Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 44, no. 1114: July 20, 1889

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July 20, 1889 Record and Guide. ESTABLISHED^ N\ARj;H21ii^ 1658.^ DeVOTEO TO REA.L Es,rME , SuiLoiKo A;R.Ci(lTECTdI^E ,h(oUSEWOLD DECOR^norf, ■ BiJ5if/E5s aiJd Themes of GeHei^L IjVhi^esi PRICE, PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SIS DOLLARS. Published every Saturday. TELEPHONE, - - - JOHN 370. Communications should be addressed to C. W, SWEET. 191 Broadway. /. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XLIV. JULY 20, 18S9. No. 1,114 The stock market during the past week has been dtii!; and, con- sideriug the persistent bear attacks upon it, as steady as could be expected. Its future depends, as al! summer markets do, upon the outcome of the crops. There will be the usual telegrams from Chicago and points West, telling of disaster in this section or that, and these telegrams will have the usual amount of truth in them. Very often tliey are sent with the intent to deceive, and even when they are true they are false by implication, for they do not tell the whole truth. Every year necessarily there are certain sections where droughts or rains hurt tlie crops. Whenever aud wherever this occurs it is telegrajihed East, the consensus of these items making a large enough total to scare unthmking speculators. There are no telegraphs, however, from the vast sections where the weather pursues the even tenor of its way. This practice of proclaiming all the bad news reminds one of Bacon's story, so often quoted, of the mariner, who upon going to sea was advised to wear around his neck a piece of the holy cross. A list was shown him of all those who had been saved by this blessed method. The seafarer looked at the list and said: '' Yes ; but where are those that were drowned ?" These misleatliug telegrams, however, really affect the market very little. It is only a widespread disaster such as a frost extending over a number of States that would provide justification for a serious fall in values. To that extent dealers in the "street" are in the hands of the weather God. The Gas Commission Itave just completed letting the contracts for the electric lights in this city during the coming year. The price to he paid for every lamp per night varies from 24 to 45 cents. Chicago pays for the same service 15 cents, and in some cities out West the cost is as low as Scents. By-and-by citizens, instead of grumbling about the amount of their tax bills will investigate for themselves the expenses of the city. One of the fii'st things that will strike them will be the vast amount of money wliich the municipality throws away as profits to corporations. Chicago obtains its electric light at half the price New York pays because it has ceased to pay tribute to monopolies or dividends on their watered stock. The city owns its own electric light plant and consequently obtains the light it needs at cost. The difference between 15 cents and 45 which New York pays consists largely of "profits." Elsewhere we publish a statement reported to have been made by Comptroller Myers to the effect that the city's expenses could be met entirely by the proceeds from franchises which are now granted to corporations for notJiing or next to nothing. Tbis is in substance what The Record and Guide has been saying for years, but this is the first indication that our city ofiBcials are recognizing the truth of it. It is to be hoped that Comptroller Meyers will not be content with merely stating the fact he recognizes, but will use his efforts to realize it. The annual objurgation of the New York tenement house has now fairly commenced. There is no doubt that the tenement house is very far from being an ideal habitation and is the cause of much physical and moral degeneration. But to cry out against tenement house owners and builders as some papers are doing, as though they were responsible for the evils of tenement life, is about as ridicu¬ lous as to criticise the manufacturers of high silk hats because that kind of head gear is absurd and badly adapted to its purpose,. There are tenement houses, not because there is anything in human nature that specially delights in building such dwellings, but because there is what may be termed " tenement house people "— people who find that such habitations on the whole suit tbeir condi¬ tion better than do any other. Before we can get rid of the tene¬ ments we must get rid of the conditions wiiich make the tenement a necessity. To do this, one thing perhaps above all others is needed in New York, and tbat is cheap, adequate rapid transit. People of small means can not live even in the northern part of tbis city if they wish to. Our present means of transjiortation are too slow. Our population must huddle together because it cannot gsgamJ, JIk c;italH:hment 'ii adequate rapid transit would be one of the most powerful blows that could be dealt at the tenement house and its evils. Some change will have to take place after the coming census is taken either m tbe number of Congressional representatives or in the ratio of Congressional representaticn to the inhabitants. The House at present consists of 325 members, one for every 154,325 inhabitants, on the basis of the tenth census. Assuming a population of about 65,000,000, tins would mean either over 420 representatives on the same basis, or an increase of the ratio of constituency to about one to every 200,000. It has been the usual custom to enlarge both the number of representatives and the size of the constituency, and it is to be presumed that the same course will be followed this time. Three hundred and seventy-five repre¬ sentatives are by no means too large a number for a poptdation of 65,000,000. There would be objections, however, to such an increase if tbe House continue to sit as they do now. Ah-eady there is such a shuffling, rustling and whispering that a speaker cannot be heard thirty feet away unless the importance of the occasion warrants an unusual amount of quietude and attention. Add fifty more whis¬ perers and rustlers and tbe din might become mibearable. The House ought to follow the suggestion of ex-Mayor Hewitt and divide its ball into two sections, one to be devoted to debating and to be arranged with benches, as it is in the House of Commons, the other to he fitted with the present desks, whereat the legislator could read his papers aud write his letters. Of course very many of those large investments of foreign capi¬ tal in this country which we have heard of lately are purely mythi¬ cal. The foreigner is not buying up our industries in any such wholesale way as rumor and report say. But even if it were ail true the cry raised by many newspapers against " foreign capital'» would not be a whit less silly than it is. It is diflScult to see how the investment of capital, foreign or native, in industry cau affect the condition of tbis country any way hut favorably. Its chief results are the employment of labor and the development of om- resources. Most of our railroads have been built and many of our largest enterprises established by foreign capital, and no one com¬ plains. The objections made now are due to a mental limitation, which may be termed economic myopia—a shortsightedness, which prevents many people from seeing the whole of the matter at once, They see that this inflow of capital makes life harder for a few individuals, and not looking further to see the greater benefits which accrue to the nation at large they cry against it. It is in this way that some people denounce labor-saving machines as an evil. They notice that a few individuals are put out of work for a time by the introduction of some device, but they ignore the greater benefits which tbe whole community obtain. There is much comicalness to be found between the lines in the reports wbich the daily newspapers give of the "severe''lecture whicli Superintendent Murray gave to the captains and officers of the police force under him, to the effect that the saloons, pool rooms aud other gambling dens in the city must be closed—as though the police were just beginning their efforts in this direction. The reports said the Superintendent assured his subordinates that be was really in earnest. The trouble is, something more is needed than the Superintendent's assertion to convince law-breakers that any one is in earnest in the matter. The mere knowledge that any earnestness existed would, without further action, close half the illegal places in the city. The trouble is, uo one believes in the earnestness either of the law, or the police, or the Supermtendent. Our excise law and laws against gatubling are simply stupendous farces and create nearly as much criminality as they suppress. It is of a different kind it is trtie. The talk about a railroad trust, embracing all the competing lines in the Northwest, is premature. Undoubtedly there will some time be'SUch a combination. When a passerby sees a plot of vacant gi'Ound in the heart of a great city he cau predict with all the cer¬ tainty in the world that before many years are out tbat property will be improved. Tbe parcel's value is derived from the advan¬ tages it possesses for improvement. It makes no difference who the owner is; if the man has common sense he will not pay heavy taxes over a long series of years and get no retm-n whatever for the expenditure. So it is with two competing railroads. They begin by fighting; and not being able to destroy they simply exhaust one another. Then they think the matter over, feel tbeir empty pockets, and enter into negotiations for consolidation. As lOHg as the competition is severe the combination is inevitable. In addition, there is another way in which two railroads consolidate. One eats up tbe other. In both cases it will be seen that the co-operation is forced, if not on the two companies, at least upon one of them. The history of the railroads in this country is one continued illus¬ tration of these facts. The period of most rapid consohdation was that subsequent to 1873, wben the collapse of the inflation previous to that time left most of the companies in such a weakened con-