Fifth Avenue in New York is one of the world’s great thoroughfares. Years ago it was devoted exclusively to residential purposes. The wealthy people built their homes along the lower end of the street. As the city grew, these people followed the avenue north until at the present time the finest homes in the city are located in the neighborhood of Central Park in the upper reaches of the street. Between Fourteenth Street and Washington Square there are now a number of business houses, two fine old churches, and a portion of the city that still retains the residential quality of dignity and worth. From Fourteenth Street to Fiftieth Street the avenue is given over almost exclusively to business. From Thirtieth Street to Fifty-seventh Street are found the finest shops and stores in New York City. Below Thirtieth Street this stately avenue, and the numbered cross streets for many blocks running east and west have been invaded by great skyscrapers known as loft buildings in which is being carried on the greatest garment-making industry in the world. The workers in the garment trade in New York are nearly all Jews and Italians. At any time of the summer and winter thousands of these workers will be Found spending their leisure on the street between twelve and one o’clock. When the workers are free it is almost impossible to pass along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street. This solid mass of men and women, all speaking a tongue that is unintelligible to American ears, pass round and round, back and forth, up and down, a resistless tide typifying the steady resistless rise of labor to a position in society where it must be considered. These big loft buildings occupied by the garment-making industry have been constructed in recent years, and so rapidly have they been erected that the storekeepers and business men of upper Fifth Avenue have formed an organization and are exerting every effort “to save the avenue from this advancing tide of foreign workers.” [Illustration: Press Illustrating Service. When the workers are free it is almost impossible to pass along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street.]