His promptitude and energy are shown in the fact that on June 4th, less than three weeks after he took charge, a public meeting in favor of rapid transit was held.
“The Evening Post,
“New York, June 4, 1877.
“To Cyrus W. Field, Esq.:
“I cannot be present at the meeting to be held this evening at Chickering Hall, but I am heartily with you and your friends in the object of the meeting. I hope that a decided expression will be given to the conviction that an absolute necessity has arisen of instituting some method of conveying passengers between the upper and lower parts of the city which shall unite the greatest convenience with the utmost possible speed.
“Yours faithfully,
“Wm. C. Bryant.”
Mr. Charles O’Conor wrote on the same day to the chairman of the meeting:
“I much regret my inability to attend the meeting in favor of rapid transit, the state of my health not admitting of my doing so. I fully sympathize, however, with the objects sought to be obtained, and here repeat the remarks which I made in closing my address before the New York Historical Society at the Academy of Music on the 8th of last month:
“ ‘It is said, and doubtless with truth, that the great cities have hitherto been destroyers of the human race. A single American contrivance promises to correct the mischief. The cheap and rapid transportation of passengers on the elevated rail, when its capacity shall have been fully developed, will give healthful and pleasant homes in rural territory to the toiling millions of our commercial and manufacturing centres. It will snatch their wives and children from tenement-house horrors, and, by promoting domesticity, greatly diminish the habits of intemperance and vice so liable to be forced upon the humbler classes or nurtured in them by the present concomitants of their city life.’ ”
On the 26th of September of this year the new president wrote:
“I believe that the early completion of the New York Elevated Railroad from the South Ferry, passing Wall, Fulton and Catharine Street ferries up the Bowery and Third Avenue to the Grand Central Depot, will be a benefit to the three great railroads the trains of which start from the depot.”