Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 38, no. 970: October 16, 1886

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^ctoier ih, 1886 The Record and Guide, THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. 1©1 Broadwav, IST. Y. Onr Telephone Call .ts ..... JOHN 370. TERMS: om YEAR, in adyance, SIX DOLLARS. Communicationg should be addressed to C, W, SWEET, im Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager, Vol. XXXVIII. OCTOBER 16, 1886. No, 870. The business situation continues to improve. There has been some slackness in trade, indeed rather more than was to liare been expected this time of year, but the manufacturers are hard at work, and the consumption of goods is fully up to the production. The most remarkable fact connected \vith the industrial situation is the pros¬ perity of our iron and car work industries. Orders for steel rails cannot be filled and all the roads are clamoring for rolling stock to transact their increasing business. There is an excellent feeling in real estate circles, and it is significant that the demand for lots for improvement by working people is quite marked. This may develop in time in a real estate speculation of large proportions. The one cloud in our domestic sky is the withdrawal of bank currency, due to the calling in of government bonds and the locking up of $70,000,000 of current funds in the Treasury as a fund to redeem bank issues. This money, under the law, can be deposited in the banks, but the latter are not anxious this should be done, as it would interfere with the high rate of interest they can now demand in the street. Fortunately for the business world, gold is coming from Europe, and this will relieve the market in spite of the banks. There is much discussion just now as to what will be fche basJe for bank issues when the government debt will be unavailable for that purpose. But the writers need not trouble themselves; here¬ after the government will issue the paper currency demanded by the requirements of trade. Nothing can be safer than a gold or silver certificate, which represents an actual dollar in the Treasury. It would be better, of course, if the notes issued by the Treasury Department should make no discrimination between gold aud silver, but the banks have lost public confldence as issuers of paper money for the business community. It is their interest to make profits for their shareholdersj and to do so they take advantage of every crisis to tax their customers heavily. Their war against silver was because the certificates made currency available at periods when they could have reaped rich harvests by advancing loans to extra¬ ordinary figures. Every spring and fall there were regular "pinches" in the market, engineered by the banks for their own benefit. This has come to an end by the government issue of greenback and gold and silver certificates. At a meeting of the shareholders of the Real Estate Exchange, a majority decided in favor of a declaration of a 2 per cent, dividend this falb The property of the Exchange is supposed to be worth about $600,000. The total income is nearly 140,000. This includes rents for offices and auction stands, knock-downs, annual memberships, etc. There has naturally been a great many expenses in the building, altering and opening of the Exchange in the first two years; but the prospect hereafter is that there will be a larger income and a reduced expenditure. The objection to the payment of the dividend was that there was an unpaid debt of $80,000, bearing 4:}4 per cent, interest. This seems a trifling matter on a property like the Exchange, when one recalls the heavy indebtedness of other corporations compared with their share capital. It is proba¬ ble that the Exchange may in time have a sinking fund to gradu¬ ally liquidate the debt while paying dividends. A proposition has been proposed to issue bonds at B}4 per cent., taking up the present debt, with the understanding that certain of them should be caucelled every year. ' m The city press are united in condemning the Aldermen before they are tried. Is it not barely possible that some of them, at least, may have voted for the Broadway Railroad franchisn without having been bribed. There must be at least a hundred thousand citizens of this city who think we ought to have had a Broadway Railroad thirty years ago. We certainly would have had oue were it not for the unwise opposition of the late' A. T. Stewart and other pur¬ blind Broadway property holders. We are no defenders of our Board of Aldermen. Our local legislation has been a scandal to Democratio government for the last fifty years, but, in common ■' 'Ulli I . ». ■ . 1259 fairness, we cannot consent to join in this outcry against men, all of whom may not be i;uilty of corruption. Oar press, like the Arch¬ duke of Austria in Shakespeare's " King John," Is "ever stronger on the stronger side." There is nothing in the way of cheap dema¬ gogism that it does not cater to. The Sun calls Representative Hiscock to account for saying that '* if gold should be withdrawn, contraction would inevitably follow and a consequent disturbance in our finances." " It is lamentable," says the Sun, " that a man of Mr. Hiscock's intelligence should talk in this way." In this case, however, the Congressman is right and the editor is wrong. If we should get rid of the $640,000,000 of gold, and substitute the $400,000,000 of silver as our only metallic basis, it would cause a frightful contraction and prices would go down with a rush. In all silver currency countries low prices prevail. Labor gets but sixty cents a day in Mexico, and from six to ten cents a day in India and China. The true policy is to use both gold and silver and all the paper that can be safely con¬ verted into the precious metals. The world is suffering from gold monometallism, but silver monometallism would be still worse. The treatise on the Prussian Land Laws, contributed to The RfiCOED AND Guide, October 2d, by Mr. M. Fast, should be read by everyone interested in the land laws of this couutry, and more particularly by those who favor reform, which would make realty easy of transfer and give us secure titles with very little cost. This gentleman shows that a system is actually in operation in an old monarchy like Prussia which is all that the most ardent land reformers ask for in this country. Every intelligent person knows that the doubt about titles, the delay and cost in conveyancing is entirely due to the laws we have inherited from the past, and that no one benefits by them save a certain class of officials and a few lawyers. The stock of a telegraph company, which consists mainly of Avires, poles and chemicals, can be transferred in Wall street without a possibility of a flaw in the title within a feAv hours' time and at a trifling cost. Yet a plot of real estate—say the Western Union Telegraph building—could not be transferred in less than a month at a very great expenditure and with a possibility of some flaw in the title. There is no need of any sach embarrassment, for land is transferred in Australia, New South Wales, Prussia, Hesse Darmstadt, and in some of the cantons in Switzerland, as readily, cheaply and safely as stocks and bonds in Wall street. No lawyer should be without a copy of Ih. Fast's carefully-written treatise on tho Prussian Land Laws. Bimetallism and Prosperity in Business. There is a widespread impression that it was the demonetization of silver in 1878 whioh caused a panic in the fall of that year, and that the only hope of a recovery of world-wide prosperity is the rehabilitation of silver as a mouey metal. Ifc is argued that the reason why we have done better than Europe was because we partially remonetized silver in 1878. The distress in trade throughout the rest of the world, and especially the deplorable condition of India, has led to the appointment of a Royal Oomrais- sion to inquire into this matter, which facfc is accepted as the first step towards a return to bimetallism by the commercial nations. Tbe banking class—the great capitalists—those who control the money of the world, have naturally b^en gold monometallists, for, a period of universal distress, while ruinous to business, is a harvest iov those who own the loanable and investing funds. Every addition to the debts of other people is a direct enhancement of the property of the money owner. Our Eastern press has made a vigorous fight for the banking interests, and have done all they could to discredit silver as a money metal; but now that the tide has turned, some of the most far-fceeing of the financial papers are trimming their sails to get on the righfc side of the question. The Financml Chronicle furnishes a case in point. It is about the only Nevp York representative of the banks whioh has ever given any facts on the subject, but it has, without scruple, drawn wrong inferences from them. Lately, however, it has been disposed to accept the inevitable, and iu ifcs last issue it is openly for a use of silver concurrently with gold to measure values. In response to a doctrinaire gold monometallic journal the Chronicle says ; It seems to speak as if the use of silver involved somefching entirely new to be applied to commerce to-day, rather thau the continuance of something very old upon and under the inflaence of which the commerce and values of the present have been builfc. A new monetary system suitable for a new world is uot according to c ur view the form the question takes. The nations have got to accept the conditions as they exist and do the besfc they can with them. Wide distress and danger of far greater disfcurbance have followed interference with a currency almosfc as old &3 history itself, and which for aboufc seventy years of this century had served as an absolutely perfect contrivance for measuring values. Now it does not seem to us quite in point or a happy use of words, to talk about alchemists in response to a proposition simply to restore that situation. Nor can we see anything so very di^cult lu such a restoration, except that a special effort is always