An ingenious individual has devised a plan whereby the space above the heads of the standing passengers may be utilized. He proposes some additional straps, on which a few passengers can be suspended horizontally, very much as dried fish in a museum are hung up against the wall. The position would be uncomfortable, but comfort is a secondary or tertiary consideration altogether.
The ordinary street car is designed to seat thirty-two passengers, but very often as many as a hundred passengers are crowded on a single vehicle. The front and rear platforms are occupied down to the very edge of the steps. It is uncomfortable enough when the passengers are sober and well-behaved; but when, as often happens, half of them are drunk, and fifty per cent. of the drunken ones are quarrelsome, the position becomes serious. A man who travels late at night on a main line of street railway will have his love for sport fully gratified. He may expect a broken rib every week or two, and, as the noble and manly art prevails among the drunken gentlemen, he can be accommodated with a fight whenever he wishes it, and very often when he doesn’t.
The modern science of pocket-picking is very much in fashion in New York, and a goodly portion of the inhabitants seem to be engaged in an effort to make an honest living by robbing the rest. On a densely crowded car, one can frequently see gangs of pickpockets, varying from two to half a dozen persons, and unless he is very attentive, they will go through him without his knowing it. They are skilful operators, and the rules of the profession forbid the practice of the science until the artist is able to pick away a man’s eye-winkers without his feeling it. I always look with pleasure on a man who boasts that no pickpocket can rob him. His confidence begets carelessness, and the result is, that he is generally robbed more than any other man.
SKILL OF PICKPOCKETS.
With a long experience on street railways, it has been my pleasure to suffer the depredations of pickpockets several times; and I will do them the credit to say that their robberies were almost always committed when I was on the lookout for them, and was quite confident they could do me no harm. They never took my watch or pocket-book, but on two occasions they have taken a letter case out of the inside pocket of my coat, and once invaded my trousers, and carried off a card case which had no cards in it. They have gone through my overcoat, and relieved it of kerchiefs, and gloves, and such trifles, and I was in blissful ignorance of their operations until some time afterwards, when I happened to put a hand in my pocket, and found that my property had gone.
Quite often I have seen the pickpockets “working” a car, and have admired the effectual and artistic manner in which they perform their duty. A few days before writing this description, I travelled with five of these individuals on my way down town, and saw them go from one end of the car to the other,—the vehicle was very much crowded,—and after taking what watches and pocket-books they could find, they left from the rear platform. The cry of robbers was raised a little too late, and when the first announcement was made that valuables had disappeared, they were off the car and three or four blocks away. Two pocket-books and four watches were the result of that evening’s enterprise—a very fair compensation for five minutes’ work.
The omnibuses are somewhat better in character than the street cars, though they do not afford accommodations for standing, especially if the passenger happens to be in the vicinity of six feet high. Many persons do stand in them, however, and revenge themselves for their discomfort by treading on the toes of the sitters at every lurch of the carriage. Intoxicated people do not ride in the omnibuses as much as in the street cars, partly for the reason that the majority of drunkards live on the railway rather than on the omnibus routes, and partly for the reason that it is not so easy to enter an omnibus as to enter a street car. The car has a conductor, whose duty it is to assist passengers on board and collect their fares, to kick off the disorderly ones, and keep everybody on good behavior. Between the pickpockets and passengers, the conductors generally occupy a neutral position, very much like the woman in the celebrated contest between her husband and a bear. The omnibus has no conductor, and as no one is responsible for the conduct of the passengers, they generally behave much better than on board a street car. If a man misbehaves himself in the former vehicle, his fellow-passengers eject him; but in the latter conveyance, the passengers do not wish to take upon themselves the conductor’s duty, and as he is generally unwilling to perform it, it is not performed at all.
Time is an important consideration on these lines of travel. There are so many stoppages for landing and receiving passengers, so many blockades arising from vehicles in the street, and from other causes, that the journey from end to end of Manhattan Island is not a rapid one. From the City Hall to Harlem, the ordinary time required is an hour and a half, and proportionally for other distances. The omnibus is even slower than the street car, as it has not the advantage of rails on which to move, and makes frequent stoppages to wait for its passengers. The consumption of time in city travel, added to the annoyances, makes it very desirable that a more perfect system should be devised.
SCHEMES OF RAPID TRANSIT.
Consequently the question of rapid transit has been very much debated, and several schemes have been proposed. I shall not attempt to give all the systems proposed for public consideration, as they would occupy much more space than I have at my disposal. Some inventors propose an underground railway, and some propose a railway elevated sufficiently high to offer no obstacle to the passage of vehicles. There has been a great deal of talk on the rapid transit question, but up to this time comparatively little has been done. A single track has been placed in the air on iron posts something like lamp posts, and carried from the Battery through Greenwich Street, and connecting streets and avenues, as far as Thirtieth Street. It is very doubtful if it ever gets any farther, or if anything more than a single track is built. The enterprise thus far has not met the expectations of its projectors. It has swallowed up a great deal of money, and secured very little travel. It carries passengers at a fair speed, but it has had two or three accidents that have rendered the public distrustful of its accomplishments.