Rapid Transit In New York

Pcople wonder wliy we do not have steam railway coinmunication between tho upper and lowor extrernities of our city. Xho matter has boen agitated a dozen years. A dozen companies liave boen cliartered, but the thing stands today just where it stood in 1800. It takes an hour and a half tó go from the City Hall to the Harloin bridge, and the ride is tedious, full of discorafort, in cars that are dirty and erowdod, with people in all tho different stages of inebriation, with oeoasional incursions of piek pockets to break up the inonotony of tho jouruey and give a dash of adventure to the excursión, lu sumnier the passenger is half roasted ur jjarboiled, and in winter he is half-frozon before he reaohes tho terminus of the route. AVhy is nothing done to pnt an end to these slow tortures in a city of a 1,000,000 inhabitants, and with moro wealth than any other on the continent P The answer is as plain as tho sim piest quostion in addition. Mr. VanderBilt will not allow a compoting line to interfero with tho roads whieh yield him a clean protit of $1,000,000. The Third Avenue Horso-car Company, whose reputed receipts last year weae 11,000,000 over and above its expenses, cannot afford to allow a quick transit road tb cut off its profits so enormous, and is willing to spend $500,000 in preventing suoh a road from getting a charter, and buying it up should its charter be granted. These horse-car roads cost very little in the ontset and, and ït costs very littlo to run them. They pay from 20 to 60 per cent ou the capital really invested in them. They stand dirootly in the way of any scheme for a metropolitan road such as the interests of the city and the convenienco of our people imperatively demand, They are the lions that dovour whoever attempts to dispute their monopoly. And until the people rise up in indignation and break their monopoly, by taking the matter in their own hands and authorizing the city government to build the road the public interest requires, we shall bo tortured and robbed by thoso corpgrations which stand directly in the way of the growth of the city and the ■welfare oí lts people.-