Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 43, no. 1101: April 20, 1899

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April 20, 1889 Record and Guide. 539 De/0]E1 to f^L ESTME . BuiLOlf/G Af!.cKlTECTJflE .KoUSElfOLD DEQOf^ATIOlJ. BUsii^ESS Alio Themes op GEfjERAl 1;JT£i\est ESTABLISHED ■V/'AWCH^l'-i^la6e. PRICE, PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS. Published every Saturday. TELEPHONE, - - ■ JOHN 370, Communications Bhould be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. /. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XLIII. APRIL 30, 1889. No. 1,101 The Record and GxnoE iviU be published next week as an illus¬ trated Centennial number. It will contain numei-ous maps and engravings of churches, dwellings, public buildings and stores in Cidstence in New York City one hundred years ago, with pictures of the structures occupying the sites to-day. An extra large edition of this number will be published, which should be specially attractive to advertisers. The business of the country caunot be called good, for the West¬ ern farmers are not buying articles of consumption. They are, however, well employed digging in the fields and opening up the largest acreage the country has ever known. With anything like ordinary luck we ought to have an abundance of crops next sum¬ mer and fall. There are many promising factors at work. We are marketing the largest cotton crop ever grown—probably 7,100,000 bales—upon which our planters have received at least half a cent a pound more tbau tbey got last year. Then our immense corn and hay crop of last year is largely increasing our animal pro¬ ducts, as well as giving us the substitute for the short wheat crop, Oui' corn exports were never so large. We ought to have shipped a great deal of gold tbis spring, but Europe has taken enough of our cotton, corn, provisions and securities to pay our large bills for imported goods. In the interest of the City of New York and of rapid transit. The Record and Guide has been doing all it could for years to get the public and the authorities to consent to sucb extensions and addi¬ tions to the Manhattan system as would add to its usefulness as a meiius of rapid transit. We neither asked, nor would we have accepted, any money compensation for our efforts and the expense we undei-went, as our object was for the public good and nofc for private gain. With a cui'ious lack of sense and courtesy, tbe officials of the Manhattan Company have generally treated our reporters, wheu in search of information, with downright rudeness, yet our publication was the only one of the New York press to point out the possibihties of the Manhafctan system to give us more rapid transit. Our publication of the "loop map" showed tbat project in its true light, and dispelled many of the preposterous iUusions created by the Times and other papers. Then our inter¬ views with leading citizens make it very certain that our city press has been wholly mistaken in thinking tbe public were opposed to any further extensiou of the Manhatfcan system. When Mayor Grant told the reporter of the Evening Post that be could not afford to help the Manhattan Road in any way, in view of the opposition of the newspapers, he made the first capital mistake of his admiuis- ti'ation. The discussion now going on will show that oui- citizens are all very largely in favor of the utiUzation of the "L" roads, and tbat if tbe Battery Park loop is necessary it will be permitted on some equitable arrangement betweeu tbe road and the city authorities. In our issue of November 17th, shortly after the election, we pre¬ dicted that "Onelion in the path of Mayor-elect Grant will be the suspicion that he may be helping corporate interests in advo¬ cating certain city improvements, and that when an endeavor is made further to utilize our elevated railroad system some news¬ paper idiot will howl about paying further ti-ibute to Jay Gould.'' Both of these predictions have come true. We find Mayor Grant opposing an estension of facilities to the Manhattan Road clearly because he is afraid of identifying himself with a corporation so obnoxious to the daily press as is the Manhattan. Hence he bas given us a rapid transit scheme of his own, admirable in many of its features, but defective principally in thia, that he has placed it in opposition to every otber plan proposed for the amelioration of the New York traveling public. We hope that he hag seen from . the handling his bill has received in the Legislature tbat the path auch schemes bave to travel abounds in obstructions, which news¬ paper editorials ar© not powerful enough to remove. Would it not be well for him to pursue in this matter a wisely inconsistent course and aim not merely to please a certain number of biassed newspaper writers, but to furnish the immediate facilities for inter¬ mural ti-avel so sorely needed by our citizens? The Mayor's bill may get through this session, but it will liave a hard time of dt. The Repubhcan majority in both Houses seem to have conypired to bring a pressure to bear upon the Mayor to influ¬ ence his appointments on the first of May. Of course be ought not, and probably will not, yield to the demands of tlie politicians; but he can now see tbe inherent diificulties in the carrying out of his plan. It involves a time-consuming fight for every inch of pro¬ gress that is made. Tliere is no eud of trouble in getting a rapid transit scheme into working order. The experience of the '' Arcade " promoters points its own moral. It would be ten yeare, at least, before a definite scheme, such as would be the outcome of the bill, could be in auy kind of shape. Meanwhile, property-holders ou both sides of the river will have reason to bless the pottering methods of New York's rulers. There is really but one thing to do. Let the Manhattan Company have its loop in the Battery and its esti-a track for through trains on tbe 3d and Oth avenues. This would add one-third to the carrying capacity of the Manhattan and give every one a seat, except during tbe most crowded hours. It would shorten the distance in point of time between both ends of the island fully twenty minutes. Permis¬ sion being granted, the Manhattan Company could supply these additional facilities within six months' time. Then we want a cable system to replace our horse-car facilities; finally, the "Arcade Road" should be given a charter. A lighted road-bed under Broadway on solid earth would be the only possible rival to the elevated system. In connection with the cable road tbere might be built another elevated structureon tbe Grand Boulevard, as well as on or along the water front on each side of the city. How much better this would be than to wait year after year for any underground or viaduct proposition to be formulated aud carried out. By the tone of the press it seems that the South and even the Southwest are thoroughly alarmed at tbe negro problem. Not only is the colored population increasing much more rapidly than the white in old States like Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas, but tbe negro is emigrating rapidly into northern Louisiana, Arkansas, the Yazoo delta and the Southwest generally. The Africanization of Mississippi has been especiaUy rapid. It is estimated that next year's census will show that the negroes outnumber the whites by at least 350,000 in a population of only 1,563,000. Some authori¬ ties consider these figm-es below the truth. From wbat can be seen at present the preponderance of fche negro even iu some of the southwesterly of tbe Southern States is inevitable. The high birth¬ rate, tbe adaptation to climate and the few wants of the colored race make this well nigh a certainty ; and the dispersion of the negi-o into States where at present he is uot to be found in very large numbers is being hastened by the labor agent who every planting time stimulates emigration from the Carolinas, Alabama and Georgia into Louisiana, Arkansas, ilississippi and elsewhere. The planter, of course, believes in negro labor. It is cheap and on the whole efficient, and to him at least the negi-o problem is no problem at all. The supposition that prevailed immediately after the war, that in a state of freedom and in competition with wliites the negro would disappear, has given place to the ideas of tbe alai-mist in an opposite direction, wliich will no doubt prove to be equally incor¬ rect. Time has shown that the negro, amid the conditions which have prevailed since the war in the Soutb, not only is not dis¬ appearing, but, curiously, is becoming more of the negro than be was a quarter of a century ago. Mulattoes, octaroons and half- breeds are less numerous than in the days of slavery, and tbe race is reverting to the pure type. But when we consider the wonderful adaptability of the social organism there is no reason for alai'm about the negro problem. Given free play and time it will solve itself for the best. As Tourgee says: " Do what we will thereis notliing but patience. It will take time to solve a difficulty which it took nearly two centuries to create." The present overcrowded condition of the city school-ljouses and the fact that on the west side applications for the admission of children have now to be refused because of the lack of accommo¬ dation is disgraceful. The public is .supposed to be especially interested in its schools, yet the appropriations for the Police De¬ pai'tment have been increased annually from §3,599,805 in 1878 to $4,235,867 in 1887, an increase of 63 per cent., whereas the appro¬ priation for the Board of Education, which was $3,400,000 in 1878, is now only ^3,994,0a8, an increase of about 17 per cent. The growth of population should and does make greater demands upon the Department of Education than upon the Police Department. It may be said that in New York the former is more economically managed than tbe latter ; but the foregoing figures, taken iu connection with the preseut lack of accommodation for