It is sometimes safe to defy an indifferent majority, but he is a fool who throws himself before the Juggernaut of roused and unanimous public opinion. The owners of the Manhattan Elevated Road were not fools in all things; so the first effect of the mayor’s news was a sharp decline in the price of their shares. The danger was, however, a distant one for them. By no possibility could so vast an undertaking be completed under five years, and within that time conditions would probably so change that there would be traffic enough to yield a reasonable profit to both systems. New bridges both to Long Island and New Jersey, to say nothing of tunnels, were also under way. These would furnish partial relief to the congestion, while they would bring fresh traffic to the short distance service, which would become an important part of the elevated railroad system. Competition in what may be termed the trunk-line business need not, therefore, be disastrous to existing rapid transit lines. It would rather come as a relief, just as the street-car lines found the opening of the elevated roads to be twenty years before. But the public paid little attention to the first discomforture of the elevated railroad magnates. Rather they rejoiced in it, especially as the erstwhile masters of the situation soon began to manifest a more conciliatory attitude toward their suffering patrons. A new principle seemed to have been discovered in the offices of the octopus corporation. Grievances that were easy of correction were remedied. Public opinion was worth catering to when you needed it. Arrogant defiance on one side, and exasperated endurance and hearty hatred on the other, was a condition of things which must not be allowed to continue, when the sufferers and haters would soon be in a position to take full revenge. So a very strange but becoming humility softened the attitude of New York’s purveyors of so-called rapid transit. They endeavored to convince the people that really they were doing the best they could. And so unresentful is the average New Yorker, that after a few smiles at the hypocrisy of it all, he accepted the new facilities now supplied, and was appeased.