R E A L    E S TAT E





BUILDERS





AND







Vol. CII.





NEW YORK, AUGUST 17, 1918





No. 7





Does New York Want Temporary Factories?

Lawson  Purdy Combats  Idea That the Establishment of Heavy

Manufactories  Is  Beneíicial

BY LAWSON PURDY
Former President Department of Taxes and Assessments





WE have all read a great deal about the alleged de-
sirability of having war work done in the City of
New York; and, I think, some of the Brooklyn
newspapers have said something about the desirability of
having it done in the Borough of Brooklyn. No com-
munity in the United States should be backward in wel-
coming any war industry when it is to the advantage of
the United States Government.

But it is by no means desirable for a large community
to have added to it suddenly a large number of workers,
in an industry which must be temporary. I can see no
gain to the Borough of Brooklyn by having established
here a temporary industry that would bring a large num-
ber of workers here for the time being. Brooklyn has
not the future of a heavy manufacturing community. The
opportunities here are far too valuable for more inten-
sive use of the facilities that Brooklyn affords to make it
worth while to retain here any industry that requires a
great deal of land as do all heavy manufacturing indus-
tries. I feel very confident that the future of Brooklyn is
not in the direction of heavy manufacturing industries.
They involve the bringing to the place of great quantities
of raw material. On Long Island we do not produce any
mineral ores. There is no particular reason that one can
see for transporting iron and coal to BrookKn, and such
industries require a great deal of land which is of such
value for other purposes that it should not be devoted to
that sort of use.

You have made a tremendous beginning here in light
manufacturing. You are providing facilities such as have
heretofore been unknown, in the great Bush Terminal.
There wiU be a further development in thc waterfront
from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Atlantic Basin. The
New York Dock Company is already deveioping along
those lines. You will in time have direct railroad trans-
portation under the Bay, with the connecting railroad into
New England. And you will have other lacilities for
bringing shipping here and taking finished articles away.

Brooklyn is a very great shipping port. We have the
immense number of miles of waterfront at Jamaica Bay
that are merely waiting for development, and the shore
from Red Hook to Owl's Head is getting pretty well de-
veloped now. Across the Bay we have the great shipping
point of Staten Island. The future of Brooklyn is a great
manufacturing centre for light manufacturing, and a very
great port for the entrance and shipment of goods with
direct entrance to New England.

You don't want these temporary industries established
here. If they are established here with reasonable access
of Manhattan and the Bronx, housing facilitics are prob-
ably suffĩcient for the time being for the workers that are
likely to come. When you add 10,000 people to Brooklyn,
Manhattan and the Bronx, it is not noticed.  But it is when





you bring 10,000 people to a Hog Island shipyard that
housing facilities must be provided. If a shipping plant
is established on the north shore of Staten Island, it will
be necessary to provide adequate housing facilities on
Staten Island. They are talking and even arranging for
the transportation of workers from the Newark ship-
yards to Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens, by an in-
tensive use of the Hudson Tubes and the Pennsylvania
Railroad. That will obviate the necessity of building
houses for workers in the neighborhood of the Newark
yards.

Before the war, as you very well know, there was a
stoppage of building throughout the United States be-
cause of the rapidly increasing cost of building material
and the increasing wage cost, and we were short of hous-
ing facilities in a great many places. With the establish-
ment of great plants for war industries it became neces-
sary to house the workers. Before the war there 'was
another condition that had been in existence for a good
many years, to whicli hardly sufĩfĩcient attention had been
paid, that of the very rapid labor turnover in great in-'
dustries. In some of them it was so high that to maintain
1,000 men it was necessary to employ 4,000 during the
year. Various estimates have been made as to the loss
caused by the labor turnover, and all agree that the loss
is very heavy. In one industry in which I am somewhat
familiar an estimate was made as to the loss caused by the
labor turnover. In this industry goods were nianufactured
which were easily damaged and spoiled. It was found
that the spoilage of goods through carelessness and in-
experience of the workers amounted in one year to a sum
that would have built houses for a very large percentage
of the force. Some of the great manufacturing indus-
tries of the country have in many ways tried to check the
labor turnover, or to stabilize labor.

There was one experiment which has exerted an evil
influence against what I think is a right line. All of you
remember the Pullman strikes of 1894. Those strikes
were in part attributed to the PuIIman Company in es-
tablishing the town of Pullman, and the paternal attitude
of the company toward its employees. Many thought that
the employees were ungrateful. They were not con-
tented. And manufacturing companies have been timid
about providing homes for their workers along the same
lines adopted by the PuIIman Company. Some of them
have refrained entirely from building houses for their
workers. Lmder such conditions the effort to maintain a
stable and contented labor forc'e has been fruitless as long
as the living conditions are so bad as they are.

During the last few years it has been common for great
industries to establish new factories in virgin fields, and
overnight a great town is built up of nothing. That was
done in Gary, Ind., by the U. S. Steel Corporation.   This