Rubber, silk goods, furs, jewelry, coffee, tea, sugar, and tin are among the leading imports. Cotton, meats, and breadstuffs are the most important exports. Besides being the principal market place of the United States, New York is also its greatest workshop, as it makes over one tenth of the manufactures of the country. In the manufacture of clothing alone, more than a hundred thousand people are employed. There are comparatively few large factories for carrying on this work, as much of it is done in tenement houses and in small workshops. The growth of this industry has been largely due to the abundance of cheap unskilled labor furnished by the immigrant population of the city. Second in importance is the refining of sugar and molasses, carried on chiefly in Brooklyn along the East River, where boats laden with raw sugar from the Southern states and the West Indies unload their cargoes. New York City leads in the refining of sugar as well as in its importation. [Illustration: THE BATTERY] Added to these, printing and publishing, the refining of petroleum, slaughtering and meat packing, the roasting and grinding of coffee and spices, the making of foundry and machine-shop products, cigars, tobacco, millinery, furniture, and jewelry are the leading industries of the many thousands which have grown up in the city. All this is largely due to the ease with which raw materials can be obtained and finished articles marketed. Thanks to its commercial advantages, New York leads all American cities in the value of its manufactures and surpasses them in the variety of its products. [Illustration: LOWER MANHATTAN] [Illustration: NEW YORK CITY DOCKS] [Illustration: LOADING A FREIGHT STEAMER] At the southern end of Manhattan Island is the Battery. In the old days the Battery was a fort. Now it is used as an aquarium. From the Battery New York's docks extend for miles along both sides of lower Manhattan and line the Long Island and New Jersey shores as well. The wharves are piled high with bales and bags, boxes and barrels. Ships from the South come with cargoes of cotton, others bound for England take this cotton away. Tank steamers from Cuba bring molasses; similar ones are filled with petroleum destined for the ends of the earth. Cattle boats take on live stock brought from the West, grain ships load at the many elevators built at the water's edge, and vessels from all the larger ports of the world put ashore goods of every description. Along both shores of the Hudson River are the piers of the great trans-Atlantic steamship companies, the landing places of the largest and fastest passenger vessels in the world. Here also are the docks of the many river and coastwise lines which carry passengers to and from the cities and towns on the Hudson and the Atlantic coast. Half the foreign trade and travel of the United States passes over the wharves of lower Manhattan. [Illustration: A DOCK SCENE]