tract in the borough of Brooklyn was 31⁄2 cents. The cubic foot of material manufactured at the plant and laid in place on the street is the unit upon which costs are determined. Further increased efficiency and reorganization are shown by fact that cost of producing and laying per cubic foot of asphalt has been greatly reduced since the beginning of the operation of the plant. Cost is as follows:

Since consolidation in 1898, 709 miles of pavement have been laid. A great amount of this pavement is, of course, laid in the suburbs where no pavement existed at the time of consolidation, but it is also noticeable that at the time of consolidation there were in the borough of Brooklyn 242 miles of cobble-stone pavements, and these cobble stones have been reduced to four miles. 1912 was the maximum paving year; in that year 71 miles of new pavement were laid in the borough of Brooklyn, while during 1914 only 45 miles were laid, due to the greatly reduced appropriations for repaving, and the small number of authorizations for assessment work (500 to 600 contracts). The total number of men employed on construction, maintenance, etc., in the bureau of highways, is 1,000 men. The bureau is divided into divisions of maintenance, construction, accounts, permits, design and survey, with an engineer in charge of each division, who reports to the chief engineer.

MARCUS M. MARKS, President of the Borough of Manhattan:

The borough president is responsible for the departments of public works and buildings. In addition, as a member of the board of estimate and apportionment, he has the opportunity to obtain a proper sense of perspective regarding the needs of all the boroughs. As a member of the board of aldermen, he has the opportunity to be in touch with the legislative department of city government.

The department of public works has charge of the design, construction and repair of highways, sidewalks and sewers, as well as the care

of public buildings, including the municipal building, city hall, hall of records, court houses, comfort stations, public baths and public markets. In connection with highways the relative cost and advantages of asphalt, wood block and granite block require particular study. Asphalt is the cheapest and granite block the dearest in original construction. Under heavy traffic granite is the most desirable and in the long run probably the most economical, and it affords a good foothold for horses, an advantage over asphalt and wood block. An objection to granite is its noise under wagon wheels that are not rubber-tired. The rapidly increasing use of rubber tires, however, will, in my judgment, increase the availability of granite block paving.

There are at present too many cuts being made in the pavements on account of gas, water and other connections. In Manhattan there were 28,000 such cuts last year. We are making great efforts to reduce this number. We shall, in the future, place signs at the corners of streets about to be paved which will give notice to the property owners to make any sub-surface connections before the paving is placed. We are also for the first time making public through the daily press the names and numbers of streets to be paved and the type of pavement to be used. We have recently evolved a new type of street sign which embraces on one surface the name of the avenue and of the street as well; so that in driving along the avenue one will no longer be compelled to crane the neck in order to see what street is being passed. The new type of sign is placed so as to be plainly visible by night as well as day.

The 520 miles of sewers in Manhattan were nearly all constructed between the years 1835 and 1870. There is a necessity for large repairing forces and constant reconstruction. There are important problems to be solved in connection with our sewer development in order to save New York harbor from sewage pollution. In connection with snow removal the sewers were used during the past winter more freely than ever before.

The bureau of design and survey handles all survey and drafting work for the several bureaus under the department of public works. It is charged also with the preparation of the official map of the borough. While the oldest of the boroughs, Manhattan is least advanced in its official map because of the great difficulties involved in tracing the old streets back to old Dutch and English days. The importance of this work is obvious when the very large real estate values which exist in downtown New York are considered. The thousands of miles of pipes beneath the city streets, including in some instances as many as eight gas pipes under a single roadway, disclose the importance of another branch of

the bureau of design and survey which has to do with the mapping of such sub-surface structures. Many other activities of a minor nature are included under this bureau.

The bureau of buildings has charge of the erection and alteration of all buildings in the borough except federal buildings, the buildings along the waterfront under the jurisdiction of the department of docks and ferries, and the buildings along the transit lines, which are under the control of the public service commission. This bureau also has charge of the safety of all these buildings, as well as the installation and changing of the plumbing and drainage systems, and the quarterly inspection of all passenger elevators. There are in the borough of Manhattan 85,000 buildings at this time.

(675)

THE ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION OF THE

TH

COURTS

WILLIAM MCADOO

Chief City Magistrate

HE subject of the magistrates' court is so large that it is possible to touch only on some phases of it. For instance, the night court for women is an interesting subject in itself; that court is a novelty, there being no other such court in any part of the world. The night court for men and the domestic relations court are also interesting. The domestic relations court was an innovation and was not known elsewhere until the passage of the law of 1910. So successful has it been that it has been duplicated in Chicago, and it now seems to occupy a place in nearly all large cities, not only in this country but in other countries. That is the court where the men who have broken domestic china fix it up the best they can. Again, there is the system of probation in these courts, which has been made a centralized one and is entirely different from any other probation system so far as I know. It has been in operation now about two years and seems to be a marked improvement on the lack of system which preceded it. There are so many interesting phases of the work of these courts that it is difficult to give you a fair idea of that work as a whole.

A larger number of people are interested in the magistrates' court than in any other court in the city of New York. In round numbers, last year about one hundred thirty-seven thousand people were arraigned in the magistrates' courts of Manhattan and The Bronx. That is somewhat of a decrease from the preceding year. About one hundred thousand of these were arraigned for minor offenses of which the magistrate had summary and final jurisdiction. About thirty-five or thirty-seven thousand were for more or less serious offenses, either felonies or misdemeanors. In order to understand the volume of business done by these courts, it is necessary to add to these figures the constant train of people who go into the courts with complaints.

Under the rules of the court, when it opens in the morning the officer in attendance asks those present whose complaints have not been taken by the clerk to come forward and state their grievances to the magistrate. It is a sort of "O hear ye, O hear ye! all ye who have business, come forward now and it will be attended to." When this universal invitation is extended to the populace of one of our busy courts, you can rest assured that the citizens are not backward in coming forward. The magistrate then really is a Cadi such as you read about in Oriental tales. Here is a lady who has a grievance against the lady living across the hall in the tenement house,—not a very serious matter. She has been to court on the preceding day and secured a summons which in general terms states that the other lady was guilty of "disorderly conduct," which, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. Both ladies are inclined to talk at once and talk volubly and emphatically, and their opinions of each other are not complimentary. I have found that the best way is to allow them to talk until they are thoroughly exhausted, at which juncture they are ready to shake hands and go home. The magistrates' court in such cases is simply a safety valve, a sort of first aid to the injured in what might result in serious disease. We arrest the development of the wound at once by patching it up and putting a little sticking plaster on it, and the patients go home in many cases perfectly contented.

Then, of course, there are a number of hungry creditors who come in and at once try to make the transaction on the part of the debtor a larcenous one. They insist upon starting the whole machinery of the criminal law in order to force a settlement or collect a debt. All these cases have to be heard, but they do not go into the record as the work of the magistrate. As I say, in view of this variety, the difficulty is to tell you briefly and pointedly just what the magistrates' courts have been, what they are, and what we hope they will be.

For many years preceding 1910, the magistrates' courts in all parts of Greater New York deservedly or otherwise were somewhat in disrepute. The office of magistrate was looked upon as simply one for political preferment, the magistrate to be selected for active partisan services and without regard to merit or character.