened to the roof of the coach, and in the winter they encase themselves in a mult.i.tude of wraps and comforters, and present a rather ludicrous appearance. They are obliged to exercise considerable skill in driving along Broadway, for the dense throng in the street renders the occurrence of an accident always probable, and Jehu has a holy horror of falling into the hands of the police. Riding with one of them one day, I asked if he could tell me why it was that the policemen on duty on the street were never run over or injured in trying to clear the thoroughfare of its frequent "blocks" of vehicles?

"There'll never be one of them hurt by a driver accustomed to the street, sir," said he, dryly; "I'd rather run over the richest man in New York.

Why, the police would fix you quick enough if you'd run a-foul of them.

It would be a month or two on the Island, and that's what none of us fancy."

It requires more skill to carry a stage safely through Broadway than to drive a horse car, and consequently good stage-drivers are always in demand, and can command better wages and more privileges than the latter.

They are allowed the greater part of Sat.u.r.day, or some other day in the week, and as the stages are not run on Sunday, that day is a season of rest with them.

Like the street car conductors, they are given to the practice of "knocking down," and it is said appropriate very much more of their employers' money than the former. They defend the practice with a variety of arguments, and a.s.sert that it is really to their employers'

interests for them to keep back a part of the earnings of the day, since in order to cover up their peculations, they must exert themselves to pick up as many fares as possible. "It's a fact, sir," said one of them to the writer, "that them as makes the most for themselves, makes the biggest returns to the office."

Many of the drivers are very communicative on the subjects of their profession, and not a few tell some good stories of "slouches," "b.u.ms,"

and "beats," the names given to those gentlemen whose princ.i.p.al object in this world is to sponge upon poor humanity to as great an extent as the latter will permit. One of the cheapest ways of "getting a ride" is to present a five or ten dollar bill; very few drivers carry so much money, as they hardly ever have that amount on their morning trips; the bill cannot be changed, and the owner of it gets "down town" _free_.

Apropos of this method, a talkative Jehu said to me one morning, "When I was a drivin' on the Knickerbocker," a line that ran some twenty years ago from South Ferry through Broadway, Bleecker, and Eighth avenue, to Twenty-third street, "there was a middle-aged man that used to ride reg'lar; all the fellows got to knowin' him. Well, he'd get in and hand up a ten dollar note--you know the fare was only six cents then--and we never had so much 'bout us, so, of course, he'd ride for nothin'; well, that fellow stuck me five mornin's straight, and I sort o' got tired of it; so on the six' day I went to the office and says to the Boss, 'There's a man ridin' free on this line. All the fellows knows him; he gives 'em all a ten dollar note and they can't break it. He's rid with me these last five mornin's, an' I'm goin' for him to-day, I want ten dollars in pennies, an' six fares out. If he rides I'll git square with him.' So the Boss he gives me nine dollars and sixty-four cents all in pennies--you know they was all big ones then--an' they weighed some, I tell you. When I got down to Fourteenth street he hailed me. Then the fares used to pay when they got out. So he hands up his note; I looked at it--it was on the "Dry Dock"--an' I hands him down the pennies. Well, how he did blow about it an' said how he wouldn't take 'em. Well, says I, then I'll keep it all. Well, he was the maddest fellow you ever seen; he was hoppin'! But he got out an' some one inside hollers out, 'Put some one on the other side or you'll capsize,' an' he thought it was me.

He jumped on the sidewalk an' he called me everything he could lay his tongue to, an' I a la'ffin' like blazes. Says he, 'I'll report you, you old thief,' an' I drove off. Well, I told the Boss, an' he says, 'Let him come, I'll talk to him,' but he never made no complaint there."

Said another: "A lady got in with me one day an' handed up a fifty cent stamp. I put down forty cents. I don't never look gen'rally, but this time I see a man take the change an' put it in his pocket. Pretty soon a man rings the bell an' says, 'Where's the lady's change?' Well, I thinks here's a go, an' I points to the man and says, 'That there gentleman put it in his pocket.' Well, that fellow looked like a sheet, an' a thunder-cloud an' all through the rainbow. He never said nothing but pulled out the change, gave it up, an' then he got out an' went 'round a corner like mad. Some don't wait like he did tho', but gits out right off. One day a chap got out an' another follered him, an they had it out on the street there, an' we all was a looking on."

Sometimes the drivers make "a haul" in a curious way. Said one: "A man handed me up a fifty dollar bill one night. I handed it back four times, and got mad because he wouldn't give me a small bill. He said he hadn't anything else, and I could take that or nothing, so, I gave him change for a dollar bill, and kept forty-nine dollars and ten cents for his fare. He didn't say anything, and after a while he got out. Why, the other day a lady gave me a hundred dollar note, and when I told her I thought she'd faint. 'My goodness!' said she, 'I didn't know it was more than one.' Such people ought to be beat; they'd be more careful when they lose a few thousand."

"Some fellows," said another driver, "give you ten or fifteen cents, an'

swear they give you a fifty cent stamp, an' you have to give them change for fifty cents, or they'll may be go to the office an' make a fuss, an'

the bosses will sooner take their word than yours, an' you'll get sacked."

One of the most laborious ways of "turning an honest penny" was brought to my notice by one of these knights of the whip. Said he: "Has you been a watchin' of my business this morning? P'r'aps you aint took notice of the money I'm takin' in? No, I guess not." The latter remark was followed by a rough laugh, in which I thought there was distinguishable a little more than mere merriment, especially when I heard a mumbled imprecation. He continued aloud: "I aint seen any yet myself." Soon the bell rang, and a ticket was pa.s.sed up. "Well," said he, "he's goin' it strong, to be sure; this here's the fourteenth ticket I've had on this trip." An explanation being solicited, the fact was revealed that there was a man inside who made a practice of buying twelve tickets for a dollar, then seating himself near the bell, he would take the fares of every one and give the driver a ticket for each, that is, receive ten cents and give the driver the equivalent of eight and one-third cents, thereby making ten cents on every six pa.s.sengers. "You see," said the driver, "what a blessin' those sort of fellers is. Here I don't have no trouble whatsomever; he makes all the change for me, and 'spose my box should blow over, nothen's lost." From time to time as the tickets were handed up he would cheer the toiler inside with such expressions as "Go it boots," "How's the cash?" "How does the old thing work?" always loud enough to attract the attention of the "insides."

This strange individual interested me so much that I made some inquiries about him, at first supposing him to be crazy or otherwise terribly afflicted; but he is considered sound, is the third in a well-to-do firm, and is far beyond the need of having recourse to any such means for increasing his capital.