Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 39, no. 999: May 7, 1887

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May n, i^m The Record and Guide. 619 THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. IQl Broad^Aray, IST. "52". Onr Telephone Call Is JOHN 370. TERMS: ONE YEiR, in adyance, SII DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XXXIX. MA.Y 1, 1887. No. 999 our public schools. The State also should furnish the diplomas to practicing surgeons and physicians. It is a pernicious custom to permit the various medical colleges to license doctors. These insti¬ tutions have a direct pecuniary interest in selling as many diplomas as possible, but the public has no guarantee that the young " Sawbones " are competent to administer to the sick or perform surgical operations. In Europe this matter is far better arranged, for State Boards are alone competent to give authority to practice medicine. Indeed, it would be still better if the whole work of granting diplomas was lodged in some central authority at Washington. Speaker Carlisle is a political fossil. He belongs to a prehistoric era of American politics. His one idea is that the way to get rid of the Treasury surplus is to cut down the revenue. All measures looking to public improvements are only " jobs " in his eyes. Yet we live in a new country which has harbors that need improve¬ ment along thousands of miles of seacoast. We have a system of waterways the most extensive in the world, and upon which millions could be spent yearly that would repay us a thousandfold in giving us internal and external commercial advantages. This nation, in Mr. Carlisle's view, should be miserly; it should act as if on the verge of bankruptcy, and take no account of its great wealth and splendid future possibilities. The aversion Speaker Carlisle expresses towards internal improve¬ ments is all the more remarkable in view of the efforts of other civilized nations to carry out improvements that will increase the commerce of their several localities and of the world—as witness the cutting of the Panama Canal, the near completion of the Corinth Canal in Greece, the heavy expenditures in Siberia to con¬ nect the waterways of the vast piovince of Russia, and the pro¬ jected canal between Kiel and the mouth of the Elbe which will join the German Ocean to the Baltic Sea—all are instances what other countries are doing to help improve commerce between the several nations. But to propose any expenditure for our rivers and harbors is regarded in the United States as an evidence of folly if not of downright corruption. We cannot but believe that Senator John Sherman, in advocating public improvements by government aid, is far more in accord with the spirit of the age. For nations as for individuals it is wise expenditures and not miserly economies which bring in the best returns. There is a great deal of indignation among our German popula¬ tion, as well as among people who own hotels and places of amusement, at the recent enforcement of the liquor laws. Germans think it hard that en the only day on which they have a vacation they are not permitted to take their customary mug of beer. The hotel and restaurant keepers are disgruntled for not being permitted to serve wine or liquor to their guests at meals. And then the proprietors of places of public amusement are not allowed to dispense liquors of any kind to their patrons at any time during the week. There are several facts to be kept in mind in consid¬ ering this matter, Mayor Hewitt and the Police Commissioners find it is possible to enforce a prohibitory law in New York at least on one day in the week. Thomas C. Acton and the late Superin¬ tendent of Police James A. Kennedy also proved that it was possible to enforce a liquor law in New York twenty years ago. It can always be done, if the police and the minor courts work together. --------------a-------------- But the stoppage of liquor selling in halls where entertainments are given is not justified by any law sanctioned by the Legislature. An enactment was passed some years ago, aimed at dives and low concert halls, where girls were employed as waiters. It is the courts that have interpreted this law to apply to all places of amusement. The Court of Appeals indorsed this opinion of the lower courts in defiance of all reason and common sense. If people are to be allowed to drink at-all it should be at places of entertain¬ ment. We believe in a good stiff license law and a rigid suppres¬ sion of all low resorts, but it is absurd to try to put into execution judge-made laws, which to the average citizen seems senseless and tyrannical. It is a wholesome sign when our daily press censures decisions made by our courts which have no basis of common sense and no warrant in the laws they profess to interpret. There has been too much sacredness attached to the outgivings of our courts. They are often, too often, wrong in their judgments. It looks as if the Legislature may rectify this blunder of the Court of Appeals as to the dispensing of beer in places of amusement. The newspapers have had a good deal to say lately about the pre¬ valence of Lynch law. They wonder why mob law prevails, and are astonished that lynchers are never punished. Is not tho solution of this miscarriage of justice to be found in our legal system ? In all new communities, while things are yet in an unsettled condi¬ tion, unchecked crime is a peril to every citizen. Everyone feels that the wrongdoer should be promptly punished, or else the gravest consequences are to be feared. But the sluggish methods of our court proceedings never change. The " law's delay" is as marked at the close of the nineteenth century as it was when Shakespeare noticed the fact in the sixteenth century. The age we live in is noted for its time-saving inventions. The world of industry and trade economizes to the utmost time, space and money. But the law is as wasteful of time as of yore. Justice costs more, and there is no certainty that crime will be'punished. Hence Judge Lynch, who does swiftly and surely what the ordinary court cannot or will not do. There is not the slightest hope that our laws in this respect wiU be changed for the better. For it is lawyers who make our laws, who expound them, and who execute them. --------------0-------------- It is not usual for us to put letters in this column, but the subject matter of the following communication is so important that we give it prominence here. Editor Recobd and GtUidb : You are mistaken in stating that an underground tunnel is to be built under Elm street from the Forty-second street depot to the Brooklyn Bridge. The arrangement is for a four-track elevated road, which is to be constructed within a year, between the Forty-second street depot and the City PostoflBLce. Elm street is to be widened as you say and extended— to Printing House square on one end and to Fourth avenue on the other. Lafayette place will be a parfc of the new street. An understanding has been arrived at^between Jay Gould and the Vanderbilts. The Manhattan Company will supply the elevated road in Elm street and the Central and Hudson River road wUI utilize its sunken tracks above Forty-second street, so that New Yorkers will have real rapid transifc from the Harlem River to the City Hall Park. Two of the elevated tracks on Elm street will be for trains which wUl not stop between Forty-second street and the Brooklyn Bridge; but there will be two tracks for way passengers. A new company may be organixed to give us this needed improvement, but the persons be¬ hind who will profit by this new line of swiffc transit will be the Vander¬ bilts' and the owners of the.Manhattan system. One Who Knows. The bill which has passed the Assembly setting apart one pier at every half mile for the use of vessels other than those owned by the great steamship companies is a very wise one. Canal boatmen, marketmen and dealers in building material, as well as general merchandise, have been greatly embarrassed by their inability to secure dockage along our river fronts. The piers have been monop¬ olized by the great steamship companies which practicaUy owns them as private property. This Murphy bill, as it is called, should become a law. The speaker of the Assembly is quite right in wanting a State Board to pass upou the qualifications of candidates for teachers in A daily paper suggests that steps should soon be taken to annex the Dominion of Canada to the United States. There is really more land in the British possessions north of us than there is in the United States. It can easily be demonstrated that aimexation would be as good a thing for Canada as for the Union. It has double the debt per capita compared with the United States, and it wants our cotton, corn, petroleum and many manufactured articles, while we want its lumber, railroad system and jta vast undeveloped territory. The population of Canada could easily become good citizens of the United States. The separation of the two countries is unnatural, for nature has made no boundary lines between the two. But, of course, England will not surrender Canada without a fight, and we are in no condition to either conquer or buy the Dominion. Some day Great Britain will get into difl3.culties which we will take advantage of to negotiate a union of aU the countries north ot the Isthmus of Darien. Owners of property on the line of improvement west and north of the Central Park are complaining of the tardy street improv- ments in charge of the Board of Public Works. Streets are opened one by one instead of whole districts being taken in hand and im¬ proved in their entirety. Builders are reluctant to constniot their edificeR in a neighborhood where adjoining streets have to be opened, sewered, curbed and guttered; for buyers don't like to