MANHATTAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10107, 20 March 1911, Page 2

MANHATTAN.

BUSINESS OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES. ("New York Herald.'') Manhattan Island is the general business office of the United States. It is the clearing-house of tlio nation. Every great industry of the country is represented here, where is the centre of trade and finance, and so interwoven aro the great commercial industries of the world that the mighty central office of America reaches with its influence into every land of the globe. All of the great corporations of the national commonwealth, no matter where- their special activities may he, maintain offices on Manhattan Island. Here is the head and centre whore plans are made and whence great activities emanate. Wires radiate from here and reach into every corner of the States and Territories, carrying suggestions, instructions and orders that decide the fate of multiform industries. It all means business advancement, growth, evolution and millions of dollars that stagger the mind impressed by enormous amounts that measure extreme Wealth. In some small room, hidden in a mighty pile of stone and steel, there gather a few men of brains, knowledge, energy and executive ability, who decide the most momentous commercial questions, with results that may touch a dozen or more industries and afEect the business of the world.

One great metropolitan growth of recent years has been in providing the thousands of rooms for this mighty central office—and it lias all been a growth from a little stone nucleus that stood in what is now Whitehall Street in 1625. It was a low warehouse of one room, the first historic office building of the island. Its one office was in a corner, and tho office furniture iy-"j a keg for a seat and two barrels with a board over them for a desk.. The barrels also were used as receptacles for papers. Here the oldest industry that extended beyond the island itself was carried on. It was tho centre of tho fur trade of those days, which at first reached only to the trapping grounds of Long Island and the wilds at the north end of Manhattan.

The fur trade as it grew reached out to more distant points, and Avhen, in 1784, John Jacob Astor camo to these shores, ho made a mighty industry of it that spread over tho wide unsettled land;, extending from tho waters of the St Lawrence and Hudson Bay to tho waters of the far western Columbia j-iiver. To-day tho fur business of these sections, and all between, to the Aleutian Islands and beyond, ovon into foreign lands—is reprcsented; in much of its management, in this main office that has grown on northward from that first stone warehouse." -This trade in skins of beaver, fox. marten, bear, mink, otter, sable, squirrel, raccoon, buffalo, musk rat. skunk 'and all the rest, into which ii has grown from tho skins of some of these, representing in value a few guilders a year, has reached over the world, and in its entire extent means tlio handling of some six million skins a year, valued at 35,000, OOOdol wholesale.

OFFICE OF WONDERFUL GROWTH. That ono little primitive offico has grown into a mighty central office, mado up of hundreds of great buildings, with thousands of rooms, unequalled in any capital of Europe. From Whitehall Street tho office has extended up to Herald Square, where its latest addition is contemplated in a palatial structure to cost 8.000,000 dollars and to fill the space between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets and Broadway and Seventh Avenue, to make room for which twenty-seven buildings will be razed. In this office is represented the 265 leading corporations of tho land, which aro founded on 11,000,000,000 dollars in stock and have outstanding 8,000,000,000 dollars in bonds. Besides these principal ones are scores on scores of less important associations, tho material activities of which aro in every State and Territory, but which must havo a New York representation if they want to be in touch with the world of business. If a ten mile railway is to be built in Posey county, Indiana, there will be found a representative of its interests in tho mighty office of Manhattan. So it is, from tho greatest undertaking of a continent down to the apparently insignificant interests of undertakings in each county of tho nation.

Cornelius Vanderbilt opened a railway office on Manhattan Island in 1844, and that was the beginning of the railway methods that have grown into such enormous proportions on the island today, with ninety-six railway corporations and all of their direct and indirect interests represented here. All of this means the interests of 280,000 miles of railway track, which cost 19,000,000,000 carrying 1,000,000,000 passengers and 1,700,000,000 tons of freight annually, spending in their operation and maintenance 1,850,000,000 dollars a year, and receiving from passengers and shippers of- freight 2,550,000,000 dollars in the same time, according to the report or th'j year just endod. Tho totality of these figures is almost beyond the appreciation of the ordinary person, to whom they mean <mly large amounts, but in the working of these railways is a deep meaning to the 1,600,000 employees, who receive an average daily compensation of 2.05 dollars each, and to tho 800,000,000 passengers who used them last year. Besides tho direct work of these corporations, they are collaterally related to hundreds of other industries, which they touch at ©very turn, and which are themselves represented in the great general office of Manhattan.

Then, behind every business and industry is the money, not only the 2,787,266,138 dollars which was in circulation on December 1 last, ■ according to the latest report, but all of tho other values that business enterprise and production have created. And here, in this great Manhattan office, is the centre or the management and handling of this capital of the nation, [f money is wanted, Now York is looked to for it. Even if other centres are asked lor money, they pay it out with one eyes on "Wall Street." Yet "Wall Street" produces not one cent in value, but gathers tho wealth of the entire country and disburses it. The decision of the men who consult around that table in tho hidden room of the great office affects tho finances of tho nation.

Every cue of the 7175 national banks of the United States, with their 795,000,000 dollars of capital, must bo directly in touch with Manhattan office. All of the 15,984 State and savings banks and trust companies of the Union, with their 12,500,000,000 dollars capital, must be directly or indirectly in communication with tho main office in Now York. If a man in Kankakee wants to get money from a bank in Oshkosh he may not bo able to get a draft on Oshkosh, but he can get a draft on tho Manhattan ofßco, raid the hank in Oshkosh is glad to get a Now York draft from the Oshkosh Bank. A good draft on the Manhattan office is good in any bank, and passes from bank to bank and finally to its place of payment in the Manhattan office unquestioned.

Every man with a big scheme, either legitimate or illegitimate, who wants money looks directly or indirectly to the great central office for it. This means promoters, and there aro promoters by the hundred who have desks in the Manhattan office, and who go from room to room to float their schemes. The American who wants to build a railway in any place, or run a line of boats in any water, or start a great industry in any State or foreign land, applies to tho main office on Manhattan Island. .Every Stato in the Union has its home insurance companies, but each one has a desk in the central offico, wliero its representative conies in contact with every move and interest of ••■ue insurance field. There arc in this

office desks of 189 life, companies, with an annual income of 745,027,892 dollars and with 28,087,327- policies in force, amounting to 13,480,721,211 dollars. These are the figures of last year. Then there are 594 fire companies, which paid in losses last year 154,009,782 dollars, and had a total cadi income of 362,082,354 dollars. OUT OF THE GROUND.

All wealth comes out of the ground. Mother Earth is tho only provider, for all things that grow come directly or indirectly from her breast, and all else is dug from below it. And here, in tins metropolitan counting - house, these things are managed and accounted for and tlioir handling and sale directed for tho entire community. Petroleum is'not flowing on Manhattan Island, excepting in .small streams from cans and barrels, but it is flowing by tho thousands of gallons, at hundreds of wells, from the valley of the Rio Grande. Last year it flowed to the extent of 1,773,000,000 gallons, which means 54,900,000 dollara in money as the prices ranged. You will not find the management of this great industry where the most wells are or where the most oil flows, but you will find it in the Manhattan ofßco. Besides the oil, in Nature's laboratory lies stored the supply of coal, the mining and handling and selling of which is a mighty industry and its management is in the Manhattan office. This industry represents the milling of 490,000,000 tons of coal in the year just ended. Of this 400,000,000 tons came from the bituminous mines of the Middle West and 90,000,000 from the anthracite field of Pennsylvania. This output meant an expenditure at" the mines of 686,000,000 dols.

If you want to reach tho principal control of this great industry you do not communicate with the mines of Ohio, West Virginia, Alabama, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Pennsylvania or any other State. Not at all. Tho head centre is right here, near the south-west corner of the Manhattan office. In the ground with the oil and coal lies the iron from which comes the steel that forms tho supporting skeleton of tho metropolitan clearing house. To mine the iron and prepare it for oommercial use makes a great business, and also has its head and front and executive headquarters on Manhattan Island. To got in touch with this head the New Yorker need not seek the deep mines or great foundries. Ho need not use the long distance telephone, for ho has only to call up one of the downtown office rooms. Here is where wires meet from 4237 steel and iron establishments; here is where centres tho influence that controls 2.331,500,000d0l capital and manages an annual product valued at 2,117,000,000d01. ALL THE GREAT FACTORIES. Every manufactory that reaches out for an extended business must have, and does have, at least desk room in the Manhattan office. Here each one keeps in touch with all the rest and with the markets of the world. There are in tho United States 216,202 of these establishments, all more or less with a community of interests and in touch with the great headquarters in New York. They have a capital of 12,687,000,000 do"l, and turned out last year material that cost them 8,600,000,000d01, which in manufactured products was valued at 15,000,000,000d01. In producing this result they paid 5,500,000 wage earners 2,612,000,000d01. You can got in touch with the management of all of the sub-divisions of this great industry right hero, for they must be represented if they want to be_ recognised in the business world. In this offico you can reach every automobile factory in the world, and last year these factories sold 190,000 machines, which, brought to them 375,000,000d01. So it is with each one of all the other productions, whether of lumber, that was valued at 1,250,000,000d0l last year; food, valued at 2.84G,000,000dol; leather, at 766,000,OOOdol; liquors, at 857,000.000dol; tobacco, at 332,000,000dol; and so on through the list. Down in one corner of the offico, in and about tho Produce Exchange, is found the centre of gravity for the 21,000,0Q0,000d0l of farm wealth, last year's principal products being 1,500,000.000d0l in corn. 625,000,000 dol in wheat. 900,000,000d0l in cotton and 720,000,000c!ol in hay. There is no' branch of the great wealth-producing industries of the nation that is not under the influence of management that reaches out from tho gigantic central office of Manhattan.