Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 57, no. 1452: January 11, 1896

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January 11, 1896 Record and Guide, 37 V ^ ^ ESTABUSHED-^iWPH2l*i^>868, Devoted io f^LEsr^re.Building AR,cKrrECTUi^>(ousDlou)Dl«H^n4 BUSINESS fib Themes of GEjtenjl iKrEnpi. PRICE, PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SIX DOLLARS. Published every Saturday. TBLKIHONB,......COBTLANDT 1870 Oommniilcatlong should be aldreesed to C. W. SWEET, 14-16 Vesey Street. /. I. LINDSET. Business Manager. "Entered at the Post-offlce at New York. N. Y., as seeondrctass matter." Vol. LVII. JANUARY 11, 1896 No. 1,452 The Rrcoud and Guide w'lll furnish you witli tla'ily detailed reports of all building operations, compiled to suit YOUU business speci.fically. .for 14 cents a day. Toa are thus kept informed of the entire market for your goods. Xo guess work. Every .fact ver'ified. Abundant capital and the thirty years'experience of The Kecokd and Guidk (;««r«Hfcc the com¬ pleteness and authentioity of this servioe. Sendjo 14 and 10 Vesey street for information. SECRETARY CARLISLE lias nitide bis .innounccnieiit of a boiul issue. Though uot in the lorm expected or desired, the aiinotinceiiieiit ha.s not been witliotit good effects mion the business situation. On this is.sue, tis in so many otlier niatters, the louil mouths seem to have had more intluciice thau the leve heads. The free coiuajce measure comes into the Senate in a way that ought to show the silver men the liopele.ssiiess, and conseiiuently tlie tooli.shness of their task, but it may be con¬ fidently iiredicted tliat it wont. The silver men will disappear from the couiieils of the nation eveutiiully, but it will be because the constituencies refu,se any longer to be served by men holding to the belief,s that they do. It is a remarkable thing, one that pa.sses the bounds of ordinary comprehension, that Congress cannot be got to see that as a mere business proposition, one in whicli the protit is beyond all question of doubt or iiiobability, that the reform of the cnrreiicy is dollars ;ind cents in the pockets of the nation. The fresh capital alone that .such a reform would biing to this country from abroad would be more effective iu the development of our energies and resources than the success of any uovel economic ideas could be. It is sur¬ prising, too, that the- agricultural class does not make itself heard with better effect than it is now doing, on the subject of the currency. The gniiii market ought to show that they are not getting all they should for their cereal produce. Take wheat for instance. From all parts of the world reports come of failures of crop. The Itttest return is from Australia, where, it is said, the crop will not average five bushels an acre. Only recently we referred to the serious tailing oft' in the wheat crops throughout Europe and in Argentina, Since then the exports from Russia and Argentina have proved that these repoits were by no means exaggerated. Reports fioni our own wheat territories, while it is too early to form an opinion of the probable results, are not encouraging to th<> grower. There is talk of war in tones that create great apprehension. All these are ordinarily bull poiuts on wheat, yet its jirice does not go up simply because the financial cinditious are such as to discourage the operations that are necessary for a rise. With the news .at hand wheat should be selling at 80 cents instead of at .about G7 cents. Cannot the farmers see that all other con¬ ditions being favorable to better prices, it is only the money question that compels them to accept ti price that it does not pay to grow the giaiii tor'? an improper or unnatiu'al one, because if those who have the powerof declaring for warorpeace, speak without due regard for diploiuiitic proprieties, the people cannot fail to get the idea, er¬ roneous though it may be, that they want war and war it will bo. Oue of the results of this feeling is the falling off in the capital applications in'London, which from being remarkably high have become remarkably low ; this is a sure sign of dullness in finan¬ cial circles. In examining these tipiilications for the year, which iimouut to over $.'500,000,000, it cannot escape notice that Lon¬ don has htitl comparatively little to do with foreign loans. Prob¬ ably not more than teu per cent, of this capital went outside of Great Britain aud her colonies. In this connection it may also be remarketl that there is a tendency, in Grermany particularly, to draw away from Loudon dmniuation in financial opertitions. Vienna will follow Berlin, and as was made patent only recently, Russia has ciirried lier business to Paris, and later to the Ger¬ man capital. The tittitiule of London itself is largely the cause of this. There need be no doubt that Russians, Germans and Frenchmen will take money from thtxt centre if they can get it on suitable terms. Britisli politicians, too, are endeavoring to divert the attention of the home capitalist to the colonies as the best and surest lield for the employment of their wealth,doubtless with the idea that tliiit will bring the whole British nation into closer coiutnunity of feeling .lutl remove some of the dangers to the Empire whicli arise from having- her interests scattered too widely among other peo])les whose friendship cannot bo de- peuiled on. ----------a---------- THE decision of the Supreme Court of Connecticut in the trolley cases, which has been looked forward to for some time with so much iiitcicHt, and which was rendered this week, passes by the one question that gave the litigation its chief in¬ terest outside ot the State in which it has been carried on. This ((uestion is the additional servitude put upon the highways by the trolleys aud the consequent right of the owners of abutting property to damages. The Connecticut case being originally one relating to the powers of municipalities to control the opera¬ tion of street railroads by modifying their privileges aud to compel the substitution of another power for electricity, the point of additional servitude was put aside as irrelevant. In the main issue the trolley companies were victorious, the court hokling that an exiuess grant bv the State to lay rails through certain specitted streets is not dependent ou the consent ot the municipal iiuthorities, nor could the latter substitute iinother power tor electricity, though they might require the substitution of the storage battery for the overhead trolley. The hitter is an importtinf concession, as any one can see. The chief regret that the court did not take up the questions of the additional burden on the highways tind the consequent rights of ad,joining propertv owners to damages, will come from those who believe ill the probability of these points being raised tigainst the owners of trolley and table lines iu this aud other States. It would have been interesting to know whether the Connecticut judicature had as jealous a regard for the rights ot abutting property owners iu the streets as the New York courts have dis¬ played iu the suits for damages brought against the owners of the New York L railroads in this city. Besides this, it is im¬ portant that the relations between the public and the owners oE the improved .systems of rapid transit, whether cable or elec¬ tric, should be more strictly defined th.an they are now. A con¬ test is inevitable ou viirious points—the terras and conditions under which they are to get permanent rights ou public thor¬ oughfares, their right to change the motive power, etc., and how these things infringe on the rights of individual property owners, for instance—aud the sooner it is biought to a focus and deter¬ mined, the better for both parties iiud the traveling public iis well WITH every community wrought up to a pitch of excitement such its has not been experienced since Nttpoleonic times, it seems ridiculously tame to talk about the condition of Euro¬ pean trade, nor is it very easy to learn much about it, except that it is necessarily bad. Wheu ueople are brought face to face with the near pro.spect of Wiir, they are likely to let everything go until they learn whether their fears are to be reitlized or not, and they can determine what course they will take in either eventuality. The consequence to all kinds of business is obvi¬ ously one of obstruction, and .surface appearances such as quota¬ tions of prices, etc., do not count for much, seeing that an hour may change them in the most radical manner. The little outbreak in tho Transvaal, which at any other time would have passed ; without occa.sioning more than a ripple of excitement, coming so ; closely behind the explo.siou of the Venezuelan bomb, h.as scared I people into doing all manner of foolish things, wliich obtain an I importance iiccording to the political prominence of the person I doing them. People are not now comforting themselves with i the belief that the first trouble will blow over, but are worrying j themselves-yvith thej question. What next? The inquiry is not "VTATURALLY the Torreus registration law adopted by Cook -i^ County, Illinois, last November, has to undergo the ordeal of the courts. Until it h.is passed through that, proceedings taken under it will be unsatisfactory, inasmuch :ia a judicial mterpretalion of any new features of legislation is necessary be¬ fore the public can accept them with perfect confidence. It is reported from Chicago that many obstacles were placed in the way of giviug effect to the system, one of which was that the Circuit Court judges only allowed the Recorder the necessary clerical help to carry out tho work of the system after a struggle. Tho judges would iu the ordinary course of things, go slow before acting on a matter of such novelty, ixud their proper prudence and caution may have been interpreted as an opposition to the measure itself, for which assumption there w^as no apparent basis. Further, it is said that the opposition of the land title lawyers in Chicago is very pronounced, and this may not be any more culpable than was the hesitirtion of the judges of the Cir¬ cuit Court in setting the miichinery of the law in motion. It would be a very difficult thing for a legi,slature to enact a mea¬ sure, of which there could be only one construction; no legisla¬ tive body has succeeded in that task yet, and it is best uudei' all the oircumstances that the coui'ts pihoiitcl flecido what was the Jo-