Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/100

PITTSBURG. for the Deaf and Dumb; also numerous parochial schools.

In 1901 Andrew Carnegie offered to present to the city a free institute of technology. The offer was accepted, the city agreeing to furnish the site and maintain the school. In 1903 a site, costing $350,000, was bouglit near the free library.

Pittsburg has been since its foundation the natural transfer point between the East and West. It is a port of entry, and its imports for the year ending March 31, 1903, amounted to $1,504,705. The city's rapid growth, however, is due to its industrial activities, and these owe their supremacy to the abundant fuel supply. Coal and coke form the largest items in the immense freight tonnage of Pittsburg, a tonnage which surpasses that of New York and Chicago combined, and which has no equal in the world. The railroad freight for 1902 exceeded 80,000,000 tons, while the water tonnage approximated 9,500,000 tons. The manufacturing interests of the city date back to the close of the eighteenth century. Iron-working and glass-making were early engaged in, and glass and steel are still the leading products. According to the census of 1900 Pittsburg had invested in manufacturing within its municipal limits $193,162,900, and the annual product was worth $203,261,251. In adjoining cities and towns were plants with an invested capital of about two-thirds of the corresponding amount given above. The Greater Pittsburg produces annually 3,500,000 tons of pig iron, or about 22 per cent. of the entire output of the country. Finished products include wire, nails, boiler and hull plate, rails, angle iron, sheet, tinned sheet, tools, agricultural implements, stoves, engines, boilers, plumbing and sanitary supplies, enameled ware, electrical machinery, tubes, armor plate, projectiles, and air brakes. The manufactures of iron and steel have overshadowed the activities in other lines, which, however, are important. In 1900 the value of the glass product was $2,778,847. The largest cork factory in the world is in Pittsburg. The output of manufactured copper is 500,000 pounds annually. In the production of electrical cable for underground use Pittsburg leads the country. Among other industries of importance are the manufacture of pottery, brick, chemicals, acids, jewelry, asbestos, shoes, tobacco and cigars, mirrors, malt and spirituous liquors, clothing, oleomargarine, rubber, and aluminum. In these employments and others 69,977 workmen were engaged in 1900. The number of manufacturing establishments was 1938. A large business is done in petroleum products, several refineries being in the city.

The transportation facilities of Pittsburg include the Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt, and Gould systems of railways, the independent Pittsburg, Bessemer and Lake Erie, and Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg roads, and the rivers. The Pennsylvania system includes, from the east, the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Buffalo and Allegheny Valley division, the Pittsburg, Virginia and Charleston, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the West Penn; from the west, the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago, the Erie and Pittsburg, the Cleveland and Pittsburg, the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago and Saint Louis, and the Pittsburg and Western roads, with their branches. The Vanderbilt system reaches the

city from the west by way of the Pittsburg and Lake Erie Railroad, while the Gould interests are penetrating to the city through an extension of the Wabash from the west. The most extensive freight yards are at Pitcairn on the Pennsylvania Railroad, Versailles on the Baltimore and Ohio, McKee's Rocks on the Pittsburg and Lake Erie, Conway on the Pittsburg. Fort Wayne and Chicago, Sheridan on the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago and Saint Louis, and at Twenty-eighth Street on the Buffalo and Allegheny Valley division. The Pennsylvania system has a large union station at Tenth and Liberty streets, used by all its roads except the Baltimore and Ohio and the Pittsburg and Western. The Pittsburg and Lake Erie also has a line new station on the South Side.

The rivers are of great importance commercially. The Monongahela runs through the richest coal fields of the Pittsburg district, and is improved throughout its entire length. In 1897 the Federal Government purchased seven locks and dams from the Monongahela Navigation Company for $3,761,615. It already owned two locks and dams above these, and Congress soon afterwards authorized the construction of six more at a cost of $1,200,000 to give slack-water navigation from Pittsburg to Fairmont, W. Va., a distance of 130 miles. Three locks and dams, to cost $1,500,000, are under construction on the Allegheny River, which will give 22 miles of slack-water navigation. On the Ohio River, Davis Island dam, constructed at a cost of $940,000, affords a harbor for the city. Six dams are being constructed at an estimated cost of $5,525,000, and five more have been authorized by Congress. The project contemplates the creation of a nine-foot stage of water between Pittsburg and Cairo, Ill., at an ultimate cost of $50,000,000. The traffic on these rivers is enormous, consisting chiefly of coal and manufactured iron. Of the 9,500,000 tons of freight on the rivers each year, 5,500,000 tons are coal. Pittsburg has 144 steam vessels, with a total tonnage of 39,476, on its marine register, but the barges, in which most of its shipping is done, are not registered. Their tonnage is estimated to be in excess of 2,500,000 tons. Considerable business in lighter freights and passengers is done on the Monongahela and Ohio rivers by fast packets. The Allegheny is devoted chiefly to lumber-rafting.

The export trade of Pittsburg is large and is growing rapidly. Coal is being shipped by river to New Orleans, and by rail to New York and Philadelphia for export. Manufactured iron and steel also are exported in immense quantities.

The government of Pittsburg is vested in a mayor and a bicameral city council. The title of the chief executive was changed from mayor to recorder by an act of Legislature passed in 1901, regulating the government of second-class cities, and his powers were much enlarged, but in 1903 the former title was restored. He now appoints, with the consent of Select Council, the city treasurer, assessors, directors of the departments of public works, public safety, charities, and the department of law, and five police magistrates. Councils elect their own presiding officers and the city clerks. The comptroller is chosen by popular vote. The city has a pension fund for the benefit of veteran employees of the police and fire bureaus, and a