January SO, 1888





Record  and  Guide.





103





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^                   N\             ESTABUSHED'^ WRpHaiu^ 1868.;^

DeV&teD to ^^E^L EsrwE. BuiLDiKo A^ciCitectui^ .KobsEMoLD DeoqratioN.
■   BusitJESS Alio Themes or CEjJERftl-l;^TEi\EST





PRICE, PER YEAR IIV ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS.

published eva'y Saturday.
TELEPHONE,          -     •     -          -          JOHN  370.

fommunications should be addressed to

C. W. SWEET, 191   Broadway,

T. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager.





Vol. XLIII.





JANUARY SC, 1889.





No, 1,089





Trade reports indicate a partial revival in business. Our real
estate market has been active and buoyant for the season. But
stocks have been dull aud depressed, although tliere were many
factors that were encouraging to the bulls. Money is easy; rail¬
road rates in the West and Southwest are well maintained; the
winter lias been an open one, and the returns from the various
transportation lines show gratifying increases. Then there is an
unusually good demand for bonds of all kinds; yet, notwithstand¬
ing these favorable indications, the stock market proper shows no
signs of animation. Prices have fallen off, and operations are con¬
fined to dealings not particii^ated in by the outside jDublic. The
difficulty is dne to the overbuilding of railroads during the past
three years. Usually periods of excessive constmction are followed
by a panic, but as tlie work was done very largely witli European
money the strain iias been less felt. Still, time is required to digest
the mass of new stocks put upon the market, and hence the hesi¬
tancy of investors and speculative dealers. There is no real dilBculty
except among the newly-built Western and Southwestern lines,
but these affect sympathetically the price of stocks of all the roads
east of the Mississijipi. It is too soou to say that we will not have
an advancing market. February may see a rally in prices, but it
will probably be followed by a broken spring, due to the change iu
the administration and tlie uncertainty as to the future financial
policy of the country.





In attempting to solve tlie rapid transit problem JIayor Grant
will meet witli two formidable obstacles. If he favors the esten¬
sion of the sunken tracks of the Hudson River Road to the Battery
he will be charged with playing into the hands and adding to tlie
profits of a great railroad monopoly. Theu, should he countenance
additional tracks aud extension of tbe elevated system, some
noisy demagogues will raise tbe cry that he is acting as a tool
of Jay Gould's. Yet these two measures are the best that can be
done to give us rapid transit within five years' time. So lie will
have to pretend to favor a new company, which will be met by a
world of obstacles and could not fiu^nish necessary relief for ten
years at least. Oiu- free press, with its liberty of unlicensed
speech, gives characterless fault-finders a chance, by their clamor,
to put a stop to needed public improvements. Mayor Hewitt's
scheme of rapid transit was an admirable one and quite practicable,
but it involved partnership with tlie Central Road, which set the
paper politicians howling. We could have had rapid transit from
48d street lo the Battery ten years ago, but even the courage of old
Commodore Vanderbilt failed him in face of the terrific clamor
of the press and the stump.   WiU it be always thus?





It is a notable fact that in January real estate auction sales have
been held at which the bidding was spirited and prices high.
"We could never see any sense in crowding afl the real estate busi¬
ness of this great city into the spring and fall months. There is
always a market for securities, grain, provision, cotton, petroleum
and other products every secular day iu the year. Real estate is
just as valuable in January as in April or October, aud ought to be
as salable. Duriug the past week there have been some excellent
auction sales and the jirioes obtaiued were quite as good as if the
property was sold in the heig'ht of the season. A lull during the
summer months might be tolerated, and then transactions would
naturally decrease in activity during the holidays; but it wouldbe
to the interest of dealers to keep business as good during the winter
as during the spring and fall months.





Ti-avelers on our railroads will not, we think, suffer by the con-
ti-ol the Pullman Company has secm-ed over the sleeping-car and
saloon-car service of the couutry. They wil! be better served in
every way, and doubtless in time fares will be reduced as they
ought to be. If this is not done voluntarily power will undoubt¬
edly be given the Interstate Commerce Commissiou to make
sleeping-c^r charges more reasonable. The Wagner system will
irfolMCbly join forces wjtb tlj9 Fvillnian Compaiiy, and then there





will be only one vast monopoly for the nation to deal with. It will
be found that better terms for the public can be made in dealing
with one great corporation than iu trusting to an aimless and
unorganized competition of several small palace-car companies,

------------»---------_~

Of course criminals, paupers, insane and diseased persons should
not be pei-mitted to land upon our shores. In trying to put a stop
to this undesirable emigration the Ford bill is all right; but when
it is proposed to keep out of the country would-be emigrants who
hold objectionable opinions ou political aud social subjects that is
quite a different matter. No ablebodied, healthy man or woman
should be excluded. We waut population, and the foreigners give
us about our only supply of domestic servants. What if some of
these people do hold extreme and even dangerous views? That
kind of nonsense does not last long in this country. At any rate
there is no way of being sure what a man believes, and, in nine
cases out of ten, good government will convert the most radical
Communist and make him a good citizen. By all means let us wel¬
come all who can work and add to the wealth of the community.
We might restrict the right to vote to those who can read and
write, but this should apply to natives as well as foreigners.





The Mugwump and Democratic press have been assailing tho
Senate Tariff Bill so vehemently that the average Republican resents
any criticism upon the proposed enactment. Yet, as an entirely
independent journal, we doubt the wisdom of many of the provis¬
ions iu the Senate measure. The replacement of the impost on
sugar by a bounty seems to us au experiment that cannot be com¬
mended. It opens the door for fraud, and increases, unnecessarily,
the force of internal revenue olficers. A subvention in aid of steam¬
ship lines is quite another matter, for though a bounty it involves
no comphcation, as it is a mere addition to tbe pay for postal
service. Ti'ade follows the flag, and hence all commercial nations
but our own have given liberally to their steamship lines to encour¬
age commerce. Our tariff aud other enactments, while helping
manufacturers, are a direct discouragement to our foreign trade,
and it is not fair to help one group of industries at the expense of
another. It is to be regretted that the system of bounties was
introduced iuto any legislation intended to affect om- agricultui'al
products.

Then the building interests as well as other vital industries will
object to the large increase of duties on sheet tin. If it becomes a
law it will increase the cost of every house built hereafter. We
do not produce any tin in this country, and yet raise over §3,000,000
by a customs duty which we now proposes to double. This is not only
a needless tax upon the builder, but upon the immense canning
interests. It unnecessarily enhances the price of all tbe foods put
up for use by the bulk of our population. It is a tax upon kitchen
utensils, makes the myriads of milk cans dearer, and it is a tax
upon the laborers' dinner pails and the food of the infants. There
are other features of the Senate bill quite as objectionable as the
bounty principle and the extra impost on tin.





Party majorities can often be more unwise than individuals.
The Democrats dm'iug the recent session have furnished many in¬
stances of this truth, and now here are the Republicans about to
imitate their bad example. The Republican majorities were,
after all, in the agricultural States; the manufacturing States
did not increase their majorities. Indeed, two of them—-
Connecticut and New Jersey—cast theu- electoral vote for
Mr, Cleveland. Wliat the Republicans should do would be
largely to extend the free list, so as to give manufacturers
cheap, raw material; and then they should have liberalized the
existing tariff so as to remove all cause of complaiut, and thus keep
up a protective tariff which would not be questioned for fifteen or
twenty years to come. It was the raising of the duties of the tariffs
of 1883, under a pretence of reducing them, which gave life to the
agitation which culminated in the Mills bill. An addition to tariff
burdens will only keep alive the agitation, making it the pivotal ques¬
tion in the next Presidential election.





Kings, it is said, should so rule their people as to prepare for
the time wheu kings would not be needed. So tariffs should be so
manipulated as to render them uimecessary wben the industries
they protected were fully established. The principal nations of the
civilized world have combined within the last thirty to fifty years
to take away the monopoly of manufacturing from Great Britain.
The people of France, Germany, the United States and tho British
Pacific colonies are not particularly in love with impost
duties as such, but tbeir people think it desirable, for obvious rea¬
sons, tliat the shop and the factory should be near their farms—
that it is not wise to send raw products tlu-ee to five thousand
miles to be worked up into manufactured goods and sold to them at
a price fixed by a rival nation. Tliis is the feeling which has sus¬
tained tariff legislation. It is not from any desire to help a
hampered class in any community.