December 14, 1901.





RECORD AND  GUIDE.





813







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Dp/fcTTH TD REAtEiq■A^Z.SUlL01^'G ^RCKrTECnflff>{oUS£3lOIDDeQCH{IID1(,

BusirJEss aiJd Themes Of GeiJer^. IKIEHPI.

PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX  DOLLARS

Published etierff Salurdap

Communlc&tioiis should be addresaed to
C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street, New YopR





J. T. LINDSET, Businesa Manager





Telephone, Cortiandt 3157





"Entered at the Post Office at N'ew Tork. N.'Y.. as second-class mailer."





Vol.   LXVIII.





DECEMBER 14, 1901.





No.  1761





OP the very many causes given for the break in stock mar¬
ket prices there is only one worth considering, and that
is that prices were too high for intrinsic merits. For the same
reason it may be expected that they will go still lower, as the
bubble of foolish theories of combinations and increased profits
burst one by one. It does not follow from this that there may
not be a sharp advance any day; such a thing may occur, but
it will only be a temporary reaction, and the downward move¬
ment will reassert itself whenever the support that comes from
overzeal in short selling is exhausted. The market is in a proc¬
ess of righting itself from the inflation into which it was forced
by the tremendous buying movement of last spring, and this
process may take a year or so to eomplete itself. Meantime,
there will be intervals that will recall bullish times, but all the
while prices will be seeking the level of real values, and may
eventualy go below them. It would have been unlike ourselves
not to have done more than we should have done because times
were good, and our having put highly speculative values on
everything so that nothing could stand the strain of an unfavor¬
able circumstance,—such as dear money just now—is not with¬
out precedent. The situation of the moment puts us in the
same boat with Europe, though not by the same means; there
money is scarce and dear because business is bad and a great
many weak-kneed concerns need propping; here the same con¬
dition as to money prevails, because we are prosperous and there
is a demand for funds from all sides. This suggests the neces¬
sity of an adjustment of ventures to means that must now be
contemplated.





T~ HE official disclosure of Pennsylvania's plans for entering
* Manhattan are received with somehing more than satis¬
faction in that borough itself, aud the plea of President Cassatt
for fair treatment by the city authorities will surely receive
generous response. The announcement does several things be¬
sides telling us what the Pennsylvania Railroad propose to do.
For Instance, as it is proposed to operate between Long Island
City and Jersey City through tunnels, by electricity, it shows,
if the experience of Baltimore has not already done so, that
Central Depot talk about the impossibility of employing elec¬
tricity as a motive power in the Park avenue tunnel is all fudge
and subterfuge. Most likely now, having this great competitor
at its doors, the Central will find a way of doing what it has
until now said could not be done, and that all the pressure of
agitating property owners and local authorities could not in¬
duce it to do. The announcement also puts to rest whatever
hopes or fears there were of a North River bridge and releases
from the ban of "approved routes" a great deal of property that
has suffered for a good many years from being included in one,
especially. The plan filed bj the Pennsylvania with the County
Clerk shows tbe main station laid out under the three blocks
bounded by Seventh and Tenth avenues and Thirty-first and
Thirty-third streets; the block bounded by Seventh and Eighth
avenues. Thirty-second and Thirty-third streets, and the east¬
erly one hundred feet (about) of the block bounded by Eighth
and Ninth avenues. Thirty-second and Thirty-third streets. In
all four blocks and one hundred feet of a fifth. Communication
with Long Island is to be had by three several lines running
west from seventh avenue under Thirty-first, Thirty-second and
Thirty-third streets to the East River; and with New Jersey by
two several lines running from Tenth avenue under Thirty-
first and Thirty-second streets to the Hudson River. No inter-
hiediate stations are indicated on the plan. It is to be
hoped that the newcomer will appreciate the fact that
an entrance into Manhattan is a very valuable privilege, and
UlsD that the authorities and property owners there will bear in
mind that they will reap immense, direct and indirect, advan¬
tages through the presence of the^only possible competitcM- to





those interests that have boasted for so many years that they
owned the only railroad entrance into the center of the coun¬
try's business.





The Promise of Better Things.

T ET there be no mistake about it. The outlook for a period
J— of sustained and heightened activity in the real estate
and building market of this city is extremely promising. Gen¬
eral and local conditions are both propitious. During the past
few years business throughout the country has been large and
.remunerative to an extent rarely equaled in American indus¬
trial history; but, partly because of certain depressing local
conditions, and partly because real estate is always the branch
of business last to feel the impulse of general prosperity, the
New York realty market has not felt any efEect from the good
times, commensurate with the expansion along other lines.
But now tbe depressing local conditions are being, to some ex¬
tent, removed. Taxes promise to be a little less burdensome
next year, and if the reform administration fulfils its promise,
lighter still the year following. The renting of almost all classes of
property is in a better way than for years past. Rents are higher
and are more easily collected. There is a general interest in real
estate operations among the many shrewd capitalists, who
are more than ever gathering to the city from all parts of the
country. The stock market has had its boom, and is now feeling
the reaction; but prices of stocks and bonds are stii! so high
that real estate speculation and investment offers, in compari¬
son, many attractions. But most important of all, there is a.
prevailing feeling of confidence and hope, a prevailing readiness
to undertake large enterprises, a prevailing expectation of higher
prices and more substantial returns, which will add the neces¬
sary spark to the whole combustible mass.

The activity in real estate which is promised will be, how¬
ever, subject to conditions, and will assume forms widely dif¬
ferent from those to which we have been accustomed in the
past.   The present activity in real estate is undoubtedly prompt¬
ed chiefiy by the dawning consciousness of what the effect will
be upon real property of the enormous growth of the consoli¬
dated city in population and trade—particularly when-the full
fruits of this growth are gathered by an adequate system of
inter-borough communication.    The Record and Guide has fre¬
quently been inclined to doubt whether in face of the Increased
taxes, which consolidation brought upon Manhattan, consolida¬
tion was not more of an evil than a benefit to the "predomi¬
nant partner" in the union, but in the light of present tenden¬
cies and prospects, such doubts are shown to be unnecessary.
The promised activity in real estate is the outcome of the full
realization and completion of consolidation—of the prospective
union of at least four of the boroughs, not merely on paper, but
by tunnels and bridges.   The   Subway will  make the   Bronx
really   a   part   of   Manhattan;    the   three   new   bridges   and
two    tunnels    will    do    away    with    the    Bast    River    be¬
tween    Long    Island    and    Manhattan,    while    the    Pennsyl¬
vania tunnel under the North River   will tighten the relations
between New York  and  the numerous  inhabitants  of  Hudson
and Essex counties in New Jersey; and the point to be kept in
mind is that these tunnels and bridges will not merely stimu¬
late the industrial progress of Manhattan by assisting the wage-
earners of New York to better and cheaper homes, but they will
have an enormous   reactive  effect   upon business    itself.    The
stores, theatres and restaurants will have more customers, and
there will be a general quickening of action and purpose through¬
out the whole city.    A reciprocal process at once of concentration
in business and distribution of population will set in, and Man¬
hattan will be benefited by both processes.   The whole econo¬
mic and domestic organization of the city will be raised to a
much higher degree of convenience and efficiency.   The effect
of these positively stimulating forces cannot be over-estimated.
The trade, industry and growth of Manhattan have been suffer¬
ing for years, and are still suffering, from insufficient space in
which to spread; and when the bars are finally let down, and
the impulse of expansion given full play, things will go with
a rush.

But just as the conditions of this activity are different, so
the forms that it will take are different. Just as its range and
location are determined, in large measure, by public improve¬
ments, so the advantages of it will be reaped by expert specu¬
lators and investors, who have foreseen these results, and ar¬
ranged to take advantage of them. In New York real estate
money is no longer made by people who sit still and wait for
the growth of the city to increase the value of their property.
It is made rather by people who understand current tendencies,
who know where to buy and how to improve, arid who have