It would therefore appear that the future residence of the New Yorker is to be some kind of a tenement structure after the fashion prevailing on the continent of Europe. For some of these costly tenements the rent is as high as six thousand to eight thousand dollars per annum. The cheapest tenements on New York island probably cost twenty dollars a month. Although a bridge has been built at enormous expense to connect New York and Brooklyn, it is a mere convenience, and has exercised no influence on the general character of New York island. While Brooklyn is growing, Harlem relatively is growing faster, at the northern end of New York island. The elevated railroads, of which there are four parallel to each other up and down the length of the island as far as the park, and three the whole length of the island, or to Harlem River, have rather exercised a recalling influence to the city from the suburbs, and the tendency is to extend New York across the Harlem River rather than across the Hudson or the East rivers and the bay, which are often embarrassed by fog, ice, and storm. The New York manufactures have so expanded that the operatives do not go from the city to the country parts to do a day’s labor, but come from the country parts into New York to earn a living. The protective tariff has transferred the foreign commerce of New York to foreign nations, while it has made New York City our largest manufacturing city. These manufactories compressed on that small island necessarily partake of the tenement house character, and it has been necessary for the legislature to pass laws prohibiting the making of cigars in the tenement houses where the people live. A few years ago I was requested to visit some of these cigar tenements in the vicinity of Tompkins Square, and further uptown, and I found an extraordinary condition of things which has not yet been checked by legislation, because after the prohibitory law was passed it was found to be defective in phraseology, and has to be reënacted. In these tenements could be seen a whole family, men, women and children, living and working their tobacco, and at the same time cooking, sleeping, eating and entertaining, with the tobacco spread over the floor to be dried at night, the children walking on it, and the vapors of the tobacco filling the lungs of the sleepers. In the morning the man got up and began to cut, trim and fill cigars, and put them on the bench before him, and there he sat all day, for at least six days in the week, seldom going out to let the rooms be aired, and some of these buildings, from four to six stories high, were nothing but pigeon cases of such tobacco tenements.