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The   Record    and   Guide.





May 30, 1885





May 14, 1885.
Editor Record and Guide:

Dear Sir—What is the best book published on law-blanks, &c. ? Please
answer through your Record and Gitide.   Yours, &c.,

A Long Subscriber and Admirer.

Answer.—If we understand our correspondent's question aright, he wants
"McCall's Clerk's Assistant," containing a large variety of legal forms and
instruments, adapted not only to county aud town offices, but to the wants
of professional and business men throughout the United States, having par¬
ticular reference to the Middle, Eastern and Western States. It is prepared
and edited by Henry S. McCall, Esq., Professor of the Law of WiUs and
►dial Property in the Albany Law School, and is pubUshed by William
Oould & Son, No. 68 State street, Albany, N. Y. The last edition was pub¬
Ushed in 1884. It has been in coustaut use since 1800, and contains approved
forms for almost everything—assignments, bUls of sale, chattel mortgages,
contracts and agi-eements, deeds, bonds and mortgages, mechanics' Uens,
leases, partnership papers, patents, powers of attorney, receipts, wills,
naturalization papers, and a hundred other forms.





The New York Arcade Railway.

AN underground VIEW.







The above cut represents a cross section of the Arcade Railway as it wiU
appear when completed according to the amended chai-ter jiassedby the last
Legislature, and which is now awaiting the signature of the Governor. The
excavation of Broadway from curb to curb, a distance of forty-four feat,
wiU afford ample room for four tracks, as seen in the Ulustration, without
any eucroachmeut on the vaiUts under the sidewalks. The two inside tracks
will be used for through or express trains, which, with stoppages a mile
apart, are intended to make the distance from the Battery to Harlem River
in twenty minutes. The accommodation or way trains runiung on the
two outside tracks wUl stop every three, four or five blocks, according to
the necessities of travel, and wiU run at about the same rate of speed aa the





elevated roads. AU the trains can have as many cars attached as the accom¬
modation of the public at any hour of the day may require. The motive
power wiU bo either electricity, compressed air or cable, thus avoiding all
annoyance from steam, smoke or cinders. The vaults or sub-ways under¬
neath the two outside tracks, as seen in the cut, are for the enclosure of water
gas and steam pipes, electric wUes of all kinds and auy other subterranean
apparatus which the present or future needs of the city may require. Within
this enclosure they will always be acces.'ible for repairs or the laying of new
pipes or wires, without tearing up or disturbing the surface of Broadway.
And here it may be suggested that among the many incidental benefits
which wiU accrue from the construction of the Arcade RaUway will be the
solution of the serious problem as to what shaU eventuaUy be done with these
decaying and corroding pipes underneath Broadway as well as the unsightly
telegraph wires overhead. What the Arcade Company proposes to do at its
own expense will very soon have to be done at the expense of the city should
the road not be built.

The roof of the Arcade is to rest on iron girders supported by iron
columns, and the space between the arched brick ceUing of the Arcade roof
and the surface of the street above is to be tiUed in with asphalt, concrete
and sand, thus affording a firm foundation for any kind of pavement that
the city may deem best for the uses of Broadway. This pavement, whether
it be stone, wood or other material, wiU never have to be torn up or
disturbed tiU worn out, which wiU be another inestimable boon to
the traveling public as well as a great saving of expense to the city. It
wUl thus be seen that whUe the primary object of the projectors of the
Ai'cade Railway is to meet the great and imperative necessity of rapid tran.
sit, which can be met in no other way, the incidental advantages to the city
involved in the enterprise are scarcely less imporant.

The rapid constniction and early completion of this great work is now
fissured if the bUl passed by the Legislatm-e meets the approval of the
Governor. In any event, the officers of the company say that a Broadway
underground road is to be buUt—according to the amended charter, if
approved by the Governor, according to the original charter, if not.
Contracts for the work have been completed and signed, embracing plans
adapted to either alternative. It rests with the Governor to say whether
the better and more exjiensive road shaU be buUt, or the inferior and
less expensive. Strangely enough the principal opposition to the improve¬
ment comes from a few Broadway property owners, and yet pecuniarily
they wiU derive the most benefit. The opponents of the enterprise now
number only a small i>ercentage of the ownersof property on that thorough
fare. Instead of injuring their property, the construction of the Arcade
would restore Broadway to its former importance, enhance the value of
its real estate at least one-third, aud render it the finest thoroughfare in the
world.





The World  of Business.

Periodicity of Panics.

Probably there is no other idea, having no substantial basis in fact, which
is more widely entertained or has more hold on the minds of men than the
idea that there is some law of periodicity in panics. No sane man iu the
world will hesitate to admit thnt he has not definitely traced that period¬
icity. Here and there some ci-azy crank, the Venner of the financial world,
will assert that he knows all about it. Usually the only i-esult of che pre¬
dictions of Venner and his kind, is to prove that he knows, not more, but
less than other people; that his stupidity in details is based upon a broad
and soUd gi-oundwork of innate and uigrained foUy. But many men, whUe
ready to grant without disijute that they cannot point out tbe unvarying
and immutable laws which govern prices, stUl insist that they believe such
laws exist, if one could only find them. A pamphlet recently published by
a Chicago firm Ulustrates both the methods of the quacks and cranks, and
the insatiable appetite ot the public for being gulled. It is entitled, " Is Ben¬
ner a prophet ?" The subject is a book ot prophecies about prices, which was
published in 1876 by oue Samuel Benner, whose close similarity to Venner,
the most impudent of all the weather quacks, is not confined to his name.
The pamphlet calls for only one objection. Loading a 100-pound gun to kiU
a gnat is uot economically expedient. But it confronts Mr. Benner. and
his a,ssertions to the past, and his predictions as to the future, with a body
of statistics and diagrams which do prove conclusively that the man was
either more iguorant than most men, or that he was a more eminent falsi¬
fier. It shows, particularly with respect to the prices of pig iron, that
nearly everyone of his assertions was false, in greater or less degi-ee, and
that the supposed periodicity ou which all his theory was based did not reaUy
exist at all in the recorded facts when he wrote. It shows, too, that not
oue of his pretUctions have been verified. Yet the very publication of such
a pamphlet bj' a business firm, aud the anxiety shown to overthrow the
influence ot Benner's predictions ou the minds of others, proves that the
predictions made were supposed to have had much influence on many
uunds. The argument here devoted especiaUy to the iron question might
be made even strouger, not only against auy other brauch of Benner's pre¬
dictions, but agaiust every other theory ot Uke nature. The fact is that
different products are governed by different laws. Scarcity and high prices
tend to cause iucreased production the world over, and in every branch of
business. But production can be increased, of wheat in one year, but of
coffee in not less thau three years. It takes but a few days to secure an
increased production of some vegetables, but years to get a larger crop of
asparagus. So with other products; to produce more hogs, or more cattle,
or more wool, different periods are required. In the production of metals,
it takes a longer time to put up the machinery for some manufactures than
for others, and henci, ot necessity, there is more delay in answering to any
increased demand. In like manner an almost infinite variety is found in
the conditions governinsi the increase or decrease of the demand for con¬
sumption. To all this it must be added that some products cau be raised
in almost any part ot the world, but others in narrow districts.
Some are greatly affected in price by speculation, and others
scarcely at aU. Hence, it is easy to see that auy periodical cause,
common in its effects upou all products, is impossible. Assuming a
periodical cause to exist, its operation would be felt in the markets
as to some products irmnediately, as to others after one year, and as to others
still, after only two or thi-ee years. The sun-spot theory, so otten urged,
obviously has refereuce directly to the products of agriculture only, and to
articles manufactured from such products. But no one supposes that the
quantity of coal or of ore taken out of mines, or of trees cut down and
sawed, or of stoue taken from quarries, or of fish taken from the sea, or of
sUk from cocoons, or of oil from weUs, or of the products manufactured from
ores, wood, stone, fish or silk, cau iu any way depend upon the spots upon
the sun. Moreover, as to agricultural products themselves, the same con¬
ditions affect one crop favorably and auother fataUy. The same influ¬
ence aiflicts one part of the world with disaster and urings bountiful suppUes