NEW YORK AT NIGHT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 149, 3 October 1910, Page 2

NEW YORK AT NIGHT.

MAYOR'S MORAL CRUSADE. "All good citizens should be homeward bound by midnight, and enterprises seeking to detain them are not worth public sympathy." This is the watchword of the movement headed by the Mayor of New York to raid, fight, and extinguish champagne halls and lobster palaces, which minister in the West End of the American metropolis to the follies and vices of gilded youth, and to sweep them from the "Great White Way," the popular term for New York's Piccadilly and Haymarket district, as a menace to the public welfare. In America the Mayors enjoy autocratic powers, and if they say they are going to close a place in the public interest they can make their threat good. Therefore, there is woe and lamentation to-day in New York's West End, because hitherto the houses kept open all night with impunity, and easily separated many million\ dollars from young men from the country or on a visit here from Europe. There is the usual protest that the rights of property are being ruthlessly invaded by unscrupulous office-holders, for the purpose of exacting graft, and there is also a noble plea on behalf of the "night toilers," who would famish, hunger and thirst, it is said, if the rails along the Great White Way are'not forthwith curbed. This plea in New York Is just about as reasonable'as to say that the night-workers of London, who feed' economically at the coffee stalls, would be hard pressed if the restaurants catering for the wealthy were suddenly closed by your county council. It is impossible to deny that the deepest gloom prevails in New York's luxurious Bohemian quarter to-day, and the proprietors of champagne halls and lobster palaces do not hesitate to declare that New Yorkers are now more oppressed by alleged puritanical regulations than any other city in the world. A few years ago one recalls 60 all-night houses along Broadway, and. soon there will be only six. Mayor Gaynor says they must close at midnight, or lose their licenses. Nevertheless, there is no fear of New Yorkers and their swarms of cosmopolitan visitors dying of ennui. The champagne halls and lobster palaces would disappear, but there remain the most gorgeous fully licensed hotels, with express lifts to beautiful roof gardens, with adornments of marble statuary, flowers, plants and fountains, and music by famous orchestras. They have, not felt the lash of the Mayor's whip, and in anticipation of new demands they are enlarging their dining-rooms and engaging extra .garcos. Apart from the all-right proprietors, nobody will suffer much, not even the gilded youths, or other "night-toilers.'