Arizona republican., 1903-05-29
St. Pstersburg and New York.

week celebrating the two hundred and fftieth anniversary of the establish ment of municipal government. the capital of the Russian empire is com memorating the bicentenary of it's foundation The building of the city was begun on May 27. 17O3. and so rapidly was 1t forced along by the energetic and indeed arbitrary meas ures of Pettr the Great. that In the ficiently advanced to become the seat O. government, and the administration was transferred thither from Moscow. It has been suggested that the object or the czar in fixing upon the mouth of the Neva for the site of his capital was to create a great Russian city which would be a counterpart of the great commercial center. in the dockyards near which he had worked in his youth, and after which the great American municipality was originally named. viz. Amsterdam. The growth of St. Petersburg has not been in the same proportion as that of New York, but it has reached the rank of tenth in the list of the great cities of the world, and it is the capital of one of the greatest empires that has arisen in the course of the worlds history.
 The New York celebration brings the metropolis of today into sharp contrast with the New Amsterdam to which the grant of municipal powers was made by Governor Peter Stuyvesant His proclamation was issued on February ?, 1853. but the grant was made in re- sponse to a petition of the inhabitants in the preceding April. The settlement which thus received corporate powers had been in existence for several dec ades. Henry Hudson, at the time a navigator in the service of the Dutch East India company, passed through New York bay and up the river which now bears his name in September, 1909, and in the course of the next few years trade in furs with the Indians was inaugurated. For some years the island of Manhattan was regarded simply as trading post, but after the incorporation of the West India con- pany. in 1921. an effort at founding a colony was made, and few years later number of families. mostly walloons. were brought over. Part of these re- mained on the island of Manhattan, and the others scattered about the neighboring country. The newcomers brought horses and cattle and farming appliances.
 From this time dates the existence of the settlement as a permanence. Its growth was slow. In 1926 the popula l tion numbered only two hundred, and at the date of the grant of municipal rights it only amounted to a little over one thousand. It was i'll 1926 that Di- rector General Minuit began his ad- ministration by purchasing the island | of Manhattan from the Indians for articles amounting in value to 50 guild CTS. or $24 In that early period prop erty brought very low prices. It was not until sixteen years later that city | lots came to be known in Fort Amster- dam, as the new settlement was at first called. The oldest conveyance on rec ord in the city tells of the sale of a lot thirty feet by one hundred and ten for 24 guilders, or $9.6O. The chamber of commerce was founded by twenty-four merchants in 176S. and was incorpo- rated in ITO. It was in the city of New York that the first congress of the was convened, and there the first presi- dent of the United States was inaugur- ated
 From that time on the history of the city is more generally known. It has shared to the full in the results of the immense material development that has marked the progress of the country since settled form of national govern ment was established.
 New York's population has increased from a little over 1000 to 3,7OO, GOO; its growth in wealth has been even more marvellous; the progress within it's limits of the institutions and the arts that makt for civilizing culture has been not unequal. and it stands at the beginning of the twentieth century as not merely the greatest city of a conti- nent, but the second in rank among the great municipalities of the world.
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