Public The greater part of the electric light, power and steam heat for the city and surrounding towns is furnished by the Cleve land Electric Illuminating Company. The newly erected municipal electric lighting plant was started on 1 July 1914; it has a capacity of 25,000 kilowatts. The city water is taken from Lake Erie through a series of tunnels connected with water stations, or cribs, some distance from shore. There are 985 miles of mains and the daily consumption in 1917 was 103,882,227 gal lons. A $3,500,000 filtration plant with a ca pacity of 150,000,000 gallons of water per day was ready for operation 1 Nov. 1915. Three new sewage disposal plants are under con struction.
Area, Streets, The area of the city of Cleveland is 56.65 square miles. The total length of streets and alleys is 917.5 miles, of which 6032 miles are paved. There are 792 miles of sewers, a number of which are lo cated outside of the city limits, carrying the sewage to the points of disposal. Since 1900 there • have been 59 railway grade crossings separated, and there still remain 180 railway crossings at grade, of which 23 are switch tracks; 30 of the main line crossings will be separated in the near future as litigation for this purpose has either been completed or is pending.
Seven trunk lines touch Cleve land, viz., the New York Central, the Pennsyl vania, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & Saint Louis, the Baltimore & Ohio, the New York, Chicago & Saint Louis (Nickel Plate), the Erie and the Wheeling & Lake Erie. The largest fresh-water passenger steamships in the country supply daily service between Cleveland, Buffalo and Detroit, and there is also through passenger steamboat service to Duluth. The Cleveland Railway Company operated 372 miles of track in 1917 and owned 1,477 revenue cars, with a seating capacity of about 73,850 persons. Under the oTayler Plan" of operating the Cleve land raitway,. the city controls the service under the supervision of a street railway commis sioner who fixes the schedules, routes, stops, etc., and reserves the right at all times to take over the entire system, in the meantime guaran teeing 6 per cent on investment. This guarantee is governed by a sliding scale, which is regu lated from time to time by withholding or extending the penny price of transfers. The maximum rate is four cents cash, or seven tickets for 25 cents, and one cent for a transfer.
This rate is now in force, 1 June 1918, but may have to be increased because of increased cost of labor, materials and equipment.
Fire and Police The divisions of fire and police are operated by the department of public safety in Cleveland. There are 604 firemen, separated into 54 companies, and 807 policemen, operating from 14 precincts. The appropriation for the division of police for the year 1918 is $1,350,741; for the division of fire, $1,038,491.
Libraries and Museums.— The Cleveland Public Library, whose. prospective home will make the fifth building in the group plan of public edifices, contains over 600,000 volumes. There are 14 large branch libraries and 11 smaller branches, 8 high school and 10 grade school libraries, 42 deposit stations, 66 delivery stations ind 6 children's stations, also 486 class room libraries, the Municipal Reference Libria2 and the Library for the Blind, making agencies for circulating books in addition to the main library. The Case Library has 90,000 volumes and the Adelbert College Library 93,000. The Cleveland Museum of Art (incor porated in 1913) is based on the John Hunting ton Art Polytechnic Trust and the Kelley Trust, which became in 1913 the Horace Kelley Art Foundation.
Education.— Cleveland is conspicuous for its system of public instruction. In 1917 there were 116 public elementary schools, with 3,017 teachers and 91,983 pupils ; 14 public high schools, 9 junior high schools and 10 parochial high schools. The city is the seat of Western Reserve University, with academic, medical, pharmaceutical, dental, law and library schools; the Case School of Applied Science; a public Normal Training School and a private kinder garten training school, besides numerous private and commercial schools, schools for nurses' training, art, music, languages, etc. Other col leges are Saint Ignatius College and the Cleve land School of Pharmacy.
Finances.— In 1917 the real estate valuation was $747,785,510, the personal property valua tion $450,928,050 and the total tax rate $15.55 per $1,000. The city has six national banks and a Federal Reserve Bank. The bank clear ances for 1917, as reported by the Cleveland Clearing House, were $3,730,204,000, as against $2,473,916,082 in 1916.