What a change Muncie has seen in the last 3 years

OUR OBSERVER.

Muncie, And Things Pertaining

Thereto.

Muncie, like most other cities has her drawbacks as well as advantages. One of her greatest drawbacks is the absence of sufficient street lighting. Time was, when a person could leave home after dark without fear of being lost or sandbagged. Not so now. The wise man transacts his business before dark, thus avoid becoming hopelessly tangled up in an open sewer or gas trench. Tis true, that on most trenches being dug there are danger lights displayed, but their pale, flickering lights are a detriment rather than a benefit to the belated pilgrim. But we shall have light — in the future.

Have you noticed the price of fuel gas tumbling to any great extent? Last winter gas was to be a great deal cheaper next winter. It is. About 10 cents on the month. Natural gas is not exactly a necessity but a luxury. There are a great many people in this city who cannot enjoy it, and they are the ones who really need it the most. They are the poorer class of laborers, who do not own their own homes. When Muncie took onto herself a boom, rents were increased from twenty-five to fifty per cent, but we have not heard of nay laboring man's wages being increased. You take a man who has a wife and two or three children to support on the average weekly salary and he will have to thaw himself out by the heat from a wood stove. Maybe the company are furnishing gas as cheap as they can, but it seems to us, from the number of good well that they have, that they would have plenty, and could afford a cheaper rate to customers.

What a change in Muncie in the past three years! Then it was a quite little city of some five or six thousand people. Now it is a hustling, bustling manufacturing city of not less than ten thousand, and still increasing at the rate that is a source of wonder and chagrin to her surrounding neighbors. Take the suburb of Boyceton. Where once was naught but cornfields and meadows, is a village of some three or four hundred souls, which in time will become part of Muncie. The same is true of the neighborhood surrounding the Ball, Hemingray, and Over glass factories. The Muncie Nail Works is also located in this neighborhood, and when they begin operations it will increase the population all the way from two to five hundred.

Wonder how the dear and confiding public like the way they got a street railway in Muncie? When the franchise was granted by the city council for a street railroad, it was to be finished and have cars running over it by August '88. You have not rode on any of the cars yet, have you? No. Well, you are not liable to until it is taken in hands by a company that means business. The company to which the franchise was granted were in for boodle with a large and corpulent B. Their aim was to secure the franchise and sell it to an Eastern company for enough to make a fat thing out of it. Their expectations were not realized, and the consequence is that the whole thing is a fizzle. There is a scheme now on foot, headed by Muncie men, which, it is carried out, will give to us our long sought after street railway. May they succeed beyond their fondest expectations, is the wish of    Ah There.