The record-union., 1892-07-16
ANOTHER PICTURE.
What Real Estate Speculation Does
for San Francisco.
Money That Should Have Been In
vested in Factories Locked Up
in Empty Houses.
Virginia Chronicle. July 12th.1

AASAA4Ad SllAOLliClS, y u4g 4Ein.
The following extract is taken from an
editorial in The Wasp, an illustrated
weekly published in San Francisco, and
contains truths not generally known:
The Micawber spirit is the bane of San
Francisco. This waiting for something
to turn up, for some whirl of the wheel
of fortune to bring sudden wealth with
out labor or forethought, is the aftermath
Of an era of gambling.
You see this spirit exemplifed to-day
by the rows of empty dwelling-houses in
all parts of San Francisco. To the casual
observer these untenanted dwellings in
dicate that the city has retrograded. Such
is not literally the fact. She has but
stood still. But in this progressive age
inactiOn soon becomes retrogression.
These rows of empty dwellings indi-
cate most plainly the direction in which
the industrial energy of San Francisco
has been most busy for several years.
The money taken from the savings banks
or Withdrawn from trade has not gone
into factories, but into sandlOts and tene-
ments. Why? Simply because the
prospective boom offered alluring pros
poets of a successful gamble and large
are essential TO success in ordinary bust
ness pursuits.
How much kinder to his felIow-man
than the railroad monopolist is the San
Francisco landlord, whose idle houses
advertise the dullness of trade? APP
proach him on the subject and learn. He
Will have his pound Of flesh if he can get
it, and tax the applicant all that the traffic
viii bear. He wants interest on his bad
speculation in real estate interest on the
house on which the contractor swindled
him, and further interest, if possible, on
the insurance and water rates. There are
10000 idle houses in San Francisco to-
day, and yet rents have not abated 10 per
cent. in six months, while the opportu-
mites for workingman to earn his bread
! have diminished 70 per cent. by the very
existence of those idle houses.
The demonstration of this fact is easy.
Ten thousand houses represent an ex-
penditure Of about $1,000 apiece, or an
aggregate of no less than 1900, 900,
which earns nothing and is practically
Withdrawn from circulation, for the land
lords cannot sell their property at the
figures they want or rent them at the ex-
orbitant rates they demand. The result
is most disastrous, of course, in the long
run TO the workingman, who has no capi-
tai to feed or house TO shelter him, and
who gets little employment when money
ceases TO circulate.
Suppose that the 900, instead of
being invested in sandlots and buildings
on which small and large monopolisls
expected to reap great profits by taxing
their poorer fellow beings, had been in
vested in wealth producing factories of
all kinds, in canneries, shoe-shops, foun-
dries, in mines, in vineyards, in every-
thing that tends TO give constant en-
ploynent TO populous communities,
what would have been the result long be-
fore this ? Instead of bewailing our COM
mercial depression, we should be boast
sceeching some band of philanthropists
be pondering as TO which of the many
thriving State we should first give right
OF way.
But" suggests the thoughtful reader,
"our labor troubles have prevented mill
ions OF capital from seek ing inv yestment
IN the channels you suggest. No man
VIII invest his money ia manufacturing
| enterprises with the prospect of having z
strike on his hands before he is we'll
started"
Precisely so. The suggestion is peril
nent, but it does not affect the force of
our argument from the start, or the truth
| OF the Introductory statement that there
are many things necessary to the proper
growth and development Of san Fran
cisco. The competing railroad, when it
ever comes, will be but means toward
the end-one OF the many factors in the
general Improvement that is sorely
needed.