sewerage, drainage, or ventilation thereof in said district," in whole or in any particular, is a public nuisance or dangerous to life or health. The Board may accordingly order the “nuisance" to be removed, abated, suspended, altered, or otherwise improved or purified. It may also "order or cause any excavation, erection, vehicle, vessel, water craft. room, building, place, sewer, pipe, passage, premises, ground, matter or thing, in said district or the adjacent waters, regarded by said Board as in a condition dangerous or detrimental to life or health, to be purified, cleaned, disinfected, altered, or improved; and may also order any substance, matter or thing, being or left in any street, alley, water, excavation, building, erection, place or grounds, whether such place where the same may be is public or private, and which the said Board may regard as dangerous or detri. mental to life or health, to be speedily removed to some proper place" selected by the Board. It is the duty of the Board of Police to execute these orders of the Board of Health, or the latter Board, if it deems proper, may execute its orders through its own officers and agencies. All expenses incurred upon private property under this act are made a lien upon the same.

All owners, tenants, lessees, or occupants of property in the district and persons carrying on business, or having charge of places or buildings are enjoined to keep the same in such condition as not to be prejudicial to life or health. Any member of the police force and every inspector or officer of the Board of Health, as the regulations may respectively provide, may arrest any person who shall violate, or be engaged in committing any act forbidden by this act or of any law or ordinance of the Board of Health, or who shall resist the enforcement of any order of the Board of Health, or of the Board of Police, in pursuance of such order, and the offence shall constitute a misdemeanor.

The Board of Health, the Health Officer and the Board of Quarantine Commissioners are required to co-operate together to prevent the spread of disease and for the protection of life and the preservation of health. There shall also be an interchange of sanitary information with the health authorities of the several towns and cities of the State for the same purpose, medical relief shall also be afforded to the poor, and hospitals for the established reception of patients sick with small pox and contagious diseases. The Board also, in concert with the Governor, may proclaim the presence of great and imminent peril to the public health, and in such cases may perform such acts and incur such expenditures as the exigency shall demand, the Board of Police may co operate with the Board of Health and promptly advise of all threatened danger to life or health, and report to the latter all violations of its rules and ordinances. The authority of the respective Boards in relation to sanitary matters is the same as a special order of a justice or judge duly issued.

The Board of Health is required to report annually to the Governor upon the sanitary condition and prospects of the district, and its expenditures; and shall suggest further legislation whenever the same may appear to be required. The Board may also enact a " Code of Health Ordinance" which shall be pub. lished on or before the 10th day of May in each year in two daily newspapers in New York and in Brooklyn; and afterward shall go into effect on the first day of June, to remain in full force for one year, unless annulled. All courts

and tribunals, or any judge or justice of them, shall take cognizance and enforce such ordinances by penalties not exceeding $50. The Board will also exercise the authority conferred by all laws relating to cleanliness and to the sale of poisonous, unwholesome or deleterious or adulterated drugs, medicine or food. The Board may also require in formation relative to the safety of life or the promotion of health, from public dispensaries, hospitals, asylums, infirmaries, prisons schools; also, from all other public institutions, and from the proprie tors, occupants, lessees and managers of theaters and other places of public resort or amusement in the sanitary district.

A special fund to be kept in the Treasury of the State, is created from the sums of money provided or raised for meeting the expenses to be incurred under this act. All payments shall be made from it under the order of the Treasurer of the Board as the Board shall direct. The Mayor and Comptroller of New York, the Mayor and Comptroller of Brooklyn and the members of the Board of Health are directed to convene at the office of the Board-at the Metropolitan Police Head Quarters-on or before the 1st day of August in each year as a Board of Estimate to make up an assessment for the expenses of the Board for the year. This estimate shall include also a written apportionment of the expenses to be awarded as the law directs to each county, city and town in the district-the salaries and compensation of members of the Board and the officers and employes, to the county where they belong; the general and contingent expenses to the counties of New York and King, and the expenditures incurred in the other counties, to the respective counties. The Poard, in anticipation of the receipt of moneys for its current expenses, may borrow such amounts as may be required on the credit of this act.

All violations of the provisions of this act or of any order of the Board made in pursuance, or of any by-laws or ordinance referred to in it, together with obstructions or interference with any person in the execution of any order of the Board, or of any pursuant order of the Board of Police; and all wilful or illegal omission to obey such order, or to conform to any sanitary regulation of the Board; and all cases in which it was made a misdemeanor to do or omit to do any act, when any power or authority hereby conferred upon the Board of Health was exercised by any other Board or officer, are declared to be misdemeanors subject to indictment and to an additional penalty of $250.

It is the duty of prosecuting officers of criminal courts and police justices to act promptly upon all complaints and in all suits or proceedings for any violation of this act, to bring the same to a speedy hearing, and to render judgment and direct execution without delay.

The 1st day of March is fixed as the day for the new Health Law to go into effect, and supersede all other sanitary authorities now existing in the territory of the Metropolitan Police and Sanitary District.

10. Finances of the City of Providence

240

9. California Gold, Quicksilver,etc,for 165 213 20. The Telegraph Wire to India and China 248

11. The United States Debt...

1949. Railway, Canal, and Telegraph Statistics 238 206 19. California Railroads..

216 21. Railways of India...

218 22. Internal Revenue in New York.

12. Immigration..

219 23. The Book Trade.....

2.3

244

245

THE

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE

AND

COMMERCIAL REVIEW.

APRIL, 1866.

HOW TO RESUME SPECIE PAYMENTS.

BY. R. G. HAZARD.

PEAN DALE, R. I., Nov. 25, 1865. MY DEAR SIR-In compliance with your request I have carefully read the letter addressed by Mr. John D. Van Buren to the Secretary of the Treasury. You observed that Mr. Van Buren's reputation and financial experience entitled his views to respectful consideration.

These may also serve to give them weight and popular currency, and I notice that they already have influential advocates.

Many of his positions seem to me untenable, and though there may be no reason to apprehend that they will mislead Mr. McCulloch, still the infusing of wrong notions upon this subject into the public mind may embarrass the efforts he is making for a gradual return to specie payments. The propagation of opinions which induce the hope and the expectation that this result can be reached without first contracting the currency seem to me eminently calculated to produce this effect. The current popular ideas influence the action of Congress, and Mr. McCulloch and his predecessors, though in the end generally obtaining what they desired, have no doubt been sometimes embarrassed by the want of timely legislation. I send you with this some of the results of my examination, and remain Yours, very truly,

R. G. HAZARD.

JOHN J. CISCO, Esq. Under the heading "How to Resume Specie Payments Without Contraction," Mr. Van Buren says: "My proposition is, instead of taking in our irredeemable paper, to leave it all out, but to make it redeemable; to bring up our money to a specie value without lessening its abundance, instead of squeezing it down to the specie standard by making money

scarce."

He subsequently says that legal tender notes rising to a par with gold is the same as gold falling to a par with legal tender, and, as he proposes that legal tender shall continue to be the medium actually used, the latter xpression ("gold falling") is most in harmony with his plan.

The scheme, in its inception, is evidently based on the belief that the quantity of money in circulation may be increased without diminishing the purchasing power of a given amount of it.

Now if $400,000,000 is sufficient to make all our exchanges, and $600,000,000 of paper, or even of gold, is supplied for the purpose, other things remaining the same, there would be $200,000,000 for which there would be no possible use; that amount would be steadily thrown back into the hands of those who owned or issued it; it would remain idle, and the circulation would in fact be only $400,000,000. But the whole $600,000,000 would competitively seek use, and prices would rise; speculative purchases would at first make additional use for money, by increasing the the number of exchanges of the same articles, but eventually the prices must settle at just fifty per cent advance. If this view is correct, and there are various modes in which it may be confirmed, Mr. Van Buren's proposition is self contradictory, and the end proposed impossible in the nature of things.

But, even if this theoretical view is not deemed conclusive, the means by which he proposes to bring the price of gold to that of legal tender are in direct opposition to all experience. His plan is for the government to hoard gold to the amount of $150,000,000, withdrawing that amount from market before using any of it to redeem the paper money to lessen the price he would diminish the supply. It may be suggested that he intends to raise paper to gold I have already remarked that, in Mr. Van Buren's view, it is proper to speak of reducing the price of gold, rather than of advancing that of paper, but, for the moment, let us adopt the latter. To enable the Government to retain the gold, Mr. Van Buren proposes that paper be issued at the market price to pay the gold interest. To bring the prices to an equality then, he really proposes to diminish the supply of the gold, which is already at the higher, and increase the supply of the paper which is at the lower price.

Mr. Van Buren argues that as legal tender would answer for all the purposes of our internal trade, $150,000,000 in gold might be withdrawn without tending to advance its price, or to produce distress or disturbance. But gold with us is now a mere commodity, and a commodity for which, in fact, there is a use and a demand for the whole supply at about 150, payable in legal tender. Lessen the supply, and competition would advance the price to what it would command for the more urgent of these uses. Rich men, whose bones were rattling with the chills, would pay large premium for it to import quinine, and the quantity might be so reduced that the Miss Fiora McFlimseys in extremity for "something to wear," would clutch the balance at any price to pay for Parisian dresses and gew-gaws.

It may be said that a portion of our gold is now employed in worse than useless speculation, as a mere implement for gambling on the stock exchange. But this boarding of $150,000,000 would, no doubt, greatly aggravate the evil, and cause the demand for this purpose to be much increased. Before this amount was obtained, gold would probably seil at 300, and I think even at a much higher rate.

Mr. Van Buren proposes that, when the gold is thus accumulated, the Government should offer to redeem the legal tender at par, and thus make gold and paper equivalent. But he also proposes to reissue the paper re

deemed; non-diminution of the paper is a distinct and prominent object of his scheme.

The accumulated gold must have been withdrawn from that in use,_or from the non-export of the product of our mines, or from import. Enhanced price is the only practicable means by which it would be effected in either of these modes.

Suppose, first, that the gold has been hoarded from that in use. The Government proceeds to pay it out at par, and gets $150,000,000 of paper, which it also re-issues. The whole process then ends where it began; neither the quantity of gold or of paper in circulation is changed, the prices will conform to these same conditions, and gold will be at the same premium as before the hoarding was begun, though not at the higher rates which compelled the abstinence from its use, without, which, the hoarding would not have been possible.

Again, suppose that the hoarded gold came from the non-export of the home product, or from import. Here, too, high prices must have compelled abstinence in the use of those imports which otherwise would, in either case, have been had in place of the gold. The hoarded gold, we may now assume, is so much added to the national wealth by this enforced

economy.

The Government again pays out $150,000,000 of gold thus saved in exchange for the same amount of paper, and re issues the paper. In virtue of the accumulation, the Government might for the moment maintain the proposed equality, and, if it proved to be permanent, it would conclusively demonstrate that the amount of circulation was previously not only in excess, but that it was absolutely $150,000,000 short of the requirements of trade upon a specie basis, for $150,000,000 has now been actually added-paper is at par with gold, and of course the prices of all other commodities conform to it. Property must then generally rise in price, and, if gold falls, it only shows that it was before high because, as com pared with other commodities, it was relatively scarce. By a forced economy in its use, its supply and its price have been brought to an equality with the other commodities, just as if flour were scarce and high in proportion to other breadstuffs, and Government, by hoarding it, should compel abstinence in its use, for consumption or export, till the accumu lated supply would suffice to equalize prices. But it is not for a currency which is too much curtailed, but for one too much expanded, that a remedy is now sought and proffered, and neither the mere hoarding and rediffusion of $150,000,000, or the addition of that amount of gold to the currency, give any promise of salutary results.

By the last process, so long as the paper money is really in excess of the wants of trade, we should not even realize the reward properly due to the abstinence by which the gold was accumulated.

As Mr. Van Buren says, while we are using irredeemable paper a large share of our coin is constantly shipping away to foreign countries.

This is because, being thrown out of use, it becomes relatively cheaper here than in other countries. The same thing would occur with the wheat and iron on hand if, from any cause, we ceased to use those arti cles. This export of gold will occur whenever it becomes relatively cheap here as compared with merchandize.

When we are paying specie, if the paper is inflated, we get more than