certain that the city has received about $140,000 in a year for the privilege of gleaning from the scows, in a very unclean condition, certain things that were dumped upon them by the Department carts. It is equally certain that the collection of these things and others, in a clean condition, directly from the houses and shops, will yield a much larger return. The only speculation that I have ventured to indulge in is qualified by a very uncertain "if." We have a population of about two million. If we can recover the value of one-half cent per day for each head of this population, the total annual income would be $3,650,000, or more than the entire cost of street cleaning and snow removal. It is safe to say that a goodly part of that cost will be recovered.
NEARLY A THOUSAND MILES OF STREETS SWEPT DAILY.
It may be of interest to show how many miles of streets are cleaned as compared with the work of 1888, when the Department was under one of its best commissioners, Mr. James S. Coleman. He reported that fifty miles were swept daily, 187 miles three times a week, sixty-five miles twice a week, and twenty-four miles "when found necessary." This makes a total of 326 miles, and an average daily sweeping of about 175 miles.
At present, thirty-five and a half miles are swept four or more times a day, fifty and a half miles three times a day, 283½ miles twice a day, and sixty-three and a half miles once a day, making a total of 433 miles, and an average daily sweeping of 924 miles, or nine miles more than the distance from New York to Chicago.
Measuring the entire expenditure of the Department by the yearly cost of each mile of daily sweeping, it was $7,176.45 in 1888 and $3,553.95 in 1896.
The performance of this vastly greater amount of work is largely due to a more effective supervision on the part of the foremen, who are kept under much more exact control, and who are supplied with bicycles to enable them to get more frequently over their sections. Each foreman is obliged to report daily, in writing, the exact point at which he was at each half hour of the day, and the accuracy of these reports is tested by the superintendents of districts and by others employed for the purpose. Dismissal has followed the rendering of a false report in this regard. It is found that the use of the bicycle increases the potential efficiency of the foremen fully threefold.
Reference was made, in the early part of this paper, to the standing of unharnessed vehicles in the streets. To remove these was pronounced an impossibility. Within less than six months from the inauguration of Mayor Strong, these vehicles had all been removed, never to return, and even the truckmen themselves now acknowledge that the change has been a benefit to them. No man who had "votes" in his eye could ever have reached this result.
MORE SNOW REMOVED IN FIVE WEEKS THAN PREVIOUSLY IN FIVE YEARS.
In no part of the Department's work has a greater improvement been shown than in the removal of snow. The mileage of removal after each storm is now about 145 miles, or more than six times as much as formerly. In five consecutive weeks of 1895 more snow was removed, and for less money, than in all of the five years beginning with 1889. On one day in this year the Department alone, aside from the work of the railroad companies and of the contractor for lower Broadway, removed 55,773 loads of snow. After the blizzard of 1888 the total removal, extending over the whole period, was 40,542 loads; and this was reported as "marking the high-water point of snow removal." The increased mileage of the present work is very largely in the more crowded tenement-house region and in the busiest downtown streets. Substantially the whole city below Houston Street was cleared, and one-half of all between Houston and Fifty-ninth Streets.
I have been told by the president of the United States Rubber Company that this snow removal, together with the abolition of mud from the streets at all seasons, has cost that company $100,000 per year by reason of the decreased demand for rubber boots and shoes. What this means to the poorer people of the city, as compared with their previous suffering, need not be said.
THE MEN SETTLE THEIR OWN LABOR TROUBLES.
Space will not permit me to give an extended account of the present method of meeting the grievances and suggestions of the men. Formerly their only recourse was to "walking delegates" and to secret com-
