USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 2 > Part 35
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may live far away in miles from your work nowadays and yet go to it as if it were near at hand. The diurnal inrush and outrush of the crowds of the work- ing and the visiting population shows this. The noise of the wheels, the sound of gearing, the need for storage of the vehicles, for their repair, for their refuel- ling, and for their speed-control, present a spectacle and a problem so vast and turbulent that the Boston of 1930 cannot be envisaged as the Boston of 1880.
There were no subway portals then with rivers of men pouring out from beneath the ground and spreading in all directions. There were no subway vents in the sidewalks emitting subway air and noise. There was no roar of subway trains below ground making the ground tremble. Yet the people who pour out in 1930 are like those who lived in Boston in 1880. They are as active, as intelligent looking, as well dressed, as orderly and as individual as those who came singly on foot, on bicycles, in horse-drawn carriages, or in bulk in the horse-cars on the surface of the ground.
LIGHTS CHANGING FROM RED TO YELLOW TO GREEN
Men whose forbears fearlessly rejected the mandates of a despotic king are timidly submissive now to the gesture of command implied by the hues of changing lights. Bostonians of 1930 stand upon the street corners in crowds of hundreds awaiting the pleasure of red to turn to yellow. When the yellow comes, they surge and cross, casting hurried glances to see if the death war- rant of the green light has been served upon them. When the green comes, hundreds of roaring motor cars surge forward to make a crossing of their own over which the warrant of a light of red may flash at any moment. When the red comes, green flashes out at another place, and when yellow comes, red flashes elsewhere.
Thus the pedestrians cross in fear, and the motors. When the two collide, it may mean death,- not the uncertain death by the despot's axe, before which a pardon often intervened, but death by the relentless stroke of the modern motor vehicle, which kills in Massachusetts at the rate of fifteen to twenty . citizens per week, where there are lights or no lights. Strange business this, yet in 1930 no better way to move than by the guidance of the flashing of colored electric lights has been devised. What shall be said of us by the his- torians of the coming century? Will they marvel at this mortality as a little thing which was vastly surpassed later or as a great thing which later was made mercifully less?
Many a Bostonian remembers the policeman who stood at the street cor- ners to protect men on foot from the onrush of horses and carriages in the 90's. The horses stopped at the waving of his hand. When the motor vehicle epoch came, policemen acting alone could not control the traffic. Target signals operated by hand were devised to give greater visibility and to add authority. Many officers were brought in at the great crossings. At small crossings officers came in where none had been needed before. By the year 1930 the cost has become so great for the employment of these trained men and their task has become so dangerous in and near the traffic streams that, with the need for synchronization of signals, the flashing lights have been brought in almost everywhere to replace or to supplement the gesturing men. To increase the
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visibility of the men both for their own safety in the rush and for their effective- ness as traffic guides, white gloves are provided for them, white shoulder straps, and also white platforms which elevate the men above the shining black mass of the surging motor vehicles.
VELOCIPEDES CHANGING TO AUTOMOBILES AND AIRPLANES
The genealogy of the airplane, whose advent marks one of the greatest changes in the past third of a century, and the history of the progenitors of the bicycle in Boston, is as follows:
The Ilobby-horse eame in pietorial form to Boston about the time of the Revolution. Soon thereafter some examples were imported to Boston and others were made here.
The Boneshaker .- This arrangement of two tandem steel-tired wooden wheels, having a seat above and between them and propelled by foot eranks on the front steering wheel, was well known in Boston during the middle of the last century. Many were made by wheel- wrights in country towns all over New England. They attained a speed of six to eight miles per hour.
The Velocipede .- This three-wheeled wooden variant of the "boneshaker" was in wide general use by the boys of Boston from 1870 to 1885 and after.
The High Bicycle .- This "wheel" or "machine" or "ordinary" differed from the "boneshaker" in having a large front wheel (48 to 70 inches in diameter) over which the saddle was placed. A small (12 to 18 inch diameter) wheel trailed at the rear. Rubber tires, when used, enabled strong riders to exceed fifteen miles per hour. Bieyeles of this kind were ridden by many thousands of boys and men of Boston from 1875 to 1890.
The Kangaroo and the "geared ordinary" appeared in Boston during the middle and the latter part of the above period and attempted to seeure safety by the use of sinaller front wheels (geared up) and a rider's seat placed farther behind the center of support. The Star and the Eagle bieyele appeared in Boston about the time of the "kangaroo" and attempted further safety by placing the large driving wheel at the rear of a small forward steering wheel. Speed of one hundred miles per day for several eonseeutive days was attained by exceptionally able men.
The Safety Bicycle appeared in large numbers from England about 1885 and was widely manu- faetured in the country immediately thereafter. The rear of the two equal-sized tandem wheels was driven by ehains (or gears) from a eentral erank axle. In speed it equalled the more dangerous kinds and was ridden by tens of thousands in and near Boston.
The Pneumatic Tired Bicycle .- This air tire of about 1890 was applied to all the above types of bieyeles, and it resulted in making the "safety bicyele" the fastest, lightest, strongest and safest. All other forms of bieycle disappeared. Speed rose to two hundred to three hundred miles per day on the road, four hundred miles or more on the traek. Tens of thousands of men, boys, women and girls of Boston rode these machines in 1900.
Bieycle Riding beeame almost a national sport in the mid-nineties and ereated multiple- seated pacing machines for two, three, five, and even ten men. Paeing machines driven by gasolene engines followed almost immediately and singled out a group of remark- ably skillful and daring men who designed and built motoreyeles and rode them. This type of mechanically-minded man ineluded several of a singularly scientific bent, among whom the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss beeame specially famous. These men, aeeustomed to light construction and high speeds, and to danger at the maximum speed, experimented with "flying machines," using materials familiar to them in bieyele construction.
The Airplane was designed, built, and flown by bievele makers. The Wrights eame to Boston with Curtiss and Grahame-White from England at one of the earliest American aviation meets, held at Squantum on the oeeasion of a visit there by President Taft during his term at the White House. Speeds of forty to seventy miles per hour were reached at a distance of from fifty to two hundred feet above the ground.
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The Automobile .- This machine, likewise, which in 1930 has revolutionized transportation upon land and even by its influence upon the water, owes much to the bicycle family. Without the rubber pneumatic tire, which was evolved for the bicycle, and the develop- ment of light and fool-proof engines for the motorcycle, the automobile could not have attained at so early a date its general conquest of mankind, and the airplane would have been delayed in appearing in the sky.
Coming generations will wonder at the fear which overcame the hundreds of thousands of horses at the sight of the first bicycles and tricycles on the highways. Greater fear came to horses that beheld the familiar street railway horse car when its axles were cquipped with electric motors. The equine mind could not reason with itself at the approach of that vehicle, which moved, as it were, by supernatural agency. Still greater fear among horses, amount- ing to terror, greeted the fast, the roaring and the gas-emitting automobiles. That terror was communicated to the occupants of the frail wooden carriages which could be broken or overturned in an instant by the rearing and bolting of the uncontrollable animals. This spectacle of fear and danger, resulting in human rage and vituperation at the sight of automobiles, formed one of the first and one of the greatest handicaps experienced by motorists in establishing their right to use the highways at the beginning of the motor cra.
Coming generations will also wonder at the silent, breathless attention, amounting to awe, with which crowds of onlookers beheld the first public ascents and flights of airplanes. Anxiety for the safety of the men riding upon those flimsy frameworks, wonder combined with delight that the strange, noisy con- trivances could actually leave the ground after the attempts of thousands of years, and a feeling that the Almighty could view only with disapproval such ascensions on the part of men lacking a divine sanction or errand,- all these conflicting thoughts held the onlookers in a thrall which may never be duplicated in human history.
In 1930 the occasional airplanes which roar above our heads attract attention somewhat. We wonder if they will increase in numbers as did the automobiles or fall into disuse as most Boston men predicted would be the fate of the auto- mobile when it appeared to the number of a few hundred upon our streets in the late 90's.
THE CHANGING LOCOMOTIVE
In 1930 there are indications that the steam locomotive has reached its peak of usefulness, beauty and size, and that its fame, like that of the clipper ship of 1830, will gradually pass into the realm of tradition. Now comes the commonplace looking electric locomotive, whose motivating mechanisms are hidden. The oil-driven automotive box-like passenger and freight cars are appearing in great numbers on the rails. Thus a new species of dinosaur comes in on an old terrain.
The artists of our day do not paint the locomotive in its strength and speed as the ancient picture-makers depicted horses and the old square-rigged ships. Our painters for the most part are content to portray copper kettles, lemon peel, bric-a-brac, and familiar faces, clothes and scenes. Artists as a class, including sculptors and poets, are oblivious of the locomotive as a thing of beauty, though there is some written appreciation of its amazing mien,
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its vitality and its strength. The sound of the blasts of its exhaust steam is the loudest of all our sounds, except artillery. The roar of its own wheels (and those that follow it) upon the track is not equaled by the sound of thunder or the roar of Niagara. We hear the raging noise of the locomotives comning in over the hills for five miles, even for ten in quiet air. The smoke rises up like a cloud and mingles with the clouds. The steam burgeons like cumulus cloud. In speed, strength, endurance and docility there is no moving thing in our time that can equal the steam locomotive. Upon the track it expresses rage which in the jungle is not equaled by the tiger running.
Within twenty years the locomotives have become longer, larger barreled and higher. Many excrescences have appeared to break the simple lines of the smooth, round sides and the jowl. Air pumps, turbines and complexes of steam pipes and valve gears cleave to the sides like leeches to the flanks of a pachyderm, but nothing can stand in the way of the moving connecting rods and the tall steel wheels which, when they are entangled or blocked, wrench themselves to pieces or tear asunder whatever stands against them. The most terrible spectacle of destruction in our day is a locomotive wrecked with its train.
THE RISE AND THE DECLINE OF THE BROOMSTICK CAR
It is a curious fact that the vehicle which in the 80's and the 90's gradually drove the horse-drawn street railway car off the streets of Boston is now in its turn being driven off by a vehicle of another species. That first vehicle was the electric car operated on the streets by current taken from bare over- head wires through a trolley pole, sometimes called a broomstick. The astonish- ingly rapid rise of this type of car in popular favor carried its trackage over the whole city and far into the suburbs. Massachusetts was by 1910 crisscrossed in all directions by these trolley lines which penetrated the smallest villages.
Fate in the form of the automobile and the automobile bus overwhelmed these upstart street railways and by greater economy of operation in all weathers has led to the abandonment of thousands of miles of tracks and pole lines. In 1930 the broomstick car is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in all the suburbs and is beginning to disappear in the City of Boston.
OTHER CHANGES
Mention may be made of a few of the minor changes which have taken place in the structure and the life of Boston in the past half-century. I will mention the bell-like noises which the tin milk cans made in the streets during the SO's and 90's. In 1930 these noises are replaced by the sharp clatter of glass milk bottles carried in wire baskets. The sound of wooden snow shovels in winter has given way to the strident roar of iron shovels. The crash of wooden window blinds swinging against the house wall is rarely heard nowadays in the gales, but the screech of revolving chimney tops needing oil has added a louder token of the strength of the Boston winds.
The street cries of peddlers in the 80's calling, "Wild duck, wild duck," "Any old rags or bottles," "Buy lob," "Fresh mackerel," "Strawberries," "Sixteen bananas for a quarter," "Fresh Messina oranges," "Pans and kettles
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to mend, boilers to mend," - these and other musical calls have been silenced by laws of the city except in the poorest districts, where the voice of the umbrella mender and the tinkling bell of the scissors and knife grinder may be heard. Ordinances have barred the musical hand-organ of the 80's, the mechanical street piano and the brass band of the 90's. The boys of the 80's could detect by the sound the difference between the hand organ which carried a monkey and the ones which were without the friendly company of this captivating simian. The delectable music of the flute, violin and harp which played trios in front of grog-shops is not heard. Fire bells no longer ring "box" numbers. The sharp twitter of the hordes of English sparrows has nearly ceased; now- adays there is no pattering sound of shoes on the sidewalk pavement since ahnost every man walks on soft rubber heels.
Yet the noises of the city of today are greater than ever. We submit to the roar and shriek of the flanged iron wheels of street railway cars, the clash and roar of the gearing and the chain drive gear of motor trucks, the tooting of countless motor horns, the bells of hospital ambulances, the unearthly moan and screak of the firemen's sirens, the cry of the break shoes of the motor car wheels, the roar of coal running through the long iron chutes which lead from the coal trucks to the windows of the cellars or to the sidewalk "covers." The overpowering thunder of electric trains running along the naked steel lattice girders of the elevated railway structures greets the ear. By comparison the horns and whistles of the tugboats and steamers in the harbor make light and harmonious music.
The ear-splitting sound of the pneumatic riveting machine tells half the city where the new buildings of steel are being erected to replace old structures of wood and self-sustaining masonry. These old buildings went up as late as 1900 to the gentle stroke of the carpenters' hammer and the masons' hand trowel, which in their time were considered to be noisy tools, though they are considered musical now. However, the modernistic musicians of 1930 tell us that the sound of the steam hammer, the planing mill, the boiler factory and the locomotive whistling and emitting its blasts of steam are motifs of the music that is to be. Poets who praise the sleigh-bell music of the 90's are considered out of date, but the men who praise the sounds made by the jazz radio and by the "loud speaker" of the streets are reckoned appreciative geniuses.
The sight and the sinell of factory chimney smoke is abating in Boston in 1930 but every man's linen, his books and his pictures are still blackened by that smoke. Evergreen trees planted in the Public Garden die from the city smoke and dust. Garbage wagon smells are less in 1930. Horse smells are replaced by the smells of gasolene and fuel oils fresh, burning and burnt. Tobacco is more in evidence by its varied smells and fragrances. As in the old days, when the east wind blows from the harbor the smell of the sea comes in and fills the heart of the Bostonian with memories and longings. With the salt air comes the aroma of coffee roasting in the ovens near Atlantic avenue. The smell of fish boats and naval stores comes in also.
The sky of downtown Boston is no longer darkened by that cloud of telegraph, telephone and electric poles, frameworks and wires which hung over the streets and the low roofs of the 80's. The ground now contains
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all these wires. They consort with an amazing number of water and gas pipes of all sizes, and with a seemingly hopeless tangle of conduits, ducts, mains, sewers, manlioles, subways, power lines, pneumatic tubes and other utility carriers whose number contantly increases and whose needs are met by hundreds of men who lead a subterranean existence during the working hours of night and day.
FOOD TAKEN FROM THE PRIVATE CUPBOARD AND FROM THE PUBLIC MACHINE
The phrase "hand-to-mouth existence" is a byword, yet it describes a condition which may be noble. Our forbears lived thus within the family. The family raised its own wheat for its own bread. The family lived by its own contacts with the fisheries, with the cultivated ground, the pastures and the woodlands. The family harvested, stored and prepared its own food. Unless we look back to that early struggle and to its successes we cannot appreciate the 1930 phase of that same struggle and success which has come into existence slowly in the three centuries and which now involves most of the families of Boston.
In 1930 the family has little or no direct contact with the natural reservoirs of food supply. We earn money at a trade or profession. Then we give money in exchange for food. We often sit down to this food at a public table, where, on spreading a napkin, public servants lay food before us and all but feed us with their hands. These servants are sustained by the organization and the machinery of warehouses, cold storage plants, canneries, bakeries, delivery trucks, heating plants, ventilating systems, laundries, plumbing fixtures, lighting arrangements, credits, mortgages, legal advice and medical service. In 1930 we are surrounded by public dining establishments, quick- lunch restaurants, cafeterias, lunch parlors, beverage spas, tea rooms, self- service lockers, the universal hot dog stands, oyster bars, sea food places and the sandwich counters.
We do not condemn. We merely note the detachment of the man and the family of 1930 from the ancient food sources .* Some philosophers of our time regard this detachment of the family as a benign escape from drudgery and as an open door to intellectual advance. Others see no advance, but only a change, with new drudgery added and new barriers rising up against the fancy, the imagination and the spirit. These philosophers find no gain in leisure but only a reduction in the number of tasks for each individual. The individual now has a less varied existence and cannot use leisure as profitably as he could if his struggle for existence were more varied. He is an incident
* EDITORIAL NOTE .- In the main, as Mr. Shurcliff suggests, the Bostonian of today is dependent upon others for his food. The soil of the city has become valuable almost directly in the ratio of its barrenness,- a curious inversion of the ancient values.
The transition, however, has been a gradual one and is not yet complete. Within three or four decades small herds of cows might be seen grazing in even so well-settled a district as South Boston; and there is still a flourishing dairy on Corey Hill, Brighton. During the World War ploughs and harrows reappeared, after long absence, in such places as the Playstead in Franklin Park, which was thrown open to the citizens for planting. In the school gardens vegetables are raised by the pupils; and tiny patches of corn and other food crops, often planted by foreigners, are still to be found in some of the residential sections. On the outermost fringe of the city southward are a few dwindling farms.
The greatest exception, of course, remains to be mentioned. Boston with its fishing fleet of two hundred vessels provides most of its own sea food and has a good surplus to sell.
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in a round of work of which only one phase is meted out to him. His resources of capability are not searched as they were in the old days. He has an easier time now, so they say, but no compensating gain seems to arise from the oppor- tunities presented to him by increased leisure.
WASTE OF WOOD CHANGING TO WASTE OF IRON
Extensive dunips of clean refuse and ashes upon vacant land are now one of the conspicuous sights of the outer margins of Boston and the adjacent cities and towns. In the 70's dumps of this kind were small and were chiefly of leaf and wood rubbish, broken crockery, coal ashes and earth. Paper and iron, also whole glass bottles and crocks, were too precious to be thrown away then. Rags were sorted out, white and colored, and exchanged at the door by the housewife for tinware. Nowadays the waste consists chiefly of news- papers, paper boxes, worn-out iron utensils, iron bed frames, the iron and steel fragments of automobiles and light machinery, broken concrete, broken bricks, coal ashes, bottles and crocks, whole and broken. Wood, having become precious, is not seen on these modern dumps except in small quantity and in small fragments. The vast accumulations are made through "free dump" privileges and usually occupy low or wet vacant ground upon which streets, buildings or parks may one day be built. Thus are blotted out pleasant marshes, small ponds, streams and low pastures which cannot find a place in the physical structure of the advancing city. Thus a record is made for the excavators of the future to ponder upon. They will find what we regarded as worthless and they can gauge thereby our stage in enlightenment.
THE PASSING OF THE SALOON
The wide-open saloon has passed. In the 80's nearly, if not quite, half of the first floor frontage of Cambridge street from Charles street to the foot of Hancock street was occupied by saloons, over whose bars liquors of all kinds were sold. The double-hung half-doors which opened into these saloons, the crowds of men who frequented the room, the undulating cloud of tobacco smoke which floated near the ceilings, the vast mirrors decorated with patterns drawn in white on the glass itself, and the general combined fragrance of hops, casks, whiskey, spirits and beer have not been forgotten along with the con- viviality whose angle of incidence was not always equal to the angle of reflection.
The maps of Boston and the old directories will show the location of the vast number of saloons which were busy catering to all sections of the city with all degrees of refinement and abandon in the days before the World War. Posterity can judge better than we the merit or demerit of the changes which overcame the open saloon in Boston.
CHANGES IN FASHION
Changes in apparel from much cloth with many folds to little cloth without a crease and with hardly a button, are recorded in the photographs of the past two or three decades. The fashion of walking with toes outturned has changed
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to the style of toes almost straight ahead. Mincing steps have grown longer. Arms swing freely. Cultivated men and women may laugh uproariously nowa- days and may swear without being damned, but if they assume airs of virtue they are relegated to cold isolation. Veneer both in men and furniture is not valued as it was in 1840. The American poetry, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, dancing and deportment of 1840 are too ncar us historically to hold popular respect, but there is reverence amounting to awe for the manners and customs of 1776 or earlier days. Grecce of the fourth century B. C. is losing interest among us in favor of the earliest dynasties of Egypt and of Ur. Popular interest in old Central America is coming in with a rush. Interest in Japan is waning. Interest in modernistic art may perhaps languish like jazz or it may take a new lease of life like the present public interest in rela- tivity, electrons, protons and other things invisible and intangible.
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