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March 29 1S84
The Record and Guide.
813
THE RECORD AND GUIDE.
Published every Saturday.
191 Broadway, N. Y.
TERMS;
ONE VBAR, iD advance, SIX DOLLARS.
Communications should be addressed to
C. W. SWEET, 191 Broadway.
J. T, LINDSEY, Business Manager.
MARCH 39, 1884.
Bualness is beginning to improve as the Fipring advances. All
or nearly all the omens are auspicious. Wheat is falling in price
and will continue to do so until it can be exported to Liverpool at a
profit; tbat is one good signs. The West-bound freights are increas¬
ing, due to a better demand for goods at the West and South; that
is another good sign, A very active demand has sprung up for im¬
proved real estate, which is the best sign of all. The spring is now
fairly under way, the planting season is all that could be desired,
money is very easy, emigration is large and good securities at pres¬
ent prices are tempting to investors. Who knows but what we
may be happy yet ?
The same day that Minister Sargent was transferred from Berlin
to St. Petersburg the President sent an urgent message to Congress
to vote for seven more iron-clad vessels for our navy, finish the
monitors and get the plant for casting great guns for our navy and
our coast defences. Of course there is no connection between the
w^ithdrawal of Sargent and the recommendation to increase the
navy. Ob, no!
Why don't the Congressional revenue ref ormers take a leaf out of
the tactics of the municipal reformers at Albany, and, instead of
introducing one bill, bring ina dozen or more, each effecting special
iateresfcs. Ib ia notable tbafc a general change has rarely been
made in our tariff, never indeed except when the war opened and
the Siuthern S^riabora aod Representatives left their seats in Con
gress. The tariff has been often amended, but every bill effecting
all interests has been either killed or so emasculated as not to be
of any value aa a reform measure.
A few years wiil transform the Fourth avenue between Union
square and the Park Avenue Hotel. Tlie Florence apartment house
ie to be extended so a^ to take in the whole block between Eigh¬
teenth aad Nineteenth streets. Then a new lyceum is to be con¬
structed adjoining the Academy of Design, Thia will be a building
of some architectural pretension. Then the Kiralfy Brothers have
their plans prepxred for coastructing a theatre for spectacular
pixrpoios, adjoining tho Belvedere Hotel, between Eighteenth and
Nineteenth streets, and another great improvement is spoken of at
length elsewhere, which involves a magnificent fire-proof structure
which will take up all the block now occupied by the Madison
Square G-arJea, save along the front on Madison avenue, which is to
be occupied by an immense apartment house. This great hall
will furnish accommodations for horse shows, circuses, fairs, floral
exhibitions, walking matches and great public meetings. Of course
other large enterprises will naturally follow. Restaurants will
be needed, and other pleasure resorts wili spring up so that the
Fourth avenue may in time be somewhat like Fourteenth street
between Third avenue and Broadway, thronged witb places of
amusement and refreshment. In times past. Fourth avenue prop¬
erty was held in high Odfceeoi, but it failed to realize expectations
as it did not prove a good business street, and was unsuitable for
dwellings. But hereafter there can be no doubt as to the estimation
in wbich real estate on this avenue will be held.
Herbert Spencer declines to become a candidate for member of
Parliament, because he thinks the sphere of government should be
limited to seeing that justice was done between men and men. In
his letter declining the nomination he says : " That which I hold to
be the chief business of legislation—an administration of justice,
such as shall secure to each person, witb certainty and without
cost, tbe maintenance of his equitable claims—ia a business to
which little attention is paid ; while attention is absorbed in doing
things which I hold should not be done at all." But what would
our lawyers do if Herbert Spencer's ideal government were estab-
liehed? Their business ia to live by litigation, to profit by the dis¬
honesty of men. Our great and costly lawsuits are not only a
denial of justice, but are a distinct sanction by government of de¬
liberate plunder. The Stock and other Exchanges can settle mone y
disputes of groat magnitude for the merest trifle, but under the
forms ef our courts estates are swallowed up; our Surrogates
Courts are the headquarters of ghouls, whose business it is to de¬
vour the substance of every dead man's estate ; our most eminent
counsel are those who are paid the most excessive and monstrous
bills. Herbert Spencer is right. Justice should be certain and
without cost. In this country it is uncertain and terribly dear, and
results generally in injustice, aud the worst of it is that it is from
this plundering caste we"talie all our rulers. Every possible presi¬
dential nominee is a lawyer. Another point is worth noting. In
England men like John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Frederio
Harrison, John Morley and other lights in literature and science
are asked to become members of Parliament; we bestow no such
distinctions upon our Emorsons or our Longfellows. Tennyson is
made a peer in England ; our greatest poet, Poe, died in a gutter.
But, when distinction is to be bestowed, it is always the lawyers ;
it is never tbe scientist or tbe man of letters.
The demand for silver dollars is. of course, due to the wearing
out of the one and two-dollar bills, and the refusal so far of Con¬
gress to pass an appropriation for printing more of them. There
would never have been any accumulation of tlie standard dollars
in the Treasury were it not for these oue and two-dollar green¬
backs. The law organizing the nationpl banks provided that when
resumption took place no issues should be allowed lower than five
dollars. Accordingly, on January 1, 1879, the national banks
withdrew their one and two-dollar bills. The then Secretary of tbe
Treasury, John Sherman, was opposed to silver coinage, and, to
discredit it, issued one and two-dollar greenbacks in the place of
the national bank notes withdrawn. All the channels of retail
trade were thus gorged with small bills, and of course the standard
dollars could not circulate. This has supplied all the "fool " news¬
papers with a standing argument against the silver dollar as to its
inutility, and the positive objection of the American people to
using it. We now see they are iu demand immediately the one
and two-dollar bills are beiug retired. If Congress had only sense
enough to decree tbat after a certain date all the paper five-dollar
bills should be withdrawn, and that at some subsequent date the
tens, both greenbacks and nationil bank notes, should be no longer
issued, we would then have a gold and silver currency similar to
France, Germany and the other leading commercial nations. With
gold eaglfs, half eagles and quarter eagles, as well as plenty of
silver iu circulation among the people, gold would not so readily
leave our shores. It is now piled up in the banks in the form of
double eagles, ready for exportation. As gold has one more use
in other countries than in the United States—thafc is, as a currency
—it naturally gravitates to the countries which most need it.
There neei be no contraction of the paper money, for the fives and
tens withdrawn could be reissued in larger denominations. It will
be remembered tbat iu England the smallest paper issue is a
twenty-five-dollar note, and gold circulates very freely among the
people in that country.
Sherred Hall.
Architecture is running so much to "palatial magnificence,'
and the dibtinction between art and luxury ts so extensivoly lost
sight of, that it is especially interesting to see an artistic use made
of simple materials and a plain treatment.
This attraction Sherred Hall has to offer. Ifc ia the firat of the
series of buildings designed by Mr. Haight for fche General Theo¬
logical Seminary, and destined ultimately to form a double
quadrangle on the square bounded by Ninth and Tenth avenues,
Twentieth and Twenty-first streets.
The general scheme we described in tbese columns some montha
ago, and Sherred Hall is all tbat has thus far been done towards
realizing it, although the funds are now available for the library at
the corner of Ninth avenue and Twenty-first street. Tbis is to be
connected by a dormitory building with Sherred Hall, which stands
some distance down Twenty-first street. The ends of the new
building show preparations for extensions on both sides.
Sherred Hall itself is about 80 feet long by 30 wide and three
stories high, with a roof of rather steep pitch, tbe ridge parallel to
tbe street upon which one side of the building directly abuts.
The street front is a wall of common hard brick, chosen for color,
and laid apparently in cement, upon a foundation of the same
slightly reddish sandstone which is employed in the wrought
work and in the lintels, arches and mullions of tbe windows. This
front is divided into three parts by the slight projection of the cen¬
tre, which ie gabled, with two small square openings iu the stone
basement and in the brick first story, a triple opening, witb a eim-
pje tracery, in the second afcory and in the third a pointed window
with perpendicular tracery in the head. On each side there are
two pairs of openings in each story, pointed arches in brickwork in
the first, a slight but effective contrast of color being obtained by
the use of brick of more pronounceu red in the jamba, aud above