THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION
The new Grand Central Station is the greatest railroad terminal in the world. The station is a beautiful building of stone and marble, large enough to accommodate thirty thousand people at one time. Between railroads and tunnels, bridges and ferries, surface cars, elevated trains, and subways, New York's rapid transit system is one of the best in the world.
With such advantages as a receiving and distributing center, it is small wonder that the city has become the nation's chief market place. It is without a rival as the center of the wholesale dry-goods and wholesale grocery businesses. More than half of the imports of the United States enter by way of New York's port, and its total foreign commerce is five times that of any other city in the country.
Rubber, silk goods, furs, jewelry, coffee, tea, sugar, and tin are among the leading imports. Cotton, meats, and breadstuffs are the most important exports.
Besides being the principal market place of the United States, New York is also its greatest workshop, as it makes over one tenth of the manufactures of the country. In the manufacture of clothing alone, more than a hundred thousand people are employed. There are comparatively few large factories for carrying on this work, as much of it is done in tenement houses and in small workshops. The growth of this industry has been largely due to the abundance of cheap unskilled labor furnished by the immigrant population of the city.
Second in importance is the refining of sugar and molasses, carried on chiefly in Brooklyn along the East River, where boats laden with raw sugar from the Southern states and the West Indies unload their cargoes. New York City leads in the refining of sugar as well as in its importation.
THE BATTERY