_    December "T,  1888





Record  and  Guide.





1625







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Vol. XLIV.





DECEMBER 7, 1839,





No. 1,134,





For the immediate futm'e the course of the aiarket will depend
largely upon the actions of Congress, The larger issues before our
natioual Legislature this year all have au important economic bear-
ing, and pricos will vary according to the temper or tbe result of
the debates. As definite action is not likely in any case, the effect
will probably be to make operators hesitate, and consequently to
smother for a time any active speculation. Thia will be particularly
the case during December—a month that is occupied in intro¬
ducing bills which may or may not come up for discussion,
but the simple presence of wliich on the calendar will make
a person uneasy. December is generally a month in Wall street of
low prices, and tbis year is not likely to prove an exception,
althougb the irregularity of the market throughout the fall does
not encoui'age one to make predictions too confidently. Business
throughout the country has an extremely favorable outlook, and
this week the dry-goods interest in certain lines of domestics, which
of lato has been extremely dull, is looking up, Tbe export trade
with China, which botb Republicans and Democrats have united to
kill with their hostile legislation, has been of late extremely unsat¬
isfactory, and the Eastern mills have missed their usual trade with
this empire. It is to be hoped that the action of the Cliamber of
Commerce, at its meeting on Thursday last, will bring to the minds
of Congressmen the necessity of legislating for something besides

votes,

----------■----------

Originally it was intended that the message from the President
to Congress should be distinctly of a higher character thau a polit¬
ical manifesto. It has come, however, to be regarded as so purely
■ a party document, tliat, as a nile, it receives little but party
applause or party denunciation. President Harrison has been no
more fortunate with his message and the treatmeut it received
than his predecessors w^ere with theirs. Before his message
appeared it could have been foretold with certainty that, no matter
what the character of it was, the Republican press andthe support¬
ers of the administration would ^bail it as "a masterly document,"
or something of that kind; "straightforward," of course, "cour¬
ageous and statesmanlike." Democratic criticism, it could with
equal certainty have been predicted, would find it " the weakest
message that has ever been given to an expectant and intelligent
people; platitudinous, vague aud {naturally) insincere." In a
general way this is what has been said about President
Harrison's message. The Tribune, to take an example, says:
" President Harrison's first message is a plain, candid and entirely
unpretentious review of public affaii's. Its most striking charac¬
teristic is an absence of pretense, exaggeration or rhetorical flour¬
ish, and there is no attempt to enlarge upon especial topics for the
sake of catching temporary popular applause or partisan advan¬
tage. It has the tone throughout of conscious strength and sin¬
cerity, and of profound conviction that the people will unwaver¬
ingly sustain the national policies to which they gave approval
by their votes one year ago," "While the Sun views the message in
this pleasant way : " For originality, grasp of public questions and
sense of perspective in the statement of the condition of national
affairs. General Harrison's message compares unfavorably with the
first message sent to Congress by Mr, Hayes twelve years ago.
This is saying rather a severe thing about General Harrison, but ifc
is sti-ictly true. The weakest man that ever occupied the White
House had more to offer to Congress in the way of information
and suggestion, and offered it with a more vigorous individuality
of thought and expression than the present Chief Executive of the
United States can exhibit or command. * * * Nobody
would be gladder than the Sun to discover in the President's flrst
important State paper the faintest sign of intellectual promise, the
least indication of a power to rise above the deadly dull line of
mediocrity. Where is there such a sign? * * * The rest
is a scrapbook of comiDaratively unimportant facts. The wearied
eye passes from paragraph to paragraph of geographical, historical
and statistical statement and platitudinous comment. The mes¬
sage is amorphous, Loug as it is, it might have been twice as long
pn the same principle of construction, and neither more nor less





valuable. Or the « hole of it might bave been left unwritten with¬
out the slightest detriment to the peace and honor of the country
or the prosperity and security of the people, and without the
slightest loss to tlie Fifty first Congress, now assembled for the
business of legislation."

--------•---------

•This kind of criticism is, of course, perfectly familiar to the
Ijublic. But the fact that this is practically the only kind of criti¬
cism accorded to Presidential messages, that they have come to be
regarded solely as partisan utterances, and are without weight
with the public or influence M'ith Congress, raises the question
whether it would not be wise to dispense with the Presidential
message, or at any rate dispense with it in its present form. It
may safely be said, that no Presidential iiiessage of recent years
succeeded in changing the opinion of a single voter on any one
subject, neither has legislation of any kind been promoted or
hastened, nor has the attention of the country been drawn to con¬
sider, as otherwise it would not have been considered, a single
question of }Kiblic policy. The fact is, the Presidential message has
become merely a lengthy and usually most uninteresting restate
ment of the views of the ]iolitical party successful in the previous
campaign. Nothing new is proposed or disclosed. The cabinet
has nothing to say that the party has not already proclaimed from
one end of the country to the other. The only difference is, that in
the message and the reports of the Secretaries, tbe vivacious polit¬
ical tone is missing, and is replaced by a style that more closely
resembles that of an annual report of a pious missionai-y society

than auy thing else.

__-------«----------

President Harrison's message is of this character ; It presents the
parly view of the Behring-Straits difficulty, the Samoan treaty, the
silver question, tariff revision, the reduction of the surplus by
repealing the tax on tobacco and the tax on alcohol used in the
arts, the Dependent Pension bill, the Blair educational scheme,
Southern elections and subsidies. What is said on these matters is
mainly in the nature of generalities. They ai-e not as cogent or as
convincing as what was said on the same subjects during the
last campaign. The only new recommendation that tbe President
makes is tbat to raise the dignity of our ministers in Bolivia, Para-
quay, Uruquay, Hayti aud the Hawaian Islands, and that to estab¬
lish an intermediate court below the Supreme Court, to have
jurisdiction over a certain class of cases. The last recommendation
is excellent, and a bill should be inti-oduced at once into Congress
to carry it into effect. Nothing referred to iu the message is of any
greater importance. It is to be regretted tbat the President did not
ignore party exigencies and discountenance, or at least be silent
concerning, the Dependent Pension bill. This is perhaps tbe most
offensive raid on the National Treasury of recent times, and the
indiscriminate bounty it extends has been as roundly denounced by
Republican journals and the self-respecting element in the G, A.
R, as by any others. While the President is favorably disposed
towards silver, what he says is not decided enough to please silver
men, though, as Secretary Windom points out in hi'^ report, which
by tbe May is one of the best that has ever been submitted to
Congress, there is very little that can be done under the conditions
that exist at this moment to restore silver to its former position.
The Treasury purchases of silver have not prevented the price from
declining within the last ten years from nearly 55 pence an ounce
to an average price of 43.49 pence during the fiscal year euding
last June.





Mr, John Beverley Robinson has received a great deal of
censure for certain statements made ui a minority report of
the Committee of the Architectural League, in which he declared
himself not only against the supposition at tbe basis of the building
laws, viz,: that the State is theoretically justified in interfering
with the property rights of citizens when such rights implied the
erection of buildings endangering tbe life, health and happiness of
their occupants, but asserted that it was the " duty of an architect
to evade the law in the interests of his client," This is certainly a
most astoundiug statements—one which can be excused only by the
evident sincerity of the man who made it. Mind you, architects
are not merely justified in evading the law, but it is their duty to
do so just as it is their duty to fear God and shame the devil. Every
architect who does not do so, provided the interests of his clients
warrant the evasion, is an immoral mau. Conversely every lean
and hungry Bnddensieck in the city is treading the narrow path of
righteousness. We are not sorry that Mr. Robinaon has had the
courage to make tills statement, for it simply shows to what an
extreme a fanatical adherence to the doctrine of laissez faire may
bring a man.    No mere time-server is John Beverley Robinson,





It is difficult, however, to criticise his statement good-hu-
moredly. The Times has commented on it in a way that was more
denunciatory than critical, and the Committee on the Building
Laws has doubted even whether it deserved the notice of censure.
For our part we should like to see a further elucidation of such