Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: no. 56, no. 1440: October 19, 1895

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October 19,18&S Record and Guide. 511 DnfeiED 10 fHLEstate.BuiLDiffe A;R.c}{iTEemi^.HousEaoiriDEOiH(m» Basufess At^ Themes of GEjieR^ Ij/resf »1. f>RICE, PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS.I Published every Saturday. Telephone,......Coktlandt 187© Ooiumunioatlone should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street. J. 1. LINDSET. Business Manager. Brooklyn Office, 276-282 Washington Street, Opp. Post Ofeiob. "Entered at the Post-office ai New Tork, N. T., as seeond-dass -matter." Vol. LVI. OCTOBEE 19, 1895. No. 1,440 The Recorb and GviD'w.tviUfu/rnish you with daily detailed reporta of all building operations, compiled to suit your business specifically, for 14 cents a day. Tou are thus kept informed of the entire market for your goods. No guess work. Every fact verified. Abundaitt capital and the thirty years'experience of TiTE Recore and Gvid'e guarantee the com¬ pleteness and authenticity of this service.'^ Send to 14 and 16 Vesey street foi' information. I THERE IS very'little change of the conditions on the Stock Market or in its environs. At one time some anxiety was created ahout a renewal of sold exports. It was argued that the speculative rise in cotton would cut off cotton bills aud so gold would have to go. The effect on prices was very slight, and in the end bills came into the market, so that the only gold that was shipped was a small amount to Buenos Ayres. So much for the bear influeuees. The plan for the reorganization of Union Pacitic fell somewbat tiat so far as its influence on prices gen¬ erally is concerned. Similar plans for other great properties have usually had a larger and more beneficial effect on the mar¬ ket as they appeared, but as in this instance the Federal Gov¬ ernment tigures as a junior-security holder and has heretofore been a splendid specimen of the dog in the manger iu Union Pacitic affairs, security holders may be excused if they do not hail any plan for their readjustmeitt with enthusiasm. The consequence of the indifference of the public to the uiarket, to one side as much as the other, is a gentle see-sawing of quotations in which there is no money to anybody. There is nothing new to add regarding general business either; it remains in a pros¬ perous hut uninteresting condition. THERE is no wonder that people have gone crazy over South African gold-mines shares ; the experts' tigures represent¬ ing prospective results are dazzlingly colossal. A receut report on the Raud District—made by mining engineers of reputation _ —estimates the annual output before the close of the century at " $100,000,000, und the total output in the next fifty years at ;, $3,500,000,000, of which $1,000,000,000 will be protit. No . wonder the indiseriminating public jumps at shares. The cold- .' blooded journalist, however, points out that the mines are over- '. capitalized for even the monstrous returns predicted. A recent .'. calculation makes the market value of Rand stock $700,000,000 ; to pay iuterest ou that at 5 per cent for fifty years would take $1,750,000,000, or 75 percent more thau the total estimated profit. Tbere can he no mistake about the market value of the shares, so that the experts will have h.ad to have made a mist.ake very unusual for them—of underestimating tbe results—for that value to be justified. All the facts obtainable, therefore, indi¬ cate that there must be a considerable sifting out of good from had and readjusting of values before these shares will be put upon a proper aud bealthy level. Apart from this threatening cloud the appearance of things commercial in Europe is on the whole satisfactory. Vienna's municipal governmeut is uow controlled by anti-Semitic political forces, a fact that creates fears of action against the Jews wliich will ultimately injure the trade of the city. In Berlin much satisfaction is expressed over the expected return of Russian financial operations to that mar¬ ket, and in Germany the iron aud textile trades are leading the Empire in the renewal of busiuess activity. The Paris Bourse is depressed, but the trade of Frunce is flourishing. In Great Britain the government revenue for the first half of the year exceeded the estimates by about $20,000,000. Morethanathird ■of r.he increase comes from " stamps " wliich cover the fees for llew incorporations, but the increases in customs and post.al and tielegi-aph services are significant of returning prosperity. The strike in the ship-building industry cau do much to check this Teturn, hut it is hoped that it will not. In Anstralia the recon¬ structed hanks as a whole are carrying out the agi-eements with tbeir creditors veiy satisfactorily, The Thorny Path of the Eeformer. T~iHE small numberof the goodly who have taken the late ad- -*- vent of " reform " into New York City seriously and even semi-religiously, regarding it as a real addition to our fund of civilization, are just at present moving about in the political field low in spirit and bitter at heart. A crisis for them is at hand. They fear they are at the point of a shabby transforma¬ tion in which the popular piety of the past twelve months about municipal affairs will clearly resolve itself into its real elements and turn out to be merely an aberrant form of the old spirit which produced and perpetuated year after year the curious dis¬ tortion which went by the name of government in New York City. Certainly, the cause of "reform " wears a sickly air these days, and signs are not absent that the coming political fall sea¬ son willbe a trying time for any constitutionally weak aspira¬ tions of the righteous. A man need not be much of a traveller among the crowd to be aware of the fact thatthe current mode is to speak of " reform " doubtfully, flippantly and even derisively. The thing—which theoretically ought to be so attractive to citi¬ zens—somehow hasn't caught hold of the popular imagination. It isn't a matter of the inevitable lameness of progress. The at¬ titude of the multitude is not that of disappointed sharers in a movement which all along has had their co-operation and still has their attachment, bnt of chagrined spectators who have grown cold of the play. The crowd is undoubtedly in that frame of mind when the easiest turn for them is to revert to their natural instincts, and these, to look matters straight in the face, have not been on the side of reform, or in warm and un¬ doubted sympathy with its aims and methods. We may say of reform what Dr. Johnson said of truth—it is a cow, Sir, which will yield people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. The queer thing is that any rational person should be disap¬ pointed because the reform programme does not draw the crowd. The very fact that this programme, which is but a copy-book statement of the elementary necessities of decent goverumeut, lias to be argued about, campaigned for and stipported with rhetoric, as though it were a high reach of political wisdom, proves conclusively that "reform" is alien as Greek to the ordinary thoughts of the multitude. Every half-enlightened Chinaman knows that to turn over a city to "politics," to dis¬ tribute the offices as party spoils for the benefit of party, or, indeed, to give any play to the distinctions of " Republican " and "Democrat" in municipal elections is to thrust into the work of administration elements out and out incompatible with single- minded efficient government. The man who does not under¬ stand this is as far from comprehending " reform " and aiding it with his support as a Hottentot, mystified hy the multiplication table, is from making a facile use of differential calculus. So long as it it necessary to struggle with the mass of voters to get them to think and act rationally about affairs in primary matters aud to proselyte among them to induce them to make those first concessions which are the presuppositions of good government, " reform " in New York must be a pursuit of the few, an inides cent dream, a paper scheme directly contradicted by those very popular forces which alone can give it reality. We shall get " reform " when it is no longer necessary to talk about it^not a day earlier. There must be very little of the philosopher in your " reformer " or he would see further than he does, aud so spare himself disappointment over contrary results. Surely it must be obvious to anyone who will give a moment to the facts that from one cause and another it is political considerations which dominate with the multitude iu our city elections. The crowd are partisans, and what they are after primarily when they go to tbe polls is party success. It is useless to speak of the exceptions. However numerous they may be, they are not enough to make independent citizenship, clear of all partisan bias a controlling factor in public affairs. The very word "independent" has odious significations in the popular luiad. The current ideal is the out and out party man who votes the straight ticket as a good rider tabes a fence. To falter is a clear sign of weakness. There must be some constitutional infirmity iu human nature that makes this insanity tolerable to people who in other matters betray no particular taint of the madhouse. Itis Ihe alienist's business to inquireinto it. Also, it is the business of the astute politician to deal with the masses as he finds them. He does, with the utmost contidenee, and therein lies his power. Precisely as the gambler counts on the ganimg instinct of his viclims, the manipulators of the political game rely upon the partisan madness of the millions. It is as ineffec¬ tual to demonstrate to the one that the odds of the game must be against him, as it is to argue with the other that "politica" and pure government have little in common. The reformer can't "politicalize" his scheme, because it is fundamentally opposed to " politics." He can merely beat his drums and appeal to the "better element" to eome out like spii-its from the vast deep, and be counted-au invitation so ineffectual that it is diffi¬ cult to avoid regarding the " element" as similar to the theoreti-