Why Investors the World Over SMITH BONDS Now owned by investors in 48 ET owners of Smith Bonds tell you in their own words why they select these time-tested first mortgage investments. A man who has invested with us for 30 years says: "For more than thirty years I have been doing business with your company and my transactions have always been handled satisfactorily. I have never lost any money on my investments with you, which is a very gratifying experience.' An Oklahoma investor writes: "For a person receiving a moderate income I have found your Investment Savings Plan a most liberal and practical plan for the systematic accumulation of capital." When you read letters such as these it is easy to understand why confidence in Smith Bonds is world wide, and why they are owned now by investors in 48 states and 32 foreign lands. There is real satisfaction in owning first mortgage investments which have behind them a record of no loss to any investor in 53 years. Current offerings of our First Mortgage Bonds, strongly secured by modern, income-producing city property, yield 7%. They are sold in denominations of $1,000, $500 and $100, outright or under our Investment Savings Plan which pays the full rate of bond interest on every payment. 7% If you would like further information send your name and address on the form below for our booklets, "Fiftythree Years of Proven Safety" and "How to Build an Independent Income." Co.-names never heard of in the town before this. The outsiders are coming in. The outsiders are the boom makers. The next thing is the news that the piece of property Wills & Minch bought at $1,000 a foot has been sold by them to the Ororo Corporation for $2,000 a front foot, and while the natives are still telling one another that somebody is going to get awfully burned the report comes-and is verified-that the Ororo Corporation has sold the plot to J. Blaine Gimmick for $3,000 a foot. Some of this Main Street property in Flushing has changed hands at $6,000 a foot, I understand; if not, it will to morrow. At the same time vacant lots between dwellings are being bought and houses are being erected on them; plots are being bought farther out and houses go up by hundreds. While the town people are saying that the town is being seriously overbuilt and that there will be an awful slump some day more houses go up three hundred in this direction, three hundred in that direction. Acreage jumps in value; the piece that was held at $1,000 an acre five years ago sells for $4,000 an acre, and is resold at $8,000. Huge apartment-houses grow into being overnight. The old white elephant of a mansion on the corner of Billis Street and Venus Avenue that has been the despair of the two maiden daughters of old Neddy Hoaks, who left them nothing else, and might as well have left them his curse, is amazingly invaded by a hundred workmen, not to make the repairs the girls have always hoped to be able to make, but to rip out woodwork, throw down walls, and destroy everything. A two-million-dollar apartment building is going up on the site, and the girls have received $125,000 for the property they tried so hard to sell for $20,000. The apartment builders chuckle. They got a bargain; a piece of ground of the same size on the opposite corner is now being held at $200,000. THE F. H. SMITH CO. appreciate that the subway means some thing, and its apparent value is "discounted" almost at once. Long before the subway is a fact property is advanced in the zone the natives believe will be affected by it-some few blocks in any direction. The local citizens say, in effect: "Our property was worth so much without the subway; add a subway, and it will be worth so much more." But they still think in the town values; the men who come in from outside think in city terms. It means nothing to them that a Main Street corner has been advanced to $800 a foot from the $500 it was worth before the subway was thought of, or that the corner could once have been bought for $100 a foot. They think: "When Flushing is as built up as the Bronx or Harlem, this corner will be worth $20,000 a front foot. If I buy it for $6,000 and put up a temporary taxpayer, I can carry it ten years without cost, and then sell it for big money." As I have said, a boom is not homemade; it is caused by the coming of outsiders who bring with them thoughts of values as they are in places where bigger money has been customarily paid. It is much as if a large number of New Yorkers who have grown accustomed to paying 60 cents a dozen for sweet corn went to Columbia County, where sweet corn may sell for 15 cents a dozen; the price for sweet corn is apt to jump to 40 cents. It is a boom in sweet corn, and everybody is happy too. The New Yorker saves 20 cents on every dozen, the farmer gets 25 cents a dozen more than he did, and-oh, boy!-how good that corn is! A boom, until it grows beyond all reason, is usually due to the sudden awakening of a large number of people to the thereto unconsidered value of a section or of a town. I am now sitting like a toad under a leaf waiting for a large number of people to suddenly awake to the hitherto unconsidered value of a piece of property at 242 State Street, to which I hold the title deed. I am spending my time reading Marcus Aurelius and the other philosophers in order to strengthen myself against the time when I will regret having sold for ten times what I paid for the house and lot instead of waiting until I could get twenty times what I paid. No matter what I get, I will be sorry I took it, but I am ready to begin being sorry at the earliest possible moment. I am sitting up until two o'clock every morning waiting for some one to come along and break my heart. Some of the results of a boom are amusing. I know a man who owned a house and lot here for which, I believe, he paid $14,000. When the town began to grow, more eating-places were needed and the house next to his was turned into an eating-place; it annoyed him considerably-it meant odors of food all day and rows of automobiles parked in front of his house at meal times. He felt that it would be almost impossible to live in his house much longer-so along came the boom, and he had to sacrifice the place In writing to the above advertiser, please mention The Outlook for $87,500. At last reports he was bearing up well under this adversity. The boom has resulted in Flushing having a blacksmith shop occupying a site on Main Street worth between $5,000 and $6,000 a front foot. I cannot give, offhand, the width of the shop, but it is probably fifteen or twenty feet, so a horse-if anybody can find a horse these days can be shod in a shop valued at from $75,000 to $120,000, not counting the building. These are yesterday's figures; to-morrow they will be higher. An interesting feature of the boom is the constant change of ownership it brings about. When I was on my vacation this summer, a man stopped to see us; he told us he had bought a lot with an old house on it as a speculation. When I got back from my vacation shortly after that, he had sold it and pocketed his profit. He made about $5,000 real money. This is like hopping onto an apple cart while it is in motion, taking a pocketful of apples, and hopping off again. Hundreds are doing this in our town-taking a short joy-ride on a piece of property and then jumping off with a bunch of money and jumping on another plot for another short ride up the price hill. I was told last night that one of our golf clubs had been offered a million dollars for its course. Golf at $55,555.55 per hole is not to be sneezed at, old man's game or not. A NOTHER peculiar thing about our boom is that quite a few of our oldtimers who have a little or muchmoney are letting our own boom go right ahead while they are doing their speculating in Florida. It rather suggests the man who had acres of diamonds in his own back yard but who went elsewhere to dig. There was never a more satisfactory time for a boom to hit our town than the present, with building materials worth much money, new or second-hand. Back in the cheap-material days a boom here would have been a "vacant lot" boom, because the presence of a building would have been a distinct detriment, having to be torn down at a considerable cost. Today the building, even if it must be destroyed, is worth money if it has any good timber in it at all. It is worth at least the cost of demolition. The buyer who is eager to pay boom prices in order to erect an apartment building does not care much whether there is a house on the property or not. In our boom sections of town the land values have advanced so rapidly and so far that even a good house is hardly taken into con Old Friends with a Future When people think of the future of the electrical industry they tend to think in terms of new, spectacular discoveries, like radio, for instance. Such thinking overlooks one important side of the story. The old familiar uses of electric current have their futures, too-especially gratifying and compelling, because they are so time-tried and so proven. Many think, for example, that nearly everybody has electric lights, and so 12,750,000 families have; that, however, is less than half the families of the nation. Many think that electricity is a commonplace in factories, yet only 62 per cent of the power they use is electric. The farmer benefits from electricity even more than does his city brother, yet 88 per cent of the farms are without it. The nation cries for faster, cleaner, cheaper transportation, yet only 1/2 per cent of the steam railroad mileage is electrified. All this, of course, is independent of the new developments-new uses for electricity that pour forth from the inventors and the research and engineering laboratories. Electrical markets are like rivers fed by countless mountain springs. WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC & MANUFACTURING CO. Westinghouse One Westinghouse contribution-the transformer-paved the way Right now is the time to think about finding a place to live next summer. The most desirable cottages-in fact, all kinds of summer propertyare snapped up early, so it will pay you to make your arrangements now. Look over the offers in REAL ESTATE, page 271. They represent really fine opportunities for the far-seeing. This is a Real Estate Number. The second of a series of four will appear on March 17. If you have property in the market, ask us for rates and information; or let us arrange your copy on approval and quote costs. Write sideration when price is considered. When a man has a lot he thought was worth $5,000, and has built a $20,000 house on it, and a similar plot next door sells for $50,000 vacant, he is apt to throw in the house quite carelessly when he is offered $50,000. This sort of boom makes it possible for the workmen of a new buyer to begin tearing down a brand-new house while the workmen of the old owner are still putting shingles on the roof. When property is booming at a jolly rate, the building that is "adequate" improvement for the land to-day becomes "inadequate" to-morrow. I know of a building on our Main Street that has stores on the street floor and two stories of offices above that. Several years ago one of the business tenants on the street floor made a lease with the owner by the terms of which his rent was to increase in proportion to the increase of the appraised value of the property. His rent was reasonable in the beginning, but now the time has come to renew it. His business could probably afford a rental of $200 per month at the outside, but under his lease he might now be made to pay $6,000 a year, which is $500 per month. This is because the building is "inadequate" improvement for the land at its present value. There are only two stories above the merchant, and his share of what that slice of the land should bring the owner is out of all proportion; there should be a ten-story building there now, with perhaps fifty other tenants. sharing the cost of the "adequate" return to the owner. But the boom came so suddenly no one knows just what to do about it. YOU ou can take my own case as an example. One of my favorite amusements for the last sixteen years has been having the leak in the roof of the bedroom over the kitchen repaired. In every way this has been one of the most satisfactory leaks in my experience. In one of the houses my folks rented out in Iowa there was a fairly good leak-when rain fell the water came down through that leak in a stream, creating a delightful sound as the water fell into the tin dishpan we always placed under it, and it was pleasant to lie in bed and go to sleep listening to the rain upon, through, and beneath the roof, but this leak of mine has given me much greater satisfaction. My leak here develops as a large damp spot on the ceiling paper, slightly brunette in coloring. It lurks over against the outside wall adjacent to the chimney, and I first observed it just after I moved in. When I bought the house a few months later, I had a tinner come up and In writing to the above advertisers, please mention The Outlook make a complete investigation, which he did, his report being that the tin roof had been there for fifty years or so, and was now ready to be rolled up and laid away with suitable obsequies while a new and virile tin roof replaced it. I told him to get out his snickersnee and his solder boiler and go ahead and replace, and he did so. He peeled enough tin from the roof to make the back yard look like northern France just after a devilish bit of strafe business, and he hammered and soldered tin for days, each clank of metal making my checkbook quiver with fear and distress, and then he said it would be O. K. if I paid at the end of the month, and he went away. I had the bedroom ceiling repapered; but that night there was a heavy dew, and all the dew on the roof came through into the ceiling at exactly the spot where the leak had always been. Since then I have had tinners on the roof almost constantly. It has got to a point where if I don't have two or three tinners messing around on the roof the neighbors send in and ask who is sick. The customary procedure is for two tinners, with a childish but intelligentlooking helper, to climb out of the thirdfloor window onto the roof and hold a consultation. They bend down and scratch six or eight of the seams with the points of their pocket-knives. "You see this, Ben?" one says to the other, mysteriously. "About it, ain't it?" "Yeah! And look at here, Joe-just look at here," the other says. Then they nod wisely and say they will come back day after to-morrow; and they do come back. Later on I get the bill-itemized. It usually arrives from three to five days after the next rain and comes in at the front door, but meanwhile the rain has come in through the roof in the same old way and place with undiminished eagerness. So I pay the bill and send for a different batch of tinners. They climb out onto the roof and scratch at six or eight seams with the points of their pocket-knives. "You see this, Pete?" one says to the other, mysteriously. "About it, ain't it?" The trouble now is that I don't know whether to give that roof its regular monthly once-for-all mending as usual or not. It is extremely upsetting. If the great Flushing boom would get up from the curb across the street and take a few steps in my direction, I would know what to do I would sit tight a couple of days, and then sell the old shack, leak and all, to the highest bidder andprobably-move out to some desert where there is no rain and where a tissue Mystic Charm in the Orient A new World of Adventure When one wearies of the sameness of everyday life, a change is needed. And it must be a complete change, fresh interests, new surroundings, strange sights. It is not in the Occident. Don't seek it here. But go to the Orient-Japan, China, Malaya, India, Egypt. There one finds mysticism, beauty, age-old customs, great nations with utterly different habits.. These lands are treasure-houses of adventure, whose possibilities are never exhausted even by a lifetime of travel. Easy Access Visit the Orient. Shop there. Play there. See as much of it as you like and return refreshed. And go in rare comfort. Every Saturday a palatial President Liner sails from San Francisco for Hawaii, Japan, China, the Philippines, Malaya, Ceylon, India, Egypt, Italy, France, Boston, New York, Havana, Panama and Los Angeles. These magnificent oil-burners offer commodious rooms, luxuriously furnished, a world-famous cuisine and the most convenient of all schedules for world travel. Similar sailings on fortnightly schedules from Boston and New York for the Orient and Round the World via Havana, Panama and California. Plan now this tour to the world's most interesting countries. 604 Fifth Avenue, New York City 177 State Street, Boston, Mass. San Francisco, California DOLLAR STEAMSHIP LINE paper roof is adequate and all that is needed. But when a boom sits dangling its feet in the gutter just across the street a man can't tell whether its next move will be to come over and make an honest man happy or go in the other direction A 1 and enrich more of those vacant-lot fel- Until further notice I reserve my opin The Book Table Edited by EDMUND PEARSON BOOK of Ellison Hoover's, "Cartoons from 'Life'," has been published. It will be noted and purchased by a number of pleasant people; people who have the "Bab Ballads" by heart, who cherish the names of Bateman and Wodehouse, George Morrow, A. 1 1 Cartoons from "Life." By Ellison HooSimon & Schuster, New York. $1.50. ver. By Ellison Hoover P. Herbert, Benchley, Donald Stewart, لدولييف Courtesy of Simon & Schuster Intimate Glimpses of American Generals of Industry This seems a shame, for Ellison Hoover and Gluyas Williams, too, are decorative artists deserving considerable attention to my way of thinking, at least. Further, they represent a type of humor that is far too rare in these free and united States, the sort of thing that leads "Punch" almost universally to be accepted as a criterion of humorous magazines. A humor with limits of taste and a basis of truth, that begets a laugh coming from the brain and not from the belly. It is dangerously easy to grow dogmatic on the subject of funny people. I have frequently entered long discussions as to why it is not funny for Mr. and Mrs. Jones to engage in a battle with iphons of soda, whereas it might be funny were Calvin Coolidge and Mr. Lloyd George to carry their exasperation to such a point. The reasons for these things are too complex for mere words. It has also been brought home to me that there are as many types of humor as there are sauces in France; that the appreciation of humor is entirely a matter of individual taste, and that one man's guess is as good as another's. Wherefore it would seem wise to drop the matter right here, and content myself with saying that in the tradition of the "Punch" artists there are no Americans better than Ellison Hoover and Gluyas Williams. 2 It might be amusing to compare these two "Life" artists with two of "Punch's" better-known men; for example, H. M. Bateman and George Morrow. Limitations of space make it impossible to reproduce good examples of the thing that both Bateman and Williams do best-a story told in a long series of little pictures, like Gluyas Williams's unfortunate who tried to catch an express elevator. Bateman's most famous series is of a day Mr. Bateman's books are many, and more than one have been published in the United States, by Henry Holt & Co., New York. |