TWO AND A HALF PER CENT. 357 



incidentally illustrates how as interest falls land values rise, and 

 explains the growing appreciation of home-owning in cities and 

 their suburbs. 



According to the statistics of the Interstate Commerce Commis- 

 sion, the bonded, share, and floating liabilities of American rail- 

 roads amounted to $8,129,000,000 on June 30, 1888.* It is not likely 

 that science has any such revolutionary gift for mankind in the 

 near future as the railroad ; and as American capital at this time 

 demands new outlets whereby to effect new economies or save 

 noteworthy waste, it may be allowable to note some fields for 

 sound investment as yet unoccupied. Is not the improvement of 

 our towns and cities, as such, a field which capital might well 

 enter ? Recent investigations by Captain Francis V. Greene, of 

 New York, and other experts, demonstrate that, were the city's 

 pavements as good as they should be, horses could draw threefold 

 greater loads over them, with an immense abatement of both noise 

 and filth. While the improvement of the metropolis due to individ- 

 ual enterprise and taste has been marvelous of late years, its man- 

 sions and business structures vying with the finest in the world, 

 the city as a city is little changed. Its gas, water, and sewer pipes 

 are still laid in the earth beneath its streets, subject to unceasing 

 disturbance for repairs. Its electric wires, for many years a griev- 

 ous eyesore, a menace to pedestrians and an obstruction often fatal 

 to its firemen, at last have so multiplied in number and deadliness 

 that a beginning has been made in laying them underground a 

 tentative procedure attended with all the uncomfortable results 

 of an underground piping for gas and water service. Repeatedly 

 the suggestion has been made, echoed at last in the City Hall, that 

 subways be constructed for the accessible disposition of gas, water, 

 and sewer pipes, and for electric wires. Never until this sugges- 

 tion is acted upon will the city's pavements be free from constant 

 breaks, which, were repair of the carefullest, would never permit 

 New York streets to remain smooth and seemly. Subways of the 

 kind proposed could easily accommodate pneumatic tubes for the 

 conveyance of postal letters and parcels. To-day the mails trav- 

 erse New York, much as furniture and vegetables do, in common 

 vans. So slow is their delivery that letters from Albany, arriving 

 at the Grand Central Station at 7 A. M., reach Fourth Avenue and 

 Thirty-second Street partly at 10.40 a. m., but in larger part be- 

 tween 12.40 and 1.10 p. m. The point named is half a mile from 

 the station, on the way between it and the Post-Office. The 

 quickest train from Albany to New York travels the distance, one 

 hundred and forty-eight miles, in three hours and thirty minutes ; 

 a letter traversing a distance of six miles within the city occupies 



* Of this stupendous total, 39 per cent had made no return whatever during the preced- 

 ing twelve months. 



