54 DOCK FACILITIES IN NEW YORK CITY. 
the adoption of any comprehensive port plan, an argument which at bottom ad- 
vances the old principle of laissez-faire. While it is true that railroad shipments 
in and out of Manhattan, both as to value and immediate necessity outweigh, cer- 
tainly to the localcommunity, in importanceand value the freight handled by steam- 
ship companies, yet such freight need not be handled in floating freight yards on the 
water front, thereby imposing an unnecessarily heavy handicap on the natural 
development of the shipping interest of this port. In other words, Mr. DuBosque 
proposes to permit the railroads almost exclusively to occupy the North River 
water front and to continue to do business in a manner which does not permit of the 
quickest distribution and receipt of freight once landed and results in the thoroughly 
congested condition now found on West Street, making it almost impossible for a 
shipper to deliver and receive more than one dray load of freight per day. 
At the same time, he would compel steamship interests to do their business 
under the handicap of receiving and unloading freight for Manhattan in uptown 
sections, entailing extra cartage and other expenses incident to remoter locations. 
The plan proposed by Commissioner Tomkins does not propose in any way 
radically to disturb the present centers of freight-receiving and freight-shipping on 
Manhattan, but merely to readjust and coordinate access to these freight centers 
so as to permit both railroads and steamships to do business under the best cir- 
cumstarices. 
To pass to one other point. I amnot only much pleased that Sir William Henry 
White honored the paper with a notice, but Iam giad he brought home to our atten- 
tion what is the basis of the whole port problem in New York, and that is port 
administration. ‘That is the crux of the whole problem in New York and always 
will be—to have a proper administration of the port. These matters should be 
administered by a continuing board. The Commissioner of the Department of 
Docks and Ferries usually holds office for a comparatively brief period and it takes 
him some time even to become familiar with the largeness of the port problenis 
which confront us here in the city. At the end of four years, the chances are that 
he will leave office, and someone else take it to learn the problem over again. 
You must have a port authority, and what the present Commissioner is trying 
to accomplish is exactly what Sir William suggested with relation to the Mersey 
Harbor and Dock Board, where certain members of that Board represent the 
municipality, and certain members represent the commercial interests concerned 
with the administration of the harbor and docks of Liverpool. The Commissioner 
here is doing that, in an unofficial way, by going to our Chamber of Commerce, and 
the various Boards of Trade, and asking them to appoint Committees to confer with 
him. He is trying to make the Port policy of New York City the policy which will 
best represent its commercial interests. 
H. L. DesAncEs, Member (Communicated) :—The subject presented by Mr. 
William J. Barney, Esq., Second Deputy Commissioner, Department of Docks and 
Ferries, is of exceeding importance to the shipping interests of New York Harbor; 
