Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 65, no. 1678: May 12, 1900

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RECORD AND GUIDE. ESTABUSHED-^ ■' Mwmm.- u oiiiVinAR ^ __________ _. \CH21!V*-I863. Bl/SDteSS wfoTHEtaES Of GtrfcR^l iNTCRfSl. ' PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS. Published every Saturday. Telephone, Cortlandt 1370. Communications should be addressed to C. W. SWEET. 14-16 Vesey Street. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. "Entered at the PoBt-Offiee at Xew Tork, N. T.. aa second-olass matter." Vol. LXV. MAY 12, 1900. No. 1678. NO regular or sustained advance in the stock market may be expected for some time. In the flrst place, the market :'.3 a professional one, a fact that always means an uncertain irreg¬ ular movement, witii the genei-al tendency downward. There should soon be a rally of some proportions, not only as a reaction to be naturally expected from the sharp decline, but because people are becoming saner regarding the re¬ sults of the fall in prices of commodities generally, and because events In South Africa are trending towards conditions that ought to have, temporarily at least, a good effect upon prices. In fact, if our party managers, who are now so deeply thinking over the probable eJSect of a pro-Boer plank in their platforms, and for which the pi'o-Boers are beginning to clamor, cannot induce Lord Roberts to stay his advance for a month or two, their thinking will he wasted mental effort. The idea of a sym¬ pathy for the Boers for election purposes only, which was pro¬ mulgated in this city this week, is not a nice or dignified one, and it will not hurt us as a nation if we are spared its further spread. Another btit lesser consideration is, that it is likely to hurt business; and, if business must be hurt it surely had better be for conscientious reasons than for political cant. Regarding the decline in commodity prices, it may be said there is no reason for a scare on that account. Such abnormal quotations for iron and other materials as were prevalent last year could not possibly continue, but there is no reason for supposing that the decline will be more than sufficient to hold the business of consumers, Mr. Carnegie's interview, published a day or so ago, expressed the correct notion as to the iron and steel trade, and aimilar conditions wtll be found in other lines. An enor¬ mous commercial movement, such as was gained last year, does not collapse all at once. Under some conditions it may be main¬ tained for years. For an illustration of this, we have only to look to Europe, where, after six or seven years of unexampled prosperity, business is still straining capital resources in order to expand and develop. In Great Britain average prices were highest, though stationary, doing the last two months. As a nation, we are given to regard presidential years as times oE politieal fetes and to neglect our ordinary pursuits, whether legitimate or gambling, as a consequence, so that transactions in all lines fall off and prices with them as a general tendency; but even this is interrupted by rallies at intervals which havo, on the whole, a sustaining effect. FACTS given in another column, relating to the awards re¬ cently announced for property taken for the site of the new. Hall of Records, bring out some of the injustices imposed by the law upon owners and others interested in land and build¬ ings taken for public use. In the first place, it is very hard that any one having an established business, with fittings and machinery for carrying it on, should be ousted and thrown, so to say, into the street with all his belongings without the slight¬ est compensation. But this is what the law does. It says the municipality may take any property it pleases and only pay the value of the land and any buildings that may be upon it. If a landlord has parted with any income-producing privilege, which is marketable and of which the value can be ascertained, that value shall be deducted from his award for the loss of his fee, A lessee having only intangible interests,such as good-will or the like, is simply told to take his belongings and go elsewhere, with nothing to compensate him for the loss or disturbance of his business, or the expense of his enforced removal. The landlord, too, when the city announces its intention of taking his property has to employ legal aid to secure his just compensation, and this fact cannot be considered by the Commissioners of Estimate in making their, award, which ia restricted to the actual market value of land and buildings at a certain date. This injustice is so striking that the Chairman of the Commission of Estimate for the Hall of Records' site calls attention to it, as will be seen hy his remarks given elsewhere, and it was commented upon in the articles, published by us some time ago, which treated of the Injuries Inflicted upon property owners and their tenants by the provisions, of the law regulating the esercise of the right of emi¬ nent domain by the municipality. The Borough System. A QUESTION OF EXTINCTION OR REFORM FOR INCREASED USEFULNESS. ^* HERE are already signs that the question of the reform of A the borough system in our municipal government, or it3 entire abolition, will occupy considerable prominence in the discus¬ sion about to take place on the revision of the charter. This week the Board of Trade and Transportation took the matter up and referred it to their Committee on City Affairs. Other organiza¬ tions will undoubtedly follow suit and all will finally offer sug¬ gestions to the Charter Revision Commission when opportunity offers, as to what should be done with the borougha and their representative boards. We may expect to see the lines of divergence very sharply drawn between those who favor and those who oppose the bor¬ ough system. This was the case in the Board of Trade and Transportation, where one proposition, that each borough should pay the expenses of its separate management and, pro rata, its .share of the expenses of the general municipal govern¬ ment, was opposed by another for the abolition of the borough system with the wiping out of all borough lines and forbidding variations in the tax rates anywhere in the city. These two propositions may be taken to fairly express the views most gen¬ erally held, though they have not yet been sufiiciently discussed to enable anyone to say which the majority favor. Our two years or more of government by an assembly com¬ posed of such opposing elements as a city so extraordinarily constructed as this could not fail to bring together, has been most unsatisfactory. The Assembly has been what was pre¬ dicted for it, a place for the airing of petty jealousies and where the strife engendered by opposing interests made useful work impossible. As on the flrst day of its meeting, the Assembly is to-day a bar to progress and a detriment to the general welfare. Consequently a cry has gone up for the abolition of the Assem¬ bly and the substitution of some other form of representative body. The borough boards have, it is claimed, done little but afford some excellent sinecures for favorites of the party bosses; and, on that account, it is claimed they should also be abolished. But, it should be remembered to the favor of the borough boards, that their rights are few and powers none. The little they could do in hearing petitions for various small matters and suggesting improvements, they have done; it is unfair to condemn them for not doing things they had no power to do. It would certainly be unwise to retain these boards in their present form; if they cannot be entrusted with powers to initiate and execute the im¬ provements their boroughs require, they ought to be abolished as an unnecessary expense to the community. But does not the little they have done suggest that they could do more and do it better than a board made up of infusible elements and in which sectional differences must prove obstructive of all real progress? Or to put it another way, does not the two years' history of the Municipal Assembly prove that a body, composed as it is, is in¬ capable of dealing with the multitude of wants, large and small, that must arise in a city that has the wonderful quality of being agricultural, and not only manufacturing and commercial as big cities ordinarily are. Think what the charter requires from the Councilman and As¬ semblyman from Queens or Richmond, for instance. He is sup¬ posed to understand and pass upon all the requirements of two commercial commimities like Manhattan and Brooklyn—the hanging of an awning over a store, the building of a sewer, the paving of a street like Broadway and other works rising in im¬ portance to the building of a rapid transit railway. AU the time he has to look to his constituents for their approval of his con¬ duct in the Assembly, this whether he desires re-election or not, because the local influence will in any case prevail in his mind. What can he do but be obstructive when he believes, as he is sure to do, that every improvement made in another borough lessens the chances of securing those his constituents are im¬ ploring him to get for his own. Then what can the representa¬ tives of commercial Manhattan and Brooklyu care about the local requirements of two semi-agricultural regions like Queens and Richmond, where ploughing and the price of hogs, or the returns of the dairy are the chief subjects of conversation ih more than nine-tenths of their area. In the Bronx, where land has gone or is rapidly going out of cultivation owing to the rise