February IS  18B8





Record   and   Guide.





243







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■wrote recently, legislation counter totbe interests of the Manhat¬
tan Co. is out of the question. That company will not permit any
rivalry in the rapid transit business. New Yorkers do not recog¬
nize that all their talking is but the chattering of a parcel of irre¬
sponsible persons. The Manhattan Co. is master of the situation
and will in time settle affairs to suit itself. Indeed, the supposition
that the people have any effective voice in tbe matter does seem
absurd when we consider what all their talking and complaining
during tbe jiast seven years has amounted to ? Denser crowding on
the elevated roads. Are we any nearer to real vapit transit to-day
than when wo began to complain years and years ago? New York
is an interesting place just at present for the student of popular
sovernment.





Vol. li.





FEBRUARY 18, 1893,





No. i,;oi





AWEEK ago everyone in Wall Street was confident tbat, Con¬
gress having refuged even to consider the repeal of the silver
law, the Treasury would exert its ingenuity to devise some plan to
at least mitigate the evil that law is doing until a Congress more
amenable to the wishes of the people should assemble. But only
another disappointment lay there. Gold exports continue in large
amounts, the time is at hand wben the interior will be heard from
again calling for the balances it has in NewYork. There is less dis¬
position to loan money, and as a consequence rates are higher and
likely to continue so. The close of the market without a rally of
importance after so big a break is a discouraging feature. No
explanation for the declines in prices seen at the ck.se of the week
is so satisfactory as discriminations against certain elas-es of secur¬
ities by loaners of money, because the declines have been in such
securities as would naturally be affected by a determination
on the part of the banks to lessen their loans. The
Reading incident aggravates the situation. While the banks
have to prepare for the impending inierior demand, they are
probably also touched deeply by the refusal of the President and
tiie Treasury to find any relief for the present position of affairs,
and believing they know their own business as well as the people
in power at Washington can know, it may be putting their
houses in order to meet a tro ible that may only be probable, but
for which they must not in any case be unprepared. A iittle
more display of want of confidence in the future and the troubles
that have burdened the financial world so long will reach the
acute stage. It is, however, easy for the administration to pre¬
vent this.





SOME ingenious persons are siriving to discover a connection
between the Webster and Plunkitt bills (which increase the
power of the Dock Department) and the hidden rapid transit scheme
which Mayor Gilroy has more than once hinted he is the happy
possessor of. The Mayor is probably the only man in the oity who
has both a plan and enough strength of mind to keep it to himself,
but people who will guess at these matters when they don't know
say that if he does not favor the Manhattan road extension, which
they think most likely, hesurelyinclines tosome project such asthe
one David J. King, Jr., has advocated—an elevated road on arches
along private property on West street. Tbis project, not at all a
bad one, provides not only for rapid transit, but for a vast system
of warehouses adjunctive to the wharves and piers along the river
front, and herein it is supposed lies the reason for Tammany's sud¬
den desire to break in upon the sleep of the Dock Depart¬
ment, augment its powers and remove the statutory lim¬
itations that now exist to the amount of its expenditures.
Tammany will pnsh the Webster and Plunkitt bills, it is said,
because it desires to develop the city's water front and docks into
something like correspondence with Mr. King's proposed system of
modern warehouses. We sincerely hope all this may be so. hut we
fear ifc is too good and that there is more subtlety than truth in the
hypotheses. For New York to obtain in one step a solution or
partial solution of the rapid transit problem, and tho creation of
an adequate system of docks and warehouses in place of the present
shanty-town accommodations is altogether beyond reasonable
expectation. In truth, Tammany does not seem to be
particularly eager to play any open part in our unending
rapid transit farce. Apparently it is perfectly content to
see the Manhattan treated liberally, and at present everything
points to tbe ultimate triumph of that Company and the
utter rejection of all uudergrouud or other projects. Everybody
must recognize by tbis time that the Manhattan Co. is strong
enough to shut out any real opposilion to its own interests. It has
won over the newspapers and practically everybody else powerful
enough to thwart its wishes. As a well informed Senator in Albany





IF common sense has any eway among our legislators at Albany
the bill at present pending which establishes home rule in tax¬
ation will be passed. The ultimate purpose of the measure is to
briug about the abolition of personal taxation in New York City,
Brooklyn and other cities of the State, as they tire one by oue of
the present imbecile attempts at the impossible. SLu'ients of tax¬
ation declared long ago that a tax upon personal property, how¬
ever Justin principle, is in tbe very nature of things impractic¬
able ; and experience '' pressed down and running over " has demon-
strattd from one end of the United States to the other the truth of
this judgment. In a speech which he made last week before
the legislature, Thos. G. Shearman pointed out that,
according to the sworn returns of taxpayers, Ohio has lost in five
years foiir thousand watches, thirty thousand carriages and $11,-
000,000. New and stringent laws in California deprived San Fran¬
cisco, according to the report of the tax collectcr, uf two-thirds of
its cash and one-third of its personal properly; while the banks of
that city held but $7,000,000 in c£sh on assessment day and $20,-
000,000 immediately before and after. Fifty counties in the State
acknowledged the possession of beehives, but only four could admit
the charge of having any honey. Nine-tenths of the State owned
cows, but were without a single pound of butter. The city of
Boston was able to fiud only §8y,000,OCO of per-sonal prop¬
erty, exclusive of hank stock, in IS89—an amount so
ridiculously small that the assessors were constrained to arbi¬
trarily increase ifc to 5186,000,000. In New York City an equally
absurd condition of affairs exists. According to the returns of the
Commissioners the metropolis is more notable for the poverty of its
citizens in everything but real esiate tiian for anything else. There
is scarcely enough tangible personal properly in the city to provide
half the inhabitants with the decencies of life. So far as New York
City is concerned there would have been nodifficulty about remov¬
ing the farce element from our tax laws long ago. To-day real
estate practically pays all taxes, and the abolition of the per¬
sonal property tax would be little more than legal acqui¬
escence to what has existed for years. No one would
dispute very seriously about a nominal proceeding. The
source of opposition has been the rural districts. The farmer
fears lo let go of a method of taxation which he believe reaches the
hoarded wealth of " the other fellow''in thecity. Taxation, he
thinks, uoon real estate would nipan for him taxation upon the
greater part of his possessions, while other people differently cir¬
cumstanced as to the character of their belongings would escape
contributing lo the expenses of the Slate. So far ithas been impos¬
sible to convince the farmer that this notion of his is a foolish one.
His mental processes are too simple to permit him to grasp a slightly
complex question. To overcome the difficulty the Home Rule
Taxation Bill was iutroduced. It allows every community to order
its method of taxafcion as it pleases without, of course, freeing any
locality from its obligations to the State. Sugar-coated in this way
the farmer may perhaps swallow the pill.





MAYOR GILROY, iu replying to the CummilLee of Graduates
of the College of the City of New York, who called upon
him the other day to obtain support fcr the bill authorizing the
removal of thecoliege up town said, in opjiosing tho project: " Let
us look after elementary education first." Undoubtedly the Mayer
is right. It would be folly for the city to expend something like
$1,750,000 in an improvement of the kiud contemplated at a lime
when accommodation in the grammar schools is so insufficient
that thousands of pupils are preforce ex:3luded. The Mayor's
remark however, has been extended to mean tbat it is the business
of the municipality to furnish its citizens with nothing beyond
simple elementary education, and in certain quarters the idea has
been heartily apju-oved. The argument in favor cf lirnilattun is tbe
old one that municipal education is merely in a way a iinlite measure
Citizens are to be educated at the public expense in order to keep
them from becoming criminals. The Siiu says: "A wcll-oidered
city cannot afford to let children grow up in ignorance. In self-
protection it must provide the rudiments of its education. lis
direct duty to education ends there."' Why should it end there?
Indeed, why should it even begin for the reasons given? The
notion that a ludimentary educatiou~<i. pifi'e savage decoratiou