September 24, 1910,





RECORD   AKD   GUIDE





481









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C. W, SWEET

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PresWeat. CLINTON W.  SWEET                      Treasurer, P. W, DODGE

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Copyrighted.   1010,  by




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Vol.




LXXXVl.




SEPTEMBER




2 4,




1910,














No,




2219.





PROBABLY the most surprising result thus far announced
by the Census Bureau has been the comparatively
small increase in the population of Chicago. Its percentage
of growth has been only a little over twenty per cent., and
thus it takes its place among the class of cities which may
he said to be exhibiting the normal rate of expansion—a
rate that is varying between twenty and twenty-five per
cent. Other large cities in the same class are St. Louis,
Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Why is it
that New Yorli can maintain an extraordinarily larger rate
of increase—amounting almost to forty per cent,, while
Chicago is growing only a little over half as rapidly? The
Borough of Manhattan, taken alone, added a larger per¬
centage to its population than did the city of Chicago, and
the Borough of The Bronx, which has an actual population
of only about one-fifth that of Chicago, is adding as many
people every year to its inhabitants as is the middle west¬
ern metropolis. In the case of Chicago, moreover, the com¬
paratively small rate of increase cannot be explained hy
the fact that any percentage of the people who contribute
to its wealth actually live outside the city limits, because
Chicago has always been very aggressive in annexing sur¬
rounding territory. Why is it, then, that the second largest
city in the country, which hitherto has increased
in population anywhere from 40 to 100 per cent, every ten
years, has suddenly dropped to a little over 20 per cent.?
And why is it that the largest city in the country has in¬
creased almost forty per cent.? Probably the difference
will be explained by the -results of the business census; but
in, general the explanation seems to be that the manufac¬
turing industries are inclined to seek the smaller rather
than the larger cities. When the Steel Corporation, for
instance, wished to construct the largest and most elficient
steel manufacturing plant in the countiT, it avoided Chi¬
cago, and selected a site near Chicago, and on the same lake,
but in Indiana. The increased price of livestock and
dressed meat has probably prevented the Chicago stock
yards from growing as fast as they have grown hitherto.
The tendency of the big corporations is to locate their new
factories in smaller places, the management of which they
can more effectually control. Another interesting fact is
that the automobile industry, the largest manufacturing
creation of the last ten years, has almost entirely avoided
Chicago. If such, in general, is the true explanation of the
comparatively small growth of Chicago, it is au explanation
frora which the country, as a whole will beneflt, A far
more wholesome group of political and business conditions
will follow from the up-buildiug of a number of smaller
centres of industrial population than from that of a com¬
paratively few large ones.

_^__---------4------_——

THE foregoing explanation of the comparatively small
increase in the population of Chicago does not, how¬
ever, help one to account for the much larger increase of
New York, Apparently the same conditions which account
for Chicago's diminished rate of increase would have their
application also to New York. This city has no doubt the
largest manufacturing output of any city in the country, but
there is no reason to suppose that it has gained much in
that respect during the past ten years. Ko single New
York indusfrv, such as automobiles in Detroit, or lake ship¬
ping in Cleveland, can be pointed out which has been par¬
ticularly   prosperous.    The proportioa of the foreign  trade





which enters and leaves the port of New York is diminish¬
ing rather than increasing. Railroad, freight rates dis¬
criminate against it rather than in its favor. Why, then,
is it increasing in population almost forty per cent., while
the majority of tbe other large American cities are increas¬
ing only a little over half that rate? The explanation,
probably, is that the wealth of the country is increasing
faster than its population, and that New York benefits more
than any other single city from the general increase in
wealth. New York is becoming more and more the great
purchasing and selling market for the whole of the United
States, and particularly for the well-to-do fraction of the
American people. It deals, not in industrial products, like
locomotives, steel beams, machinery and the like, which are
sold to industrial firms and companies, but in finished prod¬
ucts like wearing apparel, luxuries of all kinds, and the
like, which are sold either to the retailers or to the actual
consumers, Wben the results of the business census are
published it will probably he discovered that the branch
of commerce which has been expanding most rapidly in
New York has been mercantile trade of all kinds. It ia
becoming more and more the great distributing centre for
the whole of the country; and so far at least there is no
reason to suppose that it will lose this distinction. It
should maintain its usual rate of growth as long as the
wealth of the country keeps on increasing faster than Its
population.





THIS explanation of New York's extraordinary rate ol
growth is, so far as it is true, very interesting from the
real estate point of view. Among the several remarkable
movements which have taken place in New York during the
past ten years, not the least remarkable has been the
large increase characteristic of the past few years in the
erection of mercantile buildings. The expansion of the
wholesale trade has been so constant and so large that it
looked as if it could not be wholesome. In the light of the
foregoing considerations, the great increase in the num¬
ber of mercantile buildings may well be simply the visible
evidence of New York's increasing pre-eminence as the dis-
player and the distributor of merchandise for the. whole
country—or for at least an ever larger part of the whole
country, and if so, it may be expected that the demand for
Manhattan rea! estate for the needs of the wholesale trade
will become more rather than less urgent. No doubt the
tendency will be to scatter manufacturing—even the mak¬
ing of clothes—among the other boroughs; but Manhat¬
tan will retain and increase for an Indeflnite number of
years its mercantile business, and that mercantile business
will occupy the whole of the central part of the borough
from Third Avenue to tbe North River, and from Bleecker
to Fifty-ninth Street. Of course, certain avenues and streets
within this territory will be given over to the retail shops
and places of amusement, but except in these favored
locations the whole district will contain a vast collection
of warehouses and exhibition rooms—supplemented by a
certain number of lofts used for light manufacturing. Of
course, land on the more accessible avenues, such as Fourth
and Seventh avenues, which will be improved with mer¬
cantile buildings, is destined to be even more valuable than
it is now. It should be remembered also, an increasing
amount of hotel, amusement, retail and restaurant busi¬
ness is necessarily associated with the growth of New York
as a mercantile centre. Purchasers who come to New
York spend their money by night as well as by day, and
it is the money which they are leaving and will leave behind
them which will become probably the most abundant single
source of the continued growth of the city.





IT has long been evident that the New York & New Jer¬
sey Terminal Company would propose to connect its
Cortlandt Street terminal with its Sixth Avenue line, but
the route which its engineers have laid out is different from
the. one which has been anticipated. It had been supposed
that the Sixth Avenue line itself would have been extended
south to Church and Cortland streets. Instead of that
the company proposes to build down Broadway from Thirty-
third street until it reaches Union Square, and then to con¬
tinue just west of Broadway to its destination. The pro¬
posal has much to recommend it, and doubtless something
of the kind will eventually be built, but obviously the
credit of the city should not be used for such a purpose until
certain still more pressing subways are placed under con¬
tract.    Whatever the advantages of the proposed new route