Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1898 — NEW YORK'S STEADY GROWTH. [ARTICLE]

NEW YORK'S STEADY GROWTH.

The City Has Never HalttJd Since It Was Firat Fairly Started. The people of New York, Brooklyn, Staten Island and certain near-by northern towns resolved to join.' themselves together Into one city, wjLich Is now the Greater New York. It embraces three hundred and forty-one square miles of territory, and includes a population of nearly three? million four hundred thousand. Besides these, At least another million people dwelf on the New Jersey side of the Hudson .river, quit® as near and as closely identified wltli ( the great city on Manhattan Island as, are those of the northern and eastern suburbs. This makes a population ,of nearly four and a half millions whiejh may be said to belong to New York, making It not only by far the largest center of human life and interests l(n America, but, excepting only London, ithe most populous spot on the globe. How has it happened that this vast city has grown up where it stands? Why did not the American metropolis qrise somewhere else? Is its position all an accident, or does 'history show sound reasons for its situation 1 The earliest settlement here wap merely a trading station that gradually became a small seaport, like a dozens others along the coast. Before the so nearly alike that he*would have been a wise prophet who truly foretold which would thrive. Indeed, many men of that day firmly believed that Newport and Annapolis Wfere to be the two great American seaports. Great cities arise at the 'points where the greatest number of pieople find it convenient to*meet at flrstffor business, and later for pleasure. You cannot force a city to grow in an unnatural or unsuitable situation; and it is no easier to prevent a city from growing in itsi proper place. Bus the conditions that change a village into a big town, and expand the town into>a city or metropolis, are not the same in different parts' of the globe, and vary with the march of the centuries; so that now many an ancient world-market, like Nineveh or Memphis, has totally disappeared; while towns like Berlin have lately in-' creased with amazing rapidity, after a long history ns small and insignificant 1 places. As for New Yofik, it has never halted nor gone backward for a moment since it was fairly started on its career in 1623—St. Nicholas.