April 29, 1899.
Kccord and Guidt
761
BiTsiWEas jutoltEVES or CE^la)^ iKiot^l.
PR1C£ PER YEAR IN ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS
JPublisbed every Saturday.
Tblbfhoio, Costlahdt 1370.
CoicmunlcatloiLS should be addressed to
C. W. SWEET, 14-10 Vesey Street.
J. 2. LfNVb BT, Business Manager.
" Entered al the Post-O^ice al New Iork, N. y., aa second-class matter."
Vol. LXIII.
APRIL 29, 1899.
No. 1,624.
WITH SUPPLEMENTS,
THE prominent features of the stock market are speculative
manipulation and uncertainty in regard to the future of
money, with the probabilities pointing rather to higher than
lower rates. It is noticeable that, despite the work done on the
bull side and the great help afforded tO' the workers by the dis¬
inclination of holders to part with long stocks, prices are, in the
main still below what they were two or three weeks ago,when the
first setback of the year came. There is, however, nothing to
attract new public buying, except, of course, in the investment
issues. In the latter lines there is good wholesome buying, the
stocks and bonds of the properties making the best earning state¬
ments being mostly favored, as is natural. In the past it haa
been usual for dullness to come upon the stock market when the
activity in manufacturing and trading waa most pronounced.
Just now the general conditions of business, judging by the pub¬
lished reports, is excellent and promise to be better; therefore,
if the old rule still works, this should operate against the stock
market until a period is reached when outside business falls oft.
ONE of the chief sensations in the financial world across the
Atlantic, as on thia, is the sudden rise in the price of sil¬
ver. The only explanation of this rise so far offered is specula¬
tion; but this is not satisfactory. Financial journals and the
financial editors of other journals have imbibed a prejudice
against silver as a result of their efforts to maintain the gold
standard; consequently, silver to their minds is not so much a
metal or a commodity as an affair of politics, and being of the
politics to which they are opposed they cannot admit that it
will move under ordinary trade conditions. If we remove from
our minds all thoughts of the monetary controversy, it will not
appear at all strange that silver advances when everything else
has advanced; it is a valuable metal for which there are many
uses, commercial as well as monetary, and it will not be sur¬
prising if it advances still more. "With the growth of business' in
the Far East its use as money will increase and large purchases
by the Paris Mint, indicate that its value for the same purpose
in Europe is increasing rather than diminishing. This idea has
nothing whatever to do with the standard of exchange, which
may remain gold, while the circulating medium of a particular
country is silver. Possibly the readjustment of the finances of
Spain will call for large amounts O'f the white metal and explain
the French Mint's purchases. At any rate there is no reason in
the world why silver should remain the exception to the general
movement of prices. Iron, for instance, has advanced materially
this year, a fact that is affording considerable satisfaction to the
European ironmaster, because it is lessening the American com¬
petition, while the home demands remain quite active. Most
flattering reports of the condition of the iron business for the
first quarter of the year in Great Britain and on the Continent
are published. The programme for railroad building in India
contemplates an expenditure of Rx 24,000,000, about ?14,50O,OOO,
for the years 1899-1902. Instead of Germany having sanctioned
the extension of the Cape-to-Cairo railroad through German
East Africa and aubsidized a telegraph line, it appears that Mr.
Rhodes only succeeded in arranging a basis for negotiations and
the British government is more reluctant than ever to afford
guarantees. Thoae who, unable to throw off the effects of the
political conflict over the metal, look askance at the advance in
silver, will take comfort from tne report of the Rand gold pro¬
duction for the first quarter of the year, which amounted to
1,256,058 ozs., while 937,708 ozs. were produced in the same quar¬
ter of last year, 652,899 ozs. in the corresponding quarter of 1S97
and 489,148 in the same quarter of 1896. The North German
Lloyd dispensed about $1,000,000 for dividends in 1898, as against
about $500,000 in 1897. It is reported that an agreement has
been reached between dealers and agriculturists for the re-estab¬
lishment of the grain exchange at Berlin, and that the matter is
in the hands of the Prussian Minister of Agriculture. Evidently,
the agrarians do not find it so easy to keep grain prices' always
high when speculation is absent, as they once thought it was.
There is to be no legislative assembly in Austro-Hungary until
late in the ^ear, instead of in the Spring; consequently the coun¬
try will have a spell in which to breathe, before political discus¬
sions begin again to embitter the people and obstruct business.
OF the varying winds that blow upon the ship " Rapid Tran¬
sit " and carry it hither and thither, the prevailing one of
the moment comes from the East—the Third Avenue Railroad
Company is said now to be anxious to build the tunnel even with
a franchise limited as to duration. The blow from the Metro¬
politan Street Railway Company seems to have subsided into a
dead calm. To the average citizen it will make very little differ¬
ence which company builds, if one must build. The Metropolitan
Street Railway Company could give the best system of transfers,
but would have the least interest in building the Bronx section.
Third Avenue Railroad interests would have an incentive to
build as rapidly as possible on both sides of the city—on the
West to compete hardest with their rival, the Metropolitan, and
on the East to attract population to the network of street rail¬
ways they are buying and building in the Bronx through the
Union Railway Company. There is one thing, however, that
ought to be mentioned, even though it may dampen the latest
hope raised of seeing a rapid transit railroad built in the near
future, and that is, that the Third Avenue Railroad Company
has so recently paraded itself in company with the greatest o-p-
ponents of and obstacle to rapid transit, the Manhattan Elevated
Railroad Co., that their sincerity will be open to question until
they put their offer into practical shape. On the other hand, it
may be that these people have at last come to see, as has heea
recently pointed out by a railroad official, that a tunnel road
means money in the pocket of whoever builds it. Rapid transit
in this city has been such a matter of alternate hope and despair-
that settled opinions are impossible. Only this much is prob¬
able, that the advent of the Third Avenue Railroad Company as
a bidder for the franchises, would bring back the Metropolitan
Street Railway into the field of competition when we would be
more likely to see another Kingsbridge road franchise fight,,
though on a larger scale, than a practical tunnel through which
the resident of Washington Heights could be shot from City HalL
in the happy expectation of reaching home in twenty or thirty-
minutes, as he should do.
TESTS made by the Fire Department at the Manhattan Life
Bnilding cn Broadway prove that a high building can Iw
as effectively protected against fire as a low one. That protec¬
tion is not a question of height, but of appliances. Ey the con¬
nection of -an engine of the Department standing in the street
with the fire apparatus of the building itself, a stream of water
was forced 70 feet above the top of the flagstaff, which ia 370
feet above the street level, through a one-and-three-eighths-inch
nozzle and also through a one-and-a-quarter-inch nozzle. The
building plant, operated by its own engines (stationary), did
just as well, besides showing its effectiveness in protecting the
several fioors. Certain remarks attributed to the Chief of the
Fire Department at the close of this trial may be taken tO' fore¬
shadow the principal recommendation that will emanate from
the committee of the Municipal Assembly which is considering
the m'atter of the regulations to be made to meet the danger of
fire in high buildings. Those remarks were: "So far as the
Department is concerned, the tests were entirely satisfactory.
They justified my belief that if all of the high buildings were
equipped with an efficient standpipe syatem, a fire like that iu
the Home Life Building last December would be rendered im¬
possible. If the owners of high buildings will aid us in thia
matter, the Department can afford them adeqtiate protection.
THE BOWLING 6RELN SITE.
No definite progress has been made this -week In the negotia¬
tions for the purchase by the Federal Government, of the pro¬
posed Bowling Green site for the new Custom House. It was
reported last week the owners cf fourteen of the sixteen parcels
concerned have agreed on terms of sale at private contract. As
regards the two parcels, owned by the Cooper estate and E. M.
Brown, condemnation proceedings will apparently be necessary;
in any event, condemnation proceedings will be required to ex¬
tinguish the city's interest In the alleyway which enters the plot
from Bridge street. Under these circumstances it ia of course
impossible to say when the purchase will be completed, aa the
Government will sign no contracts until it is assured of the entire
block. On the other hand, the owners have good reason to facili-