Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 67, no. 1730: May 11, 1901

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May II, 1901. RECORD AND GUIDE. 837 Dt^rifl) TO REX.L EsTAjE. Buildij/g ^^cKiTEcnnip .Kousniou) Dsanpioil BiJsii^ESS AttoTHEitES Of GejIer^ lirto?^« PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS. PuMisIicd every Saturday. TELEPHONE, CORTLANDT 1370. -Communications should be addtessed to C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street. ./. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. ■■Entered al. lite Post-Office of New York, 2f. 7., as second-class mailer.' Vol LXVII. MAY 11, 1901, No. 1730. ALL stock market booms end with an explosion, and that which occiirred this week, although apparently produced hy the accidental cornering of Northern Pacific, is a natural outcome of the injudicious use. of explosives—the Northern Pacific corner was the match that is all. When the community buys securities without regard to values, so that prices advance, on patriotic enthusiasm, or a passion for gambling, instead of upon facts and figures, trouble must ensue. The loosening of the first stone may be said to cause the fall of a huilding, but investigation will show that that was only a symptom of constitutional weakness. So it was with the stock market—con¬ ditions were stretched and strained so that it could not sustain the shock of losses in Northern Pacific, and collapse was the result. The danger at the moment is that the public may over¬ look the disease in the passing of the symptom and resume those operations that can only aggravate it. Panics are usually fol¬ lowed by a quick substantial rally, and then by a long decline that brings prices down to less than value, and it is reasonable to suppose the same result will follow this one. Tbe gambling spirit was so prevalent that it may be taken that the losses are equally widespread, and the drop in prices has correspondingly shrunk the available resources of the community. It ap¬ pears, too, that the insensate struggle for control, at boom prices, of the railroad business of the West is still on, and until decided for one or other of the contestants will obscure and endanger the situation. Then, too, prices in only too many in¬ stances still reflect more than values. Buyers have mentally so underwritten the prosperity of the railroads and of the coun¬ try for many years to come, as they always do in good times, forgetting the accidents and relapses that inevitably occur, that they have more than discounted any proflts reason can expect. The one great good feature of the situation is that general busi¬ ness is so good that the effect of the panic will be felt outside of speculative circles only in a moderate degree. But it will be felt nevertheless, and this should engender caution until the power direction of its infiuence are determined. IT looks as if the Natioual Board of Conciliation and Arbi¬ tration, which certain important representative organiza¬ tions of employers and laborers are trying to form, might accomplish something. Nothing could be more encouraging than the spirit of mutual accommodation and confidence which has marked their conferences: and there can be no doubt that such a spirit will do more to remove disagreements between capital and labor than any other single agency. Witliout it any Board of Conciliation would be useless; with such an attitude behind it a Board might well be able to do good work. The weakness of the proposed machinery, as far as it can be tested by past experience, is its large and national character. Hitherto, boards of conciliation and arbitration have succeeded only when organized in particular trades; and within such limits they have heen extremely useful. But when an attempt has been made to make them generally useful, they have been much less influential, because when any disagreement broke out, the actual parties to the quarrel had no assurance that a national board would possess the necessary special knowledge to arbitrate their peculiar disagreement. The circumstance, however, which may make a National Board a helpful piece of machinery is the in¬ creasingly national character of American industries. Nearly all the organizations, both of employers and laborers, represented in the conference had behind them industries of more than local importance, so that a National Board of Conciliation and Arbi¬ tration would be the really appropriate body to which to submit tlieir differences. So far as can be judged at present, the ten¬ dency of large consolidations is on the whole to improve the rela¬ tions between capital and labor. The bigger interests involved make both employer and employee more responsible, and less ready to strike or lockout, except as a last resort. Furthermore, large and prosperous corporations, such as the Pennsylvania R. R.. for instance, can offer more permanent employment and better chances of advancement than a small railroad, whose business is comparatively precar^^ous; and so it is with other industries. Of course, the danger of extensive and costly labor disputes is as much present now as it ever was; but the tendency to higher industrial organization certainly tends to make the situation better rather than worse. T HE explanation of the platform adopted by the Citizens' Union, which has been offered by Mr. R. Fulton Cutting and other members of that organization, shows that these gen¬ tlemen understand the way to build up a municipal party and m.ake it most useful to the city. The Citizen's Union is organized not to preach reform or to denounce Tammany, but to insist that questions of municipal policy be seriously studied and be treated on their own merits. "It is aiming." says Mr. John Brooks Leavitt. "to build up a great municipal party whose battle cry* shall be 'Progress.' Many of us who have been crying 'Reform' these many years have grown sick of that self-righteous word. We have learned lessons from our chastening experiences, that reform, like charity, should begin at home; tbat a professional reformer is no better than a professional politician; that munici¬ pal government is politics as well as business; that our youthful talk about getting rid of professional politcians was callow non¬ sense; that as the three great requisites of oratory are action, action, action, so the three indispensable things for success in any political movement are organization, organization, organiza¬ tion; and that if the citizens who really want good municipal government are to do anything except fight as the child fights— scratch, kick and bite—they must follow tbe example of experts, and construct tbe necessary plant to turn out the product desired. ... No party of negation ever did anything. The Strong administration was tossed into offlce by a hurricane and tossed out by a breeze. It had no organization behind it standing for principles. If the Citizens' Union is to gain public confidence it must do more than promise to be 'good.' It must define what it means by being good, so that its performances may be measured by its promises." This is sound doctrine, and it is the one way in which an organization can in the long run make itself efficient and popular. Americans do not care for a policy of mere protest and a platform of mere scolding. They are interested for the most part in doing some particular thing; and they succeed in what they are doing not only because of their adaptability, biut because of their peculiar powers of organ¬ ization. They can understand a party with principles that sets out to achieve certain definite and desirable results, and if the Citizens' Union is becoming tbat kind of a party, it is on the high road to being a really useful instrument in the great aud difficult task of making New York an elficiently and economic¬ ally governed city. The public resources cannot be wasted in the future as they have been in the past. They must be care¬ fully husbanded, yet liberally and wisely expended; and the party that can secure the best results will be the party to gain public confidence. t----------------- THE gentleman from whom we have quoted, however, is right in asserting that municipal government is politics as well as business. It is politics because in the conduct of municipal government other considerations besides busi¬ ness consideration must be kept in mind. Any municipal party which is to get and keep control of the government must be in some sense and meaning of the word a "people's" party, and Tammany has in tbe main kept its power because it suc¬ ceeded in being, by whatever means, a people's party. More than ten years ago Heury George was almost elected mayor because he appealed to the sympathies and support, as merely reform parties never do, of a large number of ordinary voters. The Citizens' Union Is making a distinct effort to win general popular support; and that is doubtless the meaning of the planks in its platform about the municipality doing its own work, and about the "prevailing rate of wages." We cannot approve its countenance of either the delusion or the ambiguity, which hide behind such a phrase as the "prevailing rate of wages," but the purpose which has prompted these declarations is a laudable purpose, and one which must play an import¬ ant part in the success of any municipal party. Nothing is plainer from the history of municipal employment during the past fifteen years than that a city must pay a somewhat higher average for its labor than do private employers, and any municipal party which flatly opposes this tendency could never be victorious at the polls. On the other hand, any city which does pay good wages should insist, as Col. Waring did, upon getting good work, in which case it will not be much the loser.