The Reinvention of New York







	III.7 Reversing the Trend

	We need to recognize that we should retain the industry we do have. We should encourage movie production, for example, even though it is an annoyance to us. I think we want people to have real jobs. I think we want to encourage the manufacture of boxes, for example (that takes place in Queens), to continue. Sometimes incentives don't work. Look at Otis Elevator, which was invented in Yonkers (Yonkers, of course, is at 252d Street, so in some sense it's really New York City). After the city of Yonkers gave them incentives, they moved anyway. I would like to conclude with a quotation about industry. It's from Walt Whitman, who, describing the Brooklyn shoreline in the 1850s, wrote, On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night, Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets. I would say that, as Whitman noted a hundred and fifty years ago, the sight of smoke and steam rising from the city's many hundreds of factories was evidence of industrial progress and wealth. That industrial progress is rapidly departing from the city of New York, and I think that what there is left of it we should treasure and love.