November 15,1890





Record  and Guide.





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Bi/5i»(ESS Alto Themes of GiftEnfiV I^tc^est

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TKIiEPHONE,               .              .              •              CJORTLANDT 1870,

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J. T. LINDSEY, Busineas Manager.





Vol. XLVI,





NOVEMBER 15, 1890.





No. 1,183





WALL STREET is trying to recover from the eflFects of one of
these panics which recur at varying intervals but with
unvaryiug certainty. The crisis cannot be said to have brought to
light rotten spots of any importance in our own financial condition.
The one bank wbich failed has apparently been mismanaged, but
large private firms which went under had been weakened by the
tightness of money, which embarrassed them as large borrowers
whose collateral was none of the best. Credit, however, was
shown to be in a sound condition, and the prompt relief afforded
by the action of the Clearing House Association restored confidence
immediately. The strained condition of the money market has
been the principal source of weakness in our business situation. It
was for this reason that the advance in the Bank of England's rate
of discount affected us so unfavorably. Our country has been
engaged in the process of locking up its circulating capital in fixed
improvements. Building has been very active, using large
amounts of capital. The enormous consumption of iron also shows
to what extent our available resources were being rendered inac¬
cessible for quick returns or prompt concentration. Concomitant
with this, England began to sell u» our securities whenever the
market would take them. That country had lost so much money
in South America tbat English investors were obliged to realize on
their securities in order to strengthen their position. Prices cannot
recover at this moment, because selling orders are jioured into our
market from abroad immediately they begin to show any strength.
The precarious nature of English finances is best shown by the fact
that the Bank of England has been obliged to borrow £3,000,000
from the Bank of France to tide over the crisis—a fact, we believe,
unparalleled in financial history. It is thus that England is gather¬
ing the fruits f.«f her monometallic policy, which deprives her busi¬
ness of the use of one of the metals. . In the emergency her finan¬
ciers are obliged to appeal to bimetallic France, whose immense
stores of both gold and silver give her a strength which
the finances of England lack. The London market continues to be
the chief menace to our own. The determined efforts being made
to restore rates to a paying basis have better prospects of accom¬
plishing something in the near future than at any time for some
years past. So many prominent capitalists are earnestly working
for a solution, that some more binding agreement than the last
will probably be formulated. Everything, however, will be uncer¬
tain until tbere is a better assurance of an easy money market in
London. Probably the legitimate manufacturing interests of this
country were never in a better shape to resist a Wall street trouble
than at present. Usually stock panics find business men in a pre¬
carious position; but now, instead of merchants being loaded up
with big stocks of goods at falling prices, the contrary is the case.
If trouble comes, it will be largely confined to speculators, and
wiU not disturb, except sympathetically, legitimate business. The
rumors affecting the names of English banking firms known
throughout the world when gray-haired men were babies shows
tbat London is not yet in smooth water, and no man can be too
careful of future engagements. One cannot paddle too cloee to
shore in times like these.





THE Manhattan Elevated Railroad Company held its annual
meeting on Monday last. The stockholders have every
reason to feel satisfied with the report submitted. A surplus was
earned almost equal to the company's accumulated surplus hith¬
erto; the gross .earnings have increased over $400,000, and the
operating expenses reduced nearly $300,000. During the year 188,-
303,877 passengers were carried ; an increase of something more
than 4 per cent over 1889. The report also contains a grain of
comfort for the patrons of the road. The meeting was private;
but the secretary stated to the reporters that the directcHB had
decided to make extensive improvemeBtB throughout the coming
year. No details as to what these improvements would oOBSiBt of
were divulged, ezc^ that $600,000 worth o/l new cars had ali^eady
been ordered to relieve the overcrowded condition of the traffic.
A comparison of the various reports of the Manhattan Company





presents some interesting features. The increase of over 4 per
cent in the passengers carried during the period covered by the
report of 1890 over the period covered by the report of 18l;9, is
slightly larger than the increase in 1889 over \%t^, but is smaller
than the increase in any other previous year except 1884. Exclud¬
ing the enormous augmentation which took place in 1887 of 37 per
cent, due to the establishment of a uniform flve cent fare, and that
of some of the earlier years of the company's existence, the normal
rate of increase would appear to be between 6 and 7 per cent.
Any such estimate is, to a certain extent, misleading. For many
years the trains have been so overcrowded during certain hours
as to offer an impediment to what would be the maximun increase,
but even at this low calculation the company is losing the fares
of three or four million passengers a year, and property-owners
are losing the benefit that would accrue from better communica¬
tion. This fact need hardly be emphasized, but we may well stop
to consider whether, in view of the fact that some years have still
to elapse before any commission can develop a plan and any
coriioration carry it out, the Manhattan Company might not be
aided in providing the stop-gap required. We do not know
exactly what resources the company still has at its command. Its
service is being increased just so as to accommodate the increased
traffic, but without any attempt to ameliorate the present over¬
crowding. Doubtless its managers will be able to continue this
moderate increase of service for some years yet, to the continued
discomfort of its patrons. But when will their utmost limit be
reached V The caution with which the service is kept just at a
bearable point is an indication that the management have reason to
husband their resources. The cable roads on Broadway and 3d
avenue, soon to be constructed, will give some alleviation by tak¬
ing from the elevated roads a larger proportion of the short-dis¬
tance fares; but at the crowded periods of the day nearly all tlft>
passengers make too long a journey to submit to the neces¬
sary delays of surface-road transit. It is a great pity that our citi¬
zens, our officials and our newspapers cannot be brought to look
these facts in the face.





INDICATIONS are not wanting that the architects of this coun¬
try, or at least, of this part of the country, are " turning over
a new leaf." For a long time past the favorite copy-book to which
they have turned for inspiration or something in default
of it bas been the Romanesque, and it must be acknowledged
that though a considerable amount of very creditable work
has been done in that style; there has been, however, very
little vitality in the work. The artist has, all along,
been dealing with dead forms, and, as we have said, there are now
very convincing indications that the " Romanesqued " American
work of. say, the last ten years, has passed into tbe shades where
are to be found the old " Old Colonial," the Queen Anne, the
French Renaissance, and other art forms, wherein a past manner
but not a past spirit was imitated. And the new copy-book—what
style does it contain ? It is not easy to classify hybrids; but the
nuiin features of the new style are Renaissance in character, and
if one must be more particular, the Renaissance of Italy. We
prefer, bowever, to let the matter stand at Renaissance. To a very
considerable extent, in the most recent work done in this city, the
arch, as the salient feature of the design, has given place to the
column, as may be seeo, if not already observed, in the new Hotel
Imperial, the Judson Memorial Church, the Berkeley School on
44th street, the new Metropolitan Telephone Company's Building
on Broad street, the Mail and Elxpress Building, the Greenwich
Savings Bank on 6th avenue and 16th street, the new Delmonico
Building, Harrigan's Theatre, and many other buildings, all by
architects of some renown, who are usually followed by the smaller
fry. By these structures we may see how rapidly we are running
towards the rusticated, pedimented, corniced, festooned, balus-
traded, pilastered, columned style of building. There is very little
doubt that this is the beginnitig of a widespread change, and for
some years to come now the new copy-book will be used exten.
sively—^in a scholarly way, by our trained architects; and with
vagary and appalling ingenuity for ugliness by those promoters,
those embodiers of hideous vulgarity, the contract "arch-i-tecte."





THE movements to open new streets in the 2M aod 24th Wards,
to widen certain streets in the lower part of the city, and to
establish in crowded districts small parks, gain considerable inter¬
est from a paper recently published by Dr. Anders in the Univer¬
sity Medical Magazine. It is shown therein from careful observa¬
tions made in Philadelphia, that there is a close relation between
phthisis, or consumption, and the width of streets. The observa¬
tions extend over a period of fifteen years ; and a careful location
Of all the deaths due to consumption shows a very disproptHrtionate
rate of mortality in narrow, dark streets compared with the wider
ones; and in confined tenem»>nts, where the outlook is upon
neighboring walbi, oompaared with houses having direct sunlight.
Dr. Anders' conclusions are. as he pokits out, similar to those
arrived at by Dr. Arthur Ransom in England.   Indeed, in a sense,