343. Travelers.—Thousands of people from all parts of the country go to New York every year. They go to transact business, and to see the sights of this rich, crowded, busy metropolis, and to walk along its streets. Broadway is so brightly lighted at night that it is called the Great White Way.
New York is the greatest travel center in the United States. Every day express trains leave for distant parts of our country: Key West, Eastport, Maine, San Diego, Seattle, and all big intermediate places. As the city is the leading port of the United States, its hotels are crowded with boat travelers, who are either going abroad or coming from some other port of the world.
344. Neighboring cities.—The many other cities which have grown up around the mouth of the Hudson all share the oppor tunities for trade and manufacture that are at New York. Across the Hudson, opposite New York, there is a settlement that seems to be one city, but it is so long that it is called by three names and has three city governments: Jersey City is the central part; Bayonne, the southern; and Hoboken, the northern. A little farther away, to the west, are the factory cities of Newark and Paterson; and scattered around are many suburban towns, from which each morning thousands of business men go to work in New York City.
345. A string of cities.—The great water way which made so many large cities at the mouth of the Hudson has also caused cities to spring up, almost like a string of beads, along its entire course. Buffalo, at the west ern end, has become the second city of New York State, and the twelfth in the United States. Buffalo is a large city partly because so many people are needed to help with load ing and unloading ships and cars of goods bound for some distant place. The manufac tured goods (Sec. 340) and raw materials from foreign countries, such as sugar, wool, rubber, skins, varnish, and gums, come to New York at one end of this route. At Buffalo, the other end of this great trade route, lake steamers unload lumber and iron ore from the upper lakes; wheat from the Wheat Region; and corn, oats, and meat from the Central Farming Region. With all these raw materials, it is natural that Buffalo should have many manufactures of wood, iron, and machinery, as well as flour-milling and meat-packing industries.
The cities along the route from New York to Buffalo manufacture many interesting specialties. Troy makes nearly all the collars and cuffs that are used in the United States. There is a story that the industry started there because a clergyman's wife in that town made and sold collars that were not attached to shirts. This was such a practical idea that the collar industry grew in Troy.
At Cohoes, an enterprising man learned to hitch a knitting machine to a water wheel, and thus started power knitting mills. Now knitting mills give employment to many thousands in every large town along the Mohawk River, except Schenectady.
In Schenectady nearly everybody works in • machine shops, making locomotives and electrical machinery for use all over the United States and in many foreign countries. A few miles away, near the foot of the Adirondacks, are the two towns of Johnstown and Gloversville. They were settled about 1750 by Scotch glovemakers, and to this day glove-making is the chief source of in come there. Gloves are cut out by machinery in factories, and are then sent to the homes of the people, where they are finished on electric sewing machines. • At Solvay, a suburb of Syracuse, farther to the westward, is the chief industry of this long nar row district that has a local supply of raw material. Salt found nearby is brought to the factory by gravity. Water flows through a pipe from a lake down into a salt well, dissolves some of the salt and flows out through another pipe line down to thefactory. Chem ical products are made from this salt.
Still farther westward is Rochester, where the falls of the Genesee River give power at the same place that the canal gives transpor tation. This city, like New York, makes much fine clothing, and it is the greatest center in the world for the manufacture of cameras and photographic materials, and for growing young fruit trees.
346. Few farms.—The farms of the Hud son and the Mohawk valleys produce a great deal of milk and many apples. In Sections 328-331 we read about the farming on the Lakeshore plain west of the Mohawk.
347. Resources for the future.—The ad vantages that have made the remarkable string of cities extending from the sea to the lake are permanent advantages. In this re gion it will continue to be easy to get raw materials for factories and food for the work ers. From this region it will be easy to ship goods over the sea to foreign countries, and over the canal, the lakes, and the railroads to the interior of North America. Good drinking water for the cities is to be had in the neighboring highlands.
The Erie Canal Belt has good resources for power to turn its factory wheels. Elec trical energy from power plants at Niagara Falls is now carried by wire over the whole section between Detroit on the west and Syracuse on the east. If New York and the cities on the Hudson and the Mohawk grow tired of paying freight on coal from Pennsylvania, they can get power by wire from plants at the mouth of the Pittsburgh coal mine 300 miles distant, or by wire from water-power plants in the northeastern high lands 300 miles distant, or even from Niag ara to the St. Lawrence. Power has been carried over 400 miles by wire from our western mountains. On a map, trace a circle that is 400 miles from New York as a cen ter; Albany; Buffalo; Boston. What sources of power does each circle touch? (Fig.261; Sec. 352.)