A History of the City of Brooklyn and Kings County, Volume II.

by Stephen M. Ostrander

STATUE OF J. S. T. STRANAHAN AT THE ENTRANCE TO PROSPECT PARK

In the course of his address Mayor Low said:—

"As the water of the lakes found the salt sea when the Erie Canal was opened, so surely will quick communication seek and find this noble bridge; and as the ships have carried hither and thither the products of the mighty West, so shall diverging railroads transport the people swiftly to their homes in the hospitable city of Brooklyn. The Erie Canal is a waterway through the land connecting the great West with the older East. This bridge is a landway over the water, connecting two cities bearing to each other relations in some respects similar. It is the function of such works to bless 'both him that gives and him that takes.' The development of the West has not belittled, but has enlarged New York, and Brooklyn will grow by reason of this bridge, not at New York's expense, but to her permanent advantage. The Brooklyn of 1900 can hardly be guessed at from the city of to-day. The hand of Time is a mighty hand. To those who are privileged to live in sight of this noble structure every line of it should be eloquent with inspiration. Courage, enterprise, skill, faith, endurance,—these are the qualities which have made the great bridge, and these are the qualities which will make our city great and our people great. God grant they never may be lacking in our midst. Gentlemen of the Trustees, in accepting the bridge at your hands, I thank you warmly in Brooklyn's name for your manifold and arduous labors."

Speaking of a glance forward for twenty-five years, Mayor Edson said:—

"No one dares accept the possibilities that are forced upon the mind in the course of its contemplation. Will these two cities, ere then, have been consolidated into one great municipality, numbering within its limits more than five millions of people? Will the right of self-government have been accorded to the great city, thus united, and will her people have learned how best to exercise that right? Will the progress of improvement and the preparation for commerce, manufactures, and trade, and for the comforts of home for poor and rich, have kept pace with the demand in the great and growing city? Will the establishment of life-giving parks, embellished with appropriate fountains and statues and with the numberless graces of art, which at once gladden the eye, and raise the standard of civilization, have kept abreast with its growth in wealth and numbers? These are but few of the pertinent questions which must be answered by the zealous and honest acts of the generation of men already in active life. Here are the possibilities; all the elements and conditions are here; but the results must depend upon the wisdom and patriotism and energy of those who shall lead in public affairs. May they be clothed in a spirit of wisdom and knowledge akin to that which inspired those who conceived and executed the great work which we receive at your hands and dedicate to-day."

The address of Abram S. Hewitt contained these significant words:—

"I am here by your favor to speak for the city of New York, and I should be the last person to throw any discredit on its fair fame; but I think I only give voice to the general feeling, when I say that the citizens of New York are satisfied neither with the structure of its government, nor with its actual administration, even when it is in the hands of intelligent and honest officials. Dissatisfied as we are, no man has been able to devise a system which commends itself to the general approval, and it may be asserted that the remedy is not to be found in devices for any special machinery of government. Experiments without number have been tried, and suggestions in infinite variety have been offered, but to-day no man can say that we have approached any nearer to the idea of good government which is demanded by the intelligence and the wants of the community.

"If, therefore, New York has not yet learned to govern itself, how can it be expected to be better governed by adding half a million to its population, and a great territory to its area, unless it be with the idea that a 'little leaven leaveneth the whole lump'? Is Brooklyn that leaven? And if not, and if possibly 'the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?' Brooklyn is now struggling with this problem, it remains to be seen with what success; but meanwhile it is idle to consider the idea of getting rid of our common evils by adding them together. Beside, it is a fundamental axiom in politics, approved by the experience of older countries as well as our own, that the sources of power should never be far removed from those who are to feel its exercise. It is the violation of this principle which produces chronic revolution in France, and makes the British rule so obnoxious to the Irish people. This evil is happily avoided when a natural boundary circumscribes administration within narrow limits. While, therefore, we rejoice together at the new bond between New York and Brooklyn, we ought to rejoice the more that it destroys none of the conditions which permit each city to govern itself, but rather urges them to a generous rivalry in perfecting each its own government, recognizing the truth that there is no true liberty without law, and that eternal vigilance, which is the only safeguard of liberty, can best be exercised within limited areas. It would be a most fortunate conclusion if the completion of this bridge should arouse public attention to the absolute necessity of good municipal government, and recall the only principle upon which it can ever be successfully founded. There is reason to hope that this result will follow, because the erection of this structure shows how a problem, analogous to that which confronts us in regard to the city government, has been met and solved in the domain of physical science."

The brilliant oration of Dr. Storrs closed with the following glowing passage:—

"Local and particular as is the work, therefore, it represents that fellowship of the nations which is more and more prominently a fact of our times, and which gives to these cities incessant augmentation. When by and by on yonder island the majestic French statue of 'Liberty' shall stand, holding in its hand the radiant crown of electric flames, and answering by them to those as brilliant along this causeway, our beautiful bay will have taken what specially illuminates and adorns it from Central and from Western Europe. The distant lands from which oceans divide us, though we touch them each moment with the fingers of the telegraph, will have set their conspicuous double crown on the head of our harbor. The alliances of nations, the peace of the world, will seem to find illustrious prediction in such superb and novel regalia. Friends and fellow-citizens, let us not forget that in the growth of these cities, henceforth united and destined ere long to be formally one, lies either a threat or one of the most conspicuous promises of the time. Cities have always been powers in history. Athens educated Greece as well as adorned it, while Corinth filled the throbbing and thirsty Hellenic veins with poisoned blood. The weight of Constantinople broke the Roman Empire asunder. The capture of the same magnificent city gave to the Turks their establishment in Europe for the following centuries. Even where they have not had such a commanding preëminence of location, the social, political, moral force proceeding from cities has been vigorous, in impression, immense in extent. The passion in Paris, for a hundred years, has created or directed the sentiment of France. Berlin is more than the legislative or administrative centre of the German Empire, and even a government as autocratic as that of the Czar, in a country as undeveloped as Russia, has to consult the popular feeling of St. Petersburg or of Moscow. In our nation, political power is widely distributed, and the largest or wealthiest commercial centre can have but its share. Great as is the weight of the aggregate vote in these henceforth compacted cities, the vote of the State will always overbear it. Amid the suffrages of the nation at large it can only be reckoned as one of many consenting or conflicting factors. But the influence which constantly proceeds from these cities—on their journalism not only, or on the issues of their book presses, or on the multitudes going forth from them—but on the example presented in them, of educational, social, religious life—this, for shadow and check, or for fine inspiration, is already of unlimited extent, of incalculable force. It must increase as they expand, and are lifted before the country to a new elevation. A larger and a smaller sun are sometimes associated, astronomers tell us, to form a binary centre in the heavens, for what is doubtless an unseen system receiving from them impulse and light. On a scale not utterly insignificant a parallel may be hereafter suggested in the relation of these combined cities to a part, at least, of our national system. Their attitude and action during the war—successfully closed under the gallant military leadership of men whom we gladly welcome and honor—were of vast advantage to the national cause. The moral, political, intellectual temper which dominates in them as years go on, will touch with beauty or scar with scorching and baleful heats extended regions. Their religious life, as it glows in intensity, or with a faint and failing lustre, will be repeated in answering image from the widening frontier. The beneficence which gives them grace and consecration, and which, as lately, they follow to the grave with universal benediction; or, on the other hand, the selfish ambitions which crowd and crush along their streets, intent only on accumulated wealth and its sumptuous display, or the glittering vices which they accept and set on high—these will make impressions on those who never cross the continent to our homes, to whom our journals are but names. Surely we should not go from this hour, which marks a new era in the history of these cities, and which points to their future indefinite expansion, without the purpose in each of us that so far forth as in us lies, with their increase in numbers, wealth, equipment, shall also proceed, with equal step, their progress in whatever is noblest and best in private and in public life; that all which sets humanity forward shall come in them to ampler endowment, more renowned exhibition; so that, linked together, as hereafter they must be, and seeing 'the purple deepening in their robes of power,' they may be always increasingly conscious of fulfilled obligation to the nation and to God; may make the land, at whose magnificent gateway they stand, their constant debtor, and may contribute their mighty part toward that ultimate perfect human society for which the seer could find no image so meet or majestic as that of a city, coming down from above, its stones laid with fair colors, its foundations with sapphires, its windows of agate, its gates of carbuncles, and all its borders of pleasant stones, with the sovereign promise resplendent above it—

'And great shall be the peace of thy children.'"