Life in New York.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 908, 26 July 1889, Page 8

Life in New York.

HARD TO LIVE. The -Comptroller of New York has announced that hereafter he will not pay any part of a clerk's salary to the loan brokers who have so long fattened on this kind of usury. The pressure to which salaried men are subject makes them incessant borrowers, ami after they have ruu in debt elsewhere as much as possible they apply to the salary broker, a "class which has reached importance, if not respectability. Some of this number limit loans to SSOO, $lO a month, and find their customers in retail clerks. Others hang round the Post Office and City Hall and deal out larger sums, but the best pickings are found at the Custom House, where mo;i of the officials live a month ahead and pay large fees for cash advances. The salary broker under such favourable circumstances can clear $2,000 a year, and live in an easy manner on the shaves inflicted on others. When a clerk’s salary is mortgaged a month ahead he is so afraid that hia employers will discover it that he pays in selfdefence. Secrecy, indeed, is of the highest importance, and hence all such transactions are advertised as * confidential.’ This fact has led the Comptroller to oppose the ruinous system. He will pay no more salary orders to brokers, and if any*order is presented it will not be paid until an explanation be given why personal application is not made. It is one of the complaints among salaried men that they cannot live on their incomes. No wonder, for New York salaries are very low compared with expenses. Clerks in retail stores get from $5 to sls a week, and the latter is paid only to the best salesmen. Bookkeepers receive from SSOO to SI,OOO, though a few favoured men in fat places get $2,000 a year. Situations in the Post Offioe at SSOO a year are in great demand, and clerkships in public offices at $1,500 are among the best things within an office-seeker’s ambition. Now when you consider that a set of apartments costs S2O a month, aud that a flat three stories high rents from S3O to $lO a month, it is not surprising that salaried men should be almost always in debt. There, has been for several years a reduction of salaries of all kinds, owing to severe competition in trade. Among the poorest paid classes is the gatemen at the elevated road, who only get $2 25 a day, and yet mi'sy of them are married. There is a great pressure, however, to geteven such petty berths, and New York, indeed, contains such an immense number of people in search of work, and the very smallest salaries are acceptable.—N. Y. Corr. Troy Times.