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May 5, 1900.
RECORD AND GUIDE.
761
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DE^p[^ESTAIE.BmLDlKGAp!^rrECTUREMcRJSEHOU)DEaffltA^
BifsDfess aiJd Themes OF GeSer^I Ifhrap*!-.
PRICE PEH YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS.
Puaits/ieii every Saturday.
TELEPHONE, CORTLANDT 1370.
Communications should be addressed to
C. W. SWBST. 14-16 Veeey Street.
/. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager.
"Entered at the Post.-omcc at mw York. N. T.. as second-class matter."
Vol. LXV.
MAY 5, 1900.
No. 1677.
-T- HERE Is no change in the main feature of the stocli market.
i It is still a traders' market, and the movements from day
to day represent the changes in the professional mind. How¬
ever the big bad news having had its chance to show its power
and having met witb some resistance, there ought to he a change
in the general direction of quotations. Within a comparatively
short time prices have had to contend with the steel stock job-
hery strikes, new valuations of local companies for tax pur¬
poses and gold exports, all of which favored bear operations, yet
the declines effected cannot be considered heavy, and m some
cases where the influence of the bad news was not direct, the
falling off is very small indeed. The gold export movement
promises to dwindle down to very light proportions, especially
In view of a renewal of shipments hy the Transvaal, the first
since the outbreak of the Boer war last October having been
made this week, and the bettered prospects for a resumption of
mining under British regulations. The strikes cannot have in-
lured the business of the railroads materially, and the new as¬
sessments have had surprisingly little effiect upon the stocks
concerned. It is not easy to estimate the increased tax
demand these assessments will create. The final figures
Include the old assessments, consequently to estimate the
new burdens created it is necessary to substract the
valuations for tangible property from the final assess¬
ments. The new burden is the tax, at whatever rate may
â– be eventually fixed in August nest, on the remainder less the
amount paid to the city for car license fees and percentages of
earnings. On this basis, with a 2,30 tas rate, the new burden on
Metropolitan Street Railway would be equal to 2 per cent, on the
outstanding stock; in the case of Third Avenue, 2.8 per cent;
Brooklyn Rapid Transit, 0.9 per cent; Manhattan Elevated,
0.9 per cent; Consolidated Gas, 0,4 per cent How far these bur¬
dens can be met out of surplus or from economies in operation,
depends on the earning powers and conditions of the several
properties. It may be taken for granted that endeavors will be
made to offset them in one way or another. This, or the belief that
the assessments cannot be maintained in the courts, accounts
for the comparative strength of tiie Traction and other issues
affected. On the whole, it may be claimed that the market has
taken all the bad news of the past few weeks very well, and the
natural inference is that there should now he a fair reactionary
movement.
NEWS of the signing of the Davis School Bill reaches us at
the moment when we are told by responsible city officials
that we have before us another interval of waiting for minor
improvements, owing to the bond issuing power being exhausted
by rapid transit and other large works. The Davis Act will
operate to increase expenses and taxation, while the holding up
of the minor improvements diminishes the ability of the assess¬
ors to increase tas valuations. This is an unfortunate combina¬
tion. A more important matter is the way things operate to
break down the barriers that have been put up to prevent ex¬
travagance in our municipality. Mayor Van Wyck explained
the objectionahle pecuniary consequences likely to follow the en¬
actment of the Davis bill when he so properly vetoed that meas¬
ure. The Legislature in repassing the bill over that veto, and
the Governor in signing it, seem to have been more impressed by
the noisy demonstration made in favor of the bill at the hearing
before the Mayor and its hearing on the coming elections, than
hy the merits of the question involved. They are, however, de¬
ceived if they think that demonstration displayed the wishes of
the community which, at the moment, would prefer lighter tas
bills and more improvements, and would like very much indeefl
if occasionally its wishes regarding its own personal affairs, as
constitutionally expressed, were respected by the Legislature
and the Executive. We have had occasion to refer to the matter
before, but have never had so good reason to demand a larger
measure of home rule for this city than is afforded by the thrust¬
ing of the Davis Act, with its accompanying extravagance, down
the city's throat. There are matters and circumstances attend¬
ing the passage of this bill that call for attention, particularly
the way in which the school teachers have made themselves a
sort of petted class, but these we leave to others to deal with,
contenting ourselves with protesting against the enforced ex¬
travagance that the measure imposes and the way in which its
enactment violates the powers given the city to protect itself
against just this kind of infliction.
Modern May Day.
STRIKES AND STRUGGLES DISPLACE FLOWERS AND FETES.
IT is significant of the hard and cynical condition of mind that
modern conditions of industrial life have brought about,
that May Day with its poetical past, should be selected as the
day on which the worker should declare his petty war against
his employer, and that a sordid battle should be begun at the
moment when the year offers its best promise for the happiness
of man. But so it is, and that is why last Tuesday's papers con¬
tained several columns of news of strikes and trade disturbances
with their usual accompaniment of personal violence and the
tyranny of those who are loudest in proclaiming their determina¬
tion to be free.
Of the strikes themselves there is little to be said. They are
the result of prosperous times and the ease with which demands
for increased pay, or lessened work, or hoth, have been enforced
in the past year. They are, of course, well timed from the
strikers' point of view. In the building trades where they are
most plentiful, work is now well underway, and it is necessary
that it should go along without interruption if it is to be profita¬
bly completed before the inclement season returns to stop opera¬
tions. In the railroad world, where unrest among the workers
is only too apparent, a harvest is being gathered that is, or ought
to pay for many sacrifices and weary years of waiting and inter¬
ruptions are most of all to be dreaded. The record of Monday's
strikes given in the newspapers is probably only partial, and in
that record it is only stated here and there how many men aro
involved in the several disputes. This notwithstanding, they
showed that about 13,000 members of the building trades in var¬
ious parts of the country bad celebrated May Day by strikes, and
we know that some other thousands in Chicago and St. Louis
had then been already engaged in a long struggle, which is not
yet ended, with their employers. If we could count the railroad
men, the mill and machine hands and employes in many other
branches of business who left their work this week, we would
see that they represented an interruption to business of enormous
proportions.
Where the disputes have involved only small matters of pay,
or time, they seem to have been easily adjustable; the parties
have been irreconcilable only where one sought to invade the
province of the other; where the workman claimed the right to
select his co-laborers, or in other ways to interfere with the bus¬
iness direction. It is this attitude that is prolonging the strug¬
gles in St, Louis and Chicago, and which must end in the im¬
poverishment of the men and their unions, because the employ¬
ers cannot invite their own ruin by surrender. On this aspect of
the case it is agreeable to find the public on the side of the em¬
ployer. It must be borne in mind that the unions, plentiful as
they seem to be, are in the aggregate composed of only a mod¬
erate percentage of the working population of the country, and
the majority, who comprise unorganized labor, including besides
clerks, bookkeepers, the multitude who cannot organize for
united action, rather envymenwho can get a good living by work¬
ing only eight or nine hours a day. When these violently interfere,
as they too often do, with others who are willing to accept
conditions they despise, they are condemned by the courts and
the public at large. Even the block-type sympathy of the yel¬
low journals is withheld, and that is sure proof that there ia
nothing in the present strike movement that calls for outside
support and encouragement; that it is not based on hardship,
poor pay, or unduly long hours, but on a power to disturb or
destroy conditions that the country as a whole is anxious to
maintain.
None blame the men for getting all the pay they honestly can,
but the question must present itself whether they are not push¬
ing their success too much; whether, when the contracts, which
now make the employer so pliant, are completed there will be
others to keep up the pace of business activity and employ the
same number of hands at the increased rates of pay. It has been
axiomatic for generations that high rates of pay come on the
crest of the wave of prosperity, and it would be easy to argue
from precedent that the success of labor disputes in the matters
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