ich has an area of 25 square miles,
according to a report of some few years ago, was 316 miles; there are
700 streets and some 70 open places, and the area cleaned daily was
8,160,000 square yards. The cost of the care of the Berlin streets has
risen with the growth of the city from 1,670,847 marks, [1] in 1880,
to 6,068,557 marks, in 1910. The total cost of the street-cleaning in
New York, in 1907, was $9,758,922, and in Manhattan, The Bronx, and
Brooklyn 5,129 men were employed; while the working force in Berlin,
in 1911, was 2,150. It should be said also that in New York an
enormous amount of scavenging is paid for privately besides. In New
York the street-sweepers are paid $2.19 a day; in Berlin the foremen
receive 4.75 marks the first three years, and thereafter 5 marks; the
men 3.75 marks the first three years, then 4 marks, and after nine
years' service 4.50 marks. The boy assistants receive 2 marks, after two
years 2.25 marks, and after four years service 3 marks. The whole force
is paid every fourteen days. The street-cleaning department is divided
into thirty-three districts, these districts into four groups, each with
an inspector, and all under a head-inspector. Attached to each district
are depots with yards for storage of vehicles, apparatus, brooms,
shovels, uniforms, with machine shops, where on more than one occasion I
have seen enthusiastic workmen trying experiments with new machinery to
facilitate their work.

[1] The mark is equal to a little less than twenty-five cents.

Over this whole force presides, a politician? Far from it; a
technically educated man of wide experience, and, of the official of
my visit I may add, of great courtesy and singular enthusiasm both for
his task and for the men under him. What his politics are concerns
nobody, what the politics of the party in power are concerns him not
at all. That an individual, or a group of individuals, powerful
financially or politically, should influence him in his choice or in
his placing of the men under him is unthinkable. That a political boss
in this or in that district, should dictate who should and who should
not, be employed in the street-cleaning department, even down to the
meanest remover of dung with a dust-pan, as was done for years in New
York and every other city in America, would be looked upon here as a
farce of Topsy-Turvydom, with Alice in Wonderland in the title-role.

The streets are cleaned for the benefit of the people,