Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 47, no. 1208: May 9, 1891

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May 8,1891 Record and Guide. 727 ESTABLlSKED^MRRCHSl'-^'^iaSS, Dev^JTED to He4 EsfftTE BUlLDIfJG Al^Ot^lTECTJl^E .HoOSElJOLO DEG0f?AT10«. BUsitJESs kin Theme? of Gei^ei^.V 1;jte:\est PRICE, PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS. Pit.bli,shed every Saturday. Telephone, - . - - Cortlandt 1370. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14 & i6 Vesey St. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XLVII MAY 9, 1891. No. 1,208 NOTICE OF REMOVAL. The publication offices of The Record and Gdide have been removed to Nos. 14 anc! 16 "Vesey street, over The Mechanics' and Traders' Exchange, a few feet west of Broadway. \ LL the private dispatches received from Europe within the -^^^ past few days indicate a very uneasy, if not alarming state of mind in the foreign financial centres. This uneasiness is not confined to Berlin, where it has long been prevalent, or to London, which has not yet recovered from the Baring troubles, or to Itflly whose finances are very depressed, but has extended also to Paris and Brussels. Whether the contributions of gold, which New York has exported, will sevve to allay this uneasiness is not yet certain ; but it will assuredly tend to have such an effect. The large bankers in this city who deal in exchange have always asserted that the exportation, which has so impeded the upward movement of prices in our stock market was a natural opera¬ tion, as, indeed, it has been ; but they have not yet properly described the process. The great explanatory fact Is that foreign bankers have been obliged, during the uneasiness abroad, to curtail by one-half the accommodations which they ordinarily give to their connections in this city, and consequently tbe American banker has had so much less credit to draw on. Thus, suppose that au American banker liad been in the habit of selling every spring $5,000,000 worth of exchange to importers—exchange which he would pay for in easy times with sixty and ninety-day bills. He will have had the same demand for exchange during the present season from importers; but instead of his usual credit, his foreign connections, owing to their troubles, only allow him to draw on them for $2,500,000. In order, then, to meet his obligations abroad he has been obliged to export $3,500,000 in gold, thus settling in cash debts that are ordinarily balanced against the exchange move¬ ment in our direction which takes place when we begin to sell our wheat, etc. When this counter-movement does begin there will follow a return of the gold. Furthermore, since our exportations tbis year are liable to be very large, there will be an increasing ten¬ dency for the gold to come back. During JulyandAugustthiscoun- ter-movement will take place. Apart from these foreign complica¬ tions the present conditions are very favorable. The harmonious meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Western TrafiBc Associa¬ tion gives a substantial basis for anticipations of good earnings, and subordinate railway officials havt; received a lesson they will not forget. As to the rest, the labor troubles are gradually settling themselves; and the frost has not done any considerable harm. LORD COLERIDGE recently remarked, much to the umbrage of the London newspapers, that a journalist out of print made about as poor a showing as a duck out of water. His meaning evi¬ dently was Ihat the mere fact of printing a man's statements, par¬ ticularly in a journal of established reputation, surrounded them by an illusion and gave to them an authority which the writing itself did not warrant. Reflections of this kind are continually forced on the attention of a reader of the Wall street articles in daily newspapers. No doubt if it was possible to discern the men behind these attempts to account for financial facts and direct financial opinion, to watch by some telepathic process the antic gyra¬ tions of their minds, to ascertain unerringly the stupendous number of facts which they do not know, to learn the sources from which their advice to the public is derived, the illusion would ao far disappear, and we could then determine ao exactly the value of their criticisms and recommendations that their articles of to-day would be as utterly neglected as those of last year. In point of fact their advice or prevision is worse than useless; it is utterly misleading—sometimes from ignorance, sometimes from design. Two weeks ago we commented on a remarkable example of this ignorance on the part of the financial writer in a daily journal who, in speaking of the " campaigning undertaken by manipu¬ lators of Pittsburg, Cincinnati. Chicago & St. Louis stock," said that " the road is not of enough consequence to have a list of its Board of Directors quoted in' Poor's Manual,'" thus showing himself to be totally in the dark as to the standing of this corporation, which, it need scarely be said, ia the outcome of the recent consolidation of all the principal lines controlled by the Pennsylvania Eailroad Company west of Pittsburg, and which is one of the greatest cor¬ porations iu the country. What possible value can the chatter of auch an ignoramus be to anybody ; and the fact that it appears in tbe columns of an important newspaper only makes it the more reprehensible. So it is, as a rule, with the rest of the aame tribe. For instance, most of the financial writers lately have sedulously been distributing "points" on Wheeling and Lake Erie, and Louisville, New Albanv, aud Cliicago. In commenting on the merits of these important stocks, the wording of the remarks has been at times so similar aa to suggest that some of the writers had ao little originality as to use the same type-written inspiration. However that may be, an outsider following the newspaper accounts of the market might , have supposed that amidst the great mass of securities thereon exchanged, these two stocks were the pick, and that those ot other corporations were small by comparison. The impres¬ sion created was distinctly false—the importance of two minor securities being unduly emphasized, and the importance of the other elements in the market being unduly minimized. Doubtless many people have been deceived by these "points" into taking a " flyer" in these stocks, which have beenfreely peddled out for the past two weeks without undergoing any advance in price. Since no man can know everything, ignorance is perhaps at times excus¬ able ; but the deliberate endeavor to " work " a public position for private endd is far more culpable, and Wall Street operators will soon learn to place as much confidence in the advice of a news¬ paper on financial matters as they do in the weather predictions of some Wiggins or the political sagacity of a hide-bound partisan. ----------•---------- THE appointment announced of two such excellent citizens and desirable associates as Bernard F, Martin and James F, Keating to well-paid and responsible offices has moved the Herald to anathemize Tammany as again lashing "her fiery tail ""in supreme defiance of decency and public opinion." This ebullition of indignation, couched in the Herald's unique and vigorous lan¬ guage, has moved the Evening Post to reproach such of its morn¬ ing contemporaries as did not strenuously support the election of Francis M. Scott. Says the Post : , No sooner does an honest man consent to stand for office tbau some Tam¬ many hureling in the press dubs him " Piatt's man," or " Grace's man," or somebody else's man, and then everbody wbo wants an excuse for escap¬ ing the trouble of taking part in an effort to give tbe city decent govern¬ ment exclaims: " Oh, well, what is the uae of trying to do anything? Wb are bound to be fooled by the politicians anyway. If we defeat Tanimany, we will get somebody else just as bad in power over us." And then thirty thousand or more voters wiU stay away from the pollson election day, and Tammany will win anotber victory. Wben it is all over, the newspapers which have betrayed their trust and have brought it about will come out and censure the reforuaers for the " mistakes" of tbeir campaign, and wiU assure their readers that tbey hava reasons for hoping that Tammany will not give tbe city such a very bad administration afler all; and when, a (ew months later, Tammany makes a fresh batch of appointments, a little worse than the last batch, thesa virtuous moulders of public opinion, these moral guides of the people, these admonishers of reformers, will shako their heads sadly and remark that Tammany is a very shameless and dis¬ reputable and unworthy ruler, but that, after all, tbe people are the real culprits, since tbay put Tammany in office. The journals at which these shafts are aimed are willing, if not able, to take care of tbemselves, and we are only inclined to pity such intellectual weaklings when rational people get after them_ But whether the press have or have not failed in their duties to the public, do the above statements, and others to the same effect which preceded them, indicate the proper relation which an honest organ of public opinion should bear to a reform movement, using the methods employed by the People's ftlunicipiil League last fall ? All the actions of that organization were based on the supposition that the majority of the voters in this city are better than Tam¬ many, and tbat if the issue could be cleanly drawn between a political administration of our common affa'Irs and a business administration that, the voters would declare in favor of the latter. Well 1 the issue was as cleanly drawn as possible consistent with certain political leanings of the supposed majority, and Hugh J. Grant was re-elected. " But," it will be answered, " what ahout those 30,000 people who stayed away from the polls ? That is the important never-to-be-forgotten fact of the last election." Undoubtedly if all these laggards had voted for Scott tbat gentle¬ man would bave been elected; but what right have we for assuming that they would not have been distributed hetween the two candi¬ dates in nearly the aame proportion as that into which was divided the whole mass of voters. In order to overcome Grant's majority the reform candidate would have had to poll a very large percent¬ age of these votes, and one that must needs increase as the number'