LIFE IN- NEW YORK.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4246, 29 October 1874, Page 3

LIFE IN- NEW YORK.

, (From the Herald.) As cities grow in age they seem also to grow in distinctness—that is to say, the populations become more separately distinct in their characteristics and gather in certain little centres, around which they seem to move as stars around fixed orbits. The older the city the more this becomes apparent, and these people, who have once adopted these centres, seem themselves to be unable to move away from them or to break their connection with them, as it were. Where single efforts are sometimes put forth to break through this invisible but none the less arbitrary law the result is not generally successful, and they return in the end, forced back to their original starting point. In London this peculiarity is especially notable and the singular distinctness of particular places is something' wonderful. Of late years New York has shown this peculiarity very ' remarkably in the gradual growth of distinct quarters, which may bo picked out and named with boundary lines just as evident as the boundary lines of the city itself. We are, indeed, getting to possess this peculiarity to a degree which is unsurpassed by almost any city in the world, by tho establishment of particular classes of people or peculiar lines of business in certain particular streets, out of which one might almost seek in vafn for them. Trades, like nationalities, settle down in certain places and stick to each other in a remarkable degree. It would seem as if existence itself depended upon remaining thus closely associated, and, I no doubt, there are good reasons which cause

this congregation of homogeneous elements in certain distinct districts. I£ in nothing else it is sensible in simplifying the business of life iu a very wonderful degree. Our business is simply with the cosmopolitan city of New York in this article, and we may be enabled to bring the fact which has been stated more clearly to the reader's mind, together with the account of many peculiarities which will lend interest to the enumeration. THE FRENCH QUARTER. '

In spite o£ the great increase of our French population during the past few years, particularly since the close of tlie Franco-Prussian war, which sent so many of this nationality out of their own country to us, the quarter in which they have elected to live seems not to have expanded to any great degree. It is still mainly bounded by Canal-street, Amity, Broadway, and South Fifth Avenue. Here the French are gathered in great numbers, and in going along any of the streets comprised within the boundaries named one will be apt to hear almost as much French spoken as our own vernacular. The district seems to be particularly avoided by the Germans, no doubt because of the old hatred, and in particular spots of this district a stranger might almost imagine himself transported to Montmartre or Belleville-. Taken as a rule, this population is by no means a rich one, and the inhabitants are mainly engaged in all sorts of trades peculiarly French in themselves. Green and Wooster streets are full of third-rate French boarding-houses, where the principles of Communism' appear to be very popular. This is particularly the case in the lower portion of the two streets named, where some well-known Communists keep these boarding-houses, and are generally very well patronised. The boarders are mainly workmen in various branches of skilled trades. One meets also numerous houses where the manufacture of artificial flowers, feathers, and such like, is I carried on to a great extent by Frenchmen who have been long domiciled here. Candies and all sorts of sugared sweetmeats are also manufactured in great quantities roundabout here. Lager beer and French wine saloons also abound, as also French laundries. Higher up,' towards Bleecker and Amity streets, the class of French boarding-houses improves somewhat, and the Communist element is not so strong and the political opinions seem to be more of a moderate republican tone. The inmates are in many cases proprietors of some small business or other, or clerks in wholesale houses or teachers. One peculiarity of all this French population will strike the observer at once. This is that not one in ten of all these Frenchmen, however long they may have been in the country, can speak English so as to be at all understandable. While other nationali- ■ ties appear to make it their first business on arriving to learn, at least moderately well, the language of the country, the French, by being so clannish, associating almost exclusively with countrymen of their own, seem to attach no importance whatever to the acquirement.of the English language. The writer has known Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who have been here from ten to twenty years who did not know as many words of English. This has its disadvantages. They Simply seem to care for their own prosperity, and do not fraternise either with the spirit or the institutions of the country they dwell in. It is an extraordinary thing to see a Frenchman vote, and only some very peculiar occasion will take, him to the ballot-box. They seem only to care to accumulate enough here to give them the opportunity to return to La Belle France, with, sufficient for a comfortable maintenance. So true is this that out of one hundred Frenchmen here you will certainly find ninety-nine who, on being questioned, will acknowledge that their dream is a final return to their own. country after they have made enough out of America to enable them to do it. As a population, however, the French are a sober, industrious, and exceedingly useful people. In spite of their many bitter hatreds for each other, mainly born of political differences, crime is almost unknown among them. THE JEWISH QUARTER. New York, in all probability, though the computation has never been properly made, has more Jews in proportion to the population than almost any other city in the world, perhaps excepting Frankfort in Germany. They find here the field for the exercise of that business tact, and knowledge which seem an instinct with this wonderful, and admirable people, besides which they find here an absence of kthat bigotry and hatred which ostracise them, i£ not completely, in part even to this day, in some European nations. This is certainly to our advantage, because a more thrifty, orderly, and enriching population it would be impossible to have. Jews are to be found disseminated in all quarters of the city, but their one quarter par excellence, and where they are to be found iu extraordinary numbers, is in that district of the city bounded by Canal, Bowery, Houston, and the intervening east side streets. Here almost everything you see seems to have something Jewish about it. The butchers' shops have nearly all of them those mystic Hebraic signs which inform the passer by that therein meat is killed after the orthodox Jewish fashion. To be sure, the district named is not that which comprises the wealthy " part of our Jewish population, but to a groat extent the money is originally made here'by them which enables them gradully to rise in riches, when they generally move up town to wealthier neighborhoods. In this district existed once the old Jewish cemetery, which the march of the population, however, swallowed up years ago. Many of the Jews of this quarter are abjectly poor, and eko out a subsistence by all manner of little trades, one whole street being occupied almost exclusively by pigeon fanciers. They live in tenement houses mainly, and numbers of these are occupied exclusively by members of this l-ace. In point of language there is a, great contrast to the French population before spoken of. While they all know German, which, in the main, is their native language, they never neglect the language of the country, and all of" them know it more or less well. Their goaheadism is illustrated in this, and it is, indeed, almost useless to refer to their business .capacities, for these are proverbial. Taken as a rule, Jews are not employes. They seem in all cases to prefer some little business of their own, however email, and carry it along by hook or by crook until gradually they rise to competency and often to riches. And their contrast with the French is that, while the latter sigh for their native country, the Jews settle down here with the determination -to make this their land of adoption for good and for evar. It is a peculiarity of the people that while they like personal adornment and magnificence, they only indulge the taste in proportion to their means, always keeping their eye on the gradual accumulation of money, which will bo their passport to all they desire. They are clannish and intermarry, and remain here as they have remained everywhere, and through untold persecutions and tribulations—a distinctive race. • Where the Christian mingles with the Jew, as in some cases, not numerous, it is the Jew that always swallows up the Christian. But in such numbers do they abound here that the Tenth ward is, par excellence, the Jewish one. THE IRISH AND GERMAN QUARTER. No very distinctive quarter can be assigned • to either of these two nationalities, as in our city they abound almost everywhere. As a centre, however, for both, the Seventeenth ward might be taken, for hero they compose almost the entire population. There is a story told that at a public meeting, "when the ward offices were to be harmoniously distributed, the chairman was a German, and the orator an Irishman; The Alderman was given to the Germans, and the Assistant Alderman to the Irish, and several minor offices were distributed among the two nationalities. When all had been harmoniously arranged, a person rose and said that one very small office had been forgotten, and he moved that it be given to an American. At this the whole meeting rose up in arms, and the speaker was ignominiously turned out of the meeting. It is only a story ; but illustrates very concisely the enormous majority of the two nationalities spoken of in the Seventeenth ward. It is also one of the great tenement house districts, and comprises a. vast-deal of poverty, and, taking all in all, is probably the most populous quarter in the city. THE COLORED QUARTER. The colored people, of whom New York is blessed with no small population, seem to have

elected the Eighth ward at their grand centre, and around the west side .of South Fifthavenue, Thompson and parallel streets on that side of the city, they are gathered in large numbers, inhabiting blocks of these thoroughfares to the total exclusion of white people. Years ago a colony of them movqd up to the confines of Sixth avenue, and they gathered in somewhat formidable numbers on the west side of the avenue, from Fifteenth up to Nineteenth street, another large colony being found in Thirty-third-street, near Sixth-avenue. Indeed, this avenue • has grown to be such a favorite with the colored folks as to have been dignified with the euphonious title of " Nigger Broadway." Still the regular old quarter for these colored people is down in the Eighth ward, from which all these outside colonies started, and where we find a number of distinctions of classes, which are as marked, and even more so, as the -separation of classes amongst the people of the most effete monarchy. Money and color are the two principal motors of these varities of feelings, the well-to-do and the light-colored believing them-, selves to be infinitely superior in caste to the black and the poor. Occasionally you may see some cream-colored lady married to some jet-colored gentleman, but in this case you may rely on it that the wife has acted against the advice of her parents. In this quarter there "are, of course, colored bandits and thieves, but, taken as a rule, the colored population is' much the most orderly, inoffensive, and law-abiding that we have. Brawls and fights are almost unknown amongst them, and though it is a latent suspicion that the colored b'hoys around here all carry razor's for selfdefence, it is, no doubt, a weak invention of the enemy, for these razors never see light. The case of Jackson, over a year ago, seems to have been the only case of negro crime in this populous quarter for. a very long time. THE THIEVES' QUARTER. ' The old thieves' quarter where the established "gangs" existed, which for many years the police ineffectually endeavored to extirpate, was also in the Eighth ward, namely, in Spring and Prince streets. The famous Whitey-Titey brigade, which broke up on the hanging of Jerry O'Brien, the murderer, had its head quarters established in Prince-street, near Wooster, for many years. A captain of police, who was seriously annoyed and almost "broke" for several burglaries committed in the precinct, determined he would make one supreme effort to rid himself of this uncomfortable constituency. Hitherto there had been a kind of tacit understanding that the thieves should not do anything in the ward where they lived ; but as they were the first to break through this he beseiged them day and night, and at length they were obliged to move. Since that time they have elected the Fourteenth ward as their stronghold, and here, in the small streets adjoining the Bowery, they exist in great numbers, and from here they verge outwards through all parts of the city in search of "swag." These are very dull times, however, and there is great complaint among these gentlemen that the day when New York was the paradise of thieves is passed. It is not that the police have improved at all in efficiency, but that there does not seem to be the opportunity there used to be. Justice is also a little better administered than formerly, and political influence doesn't go so far as it did to save men from State Prison. All the good old days of Tammany, when it was only necessary to be in with the gang to escape scot free on everything, are gone.. But, in the meantime, these gentlemen lead a somewhat poor life of it. Just now New York is pretty free from them, as they have gone to ply their trade in the country districts, as usual at this time of the year. But they return iu great numbers in the fall, when the State fairs are over, at which State fairs they ply their industry very conscientiously.