Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 57, no. 1451: January 4, 189 [i.e. 1896]

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January 4, 1896 Record and Guide. ESTABLISHED"^'f^CH 2iu> 1868. Dented to f^LEsTwr.BuiLDif/o A^RcrfiTE(nui^>{(3USDlou>Dianfii^ Busnfess Alto Themes of Giiia^ iKrenpsi.. PRICE, PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS. Published every Saturday, Tblephonb.......Cortlandt 1370 Oommnnloatlons should be addressed to C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street. /. 1. LINDSET. Business Manager. " Entered at the Post-offlce at New York, N. P., at iecond-clMXtt matter." Vol. LVII. ;JANUARY 4, 189 No. 1,451 The Rrcoud and Guidr will furnish you with daily detailed reports of all building operations, compiled to suit your business specifically, for 14 cents a day. Yoit are thus kept informed of the entire market for your goods. Ko guess work. Every fact verified. Abundant capital and the thirty years'experience of Tmi Rkcoud and Guide i/i/arrtHfce the com¬ pleteness and authciiticity of this'jervice. tiend to 14 and Id Vesey street for information. IT is .stated on good authority that a free silver bill will be reported to the Senate on Tuesd.ay next, that the new bond issue has been arranged for and that it will be for if^l 0(1,000,000, .and that the revenue bill will go through withiu a month, or six weeks at the Latest. These are the three most important items of news in financial cirele.s at the moment. Wall street is awaiting the issue of bonds when Congress shall have form ally declared its intention of doing nathiug to help the Treasur.y, ^vhich it has already most emphatically, though informally, declared. Business outside of Wall street is await¬ ing more encouraging- liiospeets for a jieaceful settlement of the .Venezuelan boundary dispute. How the last-mentioned matter is regarded by business men found expression at the Chamber of Commerce meeting on Thursday. There is little hope that business can do more than drag along until the Com- mis.sion .iust .appointed has made its report, and tliat then, if it softens the asjiect of the controversy with Great Britain, the reaction will be prompt and extensive. Meantime, we shall have had a large issue of bonds. Tliat the times are out of .joint is proved by both gold exports and imports occurring at about the same time. Gold hits been bought abroad to pay for bonds .and gold has to be shipped to meet adverse trade balances. This extraordinary state of things has not only sent gold to a premium, but it is another proof of the necessity for reforming our currency methods. A popular loan it is saiil is impracticable, as it no doubt is, because the gold would be drawn from the Treasury to piT.y for the bonds. A banker.s' loan does not seem to be much safer, because, while the subscribers to the bonds may be pledged to bring the gold to pay for them from abroad, if the.y buy their gold by bills of exchange, the drawers may have to ship gold to meet the bills. When the last issue was made this was avoided by the making of syndicate credits in London and drawing against them. Pre¬ sumably before the arrangements for floating the loan are per¬ fected similar proyisions will be made in this instance also. EUROPEAN business begins the new year in a waiting atti¬ tude. The activity in all the great lines of production reached its culmination last f.all and has since been declining, with an accompanying easing ofif in prices. Regarding the atti¬ tude on the other side toward American railroad securities the remark of the London Economist, that their prospects are of a very nebulous kind, owing to the currency problem remaining unsolved, the uncertain outcome of the elections this year and the Venezuelan message, probably sums up the situation fairly. Not onl.v is the Western horizon cloudy, but there are present on the Eastern so many elements of possible trouble, that enterprise cannot fail to be checked, and there will be again seen the piling up of idle funds in the great banks and money again a drug in the market. The demand for the new year put up discounts in London to about one per cent., and it shows the extraordinary condition of affairs that the rise of the rate to this figure was a Bub.iect of favor.able comment. Last year opened with the boom in South African mines so far underway that the financial jour¬ nals were crying'• Caution." That boom having collapsed and the eyes of the public having been opened to the true value of the Kaffir stocks, they do not now offer any prospect of renewed activity. Of cour.se the lime will come when a new set of simple¬ tons will have been inveigled into another movement, but not yet, because the howls of the burnt children are still so piercing that others will not put their fingers into the fire. Last week we p,Uuded to the falling oft" ia the wheat crop in European Russia, This week the preliminary .statement of the Board of Agriculture .showing the estimated total produce and yield per acre of wheat, barley and oats in Great Britain in tlie year 1S95 is brought to us by the mail. It shows, in a compaiison with 1894, losses as follows: Wheat, 22,(100,000 bushels ; barley, 3,500,000 bush¬ els; oats, 13,000,000 bushels. All reports of the production of cereals, and particularly of wheat in other countries, favor the grower in the United States, and the climatic conditions here being obstructive to the growth of winter wheat ought to favor higher prices for the stock on hautl. HOW like the voice of the good grandfather the following, from Governor Morton's message, is : " It is scarcely con¬ ceivable at this period of the world's history that any great nation is willing to take tlie responsibility of the needless sac¬ rifice of liuman life, and the wanton destruction of property which woukl be the inevitable result of an armed conflict.' Scarcely conceivable! Wh.y, you dear, good soul, at what antipodes to the real existence of the hour have you been living? The streets are crowded with lumps of raw humanity ready to roar themselves hoarse for war. They figure iu the catalogue of im^n as merchants, law.yers, storekeepers, clerks, mechanics, all professing Christianity, or at .any rate civiliza¬ tion; but what do the.y care about "responsibility" or the "sacrifice of human life." You might as well talk to Choctaws or Mohawks of such matters. Surely, the noise of the last ten days hasn't died .yet i Millions of full-grown individuals claim¬ ing the dignity of manhood and profcs.sing themselves to bo reasonable creatures hiive been shouting, gesticulating, threat¬ ening, swaggering, arguing, imploring—about what? Ask any of them. Have they the first tittle of information as to the real merits of this controvers.y, older than themselves, between Venezuela and Great Britain 1 Why, the nation itself has appointed a commission to find out what we have been talking about, and it will probably consume months of study before it can arrive at an opinion about the matter. Not one in a hundred of the clamorous crowd could even accurately locate Venezuela without the aid of a map, and not one iu ten thousand knows anything more of the nature of the country, the character of its people, their form of government, their history, their past relationship with the United States, than they do of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Nevertheless, dear old Gov. Morton, they are even .iocund about your " scarce¬ ly conceivable " disaster, and they talk about war and the " sacri¬ fice of human life " as lightly as you would of a midsummer pic¬ nic. These people, you must understand, are "patriots," "good Americans" ; and nowadays to be a patriot it is not necessary to be well-informed as to what you are willing to fight about, to reason, to be dignified and moderate, to shun hot words and senseless talk, or to have any feeling about the " sacrifice of hu¬ man life " or the criminality of an .avoidable conflict with arms. It is necessaiy, however, to believe that all other nations must be wrong about any question that arises under the sun concern¬ ing your national interests, feelings or pre,)udices; that if they dift'er from you, it is tantamount to insult, .and implies an en¬ croachment upon your country's " honor." And, of course, once having got this "honor" into the field, passion and hatred come with it and the waving of flags. Then the beating pul.se and the choking speech usurp the func¬ tions of the sober minil and the human voice, the accents of which are higher than the cry of brutes exactly in preportion to what it tells of conscience and reason, and the love of man. Could Cleveland call to-morrow for a vote on war, hundreds of thousands would "rally round the flag," for any piratical con¬ flict that was trumpeted with the nation.al anthem. " In this period of the world," says the Governor, as though we were in the millenium, with Europe armed to the teeth, and our own country crying for battleshiiis .and the biggest guns. The average New Yorker would rather read a cheap newspaper descri]ition of our latest " commerce destroyer" than glance at the Beatitudes. That is the mark of our millenium. The Afri¬ can chieftain isn't civilized by the mere possession of a puncheon of rum and a tailor-made suit; and, big as its wardrobe is, the AVorldto-day'cannot be regarded as really fitted with the clothes of civilization so long as war is its most popular pursuit and the vocation that thrills its nerves the most intensely. Let us frankly acknowledge that in many respects we are still brutes, crows and kites, and even in annual messages not talk of the actual as the "scarcely conceivable." THE session of the Legislature which is now begun at Albany is likely to be an interesting one for real estate and build¬ ing interests in this Cit,y. The question of consolidation is perhaps the one of largest prospective importance, and the one that will occupy the greatest amount of attention. The intima¬ tions that the politicians are to t.ake it out of the hands of the Commission, compo.sed mostly of lawyers of standing who have made a special study of municipal government, does not create very encouraging hopes of the ultimate resiUf, Then, too, the