Delivered at $2 a copy last week was FORTUNE's New York City number, for which 170,000 copies in addition to the regular run of 140,000 had been ordered in advance. In its 248 pages, 23 articles, 179 illustrations were innumerable facts about the world's second largest metropolis, two striking conclusions. The conclusions: 1) many do not enjoy living there, although almost no one would want to move away; 2) "The transfer to Washington of the basic ideas concerning the economy has reduced the New York financier to the status of a highly paid clerk. ... It is scarcely a heroic role. And it is scarcely a role upon which to sustain—let alone increase—the power of a great city. If New York had never played a more creative role than this in the formation of the capital of the country, the city would never have become the thing it is."
Some of the facts:
>As of 1939, an estimated 7,500,000 people live in New York City, 1,200,000 on some kind of relief.
>-A girl can get a free (and good) hairdo at the National School of Cosmeticians (33 West 46th Street) but she probably is starving herself to keep in stockings and clothes.
>Eighteen thousand moneyed "metropolitanites" in Manhattan have: 1) $10,000 to $25,000 a year in income; and 2) "the common denominator of swift spending that barely catches up to their expanding wants." A family with $18,000 a year may spend $2,000 to $3,000 for rent; $1,800 to $2,100 for food; $900 for a nurse; $300 to $350 for liquor; $900 for a maid; $100 for flowers; $1,500 to $2,000 for clothes; $1,800 for life insurance, savings; $1,000 to $1,200 on the man's "cash expense at business"; $300 for his wife's pocket money; $1,800 in taxes; $400 to $600 for entertainment; $1,000 to $1,500 for summer "out of town." Add: gifts, tips, Christmas, books ($50-$75), automobile, moving, winter trip, etc., etc. Likely annual deficit: $1,000.
>"To the real Americans there is one New York statistic that incontrovertibly isolates the city from the rest of the country; immigrants and the sons and daughters of immigrants, who make up 31 per cent of the population of the U. S., make up 73 per cent of the population of New York City."
>New York City has 1,070,000 of Italian birth or parentage; 945,000 of Russian; 613,000 of Irish; 600,000 of German; 178,000 of English; 240 Hindus; 136 Icelanders and one Siamese. It has 2,000,000 Jews (of various nationalities); 440,000 Negroes.
>There are 1,150 Italian restaurants ("Very few of them ever serve a bad meal").
>Italians now almost equal Jews of all nationalities in the once predominantly Jewish clothing industry and unions (C. I. O.'s Amalgamated; independent International Ladies' Garment Workers), whose rolls show 100,000 Italian members.
>New York City's 600,000 Germans or German-born have about 1,500 clubs. The Nazified German-American Bund has probably 2,500 members in New York City plus perhaps 25,000 sympathizers.
> New York City imports $1,000,000,000 worth of food a year, manufactures $3,962,293,000 worth of products. The city's first two industries are clothing ($1,200,000,000 in 1937) and printing and publishing ($500,000,000).