Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 34, no. 858: August 23, 1884

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August S3. 1884 The Record and Guide. 873 THE RECORD AND GUIDE. Published every Saturdav, 191 BroadwT^ay, N. Y. TERMS: ONB TEAR, in advance, SIX DOLLARS. Communicatloiui should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. IJHDBBY, BuslnesM Manager. AUGUST 23, 1884. In June we Tentured to predict that stock values in Wall street would show a decided advance in July, and early in the last named month we said August would see stilt higher quotations. Kor were we mistaken. So far the advancing tide of prices gives evi¬ dences o( no retiring ebb. Should there be no disaster to the com crop, September will be another bull month. Sometime ago it was said that Wall street was the only blue spot in the country. But the current stock speculation makes that locality the most cheerful and hopeful of all tbe busineea centres. The bears keep on croakiug, with all the factors in the street operating on the bull side. The public, they say, is not in the market. This may be true enough, but somebody owns the stocks in Wall atreet. These are held at figurea generally below their in¬ trinsic values, and the owners form a public themselves large enough to maintain prices. It is further stated that at the present price of grain the farmers are impoverished and not benefited by large crops. But this is nonsense. A great crop here, no matter what the price ia, fills the barns and elevators and gives the farmer credits if not money. His stacks of wheat and corn is his bank, for some time during the year it will pay to sell it. The shrinkage of all prices haa practically made money more valuable. The farmer can buy more with tbe wheat he sells at 80 cents a bushel than he could when wheat was 25 per cent, higher, for he can purchase more cotton and woollen goods, tools, groceries and other neces¬ saries than he could two years ago. Price is a relative term, A penny could buy aa much in the reign of Edward IV. as could hatf-a-guinea in Victoria's reign. Just as soon as the com crop is assured up will go stock values. The three letters of acceptance of the presidential candidates are now before the public. That of Jamea G. Blaine was by far the ablest. It was not a candid statement of the issues before the country, but it waa full of suggestion, and its style was luminous. The assumption that the prosperity of the country waa due almost exclusively to the tariff was, it is true, a trifle abourd, but on the whole the Blaine acceptance waa a document its author could well afford to be proud of. Butler's letter was a disappointment. In a way he is quite as great an adept as Mr. Blaine in the art of putting thinga. But this ex-Eepublican and double ex-Democrat is conscious that he cuts a ridiculous figure as a labor reformer. He is, in fact, a man without any convictions, and has but one political programme —how to advance the personal fortunes of Ben. F. Butler. His letter is the plea of a lawyer making a case where there is none. Mr. Cleveland's letter evinces no ability whatever. Anxious to please all factions he uses platitudinous phrases which may mean anything or nothing. .—- ■ . .^----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Readers of the three letters of acceptance will notice how anx¬ ious ar^'all the candidates to placate the workingmen. In what¬ ever else they differ Messrs. Blaine, Butler and Cleveland unite in declaring their anxiety to approve any measures for the benefit of the toiling millions. Thia ia all the more curious in view of the past inability of the working people to make their influence felt at the polls. Workingmen's pattiea have been tried time and again, but their votes always figure among tbe scattering after the election is over. There are workingmen in the French Assembly and in the English Parliament, but no laboring main was ever chosen to our Congresa. Yet to read the letters of the candidates one would suppose that the day laborers were the most influential aection of the voting population. The demagoguery of the three candidates in this matter is simply nauseating. Can we cry Eureka ? Has the air navigation problem really been solved? Captain Renard, in Paris, has, itseema, propelled a balloon against the wind; it obeyed the rudder at every point of the com¬ pass. This is really the moat important event of thia century. Scientists have said all along that air navigation would be practicable whenever a powerful motor could be used ia a ma¬ chine of light weight. In thia case, it seema, the force was obtained from au electric accumulator motor of ten-horse power, the balloon beine; cigar-ehaped. The inventor claims that he can carry a hundred men anywhere through the air. It is only a matter of time and money. From thia time forth we may expect that prodigious efforts will be made to bring about aerial navigation. Houses and Railroads. While we can know and tabulate every mile of railroad ever built in the country and give ita cost, we are quite in the dark as to the existing number of houses, their cost, aa well as the annual supply needed by our growing population. The periodical finan¬ cial panica have been traced to the locking up of vast sums of floating capital in such improvements, yet no one seems to have realized that house building consumed as much capital as railroad building, yet such must be the case. Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, has just published an interest¬ ing paper on " Railroad Buildmg," in which he estimates that under normal circumstances we will build 6,000 miles of railroad annually, at a coat of $150,000,000. This, he thinks, will meet the requirements of the two million which is yearly added to our population. But, add;i Mr. Atkinson, we will need to spend 1300,000,000 per annum in the construction of new houses, without countiQg the coat of the repairs and additiona to the old houses. If this estimate ia anywhere near correct we muat have spent over $300,000,000 on new structures aud repau-s during the paat year, but it is probably less than the truth. In this city it ia known that over $40,000,000 is spent per annum in new residences, stores and factories. As New York contains something over 1,500,000 inhabitanta, a corresponding expenditure in the rest of the country, with its 56,000,000 of inhabitanta, would give us a sum total of over $1,000,000,000 for building purposes. Of course there haa been no such outlay of money, for there is no correspondence between the costly structures of the metropolis and the cheaper edifices put up elaewhere ; but, taking the data of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver and other growing cities, Mr. Atkinson's $200,000,000 for new structures ia far too low an estimate. We have no doubt that for the year ending July 1, 1884, more than $400,000,000 muat have been expended on new atructurea and the betterment of old ones. Hereafter, in accounting for depressed times by capital being changed from a floating to a fixed form, it will be necessary to keep in mind house building as well as railroad making. So far economists and statisticiaua have overlooked the importance of building statistics in accounting for the temporary withdrawal of capital in land and building improvements. Our Near-by Summer Resorts. New York is fortunate in being so situated that it affords a greater variety of attractive resorts in the summer than any other great city on earth. It has the ocean at its doors, a noble river with scenery equal to tbat of the Rhine on ita west, and a great sound to the east. Railroads run north and west, penetrating all sorts of regions, and giving the excursionist a choice of mountain, valley and stream surroundings. Thia advantage over other cities ia proven by the enormous local passenger traffic to what may be called near-by watering places. Every ferry and railway station is thronged in the evening with tens of thousands who sleep over night eight to forty miles away from the city. The growth of some of these near-by abodes haa been simply phenomenal. Anyone who recalls Long Branch, for instance, ten years ago and compares it with the present time, will be filled with amazement. Ocean avenue waa a fine drive even then, but from Sandy Hook to Deal there were but few hotels, and the cottage population was very small. The sand heaps on each side of the drive vi ere absolutely forbidding in appearance. To-day they are covered with charming residences, surrounded by grounds of surpassing beauty. The drive from Seabright to lower Elberon is probably the finest of the kind in the world, and the owners of the villas are among our richest New Yorkers. The region about Babylon and beyond on the south side of Long Island has also wonderfully improved within the past aeven years, and yet ita growth has apparently scarcely begun. The number of traina run duriug the summer months on the west half of Long laland is surprisingly large, but the population as yet haa not increased in the same proportion aa it has on the seacoast on New Jersey below Sandy Hook. It would seem as if improvement on the latter must continue until the whole seacoast between Long Branch and Cape May will be developed after the pattern of Sea- bright, Elberon, Asbury Park and Ocean Grove. There seems less and lesa need for New Yorkers leaving town in the hot weather when they can spend their nights in the hilly regions to the north and weat, or be rocked asleep by the ocean aurgea on the eastern coast of Jersey, or the southern shorea of Long Island. I It ia understood the directors of the Broadway Underground Railroad are considering a proposition to go right on with their work under their present chatter, which authorizes a tuimel for