Please note: this text may be incomplete. For more information about this OCR, view
About OCR text.
Iviarch 26, 1910
RECORD AND GUIDE
641
ETABUSHED-^ tf^ftRT-H 2l«> 1S6 8.
,DB6TCl)pf^LE^Alt.BmLDlKG%cKlTEeTUKE,KoliSElIOlI)DEeal^TK»f,
BiTsb/ess Alto Themes OF Ge]4er&1 Wtovest.^
PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS
Communications should be addressed tO
C. W. SWEET
Published EVers Saturdap
By THE RECORD AND GUTDE CO.
President, CLINTON W. SWEET ** Treasurer, F. W. DODGE
VlCB-Pres. Sc Genl. Mgr.. H. IV.. DESMOND Secretary. F. T. MILLER
NoH. 11 io 15 Hast 24tli Street, New York Cltr
(Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to 4433.)
"Entered at ihc Post Off
'ee at
New
York
, N. y..
as
second-class matter."
Copyrighted,
1010
by
The
Recorii
Sc
Guide
Co
Vol.
LXXXV.
MARCH
26,
1910.
No,
2193
THE recent conference held at the City Hal] between the
Tenement House Commissioner land the representa¬
tives of the several organizations interested in tenement
houses and their sufficient sanitation brought out clearly one
consideration of dominant importance. The tenement house
problem in the City of Kew York is really dependent upon
conditions which are not beiug reached by any existing
sanitary legislation; and, what is still more serious, it is
difficult to see in what way any practicable method of us¬
ing the police powers of the State will avail to improve the
domestic surroundings of the great majority of tenement-
house, inhabitants. There can be no doubt that up to the
present time the Tenement-House Law in its administrative
aspect has been a failure. The 123,000 violations are a
plain and irrefutable proof of the truth of this statement.
The Record and Guide will not go so far as to say that
this failure was inevitable, and that the law is unenforc-
ible; but its enforcement will constitute a very costly and
extremely difficult work. That it has been unenforcible
hitherto has, doubtless, been in part the fault of the prop-
.erty-owners; yet it has also been in part the fault of the
framers of the law, in that they failed to allow sufflciently
for the difflculties of its admiJiistratiou. But, however, the
blame is to he apportioned. The fact that it has proved to
be unenforcible in respect to the alterations prescribed in
old-law tenements is merely symptomatic of the stubborn
economic conditions which underly the New York tenement
house problem. It is also symptomatic of the far more
serious fact that the Tenement-House Law has failed in its
salient purpose of improving the domestic surroundings of
the poorer people. And it has failed iu this salient pur¬
pose because it cotild not have any effect upon the econom¬
ic conditions which determine the congestion of popula¬
tion. Everybody admits that congestion ik increasing in
Manhattan and is spreading to Brooklyn aud the Bronx.
That many of the inhabitants of the poorer districts live in
houses built under the new law and provided with an ap¬
parent sufficiency of light and air is surely a good thing,
hut the excellence of the result is attenuated by the circum¬
stance that these presumably well aired rooms are inhab¬
ited by a steadily increasing numher of people. The number
of lodgers is constantly increasing, because rents and the
cost of living are increasing. The TENEMENT-HOUSE
LAW, SO FAR FROM DOING ANYTHING TO DIMINISH
THIS OVERCROWDING. HAS PROBABLY DONE SOME¬
THING TO INCREASE IT, because it has increased the cost
of tenement-house construction; and it will be as power¬
less in this respect hereafter as it has been heretofore.
THE Record and Guide is wel! aware of course that the
Tenement Law is supposed to forbid the crowding of
lodgers into the rooms of a tenement house, but it is also
aware that the Sunday closing law for saloons would be
easy of enforcement compared to such a prohibition. Even
the tenement house reformers do not press at present the
policy of seeking by inspection to prevent the congestion;
and it i's safe to say that no matter who is made respon¬
sible for prohibiting the over-crowding, the prohibition will
be ineffective. It the property-owner is made responsible
we shall have a repetition in a far more acute form of the
organized illegality of the structural violations. No proper-
,.ty-owner could be sure that over-crowding did not exist in
a building he owned without living in the building him¬
self and inspecting the several tenements every night. Any
delegation of the duty would be evaded and would be made
the excuse for petty graft. And what the property-owner
could not accomplish could not conceivably be accomplished
by any practicable amount or kind of direct mnnicipal in¬
spection. People take in lodgers, not because they want to
do so, but because it is the only way of reducing the in¬
tolerable burdens imposed upon the poor by the increas¬
ing (Jost of every necessity of life. No legislation along
the lines of the existing tenement-house law can do any¬
thing effectual to diminish this grave evil of congestion—-
an evil which is bound to increase rather than diminish. So
far as Manhattan is concerned, the construction of tenement
houses intended for the occupation of the poor has ceaser"
The only type of tenement now being erected in the cen¬
tral borough in any considerable numbers is an elevator
building, intended for comparatively well-to-do people.
How, then, is the normal increase in the poorer population
.of Manhattan finding habitations? For the most part, they
are migrating slowly to other boroughs, and carrying with
them their habits of congested living; hut the necessity of
residing near their work prevents many from so doing.
Hence the overcrowding, and there is no way in which it
can be diminished save hy attacking the economic conditions
which make it inevitable.
IT is by no means obvious in what way the problem can
be effectively attacked, even on the side of its economic
conditions. Undoubtedly improved methods of rapid transit
will do something to alleviate the congestion, but the diffi¬
culty is that improved means of communication are not of
much use to that part of the population, who are most in need
of help. It is the really poor among whom congestion is
most rife( and the really poor are not free to make use of
new subways. They are forced to live where they do live,
chiefly hy the necessity of remaining near to their places
of work, and while new centers of work will be developed
in the other boroughs and assist in the distribution of popu¬
lation, an enormous numher of people will necessarily de¬
pend upon the work-rooms of Manhattan. If this popula¬
tion is to be distributed it must be by artificial means, and
a commission should be appointed to consider what artificial
means, if any, will he likely to be effective. Would it be
of any help, for instance,- to run workingmen's trains at
reduced rates over all the new subway routes? If so, what
practicable measures could he taken to secure the operation
of these trains. The value of any such measure as a means
of inducing poor families to live on cheaper land would de¬
pend upon the habits of these people, and their economic
situation; and the facts as to these matters could be obtained
only after full and careful investigation. Inquiry should he
made also into the question as to how far any future
amelioration could be obtained by the diversion of husiness,
now carried on in Manhattan, to the other boroughs. Pos¬
sible remedial measures even along the foregoing lines do
not, it must he admitted, look very promising. They would
take many years to accomplish. They could at best be only
partial in their effects. They would in one way or another
be very costly, and while they were being accomplished con¬
gestion would increase, and with it an ever larger number
of people would become habituated to unwholesome and
depraved habits of living. But if any better means of at¬
tacking the problem exist, they have not yet been suggested,
and in any event the situation will be cleared up as soon as
it is realized that the cost of congestion cannot he
fastened upon the property owners alone. It is a collective
responsibility, due to conditions which individuals cannot
change, and redeemable only at a huge cost by the whole
city.
THE protest made by Mr. Allan Robinson, of the Allied
Real Estate Interests, against the immediate abolition
of the persona! property tax seems to the Record and Guide
to be well-founded. Mr. Robinson points out that next Fall
the tax rate is likely to increase as much as thirteen points,
which would bring it up to the high figure of 1.80. If in
addition to this increase, the city surrendered the $G,000,-
000 in income now derived from the personal property tax,
a further increase of six points would be the inevitable
result. In one year, consequently, the tax rate would be
enlarged by no less than 19. points. This would mean that
the tax bills of every real property owner in New York, would
be increased by something over one-ninth, aud that this
staggering- increase would have succeeded others of the
same kind. It would mean that within four years the taxes