The Secret of New York Enterprize

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The "Philadelphia Gazette," in quite a lengthy article, attributes the success of New York—its great and rapid increase in wealth, inhabitants, and general prosperity, to energy and enterprize. It says:— " It is, indeed, New York enterprize, New Yorkenergy, New York effort," that has done almost everything for that growing city.— The public spirit and far seeing genius of Clinton gave the original impulse to that system of improvement and progress which has already resulted in such marvellous developments, and which has been carried out since with a vigor and zeal entirely worthy of him. When he projected the construction of the noble canal, from the completion ol which New York dates the beginning of her greatness, the dull, slow, and comparatively unenlightened commercial understanding of the period regarded this scheme as impracticable, and laughed at him as a wild enthusiast.— Against ridicule, opposition, and difficulties seemingly insuperable, he persevered in urging the project, until, after the lapse of seven years, and an expenditure of over seven mil-liens of dollars, the work was completed, and the first canal boat from the Northwestern Lakes landed at New York. The impetus given to the trade of the State and its metropolis, by that magnificent imprevement, soon rendered New York the central point, on this continent, of internal and foreign commerce, and infused into its citzens, as a community, an energetic and enterprizing temper, which appears to be perpetually increasing in activity, and for which no undertaking seems too gigantic. It is that temper—bold, comprehensive, and restless—which has built the three grand railways uniting the tides of the East and Hudson Rivers with the waters of Lake Erie, and is now multiplying their extensions through all the vast west. It is that temper, also, which is fast connecting New York by Ocean Steam lines with every considerable port in the world—which is erecting her superb hotels and ware-rooms, opening new and splendid places of popular amusement, spreading the lame of her magnificence far and wide, at home and abroad, on the wings ot the press, and in the persons of her people, and supplying, in short, almost the whole of the vast motive power that is operating with such resistless effect the mighty and complicated machinery of her industry and commerce.— Where she once had one, she now owns a hundred De Witt Clintons, who are bending the united force of their large minds and large means to her aggrandizement. The names of her Grinnells, Laws, Vanderbilts, Aspinwalls and Collinses, are known in every quarter of the commercial world; and their spirit, pervading and informing the great mass of the population amid which they live and move, is combining and directing the energies of the whole in the accomplishment of whatever promises to promote and maintain the metropolitan supremacy of their proud city.

Scientific American Magazine Vol 8 Issue 38This article was published with the title “The Secret of New York Enterprize” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 8 No. 38 (), p. 299
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican06041853-299d

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