The City That Was

by Stephen Smith

Now everything relating to the public health is so changed that it is almost impossible to realize the condition of the city in 1866. The change began with the very organization of the Metropolitan Board. Within a few days of that Epidemics
Checked event, cholera, which had devastated portions of Europe, made its appearance in this city; but it met with a far different reception than that of former visitations. The first case was quarantined within an hour of its occurrence; the clothing of the patient was destroyed, the room disinfected, and a sanitary guard placed over the house. No other case appeared in that quarter of the city. There were several similar outbreaks in different parts of the town, but each was treated with the same vigilance and energy, and the contagion never secured a foothold in the city or the metropolitan district.

Though cholera has since appeared in Europe at its usual intervals, and has several times been at our doors, it has not been able to invade the city for a period of thirty-four years. Smallpox, which once decimated the child population every five years, has not been epidemic in a whole generation. Diphtheria and the whole brood of domestic pestilences are diminishing in frequency and fatality. Even consumption, so common and fatal among the poor, is rapidly disappearing in consequence of the improved condition of the tenement houses.

And what a vast change has been made in the homes of the poor! No human habitation is underground; the ancient rookery, with its five hundred inhabitants, is a past number; the dark, foul courts are disappearing, and in their places have arisen the modern tenements, with their light, airy, and cheerful apartments, and all the conditions necessary to family health and domestic happiness. The laws and ordinances all conspire to compel the landlords to remedy every defect on complaint of the tenant; the penalty being that the latter need not pay rent until the home is made habitable in a sanitary sense. The vital statistics show that human life is lengthening in this city, and that the entire metropolis is more healthy as a place of residence than the surrounding country towns.

But the beneficent results of the labors of Mr. Eaton and his associates in the field of sanitary legislation are not confined to New York. As he predicted, the Metropolitan Health Law became the basis of sanitary legislation throughout the country. At the Sanitation in
Other Cities time of its enactment the municipalities of the United States were as destitute of health laws and regulations as the City of New York. To-day there is not a city, or even village, that has not its laws and ordinances relating to the preservation and promotion of the public health based on the original law drawn by Mr. Eaton. And the same remark is true of the organized health administration of the States of the Union, for on analysis it will be found that their sanitary legislation is in harmony with the provisions of that law. Mr. Eaton’s work was broad and fundamental.

At that period the old Volunteer Fire Department was quite as discreditable to the city as was its health organization. Intrenched in the political organizations of the city, it wielded a power second only to that of the great political Reorganization of the
Fire Department parties themselves. It required the strength and courage of a Hercules to purify this department by removing the existing elements, reconstructing the entire organization, substituting a paid for a volunteer membership, and requiring a high grade of qualification of its officers.

But, aided by the Citizens’ Association, Mr. Eaton undertook this reform, and after a fierce and prolonged struggle carried it to a successful conclusion. The law creating the fire department, like that creating the health department, is a model of intelligent discrimination of all the conditions essential to the efficiency of the service and its permanent freedom from the vices inherent in the old system.

Scarcely had these reforms been perfected when Mr. Eaton’s attention was turned by the Citizens’ Association to the necessity of having a department in the city government devoted exclusively to the care and management of the public docks, Creation of a Dock
Department wharves, and other water-front interests of the city. This movement resulted in the passage of the law drawn by Mr. Eaton creating the Department of Docks. Though this Department was to occupy an entirely new field in the Municipal Administration, the law shows in every section the same mastery of all the details peculiar to Mr. Eaton’s legislative work.

Finally, Mr. Eaton undertook, single-handed, to reform the police judiciary. He prepared a bill creating the civil magistrates to take the place of the police justices and reforming in many particulars the methods of procedure. This law is regarded Reform of the
Police Judiciary as a great improvement upon the previous police judiciary, but the bill became a law only after a protracted struggle with the old police justices, a struggle which Mr. Eaton maintained alone, relying upon the merits of the measure which he advocated. The consensus of opinion of legal authorities is that the new law effected radical reforms of great importance in these inferior courts of criminal jurisprudence in New York City.

If we may estimate Mr. Eaton’s mental traits by the laws which he drafted in the interests of municipal reform, we can readily conclude that he had a remarkable genius for constructive legislation. Though he was compelled to weave into the very woof of those Mental Traits of
Dorman B. Eaton laws, extraordinary powers, which he acknowledged were of vital importance to their efficiency, and yet would be a menace to the public, if the laws were administered by unscrupulous persons, he succeeded in so guarding those powers that these laws have been in operation upwards of a quarter of a century; and, while those who have from time to time been called to administer them have not always had the best reputation for intelligence and civic virtue, yet there has at no time been any complaint of injustice in their execution, nor has there been any serious lapse in their vigorous enforcement. To-day, as a generation ago, they are accomplishing the full measure of usefulness for which they were designed by their author.

Standing now at the close of a life so largely devoted to the service of his fellow-men and consecrated to the amelioration of human suffering, and where we may, in some slight degree, estimate the vast and ever-increasing fruition of its labors, how sublime it appears! Monuments and memorials can but faintly symbolize its greatness and perpetuate its enduring force. Mr. Eaton’s own thought of true fame once was expressed to me thus: “I ask only to be remembered as one who in his sphere of life’s duties endeavored to improve the conditions of human life around him.”