The Nome Daily Nugget

Special Nugget Service.

NEW YORK, Dec. 14.—Anyone who was in the vicinity of the famous Madison Square Garden late this afternoon cannot doubt that the repeated statements that New York is getting to be the most uncivilized city in the world are true.

The old Garden, which has been the scene of so many sporting events and incidentally of one or two tragedies, notably the killing of Stanford White by Harry Thaw, is in the very heart of New York's most respectable district. Situated between Madison and Fourth avenues and Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth streets it is within a stone's throw of the Metropolitan tower, Dr. Parkhurst's church and the great shopping district of Fifth avenue and Twenty-third street.

Way over on the west side, beyond Tenth avenue and above the colored district known as "San Juan Hill" lies what has for years been called by the police and the local denizens "Hell's Kitchen." To the east and further uptown is a section inhabited by a gang of roughs known locally as "The Gophers." Both this tribe of desperadoes and the outlaws who infest "Hell's Kitchen" are of the lowest order of thugs. To either crowd the taking of a life or the stealing of anything from a newspaper to a bank safe comes as natural as lighting a cigarette. The police are always at war with the outlaws or else, when one of the gang rises to political power, in league with them, and for half a century these two rival gangs of savages in the heart of the great city have had things pretty much their own way in their own dominions.

Recently war was declared between the outlaws of the west side and the outlaws of the east side. It was, as is often the case with nations, over a boundary line. The west claimed that their territory for the purposes of loot and crime extended as far east as Fifth avenue, while their rivals would only concede Broadway above Twenty-third street as the eastern border.

This argument in regard to the boundary line of crime has been going on for several years and has resulted in a number of fights and in at least two murders. The feeling between the rival gangs has at times been extremely high and there have from time to time been predictions of a serious conflict.

Yesterday, by some secret method known only to the underworld word went forth that the west siders were coming over the line to "get" the chief of the eastern gang. It was enough.

The faithful followers of "Billy the Pig" rallied to his protection and when the savages from out the west crossed the dead line under the command of "Bloody Al" they were met by the cohorts of the east.

The fight started with fists and blackjacks and the gangs surged back and forth in the streets about the Garden until some one drew a gun and fired. Then the gangs separated and for a few minutes the crack of pistols and the shrieks and curses of the wounded filled the air.

In the meantime the few policemen who had been bobbing about in the swirl of fighters like corks on an angry sea saw that they were powerless to restore order and they managed to get a telephone and send for the reserves of three stations. When these guardians of the law arrived in clanging patrol wagons the rival gangs disintegrated as if by magic and the battle was over. Several arrests of "innocent bystanders" were made and the policemen gathered up the wounded while the army of the west and the army of the east retired to their strongholds to count up their losses and prepare for revenge.

It was a nice quiet afternoon in the center of American civilization.