Street Cleaners

The cleanliness of Manhattan's streets is the concern of two rival groups of society ladies. The Outdoor Cleanliness Association, headed by Mrs. Arthur B. Claflin, scored when it persuaded Mark O'Connell, a street-cleaner, to leave his beat, and make a speech ("The thing about it is, they dirty 'em and we clean 'em up and they dirty 'em again."--TIME, March 26). Head of the Clean City Committee is Mrs. Herbert Shipman. lively widow of the late Suffragan Bishop of New York. Not to be outdone by the O. C. A., Mrs. Snipman has now written a ballet, Litter in the Street, presented last week in Town Hall as the feature of a Children's Spring Festival. Children in Daisy Blau's Dance Group pretended to be street dirt while two pianos played jazzy music by Will Irwin, and Howard Phillips, a radio tenor, declaimed Mrs. Shipman's verses, gesticulating passionately. Whirling papers, dusty mops, cans, cans, pots and pans brought on lugubrious germs which attacked a group of innocent children. A dozen trim sweepers saved the situation by singing the Clean City Committee's Marching Song. Excerpt:

We are soldiers marching onwards and

we want to see again The streets and sidewalks glisten as if

newly washed with rain. We want litter cans on every block,

no papers on the street, We want garbage cans with covered tops

in tidy rows and neat While the housewives, storemen, janitors, their steps and sidewalks

sweep, And make our city clean and keep it

clean!

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