Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [499]
In 1841 Mayor Morris called for isolating able-bodied paupers in a separate workhouse on Black well’s Island and assigning them to productive labor. The 1843 City Council agreed that this might well discourage “our dissolute and idle population” from seeking public aid in the first place.
Zealots urged more ruthless measures. One 1843 letter writer to the Tribune called for the complete elimination of any public aid that would keep paupers alive, fulminating in fine Malthusian fashion that “they who will marry and beget children in dirty cellars are a curse to the world.” Such sentiments remained beyond the pale of decent opinion, but so did Horace Greeley’s assertion that it was the depression that had made it impossible for many who wanted work to find jobs. During his relief stint in the Sixth Ward, Greeley had heard “stout, resolute, single young men and young women” pleading, “Help us to work, we want no other help; why is it we can have nothing to do?” What New York needed, Greeley declared, was not a workhouse but a “House of Industry” that could provide temporary employment in hard times. The elite consensus, however, followed Mayor Morris and his counterparts at the AICP, and before the decade was out, a workhouse would be up and running on Blackwell’s Island.
Dominant opinion was equally opposed to government’s providing public works jobs for the unemployed, as had been done in the embargo crisis. When petitions were submitted in 1837 “in behalf of the unemployed operatives, for relief,” a Common Council committee conceded that the petitioners were “not paupers” and “merely ask for employment to enable them to procure food for their wives and little ones”; nevertheless, it declared its general opposition to work relief. The council did authorize a few street and sewer projects (in part to take advantage of low wages) but established such stringent conditions for contractors that no bids were submitted, and no work provided.
At the statewide level Whigs did support internal improvements. Whig Assemblyman (and Gramercy Park developer) Samuel B. Ruggles proposed an ambitious program of state-backed canals and railroads. Governor Seward, who had written an admiring biography of his hero De Witt Clinton, supported one such project after another, running up an unprecedented state deficit of eighteen million dollars.
Democrats denounced Whigs for increasing the state’s debt and endangering New York’s standing with its creditors. The principal bankers of New York City, including many Whig paladins, agreed that further borrowing would be “highly inexpedient and improper” (especially as their institutions held nearly $750,000 of shaky state obligations). Democrats demanded that all public construction be halted. Seward, Greeley, and Ruggles argued this was short-sighted and inhumane and would flood the state with perhaps four thousand new unemployed. But Democrats took power in 1842, and New York’s grand program of public works came to a complete halt.1
“WATER! WATER!”
With one magnificent exception. The Croton Aqueduct had been authorized before the panic struck, and powerful backers would sustain the gigantic state undertaking throughout the depression. Its construction would serve as New York’s de facto jobs program.
By early 1837 the Corporation had wrested control of the municipal water supply from Aaron Burr’s Manhattan Company, purchasing its works, pipes, and water rights. Lawsuits by Westchester County dwellers protesting land confiscations by big-city interests were overcome, as was opposition from northern Manhattan landowners. Albany authorized issuance of $2.5 million in stock, and despite the panic, so sterling was the state’s Erie Canal track record that the Rothschilds and others were able to round up investors. Eventually an unprecedented twelve million dollars was raised.
Government-appointed commissioners took charge of the project and selected John