Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 293, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1918 — Size of Greater New York Is So Huge It Can Only Be Expressed in Superlatives [ARTICLE]

Size of Greater New York Is So Huge It Can Only Be Expressed in Superlatives

In 1917 exports passing out of New York harbor had a greater volume than the 'confined exports of Asia, Africa and Australia. The imports coming through its customs lines exceeded in value those of the continents of South America, Africa and Australia together. ’ For such operations as these, writes William Joseph Showalter in National Geographic Magazine, New York, perforce, must be a great metropolis. In population it outranks any one of half the nations of the earth, surpasses that of the entire continent'of Australia and matches the combined strength of the six Westernmost states of the J American union. In annual expenditures jt exceeds aU except seven of the fifty-odd nations on the map. Its water system could supply the whole earth with drinking water, and its storage reservoirs hold, enough to slake civilization’s thirst for more than a year. Its electric transportation lines carry nearly twice as many passengers in 12 months as all the steam railroads of the United States. They could give every man, woman and child living a ride every ten months —so much for the yardstick comparison. It seems unbelievable, but if every resident whose parents were born in America were to leave New York its standing as the second most populous center in the world would not be affected. In other words, the number of immigrants and their children resident' in New York is almost equal to the combined populations, of Paris and Philadelphia and greater than thte combined populations of Chicago and Berlin. Three people out of every four in the great metropolis were born under alien flags or are the children of the foreign born. But who that has studied the situation can gainsay New York’s Americanism?