Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

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January 7, 1888 The Record and Guide. 9 203 Eaat side, below SSth street. Single or double Sat.. .tl'>,000 to 30,000 ^516 East or Horth River, Six or eight lota, with one or two on waterfront, for business purposes......................... L316 City real estate iu exchange for sixty acres at Islip, L I. Has 1,000 feet p«bblv and sandy shore; handsome buildings, &c. Value increasing yearly.............................. 35,000 167'!^ On Canal street, west of Broadway, or near Broadway east of Canal street. Store, Price reasonable.................... OFFSRSD. 73 St. Hicbolas avenue. Plot of about six lots..............— 48,000 17S Weat I5th street, between 7th and Sth avenues, 50x103, with tbree-story brick buildings................................ 40,000 184 On Front, Water, Pearl and Beaver streets. South William and Broadway. Stores and offices. Ranted......20,000 to 300,000 316 Water street, near Coenties slip. Two old buildings......... 23 ,(J00 203 Hear 3d avenue and 86th street Twenty family apartment houses. Rent |3,880, Cash $7,000....................... 33,030 316 109th and llOtb streets, near 9th avenue. Lots 50x200. Easy terms..................................................... 35,000 318 Brooklyn, H. Y, Hear Sumner Avenue Elevated Station, New twostory and basement, brown stone, 1S.9 front. Mortgage $4,OJ0 at 5 !(.................................... 6,700 1073 West 4bi.h street, between 6th and 7th avenues. Three-story, brick house, 18.9x1)4x100.5. In fine order throughout...... 20,090 1073 Private dwellings on west side. To exchange for tenements or Iota........................................................ PEOPKRTT FOR 8AI.K OR TO RENT, Fifth avenue, corner of 59th street. Plot 50.5xlt0. To lease for long or short term, with renewal. Present structure commencement of large hotel. Foundation laid for heavy building. Address, Owner, 249 West Slst street. Valuable water front on the East River, between lOStb and 109th streets. For sale or to lease for a long term of years; owner will make improve¬ ments to suit tenants. The St. Nicholas avenue borse-cars afil'ord easy means of transit from the west side of the city, Addreas, Owner, 249 West Slst street. SOth street, near Sth avenue. Desirable plot, comprising about three lota. Elegant site for publishing house. Address, No, 49a, care Real Estate Exchange. ----------•---------- A Mortgage Index. We will issue, about February lat, an Index to the Hew York Mortgages published in Volimae XL. of The Rkcobd and Guide. This publi¬ cation will be invaluable to all brokers, capitalista and institutions who negotiate or make loans on city realty. It will enable tbe possessor to easily find out whc- are loaning money on any street or avenue and at what rate such loans are being placed, as well as the term they have to run. As only a limited number will be printed, subscribers who desire a copy should send a postal to that effect to this ofBce at once. The price will be 11.00 per copy. The price for copies not ordered in advance will be $1.50 each. ----------•---------- Protection and Building. A short time ago The Recobd and Guidh: published au interview with a free trade builder who had made calculations showing that protection increased the cost of building a $24,000 dwelling nearly 10 per cent, in the matter of materials alone. He estimated that were it not for the tax imposed by the tariff the bricks used would cost less by $300; stone, $300; lime and cement, $150; iron work, $500; glass, $435, etc. At the last meeting of the Commonwealth Club, Mr, Everett P. Wheeler touched upon the same subject, in tbe coiu^e of an important address, in which he rather ruthlessly dissected that rara avis of ours—the tariff. But he estimated the increased cost of building cheaper houses, costing about $13,000 each, due to protection, as high as 25 per cent. " I have done considerable building in Hew York," said Mr, Wheeler to a representative of The Record and Guide, "and I can think of scarcely a thing used in constructing our bouses which is not taxed—in many cases absurdly; for instance, there is plate glass, on which there is a duty of about 148 per cent. Yet, in spite of this the foreigner manages to sell us his goods. Our manufacturers scarcely dare claim that this 148 per cent, ia required by the higher money value of wages in America than in Europe. In truth it is simply an enormous bonus paid to one or two manufacturers to enable them to compel our people to use an inferior article at a cost one and a-half times as great as the Belgian, Frenchman or Englishman would be content with. How much better it would be for us to take the foreigner's glass and give him in exchange for it some of the many things he needs of ours, and which wa can produce with the minimum of labor. The same remark applies to.lead-pipe, copper, materials for paints, marble, and common window glass. The duty on these ia prohibitory, and there are millions of people who have to use and pay for them while the number who make tbew. are a few thousand. "Let me give you an example of how the tariff works, even]to the detri¬ ment of those it ' protects.' Formerly vessels engaged in the South American trade returned to this country with copper ore in ballast. The mineral was smelted here, aud thus sailors and mechanics found employment. Then, to prevent its importation, a duty of 3J^ cents a pound was imposed on copper ore. This was prohibitory. The vessels that carried our products to Chili, Peru, and elsewhere in the South, didn't pay, for lack of a return cargo, and ao ceased to run, while, of course, the smelting establishments had to close. Take another case—that of nickel, A duty was imposed .on this article to enable the owner of one mine in Pennsyl¬ vania to compete with foreigners. This raised the price of nickel so that the Meriden Britannia Company were unable to export their manufac¬ tures, and were compelled to invest capital and establish a factory in Canada, where nickel is free. " To return to the building trade; lot me ask, what is the use of the duty on marble ? Years ago this stone could be quarried in Italy cheaper than in thia country, but to-day the work is principally done by machinery, and costs no more to the Vermonter then to the foreigner; yet the tariff exists to increase the price of a very important material in the construc¬ tion of our houses." "But, Mr, Wheeler, would not the abolition of our tariff cause this coun try to be flooded with tbe cheaper foreign goods, and would not our work¬ men be thrown out of employment I" " That would happen if the foreigner would give us his goods for noth¬ ing; but he is not likely to go so far "as that. For every dollar's worth of merchandise he sends to us he will demand payment in a dollar's worth of our products. The more he sends the more we will have to produce. An exact ratio must be maintained. Each will makg mcn^y out of the exchange, for each produces what the other wants. If we produced noth¬ ing the foreigner would send us nothing, "Some time ago I built four houses. I have calculations here showing how much tribute I had to pay to our god—Protection, You will see it amounts to nearly 25 per cent. Four houses, 28x50, coat $12,500 each...............................$,50 000 Wages, half of cost, or............................................ 25^000 Cost of material.................................................. $25 000 Duty on material about......................................!!'.',*. 8)500 Material, if no duty......................................... ............................................ $16,500 Wages on each bouse............................................. $6,250 Material on each house, if duty free.............................. 4,100 Cost of each house without duty.................................. $10,350 The World of Business. Railway Builders Turning Southward* Vice-President T, F. Oakes of tha Northern Pacific Railroad baa been talking about the immediate future of railroad buildmg. He realizes that the Northern States east of the Mississippi River are carrying all the rail¬ way business they can support, while beyond the river, especially in the Northwest, there are more railroads than the present condition of the country will warrant. The expansion is now in the South, and there the railroad extension for tha immediate future will take place. Mr. Oakes, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, said that there would be a let up on railroad building in the Northwest next year, but it would be booming in the Southern States. He said that capital was ready to embark in this kind of enterprise in the South because that section of the country demanded more railroads. It was developing its wonderful resources ou a scale of great magnitude. Its manufacturing establishments were spring¬ ing up in heretofore comparatively unknown places. Investors saw that there was profit in Southern railroads, Another cause for thia new work in the South was the reduced price of steel rails. It had fallen consider¬ ably on the ton of late, and would probably be atill further reduced. There were too many parallel lines between Chicago and St. Paul and the Horthwest, and this was being realized every day. States like Ohio, Indi¬ ana and Illinois have railroads penetrating every county and neighbor¬ hood. In tha Southern States there are extensive areas without railway. communication, and yet every acre of the land is valuable for agriculture or is rich in mineral deposits, or else bears a heavy growth of superior tim¬ ber. In every part of thia undeveloped country the aoil is full ot wealth of one sort or another, and if railway builders have been found to push their lines across the blizzard-swept plains of the Northwest to handle the busi¬ ness of the Rocky Mountain mines, and of the summer farming in Dakota, they will soon be brought to appreciate that railways into the undeveloped regions of the South will be rewarded with magnificant results in the way of agriculture, mining, lumbering and multifarious manufacturing indus¬ tries. The future of railway construction must find its grandest realization in the South in the early future,—New Orleans Picayune. The Only Way to Break the Coal Combinations. In 1877 Franklin B. Gowen consummated a scheme by which he united all tbe anthracite coal-carrying companiea for the purpose of maintaining coal prices. Prior to 1875 the Reading Railroad Company had bought 143 square miles of anthracite coal land—though it could not exhaust one- twelfth of that property during ten years—aud the rivals of that company had obtaiued control of all the other tracts of anthracite coal land that were purchasable. When this scramble had ended, because of the absorp¬ tion of all available coal lands, the officers of these companies began soberly to count the cost of their greed. They had borrowed wherever they could. Everything rolled along merrily until the interest payments began to become due. Tha Reading Railroad Company had lost $15,(J00,C0O in the five years from 1870 to 1875, and its oflicers soon realized that they would be called upon to pay the interest on $4l,000,oo0 that had been bor¬ rowed to further their scheme of land absorption. The other coal-carryiug companies found themselves similarly situated, und they readily assented to Mr. Gowen's suggestion of a combination. The representatives of the coal-carrying companiea held regular monthly sessions for four or five years and persistently ordered advances in cial prices. They increased the trans¬ portation charges to more than three times the actual cost, but they were still unable to carry the heavy loads of debt which they had shouldered. They restricted production and imposed fines, but still they found that coal consumers could not be squeezed to their complete satisfaction. When the prices of manutactiiring sizes had been raised above a given figure they discovered that soft coal was supplanting the anthracite, and that manu¬ facturers were in a measure able to resist further exactions by changing their furnace grates and burning bituminous coal. It mattered little to the large consumer of coal whether he usad anthracite or bituminous. He bought that fuel which made the most steam for a dollar. In 18S4 anthra¬ cite was displaced by bituminous to the extent of 800,000 tous, and it then dawned on the minds of the coal kings that their combination could not be successful without the co-operation of the carriers of soft coal, who had also combined to advance prices. For a time the competition of the two qualities of coal was maintained with vigor, but the mismanage¬ ment of the Reading Railroad Company and the financial necessities of the Baltimore & Ohio Company brought both companies into the clutches of a powerful syndicate of money lenders, and through the discipline of that coterie of capitalists the two combinations, comprising twelve com¬ panies, have been induced to work together to increase the price of coal to the consumer. Manufacturers and householders in the East pay over $40,000,OJO a year in excess of the sum they would have to pay if healthy competition prevailed. They are taxed $40,000,0 lO a year to sustain railroad companies that are carrying hundreds of millions of watered capital. The only hope of relief from the oppressions of these combinations lies in competition, and as the companiea in the com- binationa control all avenues of communication with the sources of coal supply in thia country it is apparent that the needed compptition must come from without. It has been shown that twelve companiea restrict produc¬ tion and mark up prices within our own borders, but it would be an impos¬ sibility to extend that combination so that it should include the coal opera¬ tors of Nova Scotia, of England and of the globe. In that direction lies our only hope of permanent relief from the exactions of the coal combina¬ tions; and the question that presents itself to the manufacturing and con¬ suming claases uf tbia country is the choice between cheap coal and expen¬ sive coal. By maintaining the tariff barrier the coal combinations can dictate prices. If coal should be put on the free list these combinations would be broken by the pressure of outside competition. The tariff on coal protects combinations. Free coal would protect the manufacturer and the workingman along the Atlantic sea-board, and would reduce the cost ot 3 I