fects of an arrangement which combines the two?

The City and Suburban Homes Company insists on life insurance as a cardinal feature of its operations. In the first place, no man ought to undertake the purchase of a home or an obligation to pay a large amount of money without assuring his family in the event of his death in the interim. This principle has particular force in the case before us, because the purchaser has so little real capital and must depend upon his monthly earnings to carry out the bargain. Now, if he dies the family is placed in a very unfortunate position. Probably it will not be able to complete the transaction. Therefore, for the sake of the family, as well as for the company's protection, it is wise to insist on a life insurance policy taken out at the time when the original contract is entered into, and covering the purchase price.

As soon as one hundred houses are ordered, a contract is made for their erection. In this way important economies are effected. The company in buying a large tract of land and building at wholesale saves very considerable sums. After a fair allowance for expenses of management the entire saving reverts to the purchaser. The company's profit consists in six per cent. interest on deferred payments. Five per cent. of this is distributed to stockholders and one per cent. is carried over to surplus. Residence in a desirable neighborhood, durable construction and the offer of such favorable terms combine to make the scheme exceedingly popular. There is an immense constituency in Greater New York who are desirous of acquiring homes on a fair basis. The rare opportunities offered by the City and Suburban Homes Company, when once known, will attract large sums of capital to be invested through it for this purpose. Still, its aim will not be to secure a monopoly of business, but to fix a standard.

The company is perfectly secure. It builds upon order and has its clients' lives insured before the order is exe

cuted. If one of them should die even before the house was completed, the face value of the policy would pay for the house, and the family would be provided for. All policies are assigned to the City and Suburban Homes Company, and in case of death later the sum owed would be deducted and the balance handed over to the estate.

The contract between the company and its clients stipulates a monthly payment during ten, fifteen or twenty years, at the choice of the purchaser. This sum includes an instalment on account of principal, six per cent. interest on deferred payments, and the life insurance premium. Taxes and repairs are paid by the purchaser. Clients are advised to obligate themselves for a twenty-year period rather than ten or fifteen, because in so doing they are the better able to provide against contingencies arising from non-employment, sickness or other unexpected events. That is, a man need not mortgage his income beyond a safe point. The company gives him the privilege of paying sooner if he wishes. Either the whole or a part of his indebtedness is receivable at any time, and his interest account properly adjusted. This plan permits a man to provide for “lean" years. There is also the encouragement to save, and thus get the home more quickly. Both are important considerations, because habits of thrift thus engendered are likely to become fixed. Payments made in advance are a most effective guarantee against dispossession. The life insurance policy has also a loan value in any year after the third. Purchasers of suburban homes under this scheme are in every respect most favorably placed as regards crises, sickness and other ordinary economic misfortune.

From "Homewood, a Model Suburban Settlement." By Dr. E. R. L. Gould.

From The Arena. THE ORIGIN OF WALL STREET. The twenty-seven respectable citizens of New York who, in 1792, met under a

buttonwood tree in front of the premises now known as Number 60 Wall Street, and formed an association for the purchase and sale of public stocks at a fixed and unvarying commission, with a proviso of mutual help and preference, committed themselves to an enterprise of whose moment and influence in the future they could have formed no adequate conception. At that date Wall Street was a banking district, small indeed when compared with its present condition, but important in its relations to the commerce of the nation. This transaction of the twenty-seven-among whom we find the honored names of Barclay, Bleecker, Winthrop, Lawrence, which in themselves and their descendants were, and are, creditably identified with the growth of the community-added the prestige and power of the stock exchange to those of the banks, and fixed for an indefinitely long period the destinies of the financial centre of the Union.

During the earlier part of this century the banking interests of Wall Street quite overshadowed those of the stock market. The growth of railway securities was not fairly under way until the opening of the fifth decade. Elderly men can recall the date when the New York Central existed only as a series of connecting links between Buffalo and Albany, under half-a-dozen different names of incorporation; and passenger cars were slowly and laboriously hoisted by chain power over the "divide" between the latter city and Schenectady. Since there were but few railways in the entire country, there were few opportunities for speculative dealings in their shares. These shares, too, were as a rule locally held, and were more frequently transferred by executors under court orders than by brokers on the stock exchange.

Prior to 1840 and 1845, however, the members of the stock exchange were not idle. Public stocks were largely dealt in. The United States government frequently issued bonds, and the prices of these bonds fluctuated suffi

ciently to afford tempting chances of profits. State bonds also were sold in Wall Street in larger amounts than today. About the year 1850 the sales of Missouri sixes and Ohio sixes frequently amounted to millions of dollars daily. During that uncertain epoch of finance when the United States Bank was both a financial and a political power, the shares of that institution were a favorite subject of speculative dealing. The shares of Delaware & Hudson, and of the original Erie Railway, the latter laboriously constructed over a rough, barren, and thinly settled portion of the State, partly by State funds, had also become actively exchangeable in the market.

During this period a relatively enormous quantity of banking capital had located itself in and near Wall Street. The Bank of New York existed before 1800, and later, although not long after, the Street witnessed the erection of buildings of a now obsolete, and yet at that time an attractive, style of archi· tecture, devoted to the uses of the Manhattan Banking Company, the Bank of America, the Merchants, the Union, the Bank of Commerce, and others. Were it not that land in the banking district is so valuable, and that the need of upstair offices is so great, one might be tempted to regret the demolition of the graceful money temples occupied by three of these corporations on the north side of Wall Street. In each of them the entablature rested upon two fluted stone pillars with Doric capitals, in addition to the supports of the side walls. Between the steps and the doors of the temple extended a marble-paved court which often served as a convenient place of 'change for borrowers and lenders. Entering the doors you found yourself in a large, airy, dome-lighted room, the sides of which were occupied by the clerks of the institution, guarded by high barricades from the intrusive eyes and feet of the general public. At the rear were the offices of the president and cashier. Throughout the entire building there reigned a solemn and semi-religious silence. One may witness something like this to-day in the

one-third of all suicides may be attributed to insanity.

Many people, however, anxious to stamp the act with reprobation, declare that every suicide is insane. This is wrong. While those who bring about their self-destruction may have acted wrongly or unwisely, we have not the right to declare them all insane. It is true that many persons brood over their troubles until everything loses proportion, their minds become unbalanced, and in such a state they kill themselves. In such cases the act may be correctly attributed to insanity. But what are we to say of those who are to all appearance rational and yet are the victims of sudden or growing impulses? Such people are not voluntary agents, and yet they cannot be called insane. They are abnormal. There is a fatal defect in their organization which is incompatible with their survival under natural conditions. This defect may give rise to sudden impulses or may cause a growing gradual propensity which terminate in the final tragedy. Instantaneous impulses are often brought about by the slightest circumstances. Thus, gazing steadily at the wheels of an approaching train or looking down from some great height may produce a delirium, a distention of the blood-vessels of the brain, that instantly paralyzes the will of the victim.

In the consideration of those propensities which are of gradual growth we are confronted with an extremely difficult problem. We know that a great many of those who ultimately destroy themselves fight for years against the impulse. How are we to account in such cases for the persistence of the tendency toward suicide, which seems to be a part of their nature, a part which draws them instinctively to death just as the normal creature is drawn to a desire to live? For such cases heredity may be in a great measure responsible. It is clear that hereditary influences may reveal their force in the suicidal impulses as in many other of the problems of life.

Whole families have been known to kill themselves. There are a great many human beings who by nature are predisposed to self-destruction, and . only wait through life for a calamity sufficiently great to prompt them to the act. They are victims of their own faulty organizations.

Individual temperament may have a great deal to do with the question of suicide. In America the population is largely composed of the various European races, and although these are living under the same conditions, each nationality retains its own peculiar rate of suicide. Drink and crime are responsible for a large proportion of the daily self-murders. Drunkenness, the most active agent of degeneration known, is directly responsible for those which occur during a period of nervous depression following a debauch. Among the criminal classes suicide is quite common, but it is among the petty and not the grave offenders that it occurs. Poverty and disease are also strong incentives to self-destruction. Suicide is often regulated by the price of bread. Life has few pleasures for the homeless and friendless. Death to them is often a welcome friend, a happy relief from walking the streets hungry.

How many suicides are directly attributable to disease cannot be stated with exactness, but it may be said, nevertheless, that at the present time, with our advanced skill in surgery and medicine, suicide from disease is undoubtedly on the decrease. Of all suicides there are none to be pitied more than those who kill themselves to escape the racking pain of an incurable illness. For the victim of this sort there is no hope. Another class of suicides, which closely resemble those caused by disease, includes those due to infirmity. Often persons smitten with blindness, or who have met with some terrible accident, in a fit of discouragement kill themselves.

From "Suicide and the Environment." By Robert N. Reeves.