Money-Mad Metropolis

...The Sights And Sensations of The Great City A. Work Descriptive of The City of New York In All Its Phases, With Full And Graphic Accounts of Its Splendors And Wretchedness, Its High And Low Life, Its Marble Palaces And Dark Dens, Its Attractions And Dangers, Its Rings And Frauds, Its Leading Men And Politicians, Its Adventures, Its Charities, Its Mysteries, And Its Crimes In short, something for everyone We learn how bank robbers, pickpockets and confidence men operated, how the city's morgue, post office and hospitals functioned, and how wealthy New Yorkers made and spent their money There is no pretense to organization, but this is something more than a glorious hodgepodge The author was evidently a man of strong convictions who wrote with descriptive power surpassing most others who attempted books of this kind New York was the favorite subject for those who sought to contrast the extremes of "light and shadow" Here the country's wealthiest men lived nearby the most wretched and overcrowded tenement houses The violence of the Civil War Draft Riots and the corruption of the Tweed Ring could not be matched by other cities New York, to James McCabe Jr , had become a money-mad place with a social structure organized "upon a pile of bank-books " Everyone who could, came here to play the stock market, where "many win and more lose " He believed that society had become infested with men who had acquired fortunes quickly and dishonestly, that while affecting fine breeding, these nouveaux riches actually behaved with ostentatious vulgarity By way of condemning extravagance, McCabe devoted six pages to a complete inventory of the fashionable New York woman's wardrobe Extravagance, though, was not the only vice of the well-to-do McCabe deplored the habit among the wealthy of limiting their families to no more than three children He feared (along with many others) that the low birth rate would cause the "American race" to die out "There is scarcely a physician in the city," McCabe wrote, "who is not applied to almost daily by persons of good position for advice as to the best means of preventing conception " Honorable physicians, he continued, would not provide such information Nevertheless, women applied to quacks for remedies and resorted to the abortionist when necessary While the rich lived extravagantly and regulated the size of their families, New York's poor struggled to obtain adequate housing Even the thrifty, hard-working, industrious people--"the worthy poor," McCabe called them--were forced to live in stinking, overcrowded tenements where privies overflowed into the streets and garbage was thrown down air shafts and into the alleys and streets Half a million people inhabited the congested wards between City Hall and 14th Street McCabe shrewdly predicted that a system of cheap rapid transit (propulsion by steam or even compressed air) might relieve the squeeze by enabling people to live farther from their place of work Lights And Shadows provides vivid descriptions of street scenes in old New York The rich, promenading on fashionable avenues, showing off their finery, met the poor, hawking everything that could be carried cigars, candies, cakes, ice cream, flowers, dogs, and birds Fighting and begging children swarmed about (there was no compulsory school law)--the boys selling newspapers and blacking shoes, the girls selling flowers and candy Pickpockets and beggars were active to an extent perhaps unknown today, and at night the prostitutes livened up the streets Where was the middle-class New Yorker in this scene9 "The middle class," wrote McCabe, "which is so numerous in other cities hardly exists here at all Living in New York is so expensive that persons of moderate means reside in the suburbs, some of them as far as forty miles in the country They come into the city to their business in crowds, between the hours of seven and nine in the morning, and literally pour out of it between four and seven in the evening" As the city grew northward old neighborhoods were destroyed by warehouses replacing homes, McCabe asserted that more new apartments for the middle class were needed In fact, McCabe wrote this book especially for middle-class suburban and out-of-town readers He described the shops, theaters, parks, and other wholesome places to visit, and gave the charitable and philanthropic works of the city their due But the message of Lights And Shadows is a warning "The city is full of danger The path of safety which is pointed out in these pages is the only one for citizen or stranger--an absolute avoidance of the vicinity of sin" Avoid the gambling dens where you will be cheated and robbed Steer clear of the thieving streetwalkers who carry dreadful diseases Stay away from the low dives and taverns where the "roughs" have their fun in indiscriminate beatings of innocent people On occasion these roughs even commit murder, McCabe cautioned, throwing the bodies into the river but escaping punishment because they bring out the vote at election time, and are therefore protected by the political machine The possibility of violence on a large scale always threatened, for the city's police force of 2,000 men was inadequate and the "scoundrels" knew it McCabe noted that there were 13,000 National Guardsmen on duty who could be summoned to armories throughout the city on a signal from the bell at City Hall For many years they had been called out to put down riots, m the latest incident, in July of 1871, gunfire had been exchanged between rioters and Guardsmen Several persons were killed, but McCabe remarked that "the lesson was a useful one, and the effect fully worth the valuable lives laid down in defence of the law" From reading Lights And Shadows and other popular books of its type, it is fair to say that people of a century ago were as much troubled by urban crime, violence and poverty as they are today Yet m some ways we have made progress The prospect of decent housing for all remains very remote, but most present-day New Yorkers are far better off than their 19th-century predecessors Children are certainly less visible in the streets now, although as a consequence of compulsory education violence is certainly more evident in the schools In 1970, too, New Yorkers can avail themselves of legal abortions, and they will soon have off-track betting parlots as a dull counterpart to the old sinister and exciting gambling dens McCabe surely would have been appalled Prostitution was his "social evil", just as obscene movies and books and drugs trouble the current middle class (Of course, city officials continue to find it convenient to use the National Guard to suppress riots) Lights And Shadows will make a fine gift for anyone interested in city life, and especially for history students, who will discover in it everything of interest that has been left out of their dull textbooks...

...or, The Sights and Sensations of the Great City By James D McCabe Jr A Facsimile Edition Farrar, Straus and Giroux 850 pp $12 50 Reviewed by James L. Wunsch Fellow, Center for Urban Studies, University of Chicago A century ago there was a boom m the publication of large, well-illustrated books about big cities These described places to visit, told of life from high society down to the lower depths, and warned of the dangers of urban crime and violence, their titles (Sunshine And Shadow In New York, Mysteries And Miseries of America's Great Cities) had a melodramatic charm James D McCabe Jr, an occasional playwright and poet, and a professional nonfiction author, wrote three books of this type about New York City His second and best volume was published in 1872, and has now been reprinted in a handsome facsimile edition The book has a title appropriate to its 800-page length Lights And Shadows of New York Life, or...