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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1931-07-03, Page 3SI44D"I,&I3LE EVIEVYW11 EIRE Travellers' Cheques issued by The Dominion Bank arF re- cognized the world over. When travelling carry your funds in this safe and conven- ient form. Cheques may be purchased at any branch of this Bank. THE DOMINION_ BANK ESTADLISHED lays SEAFORTH BRANCH R. M. Jones - - Manager 312 BENEATH THE SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK The subsurface structure of New York is planted almost as far into the earth as the skyscraper towers rise above. Indeed, if it were not for the underside of the city there would be little above ground to excite com- ment. Lately I went exploring in this real underworld of the earth's great- est city and was amazed. We were in a vast, dimily illumin- ed subterranean chamber that had been carved in the stone heart. of Manhattan by dynamite. It was draughty down there and cold. Steel tracks that caught the jewel rays from signal lights of red, yellow, blue and green glittered to a vanishing point miles ahead. There were 59 tracks, I was told, on two levels. Curving upward through the gloom was a giant leg of steel, one of four that rose to support overhead a rec- tangle of concrete as large as a city block. "That's the bottom of one of the big hotels," said my guide. "We're down two track levels now but a long way from the deepest part. Careful, now, these stairs are steep and dark." My guide went first. He is an un- derground detective who -hunts subter- ranean vagrants in Grand Central Terminal. Except to a few the pipe tunnels are secret, unsuspected passageways. They carry the five billion pounds of steam, metered like gas, which are sold annually by a public utility to more than 2100 of the skyscrapers. At Grand Central the e mains have to be carried at great (depths. Where we entered the pipe unne'ls four great steam mains ran abreast above the floor. The tops of their asbestos - sheathed forms were nearly waist - high. It was warm and shadowy as a tropical night. "That's why the bums like it down here," explained the detective. A fellow hung himself here once. We found 18 milk bottles under the pipes afterward. He'd been living down here. He'd wash his clothes and dry 'em on these mains. There was another one, a thief, who starved himself to death down here, and one just died—sick, I guess. You see, you can't tell who is hiding under these mains as you patrol the tunnel unless you come on your hands and knees. Once we had a drive and rounded up 20 ibums." If the island were made of trans- parent glass one might see deeper pits than this beneath some of the struc- tures. The tip of the Woolworth Tower spire is 792 feet high. Almost as deep in the earth -450 feet in plac- es—there is a circular tunnel through which Catskill mountain water is de- livered into New York City. It is so big it might conceal a double -tracked railroad and is 18 miles in length, the longest such tunnel in the world. Planting it so deeply was necessary for the sake of a substantial rock covering to withstand the bursting pressure of the water load it carries. It is carried under Central Park and beneath the East River and (greatly shrunken) thence across the Narrows into Staten Island. Because of the off chance that some 'clay an earthquake may break that deep bore in Manhattan (plus the fact that the city is growing), another great delivery tunnel is being built now far under the surface of the Bronx, the East River, Queens and Brooklyn. • Much closer to the surface are the 4,000 miles of water mains linked with the delivery tunnels. Engineers and contractors who, ten thousand times a year, have occasion to trip through the street skin of 1Vlanhattan have an enormous respect for the water mains. ' "We treat a 48 -inch water main ;with the same caution as if it were a powder magazine," said one of them. "Pressing against its metal hide, we know, is' a chain of lakes mountains •'high. A break in one means serious !trouble." Trouble is the word! It may mean ruin for the contractor responsible; for many thousands of individuals it way mean a variety of inconveniences. Yet the trouble has to be risked every 'lay in numerous places. In recent times when a subway arras being -built fin Central Park West the contractor. who transformed that street into a deep trench eovlered with planking (staunch enough to carry all forms of istreet traffic, had to devise an ade- gnate cradld for no less than, five of these monstrous four -foot mains, to say nothing of a sea serpent of a gal anain, a sewer, power and light con - Units, and other conduits carrying telephone wires. ;Hie had to put tem- porary foundations under adjoining' buildings. 13e had to do these thing$ and at the same time drive fol and ;With dynamite and steam shovels a !pathway for that which 'represents A 31t IAV the grand opera of underground activ- ities—the subterranean operation of ten -car electric trains. And when he was finished he had to replace as se- curely as he found it all ,the subsur- face structure he had disturbed. There are crews constantly engag- ed in a huntforleaks and for thieves. Some years ago a theft of a million gallons of water a day was traced to a brewery. The managers had se- cretly tapped the water main. A part of the penalty imposed was a fine of $1,000,000. Gas thieves are hunted similarly. More than one illicit dis- tiller has been trapped because his greed tempted him to cut down his overhead by underground stealing. Unskilled workmen sometimes cause trouble. One mistake tied up the com- posing room of one of New York's afternoon papers just'before the dead- line. The gas fibres went out under the pots of molten lead of the linotype machines. After a frantic interval the gas resumed its flow, and the papers came from the presses half an hour late. There are imprisoned forces under- ground in New York that when out of control can be deadly. Some months ago, when wind and snow wie driv- ing pedestrians along the sidewalks with heads down, one of these failed to note a workman guarding with a red flag an open manhole. He van- -shed into an underground chamber that was for him the gateway to an- other world. He was cooked to death in a flash of time in a coil of exposed steam pipes. Below the street surface Manhattan is no more solid than Mammoth Cave. One engineer who for 43 years had studied the labyrinth exclaimed, "I understand 'it? No man can under- stand it. We who make the under- ground have our own body of laws; we have our diplomats for the do- mains of sewers, subways, water sup- ply, gas, electricity, mail tubes, steam, railroads, and other services. Each time one company wants to expand or change, all must be consulted and pla- cated. The burrowing, you see, began when the first sewers were laid, before 1700. What it will be like below streets 200 years from now I'll leave to your imagination." That gentleman can tell you of for- gotten subways buried in the city, In 1912 excavators working in Broadway broke through into a musty tunnel, where there was a passenger car, rust- ed and rotted. They found there a hidden chamber that h/.d thrilled New York in the late '70's. 'It was part of an experimental subway built by Al- fred Ely Beach. Every once in a while someone be- comes vocal in behalf of a scheme of pipe galleries for New York—a great system of spacious tunnels which would hold all the line of un- derground services, making repairs easy. As a matter of fact, nearly a mile of such gallery actually exists in New York, forgotten by all but its builders. The authorities decided it would be dangerous in operation. It is now just another of New York's forgotten underground chambers. THE WAY OUT The Smiths were deep in their yearly `vacation conference; Every- one wanted to go a different place, and no one knew much about any of them. On Dad's suggestion, they call- ed several places by Long Distance, and found out what they wanted. It was easy then to decide. MOTORMANIA As I stood on the deck of a freight- er coming up Delaware Bay and look- ed, for the first time in 19 years, up- on an American landscape, it all seem- ed familiar enough until my binocu- lars disclosed across the undulations of farmland a gleaming white band, upon which scurried two endless files of glistening things like beetles, run- ning nose to tail. I had played a lot with automobiles in roadless quarters of Asia, but this way my first glimpse of the stupendous tgaffic on our flaw- less roads; and, for some reason, I had an intuitive feeling on the spot that the poor man's car, of which I had read a good deal, was going to give me food for thought. At the outset I was too delighted in the absence of dumbfounding chang- es in land or people to try to account for it. Then I was perplexed to find how small an advance in the standard of living had been made by our high. ly advertised prosperity, apart from changes directly attributable to the car. And by now I am sure that few innovations in history have had a mrre conspicuous influence upon a whole peoples ideas than the cheap eat hai; lrad.-.end have yet contribut- ed so little to real progress. 1 teas soon to discover that there j9a let 'was (lip q leaden p•:the Mild of eaYe one else that , the MuOrigau peep&e were blesaR iiJ the ;poaseasian of 23,- 900,000 automObilea as Iby Ito . other; endowment. F,uyeirywhere it Was talc- en at en for granted that the More good roads the better, wliether they, led anywhere or not; the more cars per capita the better; and the more. nnle- age per car, on whatsoever errand, the better. I found no one suggesting even in a spcirting spirit, that gaso- line .stimulates more ,extravagance, with as little return in real hapine'ss, than alcohol ever did. There seem to be no heretics t6 hint that the auto- mobile perhaps kills more, maims more, bankrupts more homes, pro- motes or abets more crime, fills more courts, keeps more boys out of school, takes more people away from books, keeps more out of church, and cor- rupts more girls than beer ever did, I had better make clear that I am not concerned with the commercial truck, public' service vehicles, or cars owned by the wealthy. What I ques- tion is the right of •a man of small income to an automobile which con- tributes nothing to his livelihood. The community in which I have made my "study" is a typically American vil- lage. u am convinced its motoring habits are those of "the comfortably poor" throughout the Atlantic sea- board. It is a village of 53 households which put to lively use 52. automobiles besides a few trucks and tractors. Considerably more than a quarter of all the community's income is spent directly on motoring, without taking account of road taxes: Not more than seven automobiles in this village are essentlal to their owners' pursuit of a living. At least 40 impose a heavy drain on their own- ers, so heavy that the great majority have to deny themselves actual neces- sities. There are car -owning famil- ies here confessedly too poor to wire their houses for electricity. Twenty- nine out of 53 families have neither bathtubs, nor modern sanitation. Ex- cept for the car and possibly a radio, the standard of living is not a whit higher than it was twenty years ago. Cultural life is even more ;barren than it used to be. No one from this vil- Iage ever uses the automobile to go to a lecture, a concert or a play. Shop- ping, the movies and permanent waves are the three standard excuses for go- ing to town. The taste displayed in architecture and furniture is ghastlier than it ev- er was. There are only three house- holds in which anything is read be- sides newspaper headlines and, rare- ly, a rubbishy novel. Two of these are without cars. The rising genera- tion has little home life, sees no read- ing done, has little education. Dur- ing the past ten years the village has sent one boy to college, put 11 chil- dren in high school, sent one girl to business college. The elders admit there was much more schooling in the previous decade. Parents cannot now afford to keep their children in school. Motoring comes first. Also, as soon as the boys can escape from grade school, they want to earn wages, to save toward the initial payment on a car. It is a common saying among mothers in this village that the boy who does not own his car at 21 does not amount to much. It is perhaps superfluous to say what the girls think of a boy without a car good enough to set off the clothes into which they put all their earnings. Yet all this leads so slowly to matrimony. The more attention a girl elicits from a motor -minded suitor, the less able is he to provide a home for her. As I look, then, upon the life about me with an un-American detachment, I cannot escape the conviction that motor -mindedness imposes a heavy burden on a relatively poor commun- ity and adds little to such enjoyment of life as a higher civilization is sup- posed to yield. Even as an induce- ment to take the sun aid air, the car is rapidly ceasing to function. The national preference is obviously for tightly closed glassed boxes. The cheap machine used to carry its own- ers to woodland picnics. The hot-dog stand and roar house are monuments to the demise of that idea. The automobile, it used to be. said, stimulates an interest in mechanical things and caters to the spirit of ad- venture. The American motorist is now highly displeased if it does either. I know two who have had cars several years but have not even seen their engines since the salesman made a perfunctory display of them. As for adventure, there is not one American car owner out of a hundred who does not devote much earnest thought to escaping all chance of it. The sport of hunting difficulties to overcome with a car, of exploring by- ways where the going is bound to be bad but where there are picturesque views, would be considered a fool's diversion by this American genera- tion. With time on his hands and no objective, the American motorist chooses to follow a strip of glaring cement through flat country, adorned chiefly by billboards and home (brew emporiums, and through the congest- ed traffic of a dozen cities, doing 40 mile's an hour with his tense vision focused on the spare tire immediate- ly ahead. Now the substance of all these pon- derous observations is that a very big proportion of the running to and fro on -wheels which the "comfortably poor" American people do yields them nothing but a certain limited satis- faction for which they pay a perfect- ly exorbitant price. The first ele- ment in this satisfaction is keeping up appearances. The second and greater is the escape from care or dull routine. It appears indeed that a huge percentage of the automobiles in this country serve the one purpose of an intoxicant. I have a feeling that the present industrial slump is bringing us to the eve of a campaign for "temperance" and "moderation" in motor minded- ness which the priesthoodof the cult wild combat with great fury. But that campaign cannot be intelligent-, ly launched until some voice that speaks with authority challenges the fallacy that the automobile is an in- dex to prosperity or a clue to our standard of living. We shall not have a glimmer of understanding of what a car is really worth to us, or of our right to operate such a fascinating , contraption, until we' are ready tri, admit to ;one another that, for most of us, it is just an outrageously ex- pensive form of stimulant. !I t�t ti ori IYl ,, txG More New Colored Voile DRESSES It is no idle boast; it is an actual fact, we never sold Dresses in the quantities we are selling them this season. We have a very special purchase of new Pastelle shades in the very latest de- signs and styles, which we will clear at $2.95 Don't Miss These Wonder Values MEN'S FINE WORSTED SUI'T'S 19.50 HERE is an opportunity extraordinary. An ex- tensive assortment of styles in a range 'orvalu.es that makes this clearaway a re- cord breaker, both in its big selection and little prices. Through out the store prices have steadily gone down making the greatest saving -to -the -purchaser op- portunity p- portunity we have yet offered. FROCK DeLUXE 'De Prettiest. Colorful Dresses We Have Ever Shown They are made of beautiful fancy Silk Georgette and Silk Chiffon, with new coat or cape effects, large floral patterns, full length with long flares, both bright and subdued colors. You simply cannot resist these delightful new frocks. Sizes 16 to 40. Prices $12.75, $13.50, $15.00 To get Worsted Suits at this price is a real opportunity, To get high grade quality cloth tailored by Can- ada's leading makers, is a superlative achievement. Don't associate these Suits with ordinary price proposi- tions. These are beautifully lined, honestly trimmed and perfect fitting. Come in and see what big values we are offering. High Grade Beautiful Quality FROCKS A collection of Dresses, beautiful in material, excep- tional in making, and an ex- tremely attractive variety of the very newest styles. The prices are actually unprece- dented for Dresses of the high standard represented. Voiles, Celense and Silk Crepes in all the Iovely pas- telle shades and the newest printed shades. $j,95 The Big Value of the Year BEAUTIFUL BLUE STRIPE SUITS $24.50 There are no better Suits made or sold anywhere than these. Indeed few stores, if any, will equal them. These are Suits that only recently would have sold for $30 and $35.00. The very finest imported cloths are used ; the very best buying employed, and every Suit is the product of Can- ada's best manufacturers. You will be absolutely satisfied that these are real bargains when you see the Suits. { a� :-r 1 fNi Is.� i' .s..a5i�N1.lJ vx 1r,