The school army of New York is 900,coo strong. Five out of seven of its soldiers were born under alien flags or else have a parent who was. Marching ten to a file, in close formation, the vanguard of the splendid army of future citizens would be coming into New York as the rear guard was passing out of Philadelphia. New York, with an annual budget of two hundred million dollars, spends more for municipal purposes than Canada spends for dominion purposes in peace times. Yet so great is its wealth that the tax rate is less than two dollars per hundred of assessed value. school, and here undergoes medical examination at frequent intervals. Adenoids are no longer permitted to retard its growth and mental development, bad tonsils are removed, defective teeth are cared for, and the poor child is given an equal chance with the child of the wellto-do to grow up into a healthy, normal adult, girded with physical well-being and mentally equipped for the warfare of human progress. The work of food and drug inspection, laboratory research, and other activities might be discussed, but it is enough to say that if "by their fruits shall ye know them," then the New York health service has exhibits to offer which splendidly demonstrate what a municipality can do toward promoting the well-being of its people. Facing a density of population unequalled anywhere else, dealing with peo THE HUDSON RIVER AND ITS MANHATTAN AND JERSEY SHORE DOCKS Photograph by Paul Thompson This striking picture, taken from the Woolworth Tower just after a snowstorm, shows ferry-boats and tugs plowing their throbbing way through wastes of snow-covered, broken ice. It is the lower Hudson, or North River, as it is called locally, that carries the bulk of the commerce of the busiest port on the face of the globe, A TYPICAL STREET SCENE IN NEW YORK'S LOWER EAST SIDE, BENEATH THE "L" TRACKS From such a neighborhood as this come many of the new soldiers of America, who are upholding the flag with a spirit worthy of Valley Forge or Yorktown, although in such a block there may be spoken, as mother tongues, as many as twenty-seven foreign languages With no rent to pay and axle grease in very small quantities required, the ice-cream sandwich man is able to make of his pocket a reservoir for pennies in such quantities that frequently he push-carts his way into the ranks of dairy-lunch owners. ple who have to be shown at every step of the way, fighting against disease dissemination in crowded factories, crowded cars, crowded streets, New York has triumphed over all its health handicaps. ALWAYS OUTGROWING ITS UTILITIES In every phase of its development New York City is like an adolescent boy who is always outgrowing his clothes; the city fathers are kept on tenter hooks to meet its expansion. Its schools are always overcrowded because, rich as it is, the municipality cannot buy sites and build. schools fast enough to keep up with the ever-growing child army. Its transportation lines are always choked with passengers, because one subway cannot be completed before another is needed. Its bridges and tunnels are always pressed to capacity because the interval between the realization of a new need and the opening of facilities to meet it is long enough in New York's rate of expansion for a succeeding need to be born." Everywhere one hears the roar of dynamite-the growing pains of a great city. Months there are as years elsewhere and years as decades. The ultramodern of yesterday is the commonplace of tomorrow and the obsolescent of a decade hence; for New York adds a Maine New Hampshire - Vermont population to its own every ten years, and facilities must ever march at double-quick to keep pace with such growth." But at last the city has found one place where engineering construction is able to outstrip human expansion and prepare for decades ahead. It has built a water, system that will take care of half a century of growth and form a unit in the bigger system that may lie beyond that period. |