August 15, 1885





The  Record  and  Guide.





903





THE   RECORD   AND   GUIDE,

Published every Saturday.

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Vol. XXXVI.





AUGUST 15, 1885.





No. 909





The correspondence between Messrs. Pender, Green, Field and
Gould, published by the Western Union Telegraph Company,
makes entertaining reading for spectators. But for parties engaged
in competing telegraph enterprises it will not furnish much enter¬
tainment. It furnishes one more exposure of the diflSculties of
competition in fields where the new competitor can have no local
territory of his own to pre-empt, and where he must compete unsup¬
ported against perfected organization, great resources and an
established business. Fortunately for the country the telegraph
interests, though large, are not like the railroad interests—over¬
shadowing ; and whoever suffers iu the battle now in progress
between competing lines the general movement of trade will not be
very seriously affected. One thing should be clear. Two strong
and equally well established telegraphic companies would never
lead to che.ap telegraphy. They would combine to maintain rates,
and it will be only while one company is weak and struggling for life
that the public can look for cheaper service. Whether cheaper
service, temporarily, and at the expense of financial demoralization
is worth while is another question.





The propensity of Jiuman nature to get possession of property
without giving an equivalent in any sort of hard labor is illustrated
again by the parties who propose to settle down on a comfortable
estate valued at $660,000,000 in the middle or Hailem section of
this city. Claims so faint and indefinite that they have been per¬
mitted to lie dormant for nearly two centuries would not ordinarily
be thought a very good basis for a law suit in which there would
be a trifle of $660,000,000, backed up by several generations of
possession, pledged for the defence. But the claimants for this
Harlem estate are perhaps people of sufllicient leisure and young
enough in years to begin a long chase for a fortune. There is a
story told of a naval officer who entertained his companions at the
mess table, when at sea, with fabulous stories about a fictitious
horse, claimed to be in his possession, until he so wrought upon his
own credulity that, on the ship arriving m Boston, he went at once
to a horse furnishing establishment and bought a saddle. Some¬
thing of this sort must occur in the experiences of most of these
claimants for large properties. There is hardly a great city in the
Union not half held in claimant's fee simple by some crank.





Mr. Dorman B, Eaton seems to have an idea that his function is
to take charge of all the affairs of this Republic. This idea ought
to be dispelled in the interest, among other things, of Civil Service
Reform. Mr, Eaton's latest performance is his most surprising.
He had the impudence to call on Surveyor Beattie and lecture him
privately about the manner in which he conducted his oflSce, Mr.
Beattie snubbed him, very properly, by refusing to hear any unof¬
ficial criticisms from hira. It is an old saying, that to get anything
done which nobody has a strong personal interest ia doing, you
must get a man who has not a well-balanced mind, and
who is therefore given to riding hobbies. Mr. Eaton's hobby
would be a more useful and meritorious hobby if his rider
understood himself better. But Mr. Eaton must not be permitted
to take charge of all the public departments simply because he
means well and is zealous. One of these days, if he keeps on, he
will get himself in collision with President Cleveland, and when
that happens he will be very much surprised.





About the worst piece of bungling in the local transit sys¬
tem in New York and Brooklyn may be found in the connection
between the elevated railway system of the two cities and the
bridge. The trustees have puzzled over the New York terminus
until, in apparent disgust and despair, they have adopted about the
worst suggestion for an improvement that could have been offered;
and now we hear that they are about to patch up a still more incon¬
gruous and clumsy device for making a connection with the rail¬
way on the other side of the river.* Yet the elevated railroads in
both cities were located long after the plans for the bridge were
made, md there is no good reason why th9 different ptnicturefi





were brought together so badly. Posterity may be able to unravel
this tangle, and secure something symmetrical and consistent; but we
begin to despair of the present generation. By the way, there
appears to be a great lack of gumption in New York, The only
man who seems to possess this quality in excess is the Hon, Jacob
Sharp, of Bowling Green and Central Park, and he is being perse¬
cuted by the poet of the Public Works Department for his
advanced ideas. The marriage between New York and Brooklyn,
celebrated at the inauguration of the bridge, is proving to have
been a very left-handed alliance.





The British government is negotiating with the United Statesand
other countries to establish an international parcels post; in other
words, to organize a system similar to our American express busi¬
ness, by which goods and wares weighing less than ten pounds can
be sent in the mails to all parts of the earth. The inland parcels
post in England has proved a great success. In two years the num¬
ber of parcels increased from 15,000,000 to 37,000,000. The system
has recently been extended to all the colonies of Great Britain. It
is the wish of the government to reduce the cost of these packages,
but the English railway companies, although they receive half the
gross receipts of this immense business, are unwilling to reduce the
tariff of charges and are, in consequence, to be disciplined by act of
Parliament, which has a right to fix a rate and leave the decision
of its justice to arbiters. Lord John Manners, the Tory Post¬
master-General, is authority for the statement that a test was made
to ascertain which was the most efficient service—that of the govern¬
ment or the private express companies. The result was altogether
in favor of the postoffice, a fact that will astonish some Americans,
who seem to think that nothing government can do but what can
be much better and more cheaply done by private enterprise, and
yet who have before their eyes every day an example of the con¬
trary in our postoffice compared with our express service. An
increase of the parcel post business between nations would be great
public benefit and an advantage to trade; but, after all, extensions
of commerce will advantage foreign nations more than the United
States, as we have no steamships on the ocean away from our own
coast.





Many persons who were informed no longer ago than last spring,
on the faith of the daily press, that the entrance to New York har¬
bor from the sea was hereafter to be kept open at small expense, by
means of a hydraulic plow, will regret to learn that the new dredge
has proved a failure. Colonel Gillespie's report in favor of the
jetty system, to be perfected at a cost of |6,000,000, revives the sub¬
ject of harbor improvement on a grand scale, and makes the day
when the shoaling of the channels shall cease to be a matter of pub¬
lic concern again seem distant. But, in the naeantime, any visitors
to the lower bay may watch the long line of garbage scows going
out and in and dumping material enough, were it not for the nat¬
ural action of the tides and the force of several imprisoned rivers,
to hermetically seal the harbor from foreign invasion in a few
months. It will not be creditable to the city of New York to
continue this operation until Congress is forced to interfere, and
pass a law forbidding the city from damaging her own harbor.





It is strange we have no street cars in New York propelled by
compressed air. In Nantea, France, this motive power has been
tested for six years, and the success has been eo marked that the
** Mekarski " invention, aa it ia called, has just been introduced into
London, on the Caledonian line, where it had been tested for two
years before being endorsed. The pressure is 450 pounds to the
square inch, and the air is forced through hot water when the
reservoirs in the cars are being charged. With this motor the cars
could be run twenty-five miles an hour, but the city ordinance
restrict them to eight miles. The first cost of these air-driven cara
is very heavy, but the saving in running them more than makes up
the difference in a short time. There is, of course, a saving in the
purchase of horses, feed, care of stable, etc. The street cars are
like the ordinary ones, except that the floor is further above the
pavement 80 as to allow apace for the machinery under the car.
All the London papers commend these air-driven tramway cars
warmly, and they ought to be tested in this city.





A mugwump morning journal says the contest in New York
State this fall should be to see which party can put forward the
best candidates for legislative positions. But has not this been the
consideration at every State election in the past, and has it not
been found impossible to select wise and incorruptible State
senators and assemblymen ? It is quite beyond the powers of the
voters to cast their ballots for the best men. The party machines
put their own representatives in the field, and in nine cases in
ten the voter has to choose between two men equally unfit, so he
votes for his party candidate and a pretty mess he generally makes
of it. The fact is, we need in the State what we have partially
fiecuj-e<1 tor "^^w York Q,nd Brooklyn—greater execi;tivo responr^i-