Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 51, no. 1318: June 17, 1893

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June 17,1898 Record and Guide. 943 ESTABLISHED^ WARCH 2lt> 186&.:^ muk^i Mip TueuEg of Ge^JerA !|*K5!^s j FR1€£, FER ¥EAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS. Published every Saturday. TaLKPHOwal , . . - Cobtlandi 1370. CommoQlcatlona ahonld be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14 & i6 Vesey St. J. 2. LINDSEY, Bitsiness Manager, '..i..- "Sntered at the Post-o^lce at Nero Tork, N. Y., ae second-class matter." Vol. li. JUNE 17, 1898. No. 1,318 THE financial event of the week has, of course, been the action of the associated banks in preparing to issue Clearing House certificates should they be needed. It is hirdly necessary to say that tlie result of this action has been anything but reassuring. It may be taken either to indicate the precarious condition of the banks or as part of a policy to secure theiepealof the Sherman Silver law. If it is only intended to influence the members of the coming Congress or to force an earlier assembly of that body than is yet promised it is a most unwise move and the banks are likely to feel its reactive effects. If iC really indicates the need of the banks for an enlargement of the circulating medium it is a 'warning of what may be expected in the money market and in quotations for securities. That this move has been followed by a rally in the few stocks now active does not prove that it is in any way effective for good, because the market is so narrow and outside buainess so small that a movement either way is easily made by the professional element preponderating on tho long or short side. It ig significant of this peculiarity of the market that while a few active specula¬ tive issues are advanced that good investments are not affected by the same movement notwithstanding the decline they have seen. For instance, Atchison and West Shore 4s are both selling within about one per ceut of the pricea they made as a result of the Baring failure. Other securiiies equally as good can only find a market at a sacrifice. The low price at which these securities are selling ought to attract buyers, but thej are not likely to do so while the Treasury Department and the New York banks are by their acts and announcements declaring tho situalion to be so bad. The part the Treasury is taking seems somewhat inconsistent with the advice that recently came from its head and his head to the general public to bave con¬ fidence and shows how thoroughly mixed and uncertain it is on the question under review. The administration and its friends are also Hkely to do the cause of sound currency more harm than good by going too far in attributing all the financial trouble we are now experiencing to the Sherman law. That measure has a great deal to answer for, but there have been ether causes at work—over-pro¬ duction in manufactures and agriculture, over-speculation and dis¬ honesty—which have all contributed their share. To overlook these coutributiug causes is to act Ihe part of special pleader and put arguments into the hands of the opponents of currency reform. AS every indication is eloquent of the fact that the Rapid Transit problem in New York City will certainly be surrendered sooner or later to the Manhattan Company it is well tbat the Mayor did not promptly accept the resignation of Mr. Spencer and his sympathizing fellow-commissioners. If the most that official quies¬ cence and public stupidity will permit us to have is a patched-up, makeshift addition to our transportation facilities the sooner we get it the better and have done witU the matter. New York has been bought and sold and it is useless to lament our condition or interpose objections. We must say " Kismet" and stoically continue to crowd into packed cars. As there appears to be only a few thousand dollars between the price which Mr. Statin and Mr. Spencer put upon the comfort, decency and progress of the metropolis there is no reason why they should remain apart. Conclude the bargain, gentlemen 1 Twenty-flve thousand a year isn't worth sticking over. Indeed, it is part of the topsy-turvey consideration that has been given to this rapid transit business from the first that such tremendous anxiety has been shown over whether the city shall get one or two thousand dollars, more or less, for its treasury out of rapid transit. The character and extent of the new service was the really important side of the matter, but strangely that has had very little attention, and we see that when tho Manhattan Co. object to extending their line bejond the limit qI immediate div^-. dends the Commissioners are readier to forego their demands in that direction than they are to modify their stipulations as lo cash payments. Here they are firm. The city must have the few thousand dollars; but as to the service the public are to get, there is DO need to be too particular about that. If the company thinks it cannot give ua cars enough the public must go without them, if it wont pay to build to the city line the city must wait, and so on. These are unimportant matters compared with whether the com¬ pany shall pay on iis gross revenue or its revenue after deducting the present taxes! Strange perversity! when the cry of NewYork is for belter accommodalion and service and not for a petty addition to the treasm-y. Better far forego pajment of any kind if the city could get the service it requires. WE cannot sympathize with the efforts which the Sabbatarians are making to close the World's Fair on Sunday, for we must regard the matter chiefly from the practical rather than the theological point of 'view, and it seems to us very much more desirable that several thousand people should spend Sunday rationally and respectably within the Exposition inclosure than in loafing and loitering in hotel halls and corridors or ou tho streeta, or, aa would be the case with a great number, •'drinking perpendicularly " in Chicago bars. We don't mean to say that this is the only alternative. Tha churches and the Sunday schools are open on Sunday as well as the saloons, but no one can have any hesitaiion in saying that, of the crowd excluded from the Fair on Sunday, if the doors be closed, only an inconsiderable minority would seek the cDurclits. Sunday is the great American loafing daj' and the bulk of the people iu Chicago would put their time to no better use than they would if they were allowed to enter the Exhibition. But while we do not sympathize with the Sabbatarians, we canuot quile agree with their opponents who endeavor to make out that the fi^ht about the open¬ ing of the World's Fair is " piire ciisseduess." Giren certain ideas concerning the sanctity of tlie Sabbath, ihe opposition to the opening of the Exposition on Sunday is logical and in a sense very practical. The force of a great national example, oue way or the other, cannot be overestimated, and the success of the anti- Sabbatarian principle in Chicago, while it would not incur judg¬ ment make in the least for unrighteousness, wjuid certainly be a aort of popular decision against the ecclesiastical idea of Sunday. That it has been possible lo raise this quesiion as forcibly ae it has been raised and in such an extreme case as the World's Fair, clearly indicates how strong the ecclesiastical idea remains, even at this late day. ----------•—--—~— DURING the conference with several representatives of Labor whicb Professor Levassf'ur, the distinguished French statisti¬ cian, held ihe otber day in Columbia College, George Murray, an ex-Master Workman of the Knighls of Labor, dociarcd that the high wages earned by the American laborer are due to the labor organizations. It is, of course, natural that Mr, Murray should be of this opinion. Everybody is apt to magnify the importanceof his own tiade. The strange thing is that people who are not profession¬ ally connected wilh " Labor " sliould share Mr. Murray's opinion, as over aud over agam we see tliey do. The rate of wages in any country depends primarily upou the productiveness of labor. Wages in Patagonia could uot be high as in Peimpylvania even though the Walking Delegate were supreme in the former and the "union" unknown inthe latter. The fundamental cause of high wages in this country is that labor iu the United Slates—largely due to natural advantages—is more pioductive thau elsewhere. Wages are the portion which Labor receives in the di.stribution oE the national income. The Unions add nothing to tbe amount for distribution. The most that they can do is to exact as large a share as possible for "Labor." -----------■-----------. PRINCESS EULALIA will, no doubt, carry home many amus¬ ing recollections of her visit to this country; but wo doubt if she will get quite so much fun out of anything as out of the efforts of our great journalists to "illustrate" her. It ia customary for travelers, who push their journey into remote parts, to return laden with curiosities connected witb the most peculiar practices of tte barbaric peoples they have visited, and certainly the princess could exhibit no more striking example of the savagery of this counlry than iis newspapers with their childish attempts to represent her pictorinlly. Nothing more archaic, simple, untutored could have been done by the eavages that greeted Columbus upon hi.5 arrival on these shores some five hundred years ago. Our great journal¬ ists are. of course, not likely to take this view, but no doubt the old Peruvian and Mexican artists who atttmpied to portray tbe first visitors from the Princess's country were not without a fondness and sympathy for their own rude attempts which passed with them for the tempered appreciation of the critical judgment. How elusive the royal physiognomy was to the artists of the metropolitan press our readers cannot have forgotten. Twenty-four hours was sufficient to completely change its charac-