world. She has a harbor capable of accommodating all the fleets of
Christendom, both commercial and belligerent. That harbor has a western
ramification, extending from the Battery to the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil
Creek,--a distance of fifteen miles; an eastern ramification, reaching
from the Battery to the mouth of Haarlem River,--seven miles; and a main
trunk, interrupted by three small islands, extending from the Battery to
the Narrows,--a distance of about eight miles more. It is rather
under-estimating the capacity of the East River branch to average its
available width as low as eighty rods; a mile and a half will be a
proportionately moderate estimate for the Hudson River branch; the
greatest available width of the Upper Bay is about four miles, in a line
from the Long Island to the Staten Island side. If we add to these
combined areas the closely adjacent waters in hourly communication with
New York by her tugs and lighters, her harbor will further include a
portion of the channel running west of Staten Island, and of the rivers
emptying into Newark Bay, with the whole magnificent and sheltered
roadstead of the Lower Bay, the mouth of Shrewsbury Inlet, and a portion
of Raritan Bay.
As this paper must deal to a sufficient extent with statistics in
matters of practical necessity, we will at this stage leave the reader
to complete for himself the calculation of such a harbor's capacity. In
this respect, in that of shelter, of contour of water-front, of
accessibility from the high seas, New York Harbor has no rival on the
continent. The Bay of San Francisco more nearly equals it than any
other; but that is on the Pacific side, for the present much farther
from the axis of national civilization, and backed by a much narrower
agricultural tract. We will not refer to disadvantages of commercial
exchange, since San Francisco may at any time be relieved of these by a
Pacific Railroad. On our Atlantic side there is certainly no harbor
which will compare for area and convenience with that of New York.
It is not only the best harbor on our coast, but that in easiest
communication with other parts of the country. To the other portions of
the coast it is as nearly central as it could be without losing fatally
in other respects. Delaware and Chesapeake Bays afford fine roadsteads;
but the low sand barrens and wet alluvial flats which form their shores
compelled Philadelphia and Baltimore to retire their population such a
distance up the chief communicating rivers as to deprive them of many
important advantages proper to a seaport. Under the influence of free
ideas may be expected a wonderful development of the advantages of
Chesapeake Bay. Good husbandry and unshackled enterprise throughout
Maryland and Virginia will astonish Baltimore by an increase of her
population and commerce beyond the brightest speculative dreams. The
full resources of Delaware Bay are far from being developed. Yet
Philadelphia and Baltimore are forever precluded from competing with New
York, both by their greater distance from open water and the comparative
inferiority of the interior tracts with which they have ready
communication. Below Chesapeake Bay the coast system of great
river-estuaries gives way to the Sea-Island system, in which the
main-land is flanked by a series of bars or sandbanks, separated from it
by tortuous and difficult lagoons. The rivers which empty into this
network of channels are comparatively difficult of entrance, and but
imperfectly navigable. The isolation of the Sea Islands is enough to
make them still more inconvenient situations than any on the main-land
for the foundation of a metropolis. Before we have gone far down this
system, we have passed the centre where, on mathematical principles, a
metropolis should stand.
Considered with regard to the tributary interior, New York occupies a
position no less central than with respect to the coast. It is
impossible to study a map of our country without momently increasing
surprise at the multiplicity of natural avenues which converge in New
York from the richest producing districts of the world. The entire
result of the country's labor seems to seek New York by inevitable
channels. Products run down to the managing, disbursing, and balancing
hand of New York as naturally as the thoughts of a man run down to the
hand which must embody them. From the north it takes tribute through the
Hudson River. This magnificent water-course, permitting the ascent of
the largest ships for a hundred miles, and of river-craft for fifty
miles farther, has upon its eastern side a country averaging about
thirty miles in width to the Taconic range, consisting chiefly of the
richest grazing, grain, and orchard land in the Atlantic States. Above
the Highlands, the west side of the river becomes a fertile, though
narrower and more broken agricultural tract; and at the head of
navigation, the Hudson opens into another valley of exhaustless
fertility,--that of the Mohawk,--coming eastward from the centre of the
State.
Thus, independent of her system of railroads, New York City possesses
uninterrupted natural connection with the interior of the State, whence
a new system of communications is given off by the Lakes to the extreme
west and north of our whole territory.
To the northeast, New York extends her relations by the sheltered avenue
of Long Island Sound,--alluring through a strait of comparatively smooth
water not only the agricultural products which seek export along a
double water-front of two hundred miles, but the larger results of that
colossal manufacturing system on which is based the prosperity of New
England. To a great part of this class of values Long Island Sound
stands like a weir emptying into the net of New York.
The maritime position of New York makes her as easy an entrepot for
Southern as for foreign products; and in any case her share in our
Northern national commerce gives her the control of all trade which must
pay the North a balance of exchange.
The Hudson, the Sound, and the line of Southern coasting traffic are the
three main radii of supply which meet in New York. Another important
district paying its chief subsidy to New York is drained by the Delaware
River, and this great avenue is reached with ease from the metropolis by
a direct natural route across the Jersey level. Though unavailable to
New York as a navigable conduit, it still offers a means of penetrating
to the southern counties of the State, and a passage to the Far West, of
which New York capital has been prompt to avail itself by the Erie
Railroad, with its Atlantic and Great Western continuation to St. Louis.
This uniform broad-gauge of twelve hundred miles, which has just been
opened by the energy and talents of Messrs. McHenry and Kennard,
apparently decides the main channel by which the West is to discharge
her riches into New York.--But we are trenching on the subject the
capital's artificial advantages.
Finally, New York has been prevented only by disgraceful civic
mismanagement from becoming long ago the healthiest city in the world.
In spite of jobbed contracts for street-cleaning, and various corrupt
tamperings with the city water-front, by which the currents are
obstructed, and injury is done the sewage as well as the channels of the
harbor, New York is now undoubtedly a healthier city than any other
approaching it in size. Its natural sanitary advantages must be evident.
The crying need of a great city is good drainage. To effect this for New
York, the civil engineer has no struggle with his material. He need only
avail himself dexterously of the original contour of his ground.
Manhattan Island is a low outcrop of gneiss and mica-schist, sloping
from an irregular, but practically continuous crest, to the Hudson and
East Rivers, with a nearly uniform southerly incline from its
precipitous north face on the Haarlem and Spuyten Duyvil to high-water
mark at the foot of Whitehall Street. Its natural system of drainage
might be roughly illustrated by radii drawn to the circumference of a
very eccentric ellipse from its northern focus. Wherever the waste of
the entire island may descend, it is met by a seaward tide twice in the
twenty-four hours. On the East River side the velocity of this tide in
the narrow passages is rather that of a mill-stream than of the entrance
to a sound. Though less apparent, owing to its area, the tide and
current of the Hudson are practically as irresistible. The two branches
of the city-sewage, uniting at the Battery, are deflected a little to
the westward by Governor's Island, and thus thrown out into the middle
of the bay, where they receive the full force of the tidal impulse,
retarded by the Narrows only long enough to disengage and drop their
finer silt on the flats between Robin's Reef and the Jersey shore. The
depurating process of the New World's grandest community lies ready for
use in this natural drainage-system. If there be a standing pool, a
festering ditch, a choked gutter, a malarious sink within the scope of
the city bills of mortality, there is official crime somewhere. Nature
must have been fraudulently obstructed in the benignest arrangements
she ever made for removing the effete material of a vast city's vital
processes. In the matter of climate, New York experiences such
comparative freedom from sudden changes as belongs to her position in
the midst of large masses of water. She enjoys nearly entire immunity
from fogs and damp or chilly winds. Her weather is decided, and her
population are liable to no one local and predominant class of disease.
So far as her hygienic condition depends upon quantity and quality of
food, her communications with the interior give her an exceptional
guaranty. Despite the poverty which her lower classes share in kind,
though to a much less degree, with those of other commercial capitals,
there is no metropolis in the world where the general average of comfort
and luxury stands higher through all the social grades. It is further to
be recollected that health and the chief comforts of life are
correlative,--that the squalid family is the unhealthy family, and that,
as we import our squalor, so also we import the materials and conditions
of our disease. This _a priori_ view is amply sustained by the
statistics of our charitable institutions. Dr. Alanson S. Jones, whose
position as President of the Board of Surgeons attached to the
Metropolitan Police Commission combines with his minute culture in the
sciences ministering to his profession to make him a first-class
authority upon the sanitary statistics of New York, states that the
large majority of deaths, and cases of disease, occur in that city among
the recent foreign immigrants,--and that the same source furnishes the
vast proportion of inmates of our hospitals, almshouses, asylums, and
other institutions of charity; furthermore, that two thirds of all the
deaths in New York City occur among children,--a class to which
metropolitan conditions are decidedly unfavorable; and that, while the
seven hundred thousand inhabitants of Philadelphia are distributed over
an area of one hundred and thirty square miles, the one million
inhabitants of New York are included within the limit of thirty-five
square miles, yet the excess of proportionate mortality in the latter
city by no means corresponds to its density of settlement. It is safe to
affirm, that, taking all the elements into calculation, there is no city
in the civilized world with an equal population and an equal sanitary
rank.
Hydrographically speaking, either Liverpool or Bristol surpasses London
in its claims to be the British metropolis. But as England's chief
commerce flows from the eastward, to accommodate it she must select for
her metropolis the shores of the most accessible, capacious, and
sheltered water on that side of the island. The result is London,--a
city backed by an almost imperceptible fraction of the vast interior
which pays tribute to New York,--having a harbor of far less
capacity than New York, and without any of its far-reaching
ramifications,--provided with a totally inadequate drainage-system,
operating by a river which New-Yorkers would shudder to accept for the
purposes of a single ward,--and supporting a population of three million
souls upon her brokerage in managing the world's commerce. New York has
every physical advantage over her in site, together with an agricultural
constituency of which she can never dream, and every opportunity for
eventually surpassing her as a depot of domestic manufactures. London
can never add arable acres to her suite, while only the destruction of
the American people can prevent us from building ten up-country mills to
every one which manufactures for her market. She has merely the start of
us in time; she has advanced rapidly during the last fifty years, but
New York has even more rapidly diminished the gap. No wonder that
British capitalists will sacrifice much to see us perish,--for it is
pleasanter to receive than to pay balance of exchange, even in the
persons of one's prospective great-grandchildren.
Turning to the second great power of the Old World, we may assert that
there is not a harbor on the entire French coast of capacity or
convenience proportionate to the demands of a national emporium. Though
the site of Paris was chosen by a nation in no sense commercial, and the
constitutional prejudices of the people are of that semi-barbarous kind
which affect at the same time pleasure and a contempt of the enterprises
which pay for it, there has been a decided anxiety among the foremost
Frenchmen since the time of Colbert to see France occupying an
influential position among the national fortune-hunters of the world.
Napoleon III. shares this solicitude to an extent which his uncle's
hatred of England would never permit him to confess, though he felt it
deeply. The millions which the present Emperor has spent on Cherbourg
afford a mere titillation to his ambitious spirit. Their result is a
handsome parade-place,--a pretty stone toy,--an unpickable lock to an
inclosure nobody wants to enter,--a navy-yard for the creation of an
armament which has no commerce to protect. No wonder that the
discontented despot seeks to eke out the quality of his ports by their
plenteous quantity,--seizing Algiers,--looking wistfully at the Red
Sea,--overjoyed at any bargain which would get him Nice,--striking madly
out for empire in Cochin China, Siam, and the Pacific islands,--playing
Shylock to Mexico on Jecker's forged bond, that his own inconvenient
vessels might have an American port to trim their yards in. Meanwhile,
to forget the utter unfitness of Paris for the capital of any imaginary
Commercial France, he plays ship with Eugenie on the gentle Seine, or
amuses himself with the marine romance of the Parisian civic escutcheon.
No one will think for an instant of comparing Paris with New York in
respect to natural advantages. The capitals of the other Continental
nations are still less susceptible of being brought into the
competition. The vast cities of China are possible only in the lowest
condition of individual liberty,--class servitude, sumptuary and travel
restrictions, together with all the other complicated enginery of an
artificial barbarism, being the only substitute for natural cohesion in
a community whose immense mass can procure nothing but the rudest
necessaries of life from the area within which it is confined.
_A priori_, therefore, we might expect that the metropolis of America
would arise on New York Island, and in process of time become one of the
greatest capitals of the world.
The natural advantages which allured New York's first population have
been steadily developed and reinforced by artificial ones. For the ships
of the world she has built about her water-front more than three hundred
piers and bulkheads. Allowing berth-room for four ships in each
bulkhead, and for one at the end of each pier, (decidedly an
under-estimate, considering the extent of some of these
structures,)--the island water-front already offers accommodation for
the simultaneous landing of eight hundred first-class foreign cargoes.
The docks of Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Hoboken may accommodate at least
as many more. Something like a quarter of all New York imports go in the
first instance to the bonded warehouse; and this part, not being wanted
for immediate consumption within the metropolis proper, quite as
conveniently occupies the Long Island or Jersey warehouses as those on
the New York shore. The warehouses properly belonging to New York
commerce--containing her property and living on her business--received
during 1861 imports to the value of $41,811,664; during 1862,
$46,939,451; and during 1863, $61,350,432. During the year 1861, the
total imports of New York amounted to $161,684,499,--paying an aggregate
of duties of $21,714,981. During the year 1862, the imports amounted to
$172,486,453, and the duties to $52,254,318. During 1863, the imports
reached a value of $184,016,350, the duties on which amounted to
$58,885,853. For the same years the exports amounted respectively to
$142,903,689, $216,416,070, and $219,256,203,--the rapid increase
between 1861 and 1862 being no doubt partly stimulated by the
disappearance of specie from circulation under the pressure of our
unparalleled war-expenses, and the consequent necessity of substituting
in foreign markets our home products for the ordinary basis of exchange.
In 1861, 965 vessels entered New York from foreign ports, and 966
cleared for foreign ports. In 1862, the former class numbered 5,406, and
the latter 5,014. In 1863, they were respectively 4,983 and 4,466. These
statistics, from which the immense wharfage and warehouse accommodation
of New York may be inferred, are exhibited to better advantage in the
following tabular statement, kindly furnished by Mr. Ogden, First
Auditor of the New York Custom-House.
_Statistics of the Port of New York._
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | | 1861. | 1862. | 1863. |
|--+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------|
| | | $ | $ | $ |
|1 |Total value of Exports |142,903,689 |216,416,070 |219,256,203 |
|2 |Total value of Imports |161,684,499 |172,486,453 |184,016,350 |
|3 |Value of Goods | | | |
| | warehoused during | | | |
| | the entire year | 41,811,664 | 46,939,451 | 61,350,432 |
|4 |Amount of Drawback | | | |
| | allowed during the | | | |
| | entire year | 57,326.55| 275,953.92| 414,041.44|
|5 |Total amount of Duties | | | |
| | paid during year | 21,714,981.10| 52,254,317.92| 58,885,853.42|
|6 |No. of Vessels entered | | | |
| | from Foreign Ports | | | |
| | during year | 965 | 5,406 | 4,983 |
|7 |No. of Vessels cleared | | | |
| | to foreign Ports | | | |
| | during year | 966 | 5,014 | 4,666 |
|--+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
Besides the various berths or anchorages and the warehouses of New York,
commerce is still further waited on in our metropolis by one of the most
perfect systems of pilot-boat, steam-tug, and lighter service which have
ever been devised for a harbor. No vessel can bring so poor a foreign
cargo to New York as not to justify the expense of a pilot to keep its
insurance valid, a tug to carry it to its moorings, and a lighter to
discharge it, if the harbor be crowded or time press. Indeed, the first
two items are matters of course; and not one of them costs enough to be
called a luxury.
The American river-steamboat--the palatial American _steamboat_, as
distinguished from the dingy, clumsy English _steamer_--is another of
the means by which Art has supplemented New York's gifts of Nature. This
magnificent triumph of sculpturesque beauty, wedded to the highest grade
of mechanical skill, must be from two hundred and fifty to four hundred
feet long,--must accommodate from five hundred to two thousand
passengers,--must run its mile in three minutes,--must be as _rococo_ in
its upholsterings as a bedchamber of Versailles,--must gratify every
sense, consult every taste, and meet every convenience. Such a boat as
this runs daily to every principal city on the Sound or the Hudson, to
Albany, to Boston, to Philadelphia. A more venturous class of coasting
steamers in peaceful times are constantly leaving for Baltimore,
Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Key West, Mobile, New Orleans, and
Galveston. The immense commerce of the Erie Canal, with all its sources
and tributaries, is practically transacted by New York City. Nearly
everything intended for export, plus New York's purchases for her own
consumption, is forwarded from the Erie Canal terminus in a series of
_tows_, each of these being a rope-bound fleet, averaging perhaps fifty
canal-boats and barges, propelled by a powerful steamer intercalated
near the centre. The traveller new to Hudson River scenery will be
startled, any summer day on which he may choose to take a steamboat trip
to Albany, by the apparition, at distances varying from one to three
miles all the way, of floating islands, settled by a large commercial
population, who like their dinner off the top of a hogshead, and follow
the laundry business to such an extent that they quite effloresce with
wet shirts, and are seen through a lattice of clothes-lines. Let him
know that these floating islands are but little drops of vital blood
from the great heart of the West, coming down the nation's main artery
to nurse some small tissue of the metropolis; that these are "Hudson
River tows"; and that, novel as that phenomenon may appear to him, every
other fresh traveller has been equally startled by it since March, and
will be startled by it till December. Another ministry to New York is
performed by the _night-tows_, consisting of a few cattle, produce, and
passenger barges attached to a steamer, made up semi-weekly or
tri-weekly at every town of any importance on the Hudson and the Sound.
We will not include the large fleet of Sound and River sloops, brigs,
and schooners in the list of New York's artificial advantages.
Turning to New York's land communication with the interior, we find the
following railroads radiating from the metropolitan centre.
1. A Railroad to Philadelphia.
2. A Railroad to the Pennsylvania Coal Region.
3. A Railroad to Piermont on the Hudson.
4. A Railroad to Bloomfield in New Jersey.
5. A Railroad to Morristown in New Jersey.
6. A Railroad to Hackensack in New Jersey.
7. A Railroad to Buffalo.
8. A Railroad to Albany, running along the Hudson.
9. Another Railroad to Albany, by an interior route.
10. A Railroad to New Haven.
11. A Railroad to the chief eastern port of Long Island.
12. The Delaware and Raritan Road to Philadelphia, connecting with New
York by daily transports from pier.
13. The Camden and Amboy Railroad, connecting similarly.
14. The Railroad to Elizabeth, New Jersey.
The chief eastern radius throws out ramifications to the principal
cities of New England, thus affording liberal choice of routes to
Boston, New Bedford, Providence, and Portland, as well as an entrance to
New Hampshire and Vermont. To all of these towns, except the more
southerly, the Hudson River Road leads as well, connecting besides with
railroads in every direction to the northern and western parts of the
State, and with the Far West by a number of routes. The main avenue to
the Far West is, however, the Atlantic and Great Western Road, with its
twelve hundred miles of uniform broad-gauge. Along this line the whole
riches of the interior may reasonably be expected to flow eastward as in
a trough; for its position is axial, and its connection perfect. All the
chief New Jersey railroads open avenues to the richest mineral region of
the Atlantic States,--to the Far South and the Far West of the country.
Two or three may be styled commuters' roads, running chiefly for the
accommodation of city business-men with suburban residences. The Long
Island Road is a road without important branches; but the majority of
all the roads subsidiary to New York are avenues to some broad and
typical tract of the interior.