his special functions and his special activities, and so I shall undertake to describe briefly in the following pages some of those municipal undertakings with which I have had most to do. In the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, the city already has a modified. sort of "commission government." The board is composed of the mayor, the comptroller, the president of the board of aldermen, and the presidents of the five boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Richmond. Each of these officers is elected by the people, and each has separate executive powers independent of those of any of the rest. Collectively, and under the constant watchfulness and guidance of public opinion, they hold the city's purse-strings and authorize the expenditure of its money. Upon all questions that arise, the first three of the officials named have three votes each. The presidents of Manhattan and Brooklyn have two votes each, and the presidents of the other boroughs one each, making sixteen votes in all. The expenses of all departments and the outlays for all improvements have to pass the scrutiny of this board and of a corps of experts in its service. In it rests also the power of granting franchises.

The Borough of Manhattan - which made up most of the old City of New York - has 2,400,000 people, or nearly half the population of the consolidated city, and perhaps three quarters of its wealth in real estate. Directly in charge of the borough president, an independent elective officer, elected by the borough vote alone, are the various bureaus of public works and the bureau of buildings. The former have to do with the laying and maintaining of pavements; keeping the city's thoroughfares cleared of obstructions; mapping sewers, water mains, vaults, and subsurface conditions in general; and the construction and care of public buildings and offices, public baths, and markets. The bureau of buildings passes upon the plans for all new buildings and alterations and sees that the laws governing these plans are carried out properly. The total number of employees under the president of Manhattan is about 3,000.

First, before telling of what I have tried to do as borough president, I purpose to discuss one or two phases of my work as a member of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Necessarily, most of the business of the board is transacted by committees. It has fallen to my lot to serve upon a number of these - the budget committee, the corporate stock budget committee, which controls the use of the city's credit, and others. I have, however, been particularly fortunate in serving as chairman of various committees that have had to do more particularly with matters that come under the head of what I may even call my hobby

city planning. This, to me, has always been an absorbing subject. I do not use the phrase in its narrower sense of the mere laying out of parks and streets and boulevards, but in its larger significance as the science of directing the actual building and growth of a city along proper and rational lines. The formation of a rapid transit railway plan that will spread the population of a city among outlying sections and yet keep it close to the centres in point of time; the logical arrangement of streets and other public spaces; the clearing away of obstructions to traffic; the regulation of the height, size, and general arrangement of buildings to the end that dangerous congestion may be stopped and the appearance of the city saved; the creation of parks and playgrounds and public baths and hospitals these are all included in city planning, and, as I see it, they constitute the main concern of the leaders in the government of New York City at the present time.

Fundamental, of course, in such undertakings, is the prudent expenditure of the city's funds. Whatever vast visions we may have of the New York of the future, or of schemes for its rebuilding and rearrangement, the virtue of knowing how not to use dollars as well as how to use them can never lose its importance. The task is to spend and be economical at the same time; to strike a just balance between constant development on the one hand and canny thrift on the other; and it is a task that calls for the most thorough

training and the deepest sense of responsibility that any group of men may possess. The chairmanship of the "committee on transit proposals," upon which President Miller of the Bronx and President Cromwell of Richmond served with me, has been, I suppose, the most important of my board of estimate assignments. It was in that capacity that I took part in the drafting of the subway contracts that were signed last March. A proposal from the Interborough Rapid Transit Company for the building and operation of various extensions of the present subway system, the cost to be borne partly by the city and partly by the company, was presented to the Public Service Commission on December 5, 1910. Two weeks later this proposal was sent to the Board of Estimate with the statement that, subject to certain modifications, the Commission was prepared to accept it. Under the law, both bodies must approve before contracts for either construction or operation of transit lines become effective. As some of the members of the Board of Estimate believed that a better solution could be reached through further negotiations, my committee was appointed to confer with the Public Service Commission in the matter, and the contracts finally presented were the result of the joint efforts of the Committee and the Commission, headed by its chairman, Mr. Willcox.

We entered these conferences fully realizing that the city needed better transit facilities and needed them immediately. But, also, we had to look to the future, to find a solution that would be lasting and not a makeshift. I can say with profound conviction that I believe the real solution has been found. The existing subway system and the great system of elevated railway lines in Brooklyn, with a combined trackage of 181 miles, have been used as nuclei in the laying out of the so-called "Dual Plan," which will comprise 494 miles of track. The expanded Manhattan Elevated system will bring the total track mileage of rapid transit lines to 614. With the old and new lines linked, the population of Greater New York gains the benefit of an almost universal five-cent fare, and the way is

laid for city expansion upon a scale not hitherto deemed possible.

In order to provide an outlet for congestion at the centre of the city, many lines will run into the more sparsely developed sections where real opportunities for comfortable home-building exist and where for some years to come railroading upon a purely commercial basis cannot pay. The Interborough Company, at the beginning, had proposed that it retain all the fares collected upon its present lines, and that the city stand the losses on all the new ones. The company holds the present subway lines under a 50year lease, with the privilege of a 25-year renewal, and they can not be taken away from it. In order to get the complete system it desired, not simply for commercial return but for the purposes of city-building, the city's representatives demanded that the receipts from both old and new lines should be pooled, and that the city, moreover, should retain the right to build other branches whenever it chose, and to add them to the system, virtually upon the same basis. As compensation for the value of its present leases, it was agreed that the company should retain annually out of the combined receipts the equivalent of the sum it earned two years ago. After that deduction, and after the payment of operating and interest charges, all further profit is to be divided equally between the company and the city. A similar arrangement was made with the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company.

For the current fiscal year, ending June 30, 1913, the net earnings of the Interborough Company will exceed by about $1,530,000 the preferred amount which the city is to allow. This excess will become still greater during the four years before the new lines can be put in operation, and every dollar of it means an advantage to the city under the pooling plan.

To build the new lines of the dual system, and to third-track and extend the Manhattan elevated lines as well, the great sum of $325,000,000 was required. As further consideration for their enlarged interest in the city's transit facilities, the city induced the Interborough Company

tallest of these, to which I have referred, will house 10,000 people. The problem of providing proper light and air and the ordinary sanitary facilities is becoming constantly more complicated, aside from the actual danger to life created by the constantly growing congestion. The city,

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to provide $110,000,000 of this sum, and the Brooklyn Company $60,000,000, without further return to them than the payment of interest and sinking fund charges. As part of the bargain, the Interborough Company agreed to give to the city one half of the estimated 40 per cent. of increase in the net receipts of the Manhattan elevated lines. Both companies agreed to submit all their operations to the constant scrutiny of the city authorities, and to conform as well to whatever regulations the authorities might make governing the character and type of equipment, the fixing of schedules for train service, and operating methods in general. Both municipal construction and absolute municipal ownership are assured. Title to every rod of the lines vests in the city from the beginning, and the city is to let all construction contracts. The companies merely pay over their contributions to the Comptroller as they are required. Finally, the city reserves the right to take over the new lines, or particular groups of them, after ten years, if it so likes, and is required merely in such an event to pay back the contributions of the companies on a diminishing scale, until at the end of the lease period of 49 years both the lines and equipment shall come to the city without the payment of a dollar.

I presume that a settlement of this sort would have been impossible ten years ago. That it is possible to-day is an evidence of the degree in which a municipality like New York is advancing in the recovery of its sovereign right, and. in its capacity to serve the people upon a truly business basis.

The committee on the proper regulation of the "height, size and arrangement of buildings within the city limits," of which I am also chairman, has a work to perform scarcely less important than that of the transit committee. Although there are the minor regulations of the building code, affecting the details of construction, the owners of private property have been permitted to do about as they pleased with their ground areas. Buildings in Buildings in lower Manhattan have gone to the height of forty and fifty stories. The latest and

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in short, is in grave danger of choking itself to death, unless some sensible regulation of the disposition of building areas is imposed.

The Board of Estimate's committee, under the authority given by the board, has associated with itself an advisory commission of experts, representing all the interests involved in the solution of this problem. This commission is hard

at work, and before long will no doubt recommend some feasible plan for the relief of what threatens to become an intolerable situation. Our object is not necessarily to forbid tall buildings, but to keep them within bounds; to stop the course of abnormal and artificial values upon lot areas in one small portion of the city, and through the enforced widening of building activity to bring about increases of value, and at the same time the offer of greater safety and comfort, in every other part of the city.

Under the authority of the Board of Estimate, which has supreme control of the city's streets, I have done what I could, in the capacity of Borough President, to relieve existing traffic conditions, as well as to improve the face of the town, by widening the roadways of practically all the 100-foot streets, such as Fifth Avenue, Forty-Second, Thirty-Fourth, Twenty-Third, and Fourteenth streets, and by removing the encroachments of private property upon the sidewalks. For three centuries, all manner of encroachments stoops, porches, porticos, areaways, and even gardens-have projected upon the public's sidewalk space. In a test case brought several years ago, the courts held that the city retained the right to oust every trespasser of this sort; and under this decision I have proceeded with the clearing up of every street where congestion has become considerable. The engineers of my department tell me that the area recovered is equivalent to a continuous strip ten feet wide and thirteen miles long. The value of this property to the city is estimated at many millions. The widened streets are stately and beautiful, compared with the ragged streets of three or four years ago, and every one concedes, I think, that the aspect of the city has gained a new dignity.

The maintenance of the pavements is one of the most important functions of the Borough President's department, and the difficulties that it presents have become more and more serious with the rapid growth of automobile traffic and the introduction of immense automobile trucks. A conference of the consulting engineers of the five boroughs was called

at my suggestion, and, with the advice and assistance of the leading outside experts on paving, we revised radically the old paving specifications. The result is that the quality of pavement has been improved, and at the same time bidders who were excluded by the old specifications have entered the field.

In the first three years of the present administration, from the beginning of 1910 to the end of 1912, 109 miles of new pavement were laid, divided as follows: 53 miles of sheet asphalt, 30 miles of granite block, 14 miles of wood block, and 12 miles of asphalt block. Fortytwo miles of new pavement were laid in 1912, as against 25 miles in 1909, the last year of the previous administration. As an illustration of the economies effected, the cost of laying the surface and "binder" of sheet asphalt pavement is anywhere. from 20 to 40 cents less per square yard than it was in 1909. A still more forcible comparison is that of repair costs. The cost of repairing the stone pavements in Manhattan fell from $500,000 in 1909 to $300,000 in 1912, though the total area repaired increased from 206,000 square yards in 1909 to 325,000 in 1912.

It has been my privilege, as a member of the corporate stock budget committee, to help select a site for the new "civic centre," in which our $10,000,000 courthouse is to be placed, and in which other city, state, and Federal buildings may be grouped. As custodian of the public buildings, I am restoring the old City Hall the most beautiful building, I believe, in the possession of either this or any other American municipality. The restoration is following the original plans of the building, which we found the Historical Society had preserved. With the removal of the "Mullett post office," which is the acme of ugliness, and of the "Tweed court house," we shall have restored the historic common of the City of New York, with the City Hall its sole occupant, as it was a hundred years ago. The new "civic centre" will lie just north, beyond the great new Municipal Building, in which the city departments are soon to be housed. The "centre" will be developed upon a plan worthy of the position

Another of my committees has been that on the better coördination of the departments of health, charities, and hospitals. These are chief among what I might term the city's "welfare" departments. Liberal appropriations were made for their support in past administrations, and have been continued by this one. But there is a strong conviction in the board that in order to meet its own responsibility of appropriating wisely, it should insist upon better and more economical methods in some respects, and upon a much greater degree of attention to the preventive side of the city's health and social work. The heads of the departments concerned are coöperating in a most friendly way toward this end, and the results are beginning to count. Through the adjustment of appropriations in the last three years, the city is already spending far larger amounts than previously for medical inspection in the public schools; for infant milk stations; for the prevention of tuberculosis; for the proper care of convalescents discharged from the city hospitals; and for the better employment of others who through their personal misfortunes have become public charges.

One result of all this is that the annual death rate, which only twenty years ago was normally about 26 or 27 in a thousand, has been brought this year to 14. In one month of last fall it fell even lower.

At the instance of my committee, the legislature of two years ago passed an act creating the Public Recreation Commission, which is taking over the administration of the playgrounds, recreation piers, recreation fields, public baths, gymnasiums, and swimming pools, and encouraging the use of all of them. The number of swimming pools and gymnasiums in the public baths and elsewhere during the last two years has been doubled. The use of public schools as social centres, and the giving of free public concerts in the school buildings, are other innovations for which the present administration is responsible.

reached from almost any part of the city -and Coney Island from anywhere south of 59th Street for a five-cent fare. In these and in many other ways the people's money, placed in trust in the hands of the city's officers, is being spent for the benefit of the people.

That these things can be done without increase of cost, and merely through the application of the commonest rules of business administration, has been shown in the bureaus of the Borough of Manhattan and in many other branches of the city government. I found an appropriation of $3,000,000 provided to run the borough during the year 1910. Through the installation of up-to-date accounting, through the cutting out of waste wherever I found it, and through the employment of skilled and efficient heads of bureaus, in a single year this sum was reduced by 17 per cent. The greater part of the money thus saved was used for other purposes that had been neglected. The record of the two years of 1911 and 1912 tells a similar story. I was aided greatly at the outset by the Bureau of Municipal Research, which, though supported privately, has been placing its men at the service of practically all city departments that desire them. Those who through their private means have established this bureau have rendered great service not merely to the city but to the Nation.

Genuine progress is possible only with the realization by the city's officers of their duty to act in accordance with enlightened public opinion. Every effort has been made in New York in the last three years to give complete publicity to what the city administration is doing, and to enlist the active interest of the people. If the New York of the future is to have the great place it deserves among the cities of the world, the people must continue to look closely after their own affairs. They must insist that the responsibilities of the city government, as a business and social agency, shall continue to be met as we of the present administration have been trying, at least,