356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



appliances ; electric "bells all intended to minimize service at the 

 expense of an increased original outlay. If the occupant of a suite 

 in a New York apartment-house, who has abandoned a self-con- 

 tained house, is asked the reason, he will probably say, " I pay 

 just as much rent, but I get along now with fewer servants/' 



The tendency observable on all hands to provide durability in 

 the stead of flimsiness, the most elaborate and complete machin- 

 ery for anything short of it, is accompanied by another tendency 

 in no sense economical. When banks and office-buildings display 

 floors of rich mosaic, walls and ceilings of variegated marble, stair- 

 cases of Mexican onyx, it is evident that luxury brings a price as 

 well as wholesomeness and commodiousness. Throughout the 

 Union every considerable city has its structures of this type dis- 

 covering the sky, mostly erected by insurance companies who 

 seem to be hedging on the fall in the rate of interest by reaching 

 out after unearned increment. 



Rent has been affected in diverse ways by the cheapening of 

 secure loans. In so far as mining privileges and the like can be 

 worked with less cost for the hire of capital than ever, their net 

 income, rent or royalty, has increased. Farming lands of all kinds 

 but the best situated or the most fertile have tended to fall in rent 

 as massed capital has become cheaper. Railroads, in opening up 

 vast tracts of new territory with great rapidity, have kept the val- 

 ues of even the best farming land lower than they would otherwise 

 have been. In the same direction also has operated the lowered 

 rate at which money can now be borrowed on farm buildings and 

 machinery. In the cities and larger towns rents have risen remark- 

 ably within twenty years, yet the rise would have been greater 

 still had not the rate of interest dropped. Rent in cities and 

 towns, as elsewhere, depends upon two values that of land apart 

 from improvements, and that of improvements. The first of these 

 values is determined by the comparative salubrity, publicity, con- 

 venience, and beauty of sites ; other things equal, it will tend to 

 rise as the income of the average citizen rises with the increase 

 of ability to compete for advantages desired. The rental value of 

 improvements, of all that capital adds in preparing for a build- 

 ing, constructing it, and fitting it up, will tend to approximate to 

 the rate of interest payable on approved real-estate security. In 

 New York city, where land is usually more valuable than the build- 

 ings which cover it, low terms for mortgage interest have not 

 affected rents so much as in smaller cities where buildings are as 

 valuable as or more valuable than their sites. Last spring a 

 block of tenement-houses in New York sold at a price so high as 

 to realize its purchaser but six per cent as a gross return on his 

 investment. If his rents remain unchanged, any further fall in 

 the rate of interest will enhance the price of his property. This 



