50 
Brooklyn ranks second in America; as a manufacturing center 
fifth. The manufactured products of Brooklyn now amount, in 
round numbers, to $1,400,000,000 a year. The wholesale prod- 
ucts amount to sae annually. 
The figures of the 1930 U.S. census show that the population of 
Brooklyn (2,596,154) has increased over 28 per cent. since 1920. 
Vhe attendance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for the same 
period increased from 312,000 to 1,006,000 or 222 per cent. ‘The 
Tax Budget appropriation of the City of New York for the main- 
tenance of the Garden increased $32,528 (from $68,478 to $1ot,- 
000), or 48 per cent., and the Private Funds Budget $62,266 (from 
$34,163 to $96,429), or 182 per cent. 
The circular above quoted also records the activity of the 
Chamber in connection with the recent establishment of Long 
Island University (1926), Brooklyn College (1929), and the new 
Technical High School buildi 
— 
ing soon to be constructed at a cost 
of approximately $7,000,000, to provide vocational training. 
Everyone interested in Brooklyn may well be proud of this 
splendid accomplishment and growth. 
But what is it that makes a city truly and permanently great? 
There were much larger mediaeval cities than Pisa, Florence, and 
Padua. Whoever thinks now of the size of Athens during the 
period of classic Greece, or of the commerce of Alexandria? To 
mention these cities is to suggest the names of Galileo, Giotto, 
Vesalius, and Dante: Pericles and Aristotle; a great university 
(Padua), surpassing architecture (Athens and Pisa), literature 
that lives for more than 2000 years (Athens); a great lbrary 
(Alexandria); parks or groves where people went, not to eat 
lunches, play games, and litter up the place, but to walk and talk 
with philosophers. We forget that Florence and Padua are and 
have been important centers of manufacturing and commerce, that 
Alexandria was a great shipping center. To mention Milan is to 
think “ Cathedral” and ‘ Leonardo da Vinci,” forgetting and not 
much caring, that there is the financial center of Italy and a great 
manufacturing center. 
It is by no means intended here to endeavor to belittle the im- 
portance of trade and commerce, but it is the intention to em- 
phasize the mistake of any city stressing and supporting these 
things to the exclusion of things of the spirit 
