§46





The  Record and   Guideo





July S4,1886





a road leading to a beautiful lake, on the shore of which they have built
their club-house.

J. J. Smith is stopping at the Strong House, Saratoga Springs, N. Y.,
and will return September 1st.

B.  H. Martine is spending the summer at Chappaqua, coming to town
daily.

C.  W. Luyster is stopping at the Highlands of Navesink, N. J., coming to
tovm daily.

John S. Pierce and family are staying at Ocean Grove, N. J.   Mr. Pierce
comes to the city two or three times a week.





Competition for Armory Plans.

The new Armory Board have issued a notice to architects that plans for
the following armories wiU be receiv&d up to August 13th.

The Board consists of Mayor Grace, chairman; Commissioner of Taxes
and Assessments Michael Coleman, secretary; Commissioner of Public
Works Rollin M. Squire, and Brigadier-Generals W. G. Ward and Louis
Fitzgerald,

The intended armories are those for the Eighth and Twenty-second Regi¬
ments, N. G., S. N. Y.'

The Eighth Regiment armory is to occupy the block about 200x403,
between Madison and Fourth avenues and Ninety-fourth and Ninety-fifth
streets. Competing architects must have in view the following require¬
ments: Plans are to include quarters for the Second Battery of Artillery,
including gun rooms, harness, saddle, officers' and company rooms, and as
large a drill-room as practicable.

The Twenty-second Regiment Armory is to be built on the block between
Ninth avenue and the Boulevard and Sixty-seventh and Sixty-eighth
streets. It will front 200 feet on Ninth avenue, 225 feet on the Boulevai'd,
224 feet on Sixty-seventh street and 327 feet on Sixty-eighth street.

The armory is to be buUt preferably of stone, and will contain as large a
drill-room as practicable, with the necessary officers' rooms; rooms for ten
companies of suitable size, with fuel, water, washing and closet accommo¬
dations; also a range for cooking for 800 men; two rifle ranges of as great
a length as possible.

The colonels of both regiments are to be consulted as to their detailed
wants.

In such cases as the Board may decide a reasonable extension of time
'will be allowed for completing plans. Those architects whose plans were
rejected by the previous Boai'd have been invited to send them in again for
inspection.

The competition has excited considerable interest among architects, and
the facts herein presented and which are now published for the first time
were furnished The Record and Guide from Commissioner Coleman's
office.





The World of Business.

Business Outlook.

The general situation continues healthily conservative. Crop conditions
are watched everywhere as the key to the future. Upon the basis of pro¬
duction to meet actual consumption, the prosperity of the agriculturist is
obviously essential to the natural advancement of legitimate commercial
and industrial interests. A splendid crop of winter wheat has already been
gathered, amounting to about 295,(H)0,000 bushels, and spring wheat returns
may still increase the annual yield all the way from 420,000,000 to 440,000,-
000 bushels in spite of the unfavorable weather to the growing grain during
the past thirty days. Corn promises abundant returns, and of rye, barley
and flax average crops are now looked for. Oats and cotton will be short
crops, and the domestic wool clip will probably show a shortage approxi¬
mating 10 per cent, as compared with last year. Until the standing crops
are actually harvested nothing is absolutely assured, however, as the
summer has proven itself one of strange merteorological disturbances,
and the other natural enemies of vegetation, in the shape of
bugs, etc., have not all been vanquished yet. Abroad, the wheat
crops of Russia, India, the United Kingdom and Australia are
reporJed short of last year's averages and undergoing weather that can
not but damage them to a greater or less extent. The exact amount of
damage to grain at this time is always largely a matter of conjecture, and
is chiefly useful as a lever for speculative values. It is, therefore, impos¬
sible, in view of the inseparable uncertainties of the time, to accurately
estimate the average prices at which producers are to market their grain
this year. From the marked advances in prices last week a slight reaction
has followed, and trading has been less active under moderate fluctuations
in values. It may be accepted as a peculiarly wholesome feature of general
trade that transactions have increased while prices have undergone but
little change. In metals, lumber, coal, dry goods, etc., holders have been
quite willing to keep their stocks intact rather than sell below cm-rent
quotations, and the small advances made in special lines have been more
than justified by larger demands for them at the higher figures. Coal, at
present, is lifeless under the weight of larger stocks in the hands of pro¬
ducers than last year at this time, and a belief on the part of buyers that
rates will be lower later in the season. The dullness has undoubtedly been
aggravated by several of the companies in the combination mining more
coal than their stipulated quotas for July. The increase of the annual
allotment of the steel rail mills to 1,400,000 tons, as 1,100,000 were already
contracted for, is a gratifying development of the wise management of
industrial affairs, and is strong evidence of the prevailing prosperity. The
improved condition of general trade is becoming more apparent, except in
those sections of the country where mercantile business is affected by the
influence of the drought on spring wheat. Domestic money markets were
firmer in the interior, where funds will now be needed for marketing the
harvested grain and to expand the operations of established mercantile and
manuf actm-ing industries." An almost universal improvement in collections
has also made its appearance. Money is naturally in fair supply at the
metropolis, but nearly all the National banks have put out all the funds that
the law allows them to loan. Last July these same institutions held over
$65,000,000 of surplus capital in their vaults, which they could not place at
any rates. Stocks have been less active than the first part of the month,
though the list is quoted somewhat higher and stronger than a week ago,
chiefly on the temporary settlement of the rate war of the Granger roads.
The i.)ublic does not want stocks yet appai'ently, and veteran operators see
little in the mai'ket for the present. On the other side of the Atlantic,
however, there has been some purchasing of our securities, especially in
England, and foreign exchange has dropped to a point where further
shipments of gold from this s de are improbable the rest of the summer. The
general situation in Great Britain and on the continent reflects something
of the improvement at home,—The Inter-Ocean.   "





Diminshing Failures.

The national failure record continues to prove the actual though slow
return of the conditions of prosperity. In general, the present year might
be expected to give a poor business showing. At the most critical time
there came labor disturbances which frightened capital, brought enforced
idleness, and so disarranged the course of trade and overthrew the plans
and estimates of merchants, as well as manufacturers, that it must have
been responsible for a large number of business disasters. Merchants in the
Southwest who had just received large stocks of goods found themselves
cut off from their customers at the opening of the season. Orders were
withheld from manufacturers, and the causes that bring failures were put
in unaccustomed activity. Yet, notwithstanding all this, there has been a
distinct improvement in the last six months as compared with the preceding
year. The number of failures reported to Bradstreets for this period in
1886 is 5,461, as against 6,106 in 1885,5,444 in 1884, and 5,296 in 1883. We have
risen a respectable distance from the trough of last year's sea, and are now
ascending toward the crest of the wave at least as rapidly as we ran down the
incline in the preceding years. It can hardly be doubted that but for the labor
disturbances there would have been fewer failures in these months than in
the corresponding time of any of the lasi three years. The comparative
severity of failures is still more indicative of returning business health. It
is not so much the absolute number of failures as the actual money losses
involved which is the true commercial barometer. And while the per¬
centage of assets to liabilities is less this year than in its two predecessors,
the total of assets and liabilities is immensely smaller. The lai-ge failures
have decreased. It is not branches, but only leaves that are now falling
before the declining breath of the receding storm. Each week's record
shows the improvement to be continuing. The conditions now are all
favorable. There are but two dangers ahead—but two causes which can
operate to check the rev ival that has certainly set in. If labor should learn
from the experience of the year the folly and wastefulness of strikes—and
if Congress could be made to see that what the country most needs is the repeal
of bad currency and commercial laws now in force—we might reasonably
expect, for some years to come, a season of prosperity seldom equaled in the
country's history.—St. Paul Pioneer-Press'.

Growth of Population and Food Production.

The summer hog-packing (since February) has this year been somewhat
greater than last year, the whole number packed at the twelve principal
packing places in the Northwest having been 2,433,282 down to June 26 this
year, against 2,242,917, an increase of 19J,365, or SX per cent., and the
summer packing last yeai* was greater than in any previous year except 1880,
and a fifth more than in 1884. At the rate of increase shown by these
twelve places for the fom- months (half the season), the number packed
during the eight months to October 31 will be about 5,265,000, while the
greatest number heretofore was 5,323,898, in 188fc». Thus, the large corn
crops of the last two years are making themselves felt in this important
staple, while in the winter packing and the corn and provision exports they
have been felt much less than it seemed natural to expect. Thus the
number packed in the last winter season (November to February, inclusive)
was 6,29d,995, aud the year befoi'e, 0,460,240, which are less than in any of
the four years, 1877-78 to 1880-81, when the number ranged from 6,50.5,000
to 7,480,000, though the corn crop was not so lai-ge in those years as in the
last two. Taking both seasons together, the difference is not so great.
For the twelve months ending with October last the number packed was
11,313,619, and in the only previous years in which as many as 10,000,000
were packed, the numbers were :

1878-79.                         1879-80.                         1880-81.

11,531,896.                      12,274,349.                      11,723,145.

so that only in 1880 did the number greatly exceed last year's. With the
rate of increase so far continued through this summer season, the whole
number for the twelve months ending with next October will be 11,564,000,
and not six per cent, lef s than in 1879-80. Exports having fallen off greatly
in comparison with the early years of great production, it follows that the
home consumption of pork products must have increased materially, and
perhaps more than in proportion to the increase in population. In
Europe thii would indicate an improvement in the condition of the people,'
but it does not necessarily here, where the poorer classes even eat beef and
mutton and butter in preference to pork and bacon, when they have plenty
of work and good wages, and when times go hard with ttiem may eat more
pork than before. But actually since 1880 there has been a considerable
increase in tbe production of cattle and dairy produce and a decline in the
exports of them, so that we are taking much more beef and butter, as well
as more pork than we used to. But there must be in the country now very
neartly 60,000,000 people, against 50,000,000 in 1880, and the additional
10,000,000 eat a great quantity of meat, etc. Indeed, if the produce of which
we get statistics were the whole, they would be very ill fed indeed; the great¬
est number of hogs reported packed in any one year amounted to only 46^^
lbs. per inhabitant, and that year we exported 26 lbs. per inhabitant, leaving
but one ounce a day apiece; but while the Northwestern packing includes most
that goes to market and is transported by rail or steamer or exported,
there is an enormous amount packed for home consumption aU over the
country, including nearly all the farmers' supplies in all parts of the
counti'y where corn is grown at all, except the South (which produces
much, but also imports a great deal), while pork is pre-eminently the
farmer's meat. In this as in many other of our products, we shall go
very far wrong unless we take account of the ten millions of people
added to om* population since the last census. It is like the addition of a
country more than one-fourth as populous as Great Britain and Ireland
to be wholly supplied with food fi'om this country. Such an addition
requires of wheat alone about 45,000,000 bushels a year, yet in spite of
the new wheat country settled since 1880, we have sown less wheat than
in that year, both this year and last. Our exports of food, therefore, are
necessarily less than they were five or six years ago, because our
population has increased faster than our production. As in pre¬
vious periods, other industries have been extended faster than agri¬
culture, and the prosperity of the country depends to a very great extent
on the wisdom with which such industries have been selected. Ordinarily,
the extension of farming is much safer than the extension of other indus¬
tries here, because we have the world for a market for our crops, but only
the United States for our manufactm-es and our coarser minerals. But,
actually, farming has probably been quite as unprofitable as the average of
other industries for the past few years, and it seems fortunate that wheat-
growing has been reduced instead of increased, and cotton-growing
increased no faster than it actually has been. It seems that we have
arrived at that point in our industrial development when great care and
much experiment are required to determine in what direction further
progress can be made to advantage. The indefinite extension of wheat
and cotton-growing, iron-smelting and railmaking may be disastrous, and
we shall have to inquire with much care whether what we purpose to pro¬
duce will be wanted before we can safely engage capital and labor in an/
new enterprise.—Railroad Gazette.

Railway Building Active.

The projects of the vai'ious large corporations for additions and exten¬
sions this year are now so far advanced that it is possible to take a super¬
ficial view of the field, and to see that the results will exceed in importance
those of last year or the year preceding. While it cannot be said that
there is any marked recovery yet from the period of prostration which set
in with the begimiing of 1883, still the work of reorganization has sufficiently
rehabihtated the most crippled companies, and where there is local justifi¬
cation for expansion building is again going forward. Particularly in the
States which feel the impulse of an incoming agrioultural population of a