crown CU Home > Libraries Home
[x] Close window

Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Use your browser's Print function to print these pages.

The Record and guide: v. 40, no. 1029: December 3, 1887

Real Estate Record page image for page ldpd_7031138_006_00000669

Text version:

Please note: this text may be incomplete. For more information about this OCR, view About OCR text.
December 3, 1887 The Record and Guide. 1501 THE RECORD AND GUIDE, Published every Saturday. Onr Telephone Call Is • - - - JOHN 370. TERMS: OIVE YEAR, in adrance, SIX DOLLARS. Communications should be addressed to C, W. SWEET, 191 Broadway. J. T. LINDSEY, Business Manager. Vol. XL. DECEMBER 3, 1887. No. 1,029 The stock market looks weak, and it seema as if the experience of past Decembers would be repeated. The last month of the year is generally signalized hy lower quotations. It is a time when accounts are closed up—when money is being withdrawn from the street by the great corf orations who have surpluses, the funds being required for the payment of the January dividends. Then the meeting of Congress gives an element of uncertainty as to the future of the money market. If that body would not do quite eo much talking, and acted promptly and wisely, especially in the dis¬ tribution of the Treasury surplus, we would not only have a buoyant stock market bat the trade of the country would be prosperous until such time as the crops of 1888 were gathered. It is not, how¬ ever, at all likely Congress will act wisely. When the flood-gates of talk are opened a body of lawyers can do nothing but spout and procrastinate. In the meantime the surplus will have accumu¬ lated and the busiuess of the nation will suffer. The newspapers continue to talk nonsense about the Panama Canal, and persist in advocating the preposterous Nicaragua scheme. Despite all ths unfavorable reports, the American people may rest assured that the Panama Canal will be completed and will be open for business before the Nicaragua Canal is commenced. If the two were finished at the same time the Panama Canal would, of course, have all the business, for ships would pass through it in less than two days, while the rival route would take nearly two weeks. Our American leaders of publio opinion are pursuing the same **dog in the manger" policy that the English publicists did when De Lesseps was building the Suez Canal. It was declared to be a wholly impracticable enterprise ; its cost would be ruinous, and it would be a failure in any event. This is what foolish Americans are now saying about the Panama Canal. The English had good reason to dread the opening of the Suez Canal. True they have captured it, and the tonnage which passes through it is mamly that which carries the British flag. But Eng¬ land is ceasing to be the warehouse of the world because of that canal. The products of the East are now being distributed by way of the Mediterranean Sea. It is Italy which, m the near future, will control the trade between the Orient and the Occident. Eng land is being impoverished in every way. Her agricultural class ia being ruined by the competition of America, her South Pacific colonies and India. All the world now bars out her manufactures, and the Suez Canal is slowly but surely taking from her her for¬ mer commercial supremacy. At first, doubtless, the Panama Canal will injure our overland trade, but finally the canal itself must belong to the American Union. One fact, however, should be kept in mind, despite all our press may say, the Panama Canal will flnally be completed and opened to the commerce of tho world. missible in a court of justice. Without exactly saymg so, the Times gives the impression that an innocent man has been convicted because he was poor and disliked, while a rich rogue has been allowed to escape through the meshes of the law. Well, this kind of thing has occurred before. 1 And now the Commonwealth Club has a panacea for our politica ills. It wants to clothe the forms of our primary elections with the sacredness and sanction of our regular election machinery. It takes it for granted that if the majority really rule and the "bosses" are suppressed that future legislatures and Boards of Aldermen will be virtuous. But this plan will not work if the body of the voters are themselves corrupt. The money of candi. dates have often debauched majorities in many of the Con¬ gressional districts of the States. The fact is, the only reform likely to be effective is the adoption of the Australian system, the features of which in detail were published in The Record and Guide of last week. The Times says there was no case against John Most. He was I^L convicted because of his alleged bad character and odious person- ^^ ality. He never really committed any offense against our laws, ^^■but he has served a yearns imprisonment and is likely to go to ^^Bjail again because of an interpretation put on hia language which ^^■he disclaims. The same paper declares that law defeated justice ^^^iii Jacob Sharp's case. There was no doubt at all of his guilt, yet the Court of Appeals unanimously agrees that Judge Barrett made ' ness of it in permitting evidence against him wbich was inad- We have always held that the Judge in Sharp's case seemed to think more of the newspapers and public opinion outside than he did of the forms of law. The jury were forced to convict by the threat of " embracery." Nearly every newspaper in town would have held up the jurymen as a set of perjured villains if they had not brought in Sharp guilty. The trial, as conducted by Judge Barrett and the press, was a screaming farce. Of course Jake Sharp is the corrupt scoundrel he was charged to be, and it ia a grave discredit to our legal machinery that under its forms he could not be punished. Of course, also, the further trial of the boodlera is now out of the question. Our people ought to bear in mind that the cause of all our trouble is that under our system of government it is impossible to elect honest Aldermen or legislators. There seems to be no doubt but that Great Britain is passing through a severe industrial crisis, the gravity of which cannot be overestimated. England was prosperous when she was the one great manufacturing couutry of the world. When competition commenced in Europe and hostile tariffs interfered with the sale of her goods she kept opening new markets in Asia and elsewhere, but now practically all civilized as well as uncivilized nations are trying to manufacture their own home consumed goods; hence England's manufacturing supremacy haa culminated. Then American, Indian, and other competitors have ruined the agricul¬ turists, so it seems aa if that apparently powerful nation "was tottering to ita fall." There is keen distress and poverty through¬ out Eugland, Wales and Scotland, as well aa in Ireland. The Anarchist and the red flag will be heard of frequently in connec¬ tion with the discontent of the laborers of Great Britain. A Herald reporter has interviewed a secret agent of the English Socialists, now in tliis country, who makes the following state¬ ment, which accords with our own advices, and is undoubtedly true: The old powerful trade unions are to-day mere charity organizations. The Engineers' Uniou, which has 50,000 names on its rolls, had last year to support twenty thousand of its members who were out of work ; more¬ over thousands of countrymen are pouring daily into London hoping to Qud work. Over one hundred thousand paupers are being supported in the London workhouses; the prisons are overstocked and new ones are being built; agriculture is ina hopeless state and cau never be revived; hundreds of landlords' wives are trying to make a living by dressmaking and other such work; and, on the whole, there are no words in the English language which can describe the misery of the masses iu England. The cause? Well, the immediate cause is the want of foreign markets. The limit of conquest has baen reached in this direction, and in the few still existing outlets for trade England cannot compete with Germany; hence have arisen overproduction and overpopulation, and English workingmen have ceased to be either earners or consumers. Not only has England lost in her foreign markets, but in those that are left she has the active competition of Germany, whose merchants are as enterprising and as skillful as those of England, and who are better educated and more economical. Undoubtedly the government of Great Britain has grave perils to encounter in dealing with tbe distress of the agricultural and manufacturing classes. Look out for bad news from abroad. The Standard, Henry George's paper, states that in all proba¬ bility the Labor party will not run an independent Presidential ticket next year. This ia really an important announcement, for if that policy is carried out it makea this organization a balance of power party, which will be, as it were, up at auction between the great rival political organizations. The seventy odd thousand ballots polled for Henry George did not affect the result of the last State election, for, contrary to general belief, the votes seemed to have been drawn equally from both the other partiea. The liquor interest was thrown very generally in favor of the Democratic party, while the extreme Prohibitionist refused to vote for the Republicans, which lost them the State. This winter the Republi¬ cans will make an earnest effort to capture the Prohibition vote, and this will give the more importance to the Labor people, who will probably ask for planks in the respective platforms, rather than for any share in tho spoils. If the George party can hold their votes they may be able to determine the result in several important States, including New York. It ia quite clear that an independent Labor party would cut but a poor figure in the Presi¬ dential election. But Henry George repudiates the wise counsel of his paper during hia absence. He iasista upon running a Presi¬ dential ticket. Of course tbat means that there will be a George Labor party