Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 34, no. 870: November 15, 1884

Text version:

November lo, 1884 The Record and Guide 1U7 THE RECORD AND GUIDE. Published every Saturday. 19 1 Broadway, N. Y. TERMS: OSK YEAR, ia advauce, SIX DOLLARS. Comnaunications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway, J. T. LINDSEY, Businesa Manager. NOVEMBER 15, 1834. Now, that the eleution is over there is an improved feeling in trade circles. Stocks are firmer; there is more inquiry for improved real estate, and a more hopeful feeling obtains in every department of business. Considerable quantities of gold are coming from Europe, and the greatest corn crop ever grown in this coun¬ try will soon begin to move. Nothing that Congress can do will injure the trade of the country, and unless something unexpected happens we ought to have better times up to the close of the present crop year. The Broadway surface horso-car road seems now to be a fixed fact. Apart from the questionable infiuences which were brought into play to affect the action of the Aldermen, the city will be a gainer by the arrangement finally arrived at. The company guar¬ antees to pay 3 per cent, of its gross receipts at first and 5 per cent, subsequently into the city treasury, while all who ride in the Broadway cars are to receive transfer tickets entitling them to go to the upper end of the city for five cents. Neither the city nor the patrons of the cars have anything to complain of in this arrangement. The change will be a relief to Broadway, as it will rid that thoroughfare of the lumbering omnibuses. Then again a surface horae-car road wili not interfere with the building of an arcade under Broadway; a cable road would necessarily interfere with tbat proposed improvement. finance, pointing to the piles of unsalable goods, declare they are due to over-production, yet the world is full of empty stomachs and naked backs. The real explanation, however, is the discard¬ ing of silver as a money metal and the making of gold the sole unit of value at a time when the production of gold is falling off, and the commerce of lhe world demands both its precious metals and every paper agency which facilitates exchanges to transact the growing business of the modern world. It looks now as if England will be the chief sufferer, as all the rest of the world is demanding part of her hordes of gold, which she caunot spare so well as could either France or the United.States. Although the discount rate in the Bank of England is 5 per cent., gold flows out of its vaults to the United States where money caunot be loaned even at 3 per cent There is some mystery about the steady imports of gold in view of the condition of our foreign trade. We are sending less to Europe than we did last year, Dnring October, for instance, our provision export was $7,458,333, against $3,650,963 last year. Since January, that is, for ten months, our exports of breadstuffs were $130,998,047, that is some $2-1,137.834, or IC per cent., less thau for the corresponding ten montbs of last year. The lower price of our fiour and wheat explains some of this falling off. Our cotton export is much less than that of last year in value. It would seem, therefore, as if Europe waa again buying our stocks and bonds, a fact rendered probable as the London scale of prices has been higher than those that have obtained here recently. AVhen our corn commences to go forward there will ba a check to our cheap wheat export as well as an increase in the total valuation of our cereals sold abroad. The adoption of the constitutional amendment limiting the indebtedness of localities to 10 per cent, of the assessed valuation of real estate is taken advantage of by Mayor Edson to suggest all manner of disagreeable possibilities. It may put a siop, he aays, to the acquisition of tbe parks in the annexed district, to the work of the Dock Commissioners, the purchase of school sites and local improvements of all kinds. Ten par cent, of the valuation of the city is within afraction of being$113,000,000. Our nominal debt is now $135,810,579.!33, but then there are $35,479,579.33 in the sink¬ ing fund, so that our real debt is $90,331,000, exclusive of revenue bonds issued against taxes to be collected. In any fair construction of tbe law ic is our real and not our nominal debt, which the con¬ stitutional amendment will affact. If tliere is any doubt about it the next Legislature must abolish this absurd fiction of the sinking fuud, which is good for nothing except to employ addi¬ tional clerks and conceal the real condition of the finances of the metropolis. ------------e----------- The Mayor seems disposed to be an obstructionist. His special animosity is directed against the parks in the annexed district, but if these are desirable there is no reason why the city should not have them, as the amendment does not go into effect until Janu¬ ary Ist. Were commissioners appointed now to condemn the land the work could practically be consummated before the begin¬ ning of the new year. The aqueduct expenditure is expressly exempted by the terms of the amendment. We want these parks as well as other local improvements to go on, and the ^118,000,000 debt has not yet been reached by a good deal. With the steady growth of the city a permanent debt of that amount could be very easily handled and would become less onerous every year. The empire of Austria has determined to get rid of its paper and silver money and will resume specie payments in gold. The king¬ dom of Greece also is about to leave tbe Latin Union and to adopt the gold unit of value. The former empire will require $350,000,000 of gold immediately, and Greece some $40,000,000, This additional demand for the yellow metal will further depress the price not only of silver "i --f all commodities dealt in by the commercial world. The "sen*'-^that a 6°!'^ " between the nations is becoming more eager as ti.^ --cityjs by. This results in a steady addition to the value of gold, ^ hich shows itself in the lower prices of everything produced by thtJ'human race. This redaction of values checks pro¬ duction, for no one wishes to add to the stock of goods on hand in a falling market. Hence the accumulation of money at the trade centres, the stoppage of manufactures and the throwing out of employment of hosts of laborers, The wiseJicreB who write on Jay Gould. There is a curiously bitter and apparently unreasonable feeling against the great speculator whose name heads this article, not only in Wall street but among the outside public. For years the Herald and Times have attacked him almost daily, and in a spirit which, to put it mildly, is simply malignant, lhe WaU Street Neivs recently intimated that Gould was in danger of being hung to a telegraph pole. That this feeling is shared by the populace is shown by the fact that in the excitement which followed the elec¬ tion a mob gathered at Gould's house threatening to do him bodily injury. The police, however, succeeded in dispersing them before any harm was doue. How are we to account for this general detestation of such a bold and auccessful operator ? A bad man in the ordinary sense of the word be is not. In fact be is an exemplar of all the domes¬ tic virtues. He is a model husband and father and is not known to have any personal vices. He has been called a wrecker of rail¬ way properties, yet for the last'three years he has confessedly made heavy sacrifices to sustain market prices. Were he to let go his hold on Missouri Pacific, Western Union or the miscellaneous stocks in whicb he is interested there would be a panic on the street, and the bulls in stocks would all be ruined. Yet somehow he is regarded as the evil genius of the speculative arena, while the general impression seems to be that were he out of the way a more natural market to trade in would result. It is alleged that he is treacherous—that he does not keep faith wilh his assodates. Yet somehow during his career he has suc¬ ceeded in forming alliances with all tbe leaders of the street and with every prominent railwayman in the country. Not so with the Vanderbilts or with Jamea R. Keene, who attempted at one time to become hie rival. The former attract to them but very few persons outside tbe officers of the properties they control. But observe the directories of the Gould enterprise —Western Union, for instance—and see how rich it is in weighty names compared with the boards representing rival interests. Then, again, his career bas been a marvellous'one, Thecourse of his life from the time he came to New York to sell his famous patent mouse-trap has simply been a wonder. What remarkable faculties he must have had to form tbe combinations and carry out the enterprises which has made him for bo many years the greatest speculator and railway organizer in the world! The secret of the universal dislike felt for him may perhaps be found in the belief tbat his object in life has been merely to accu¬ mulate money and wield power. Businesa men are not popular with the American people, and for the same reason which makes Gould disliked. At our elections the suffrages are given to lawyers almost exclusively, for they work for others directly and only indirectly for themselves, while the groat businesa organizing intellects of the nation are rigidly excluded from public life because of a feeling that the pursuit of wealth alone does not develop the highest moral qualities in the ordinary man. Jay Gould with all bis wealth and opportunities has done but little for the community. He bas been a huge sponge drawing everything to himself, giving out nothing. It would be better for his reputation if he had some popular weakness such as a love of Iiorses, or a fondness for disphy and would distribute his money more freely, but he never comes before the public except as the leader of a bull or bear movement ■