new ideas purchased from this source. designs for wall paper, rugs, print dressgoods, etc., and were delighted to obtain them. FIFTH AVENUE LOOKING NORTH FROM FORTY-SECOND STREET THE PREPONDERANT FOREIGN ELEMENT IN NEW YORK'S SCHOOL ARMY When one reflects that seven out of every nine children of school age in New York are of immigrant parentage, a situation is disclosed that might be termed startling, especially when it is remembered that the school army of Greater Gotham is so large that if it marched ten abreast in close formation the front rank would be boarding a North River ferryboat when the rear guard was crossing the Schuylkill out of Philadelphia. It is a staggering task which confronts the city in Americanizing such huge numbers of youthful foreigners. Indeed, did it not happen that New York is so richwith assessed values greater than those of the next seven cities in America combined-it might well call upon the national government for aid. But with such wealth it is bearing the burden alone and is doing it admirably. This great thoroughfare has been preempted by Fashion and the Shopper. Heavy traffic is rigidly excluded. One might go on to the length of a whole article writing about striking features of the New York public schools, which stand first among all the agencies for Americanizing the immigrant's children. How these schools take seventyodd tongues and substitute good English; how they not only labor to fit boys and girls for intelligent and useful places in the country's great industrial system, but also through employment bureaus bring the trained pupil and the open job together; how they provide every year for the children of an added population equal to that of Memphis, Tennessee-none of these achievements or problems can be described here. NEW YORK'S GUARDIANSHIP OF THE Next to the education of its children for their life work and the maintenance of order, a community's most important task is to care for the public health. And here again the big city shines. If there ever was a city on the face of the globe which to superficial judgment A MODERN APARTMENT HOUSE OF THE TYPE PREVAILING ALONG RIVERSIDE DRIVE Nearly four million people live in "tenements" in New York, for under the law a "tenement" is anything from one of the frowsy seven-story affairs in the lower and poorer East Side, overrun by poor children, to the fashionable apartment house on Riverside Drive, open only to tenants who have big bank rolls but no children. would seem a paradise for all the germs in the catalogue that city is New York. From every continent, every clime, and every country have come its inhabitants. For the most part those who come from foreign lands are as ignorant about the germ theory of disease when they arrive as a primary pupil is ignorant about differential calculus. Every one knows that crowding tends to magnify the problem of public health. "Too thick to thrive" is an alliterative phrase which diagnoses the health situation in many an overcrowded population center. When it is remembered that on the average square mile in Manhattan there are nearly as many people as in the whole State of Nevada, and that down THE CURB MARKET IN BROAD STREET: NEW YORK A section of the street is roped off, and within this area, on stirring market days, there gathers one of the most wildly gesticulating crowds imaginable. They are the curb brokers, who buy and sell securities, most of which are not listed by the more conservative exchanges. In the squat little buildings in the foreground are the offices of many of the curb brokers, and the sign-language that passes between windows and street is as eloquent in its unintelligibility to the looker-on as it is in dollars and cents to the participants. This structure is reputed to be the largest hotel in the world. It has 1,700 rooms. The metropolis has half as much invested in hostelries as Uncle Sam invested in the Panama Canal. Within a single square mile there are enough hotels to house and feed 50,000 people. They employ three people for every five they entertain. No other great city receives so many sojourners, who are both able and willing to pay for every creature comfort; and there is no taste so expensive that a Gotham hostelry cannot fill its demands. Every night the food and drink bill of the hotels and restaurants amounts to more than a million dollars. THE CROTON DAM AND SPILLWAY OF THE NEW YORK WATER SUPPLY The Croton water system, which was New York's main reliance before the Catskill waters were tapped, is not small, even for a big city. There are probably not fifty cities on the globe for which it could not furnish an adequate water supply. But for New York it became so inadequate that the city was face to face with a real water famine repeatedly. in the East Side the population is many times as dense, the wonder is that it is possible to prevent the city from being a pest hole, with every infectious disease endemic, from anthrax and ague to typhus and cholera. Furthermore, the elevated, the subway, and the surface lines would seem to afford unexampled opportunity for the spread of disease. But in spite of these conditions, New York is one of the healthiest cities in America. Compare Manhattan's 1916 death rate of 13.60 per thousand with Baltimore's 18.18, or Washington's 18.01, and it will be realized that to offset its overcrowding, its East Side ignorance, and its vast daily intercourse, New York has a health service second to none in the world. Nowhere else is there to be found a more splendid tribute to the success of |