Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 44, no. 1134: December 7, 1889

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_ December "T, 1888 Record and Guide. 1625 ESTABUSHED'^N\ARpHei'-^ 1668.^ De/oteO to I^ea,L Estme . BuiLoij/g A|i,ci(itectui^e ,KousEilotD DEQQf^nofl. BiisitJESS aiJd Themes OF GeHei^L l;VT£n,EST PRICE, PER TEAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS Published every Saturday. TELEPHONE, . - - - JOHN S/O. IfcHomunlcations should be addressed to C.W. SWEET, 191 Broadway, /. 5*. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XLIV. DECEMBER 7, 1839, No. 1,134, For the immediate futm'e the course of the aiarket will depend largely upon the actions of Congress, The larger issues before our natioual Legislature this year all have au important economic bear- ing, and pricos will vary according to the temper or tbe result of the debates. As definite action is not likely in any case, the effect will probably be to make operators hesitate, and consequently to smother for a time any active speculation. Thia will be particularly the case during December—a month that is occupied in intro¬ ducing bills which may or may not come up for discussion, but the simple presence of wliich on the calendar will make a person uneasy. December is generally a month in Wall street of low prices, and tbis year is not likely to prove an exception, althougb the irregularity of the market throughout the fall does not encoui'age one to make predictions too confidently. Business throughout the country has an extremely favorable outlook, and this week the dry-goods interest in certain lines of domestics, which of lato has been extremely dull, is looking up, Tbe export trade with China, which botb Republicans and Democrats have united to kill with their hostile legislation, has been of late extremely unsat¬ isfactory, and the Eastern mills have missed their usual trade with this empire. It is to be hoped that the action of the Cliamber of Commerce, at its meeting on Thursday last, will bring to the minds of Congressmen the necessity of legislating for something besides votes, ----------■---------- Originally it was intended that the message from the President to Congress should be distinctly of a higher character thau a polit¬ ical manifesto. It has come, however, to be regarded as so purely ■ a party document, tliat, as a nile, it receives little but party applause or party denunciation. President Harrison has been no more fortunate with his message and the treatmeut it received than his predecessors w^ere with theirs. Before his message appeared it could have been foretold with certainty that, no matter what the character of it was, the Republican press andthe support¬ ers of the administration would ^bail it as "a masterly document," or something of that kind; "straightforward," of course, "cour¬ ageous and statesmanlike." Democratic criticism, it could with equal certainty have been predicted, would find it " the weakest message that has ever been given to an expectant and intelligent people; platitudinous, vague aud {naturally) insincere." In a general way this is what has been said about President Harrison's message. The Tribune, to take an example, says: " President Harrison's first message is a plain, candid and entirely unpretentious review of public affaii's. Its most striking charac¬ teristic is an absence of pretense, exaggeration or rhetorical flour¬ ish, and there is no attempt to enlarge upon especial topics for the sake of catching temporary popular applause or partisan advan¬ tage. It has the tone throughout of conscious strength and sin¬ cerity, and of profound conviction that the people will unwaver¬ ingly sustain the national policies to which they gave approval by their votes one year ago," "While the Sun views the message in this pleasant way : " For originality, grasp of public questions and sense of perspective in the statement of the condition of national affairs. General Harrison's message compares unfavorably with the first message sent to Congress by Mr, Hayes twelve years ago. This is saying rather a severe thing about General Harrison, but ifc is sti-ictly true. The weakest man that ever occupied the White House had more to offer to Congress in the way of information and suggestion, and offered it with a more vigorous individuality of thought and expression than the present Chief Executive of the United States can exhibit or command. * * * Nobody would be gladder than the Sun to discover in the President's flrst important State paper the faintest sign of intellectual promise, the least indication of a power to rise above the deadly dull line of mediocrity. Where is there such a sign? * * * The rest is a scrapbook of comiDaratively unimportant facts. The wearied eye passes from paragraph to paragraph of geographical, historical and statistical statement and platitudinous comment. The mes¬ sage is amorphous, Loug as it is, it might have been twice as long pn the same principle of construction, and neither more nor less valuable. Or the « hole of it might bave been left unwritten with¬ out the slightest detriment to the peace and honor of the country or the prosperity and security of the people, and without the slightest loss to tlie Fifty first Congress, now assembled for the business of legislation." --------•--------- •This kind of criticism is, of course, perfectly familiar to the Ijublic. But the fact that this is practically the only kind of criti¬ cism accorded to Presidential messages, that they have come to be regarded solely as partisan utterances, and are without weight with the public or influence M'ith Congress, raises the question whether it would not be wise to dispense with the Presidential message, or at any rate dispense with it in its present form. It may safely be said, that no Presidential iiiessage of recent years succeeded in changing the opinion of a single voter on any one subject, neither has legislation of any kind been promoted or hastened, nor has the attention of the country been drawn to con¬ sider, as otherwise it would not have been considered, a single question of }Kiblic policy. The fact is, the Presidential message has become merely a lengthy and usually most uninteresting restate ment of the views of the ]iolitical party successful in the previous campaign. Nothing new is proposed or disclosed. The cabinet has nothing to say that the party has not already proclaimed from one end of the country to the other. The only difference is, that in the message and the reports of the Secretaries, tbe vivacious polit¬ ical tone is missing, and is replaced by a style that more closely resembles that of an annual report of a pious missionai-y society than auy thing else. __-------«---------- President Harrison's message is of this character ; It presents the parly view of the Behring-Straits difficulty, the Samoan treaty, the silver question, tariff revision, the reduction of the surplus by repealing the tax on tobacco and the tax on alcohol used in the arts, the Dependent Pension bill, the Blair educational scheme, Southern elections and subsidies. What is said on these matters is mainly in the nature of generalities. They ai-e not as cogent or as convincing as what was said on the same subjects during the last campaign. The only new recommendation that tbe President makes is tbat to raise the dignity of our ministers in Bolivia, Para- quay, Uruquay, Hayti aud the Hawaian Islands, and that to estab¬ lish an intermediate court below the Supreme Court, to have jurisdiction over a certain class of cases. The last recommendation is excellent, and a bill should be inti-oduced at once into Congress to carry it into effect. Nothing referred to iu the message is of any greater importance. It is to be regretted tbat the President did not ignore party exigencies and discountenance, or at least be silent concerning, the Dependent Pension bill. This is perhaps tbe most offensive raid on the National Treasury of recent times, and the indiscriminate bounty it extends has been as roundly denounced by Republican journals and the self-respecting element in the G, A. R, as by any others. While the President is favorably disposed towards silver, what he says is not decided enough to please silver men, though, as Secretary Windom points out in hi'^ report, which by tbe May is one of the best that has ever been submitted to Congress, there is very little that can be done under the conditions that exist at this moment to restore silver to its former position. The Treasury purchases of silver have not prevented the price from declining within the last ten years from nearly 55 pence an ounce to an average price of 43.49 pence during the fiscal year euding last June. Mr, John Beverley Robinson has received a great deal of censure for certain statements made ui a minority report of the Committee of the Architectural League, in which he declared himself not only against the supposition at tbe basis of the building laws, viz,: that the State is theoretically justified in interfering with the property rights of citizens when such rights implied the erection of buildings endangering tbe life, health and happiness of their occupants, but asserted that it was the " duty of an architect to evade the law in the interests of his client," This is certainly a most astoundiug statements—one which can be excused only by the evident sincerity of the man who made it. Mind you, architects are not merely justified in evading the law, but it is their duty to do so just as it is their duty to fear God and shame the devil. Every architect who does not do so, provided the interests of his clients warrant the evasion, is an immoral mau. Conversely every lean and hungry Bnddensieck in the city is treading the narrow path of righteousness. We are not sorry that Mr. Robinaon has had the courage to make tills statement, for it simply shows to what an extreme a fanatical adherence to the doctrine of laissez faire may bring a man. No mere time-server is John Beverley Robinson, It is difficult, however, to criticise his statement good-hu- moredly. The Times has commented on it in a way that was more denunciatory than critical, and the Committee on the Building Laws has doubted even whether it deserved the notice of censure. For our part we should like to see a further elucidation of such