All of these institutions are private corporations controlled by 

 boards of trustees, who administer them according to their own fancy, 

 making- the contracts for supplies and fixing the salaries, with the 

 same generosity that characterizes their devotion to the arts, with this 

 single exception, that, in this instance, the City pays the bills. Over 

 eighty per cent of their maintenance is salaries. The City has no voice 

 in the fixing of these salaries, and the employees are not selected from 

 the civil lists made up after examinations in which all the citizens of 

 New York are invited to participate, and owing to the facts that the 

 City makes its constributions to them as it does to the hospitals, they 

 claim exemption from the labor laws of the State applicable to the City 

 and those contracting with it, and I am informed that one of the cor- 

 poration counsels some years ago advised the City to this effect. 



You can form an idea of where we are drifting imder these circum- 

 stances by a glance at the salaries paid by the City to its Park Com- 

 missioners, under wdiose jurisdiction these museums are, and those paid 

 by the City at the instance of the trustees of these institutions to the 

 directors of the museums : 



The salary, Park Commissioner, Manhattan and Richmond $ 5,000 



The salary. Director American Museum of Natural History 10,000 



The salary. Director American Museum of Art . . 10,000 



The salary, Director Aquarium ..... 4,000 



The salary, Park Commissioner The Bronx . . . 5.000 



The salary. Director Zoological Park .... 8,000 



The salary, Director Botanical Garden. . . . 6,000 



The salary. Park Commissioner, Brooklyn . . . 5, 000 

 The salary, Director Brooklyn Inst, of Arts and Sciences (in part) 2.500 



The City's relation to these museums originated with-the promoters of 

 the museums, operating through the legislature. And while the City 

 has never established any definite policy towards them it has compla- 

 cently accepted the suggestions of the legislature and the friends of the 



