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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 87, no. 2249: April 22, 1911

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April 22, 1911. RECORD AND GUIDE 733 ^ ESTABUSHED-^,f^ftRpH2Li;^l86a. IjE^TEDlOf^EsTATE.BinLDlKo AR,Ci{lTEeTiJI^E,KaiJSEllOII)DEG(SiATlorf. Bltsii^ess ajIdThemes of Ge^IeraI IKteresIv PRICE PER YEAR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS CommunlcatloBs should be addressed to C. W. SWEET Published Every Saturday By THE RECORD AND GUIDE CO. President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer, F. W. DODGE Vlce-Pres. Se Genl. Mgr., H. W, DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER Nos. Jl to 15 East 21th Street, New Tork City (Telephone, Madisou Square, 4430 to 4433.) 'Entered at the Post Office al Sew York. N. Y.. as second-class matter.' 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