Daily Yellowstone Journal

Careless Use of Paper, Some Remarks on a Public Evil That Is Applicable to Many Places.

Paper is an article of universal use, of a lightness aerial almost to the point of volatility, and so cheap that once used it is generally thrown away. In the careless hands of a slovenly people it can become the most disfiguring and offensive feature of a city's streets and parks.

In every street of New York there live or pass hundreds or thousands who daily make paper contributions to the city's unsightliness and filth. Paper falls upon the streets from all quarters, from the doors of houses, private and commercial, and from the hands of thousands of wayfarers who have finished reading their letters, newspapers or handbills, or have taken the wrapping off their parcels. Look up any street in the city, and if it doesn't carry paper marks that should disgrace any property and self-respecting community, it is probably because of the momentary immunity following the sweepers.

No district anywhere, no block even, is free from this form of rubbish. In the parks it is fearful. Men please thousands with whose reading in the beautiful places so elaborately laid out and so laboriously and expensively kept and, in hoggish indifference to the public's protection, toss their papers to be scattered by the wind in all directions. Nursemaids sit with indifference while their children litter the walks with paper bags or torn book leaves or orange skins. Persons of all sorts of conditions, sizes and sexes carry their high there and leave the temporary surroundings more like a pigsty than part of the fairest wood most charming retreat which the skill of man and the generosity of a public spirit can make.

Children are brought to play in the Central Park in organized swarms led by women specially charged with their conduct, and perhaps also at other times with their education, yet under their theoretical supervision the clean, fresh lawns are permitted to assume an aspect of disorder and untidiness such as would be tolerated in no decent nursery. The quality of our pavements is rapidly rising to the standard indispensable for a really beautiful and finely finished city, but all in vain if they are to be continually strewn with paper.

There is no labor required to free New York from this offensive and long standing habit of slovenliness. Only a little care is needed, but it must be general and unflagging.--New York Sun.