WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO HELPING TO MAKE NEW YORK A CLEANER, MORE HEALTHFUL, MORE BEAUTIFUL, AND GREATER CITY PRESIDENT OF THE BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, WHOSE WORK TO HELP ORGANIZE THE BUSINESS ACTIVITIES OF THE CITY ON A BUSINESS BASIS HAS PLACED HIM AMONG THE FOREMOST CONSTRUCTIVE MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATORS IN THE UNITED STATES Opposite the Post Office, on lower Broadway, there has just been completed a building, 780 feet high, which will provide working quarters for 10,000 people. If all the men and women employed in this one "skyscraper" should attempt to go uptown by the subway at the end of the day it would take the ten-car express trains, running at the intervals now established, fifteen minutes to haul them away. Though this happens to be the highest structure in the city, there are others nearly as large; it is one of dozens that accommodate four or five thousand people each and one of hundreds that accommodate more than a thousand people each. The number of these great buildings is steadily growing In the year that ended on June 30, 1912, the surface, elevated, and underground railway companies of the city collected 1,622,979,709 passenger fares, or 4,446,000 a day. The number of passengers carried in a year on all the steam railroads of the United States is about 1,000,000,000, which is less than New York's local passenger traffic by about 623,000,000. The total traffic of all the city lines increased 71,000,000 between 1911 and 1912, and the figures now available show that the increase between 1912 and 1913 will be just as great or greater. The assessed valuation of taxable real estate in New York is $8,006,647,000, an increase of $5,543,512,000 in the fifteen years that have passed since the Greater City was created. The city's net "constitutional" funded debt-after deducting the bonds held in the sinking fund and the self-supporting rapid transit, dock, and water bonds is $563,313,501. The city's budget for 1913, as already made up and printed, amounts to $192,711,000. (The Belgian Government spends about $130,000,000 a year.) This is for running expenses-education, health, police protection, maintenance of parks and streets, interest on the debt, and so forth - and does not include capital expenditures through bonds issued for permanent improvements. In the fifteen years between January 1, 1898, and January 1, 1913, the appropria THE BEGINNINGS OF A CIVIC CENTRE FOR NEW YORK CITY THE NEW MUNICIPAL BUILDING IN THE BACKGROUND, THE HALL OF RECORDS TO THE LEFT OF IT, AND THE OLD CITY HALL IN THE CENTRE OF THE PARK in any spirit of boastfulness, for the greatness of New York is the product of natural conditions and economic forces far beyond the control of any of us. These few statistics are useful here only in that they reflect the size and seriousness of the problems which the people of the city, through their representatives, have to face and solve. "What we are trying to do" would seem a more fitting title for this subject, for no one who has a part in the city government can fail to realize how much his work is interwoven with that of his associates and how essential it is that, if the work is to be done successfully, they must all pull together. Yet every one has A SUGGESTION OF NEW YORK'S TRANSIT PROBLEM CROWDS CLIMBING THE STAIRS TO THE ELEVATED RAILROAD, ENTERING THE KIOSKS TO DESCEND TO THE SUBWAY, AND BOARDING THE SURFACE CARS IN CITY HALL PARK. MORE THAN 4 MILLION PASSENGERS USE THE TRACTION LINES EVERY DAY, TO TRAVEL TO BROOKLYN, UPTOWN MANHATTAN, AND THE BRONX |