Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1911 — Gotham May Have Reached Its Growth [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Gotham May Have Reached Its Growth

NEW YORK.—That New York City has nearly reached its maximum of growth and will find its supremacy as the biggest city and the most important commercial center in the western world threatened by competitors during the next thirty years is the belief of Walter Laidlaw, secretary of the New York Federation of Christian Organizations and a census expert of note. Dr. Laidlaw frankly sets aside as preposterous the commonly accepted estimates of the tremendous growth of the city in the next three decades and prophecies that in 1940 the population will not exceed 9,600,000. In a long report on “New York’s Future,” Dr. Laidlaw notes that the two greatest causes of the city’s rapid rise to pre-eminence were the build-

ing of the Erie canal and the immense immigration, and he declares that there are now certain factors working against a continued increase. In the first place, Dr. Laidlaw sees a continuation in the decline in the share of New York in the foreign commerce of the nation. In the last thirty years it has fallen from 54.8 to 47.7. Canada is becoming an important competitor and other American ports are doing their best to overhaul the metropolis. Providence, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other ports are formidable rivals. The proposed intercoastal canal, the development of the Mississippi, the completion of the Panama Canal and the favorable positions of cities to the south of New York City to engage in trade with South America, all will tend to dwarf New York. Other factors are the decline of immigration, the diminishing export trade with Europe, the awakening of China and the increasing importance of Pacific commerce. The Pacific coast, the statistician thinks, is bound to run the East hard for its present supremacy.