Show = + = = r M DOOn OF THE BARKER II THE GLORY OF BAXTER STREET IS FADIXG AWAiY IX THE OLD DAYS 5TEX WE1RE fAmED FOR RJ3FI7SEVG TO BUY 2 StilTS OF CLOTHES CAUSES OF THE CHANGE NEWYORK Sept 4 Baxter street id excited to the core The original Harris Cohen the king of the street and all of his jealous imitators dont know where they are at The barkers are on strike and for the first time in the history of the Bay they are fighting their employers instead of slugging the unfortunate pedestrian who innocently inno-cently wanders through the street The barkers have been working fourteen hours a day and they wait to cut down the hours of labor to ten This is regarded re-garded as treason and as a sure sign of retrogression in the tre tAt t-At a matter of fact this retrogression has been moving along silently for two years A man has not been killed in the street for refusing to buy a suit of clothes fbr six years and the man who killed him cant even get a job as a barker bar-ker He is forced to peddle handme downs among the office boys in the big down town buildings The Idea of his being turned down in the street for simply killing a man in the discharge of = I I I lf I A BAIRKEIR OF THE OLD SCHOOL his duty hurls his feelings He says The street is on the bum and itll never be what it was There is no doubt that the real genuine gen-uine Baxter street arker is passing away and his place is being taken by the cheap mixedale prize fighter who would rather lalk than crap The genuine gen-uine barker would chink nothing of starting a I riot whiih would call out the fire department and the police reserves re-serves if a man failed to buy a 90 cent pair of pant with scams cemented cement-ed instead of sewed THE GOOD OLD DAYS If the barker went to jail for his commercial com-mercial enthusiasm his t pay went on and when he came out he was a hero The diamond foelecked daughter of the original Harris Cohen would smile upon him and he would reign until another barker came out of the lockup for half killing a doubting purchaser Perhaps the fact that all of the daughters of the original Harris Cohen have married and live in uptown mansions has taken the zest out of Baxter street life All of the barkers used to live in the hope of winning one of the Cohen girls in marriage A hundred thousand dollars went with each one and that was a prize worth striving for The old man was worth 3000600 and took good care of his sonsinlaw The passing of the barker marks the death of about the last feature of old downtown life Up to five years ago the pullersin of Baxter street formed one of the sights of the city Strangers were taken there by thoste who knew the ropes and they saw enough to I wonder at for the next six months The reform of the police department I is probably responsible for the changed condition of affairs There is little doubt I that in the old days the owners of the stores wielded a potent influence in police po-lice circles as the man who had been outrageously assauWedi received cold comfort when hs complained to the police po-lice I an honest policeman attempted to interfere with the work of the bark nS i 1 1 WORKIXGS OF THJE JOXEoE ers he was set upon by a dozen of them and beaten and kicked into insensibility insensibil-ity At the station house he was quietly told not to meddle with what > didnt I concern him and if he was persistent I he was transferred to Goatville or some other obnoxious post I INVENTION OF THE JONESER Some twelve years ago a man was killed by a barker He was not the first or the last but his death marked a epoch in the street fo it officially recorded the invention of a new blow This blow was christened the Jone ser in honor of the victim whose name was Jones The latter a big husky man was walking through the when a barker caught street at night cught hold of him and attempted to pull him into the store The man didnt take kindly to the treatment and showed fight He was thumping the life out of the barker when others came to the rescue of their comrade One of the newcomers made a full swing on his heel and landed the back of his hand with crushing force against the skull I of Jones just at the base of the brain Jones went down and died tw days f G t later In 3 hospital of concussion of the I brain This blow is rely the pivot blow made famous in the prize ring by La Blanche the Marine Its BlJce Mane It use is now prohibited a all prize fights because of the great danger of its bcus grer it resulting re-sulting fatally But the barkers suItg fMly te brker adopted I adopt-ed it generally because of its certainty to render a obstreperous person unconscious conscious cnscious I In the od days the barkers were clannish They would put up a glorious ous fight against one another for the possession of a customer but i a pedestrian I pe-destrian assailed one of their numbers num-bers they would all take a hand in the I fracas And on the rare occasions when a barker was arrested they would I march to the court room and in a j I solid bunch swear to the innocence of I the accused They would assert that the victim had begun the fight out of pure wantonness and that the poor hardworking barker had to defend himself him-self a best he could THE ONLY MEN THEY FEARED Oldtinie pugilistic lights of the Bowery Bow-ery contemporaries o Joe Coburn and men of that ilk found their chief o chef pleasure in walking through Baxter street at night in the hope that some new barker would attempt t pull them in These were the only men the barkers bar-kers stood in fear of Experience had taught them that they would receive such a severe drubbing before friends could come to the rescue that it did not pay to begin hostilities An innocent might inquire how could a person be forced to buy after he ha been dragged into a store The question ques-tion is easily answered The salesmen were browbeating thugs of the first water and they frightened the average man out of his life If he refused to hand over 2 for a 60cent coat he was thrown down stairs and then invited to walk up again and buy In some of the stores it was the custom t hustle a man up to the top floor and then if h refused to buy he was patched down one flight of stairs after another by salesmen at each landing When he landed at the bottom he generally considered con-sidered that it was best to escape with his life by spending the money he had in his clothes Later if he complained to the police the owner o the store the salesmen and the barkers would all solemnly swear that he had never been in the place and that he had made some mistake Generally that ended it a the police were not anxious to jeopardize the fat revenues of Baxter street The barker of today Is a tame affair or aar He contents himself with yelling out the glories of his wares and holding up a possible customer by buttonholing ham He seldom drags a man in bodily because the police and the police mag istrates frown upon such doings DAVID FERGUSON |