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§46 The Record and Guideo July S4,1886 a road leading to a beautiful lake, on the shore of which they have built their club-house. J. J. Smith is stopping at the Strong House, Saratoga Springs, N. Y., and will return September 1st. B. H. Martine is spending the summer at Chappaqua, coming to town daily. C. W. Luyster is stopping at the Highlands of Navesink, N. J., coming to tovm daily. John S. Pierce and family are staying at Ocean Grove, N. J. Mr. Pierce comes to the city two or three times a week. Competition for Armory Plans. The new Armory Board have issued a notice to architects that plans for the following armories wiU be receiv&d up to August 13th. The Board consists of Mayor Grace, chairman; Commissioner of Taxes and Assessments Michael Coleman, secretary; Commissioner of Public Works Rollin M. Squire, and Brigadier-Generals W. G. Ward and Louis Fitzgerald, The intended armories are those for the Eighth and Twenty-second Regi¬ ments, N. G., S. N. Y.' The Eighth Regiment armory is to occupy the block about 200x403, between Madison and Fourth avenues and Ninety-fourth and Ninety-fifth streets. Competing architects must have in view the following require¬ ments: Plans are to include quarters for the Second Battery of Artillery, including gun rooms, harness, saddle, officers' and company rooms, and as large a drill-room as practicable. The Twenty-second Regiment Armory is to be built on the block between Ninth avenue and the Boulevard and Sixty-seventh and Sixty-eighth streets. It will front 200 feet on Ninth avenue, 225 feet on the Boulevai'd, 224 feet on Sixty-seventh street and 327 feet on Sixty-eighth street. The armory is to be buUt preferably of stone, and will contain as large a drill-room as practicable, with the necessary officers' rooms; rooms for ten companies of suitable size, with fuel, water, washing and closet accommo¬ dations; also a range for cooking for 800 men; two rifle ranges of as great a length as possible. The colonels of both regiments are to be consulted as to their detailed wants. In such cases as the Board may decide a reasonable extension of time 'will be allowed for completing plans. Those architects whose plans were rejected by the previous Boai'd have been invited to send them in again for inspection. The competition has excited considerable interest among architects, and the facts herein presented and which are now published for the first time were furnished The Record and Guide from Commissioner Coleman's office. The World of Business. Business Outlook. The general situation continues healthily conservative. Crop conditions are watched everywhere as the key to the future. Upon the basis of pro¬ duction to meet actual consumption, the prosperity of the agriculturist is obviously essential to the natural advancement of legitimate commercial and industrial interests. A splendid crop of winter wheat has already been gathered, amounting to about 295,(H)0,000 bushels, and spring wheat returns may still increase the annual yield all the way from 420,000,000 to 440,000,- 000 bushels in spite of the unfavorable weather to the growing grain during the past thirty days. Corn promises abundant returns, and of rye, barley and flax average crops are now looked for. Oats and cotton will be short crops, and the domestic wool clip will probably show a shortage approxi¬ mating 10 per cent, as compared with last year. Until the standing crops are actually harvested nothing is absolutely assured, however, as the summer has proven itself one of strange merteorological disturbances, and the other natural enemies of vegetation, in the shape of bugs, etc., have not all been vanquished yet. Abroad, the wheat crops of Russia, India, the United Kingdom and Australia are reporJed short of last year's averages and undergoing weather that can not but damage them to a greater or less extent. The exact amount of damage to grain at this time is always largely a matter of conjecture, and is chiefly useful as a lever for speculative values. It is, therefore, impos¬ sible, in view of the inseparable uncertainties of the time, to accurately estimate the average prices at which producers are to market their grain this year. From the marked advances in prices last week a slight reaction has followed, and trading has been less active under moderate fluctuations in values. It may be accepted as a peculiarly wholesome feature of general trade that transactions have increased while prices have undergone but little change. In metals, lumber, coal, dry goods, etc., holders have been quite willing to keep their stocks intact rather than sell below cm-rent quotations, and the small advances made in special lines have been more than justified by larger demands for them at the higher figures. Coal, at present, is lifeless under the weight of larger stocks in the hands of pro¬ ducers than last year at this time, and a belief on the part of buyers that rates will be lower later in the season. The dullness has undoubtedly been aggravated by several of the companies in the combination mining more coal than their stipulated quotas for July. The increase of the annual allotment of the steel rail mills to 1,400,000 tons, as 1,100,000 were already contracted for, is a gratifying development of the wise management of industrial affairs, and is strong evidence of the prevailing prosperity. The improved condition of general trade is becoming more apparent, except in those sections of the country where mercantile business is affected by the influence of the drought on spring wheat. Domestic money markets were firmer in the interior, where funds will now be needed for marketing the harvested grain and to expand the operations of established mercantile and manuf actm-ing industries." An almost universal improvement in collections has also made its appearance. Money is naturally in fair supply at the metropolis, but nearly all the National banks have put out all the funds that the law allows them to loan. Last July these same institutions held over $65,000,000 of surplus capital in their vaults, which they could not place at any rates. Stocks have been less active than the first part of the month, though the list is quoted somewhat higher and stronger than a week ago, chiefly on the temporary settlement of the rate war of the Granger roads. The i.)ublic does not want stocks yet appai'ently, and veteran operators see little in the mai'ket for the present. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, there has been some purchasing of our securities, especially in England, and foreign exchange has dropped to a point where further shipments of gold from this s de are improbable the rest of the summer. The general situation in Great Britain and on the continent reflects something of the improvement at home,—The Inter-Ocean. " Diminshing Failures. The national failure record continues to prove the actual though slow return of the conditions of prosperity. In general, the present year might be expected to give a poor business showing. At the most critical time there came labor disturbances which frightened capital, brought enforced idleness, and so disarranged the course of trade and overthrew the plans and estimates of merchants, as well as manufacturers, that it must have been responsible for a large number of business disasters. Merchants in the Southwest who had just received large stocks of goods found themselves cut off from their customers at the opening of the season. Orders were withheld from manufacturers, and the causes that bring failures were put in unaccustomed activity. Yet, notwithstanding all this, there has been a distinct improvement in the last six months as compared with the preceding year. The number of failures reported to Bradstreets for this period in 1886 is 5,461, as against 6,106 in 1885,5,444 in 1884, and 5,296 in 1883. We have risen a respectable distance from the trough of last year's sea, and are now ascending toward the crest of the wave at least as rapidly as we ran down the incline in the preceding years. It can hardly be doubted that but for the labor disturbances there would have been fewer failures in these months than in the corresponding time of any of the lasi three years. The comparative severity of failures is still more indicative of returning business health. It is not so much the absolute number of failures as the actual money losses involved which is the true commercial barometer. And while the per¬ centage of assets to liabilities is less this year than in its two predecessors, the total of assets and liabilities is immensely smaller. The lai-ge failures have decreased. It is not branches, but only leaves that are now falling before the declining breath of the receding storm. Each week's record shows the improvement to be continuing. The conditions now are all favorable. There are but two dangers ahead—but two causes which can operate to check the rev ival that has certainly set in. If labor should learn from the experience of the year the folly and wastefulness of strikes—and if Congress could be made to see that what the country most needs is the repeal of bad currency and commercial laws now in force—we might reasonably expect, for some years to come, a season of prosperity seldom equaled in the country's history.—St. Paul Pioneer-Press'. Growth of Population and Food Production. The summer hog-packing (since February) has this year been somewhat greater than last year, the whole number packed at the twelve principal packing places in the Northwest having been 2,433,282 down to June 26 this year, against 2,242,917, an increase of 19J,365, or SX per cent., and the summer packing last yeai* was greater than in any previous year except 1880, and a fifth more than in 1884. At the rate of increase shown by these twelve places for the fom- months (half the season), the number packed during the eight months to October 31 will be about 5,265,000, while the greatest number heretofore was 5,323,898, in 188fc». Thus, the large corn crops of the last two years are making themselves felt in this important staple, while in the winter packing and the corn and provision exports they have been felt much less than it seemed natural to expect. Thus the number packed in the last winter season (November to February, inclusive) was 6,29d,995, aud the year befoi'e, 0,460,240, which are less than in any of the four years, 1877-78 to 1880-81, when the number ranged from 6,50.5,000 to 7,480,000, though the corn crop was not so lai-ge in those years as in the last two. Taking both seasons together, the difference is not so great. For the twelve months ending with October last the number packed was 11,313,619, and in the only previous years in which as many as 10,000,000 were packed, the numbers were : 1878-79. 1879-80. 1880-81. 11,531,896. 12,274,349. 11,723,145. so that only in 1880 did the number greatly exceed last year's. With the rate of increase so far continued through this summer season, the whole number for the twelve months ending with next October will be 11,564,000, and not six per cent, lef s than in 1879-80. Exports having fallen off greatly in comparison with the early years of great production, it follows that the home consumption of pork products must have increased materially, and perhaps more than in proportion to the increase in population. In Europe thii would indicate an improvement in the condition of the people,' but it does not necessarily here, where the poorer classes even eat beef and mutton and butter in preference to pork and bacon, when they have plenty of work and good wages, and when times go hard with ttiem may eat more pork than before. But actually since 1880 there has been a considerable increase in tbe production of cattle and dairy produce and a decline in the exports of them, so that we are taking much more beef and butter, as well as more pork than we used to. But there must be in the country now very neartly 60,000,000 people, against 50,000,000 in 1880, and the additional 10,000,000 eat a great quantity of meat, etc. Indeed, if the produce of which we get statistics were the whole, they would be very ill fed indeed; the great¬ est number of hogs reported packed in any one year amounted to only 46^^ lbs. per inhabitant, and that year we exported 26 lbs. per inhabitant, leaving but one ounce a day apiece; but while the Northwestern packing includes most that goes to market and is transported by rail or steamer or exported, there is an enormous amount packed for home consumption aU over the country, including nearly all the farmers' supplies in all parts of the counti'y where corn is grown at all, except the South (which produces much, but also imports a great deal), while pork is pre-eminently the farmer's meat. In this as in many other of our products, we shall go very far wrong unless we take account of the ten millions of people added to om* population since the last census. It is like the addition of a country more than one-fourth as populous as Great Britain and Ireland to be wholly supplied with food fi'om this country. Such an addition requires of wheat alone about 45,000,000 bushels a year, yet in spite of the new wheat country settled since 1880, we have sown less wheat than in that year, both this year and last. Our exports of food, therefore, are necessarily less than they were five or six years ago, because our population has increased faster than our production. As in pre¬ vious periods, other industries have been extended faster than agri¬ culture, and the prosperity of the country depends to a very great extent on the wisdom with which such industries have been selected. Ordinarily, the extension of farming is much safer than the extension of other indus¬ tries here, because we have the world for a market for our crops, but only the United States for our manufactm-es and our coarser minerals. But, actually, farming has probably been quite as unprofitable as the average of other industries for the past few years, and it seems fortunate that wheat- growing has been reduced instead of increased, and cotton-growing increased no faster than it actually has been. It seems that we have arrived at that point in our industrial development when great care and much experiment are required to determine in what direction further progress can be made to advantage. The indefinite extension of wheat and cotton-growing, iron-smelting and railmaking may be disastrous, and we shall have to inquire with much care whether what we purpose to pro¬ duce will be wanted before we can safely engage capital and labor in an/ new enterprise.—Railroad Gazette. Railway Building Active. The projects of the vai'ious large corporations for additions and exten¬ sions this year are now so far advanced that it is possible to take a super¬ ficial view of the field, and to see that the results will exceed in importance those of last year or the year preceding. While it cannot be said that there is any marked recovery yet from the period of prostration which set in with the begimiing of 1883, still the work of reorganization has sufficiently rehabihtated the most crippled companies, and where there is local justifi¬ cation for expansion building is again going forward. Particularly in the States which feel the impulse of an incoming agrioultural population of a