Augaat25, IStfl





Record   and   Guide.





257





niE.





ESTABUSHED*^ l^caSliiN 1868.

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Bush/ess Alio Themes or GeiJer^L IrfttRfsi.

PRICE,   PER   YEAR   IN   ADVANCE,   SIX   DOLLARS.

Published every Saturday.

Telephone,......Cortlandt IS70

Conimunlcations ahould be addressed to

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"Bettered al Ihe Post-office at Nev> York. N. Y.. as second-idass matter."





Vol. liv.





AUGUST 25, 1894.





No. 1,380





For additional Brooklyn matter, see Brooklyn Departi}wnt immediately
followina l^ew Jeraey records [paqe 379).

OUR BUILDING LAWS.
Architects, builders, building operators andotkers interested in the liuild¬
ing trades in Brooklyn, will be glad to learn thatTuE Record akd
Guide edition of the new Building Laws of Brooklyn is now issued
and for sale. Those who are familiar with the manner in which The
Record and Guide editions of the Bnilding Laws of New York have
been compiled know what to expect—a handy volume, containing everything
embraced toiHiin the State laws, municipal ordinances, and departmental
reguUitions, with illustrations wherever they are helpful to declare the
meaning of the text, and a directory of the Building Department. The
laws and ordinances embrace those governing sanitation, drainage, water
and other street connections, and the regulations of the Health Department
also. Finally there is a complete index—a labor and time-saving conven¬
ience that 18 alone worth twice the price of the book, which is ready for
delivery from the offices df. Thi5 Record and Guide, Nos. 14 and 16
Fesey street. New York, and 276 Washington street, Brooklyn, at the uni¬
form price of $2,

WHEN reports of improvement in trade are as universal as
now they must be accepted ae good evidence of changed
conditions. In almost all lines—jobbing, dry goods, shoes or
iron and steel—improvement is noted. Id the few instances
where improvement is lacking there is no set back only hesita¬
tion, as in drugs and woolens, because of the uncertainty regard¬
ing the action of the President on the Tariff bill, and its
pai-ticular effect on goods iu these lines. The strike and shut
down among the New England cotton mills have a bad appear¬
ance, but they can on'y fail of speedy remedy in the event of all
the world beiug wrong on the trade situation. Continued
improved business would soon use up manufactured stocks of
cotton goods, and depleted stocks would quickly show the way
to a settlement of labor troubles. In the stock market much
of this week's advance has been due to the scaring of
bears on the high-priced stocks, particulaily in the Vanderhilts.
Taken as a whole there has beeu a great deal oE realizing, hut it
must be couf^ssed that it has been an excellent market to
realize on. The nest few days will set le definitely all doubts
on the Tariff bill and the market wi 1 take its cue accordingly.
Looked at broadly there eau be no doubt that it is a bull market.
Whatever set backs come will be speedily recovered under an
irresistible tendency of prices to advauce from the figures into
which they have been forced by the bad business of the
past year. Stocks could not fail to advance, business to im¬
prove and people feel better ou such good news as that the ad¬
journment of Congress had been fixed for an early day.





CHEERFULNESS characterizes all the reports from foreign
trade and commercial centres. The stock markets are
active on advancing prices. In fact alj the world seems to be
emerging at one and the same time from the dumps into which
one country after another has been plunged sinee the Baring
failure. The universal recogEition that conditions are better
proves that the change is quite positive. The small signs
whicb, from time to time, pointed the way we have gone have
been overlooked. As a matter of fact the indications of better
times have been quite precise for some time, this whole year
haying been one of steady recovery in almost all lines of
business. English railways report an increase in gross earnings
for the first half of the year of over $5,000,000. Board of
Trade returns for July show a decline of $7,000,000 in imports,
almost wholly under head of breadstuffs, and a decline of
$6,000,000 in exports, generally distributed. Good harvests
throughout Europe offset the falling off on this side ot the Atlan¬
tic, so that the amount of wheat grown will equal a year's con¬
sumption, but there are still accumulations of the past three years
to keep dowu prices. Announcement is made from Paris that
meetings bave been called tor the Slst inst, of the stockholders





of French Submarine Telegraphs and Paris to New York cable
companies to ratify an agreement that bas been negotiated for
the amalgamation of those comparics. Bleichroder and the
Disconto-Gesellschaft have taken a hundred million francs loan
of the Gotthard Eailway Company. Th< textile trade of Ger¬
many is looking up as a result of the passing c f the Senate Tariff
measure. Vienna is flourishing because of the number of public
worksgoingoninitsmids). The improvement of the Danube, the
building of a number of railways, some of them undergiound,
axd to be worked by electricity, and tbe removal
of the old fortress-like barracks from the cei-tre to
the outskirts of the city have given plenty of employment to
the working people. A canal from the Danube into
the Elbe or the Oder is now talked of. The government con¬
tinues tbe rapid delivery of the new gold coins to the Austro-
Hungarian Bank, In Kussia the scarcity of labor in tho farming
regions is making a market for agricultural implements and
machinery. South America and Australia are not excepted from
the pleasant change that is taking place in the comnierciai con¬
ditions of the world. In Chili the sale of the nitrate beds has
been so satisfactory as not only to put the government in funds,
but also to encourage business ; in Argentina the continued fall
in the gold premium is having a similar influence, and in Aus¬
tralia the banks, as reorganized, are strong, with a large supply
of gold on hand.





THERE is no doubt that 1S94 will break the record for gold
production, not only in the United States, bnt also in the
other great gold producing countries of the world. Last year
the total production was about $150,000,000, of which the
United States contributed $30,000,000. Current reports in¬
dicate an increase of 25 per cent for this country. In South
Africa and Australia there are also indications of a very
large increase so that it is possible that the year may add
$180,000,000 to $190,000,000 to the gold supply of tbe world.
These reports are naturally having a very great influence on
trade and on the stability of financial conditions. It is reported
that Japan contemplates putting its currency on a gohl basis as a
part of the refonns it is carrying out in order to bring the nation
more on a par with great foreign powers in its dealings. Such
an idea would not have arisen except for tbe success that is
attending the miner in the gold fields. The apparent certainty
of a large increase in the output of gold has also a good deal to do
with tbe maintenance of the policy of the Indian
Council toward silver and will go far toward making
that policy the success it promises to be as soon as business
revives. Wliile there cannot be any doubt that the world is
becoming much richer in available gold, and that fact is having
a great deal to do with (he improvement in business, we should,
however, be careful in accepting all the stories that are being
circulated about gold discoveries in different parts of the world.
Gold is fonnd in places remote from the great hives of humanity,
and a small discovery may become a large one before it reaches
the confines of civilization by dint of telling, and as the ordinary
newspaper is a sensitized plate, unresistingly receiving any
impression thrown upon it, Ihe latest version of the story is
taken without criticism andpassedon from one journal to another
with equal indifference. It will be well to wait before we accept
the amazing accounts of gold discoveries that are now coming—
with the suspicious prints of the space-writer's fingers upon
them—from out of Colorado, Australia, So'th Africa and even
New Guiana and Venezuela, until competent examination is had
of them to determine their proportions, otherwise we may he
taking a gold-news boom for a gold-boom, which is a very
distinct and different thing.





OUR newspapers make ns out to be a queer people. A few
months ago they were voicing what was supposed to be
the popular sentiment concerning the Goulds. Thoy were
a tainted lot, these heirs of the dead piratical millionaire
and, said our editors, the matter of rapid transit then being
uppermost, they and the wicked corporation with which they are
interested are not to be trusted. They are quite capable of
burglarizing our streets, of attempting to bribe our incorrupt-
able officials, of defrauding the city aud of committing any of
those wholesale crimes which it has become the privilege of our
rich to indulge in almost with impunity. It was in these colors
that the editorial picture of the Goulds was painted a year ago.
Since then the purchase of the Vigilant has wrought a wonderful
change in the newspaper conception of these young men.
Depicted, if one may say so, in «;a<er-colors the Goulds make
quite an attractive and meritorious appearance. Recently some
spiteful and insular Britisher had the effrontery to suggest tha,t
the Vigilant was not quite "regular" in her racing, aind
our editors promptly gave the maligner to understand what they
thought of him and of the Goulds. English yachtsmen were
informed that the owners of the Vigilant were worthy repre¬
sentatives of American fair-play and chivalry, and though
the editors were without absolutely any information regarding





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