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Jecember 29, igoo
:CORD AND GUIDE.
905
ESTABUSHED-^ ^CH 2WS1866.
DEVblED ID R,EA,L ESTWT.BmLDi^G Ap&rftTEeTURE.HoUSEHOlDDESa^KloHL
BiTsii/ESs AfbThemes or GEito^l Interest.
PRIC£ FER ITEAR IN ADVAKCE BIX DOLIiARS.
Published evert/ Saturdav-
TBLEPHONE, COaTLANDT 1370.
Communications should be addressed to
C. W. 'BWUBJT, 14-16 Veaey Street.
/. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager.
•Entered at the Post-Office at New York, N. Y.. as second-elass matter.-
Vol. LXVI.
DECEMBER 29, 1900,
No. 1711.
FAILING any other reason for the continued activity in the
stock market, we must conclude that its manipulators are
actuated solely hy patriotic motives. Every share sold means
two cents, and a million and a half shares a day, a total of
$30,000 per day added to the national treasury, plus the con¬
sequent income from transfer and power of attorney stamps, a
very considerable additional item. Of course, we know that tbe
industrial, commercial and speculative prospect is very bright,
and tjiat the growth of business means much to corporate securi¬
ties, besides opening out an endless vista of opportunities for
wealth, but prices seem to us to, have long ago discounted all
that for the time being, and our only recourse now is to believe
that Wall Street is determined to make Uncle Sam as rich as il
hopes to become itself. We have no arguments with wliich to
combat so worthy an object. In this disposition it was sad tn
note that the market appeared to be a little top-heavy at the
close of the week and gave signs of reacting. However, if tbese
Blgns prove true, although the Government will lose by the les¬
sened business that is sure to ensue, the community cannot hut
be benefited in the end if the market takes a steadier course
and quoted values contract somewhat in place of swelling. The
purely speculative character of the market is shown by the
prompt support that any attempt to advance prices receives;
there is no doubt whatever that the speculative public is still in
the market in undiminished ranks and is ready to take up any¬
thing whatsoever that displays animation. The game is simply
how to get in and out with a proiit, and up to this time it haa
teen an easy one to play. Outside of the stock market business
appears to be in a very satisfactory state, laying the foundations
for a very active spring season, and money is unusually easy for
the time of the year. The indications of a master hand working
to bring order into the coal trade is one of the best features of
the situation. The European markets appear to be active only
in Governments, Americans and the more speculative mining
shares. While money is in good demand, the year will appar¬
ently close without the stringency that marked tbe ends of all
previous years during the business boom. Beyond these things
there is nothing new in the European situation calling for com¬
ment unless yesterday's cable reports of embarrassments iu Lon¬
don are conflrmed.
A BILL has been introduced into the House of Representatives
by a Congressman from New Jersey, which fixes the salary
of the Vice-President at $25,000 a year, and that of the members
of the Cabinet at $15,000 a year. There is no chance of such a bill
being passed at the present short session, but it so manifestly
should be passed that the narrow and petty opposition which
its provisions have provoked simply makes one impatient. The
$8,000 which a Cabinet Minister is paid at present is entirely
inadequate to the expense of an appropriate establishment in
Washington, and the consequence is that a man without some
means of his own is obliged either to decline a Cabinet posi¬
tion or else be bothered during his whole incumbency by smaiT
flnancial worries. It is incomprehensible that a people ordi¬
narily as generous as the people of this country should be so nig¬
gardly with their public servants. They look on with apathy
while millions of dollars are squandered indirectly, but they
grudge the few hundred thousand dollars which are necessary
to give the high officials of the national government as much of
an income as the standard of living in Washington makes neces¬
sary. Several times in the past they have been aroused to
paroxysms of anger by proposals to increase public salaries, so
that such proposals are now made with the utmost timidity. '
The President, the members of the Cabinet, tbe foreign Minis¬
ters, aud the judges of the national courts are all underpaid.
As long as men cannot accept public office without considerable
pecuniary sacrifice they are often obliged to decline it, and the
public service inevitably suffers. For a great and wealthy na¬
tion the United States is undeniably stingy and mean in this
respect, ^and the curious part of it is that the high offices in the
national government are exceptional, in that they are not sought
and never would be sought merely on account of the compensa¬
tion they carry with them.
T T is not likely that we shal! hear anything more of the desire
of the Justices of the Supreme Court to appropriate to them¬
selves the building now being erected for the Register and Coun¬
ty Clerk, and known as the Hall of Records, if the thing is any¬
thing more than a newspaper story. The justices, if they had
any such thought, must have soon seen that the idea of changing
the original plans is altogether impracticable. It is not likely,
either, tbat those who worked so hard for so many yeara to se¬
cure a satisfactory receptacle for the priceless records of the
Register's and County Clerk's offices would stand quietly by and
see the transfer made without protest. The further idea that
the county building would make a suitable Hall of Records is as
fallacious as that that gave it birth. This idea is too much in
accordance with another, equally erroneous, that prevailed for
too long a time, namely, that the county records were so much
junk that could be dumped in any old shed. If the Supreme
Court is badly boused, as undoubtedly it is, the justices should
use their great influence in procuring a new and better home,
in which endeavor they may count upon general support.
T T is well known that the Germans as part of their retalia-
â– ^ tion on the Chinese for the invasion of the Huns in the fifth
and sixth centuries and for the murder of their Ambassador at
the end of the nineteenth century have removed to Berlin some
renowned Chinese astronomical instruments. The photographs
of some of these instruments have recently been published, and
if the fantastic beauty of such objects is any excuse for appro¬
priating them, the Germans are to be excused. Quadrants and
astrolabes, which a European designer would make severely
plain and utilitarian, blossom under the hands of the Chinese into
the extravagant and grotesque forms of dragons and sea mon¬
sters. But although grotesque and extravagant to our eyes,
these forms possess at tbe same time a great decorative beauty,
and from the Chinese point of view even appropriateness. To a
people not scientifically trained, astronomical instruments might
readily seem allied to the dark and incomprehensible powers of
the nether world—powers which would be represented by just
such gro'tesque and outlandish forms. A similar association
of ideas would be wholly impossible in the mind of a West¬
ern man, who understood that scientific instruments are merely
delicate and ingenious pieces of machinery for recording and
measuring the nature of distant bodies and their mathematical
relations. It is a pity, however, that in the West the scientific is
so entirely divorced from the artistic spirit that there is never any
attempt to make scientific machinery something other tban mere¬
ly utilitarian, Victor Hugo remarks in one of his scattered pieces
that a mediaeval machinist could not help but turn a steam en¬
gine into some monstrous dragon vomiting smoke and flre, in¬
stead of the ugly and clumsy combination of chimney and boiler
on wheels which our locomotive works manufacture. Here
again, of course, a form of representation appropriate to the
middle ages would be merely fantastic in modern times; but
this fact should not disguise the legitimacy of the demand that
such machinery might well be something more than merely use¬
ful. Undoubtedly the forms of scientific instruments and of ma¬
chinery of all kinds should remain severely simple and should be
chiefly expressive of their actual utility, but it would still be
possible to make these instruments more seemly and pleasing
than they are at present.
"tlCTHE'N referring to the Tenement House Commission report
' • on fires in tenements last week, we overlooked one very
important point, viz., the class of tenements in which fires are
most frequent. To understand the importance of this it must
be remembered that the revised charter of 1883 included a mod¬
ernized building law and an improved tenement house law, and
that in 1S92 it was enacted that in all tenement houses the floor
over the basement should be constructed fireproof. The tenements
standing in this city can, therefore, be divided into three classes
according to their age, which will carry with them decreased
fire resisting qualities as they go beyond the dates of passage of
the laws mentioned. They would be: First, those erected prior
to 18S2; second, those erected between 18S2 and 1892, and third,
those erected since 1892. If the tenements in which fires, and
particularly fatal fires, occurred were classified in this way, the
order of safety from fire would, we firmljf- believe, be found lO