Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 74, no. 1898: July 30, 1904

Text version:

July 30. 1904- RECORD A\n GtilBE 233. mil; v£^ " ESTABUSHED"^ Dn&TED TO Re\L ESTkTZ, BuiLDlffc Aji-ClfrTECTURE ,KoUSEllOU> DEQORfTlOS, .BusiiiESS aiJdThemes OF GeiJer^I IHtei^sT. PRICE PER year: in ADVANCE SIX DOLLARS Published eVerp Satarday Communications should i)e addressed to C. W. SWEET. 14=16 Vesey Street, New Yora J. T- LINDSEY, Business Manager Telephone, Cortlandt 3157 ••Entered at the Fost OJJic at New York,N. Y..a second-class matter." vol. LXXIV. July 30, 1904. No. 1898. THE statement of tlie "Iron Age" ttiat the improvement of the Eiteel situation has taken place chiefly in Wall Street, Is confirmed by the quarterly report of the Steel Corporation, whicii shows that the orders on the hooks of tbat company amount to a million tons less than they did three months ago. It seems douhtful, consequently, whether that company can earn the full dividend on its preferred stock during the winter quarter of the current year, and it may be expected that after the dividend now declared is deducted from the market price of that stock, it will return to the lower level at which it sold during the spring. It certainly looks, however, as if the coming year would be a better one for the steel trade than tbe current year. The general consumption of steel manufacturing goods will certainly be larger; and it is probable that the railroads, while they will not be very hungry consumers, will require a bigger tonnage than they have taken during the current year; certainly, we shall have no great faith either in the revival in general business or in the permanence of higher prices on the stock market until the feeling in the steel trade becomes unde¬ niably better and is founded upon a considerable increase of the business in sight. IT will be good news to tbe inhabitants of the East Side that the IVTanhattan Railway Company is preparing to run seven- car trains on its East Side lines. That section of the city, both south of Fourteenth Street and north of Fifty-ninth Street, has of late increased more in population than any other of the chief divisions of Manhattan. Yet nothing is at present actually be¬ ing done to improve its means of transit. The East Side subway is still flve years or more in the future. The existing subway is intended only for the West Side of Manhattan. Consequently the elevated roads will continue to be the one rapid transit railroad which will serve tbe swarming population of that part of the city; and it is fortunate, indeed, that the electrical traction will permit the Manhattan Company to add still another car'to the length of its trains during the rush hours. This addi¬ tion will immediately increase by one-sixth the carrying capacity of these trains; and the additional car will further mean ah increase almost one-half in that carrying capacity since the electrical motors were installed. Seven-car trains, welcome as they will be, will, however, only reduce the con¬ gestion for a year or so; and the next step should be the carry¬ ing out of Mr. Parson's suggestions respecting the four-tracking of the Second Avenue line. The East Side needs a much better express service than any which it now obtains, and it needs more track room. Both these advantages could be secured by the adding of two tracks to the Second Avenue line, and arrangements should be made with the Interborough Company to that end. T T is a pity that some method cannot be found of organizing ^ the planning of necessary public improvements for the Greater New York, so that there would be less delay in getting them Underway, Wherever the Rapid Transit Commission, on tbe one hand, or the Board of Estimate, on the other, is chiefly responsible, there is more hesitation and deliberation than is natural, considering the importance of the decisions to be reached; but wherever the conflicting ideas of several different departments or commissions have to be reconciled, there seems to be no end to the delay which takes place before any definite action is taken. Such is the case, for instance, with the plan¬ ning of an adequate system for distributing and collecting pas¬ sengers who cross the present and prospective Brooklyn Bridges. Whether it is a question of widening the streets that approach these bridges, or planning connecting tunnels, year after year passes and nothing effective is done. For five years the condition of the traffic across the Brooklyn Bridge has been both a disgrace and a peril, yet in all that time not even one effective temporary relief has been provided, much less a per- manert cure for the evil. The Wiliiamsburgh Bridge was "opened" almost a year ago, but no definite decision has been talien either about the street approaches or the transit con¬ nections. The only means of traveling across the Bridge, which has been provided, is that of trolleys terminating at either end, which will merely repeat the terminal congestion of the Brooklyn Bridge. It is the same way .with the Manhattan and Blackwell's Island Bridges. Yet it is perfectly plain that the one thing necessary is some method of distributiag passengers to their destinations and collecting them, and that these ends can be best reached partly by special subway to important points and partly by a thorough system of connection with the new Manhattan subway systems. But there is no one man, or no body of men, who have the power or the gumption to decide upon the proper plan and push it through. Bad organization and division of responsibility are partly responsible for this failure. All such matters should be left to the Rapid Transit Commission, subject to the approval of the Board of Estimate. The duties of the Bridge Commissioner should be confined to the construction aud supervision of the bridges, which is suf¬ ficient to keep the hands of any one man tolerably full. The Jewish Population of New York. ■^OR A long period the Irish immigra.tion was the dominant ■^ influence in the political and popular social life of New York. As the Irish invasion began to slacken, the Germans came in large numbers until there were more people of German descent living around New York Bay than in any European city, except Berlin and Vienna. But the German immigra¬ tion began also to diminish; and with its diminution the Germans, like the Irish, have become more and more absorbed into the American population of New York. No sooner, how¬ ever, had the German ingredient began to decrease, than a great influx followed of Polish and Russian Jews; and if this immigration continues at its present rate for another fifteen or twenty years, these emigrants and their descendants will be numerically the most important single ingredient in the population of the city. There are said to be about 700,000 Jews now living in New York; and what with additional immigra¬ tion and the natural increase due to their great fertility, this number might easily be more than doubled by 1925. Neither is there any reason co suppose that the rate of immigration will seriously diminish in the near future. The Jews are still perse¬ cuted in Russia, and they are comparatively prosperous in this country. New York is destined, in the course of time, to become more, rather than less, Jewish. When the Russian Jews flrst began to immigrate in large numbers, it was frequently assarted that they would prove to be on the whole an undesirable addition to the population of the city. It was feared that their standard of living would prove to be low, and would deteriorate the standard of living of everybody wlio competed with them. It was also feared that their clannishness would make them impervious to the influences of American life, and that they would remain essentially and persistently alien. These fears have proved to be groundless. While their standard of living is not as high as that of some other immigrants, it is as high as is necessary, considering their sedentary occupations; and it has a tendency to be raised as soon as the Jew has been in this country for a few years. Furthermore, the Jew, although clannish, begins very soon to be in a certain way Americanized. He adapts himself early to the better opportunities of American life, and has a tendency to break away from a rigid conformity to his ancestral cere¬ monialism. He has not yet become much of a politician, but he has made his beginnings even in that fleld of work. There are .;ood reasons for believing that the majority of them will become excellent Araerican citizens. Yet they will at the same time be American citizens after their own special manner. With all their adaptability, they retain strong racial and social characteristics, and offer in this respect a more stubborn resistance to the assimilative forces of American society than do the Irish or the Germans. Their religion tends, of course, to keep them together, as does the sense that they are still for the most part strangers in a strange land. They have, indeed, no fatherland to look back to or no nationalities to break; but they are bound together by stronger bonds than those of nationality. They are united by the sense of many centuries of persecution and oppression, and they hold fast to each other with all the tenacity of their race. Moreover, their habit of inter-marrying prevents them from being emerged into the American people as the Irish and the early German imml- rants have been. The consequence is that freely as they ex-