September 11, 1886





The   Record and   Guide.





1119





THE   RECORD   AND   GUIDE,

Published every Saturday.

191 Broad^w^sL-v, I^Q". "Y.

Onr Teleplione Call Is      ...      .





money which recommends him to the favor of the machine poli¬
ticians. He has no special fitness for the position of chief magis¬
trate of this city.





JOHN 370.





TERMS:

ONE YEAR, in advance; SIX DOLLARS.

vommunications should be addressed to

C. W, SWEET, 191 Broadway.

J. T. LIKDSEY, Business Manager.





Vol. XXXVIII.       SEPTEMBER 11, 1886.





No. 965.





The most hopeful sign of the times is the dullness of speculation
in all the leading exchanges and the remarkable activity in the
general business pf the country. Stocks are strong and ought to
see higher figures, but the general public keeps away from Wall
street, while the Cotton, Produce and Petroleum exchanges are no
longer the scenes of eager strife between excited brokers. Money
has ruled easier in the loan market during the past week, but if
the activity in general business continues we may again see the
high rates which obtained in August. The cotton crop has got to
be moved, and the money to do it will come mainly from our New
York banks. The railroad returns are remarkably large, and the
demand comes fr^m every quarter for more freight cars. It is
evident now that the transportation liues will have all they can do
up to the close of the present crop year. The heavy building
movement underway is undoubtedly adding to the business of the
roads, who have to transport the lumber and much of the material
used in the construction of new edifices. Altogether the business
outlook is very promising.





It has been repeatedly said in these columns that war would in
all probability break out in Europe immediately on the death of
Kaiser Wilhelm. This fact is the key to the situation in South¬
eastern Europe to-day which is so puzzling to the writers on our
daily press. Bismarck, the Crown Prince, Germany, Austria and
Great Britain have been ready and eager for war, to beat back
Russia from Constantinople as well as in Central Asia. This view
is borne out in the following extract from a dispatch in the Times
from its well-informed London correspondent:

How much the aged Kaiser's friendship for the Romanoffs bequeathed to
Mm on the deathbed of his father has done during the last thirty years to
pres""rve peace between Germany and Russia will not be known till the
inner history of the Russian Court is some day revealed. But every
informed person believes it to have been the one controlling feeling of the
old sovereign's life which even Bismarck and the Crowa Prince have been
unable to override. It is due to this deep pers mal feeling of the Kaiser
jthat Germany has so often swallowed almost insufferable humiliations from
Russia and so often accepted the mission of doing Russia's dirty work. It
is universally felt that the essential preliminary of any rupture of the
triple alliance would be to convince the Kaiser that Alexander III. is an
unworthy successor to his grandfather, whom the old Kaiser so loved. If
anything could do that it would be .-just such a letter as the Czar, in his
sulky wrath, was decoyed into writing to the German officer on the Bul¬
garian throne.

Our readers, keeping this fact in mind, can understand why it
is there may be no war on the Eastern question during the life of
the present Emperor of Germany. The New York daily news¬
papers have been inventing all kinds of theories of what has been
going on in Bulgaria, overlooking the above explanation, which is
the true one.





The list of candidates for Mayor is enlargening. Andrew H.
■Green has been suggested. No one is better posted than he on the
needs of our local government, while his honesty is unimpeach¬
able. But he is not a popular man, and has made quite an unne¬
cessary number of enemies. Notwithstanding his services to this
community, when he ran for Alderman-at-large the vote he polled
was less than that of his party. Thomas C. Acton has also been
mentioned. He, too, would make an admirable Mayor, for during
all his active life he has held executive positions, which he has
filled with credit tp himself and with benefit to the community.
He would not, however, be popular with the liquor interest; for
when the Sunday liquor law first went into force he was president
of the Police Board, and, with the co-operation of Superintendent
Kennedy, the law was rigidly carried out. It is absurd to say that
even a prohibitory law could not be enforced in New York city.
Mr. Acton showed that liquor selling could be stopped one day in
the week, then why not every day if officials such as lie were armed
with'authority to see that tlie law was obeyed? Levi P.Morton is
also in the field as a candidate for Mayor on the Republican ticket.
Unfortunately this gentleman has been named for so many differ-
,mt offices that a well-founded  suspicion exists that  it   is  his





Theodore Roosevelt has been pressed so earnestly for Mayor" that
to get him out of the way the Republican politicians talk of run¬
ning him for Congress. While Mr. Roosevelt would make a con-,
scientious and intelligent representative his proper place would be
at the head of a city ticket for Mayor. All his public training fits
him peculiarly tor that position. At the same time something
should be done to raise the character of our Congressmen. New
York makes a poor showing at the national capitol. The news that
S. S. Cox proposes to resign his diplomatic employment at Con¬
stantinople to contest an east side Democratic district this fall is,
we hope, true. Mr. Cox has defects of character and has not
always voted in the way we wished he would do, but he is a man
of brains and would be a representative we need not be ashamed

of.   Persons like Tim Campbell should be remanded to private life.

--------•--------

Goethe saw but one battle. It was Valmi, where the insubor¬
dinate French revolutionary army under Dumourcez met and •■
defeated the admirably trained troops disciplined in the school of
the great Frederick. Afterwards, when asked what he thought of
the fight, the greatest literary authority in the German language
said: '' I witnessed a battle which marked an epoch and ushered in a
new era." The daily press has recorded the fact that on the 6th of
September the labor unions turned out in procession in all the large
cities of the Union. They aggregated in numbers hundreds of
thousands. We have had parades of the trades before, but they
made their appearance in political processions and were intended
to help or hurt politicians advocating protection or free trade. This
typified the fact that in our past history the industrial classes sub¬
ordinated their interests to those of the politicians. But the great
parades of last Monday were avowedly non-politi^'.al. Labor glori¬
fied itself. The working people announced that they were organ¬
ized to advance their own interests, which have a social rather

than a political aim in view.

—-------•--------

Does this procession of the trades, like the battle of Valmi, mark
a new era in the internal history of the country ? Will the vast
mass of wage-receivers, who comprise 99-100 of the voters of the
country, hereafter assume the mastership in the politics of the
nation? The most intelligent of them are already organized into
trades unions; and then there is another organization powerful in
numbers, embracing all classes of the working people, known as
the Knights of Labor. Will these organized masses of working
people hold together on election day ? If they do they are masters
of the situation, for they have organization and numbers, while
the capitalist class, outside of the corporations, have no unity of
leadership or action. Heretofore the historic parties, into which
the country has been divided politically since the adoption of the
constitution, have been able to hold the masses in opposing camps,
and, on election day, the workingmen became Federals, Whigs,
Republicans, or Democrats, and forgot that they had any special
interests of their own to look after. These great political organic
zSitions were often dominated by powerful pecuniary interests,
The slaveholders were once all-powerful in the Democratic party.
The manufacturing interests are a controlling force in the two
existing political organizations. The coming elections will show
whether the organized wage-receivers are prepared to break with
their old party associates and set up a new political organlzatiou
of their own. Should they do so it will mark a new beginning iri
the domestic history of the country.





It is an ominous circumstance that the person chiefly honored by
the New York trades unions was Henry George, who was officially
asked to view the procession. This man has achieved distinction
by writing a book to show that all the poverty in the world is due
to the private ownership of land. His one panacea for the poverty
and physical misery of mankind is the exploitation of all who hold
property ih land, the government to be the sole owner hereafter.
Mr. George's work is brilliantly written, and is a very destructive
criticism of the theories of the political economists. The work has
been widely circulated in Europe as well as in this country, but
Mr. George's radical panacea for poverty has not been deemed of
any value by any school representing the best thought of the age.
Should the city and factory workingmen commit themselves to
this land theory it would array all the land-owners, and they are
very enormous m this country, on the side of the employers and
capitalists, but it is very significant that in the State platforms put
out by both parties recently, planks are inserted intended to placate

the laboring masses.                                                          •-

--------•--------

Well, the Mayflower has won one of the three races, and the
Galatea will doubtless be discomfited in the other trials, but what
good wiU come of it ? It will be a cheap triumph over England, as
showing the superiority of our sailing vessels at'a period in the
history pf modern commerce when vessels with sails are obsolete.