New York: Fragrant Days in Fun City

For New York City's 8,000,000 ad versity-tempered citizens, the sanitation workers' strike was merely a nuisance at first. By the end of last week, it had turned into a genuine crisis. Nearly 100,000 tons of uncollected garbage lay in noisome heaps on sidewalks and in doorways. Trash fires flared all over town. Rats rummaged through pyramidal piles of refuse. Public-health authorities, warning of the danger of typhoid and other diseases, proclaimed the city's first general health emergency since a 1931 polio epidemic.

The confrontation between Mayor John Lindsay and the Teamster-affiliated Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association had been abuilding for months....

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