d miles, of which one-third is
available for anchorage. The docks and piers, including those of Jersey
City and Hoboken, aggregate about ninety miles in frontage.

About sixteen thousand sea-going craft enter and clear yearly, and an
average of nearly twenty large passenger and freight steamships arrive
and clear daily, about one-half of them being foreign. The latter
receive their cargoes from about three thousand freight-cars that are
daily switched into the various freight-yards, a large part of which is
through freight from the west.

The port of entry of _New York_ is a centre of population of about four
million, and although there are the industries usually found in great
communities, the greater business enterprises practically reduce
themselves to export, import, and exchange. For this reason New York
City is the financial, as well as the commercial centre of the
continent. Most of the great industrial corporations of the country have
their head offices in the city. These are financed by more than one
hundred banks, together with a clearing-house whose yearly business
amounted in 1902 to considerably more than seventy billions of
dollars.[50]

[Illustration: BOSTON HARBOR]

_Boston_ has been one of the leading ports of the United States for
considerably more than a century. It ranks second among the ports of the
United States. Regular lines of transit connect it with the principal
ports of Great Britain and Canada. The coast trade is also very heavy.
Boston is the financial and commercial centre of New England; the
cotton, woollen, and leather goods passing through the port find their
way to nearly every inhabited part of the world. The city controls a
considerable export trade of food-stuffs from the upper Mississippi
Valley. The vessels entering and clearing at Boston indicate a movement
of about four million five hundred thousand tons, about one-fourth that
of New York. The clearing-house exchanges average about six billion
dollars yearly.

_Philadelphia_, on account of its distance inland, is not fortunately
situated for ocean commerce. Steamships of deep draught reach their
docks at the lower end of the city under their own steam, but
sailing-craft pay heavy towage fees. There are regular lines to
Liverpool, Antwerp, West Indian ports, Baltimore, and Boston.
Philadelphia is the centre of the anthracite coal trade, and this is the
chief factor of its domestic trade. The imports of fruit from the West