It will be noted that a general survey of these twelve months is decidedly like that for the twelve months ending upon November 30th, 1888. Since December 1, 1886, therefore, permits have been issued for the accommodation of 20,042 families The conclusion hinted at early in this message that present rate of growth of this city is in excess of 25,000 per year is more than supported by these figures. The conclusions thus arrived at as to the present and future of Brooklyn are reinforced by observation of the life of the people as it ebbs and flows about us. Closer union with New York has--to put it paradoxically--removed us further from New York. The increased population, whose growth is undoubtedly stimulated by improved transit, consumes such a volume of home supplies that our local business has vastly augmented and varied. The tendency to visit New York for every sort of purpose declines. Closer alliance with New York means a more discriminating alliance and less general indiscriminate dependence on that city. This must ever be the rule of growth in great communities. It is the rule of national growth. Of the products of the West some must be shipped in undiminished bulk, but even these are so handled that a small room in New York suffices to accommodate enough buyers and sellers to dispose in one day of a year's crop. Other forms of product reach the East for consumption or export in a concentrated form. By the natural law of growth the process of concentration is constantly moving Westward in its place of performance to intercept the raw material at a point as near as possible to that of its production. Similar laws apply to New York and Brooklyn with unusual intensity. Obviously New York must be the clearing house and the site of the finer and more costly grades of industry. That it cannot be the abode of large industrial activity demanding bulk or space is not less clear. Manufacturers who are to occupy much of the earth's surface, or whose products are bulky, must establish themselves elsewhere. Some of them must and will come to Brooklyn, and the population growing up about them will hereafter depend less and less upon New York for any except the finer bonds of relation which unify the diverse purposes and interests clustering around our majestic bay.