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Real Estate Record
AND BUILDERS' GUIDE.
Vol. XXIX.
NEW YOEK, 8ATUEDAT, APKIL 8, 1882.
No, 734
PublisJied Weekly by The
Real Estate Record Association
TERMS:
OXE YEAR, ia advaace - - - - - $6.00
Communications should be addressed to
C. W. SWEET, 13T Broadway
J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager.
What has Mr. James Gordon Bennett
done that the Netv York Herald should
abuse him because he happens to be a land¬
lord? That influential journal denounces
landlords as mean and avaricious, because
thfey take a natural advantage of the large
additions to the population of the city
to increase the interest upon their
investments. The writer in the Herald
may have a relative who keeps a grocery
store. The drought of last summer made
potatoes scarce but surely that would be np
reason for abusing the groceryman or call¬
ing him extortionate because he advanced
the price of those tubers. Now James Gor¬
don Bennett owns a building full of offices
on Nassau street, and liis rents have been
advanced within the last two years. He
owns dwelling house property on Fifth
avenue and other streets, a country resi¬
dence on Washington Heights and vacant
property in the Twenty-third and Twenty-
fourth Wards. Because these lands and
tenemients have advanced in market value
that is no reason why the Herald should
stigmatize Mr. Bennett or the class of land¬
lords and landowners to which he belono-s,
as mean and avaricious. Leading papers
owned by wealthy individuals or corpora¬
tions, and in themselves representing mil¬
lions of dollars, should be careful how they
. pander to prejudices against any class of
citizens. The capitalist who provides dwell¬
ings, stores and offices for living and the
transaction of business, performs as useful a
social function as any banker, merchant,
manufacturer, editor or farmer. We pro¬
test against the injustice which the editor,
of the Herald is doing to Mr. James Gor¬
don Bennett, the landlord.
The stock market will undoubtedly be
subject from this time forth to very marked
fluctuations. There are powerful influences
at work to advance prices, but the course of
events is against them. " Everybody," as
ex-Surrogate Hutchins is reported to have
said, "is stronger and wiser than any¬
body." The magnates of the street may for
a few weeks sustain and even advance
prices, but they cannot continue an upward'
movement if the facts of the business of
the world do not warrant their action.
There can be no great rise in the best secu¬
rities, and the prospect would seem to be of
a general reduction in values. There will,
of course, be ^spurts to higher flgures, and
certain stocks may be manipulated so as to
advance largely; but the average of prices is
probably higher to-day than it will be during
May and June. The large railroad earnings
due to the heavy immigration, and the
promise of the crops which will look well
from time to time, even though they finally
fail, will give us occasional bull speculations
before the harvest is actually gathered. But
in the meantime the real estate market is all
right and is bound to be active for the next
two years, no matter what happens to stocks.
THE REAL ESTATE SITUATION.
Saturday, April 1st, 1882, was the busiest
day in the Register's Office since 1868, when
the paper money speculation was at its
height, and when the Tammany ring was
doing all it could to foster extravagant no¬
tions as to the value of New York realty.
We are now on a gold basis. There is no
speculation as yet in real estate. Prices can¬
not be called high, and there is plenty of
cheap property yet in the market, yet the
natural growth of the city is such that »he
legitimate business of to-day equals in
volume that of a period when the specula¬
tion was a partial frenzy. In some cases
prices are higher now than then, but unim¬
proved property away from the line of imme¬
diate improvement is very cheap to-day
compared with the figures which obtained
up to 1873.
A marked feature of recent buying has
been the purchase by the retail dealers and
storekeepers of the property in which they
transact their business. There have been
large additions to the population of New
York within the last four years; the labor¬
ing classes have been fully employed at high
wages, and this state of things has made
custom good in all our retail stores. Real¬
izing the value of their places of" btisiness,
these shopkeepers have iu many instances
invested their savings in purchasing the
property they occupy. The number of
stores has not increased relatively to the in¬
crease of the customers.
Another fact will be observed. Among
the new building plans filed are quite a num¬
ber in the old Eighth Ward. And here
again it is remarkable that it is the mer¬
chants themselves who are erecting build¬
ings for the accommodation of their business.
The wholesale trade of New York is stead¬
ily encroaching upon the residence portion,
and it will not be many yoars before the whole
region south of Fourteenth street will be
given over to manufacturing establishments,
warehouses, and wholesale dealers. Were
the North River Tunnel completed it would
work a vast change in this quarter of the
city.
On the East Side, again, a very remarkable
change has taken place in the productive¬
ness of realty. Property has been under a
cloud during former years in the Seventh
and Thirteenth Wards. In that section of
the city tenements were not in demand, and
these two wards were the only ones in the
city which showed a decreass in the taxable
value. But so great has been the increase in
the population of the city, especially of ' the
laboring classes, that all the tenement houses
on the East Side are full to overflowing.
^ This is particularly the case in the Seventh
Thirteenth, and Seventeenth Wards. It
may be remembered that over 140,000 immi¬
grants remained in and around New York
during 1881. The Irish and Germans go to
live among their friends on the East Side.
Then the population of Williamsbux-g is in¬
creasing, as is shown by the increased ac¬
commodations at the Grand Street Ferry,
and the greatest throngs that come and go
every few minutes. The East Side store-
keepers have made and are making a great
deal of money. Ridley has taken in tliree ad¬
ditional houses on Grand street, and has
built still another on Orchard street; indeed
he now occupies nearly the entire block, and
his business has increased at a faster ratio
than that of ilacy's establishment on the
West Side. Tenement house property has
advanced in rental value from 15 to 20 per
cent., and the signs are that there will not
be accommodation during the coming year
for the poorer people who want to live in
New York.
PROGRESS AND POVERTY.
A correspondent wishes to know what
The Real Estate Record thinks of Henry
George's work, entitled '• Progress and Pov¬
erty." We have already referred to this
book, but as it has attracted miicri attention
since then and as it is being tra,nslated into
several foreign tongues, perhaps a further
reference to it may be allowable.
Mr. George's work is forcibly written and
his criticisms on previous writers on political
economy are often very just. But we can¬
not assent to the conclusions he arrives at.
From his point of view all the woes of man¬
kind are due to the private ownership of
land, in other words to land monopoly, and
his cure for the ills of society is for the State
to be the sole owner of the soil, which is to
be offered free to any one who will till or
build upon it. But Sir Henry Maine and
other writers on the land tenures and owner¬
ship of the past, have shown that our semi-
savage ancestors did own the land in com¬
mon and that the thrift and enterprise of
modern times is due in great part lo the
recognition of private ownership of the soil.
The East Indian village common, and the
Russian commune are relics of the semi-
barbarous past, and a return to State or
community ownership would be a step back¬
ward instead of forward.
But even if Mr. George is correct and land
monopoly, is really the cause of the inequal¬
ities of wealth and the misery of the poor,
his solution of the problem is so difficult to
bring about that it cannot be made a prac¬
tical question for the next generation. To
propose that private persons should surren¬
der their landed property to the State or
nation is to expect a miracle, and the age of
marvels of that kind has passed forever. It
is more .than suspected that the ills of
society are not due to any one cause, but to
the imperfection of all human institutions.
A cure will not be found in any one panacea
but in the progress of our civilization and
by higher ethical ideals of the race. We are