EAL  Estate  Record





AND BUILDERS' GUIDE.





Vol. XXVII.





NEW yoek:, SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1881





No. 685





Published Weekly by The

Real Estate Eecord Association

TERMS:
ONE TEAR, in advance.....$6.00

Commimications should be addressed to

C. W. SWEET, 13T Broadway.

J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager.





The sensational statements in our daily
newspapers respecting the disease and death
rate of the metropolis have had their effect
this spring in scaring people out of the city,
and preventing others from coming here
New York is not an unhealthy city. The*
large death rate is due to the tens of thou¬
sands of invalids who come here from all
parts of the country for treatment. We
have the most famous physicians in the
country, the largest hospitals and the best
medical schools. Our large seafaring popu¬
lation also helps to swell the mortaUty; but a
look at any assemblage of New Yorkers at
the exchanges and churches, will show
that the number of old peoj)le is very
great, or as large as in any other part of the
country. Our streets are not as clean as
they should be. The city is doubtless mis¬
governed, but it is not in the interest of New
York to give the impression to the world, as
our newspapers do, that it is unfit to live in.
The owners of New York realty should re¬
monstrate with the editors of the news¬
papers for maligning the city and injuring
its reputation as a place of residence.

----------------^t^----------------

The Neio Tork Herald, not content with
doing all it could to keep people away as well
as drive them out of the city, by its extrava¬
gant statements of the death rate and ill-
health of New York, on Friday abuses the
landlords and says they were served right
in having so many tenements left vacant on
the 1st of May. This is adding insult to
injury. If the vast real estate interest of
this city should withdraw its patronage from
the Herald, it would leave a gap in its col¬
umns which could be filled with much more
sensible matter than this absurd abuse of
landlords. Strange that newspapers cannot
see that their interests are identical with
those of the city they live in.





The Elevated Road securities have had a
blow between the eyes duiring the past week.
The statement of the Manhattan Company,
calling for remission of taxation, was so
well put, as to make holders very nervous as
to the wisdom of retaining their stock at
high figures. We do not beheve that the
Manhattan system will fail, even if there
should be a default on the first of next July.
Ninety days redemption is permitted, and
in some way Manhattan stock will be kept
alive. In view of the future probabilities of
the elevated system, it would not be a diflS.-
cult thing to sell income bonds or preferred
stock, to. keep the Manhattan Compaoy alive
until such time as the increased busintss
would suffice to pay all the  fixed charges.





The experience of the hard times we have
passed through, shows how rarely common
stock has been wiped out, because of non¬
payment of interest on the bonds. No mat¬
ter what may happen, there will be no wip¬
ing out of Manhattan stock. '





Visitors to Philadelphia and Baltimore
have been struck by the number of pretty
little brick houses, suitable for a small
family, the fronts trimmed with white mar¬
ble and the low stoops of thesame material.
These white front steps are kept scrupulous¬
ly clean and the effect is pleasing. Some¬
how these kind of houses have not been ini¬
tiated in New York so far. We notice, how¬
ever, something of the kind on Madioon
avenue near One Hundred and Sixteenth
street. The white marble trimmings are
quite an ornament to a brick building, but
somehow our climate soon tarnishes white
marble. We have some white marble fronts
on Lexington avenue and Thirty-eighth
street, then there is the Stewart building ;
but they soon become discolored and present
a dingy appearance. Yet we have but few
manufacturers in this cifcy, no flynig coal-
dust, and our atmosphere is generally clear
and sunny, but the fact I'emains that white
marble will discolor under our skies.





CHEAP MONEY AND THE TIMES,
There is a sect of crazy i"ef ormers who are
clamoring for an abolition of all usury.
They claim that money should not have any
value except in direct purchases, and they
appeal to the old Jewish laws for a religious
sanction of their doctrine. If matters keep
on in the way they have been going, it will
not be necessary to cheapen money by law.
For the difficulty to-day in all advanced
commercial nations is to find profitable
employment for money. It goes begging
all the large, wealthy capitals of the world.
Premier Gladstone, in presenting the anmial
budget to Parliament, gave as one reason
for lowering the income tax, the general
unprofitableness of business in Great Britain.
The income paying class had found their
standard of comfort lowered, by the lack of
safe avenues in which to remuneratively
invest their surplus monies. As a conse¬
quence, speculators in England and France
are just now engaged in the dangerous busi¬
ness of blowing up all kinds of company
bubbles. Hundreds of schemes are widely
advertised, promising fortune which really
have no merit whatever, but the shares of
which people buy eagerly in the hope that
perhaps they will turn out well.

In previous numbers of this paper, we
have pointed out why money was cheap,
and the reasons there wer's for believing it
would be still cheaper. Labor and machin-.
ery has created a great deal of surplus wealth
in every modern nation. This extra capi¬
tal of the world, as it may be called, is ren¬
dered immediately available everywhere by
the telegraph. There is no difficulty in the
way of moving it immediately from one
! money cent'e to the other.   As the world





continues to grow richer in actual wealth,
money will necessarily get cheaper. The
ultimate effect will be to increase the value
of everything which returns a fair income.
As all the wealth of the world is got from
the earth by labor, it is safe to predict that
land and labor will in the end profit by the
cheapening of money. The reduction of
interest forces persons, who had hitherto-
fore been idlers, to become producers, and
as the earth is the basis for all the work
done by man, the possession of the soil will
be the most certain of all holdings. While
cheap money3means eventually in this coun¬
try as in England, low rentals, those ren¬
tals will be expressed by the higher value of
buildings ; that is to say, there is no danger
of any reduction of rents in this country,
but house property must, in a time, sell at
figures which wiU not return more than Ay^
or 5 per cent.

Everv indication points to lower prices
for money in this country. Not only is the
volume of our currency increasing, by the
addition of gold and silver ; but credits are
certain to be expanded by the growing
value, taking the country through, of real
estate Ali who are in doubt as to what in-
investments to make, should understand
that nothing is so sure as real property.
Whatever else may go down in market
price, improved property and real estate in
the line of improvement, are certain not
only to advance in intrinsic but in market
value.





Strange that some ambitious, young pub¬
licist does not work for a union of New York
and Brooklyn. The completion of the bridge
will soon practically make both cities one
and a thousand reasons could be given for
putting them under one government. The
mayors elect of both New York and Brook¬
lyn are generally men of whom the munici¬
palities may well be proud. The aldermen
in both corporations quite the reverse.
Would not the union of the two cities, with
the election of say one-half the aldermen on
a general ticket, give us officials of whom
we need not be ashamed ? The government
of this great city would then be a more
important matter than the administi*ation of
any state in the Union. The Mayor of New
York would be the peer of any governor in
the country. We could have better police,
a more efficient street cleaning system, and,
were some civil service reform effected,
more efficient and economical government
than we have ever yet had. The local poli¬
ticians of both cities would naturally op¬
pose this annexation, but the property
interests of NewYork and Brooklyn could
not but approve it. Where is the local
statesman who will take this matter up and
agitate it until earned out ? A monument
will some day be put up to the man who
brought about an annexation of the teiTi-
tory which really belongs to the metropoUs.
If this should be accomplished. New York
in the census of 1890 would be found to have
a population of over 2,000,000.