REAL   ESTATE







BUILDERS





AND







NEW YORK, DECEMBER '13, 1913





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i-llfl'il(!'^''.i'





SERIOUS   DEFECTS   IN   NEW   FIRE   LAWS





Factory Workers Deprived of Needed Protection — Many Owners of
Factory Buildings Subjected to Arbitrary and Expensive Requirements.





By ALEXANDER C. MAC NULTY, Assistant Corporation Counsel





[Since th'S article was ivrittcn the draft o*
a bill itiliiided lo cure some of thc defects
in the firelatvs, and restore to the Neiv
York City Fire Dcfartment most of the
poxvers, of zchich it has been deprived b\<
the new Slate Factory laivs, has been for¬
warded lo Governor Glynn with_ a letter of
commendation signed by the Slate_ Labor
Commissioner, thc Deputy Fire Commis¬
sioner Mr. Olvaney, and .4bram I. Elkus.
chief counsel to the Factory Investigatinii
Commission. This legislation has been
asked for upon Ihe advice of .Assistant Cor¬
poration Counsel MacNulty, who, in Ihis
article, c.rplains Ihe injury Ihat was done
by Ihe hurried legislation  of last Spring.]

THE recent explosion, fire and fatal¬
ities in a Canal street factory build¬
ing constituted the first of a series of
disasters that, with good reason, may
be expected to result from the division
of responsibility and general chaos
worked by the fire laws enacted this
year.

The measures referred to went into ef¬
fect October 1, and since then the Fire
Department has been powerless to re¬
quire the remedying of unsafe conditions
in factory buildings, except insofar as
such conditions may be minimized by
fire-alarm systems and auxiliary extin¬
guishing appliances. .A.11 jurisdiction of
fire-escapes and other means of egress
from factories, and all authority to make
orders for the safeguarding of factory
employees against conditions likely to
cause fires and fire-panics, were taken
from the Fire Commissioner by amend¬
ments to Section 775 of the Greater New
York Charter, made by Chapter 695 of
the Laws of 1913.

The Hoey  Law Efficient.

The local fire-prevention system,
created and organized under the Hoey
Law, has operated efficiently. More¬
over, it has not imposed arbitrary
and unreasonable expense upon the own¬
ers and lessees of tenant-factories. In¬
deed, under the Hoey law, a fire-preven¬
tion order must be reasonable to be en-
forcible by judicial action, civil or crim¬
inal. Requirements of the Fire Commis¬
sioner, when arbitrary and oppressive,
may be opposed in and vacated by the
courts. For this reason, in issuing fire
prevention orders, under the authority
of that statute full consideration has usu¬
ally been given to the nature and degree
of the fire hazards of the particular
buildings affected by such orders. Where
factory buildings contain little or no
combustible material, the requirements
have been few and inexpensive to ineet.
On the other hand, in buildings jammed
with inflammable materials and crowded
with toiling humanity, the requirements
have often been numerous, and some¬
times burdensome.

In brief, under the Hoey law it has
been impossible to mulct property own¬
ers and business proprietors for unnec¬
essary    and     unreasonable     safeguards







.A.LEX.A.NDER   C.    MAC   NULTY.

Mr. MacNulty is Ihe City's tire-law e.v-
pcrt. He drafted the Hoey Fire Preven¬
tion Law, and has had charge of all crimi¬
nal prosecutions and civil proceedings
ilicrcnndcr. in behalf of the Corporation
Counsel. Mr. MacNulty has made a special
study of firc-prcvention measures and of
means for the elimination of fire-perils, and
is being mentioned in connection with the
Fire Cominissionership.

against fire perils, whereas it has been
possible to require that dangerous fire-
traps should be made safe at hatever
cost. Lender the circumstances it would
seem that a radical departure from the
fire-prevention system, authorized and
developed under the Hoey law, should
not have been made without the most
careful consideration and balancing of
all the conditions involved.

Unintentional  Interference.

It is common experience that modern
legislation is more apt to be destructive
than constructive. The fire laws en¬
acted this year seem to be typical of this
tendency. It appears now that it was
not the intention of the Factory Com¬
mission to deprive the Fire Commission¬
er of the power to remedy all dangerous
conditions in factory buildings, nor was
it intended to rescind his authority to re¬
quire fire drills in buildings not used for
factory purposes.

The admission that these concedcdiy
unwise encroachments upon tlie Fire
Commissioner's jurisdiction were inad¬
vertent, and chargeable to lack of care in
drafting the statute which contains them,
raises a serious doubt as to the wisdom
and technical accuracy of all the pro¬
visions of the new fire laws. This doubt
is accentuated by the fact that many of





such provisions contained requirements
applicable to all factory buildings. They
do not discriminate between buildings
with non-combustible or slow-burning
contents and those filled with explosive
or highly inflammable materials. They
put a wire-goods manufactory and a
sjiirt-waist sweat-shop on the same ba¬
sis, imposing on both the expensive re¬
quirements that are indispensable to the
latter only. In this respect, therefore,
the new legislation is arbitrary and op¬
pressive.

Hard on Owners of Old Buildings.

The provisions added to the Labor
Law, which form the bulk of the new
fire laws, appear to be aimed at the
most numerous, yet least remunerative,
class of business properties—the old-
style loft buildings. There are hundreds
of such structures in lower Manhattan
and in the Williamsburgh section of
Brooklyn, that are wholly or partly va¬
cant. It is from the owners of. these
properties that we hear the most con¬
cerning over-assessment, excessive tax¬
ation and budgetary increases. They are
losing money, but the real cause of their
loss is the ever increasing migration of
industrial plants, from old factory build¬
ings to new loft structures of modern
equipment and so-called fireproof con¬
struction. One twelve-story Ijuilding of
the latter type affords the same area of
floor space as two six-story structures,
occupying twice as much land as does
the  taller building.

The modern factory building, there-
tore, costs commensurately less for land
and construction, hence its owner can
successfully compete with the landlord
of an old-style factory building in the
matter of lower rents, as well as in trade
facilities. These are the real reasons for
the vacant space in the older buildings
and the consequent loss to their owners.
Under the circumstances, it will be ruin¬
ous to the owners of many of the old
type of loft buildings to require them to
make the same structural alterations in
their vacant or half-vacant properties,
as no doubt should be made in many of
our  towering tenant-factories.

Two Tragedies.

True, but for the fortuitous absence
of the usual occupants of the two upper
floors of the Canal street building, the
loss of life in the fire there might have
been appalling; the disaster was terrible
enough as it was. But it should be re¬
membered that this fire was explosive
in origin and killed its victims, with one
exception, before they had a chance to
escape. Even had the upper floors been
occupied to their normal capacity, their
human contents were all within the
stretch of the ladders of the Fire De¬
partment, and their retreat mi.ght have
been protected by its hose-streams. On
the Other hand, the scores of people, who