Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1914 — LOOKING DOWNWARD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LOOKING DOWNWARD

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NEW YORK BEFORE IT WAS DE■iiiS;?;:'U MAGNETIZED

Beneath the big receiving float of the F. C. & A. Aerial line twinkled the scattered night lights of New York city—the new New York, the New York of 1962. Capt. Martin MacManus, master airigator, retired, and the young float superintendent puffed luxuriously at their midnight cigars and gazed down into the vast silence. Hundreds of tiny air craft, their Single white turret lights marking them as private, streamed to and fro along the passenger lanes. The traffic lanes >wefe empty, save for the inevitable numbering newspaper carriers bearing Ithe hour's papers to the express floats at the lower end of the island.

I No hum of crowded humanity came upward through the night to the float, for the humanity that once bad packed Manhattan island now was scattered oyer the new 200 mile Metropolitan area, a feat that bad been made possible by Durang’s mastery of the law of gravitation and the consequent development of cheap, safe and swift aerial transportation, j “And they tell me?' said the superintendent musingly, “that once upon a ‘time that island was crowded so tightly that people were pushed off the piers." “Aye,” said Captain MacManus. “In the days of my youth, the year of 1912 land thereabouts, such was the case.” - “But why,” persisted the younger man, "why did the people swarm so to that little island there was the whole open country all around?” “Because,” said MacManus, “it was jNew York. “New York, my boy,” continued the veteran, “New York was—New York. !If you had lived in that time you would have understood what that meant Now that people have stopped Imitating sheep aqd moths, it is hard

to explain. New York was a sort of hpy no tic-magnet that mesmerized all the young people and lots of the old ones In this country and put Into their heads the delusion that they had to go to New York to‘live.’ Can-you Imagine such a thing, Charley? Thousands and millions of people laboring under the. delusion that they had to live in one certain place to be happy —and that place New York city!” "1 give it up,” said the superintendent. “What was the matter with them?”

“They were afflicted with the New York bug,” replied MacManus. “The place had them hypnotized, as I say, no matter how far away they might live. It didn’t make any difference who or what or why they were, at Borne time or other the bug was sure to strike them, and they began to look up time tables to Manhattan Island. Milliners, artists and anarchists, writers or waitresses, they were all alike. It was 'New York or bust’ with them all. The fact that the place already was packed tighter than a dynamo made no difference. ‘Always room for one more,’ they said. There was, too, if they had the price, bat the room was apt to be at the end of a hall, and 5 by 8 in size. • ’ “Did that discourage them, you ask? It did not Yow see, after anybody had lived In New York over Wo weeks In those days they developed what was known among our forefathers as the New York point of view. It was a

strange thing, that point of view. It made * man. talk of his little cubbyhole on the fifth floor of «tenement as ‘my apartments.’ It made him put up a front, as near to a millionaire's as he could imitate, and he’d live on pork and beans. In other words, the How York point of view was calculated to make everybody and everything look like money, and that was all anybody ever looked for there at that time. “A young man would come from the hinterland to New York and get a job, and for the first few weeks he’d go along'his way as a young man should go who expected to be the boss some day. He’d go home at night and sleep, and he’d save a little money. But soon the bug would start working on him. The first symptom would show in his buying a cane and discovering Broadway. The next downward step would be leaning to eat spaghetti in Italian restaurants. After that the rest was simple. The young man would go home in the evening, but only to change his collar and get his stick. Sometimes he would eat and sometimes he wouldn’t. But no matter, when you’d see him uptown at night under the lights you had to admit that he looked like a typical New Yorker, and that was what the young man’s soul craved. After that he’d go home and feel that the day had not been misspent. :

“By this tiu£ if you ever asked him if he hadn’t come from Oskaloosa, or Chicago, or some other American city he’d be ready to fight. He was a New Yorker by this time, and if he got as far as Coney Island he thought he was traveling. And with this we close the book on a young but misspent life. For nobody ever recovered after the bug had done its work. They were sealed to Manhattan island then. They would rather live there thirty minutes than any other place thirty years; they said so themselves. That was

why the park benches always were so full.

"What became of them all? Nobody knew—or cared. New York was the first city in this country to discover that it could do away with its heart and soul. People used to talk about ‘the heart of New York.’ It had none. Other cities tried to Imitate It iq, this, but they looked like nice little school children playing robbers. If a person had money all of New York knew where he was. You bet it’did; it needed him in its business. If he had no money, nobody except perhaps the policeman on night duty in the parks knew that he existed. _ So long as one’s money lasted a fellow was followed by a procession usually headed by a prosperous looking young woman, then, in order, a head waiter, a chauffeur, a bartender and a ‘crowd of friends.' After bis money was gone the procession consisted of one past. The order of Friends was strong in New York in that era; you couldn’t get away from them —if you looked like you had the gelt. But if you failed to make a spectacular front: ‘Good-night! Who ever saw you before?’ You didn’t have to have any money, understand; you only had to look like it. A typical New Yorker who was good at the Job could look likp a millionaire and owe for laundry at the same time. You have beard of New York art, Charley? Well, that was it; New Yorkers were all artists in that line. “Two kinds of people came to that

city In those days: people who to make money and people who wanted to spend it It was the first kind that kept the place crovMed like a present-day cut-rate Greenland summer excursion, but it was the second crowd that paid for the lights. The lights were most of them down there, Charley, under that long passenger lane you see below you. They called it Broadway, because it had nothing to do with the straight and narrow path. Now we have lights guide us around the heavens, but there was nothing like that in old New York. Then they had them to trim the spenders by.

“I’ve heard of that place they used to call Broadway,” said the superintendent. “Lillian Rusell sings a song about it at the Z., & T. Aerial theater.”, “I know,” said |he captain, “and she was just as beautiful and youthful then as she is now. She was one of the things that helped make New York the hypnotic-magnet it was. Every laundress in the country said to herself at night: ’Lily Russell went, tp New York, and look at her now. Why can’t I go and do the same?” “There was a place called Coney Island, too, wasn’t there?” said the superintendent ' “Yes. Coney island was Hie most crowded spot on the globe in summer time. On a Sunday . it was packed tighter than Manhattan island; The New Yorker’s idea of a change of scene was to get out of one crowd into a bigger one. When he was jammed in so tight that his lungs couldn’t work he was happy. The straight front corset was invented in New York at this time for obvious reasons.”

“The people coming into New York from the rest of the country must have felt strangely out of place,” mused the superintendent. “They did,” said the captain, “if they came from the United States. The tdsitor from Kalamazoo, would try to get chummy with his neighbor in the theater. ‘Kalamazoo?’ the neighbor would say. ‘lt’s in Africa, isn’t it?’ ‘No, Michigan.’ ‘Oh, yes, Michigan. That’s one of the western states, what?’ The best part of it was that the other fellow ha* just got in from Muncie Ind., the . day before. But suppose you came from London —Oh! deah chap, then you were at home, really —New York always felt ashamed of the fact that it was located so nearto America. English styles used to come outr there before they did in London. When the president of the United States paid the town a visit they sent a traffic policeman to the depot to see that his taxi-cab didn’t break any speed laws. When any member of English royalty deigned to come over the mounted police were iswept away like chaff by the surge of free-born New Yorkers rushing for ward to get in the moving picture of ’Crowds Waiting Arrival of Duke of Con-Naught’ If the royal machine would hit a citizen the man would die happy. Such was the patriotism of that great city at that time.” “Didn’t they ever go out and see the rest of the country?” said the superintendent. * “Only when they had to. The only time they enjoyed themselves then was when they, stepped up and registered from New York city. The rest of the time they were wishing they were back in the crowd.”

The superintendent stared musingly down into the silent sppce below. “There must have been something about the town, after all, to make such a strong attraction,” said he. “There was,” said Captain MaoManus. “About five million people.” • (Copyright, by W. G. Chapman.)

"They called it Broadway, because it had nothing to do with the straight and narrow path.”