January 23, 1904.





RECORD AND   GUIDE





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Vol. LXXIII.





JANUARY 23, 1904.





No. 1871.





THE increasing activity and the advancing prices of the
Stock Market during most of the past week have been
just what was needed to restore confidence in the general sit¬
uation. The character of the buying was perhaps no better
than it should be. It undoubtedly came chiefly from profes¬
sional Interests, who are seeking to advance prices, and then
to sell out their purchases to the public at these higher figures;
but it was justified by the general conditions, by the ease of
money, by the improved business prospects, and by the more
hopeful feeling, which is -prevailing in commercial and financial
offices. It is not to be expected that any very general or pro¬
longed rise in prices will result, because, as the large Issue
of bonds during the past week shows, the railroads and the big
corporations will need whatever money there is available, in
order to reimburse themselves for expenditures already made
and to provide for new improvements. But the great thing is
that business should resume a generally healthy tone, and that
financial and business men should ^ face the exigencies of a
presidential year with justifiable confidence. That condition of
things is now coming to pass. It looked at one time as if the
depression brought about by dear money would spread from
Wall Street throughout the whole business organism; and with
that danger averted, it will not be necessary for people to sail
as close to the wind as many of them have been doing during
the past few months.

PRESSURE will undoubtedly be brought upon the Legisla¬
ture during its present session to pass some bill which
will provide for the effective supervision and regulation of the
local transit service of New York City. Two proposals have,
indeed, already been made—one by the Merchants' Association
to add a couple of members to the State Railroad Commission
with special local functions; the other by a local rapid transit
association to constitute a special metropolitan transit com¬
mission. While fully agi'eeing that effective local supervision
is necessary, the Record and Guide does not see the necessity
of instituting the additional administration machinery pro¬
posed by either of these bills. There are constituted authorities
in the city at the present time who are fully capable of super¬
vising in the public interest the service offered by the local
transit companies. It has always seemed to the Record and
Guide that, for instance, such supervision should be placed in
the hands of the Rapid Transit Commission, because the regu¬
lation and improvement of the transit service Of New York is
inseparably connected with the measures which are being taken
to add to that service. Comptroller Grout has recently made
the suggestion along the same lines that the supplementary
power should be conferred upon the Board of Estimate and
Apportionment. Well! it would certainly be better to confer
the power on this governing board of the city, than to consti¬
tute for the purpose a new and expensive commission; and the
Board of Estimate has one great advantage over the Rapid
Transit Commission—the advantage that all of its members are
responsible to the voters of the whole or a part of the city.
This comparative Irresponsibility, however, is a disadvantage
under which the Rapid Transit Commission labors in all of its
work, and it is a disadvantage which only becomes serious
when the Commission shows signs of losing touch with popular
opinion. Even though that body is less directly responsible than
the Board of Estimate, it should, as long as it retains its pres¬
ent functions, be placed in control of such a complicated tech¬
nical problem as that of transit regulation—especially when
this technical problem is so closely connected with the func¬
tions which it now exercises. It should be remembered, also,
that two elected officials, the Mayor and Comptroller, sit in the
Commission, and have great weight in its deliberations. In any
case, however, we do not want any more local commissions;
neither have New Yorkers any faith in the beneficial effects of





the addition of two local members to the State Railroad Com¬
mission. The business is one which either the Rapid Transit
Commission or the Board of Estimate should undertake, and
to give either of them necessary power would be a further step
in the way of the consolidation of power in a few competent
hands, which should he the object of any constructive munic¬
ipal legislation.





WHEN it was proposed during the last session of the
Legislature to assess the value of the land and the
buildings separately on the New York tax books, the Record
and Guide objected on two grounds, (I) That in a borough
such as Manhattan, which contained a great deal of fiuid prop¬
erty, it was practically impossible in a great many instances
to separate the value of the building from the value of the land,
and (2) it would complicate the work of the deputy assessors,
whose time and knowledge is strained hy the work they are
now doing. The validity of both of these criticisms is con¬
firmed by the arbitrary nature of the value placed in tax books
for 1904 upon old buildings situated in valuable locations. In
the cases of new buildings of standard types, such as a six-
story tenement or a skyscraper, it is possible to separate the
value of the building from the land with some accuracy; but
in the cases of those obsolete buildings, which still frequently
remain upon costly property In Manhattan, there is no way of
estimating what they are worth. They are worth something,
because in case they were not there, the owner would have to
erect some kind of a tax-payer; but if the next day the decision
is made to erect a new skyscraper on the laod, the building is
worth only the few hundred dollars which a house-wrecker
would give for it. At that time, we instanced the old Progress
Club as a building of this kind, and the way in which the as¬
sessor has dealt with this plot shows that the Illustration was
well chosen. He adds $80,000 to the value of the property, be¬
cause of the building, yet this structure is useless to its present
owner, and will he sold for a few hundred dollars to a second¬
hand building materia! dealer. The Evening Post mentions
some other examples of this kind. The assessor makes the
United States Realty Company pay taxes on ?55,0OO as the value
of the Ti-inity Building, Yet, how much has the Realty Com¬
pany been able to sell it for to the ho use-wrecker? The Stewart
Building is appraised at $520,000. apart from the land; and yet
if the city decides to build its Court House on that site, it will
be worth nothing at all. So it is with, hundreds of similar in¬
stances. These arbitrary valuations are not the fault of the
assessor. There is no rule which can guide him iu placing a
value upon such buildings. He must simply make his guess;
no matter how absurd the guess may become a few weeks after.





IT does not follow that the law providing for the
assessment of land and buildings should be repealed. The
class of building of which the old Progress Club and the Trin¬
ity Building are examples, are. indeed, an extremely impor¬
tant class of building, and are. as it happens, generally situated
upon land which is difficult to assess accurately, because of the
frequently speculative nature of its value; but the amount of
this kind of property in the city will probably, in the course
of time, tend to decrease rather than increase. At any rate, we
can understand that the help which the separate assessment
of land and building will afford to the task of making a scien¬
tific and just assessment list is worth the risk and trouble
which particular class of property will necessarily give the as¬
sessors. The attempt, however, that the tax reformers should
next make is to improve the administrative machinery which
stereotypes the assessments. The Record and Guide has al¬
ready frequently pointed out the absurdity of asking any asses-
sior to appraise 150 parcels of property every day for 100 days
with any pretence to method and accuracy. Not only should
the assessors be given more time for the work, but they should
not be shouldered with the exclusive responsibility which they
have at present. A board of review should be established,
which shiould go over the list before the books are opened and
test the work of the deputy assessors. No one man's judgment
should be final, as it now practically is, in such an important
matter as officially appraising the value of hundreds of millions
of dollars' worth of real estate. Finally, the bill passed last
year providing for the publication of the assessment list, should
be amended, so as to insure prompter publication. At the pres¬
ent the Tax Department has until July 1st to furnish the "copy"
to the City Record, and thereafter the City Record can print the
list at its leisure. This means that the assessment list for 1904
will not be published and be made readily accessible until the
deputy assessors have started out on their job of making the
assessments for 1905. It would be far hetter to advance by
several months the time for beginning the assessment, and then
arrange to bave the list published, if npt contemporaneously