Take the matter of population. Everybody knows that Cleveland is the "Sixth City" in the United States, but not everybody knows that in 1850 she was forty-third. The Chamber of Commerce told me that, but I have prepared some figures of my own which will, perhaps, give the reader some idea of Cleveland's magnitude. Cleveland is only a little smaller than Prague, while she has about 50,000 more people than Breslau.
If that does not impress you with the city's size, listen to this: Cleveland is actually twice as great, in population, as either Nagoya or Riga! Who would have believed it? The thing seems incredible! I never dreamed that such a situation existed until I looked it up in the "World Almanac." And some day, when I have more time, I intend to look up Nagoya and Riga in the atlas and find out where they are.
A Chamber of Commerce booklet gives me the further information that "Cleveland is the fifth American city in manufactures, and that she comes first in the manufacture of steel ships, heavy machinery, wire and wire nails, bolts and nuts, vapor stoves, electric carbons, malleable castings, and telescopes"—a list which, by the way, sounds like one of Lewis Carroll's compilations.
The information that Cleveland is also the first city in the world in its record, per capita, for divorce, does not come to me from the Chamber of Commerce booklet—but probably the fact was not known when the booklet was printed.
Besides being first in so many interesting fields, Cleveland is the second of the Great Lake cities, and is also second in "the value of its product of women's outer wearing apparel and fancy knit goods."
It is, furthermore, "the cheapest market in the North for pig iron."
It is an Elizabethan building, with a heavy timbered front, suggesting some ancient, hospitable, London coffee house where wits of old were used to meet
There are other figures I could give (saving myself a lot of trouble, at the same time, because I only have to copy them from a book), but I want to stop and let that pig-iron statement sink into you as it sank into me when I first read it. I wonder if you knew it before? I am ashamed to admit it, but I did not. I didn't consider where I could get my pig iron the cheapest. When I wanted pig iron I simply went out and bought it, at the nearest place, right in New York. That is, I bought it in New York unless I happened to be traveling when the craving came upon me. In that case I would buy a small supply wherever I happened to be—just enough to last me until I could get home again. I don't know how pig iron affects you, but with me it acts peculiarly. Sometimes I go along for weeks without even thinking of it; then, suddenly, I feel that I must have some at once—even if it is the middle of the night. Of course a man doesn't care what he pays for his pig iron when he feels like that. But in my soberer moments I now realize that it is best to be economical in such matters. The wisest plan is to order enough pig iron from Cleveland to keep you for several months, being careful to notice when the supply is running low, so that you can order another case.