Excerpt from A Bird's-Eye View of Greater New York and Its Most Magnificent Store: Being a Concise and Comprehensive Visitors' Guide to Greater New York, Its Myriad Sights and Scenes, and Its Grandest Emporium of Commerce, the Big Store of Siegel-Cooper Co

Queens and It embraces some forty-odd small towns and villages, threaded together by ferry and rai road. Brooklyn and its many suburbs, and Staten Island, separated by a wide stretch of navigable water, are now a part of the city itself.

Of the history of the political struggle that resulted in the passage of the bill at Albany it is sufficient to say that the bill for the consolidation of the Greater New York was passed in 1896, and the charter in 1897. The charter went into effect on the first of January, 1898.

City government. Very briefly, the city govern ment of Greater New York consists of a mayor (salary, $15, 000; term of office, 4 years; of'ficial headquarters, the City Hall), and a Municipal Assembly, in which there is an upper and a lower house. The upper house is the Council, it which there are twenty-nine members, chosen by the electors of the city. The President of the Council is elected by the city at large, to hold office for four years, with a salary of The other twenty-eight members are elected for four years, with a salary of a year. Each is chosen within a council district, in which he is a resident. The whole city is divided into ten council districts, of which there is one in the Borough of the Bronx, four in Manhattan, three in Brooklyn, one in Queens, and one in Richmond. Three councilors are chosen in each of the council districts of the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, and two in Queens and in Richmond.

The lower house is called the Board of Aldermen. It con sists of 60 members, one of whom is elected in each of the Assembly Districts. Their term of office is two years, the salary, These, with borough boards, boards of local improvement in each of the 22 Senate Districts, and the officials of 18 city departments, constitute the executive of the government of Greater New York.

The city has a municipal debt of an average burden of $56 per capita. The municipal expenditures require a year. The municipal employees form an army of larger than the regular army of the United States. Of these, wear the policeman's blue, and form-the street cleaners' brigade.

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