Ye aS Se 
DOCK FACILITIES IN NEW YORK CITY. 47 
In connection with providing further facilities for large steamers at 
Manhattan, there must not be overlooked provision for the transient and 
smaller craft. In Manhattan below 18th Street, the so-called open wharfage 
or piers where canal boats, river steamers, tramp freighters and such craft 
may occasionally be berthed, are practically limited to 5 piers. The com- 
paratively high cost in Manhattan of building materials, structural iron, 
and coarse freight is due in some measure to this lack of open piers, which 
often necessitates long truckage hauls from the more remote sections of the 
Island. In the proposed reorganization of the port such open piers will 
probably be provided at not more than half mile intervals in congested 
sections. 
As stated in the opening of my address, the great problem of New York 
Harbor authorities at present is not the lack of natural resources or the 
overcoming of engineering difficulties but rather to organize the separate 
piers and to correlate the many disconnected developments, and to end the 
confused use of the water front. Any betterment of port facilities must 
conform to the demand of the times, namely, systematic and effective organi- 
zation. In other words, future harbor plans must be governed by the same 
change that in private business is merging small disconnected companies 
into large corporations. Port authorities must cease to develop the harbor 
from the standpoint of individual piers used regardless of their neighbors, 
and must plan all future improvements not only for sections of the harbor 
but for the harbor as a whole, so as to make the port one organized connected 
terminal. It is toward this end that the present port authorities in New 
York are working. As in the reorganization of modern business, individuals 
and smaller companies have suffered, so a departure from present conditions 
and past customs of port development will entail seeming hardships upon 
individual companies and individual sections of the harbor. Therefore, 
antagonism is aroused and ultimate success depends largely upon a broad- 
ened outlook of all concerned and a willingness to concede much for the 
ultimate greatness of the port of New York, also upon stout assertion by the 
City of its trusteeship of the water front for its best use as a whole. 
A brief address can give only in outline the present conditions, their 
disadvantages and the necessity for improvements and the proposed methods 
of making them. Therefore, I have left untouched the equally large subject 
of port organization from an administrative standpoint. More important 
even than plans, is a stable form of port administration capable of a con- 
tinuous port policy and of carrying out of plans after they have been once 
adopted. For the present, the responsibility for a continuity of policy rests 
not in the changing port authorities but in the public and more especially 
