Real  Estate   Record





AND BUILDERS' GUIDE.





Vol. XXVI.





NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1880.





No. 649





Published Weekly by

TERMS.
ONE YEAR, in advance.. ..SIO.OO.

Communications should be addressed to

C.   W.   SWEET,
No. 137 Broadway

NEW YOEK, LOOK TO YOUR LAURELS.

A WARNING TO PROPERTY OWNERS—SHALL
OUR CAPITAL BE MADE USEFUL ONLY BY THE
STURDY YEOMEN OP THE WEST—AN INTER¬
VIEW THAT OUGHT TO BE STUDIED BY ALL
OF OUR CAPITALISTS.

Tlie good old principle that -'to know thy¬
self is the beginning of all wisdom," ought
also to be applied to the knowledge of one's
country. Such knowledge certainly is also
the beginning of that country's prosperity.
How many of our New York property
owners of to-day have a correct idea of the
vastness and greatness of this country, of
which our own city is tlip metropolis ? Few,
very few, indeed. Many of them have never
gone west of the lakes, and when they
travel at all they visit foreign lands and
study foreign habits. Men of pluck and enter¬
prise, on the contrary, combine leisure with
observation, so as to see for themselves the
various channels through which a nation
passes to the pinnacle of prosperity. During
the summer now about ending, we rejoice to
say, that quite a number of successful busi¬
ness men have made extended Western tours,
and they have returned wiser if not better
men, with more exalted ideas of their coun¬
try's actual greatness and future prosperity,
and, what is more, they return with a knowl¬
edge which, if properly diffused, cannot fail
to have a salutary influence upon a class of
our population too apt to let things take their
course. We are led to these remarks owing
to the views expressed to the writer by a gen¬
tleman of intelligence and observation, who
liad just returned from a three months West-
em trip. Having greeted him with the re-
uiark: "I suppose you are glad to be back in
New York," he replied, "Yes, because this
is my home; but, as a business man, I as¬
sure you the contrast between this city and
some of these Western towns is very strik¬
ing. There appears to be a lack of snap here,
and an air of old f ogjasm which is just now
to me very oppressive."

NEW YORK NOT UP TO THE MARK.

" You are indeed well surfeited with West¬
ern ideas," said the writer.

" And why should I not be ? I made up
my mind to travel with my eyes wide open,





to study the country through which I was
passing, and to gather ideas from the men
residing in the various States, and my gen¬
eral conclusion is that we here in New York
are the least enterprising people in the Union.
Aside of the.'lack of snap,' to which I have
just alluded, as coming under my observation
in business circles, it strikes me also that no-
wliere do the rich and poor drift apart as
much as here in New York, and the result is
an absence of city pride, which can alone
make a city great. In Western cities capi¬
talists and workingmen take pride in their
respective cities, and in their various spheres
co-operate for the great and good of their
particular localities. Where is there here in
New York a leader in improvements whom
other capitalists are anxious to follow ? In
fact, there are no leaders at aU compared to
the sturdy, enterprising men of Chicago,
Cincinnati and other places."

HOW OUR CAPITALISTS ARE REGARDED.

"They must have made an exceedingly
favora,ble impression upon you," said the
writer.

*' So they have. The average Western man
has a more intelligent idea of the resources
and greatness of this country than your Wall
street bankers or up-town property owners.
They are, for instance, constantly amused at
the mental somersaults of some of New
York's financial writers. These Western
men are tireless, enthusiastic workers, they
see themselves, so to speak, grow over night,
they know everything connected with their
work, only they do not know how to Uve.
Metaphysics and sesthetics find no room there.
These men only attend to politics and busi¬
ness, and business and politics. That is all;
and they, per force, become excellent judges
of the science of government. They look
upon us New Yorkers as a sort of effete class,
and say, ' You have what I need, money ; I
want it for our enterprises ©ut here, and I
respect you for it, because you possess it, but
that is all you do possess ; when it comes to
men, we have them out here.' At first such
remarks sounded strange to me, but when, in
one city as weU. as another, I was reminded
how much nature had done for New York
more than for any other city in the Union,
and how little men of capital and enterprise
had done for it, I held my breath and listened
again. ' You have a thousand places fit for
amusement along your seaboard and in your
subm-bs,' I was told, 'any one of which
would be a fortune to us if we had it. Coney
Island had to invite you for a century before
you knew enough to go there. Look at your
miserable docks, for instance. Do you im¬
agine that if Western men had charge of the
great port of New York they would be in





such a scandalous condition, anda waterfront
that is a disgrace to a country which pre¬
tends to be a model one, and which really
make a painful impression upon a foreign
traveler when he lands on these shores V I
could not help but give assent to my West¬
ern friends' remarks, and many of them add¬
ed : ' Never mind, wait awhile, just now we
have plenty to do here, but we will shortly
come over and do that Avork for you. West¬
ern men have already done big work for you,
and they will do more. They are now build¬
ing your Hudson River Tunnel, Western men
have built your elevated roads and your
mammoth Rockaway hotels, and the time is
not very far distant when we will do some
more work for you.' And so from one sec¬
tion of the West to the other I had to listen
to criticisms of'New York's want of enter¬
prise not at all flattering to our local pride.
Wherever I went, except in a few localities,
I saw not only progress, but the grit to secure
and hold fast to progress.

CHICAGO'S PLUCK.

"Look at Chicago, for instance, It is a
beehive. Work, work, incessant work, and
a virtual taskmaster for the entire West.
Rich or poor, it is one vast community, firm¬
ly imbedded upon the cornerstone of labor,
and going forward with such mighty strides
that I could almost not believe what I saw
with my own eyes. I was informed, how
correctly I cannot vouch for, that the sales
of one dry-goods house this year surpass
those of any other dry-goods house in the
world. Now what is the result? Where
only a few years ago the city of Chicago
could with difficulty place her bonds in the
Eastern States at 10 per centum, she now has
secured a loan from her own capitalists at
4)^ per centum, after having refused the
same amount from Boston capitalists at Sj^.
There is, of course, also quite a boom in real
estate, and any number of parcels of prop¬
erty have this year been sold at double the
price of last year. Everywhere in that city
new buildings are going up, and there is no
let up to the improvements that follow one
another in rapid succession."

CINCINNATI'S COSMOPOLITAN CHARACTER.

" Did you find the same spirit of enterprise
prevailing in other Western cities ? " asked
the writer.

"Yes, I did, in several places, notably in
Cincinnati. Here is a city, which, at the
outset of the war did not know anything
about manufactures. It is to-day besmeared
and begrimed with the smoke of her factory
chimneys. Her citizens found then that
their trade with the South was cut off, and
they went to work with a wUl, resulting in
her being to-day, one of the largest manu-