April 22, 1911.





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CopjtiHhtcd.   1911,   by   Tho   Record   Se   Guide   Co.





Vol.   LXXXVI.





APRIL  22,   1911,





No.   2249





THE LIGHT MANUFACTURING  INDUSTRY.

SINCE the "Triangle" holocaust in Vv^ashiiigton Place
much public cousideratiou has been given to the sub¬
ject of crowded factories in high city buildings and to the
best means of protecting the operatives from fire and panic.
In consequence, there has come a new and better realization
of the magnitude of the light manufacturing industry in
Manhattan and its remarkable expansion iu recent years.
New Yorlt has ever been the flrst manufacturing, as well as
the first commercial city of the country, but its manufactur¬
ing supremacy is now based, not on its heavy manufacturing,
but on its light manufacturing. The shipyards, ironworks,
planing-mills, machine-shops, carpet-mills, carriage factories,
etc., have nearly all moveti off the island to Newarit Bay,
the Jersey shore of the Hudson, to Long Island, and to more
distant places—driven out by one cause or another. Some
say personal property taxation has been the principal cause,
because New York taxes the personal property of manufac¬
turing corporations, and New Jersey does not, Blit there
are also otlier causes. Competition in labor is one strong
reason why, and good transportation is another. By merely
having offices and salesrooms in Manhattan aud their shops
at the end of a telephone wire somewhere outside on tide¬
water, or within a night's run by rail, large manufacturers
have found that they make out very well. In place of the
heavy manufacturing there has sprung up a myriad of little
concerns of small invested capital and occupying on the
average comparatively small space, but in the aggregate em¬
ploying hundreds of thousands of operatives and producing
annually Iiundreds of millions of dollars' worth of goods,
whicli for the most part consist of women's apparel, includ¬
ing millinery, furs and wraps. The expansion in this line
of business has been so enormous that only real estate ex¬
perts who have studied it have comprehended the dynamic
force behind the demand for the construction of more loft
buildings in that part of the city where the allied industries
mostly reside. All have thrived wonderfully in the last ten
years, notwithstanding the depression in some other lines
of business, because they have not merely New York City,
but the whole country for a market, and because the average
woman, like the average man, has come to depend upon
ready-to-wear rather than custom-made clothing.





FACTORY REGULATION.

THE Triangle Waist factory was typical of a large class,
in that it occupied premises not originally planned or
suited for a crowded manufactory. The Coroner's jury,
which this week finished its investigations into the fire which
consumed the contents of that factory and caused the death
of 140 lives, came to the conclusion, as the public at large
has also, that there should be a law particularly governing
that class uf buildings, and requiring that no building should
be used for any other purpose than the one for which it was
designed, unless altered into conformity with the law. In
view of a number of extreme demands that were being made
in representative tiuarters, the recommendations which the
jury has made seem reasonable. Some investigators, for
example, have advised a limitation in the height of factory
buildings, and others have advocated restrictions whiph
would result In relegating manufacturing to the suburbs.
Fortunately, the Coroner's jury was composed of men quali¬
fied by education and experience to comprehend the mo¬
mentous  questions   involved.     Drive  all   the   manufacturing





establishments out of New York and who will pay the
present schedule of rents for business and residential prop¬
erty? "Abolish the personal property tax, and the Borough
of Queens, the ideal factory sitage on Jamaica Bay and the
whole west end of Long Island will be covered with heavy
manufacturing plants in nearly the time it would take to
build thenf," is the answer of tax reformers. But what sort
of a place would Manhattan Island be without any manu¬
facturing? Who would fill the great loft buildings which the
light manufacturing industries have erected, and what other
business force is there to keep up the momentum in building
construction and rea! estate speculation? Much is implied
in the conclusions which the Coroner's jury reached that has
a bearing on economic conditions in New York City, The
terrible fire would have justified for the time being almost
any of the radical measures that have been proposed, even
to turning the Building Bureaus back into the control of
the Fire Department, and limiting the height of all build¬
ings hereafter to be constructed. Instead, the jury has sim¬
ply recommended those precautions which are most obviously
necessary and  reasonable at the present time.





'     THE B. R. rs OFFER ANALYZED.

THE negotiations over the contracts for the new sub¬
ways are rapidly approaching a crisis. In all proba¬
bility a decision will be reached in one way or another by
the end of next week, and that is the really important mat¬
ter. Better any decision than a continuation of the delay,
which has proved to be so inconvenient and so costly to the
citizens of New York. At the present writing it looks as
if the decision would be unfavorable to the Interhorougb
Rapid Transit Company, and if such is the case there will
be no difficulty in placing the responsibility for the miscar¬
riage of the negotiations. The management of that com¬
pany has, as usual, blundered and has suddenly called into
existence an actual competitor where only a possible com¬
petitor existed before. When the Brooklyn Rapid Transit
Company made its proposal for a Broadway-Seventh-Avenue-
59th-Street loop, connecting the bridges, the Interborough
Company at once announced that it would withdraw its ex¬
isting offer in case any such franchise were granted. A
more effective method of creating, instead of killing, a com¬
petitor cannot well be imagined. The Brooklyn Rapid
Transit Company, as the representative of the great and
growing population of the Borough of Brooklyn, was en¬
titled to the proposed loop in Manhattan. Such a loop would
have been of enormous convenience to the residents of
Brooklyn, and it would have been of the utmost beneflt to
the business interests of the central district of Manhattan.
Submission to the demand that the Brooklyn company should
be excluded from Broadway would have been a plain sacri-
flce of the city's interest to that of the Interborough Com¬
pany, and it would have been unjust to the Brooklyn Rapid
Transit. Inevitably that corporation resolved to strike back.
The invasion of Mauhattan, first proposed by its manage¬
ment, would not have hurt the Interborough's monopoly
much more than the McAdoo system hurts it. But an ulti¬
matum that the Brooklyn company could obtain not even
such a limited entrance into Mauhattan forced its directors
to consider a far more aggressive invasion. Being pushecl
to the wall, they made an offer for the whole Triborough
system, and it is evident that the Interborough Company wili
have to accept the terms proposed by the Board of Estimate
substantially without modification or else submit to the
construction of a really strong independent system.





THE situation produced by the offer of the Brooklyn Rapid
Transit Company contains so many novel aspects that it
profoundly modifies the grounds for a decision for or against
the Interborough, In case an independent subway system
is to be constructed and operated, the Brooklyn Rapid
Transit Company is the best tenant which the city could
obtain; but it would not constitute a good tenant, because it
would make an effectual competitor of the Interborough,
No competition in the operation of subways will ever he
effective. The peculiar benefit to be derived from the Brook¬
lyn Rapid Transit Company's offer lies in the direction uot
of more effective competition, hut more effective co-opera-
lion. The Triborough route, instead of being operated in¬
dependently, will be tied to a larger system, whose ramifi¬
cations cover the major part of Brooklyn aud Queens, aud
as a consequence of this alliance, freedom of movement be¬
tween Brooklyn and certain parts of Manhattan will be very
much promoted. It is this fact which makes the offer of the
Brooklyn   Rapid  Transit  Co.   so   much   more   tempting  than