NATURE AT HER LOVELIEST — THE PARK LAKE.
ELECTRICITY’S MANIFOLD USES.
In the same article occurs a concise statement of the varied uses to which the incoming low-priced power will be applied in Buffalo. It is as follows:
“Near to Niagara, only twenty-two miles distant, is Buffalo, already a large and prosperous city, the head centre of lake navigation. The simple extension of conductors over the short distance above mentioned will bring to the people of Buffalo direct share in the economic and other advantages of the new and great enterprise. Light, heat and motive power for streets, vehicles, works, shops, factories, stores, churches, dwellings, can be supplied from the dynamos at Niagara more economically, probably, than by any other means. Local steam engines may be dismissed; their occupation, for Buffalo, will be gone. Even the steam fire engines may retire. The electric pump will beat them out of sight.”
PLENTY OF BANKING CAPITAL.
Buffalo is blessed with splendid banking facilities. There are now nineteen banks of deposit in the city with a total capital of nearly five million dollars and a reserve of nearly eleven millions. Five new banks have been started here since the spring of 1891. Our bankers are cautious, conservative business men, and banking business in this city has always been conducted on conservative lines. The solid financiers who control these great barometers of our business life have never invited disaster by loose, speculative methods. Like the arch in the foundation wall of a massive structure, gaining strength from increased weight, has been the prudence of our bankers, and to-day our banking institutions rest upon secure foundation and are ready for the branching out and growth that will come to them with the rapid increase in industrial enterprises resulting from the world’s cheapest power. Prudence has been the watchword of success in the past, and it will continue as the governor in the greater transactions of the greater future.
OUR LOW TAX RATE.
Some facts about Buffalo’s tax rate are fitting at this time. In a carefully written article from the pen of the Hon. Charles F. Bishop, Mayor of Buffalo, and printed in the Sunday Express of April 3, 1892, the following facts are given:
“Property in Buffalo is assessed at much less than its real value, and its tax rate has for many years, for all purposes (State, County and City) except local improvements, averaged about two dollars per hundred on the assessment. At first thought this may seem high, but a careful examination of the reports of other cities shows that the rate elsewhere is generally much higher. In New York it is $1.95; in Chicago $5.00; in Brooklyn $2.57; in Cleveland it is $2.79; in Cincinnati $2.85. And this reasonable rate of taxation is not obtained by rapid increase of our bonded indebtedness except for acquiring valuable property for permanent use, or the extension of great public improvements.
“Indeed, so careful has the increase of indebtedness been guarded that now with an indebtedness of $11,464,531 the city is the owner of real estate valued, in 1890, at $7,804,267 and personal property valued at $6,828,765. Surely this statement shows a due regard for the tax-payers’ interests; and coupled with the fact that Buffalo maintains school facilities as good as those of any city, police and fire departments that for efficiency are unsurpassed, and furnishes a water supply that for purity and cheapness is unequaled, it presents a very well-grounded claim for municipal economy.