A SECTION OF THE BIG TUNNEL THROUGH WHICH CATSKILL WATER PASSES UNDER NEW YORK The man in the middle distance gives some idea of the tremendous size of the stream of water required for New York. The small streams flowing in are from underground springs. These were ultimately dammed back by grouting placed between the concrete lining and the solid rock. which even the waiter in a quick-lunch room scarcely deems worth a "Thank you"? Yet the world's loftiest building, its crowning cathedral of commerce, was built out of the small margin of profit in ten-cent transactions. Who considers the dust in the street? New York has built up sixty-five acres of ground, valued at several million dollars, out of street sweepings. Who feels the dust and dirt that adhere to his shoes? However, more than seven tons of the housewife's enemy is carried by tramping feet into the subways every twenty-four hours. THE COSMOPOLIS OF CIVILIZATION One scarcely knows which to wonder at most-New York, the cosmopolis of civilization, or New York, the metropolis of the western world. It has more Irish and their sons and daughters than Dublin, more Italians and their children than has Rome, as many Germans and their children as Leipzig and Frankfort-onMain together, while its Russian population by birth and parentage is greater than the combined populations of Riga and Dvinsk. But New York's appeal is as much to the people of the United States as to those of the outer world. Glancing at the list of those born elsewhere whom Uncle Sam found living in the metropolis when he last counted noses, we discover that there are more Jerseyites in Gotham than in Passaic, Princeton, and Rahway combined; more Connecticut-born than in Danbury; more people of Massachusetts birth than in Taunton; more Ohioans than in Chillicothe; more Pennsylvanians than in Allentown or Altoona. Every State sends a quota of its people to become part and parcel of New York life, and perhaps a majority of the city's most KEEPING A TUNNEL SECTION OF THE CATSKILL AQUEDUCT FREE OF WATER In excavating the tunnels for this aqueduct, thousands of underground springs were encountered, and electric pumps had to be installed to prevent accumulated water from interfering with the progress of the work. THE NIAGARA OF AMERICAN LIFE New York is indeed the Niagara of American life. As over the great falls the waters of the continental basin rush down to the Atlantic Ocean, so through this city passes the vast river of humanity that seeks the sea of opportunity in the world beyond. It has been said that standing at 42d street and Fifth avenue long enough one will see every American. who does a worth-while thing pass that busy corner. Certain it is that all the currents of human achievement in America do flow in that direction. Below the falls is the whirlpool. As one stands above Niagara's gorge and watches the swirling waters, seemingly bereft of all sense of the direction where lies the sea, he wonders whether they will ever break the spell of the moment and find the channel they seek. So, also, standing at the vantage point of Times. Square and watching the confusion of the rush hour, with its swirl, its eddy, and its drift, the onlooker marvels that in every drop in this whirlpool of humanity there is purpose. Any story of New York begins with its people, and in its vast aggregation of humanity there is a wealth of interest. Let those who have been pessimistic about our immigration study New York. It seems unbelievable; but if every resident whose parents were born in America were to leave the city its standing as the second most populous center in the world would not be affected. In other words, the number of immigrants and their children resident in New York is almost equal to the combined populations of Paris and Philadelphia and greater than the combined populations of Chicago and Berlin. Photograph from Brown Brothers THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE FROM THE STEPS OF THE SUBTREASURY DURING A LIBERTY-LOAN CAMPAIGN A few figures will show the vast proportions of everything that relates to life in New York. Four transients arrive every second, a passenger train comes into the city terminals every fifty-two seconds, and a ship clears every forty minutes. A child is born every six minutes, a wedding takes place every thirteen minutes, and a funeral is held every fourteen minutes. There is a real-estate transfer every twenty-five minutes, a new building is erected every fifty-one minutes, and a fire occurs every thirty minutes. Every day three hundred and fifty people come to the city to live, and a hundred new telephones are installed. FIGHTING THE BIG GRAIN FIRE AT DOW'S ELEVATOR, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK High-pressure service in the downtown district in New York has all but banished the modern big fire. Giant electric pumps, capable of delivering thirty thousand gallons of water a minute, at a pressure of three hundred pounds to the square inch, represent the "big guns" of the fire department. Under such pressure windows are smashed in, partitions are torn down, merchandise is swept aside, and water is driven into every nook and cranny of a structure afire. The ten pumps of the high-pressure service can deliver a hundred streams at once. Veritable walls of water check a fire's effort to spread. Only a negligible number of the city's forty fires a day get beyond the buildings in which they originate. Rising 785 feet above the sidewalk, possessing forty acres of floor space, and having elevator shafts with a combined length of two miles, the Woolworth Building well fits its rôle of tallest building in the world. One of its chief successes is, according to architects, its scale. The architectural adornments which, viewed from the street, look like delicate and elaborate embroidery in stone, do not become coarse or crude when seen close at hand. One authority calls this civilization's greatest cathedral of commerce and another the world's foremost temple of trade. That it is both a beautiful and a substantial structure no one who Las ever seen it outside and in will controvert. |