April 20, 1889





Record  and  Guide.





539





De/0]E1 to f^L ESTME . BuiLOlf/G Af!.cKlTECTJflE .KoUSElfOLD DEQOf^ATIOlJ.

BUsii^ESS Alio Themes op GEfjERAl 1;JT£i\est







ESTABLISHED ■V/'AWCH^l'-i^la6e.







PRICE, PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS.

Published every Saturday.
TELEPHONE,          -          -          ■          JOHN   370,

Communications Bhould be addressed to

C. W. SWEET, 191   Broadway.

/. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager.





Vol. XLIII.





APRIL 30, 1889.





No. 1,101





The Record and GxnoE iviU be published next week as an illus¬
trated Centennial number. It will contain numei-ous maps and
engravings of churches, dwellings, public buildings and stores in
Cidstence in New York City one hundred years ago, with pictures
of the structures occupying the sites to-day. An extra large
edition of this number will be published, which should be
specially attractive to advertisers.





The business of the country caunot be called good, for the West¬
ern farmers are not buying articles of consumption. They are,
however, well employed digging in the fields and opening up the
largest acreage the country has ever known. With anything like
ordinary luck we ought to have an abundance of crops next sum¬
mer and fall. There are many promising factors at work. We
are marketing the largest cotton crop ever grown—probably
7,100,000 bales—upon which our planters have received at least half
a cent a pound more tbau tbey got last year. Then our immense
corn and hay crop of last year is largely increasing our animal pro¬
ducts, as well as giving us the substitute for the short wheat crop,
Oui' corn exports were never so large. We ought to have shipped
a great deal of gold tbis spring, but Europe has taken enough of
our cotton, corn, provisions and securities to pay our large bills
for imported goods.





In the interest of the City of New York and of rapid transit. The
Record and Guide has been doing all it could for years to get the
public and the authorities to consent to sucb extensions and addi¬
tions to the Manhattan system as would add to its usefulness as a
meiius of rapid transit. We neither asked, nor would we have
accepted, any money compensation for our efforts and the expense
we undei-went, as our object was for the public good and nofc for
private gain. With a cui'ious lack of sense and courtesy, tbe
officials of the Manhattan Company have generally treated our
reporters, wheu in search of information, with downright rudeness,
yet our publication was the only one of the New York press to
point out the possibihties of the Manhafctan system to give us more
rapid transit. Our publication of the "loop map" showed tbat
project in its true light, and dispelled many of the preposterous
iUusions created by the Times and other papers. Then our inter¬
views with leading citizens make it very certain that our city press
has been wholly mistaken in thinking tbe public were opposed to
any further extensiou of the Manhatfcan system. When Mayor
Grant told the reporter of the Evening Post that be could not afford
to help the Manhattan Road in any way, in view of the opposition
of the newspapers, he made the first capital mistake of his admiuis-
ti'ation. The discussion now going on will show that oui- citizens
are all very largely in favor of the utiUzation of the "L" roads,
and tbat if tbe Battery Park loop is necessary it will be permitted
on some equitable arrangement betweeu tbe road and the city
authorities.





In our issue of November 17th, shortly after the election, we pre¬
dicted that "Onelion in the path of Mayor-elect Grant will be
the suspicion that he may be helping corporate interests in advo¬
cating certain city improvements, and that when an endeavor is
made further to utilize our elevated railroad system some news¬
paper idiot will howl about paying further ti-ibute to Jay Gould.''
Both of these predictions have come true. We find Mayor Grant
opposing an estension of facilities to the Manhattan Road clearly
because he is afraid of identifying himself with a corporation so
obnoxious to the daily press as is the Manhattan. Hence he bas
given us a rapid transit scheme of his own, admirable in many
of its features, but defective principally in thia, that he has placed
it in opposition to every otber plan proposed for the amelioration of
the New York traveling public. We hope that he hag seen from
. the handling his bill has received in the Legislature tbat the path
auch schemes bave to travel abounds in obstructions, which news¬
paper editorials ar© not powerful enough to remove.   Would it not





be well for him to pursue in this matter a wisely inconsistent
course and aim not merely to please a certain number of biassed
newspaper writers, but to furnish the immediate facilities for inter¬
mural ti-avel so sorely needed by our citizens?





The Mayor's bill may get through this session, but it will liave a
hard time of dt. The Repubhcan majority in both Houses seem to
have conypired to bring a pressure to bear upon the Mayor to influ¬
ence his appointments on the first of May. Of course be ought not,
and probably will not, yield to the demands of tlie politicians; but
he can now see tbe inherent diificulties in the carrying out of his
plan. It involves a time-consuming fight for every inch of pro¬
gress that is made. Tliere is no eud of trouble in getting a rapid
transit scheme into working order. The experience of the '' Arcade "
promoters points its own moral. It would be ten yeare, at least,
before a definite scheme, such as would be the outcome of the
bill, could be in auy kind of shape. Meanwhile, property-holders ou
both sides of the river will have reason to bless the pottering
methods of New York's rulers.





There is really but one thing to do. Let the Manhattan Company
have its loop in the Battery and its esti-a track for through trains on
tbe 3d and Oth avenues. This would add one-third to the carrying
capacity of the Manhattan and give every one a seat, except during
tbe most crowded hours. It would shorten the distance in point of
time between both ends of the island fully twenty minutes. Permis¬
sion being granted, the Manhattan Company could supply these
additional facilities within six months' time. Then we want a cable
system to replace our horse-car facilities; finally, the "Arcade Road"
should be given a charter. A lighted road-bed under Broadway on
solid earth would be the only possible rival to the elevated system.
In connection with the cable road tbere might be built another
elevated structureon tbe Grand Boulevard, as well as on or along the
water front on each side of the city. How much better this would
be than to wait year after year for any underground or viaduct
proposition to be formulated aud carried out.





By the tone of the press it seems that the South and even the
Southwest are thoroughly alarmed at tbe negro problem. Not only
is the colored population increasing much more rapidly than the
white in old States like Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas, but
tbe negro is emigrating rapidly into northern Louisiana, Arkansas,
the Yazoo delta and the Southwest generally. The Africanization
of Mississippi has been especiaUy rapid. It is estimated that next
year's census will show that the negroes outnumber the whites by
at least 350,000 in a population of only 1,563,000. Some authori¬
ties consider these figm-es below the truth. From wbat can be seen
at present the preponderance of fche negro even iu some of the
southwesterly of tbe Southern States is inevitable. The high birth¬
rate, tbe adaptation to climate and the few wants of the colored
race make this well nigh a certainty ; and the dispersion of the
negi-o into States where at present he is uot to be found in very
large numbers is being hastened by the labor agent who every
planting time stimulates emigration from the Carolinas, Alabama
and Georgia into Louisiana, Arkansas, ilississippi and elsewhere.
The planter, of course, believes in negro labor. It is cheap and on the
whole efficient, and to him at least the negi-o problem is no problem
at all. The supposition that prevailed immediately after the war,
that in a state of freedom and in competition with wliites the negro
would disappear, has given place to the ideas of tbe alai-mist in an
opposite direction, wliich will no doubt prove to be equally incor¬
rect. Time has shown that the negro, amid the conditions which
have prevailed since the war in the Soutb, not only is not dis¬
appearing, but, curiously, is becoming more of the negro than be
was a quarter of a century ago. Mulattoes, octaroons and half-
breeds are less numerous than in the days of slavery, and tbe race
is reverting to the pure type. But when we consider the wonderful
adaptability of the social organism there is no reason for alai'm
about the negro problem. Given free play and time it will solve
itself for the best. As Tourgee says: " Do what we will thereis
notliing but patience. It will take time to solve a difficulty which
it took nearly two centuries to create."





The present overcrowded condition of the city school-ljouses and
the fact that on the west side applications for the admission of
children have now to be refused because of the lack of accommo¬
dation is disgraceful. The public is .supposed to be especially
interested in its schools, yet the appropriations for the Police De¬
pai'tment have been increased annually from §3,599,805 in 1878 to
$4,235,867 in 1887, an increase of 63 per cent., whereas the appro¬
priation for the Board of Education, which was $3,400,000 in
1878, is now only ^3,994,0a8, an increase of about 17 per cent. The
growth of population should and does make greater demands upon
the Department of Education than upon the Police Department. It
may be said that in New York the former is more economically
managed than tbe latter ; but the foregoing figures, taken
iu   connection with   the   preseut   lack of   accommodation  for