THE ESSEX STREET HOLOCAUST.

THE ESSEX STREET HOLOCAUST.

再一次这个城市的场景了, but a perfectly preventable sacrifice of human life in a densely crowded tenement district. The story is an old and too familiar one. and tells of the destruction in broad day light of a wretched firetrap of the accustomed sort, with dark, narrow, and tortuous stairways, the usual elevator shaft, or fire conductor, from the basement, and the fire escapse so-called,with wooden platforms, which burned away at the first attack of the flames, leaving no foothold for the unfortunate tenants to utilise as a means of escape. Where the escapes had iron platforms, these were so incumbered by the wonted assortment of stuff seen on tenement house fire escapes as to not only utterly prevent those who were in danger of death from the fire which surrounded them in their rooms, on the stairways, and in the halls from attempting to save their lives, but also seriously to hamper the firemen in their operations. There is no need to ask who was to blame for this. The responsibility for the destruction of life and the grave injuries received by so many of the tenants lies at the door of those city authorities who deliberately neglected their duties. These in elude the tenement house bureau, which, after making so many professions of seeing not only to the moral, hut the physical improvement of tenement houses, and having had a special code of laws drawn up for its use. and an expensive staff of officials appointed for its serv'ce, particularly in the way of inspecting the condition of the fire escapes, the facilities, exterior and interior, for escape in case of fire, and the structural preventatives to the upward and lateral spread of the flames, has as yet, after the lapse of so many months—of paying salaries to the staff—nothing to show for its existence, but the loss of five, or six. or more lives and the maiming of half a score persons. Next in order conics the fire department, whose captains arc supposed to have all the fire escapes inspected, their condition examined, and a, report sent in to headquarters as to whether or not thev are in every way capable of serving the purposes for which they are intended. That this was not done, or, if done by the captains and proper reports sent in to the authorities. that no notice was taken of such reports, the holocaust of Monday last clearly proves. It is. therefore, “up to” Commissioner Sturgis to open an investigation into this matter, which public opinion demands shall he thorough, shall be undertaken at once, and shall not end in a plentiful coating of whitewash for some one higher no and making a scapegoat of some luckless subordinate who lacks pull enough to ward off the consequences of his superior’s culpable neglect. Precisely the same censure rests upon the inspectors of the city building department, who, if thev had conscientiously performed the duties for which they are paid, would not have suffered wooden-platformed fire escapes to remain for a day. nor allowed the woman who owns the premises to shirk the consequences of her mean and picayune economy in evading the law as she did. Better things were expected from a “reform” government, whese loud professions of remodeling the whole municipal svstem generally have as vet been belied in nearly every department. Till real, and not sham investigations into such abuses are instituted, and the defaulting officials of whatever rank are duly punished for a neglect which has so often been accompanied by fatal consequences, the citizens of New York will have no confidence in the sincerity of the promises of the present municipal administration. Meanwhile it would be at least less indecent if a judicious silence were in future observed by the press and many of those in authority as to fat d fires in London and elsewhere. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

At the next meeting of the board of aldermen of Jersey City. N. J., the Jersey City fire department will present a petition, signed bv every member, asking that an ordinance he passed compelling the proprietors of theatres to pay a license fee of $.150 a year each. This amount, if the ordinance is passed, will he placed to the credit of the Firemen’s Pension fund, which was started 'ome time ago and now amounts to over $5,000. The opinion held is that the ordinance can be passed and acted upon.