1434





Record and  Guide.





October 26, 1889





or an average of 19.3 knots an hour. Several other boats have done
nearly as well. What speed would the fastest cruiser develop in a
six days' run uuder ordinary conditious?





There is a very pretty dispute under way just now in Southern
California—one which is a direct consequence of the boom which
made Los Angeles and the adjacent counties in 1886 and 1887 a rare
place for real estate speculators. As is very well known, tbat boom
is a thing of the past. The fall in values has been something per¬
fectly enormous. At Oak Knoll, lots which sold two years ago for
$1,500 at present find no takers at $100 ; large tracks of alkali lands,
at one time laid out in lots, but at present tbe home of horned toads
and jack-rabbits, are assessed at $60 an acre, and are not worth one-
tenth of the sum; and a list of property can he shown whicb had
been sold for prices aggregating S403,9SO, aud whicb at present are
not worth their assessed value—some $90,000. But the inflation in
town sites went to an extent that seems absurd to an outsider.
There were some tixty paper towns created in different parts of
Los Angeles Couniy, comprising 79,350 town lots—enough, say,
for 300,000 people, and nearly 40,000 more than there are in New
York between 59fch and 155th streets. At present there are 2,351
peoi>le living in these towns. Border City had 1,'.)20 lots, and not a
single inhabitant to take advantage of them ; Chicago Park, 2,286
lots, and but a single occupant; Carlton, 4,060 lots, and not an
inhabitant; Manchester, 2.304, and the same overwhelming popu¬
lation; West Glendale, 8,128 lots, and no inhabitants, and Sunset,
2,032 lots, and one solitary watchman, who looks after an expensive
hotel and a deserted town. Yet the Los Angeles Herald says:
" The boom in Los Angeles was, in the main, a perfectly legitimate
development." Southern California is a very wonderful country,
but its friends ought to be wiUing to admit tbat it is more success¬
ful in cultivating fruit than town lots.





But the town and county of Los Angeles are suffering for their
folly in the shape of an assessment roll proportionally larger (ban
tbat of less enthusiastic counties in the State. In 1881 tbo county
assessment stood at $16,697,591 ; the next year ifc was raised almost
exactly $4,000,000, or 25 per cent., a rate of increase that was
pretty well maintained until ISSC, when a stride of some $8,000,000
was effected and the total " boosted".to $^10,000,000. Atthispoint a
boomer got control of the assessment office and made that
$40,000,000 $90,000,000 in one short year. The year following this,
in 1888, a further increase of $23,000,000 was made by tbe assessor,
who was undismayed by a certain weakening in the demand for
town lots. This would have made no particular difference if county
taxes alone had been levied on real estate, but it made it lather
hard on Los Angeles when the State taxes cajue to be levied, of
■which, of course, she got rather more than her fair share, at the
very time too when sbe could least afford to pay it. An appeal
was made to the State Board of Equalization, and the assessment
was reduced some 10 per cent. But the incorrigible county asses¬
sor was not dismayed by this fact. Although the past year had
been quiet enough in all conscience he advanced the assessment
figures to very nearly tbe same total as thafc of tho year before.
This was done in spite of the fact that all the other counties in
Southern California lowered their assessments—San Diego by some
$6,000,000, San Bernadino by $1,600,000, Santa Barbara by
$5,000,000, and Ventura by $500,000. So Los Angeles County went
to tbe Board of Equalization again aud got another rebate of 10
per cent. Even after tbis rebate is made, however, her assessment
in 1889 is three times as great as it was in 1885, which, considering
that melancholy list of town lots given above, is compelling Los
Angeles to pay taxes on a largely inflated scale of values. Take
her flgures in reference to the town and county of San Francisco.
The Bay City and county were assessed this year at a little less than
$250,000,000 ; and tbis with a population of 400,000, a fair propor¬
tion of millionaires, and with $80,000,000 depo&ited in savings
banks. Los Angeles with a scant 150,000 population is obliged to
pay within $400,000 of the total of San Francisco into the County
and State Ti-easury. In olher words, for every six dollars the
inhabitant of one county has to pay, the inhabitant of the other bas
to pay $] 5—a fact to be partially explained by the 1 per cent, tax
limit in San Francisco.





It is not too much to say that such gross inequahties as this are
an inevitable consequence of the State taxation of real estate. The
counfcy and cityof NewYork and the inhabitants thereof ought
indeed to be painfully aware of this fact, but it does no harm to
bring it to their attention once again, Tiie root of the difficulty
that no one Board of Assessors can make the valuations for a whole
State, consequently the function must be left in the bands of the
various county boards, with no guarantee that the assessments will
be made fairly. It is seldom, indeed, tbat, as in Los Angeles County, a
puzzle-headed assessor discriminates against his own county in mak¬
ing the assessments ; tbe tendency is very naturally the other way.
But no matter how the discriminations are made, it is enough that
tbey exist, and that they force one county honest enough to assess





itself fairly to pay roundly for its own honesty, and another county
disliouest enough to put low valuations on its property profits by its
own delinquency. The device employed to overcome these dis¬
criminations is as clumsy as it is useless. Wbat good has the State
Board of Equalization done New York? What good did it do Los
Angeles? That county got a 10 per cent, rebate, when the shrink¬
age in some cases amounted to forty or fifty times as much. Eeal
estate is a thing so local iu its nature and so entirely uuder the
influence of local conditions tbat it ought to bear only local
burdens.





The Location of Onr '' Great Futm-e.'!

If aline were drawn, roughly speaking, across the United States
a trifle to the south of the 40th parallel, it would divide this
couutry into two more or less equal parts. North of it would
be found all the New England States, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, practically all of the "central" States tliat touch
upon the lakes, the gi'eat Northwest, and the several territories,
with the exception of a part of Utah, and all of Arizona, New
Mexico and the Indian Territory. A part of California and a small
portion of Nevada, Colorado, Kansas aud i\Iissom"i would also be
north of the line ; but, as the imaginary division is only a rough
one, these larter maybe considered as falling for our purposes
wholly within the southern Iialf, which thus would consist of
all the "Southern," Soutii Central and Southwestern States.

It may be set down as a passably accurate statement that
few persons would hesitate to assert that the "Great Future"
of this country, whicb is the cause of ■ so much proloptic enthusiasm,
is to be created mainly in the region to the north of our imag¬
inary line. It includes the "Great West," that land of limit¬
less promise, which has aUvays been regarded as peculiarly the
territory of the '-Future." It is pre-eminently the sphere of "Enter¬
prise," and to-day it is not only the more densely populated and
wealthier of the two sections we are considering, hut contains the
gi-eat manufacturing, banking and commercial centres of the
country as well as the chief ports and cities.

The country to tbe south of this line bas never appealed very
strongly to the imagination of our people. Over its future there
bas always hung, in the popular mind, something of the haze of its
semi-tropical sunshine. Is it not cursed hy its past, and confronted
by a race problem which to all appearances is insolvable? Little of
tbe vigor of the North is supposed to be there, and much of an
enervating spell. It is, of course, au important part of the country,
rowing in the same boat as it were with the North and East and
West; but as Jerrold once remarked on another matter, "rowing
n'ith what different skulls.'"

But the popular conception of the South, which has hitherto pre¬
vailed, must be dropped. However much of truth there may have
been in it in the past, it now no longer squares with facts. Indeed,
the history of the West can show no more marvwlous increase in
wealth than has been made during the past ten years in the section
to tbe soutii of our imaginary line; and the prospect before it has
widened so immensely that the question may to-day be asked seri¬
ously whetiier the " Great Future " of tbis country is not to be
looked for rather in the South than in the Norfch.

A few facts are perhaps needed to support this statement. It has
been taken for granted always that the great agricultural region
is and will be the West; yet, last year, the value of the agri¬
cultural products of the South, which by the way are steadily
becoming more diversifled, was $900,000,000, and the value
of live stock which in 1879 was $393,000,000, about $575,000,000. In
connection with tliis matter the fact should not be overlooked tbat
cotton is the great export of tbis country, the value of it being more
than twice that of wheat, about which financial prophets and
weighers of our prosperity prate so much. During the last fiscal
year $2il7,775,270 worth of cotton was sent abroad, but ouly
$87,000,000 of wheat aud $32,000,000 of corn, so that in om- foreign
trade the South is already by far the greatest factor. Even in the
production of cereals the South is much underestimated, for in the
fields of the State of Kansas alone fully one-tenth of the total pro¬
duct of the entire country is uow harvested.

In manufactures too, the same misconception, or rather misap-
preciation, prevails of the part the Soutb is playing and is destined
to play. It is supposed that the eastern, or at any rate Ihe northern
part of tbe country, will be the chief seat of manufactures in the
future. But'the cotton and iron trades, the two chief industries of
man, are both drifting southward ; and the coarse woolen trade,
at least in certain articles, is shifting from the east to Louisville.
In the last three and a-balf years, 11,000 new industrial establish¬
ments have heen started in the South. In ten years the cotton mills
bave increased in number from 142 to 330, and the spindles from
half amillion tol,b00,000. There are uo..' 214 cotton-seed mills
instead of only forty-five, aud the vahie of tiie product has more
than doubled. In the same time the amount of coal mined annu¬
ally has risen from less than fcwo mUIion tons to<jver twelve millions,
and the production of pig iron from 203,000 tons to 1,.200,OJO tons,
I and finally, the value of property has increaseU ii'om §5j735,000j000