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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 26, no. 649: August 21, 1880

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Real Estate Record AND BUILDERS' GUIDE. Vol. XXVI. NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1880. No. 649 Published Weekly by TERMS. ONE YEAR, in advance.. ..SIO.OO. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, No. 137 Broadway NEW YOEK, LOOK TO YOUR LAURELS. A WARNING TO PROPERTY OWNERS—SHALL OUR CAPITAL BE MADE USEFUL ONLY BY THE STURDY YEOMEN OP THE WEST—AN INTER¬ VIEW THAT OUGHT TO BE STUDIED BY ALL OF OUR CAPITALISTS. Tlie good old principle that -'to know thy¬ self is the beginning of all wisdom," ought also to be applied to the knowledge of one's country. Such knowledge certainly is also the beginning of that country's prosperity. How many of our New York property owners of to-day have a correct idea of the vastness and greatness of this country, of which our own city is tlip metropolis ? Few, very few, indeed. Many of them have never gone west of the lakes, and when they travel at all they visit foreign lands and study foreign habits. Men of pluck and enter¬ prise, on the contrary, combine leisure with observation, so as to see for themselves the various channels through which a nation passes to the pinnacle of prosperity. During the summer now about ending, we rejoice to say, that quite a number of successful busi¬ ness men have made extended Western tours, and they have returned wiser if not better men, with more exalted ideas of their coun¬ try's actual greatness and future prosperity, and, what is more, they return with a knowl¬ edge which, if properly diffused, cannot fail to have a salutary influence upon a class of our population too apt to let things take their course. We are led to these remarks owing to the views expressed to the writer by a gen¬ tleman of intelligence and observation, who liad just returned from a three months West- em trip. Having greeted him with the re- uiark: "I suppose you are glad to be back in New York," he replied, "Yes, because this is my home; but, as a business man, I as¬ sure you the contrast between this city and some of these Western towns is very strik¬ ing. There appears to be a lack of snap here, and an air of old f ogjasm which is just now to me very oppressive." NEW YORK NOT UP TO THE MARK. " You are indeed well surfeited with West¬ ern ideas," said the writer. " And why should I not be ? I made up my mind to travel with my eyes wide open, to study the country through which I was passing, and to gather ideas from the men residing in the various States, and my gen¬ eral conclusion is that we here in New York are the least enterprising people in the Union. Aside of the.'lack of snap,' to which I have just alluded, as coming under my observation in business circles, it strikes me also that no- wliere do the rich and poor drift apart as much as here in New York, and the result is an absence of city pride, which can alone make a city great. In Western cities capi¬ talists and workingmen take pride in their respective cities, and in their various spheres co-operate for the great and good of their particular localities. Where is there here in New York a leader in improvements whom other capitalists are anxious to follow ? In fact, there are no leaders at aU compared to the sturdy, enterprising men of Chicago, Cincinnati and other places." HOW OUR CAPITALISTS ARE REGARDED. "They must have made an exceedingly favora,ble impression upon you," said the writer. *' So they have. The average Western man has a more intelligent idea of the resources and greatness of this country than your Wall street bankers or up-town property owners. They are, for instance, constantly amused at the mental somersaults of some of New York's financial writers. These Western men are tireless, enthusiastic workers, they see themselves, so to speak, grow over night, they know everything connected with their work, only they do not know how to Uve. Metaphysics and sesthetics find no room there. These men only attend to politics and busi¬ ness, and business and politics. That is all; and they, per force, become excellent judges of the science of government. They look upon us New Yorkers as a sort of effete class, and say, ' You have what I need, money ; I want it for our enterprises ©ut here, and I respect you for it, because you possess it, but that is all you do possess ; when it comes to men, we have them out here.' At first such remarks sounded strange to me, but when, in one city as weU. as another, I was reminded how much nature had done for New York more than for any other city in the Union, and how little men of capital and enterprise had done for it, I held my breath and listened again. ' You have a thousand places fit for amusement along your seaboard and in your subm-bs,' I was told, 'any one of which would be a fortune to us if we had it. Coney Island had to invite you for a century before you knew enough to go there. Look at your miserable docks, for instance. Do you im¬ agine that if Western men had charge of the great port of New York they would be in such a scandalous condition, anda waterfront that is a disgrace to a country which pre¬ tends to be a model one, and which really make a painful impression upon a foreign traveler when he lands on these shores V I could not help but give assent to my West¬ ern friends' remarks, and many of them add¬ ed : ' Never mind, wait awhile, just now we have plenty to do here, but we will shortly come over and do that Avork for you. West¬ ern men have already done big work for you, and they will do more. They are now build¬ ing your Hudson River Tunnel, Western men have built your elevated roads and your mammoth Rockaway hotels, and the time is not very far distant when we will do some more work for you.' And so from one sec¬ tion of the West to the other I had to listen to criticisms of'New York's want of enter¬ prise not at all flattering to our local pride. Wherever I went, except in a few localities, I saw not only progress, but the grit to secure and hold fast to progress. CHICAGO'S PLUCK. "Look at Chicago, for instance, It is a beehive. Work, work, incessant work, and a virtual taskmaster for the entire West. Rich or poor, it is one vast community, firm¬ ly imbedded upon the cornerstone of labor, and going forward with such mighty strides that I could almost not believe what I saw with my own eyes. I was informed, how correctly I cannot vouch for, that the sales of one dry-goods house this year surpass those of any other dry-goods house in the world. Now what is the result? Where only a few years ago the city of Chicago could with difficulty place her bonds in the Eastern States at 10 per centum, she now has secured a loan from her own capitalists at 4)^ per centum, after having refused the same amount from Boston capitalists at Sj^. There is, of course, also quite a boom in real estate, and any number of parcels of prop¬ erty have this year been sold at double the price of last year. Everywhere in that city new buildings are going up, and there is no let up to the improvements that follow one another in rapid succession." CINCINNATI'S COSMOPOLITAN CHARACTER. " Did you find the same spirit of enterprise prevailing in other Western cities ? " asked the writer. "Yes, I did, in several places, notably in Cincinnati. Here is a city, which, at the outset of the war did not know anything about manufactures. It is to-day besmeared and begrimed with the smoke of her factory chimneys. Her citizens found then that their trade with the South was cut off, and they went to work with a wUl, resulting in her being to-day, one of the largest manu-