EAL Estate Record

AND     BUILDERS'    GUIDE.





Vol. XVII.





NEW YOEK, SATUEDAY, MAY 20, 1876.





No. 427.





Published Weekly by

THE REAL ESTATE RECORD ASSOCIATION

C. W. SWEET...............Pbesident and Tbeasuber

-PEESTON I. SWEET...........Seckexaey.

L. ISEAELS.........................Business Manageb

TEEMS.
ONE TBA.R, in advance....$10 00.
Communications should be addressed to

O.   SV.   S^WEET,
,__^___________            ^^^- 345 and 347 Broadway.

HOW    EAILWAYS   AFFECT   CEN-
TEES OF POPULATION.

Persons interested in real estate or our rail¬
way system should not faH to read tlie two re¬
markable papers in the Atlantic Monthly for May
and June, written by Charles Francis Adams, Jr.
They furnish food for thought, which those
who are about investing would do well to con¬
sider. Indeed, all the previous contributions of
this member of the Adams family on the railroad
system bear marks of great sagacity, enlarged
views, and a perception of the future which is
extremely rare with the prominent publicists of
this country. It is one of the misfortunes of
our American public life that it does not devel¬
op statesmen. We have shrewd politicians,
skillful manipulators, men of great practical
sense in dealing with present emergencies, a few
of fair eloquence, but statesmen in the higher
and larger sense are woefuUy lacking. Take any
of the gentlemen who ate prominently named
for the presidency in both the great parties
and, with, perhaps, two exceptions, none of
them have delivered any speeches which bear
marks of a very high order of mind. It has
not, indeed, been found neoepsary that our
Presidents should be statesmen. Good com¬
mon sense, personal honesty, abiUty to deal
with current events with tact, are about all the
qualities which our people seem to consider,
requisite for the Presidency. Indeed, voters
seem to have generaUy distrusted mere orators;
and our most distinguished speakers—the Web-
Bters, Clays, Bentons, Calhouns, and Sewards—
have failed in their ambition to become Presi¬
dents. Militaiy men, persons unable to make
speeches, who have had a reputation for fair
common sense, are what the American voter
instinctively demands; hence the Harrisons,
Taylors, Lincolns, and Grants, rather than the
great speakers or philosophical pohtical think¬
ers.

But revenons a nos moutons. Charles Prancis
Adams, Jr., is really a philosophical siatesman.
His writings on tha raikoad question are mark¬
ed by.the same high qualities which have made
De ToequeviUe so authoritative a wi-iter on cur«
rent poUtical history. Mr. Adams in his recent
pubUcations points out, with great force and ad¬
mirable clearness, the absurdity of supposing
that the mxiltiplioation of raUroads secures com¬
petition.   The railro^a is a natwal monopoly,





and the whole system cannot thiive unless some
understanding is arrived at, or some combina¬
tion is made with reference to freights and fares.

But the point which principally interests our
readers as New" Yorkers in 'Mr. Adams' vati¬
cinations is the damage which, nshe points out,
is being done to the former great raUroad cen¬
tres by the natural extension of the railway sys¬
tem. The first and immediate effect of new
raih'oads was the enhancement and concentra¬
tion of business in certain gi-eat centres of trade
and commerce. The large cities were built up
at the expense of the smaller communities as
soon as they became termini of raikoads. Chi¬
cago and New York profited more than any other
points in the country by the necessary concen¬
tration of raUroad depots at these two points.

But recently there has been a change. Both
New York .and Chicago are now suffering trom
the more recent extension of railroads. It is
an ominous circumstance for the metropolis
that the opening of the Centennial was signal¬
ized by a train Irom Boston passing aroimd
and avoiding New York, instead of stoppiag
here. Chicago also finds that, in their anx¬
iety for business, merchants in the Eastern
seaports are quite as wjlling to buy at Quin¬
ey, Peoria and Milwaukee, as they are at
Chicago; for they cannot see why Chicago
should exact a tribute on the grain trade of the
West. Business now goes around, and on the
other side of Chicago, and this unification of
the railway syatem will in time destroy the
monopoly of the great railroad centres of the
past. This iu itself is not to be regret-
ed, but we judge that in the not very
distant future the seaport cities will gain
by this necessary discrimination against the
inland cities. If the Liverpool or New York
grain merchant was formerly compeUed to
go to Chicago because the depots for grain
were there, it of course allowed that city to levy
a toU upon the business so transacted. But
shippers have found that they can escape the
taxes which Chicago has put upon the com¬
merce of the Northwest by dealing directly with
the rural grain merchants at their local depols.
The telegraph, wbich first helped the monopoly
of the large cities, is now working against them.
There is nothing to prevent the shipper in New
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore or Boston from
sending to the various smaUer depots to fill up
his orders for grain or cattle, and he is doing so.
The telegraph, in other words, is destroying the
monopoly of the internal railroad cities. This,
by the way, is not Mr. Adams' comment on this
circumstance, but our own. He simply points
out the fact that the raih-oad no longer buUds
up inland ports, but rather helps take away
the cdncenti-ation of business firom any one
quarter. He overlooks, in his admirable pa¬
per, the influence, of the telegraph in destroy¬
ing the moiiopoly of certain localities; but this





universalizing, so to speak, of trade as dis¬
tinct from localizing does not apjply to seaport
cities. The grain and other products to be
sent abroad must, after all, come to the seacoast,
and the four large ports on the Atlantic coast
will necessarUy, in time and as the country
grows, become more and more important as
points of import and export. With the new
avenues of con>munication and the facilities of
telegraphing, there is no necessity for the grain
of the Northwest being stored in Chicago.
Once on the cars, it may as well come right
through to the East. But it must be deposited
at a shipping port, and hence we judge that New
York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and
perhaps some other ports whose trade has not
yet been developed, will profit enormously
by the pioductions of the West. The only
three other ports which are certain to have a
great future are San Francisco, New Orleans
and Galveston. San Francisco will grow with
tho growth of the Pacific trade; New Orleans
will regain much of her old traffic as soon a> the
mouths of the Mississippi are accessible to ocean
vessels; whUe Galveston, with the new improve¬
ments they are making, will have twenty feat of
water on its bar, and will have bahind it a coun¬
try full of vegetable, animal and mineral wealth.
Galveston is destined to a far greater future than
New Orleans, and wiU in time compete with
Baltimore and Boston, if not with New York.
This railroad question is one which vitaUy in¬
terests aU New York property dealers, and it
should be considered firom every point of view.

------------------*--*^h *     ----------—

GOLD AND SILVEE.





One of the reasons for the hard times which
affects all civilized nations to-day is the substi¬
tution in so many countries of gold alone as the
unit in place of gold and silver. The demon¬
etizing of sUver in Germany and several of
the other continental coimtries has had the ef¬
fect of greatly enhancing the value of gold, or, in
other words, in reducing prices, making the
gold doUar purchase far more than it would when
the two metals were available for currency. This
reverses the whole course of modem industry
and banking. Our banking and commercial
systems have heretofore been on the side of the
debtor class. The various devices of paper
money and bills of exchange led to the enhance¬
ment of prices by making more numerous the
tokens by which wealth was ex«hanged. We
read with wonder of how in the times of the Tu-
dors and Plantagenets that a few pennies would
buy a sheep. This was possible in a poor
community where coin'was scarce, and paper
money, bank notes, and biUs of exchange were
aU unknown. The stock of gold and sUver in
the world was smaU, and a very little money went
a great ways; but from the invention of bills of
exchange by the Italian Jews towards the close
ashes of such a size would be imposing,   I hope