ECORD





AND   BUILDERS'   GUIDE.





VoL..X.                     NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1872.                        No. 248.





Published Weekly bv:.

THE EEAL ESTATE RECORD ASSOCIATION.

TERMS.

One year, in advance......................S6 00

All communication's should be addressed to

•7 AND 9 WARBEN STKEKT.





No receipt for money due the REAL EST-WE RECORD
will he acknowledged unless signed by, one of our regular
coUector-s. HENRY D. SjiiTir or Thomas P. Cummings.
All bills for collection will be sent from the office on a regu¬
larly printed form.





THE INSURANCE ROW.

The Life Insurance Companies are doing the
public a real service in so washing their dirty-
linen as to disgust the community -with the
•ivhole business. So far the Mutual has the best
of the fight. The documents it has put forth
clearly prove that insurauce has heretofore
been too costly. The insured as a class pay an
enormous premium for -what in the long run
proves a most costly and insecure investment.
Parasites swarm because of the -waste of the
systeni. But the allied companies also make a
good point when they sa^^ that the"^ real test of
the strength of the respective organizations
-tfill come a decade ahead; that all is smooth
sailing at first -when premiums on young lives
are paid in, but that the real tug -will come when
the lives expire. Any business is unsafe -where
the profits are immediate and the losses pro¬
spective, and this is the notable characteristic
of Life Insurance. Hence it is that 77 per
cent, of the English companies have failed, and
there is nothing surer in the future than that
three-fourths of the present American com¬
panies -will also come to an untimely end -with¬
in the coming ten or at most fifteen years.

The dispute between the Mutual and the al¬
lied companies -will result in some notable
changes. It -will bankrupt a number of small,
fraudulent concerns, and will so far be a public
benefit. This will eventually add largely to the
business of big insurance companies, and that
-will be a public misfortune, for the bankruptcy
of neariy all of them is a mere question of time,
and the longer they last the more the commu¬
nity wiU lose in the end.

As is well known, one great soiu'ce of profit in
insurance companies is the forfeiture of poli¬
cies by the non-payment of yearly dues. A
controversy like that going on at present
alarms timid, people, and they decline to con¬
tinue the tax. Of course, the companies pocket
every cent the insured have given them. It is
safe to say that $75,000,000 of liabilities wiU
have been swept away by the time the present
newspaper war has ended. This temporary
discredit does no permanent harm to the com¬
panies, for every year furnishes its new crop of
fools.    It is.computed that in this country in¬





surance on lives averages only four years. This
includes deaths and forfeitures. It is not im¬
probable that the present row was kicked up to
lessen the liabilities of the large companies as
weU as to discredit the smaller ones; at any rate
these effects -will follow.

The siniple fact is that the whole life in¬
surance business is gambling in its meanest and
most treacherous form. For a certain cash
annual pa3mient these companies bet you one
often thousand doUars, as the case may be, that
you won't die within a certain number of years.
After getting your money they lay traps to
make you forfeit your policy, and if you die
every irregularity is magnified so as, if pos¬
sible, to cheat your -widow and orphans. The
faro table and sweat-boards give you twenty
chances for your money, where life insurance
gives you one.

It is a rascally business, in whatever light it is
regarded, and nothing so nauch shows the
demoralization of the press as the countenance
they give to it.





HEALTH AND ARCHITECTURE.

In a lecture recently delivered in London,
and largely commented upon by the London
Times, Mr. R. Rawlin^on gave his -views respect¬
ing the present condition of architecture as
applied to health in England, and drew a most
lamentable picture of the extent to which
architecture—-with all the advantages of mod¬
em scientific discoveries—has failed, up to the
present time, in making its influence generally
felt in house-building and house management,
not only in the dweUings of the poor but among
those of the wealthy, and even in such, funda¬
mental conditions as those of having a good
and healthy foundation and the means of secur¬
ing proper ventilation and warmth. Some of
Mr. Rawlinson's observations are perfectly
startling. He says that fine houses are spring¬
ing up every day in the most fashionable por¬
tions of the West End of London for which
fabulous prices Jlre paid. The purchasers are
doubtless duly assured that all the subsidiary
arrangements are in accordance -with the best
modern practice; the occupier pays his sewer
rates in secure confidence that he is deriving aU
the benefit desig-ned by the grand scheme of
metropolit.an drainage, and yet aU the while his
drains are not in connection with the sewer.
How much danger may result from this one
cause of malformation alone was prominently
sho-wn not very long ago, on the occasion of a
visit to the seat of some nobleman in the north
of England, where, owing to an imperfect
drain, a number • of distinguished personages
came very near losing their lives, foremost
among them the Prince of Wales. The same
neglect observable in the case of drainage
Mr. Rawlinson traces also into.matters affect¬





ing warmth and ventUation ; and if he is thus '
able to paint even the houses of the rich, in
ten times gloomier colors does he depict the
dwellings of the poor.

There can be no doubt whatever that in the
matter of dwelling-houses, of aU classes,
whether affecting comfort or salubrity, we
hold a great superiority over England, inferior
though we are in aU the higher ranges of archi¬
tecture, as seen in the construction of public
buildings. The luxuries condensed in the
mansion of one of our miUionnaires in New
York, the contrivances to which we have
become universaUy accustomed for sa-\nng
labor, are many of them to this day unkno-wn
or unapplied in the residences of the wealthiest
in London. A short time ago an American gen¬
tleman was passing by some enormous houses
of very costly construction in course of erection
on the Duke of Portland's estate, near the
Apsley House entrance of Hyde Park, and,
happening to notice the prodigious height of
these dwellings, asked an intelligent and gayly-
decorated footman who was passing if they
were pro-vided wifch elevators to reach the top
stories. He smiled incredidously, and asked
who ever thought of going up and down the
highest buUding by auy other means than a
stair-case? Meeting an American gentleman
of wealth, who had been examining some of
these private palaces in course of construction,
he laughingly told the -writer that the agent of
one of them, in expatiating upon the manifold
exceUencies of the buUding, drew his attention
to a very ingenious novelty he had just intro¬
duced, by which people at the top could im¬
mediately communicate -with those in the
bottom of the buUd.ing. It was an ordinary
speaking-tube inserted in the waUs.

But whUe we know how to buUd, and while
we do buUd houses of matchless convenience
for the wealthier classes, we need no Mr. Raw¬
linson to point out to us the infamous and
neglectful manner in which our tenement
houses are constructed ; those infamous dens
of discomfort and disease in which human
beings are herded together like beasts, vrith no
other purpose than to grasp the greatest num¬
ber of doUars out of the greatest number of
people crowded under one roof, and where no
attempt whatever is made to secure scientific
or effective ventUation. Then again, in what
does his frightful picture of the squalid
"dwellings of. the East London Poor" differ
from what can be drawn of those -wretched
haunts in the lowest portions of our city, near
the river sides especially, where thousands live
literally the lives of rats: Houses buUt upon
what is caUed made-ground, or ground com¬
posed of refuse and debris of aU descriptions,
perpetuaUy fiUing the dweUings with poisonous
gases ; other houses, perhaps a little better off,