The Essence of New York City business and financial operations. They connoted the dynamic drive of its business community, just as its mighty bridges, reaching out as if to engross the surrounding territory, suggested its commercial hold on the rest of the nation. In the opinion of John C. Van Dyke, writing in 1908, these "cathedrals to commerce" furthered the impression that "commerce, trade, traffic —what is commonly called business"—underwrote the city's economic might.22 So positively have the commercial and financial activities of New York's economy asserted themselves that the immensity of industrial operations in the city and its environs is often overlooked. Actually, as early as i860, New York could boast of being the foremost manufacturing city of the nation, in terms of the value of the goods produced; and the New York City of World War II could claim to be what John Gunther called it, "the greatest manufacturing town on earth." The New York Times reported in the late 1940s that more persons were then engaged in New York's garment trades than made steel in Pittsburgh or automobiles in Detroit.* But for at least two reasons this aspect of the city's personality has failed to impress the casual observer as much as it might. One is that garment manufacture— the city's predominant industry— is usually carried on in structures that look more like business blocks than like factories. The other is that the appeal and magnitude of the city's financial, entertainment, and retail shopping centers are such that transient observers rarely find themselves in the parts of the city where factory structures of the traditional type are found. Another ingredient of the "essence" of New York—and a trait that has impressed contemporaries through the years—is the convivial nature of its society. To many an observer, midtown Broadway, especially when transformed by its spectacular lights, is more manifestly representative of the personality of New York City than are Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, or the New York port. 22 John C. Van Dyke, The New New York (New York: 1909), vii, 14, 16. 28John Gunther, Inside U. S. A. (New York: 1947), 553J John Joslin, "Our Incredible City," in New York Times Magazine (December 22, 1946), 11. 410