She
killed rats by the hundreds of thousands, rat-proofed her buildings, and
thus, at one stroke, eliminated all fear of bubonic plague. She began to
take interest in the public schools, and soon trebled their advantages.
She concerned herself with the revision of repressive tax laws. She
secured one of the best street railway systems in the country. But,
perhaps most striking of all, she set to work to build scientifically
toward the realization of a gigantic dream. This dream embodies the
resumption by New Orleans of her old place as second seaport city. To
this end she is doing more than any other city to revive the commerce of
the Mississippi River, and is at the same time making a strong bid for
trade by way of the Panama Canal, as well as other sea traffic. She has
restored her forty miles of water front to the people, has built
municipal docks and warehouses at a cost of millions, and has so
perfectly cooerdinated her river-rail-sea traffic-handling agencies that
rates have been greatly reduced. Upon these, and related enterprises,
upward of a hundred millions are being spent, and the vast plan is
working out with such promise that one almost begins to fear lest New
Orleans become too much enamored of her new-found materialism--lest the
easy-going, pleasure-loving, fascinating Creole belle be transformed
into the much-less-rare and much-less-desirable business type of woman:
a woman whose letters, instead of being written in a fine French hand
and scented with the faint fragrance of vertivert, are typewritten upon
commercial paper; whose lips, instead of causing one to think of kisses,
are laden with the deadly cant of commerce; whose skin, instead of
seeming to be made of milk and rose leaves, is dappled with industrial
soot.
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