Two features of the financial system of New York that increase expenditures can and should be changed. Taxes are now collected in the last quarter of the year upon an assessment made twelve months before. This compels the city to borrow large sums of money to meet current expenses. In 1899 the city borrowed, in anticipation of taxes, the sum of $48,027,450, on which the interest amounted to $755,704. If the taxes were collected during the first quarter of the year, the city would not only save this three quarters of a million dollars interest on temporary loans, but for six or seven months would have large cash balances in depository banks earning two per cent. This change would be worth approximately $1,500,000 a year to the treasury, but it must be made by degrees in order that taxes shall not be collected twice in a twelve-month. Under the present constitutional restriction upon the borrowing capacity of the city, New York is placed in the contradictory position of getting richer and poorer at the same time and by the same process. The restriction of the debt limit to ten per cent of the taxable real estate is arbitrary, and makes no distinction of obligations. Every time the city acquires additional real estate for parks, docks, schoolhouses, or any other purpose its borrowing capacity and income from taxation are reduced, because the property acquired no longer yields a tax and it is not counted in the valuation upon which the debt limit is fixed. This is the most illogical and unbusinesslike feature of the present financial system. The piers owned by the city are profitable investments, yielding a revenue in excess of interest and sinking fund for the bonds issued; yet if we should acquire $100,000,000 of additional water front now owned by private parties the borrowing capacity of the municipality would be reduced $10,000,000, and the income would suffer the amount of taxes on the land acquired. There should be adopted a constitutional amendment that would separate debts incurred for revenue-yielding investments, such as docks and waterworks, from those created for general public improvements. The former should not be a charge against the borrowing capacity of the city. The budget of the city for 1900 is $90,778,972.48, which will be reduced $9,000,000 by the general fund, leaving some $82,000,000 to be raised by taxation. The magnitude of this outlay for current expenses may be better understood by comparison with the expenditures of other large cities. The approximate current expenses of London last year were $73,000,000; of Paris, $75,000,000; of Berlin, $23,347,600; of Boston, $35,454,588; of Chicago, $32,034,008; of Philadelphia, $27,075,014.