THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



45 



traduction, the value of the exports from 

 this port is greater than the value of the 

 exports of Asia, Africa, and Australia 

 combined. Think of the thousands of 

 cargoes which leave these continents. 

 And then add the vast international trade 

 between the countries of Asia, as Japan 

 with Russia and China. Yet all this in- 

 tercontinental and international trade 

 combined does not amount to as much as 

 the outgoing trade of the port of New 

 York. 



The incoming trade, also, is vast in 

 volume — South America, Africa, and 

 Australia combined are far behind New 

 York in the comparison of import values. 



With such an unmatched combination 

 of freight-moving demands, what wonder 

 is it that even the supercity falters? 

 Many remedies have been proposed. 

 Ward's Island, planted in the throat of 

 East River, together with Hell Gate, 

 stands as an obstruction to through East 

 River traffic. It has been proposed that 

 great ship terminals be built on the shores 

 of the Bronx above Hell Gate, thus pro- 

 viding entirely new docking territory. 

 Already work in this direction has been 

 started and some extraordinary difficul- 

 ties have been encountered on the marshy 

 shores, where the mud is so fluid that it 

 has to be moved by hydraulic dredges 

 and deposited behind retaining walls. 



Congress has just enacted a law pro- 

 viding for the deepening of Hell Gate 

 channel to 40 feet. This will give the 

 Bronx a splendid water-front of its own. 



new York's great waterfront 



New York has 578 miles of waterfront, 

 of which 450 miles are available for pier 

 construction. The harbor is far superior 

 to that of London or of Liverpool. The 

 Thames is a brook beside the Hudson, 

 and requires constant dredging. Liver- 

 pool has a tide of 30 feet range, with 

 enormous Watergate construction re- 

 quired to overcome it, while New York 

 Harbor is practically tide free. 



In so far as docking space is con- 

 cerned, New York can expand her harbor 

 to a capacity equaling the combined dock- 

 age space of any five of the main ports 

 of Europe. 



On the Manhattan shore of North 

 River, between 36th and 39th streets, the 



city has begun the construction of a series 

 of gigantic piers for modern leviathans. 

 These piers are 1,050 feet long, with slips 

 350 feet wide and having a depth of 44 

 feet at mean low water. 



Construction preliminaries for these 

 piers reminded the onlooker of the rais- 

 ing of the Maine in Havana Harbor. A 

 huge cofferdam, the largest ever made, 

 was constructed by driving steel sheet 

 piling around the space to be excavated. 

 Then the water was pumped out of the 

 area enclosed by the cofferdam and work 

 was begun on the building of the piers. 



The relief of the congestion beyond 

 the piers is one of the main problems of 

 the port. A series of elevated freight 

 stations, situated behind these piers and 

 accessible to all railroads, just as are the 

 Bush terminals in Brooklyn, has been 

 proposed. 



THE POEICE AND EIRE DEPARTMENTS 



One hesitates, in an article of maga- 

 zine length, even to refer to the police 

 and fire departments of the metropolis, 

 for each is a story in itself and defies suc- 

 cessful summary in a few paragraphs. 



One who stands at a busy corner like 

 Fifth avenue and Thirty-fourth street, 

 when Upper Manhattan and the Bronx 

 are making their morning migration to 

 the downtown district, and watches a 

 traffic policeman handle the inevitable 

 congestion, appreciates two facts — first, 

 that the New York police force faces tre- 

 mendous problems, and, second, that it 

 solves these problems in a way that is 

 admirable. 



The city spends as much for the main- 

 tenance of law and order alone as the 

 republic of Colombia spends for all na- 

 tional purposes. If all the people — men, 

 women, and children — in Nevada's largest 

 city were suddenly to turn policemen, 

 they would make a force just about equal 

 to that of New York. 



We read often of the failures of the 

 New York police force, but those who 

 realize the vastness of the population, the 

 unusual proportion of criminals which a 

 supercity attracts from the outside world, 

 and the opportunities men have for los- 

 ing themselves in a community so big and 

 so busy that no one bothers about the 

 affairs of his neighbors, understand quite 



