Article Text
According to all accounts, New York city has never been so poor as at present. An old and well known resident of the city, writing to the Troy Times, says it is "poverty all round." The masses are hungerbitten, and the "gentry" are severely pinched. The percentage of growth, too, or at least in the increase of values, was less last year than in any previous year for a quartercentury. Only five millions was added last year to the real estate assessment roll, while three years ago the annual increase was fifty millions. Real estate is very dull. Stores do not pay, houses do not pay, the great structures erected for offices do not pay, and increase in building will be small. Every description of property which is under heavy mortgages is said to be in danger. Since the panic, personal property has also depreciated enormously, the shrinkage being estimated at thirty millions-due, chiefly, to the heavy decline in ordinary values. Pacific Mail, which once was quoted at three hundred, is now forty-five. Panama Railroad has been as high as four hundred, but now is selling at one-third that rate. Kansas Pacific bonds which were issued at ninety-five are now selling at seventy, and to these shrinkages is to be added the entire loss of bank capital in the Ocean, the Atlantic and other ruined banks. Then, again, railroad bonds to the amount of more than $300,000,000 have defaulted on their interest since the panic, and these to a large amount are held in that city. New York may wear a showy mask, but there are grim features behind it.