October 16,1880





The Real Estate Record.





895





authority, in the way of removal, if not of
the appointment of all his subordinates, but
the courts interfere and strip him of this
power, under some technical rulings, and, in
effect, make it impossible to remove any city
officer, without the formality of a court and
of a possible appeal to the law, in every case.
The commissioner's discharge of his engineer
was declared to be legal by the law officer
of the city, by the judge of the court before
whom the matter came, by the unanimous
decision of all the judges of that same court,
and to this, three members of the Court of
Appeals subscribed. But four members
of that court declared that the dismissal
of the engineer was illegal. Property hold¬
ers must understand that it is a very danger¬
ous kind of govern aient which keeps subor¬
dinates in power in defiance of the wishes of
the chiefs of the departments. There can
be no efficient government when such is the
case, [t is a pity, after all, that the judges
of our Court of Appeals are not more amen¬
able to public opinion. They are elected for
terms wdiicli, practically, amount to a life
tenure, and hence are becoming indifferent,
not only to the wishes but to the welfare of
the community.





FLATS AND TENEMENTS.

Our readers must have noticed how large
a proportion of projected new buildings are
for handsome tenement houses and first-
class Paris flats. The latter is, after aU, but
an aristocratic, somewhat costly, tenement
house. They have somehow become popu¬
lar in the metropolis, due, no doubt, to the
costliness of living and to the desire of the
heads of families to economize domestic
labor. Where four servants are required in
a private house two are considered ample on
a flat, and where meals are served, even one
girl will do the necessary work of a small
family, the washing being given out. No
doubt the popularity of the Paris flats is, in
some measure, also due to the ambition of
people who have been comj)aratively poor,
to live in a large iDalatial residence. Fami¬
lies who were forced to dwell in small
houses or occupy apartments in modest
dv.'ellings, on becoming better off, or, hav¬
ing a stroke of good luck in business, would
natm-ally feel like dwelling for a time, at
least, in an immense building, equal in
magnificence and embellishment to the
l^alace of a king.

One of the consequences of this kind of
living is the economizing of space, and
hence the slower movement in the specula¬
tion in vacBnt lots. All of the present popu¬
lation of New York, if it was under the
roof of apartment houses, could be amply
accommodated on this Island in a line
drawn from East to the North River below
Forty-second street. It is the deuiand for
single houses, occupied by one family, which
consumes so much of our valuable ground.
If, by any accident, the tenement houses
and flats should become uninhabitable, and
the family hotels should be no longer
used, all the vacant lots below One Hundred
and Tenth street would not supply the de-
ipand fpr liouse^ to acppiiimQdat§ tbe former





occupants of these large establishments.
Flats, therefore, mean such economizing of
the available ground of New York as will de¬
crease the demand for residence property.
It is not to be disguised that old house
agents are of the opinion that the mania for
these great establishments is only tempo¬
rary ; that after a time the heads of families
will want -their own houses; that after
irying living in suites of rooms for a couple
of years, they will long for the privacy of
their own homes. They will tire of the ex¬
actions of the janitors ; they fear that their
coal in the open bins will be stolen ; they do
not like their children to be so intimate with
the children of people living on the same
floor. Then it does not seem so pleasant for
ladies to receive their friends in a few rooms
in the upper part of a great flat rather
than in their own parlors in their own
house. StiU there will always be a sufficient
number of floating people, of families who
wish to reduce exiDcnses or economize labor,
to fill the houses already constructed. The
experience of Paris settles that question,
and New York is yet to become a second
Paris.

At any rate these new dwellings have be¬
come a feature in our city architecture.
They are palatial, imj'osing, and give scope
for boldness and variety of design. If some
of them should become unpopular, the more
elegant and magnificent wUl always com¬
mand their price. There is probably no way
in which capital can be invested which is
sure of a large and certain return than it is
in the erecting of family hotels or Paris
flats, say in the neighborhood of our Parks
in the Twelfth Ward of this city.





ALL RIGHT,  OF COURSE.

John K. Porter is a member of the law
firm which represents the Metropolitan Ele¬
vated Railway Company in all legal contests.
During the legislative investigation into
railway corporations the fact came to light
that that company had paid enormous sums
of money to Messrs. Porter, Lowrie, and
their legal associates. The controlling stock¬
holder in the Metropolitan Elevated is un¬
derstood to be Jose F. Navarro. During the
regime of the Tweed Ring, Mr. Navarro
secured a contract from Wm. M. Tweed and
Alexander Frear to supply the city with
water meters, and, singularly enough, this
seems to be the only contract ever made by
Tweed in which he claimed no divvy. Upon
the breaking up of the ring, Navarro's claim
for the water meters was not allowed on the
ground that there was a corrupt under¬
standing with Tweed and Frear. The claim
was lately transferred to one Baird, also a
Metropolitan Railroad official, who made
application to the courts to represent !Na-
varro before John K. Porter, who has been
the referee as far back as 1874. At the end
of nearly six years, referee Porter reports
the claim a just one, and that the city, in
equity and law, is bound to pay it.

The city will further contest this award on
the ground that the charge for the meters
was excessive; and will show that Tweed
was not in the habit of giving valuable coii-'





tracts without a handsome consideration for
himself.

We have repeatedly said in these columns
that, on the return of better times, we would
see the old Tweed Ring practices revived.
The same conditions which gave us muni¬
cipal misrule in the past, continues in full
force to-day. We have a vast voting jiopu-
lation who have no stake in the property of
the city, a business class which takes no in¬
terest in local politics, and swarms of poli¬
ticians of both parties who propose to live at
the expense of the public. It is a notable
circumstance that there has been no reduc¬
tion of the city's expenses since the over¬
throw of the ring. We pay the same ex¬
travagant salaries which obtained before
the panic, and every effort to reduce the
local burdens and cut off sinecures has been
defeated in the legislature. The one measure
which did get through, and which would
have saved us $2,000,000 a year, was vetoed
by the late Gov. Robinson on technical
grounds.

Nor do we see any hope in the immediate
future. Citizen associations, reform organi¬
zations and tax-payers' parties have all been
tried and have failed. We have probably
entered upon a new era of "rings;" other
Tweeds are in store for us, while it will be
found in time that the Barnards and Cor-
dozas still have their representatives in our
courts.





THE TRUTH ABOUT LEADVILLE.
In the early part of April, while the
" boom " in mining stocks was still under
way, the editor of The Record thought he
would warn investors against certain de¬
lusions which seemed to possess them at that
time. Two supplements were issued, trying
to put the New York public on its guard, but
at that time it was not the tnith which was
looked for, but pleasant falsehoods, and so our
warnings fell unheeded. When Amie was
selling at $4, Little Chief at $10, Climax at
$3 and Chrysolite at over $30, we published
in a supplement the following article :

People who have money to invest would do well
to be on their guard against any of the companies
organized on Leadville property. Not but that
the district is rich, very rich, but it should be
remembered that the ore in that camp is a deposit
aud is not likely to last. Old Californians shake
their h^ads and look dubious when examining the
Leadville mines. These are rich in silver car¬
bonates ; are easily worked because near the sur¬
face, and hence the first output is very large, and
the mine apparently very profitable. But, as has
been demonstrated by Little Pittsburg, and other
Leadville mines, the deposit does not last long.
Uninitiated irvestors m y uot know that the most
permanent mines are those which bear ore in fis¬
sures ; that is, openings in the rock in which is
quartz bearing metal. But instead of runnmg
down into the earth as is the case with true fissure
veins, these Leadville deposits are horizontal, or as
one well-known miner says, "in Leadville the fis-
ures are ou their backs." Hence, instead of hav¬
ing the centre of the earth to go for, the Leadville
mines have at best less than a hundred feet of
depth. Old, experienced miners say " beware of
specimen mines,'' That is, d'strust a"ny rock which
shows gold or silver to the naked eye. Nature is
never or very rarely lavish. Wherever gold or
silver is found in an almost pure state, one may be
sure that there is not much of it. The most prof¬
itable mines, so far, bave been those in whicli the
silver has been mixed largely with lead, or, as in
the Black Hills, where the gold is a very low grade
but covering a large amount; of rock. Silver Cliff
bas been well styled tbe Silver Black Hills, for
there the ore is in immense quarries. This one is
of low gj-ade, requiring expeusiye machinery tu