Social legislation and social activity

by American Academy of Political and Social Science

There is another and increasing class of regulations intended to protect the life and health of those who cannot, it is supposed, protect themselves by any means within their control. Fire-escapes, which are almost universally required by law in non-fireproof tenement houses, belong to this class. There is no such regulation for private houses, and there is usually no such requirement for two-family houses. The reason for the fire-escape in tenements and hotels must rest either on the supposed inability of the inmates to protect themselves, as the owner of a private house can protect himself and his family, or else from the greater number of persons exposed to risk. Of such class also is the law providing that there be a separate water-closet for each apartment, as in New York, or for every two families, as in Detroit and elsewhere, and that lights be kept burning in public halls at night. No such regulations exist for private houses. They can be only justified in tenement houses on the theory that the tenants in such houses must live in them, cannot control their maintenance in these particulars, and are entitled to the protection of affirmative law for these necessities or conveniences. It may be answered that they need not rent rooms in houses not furnished with separate water-closets, and the halls of which are not kept lighted, unless they wish to, and that they should not be restricted in their liberty to rent rooms in such houses, it may be at a lower rent, if they so desire. The reply may be, and in some cities would properly be, that they would have no choice unless the law intervened to protect them. Moreover, it might be urged that in the provision for separate water-closets for each apartment, and in the lighting of public halls, there was an element of protection to public health and morals in which the community had an interest, and which the community by regulation should insure.

I have sought by these illustrations to point the closeness of the dividing line between justifiable restriction of the individual liberty of the house builder and house owner, for the protection of the liberty of others, and paternalism. It is undoubtedly true, as Mr. Lecky states in the concluding part of the paragraph to which I have already referred, that “the marked tendency of these generations to extend the stringency and area of coercive legislation in the fields of sanitary reform is one that should be carefully watched. Its exaggerations may, in more ways than one, greatly injure the very classes it is intended to benefit.” There is real danger lest in our eagerness and earnestness to improve the condition of others, we legislate from the point of view of those fathers and mothers who are always ready to regulate the affairs of every family but their own, and break down the habit of self-dependence and the spirit of individual responsibility upon which the vigor of our American social fabric so largely depends.

Perhaps the most important limitation to tenement house reform, in the construction of new tenements, is the question of cost. If tenements cannot be rented at a profit they will not be built. There are many things which it would be desirable to have in a tenement, each one of which adds to its cost, and if they be required by law to an extent which makes it unremunerative, tenement building will cease. It is undoubtedly desirable that all tenements should be fireproof throughout; indeed, the same may be said of private houses. In 1892, Boston so prescribed; but few, if any, were erected, and the law was consequently modified in 1899.

The amount of rent which the average American workingman in any particular city can pay approximates a fixed quantity. Any legislation which materially increases this rent, or which prevents building and therefore prevents his finding shelter, is quite certain to be repealed. This proposition, however, is not so discouraging as it may appear at the outset. The standard of living among our working classes is steadily improving. What yesterday was a luxury, to-day is a necessity. In many cities, apartments which are not provided with running water are unrentable. Bathing facilities are increasingly in demand, and are frequently being provided. Families that have once lived in apartments where the bedrooms have light and air, will not hire apartments which are dark and unventilated. The supply must meet the demand. Interest rates are receding; economies in construction are being introduced, which some time ago were unknown, largely by the building of houses by the wholesale. The large profits which were demanded as the normal income on tenement houses in the past are no longer expected. Rooms up to the standard of the modern tenement house law can be provided without increasing the rental.

Another limitation in many cities is the prevailing lot dimension. If Dante were to-day writing his “Inferno,” the lowest depth would be reserved for those men who invented the twenty-five foot lot and imposed it on so many American cities. In unbuilt districts, where several lots, whatever be their dimensions, can be purchased and built upon together, the lot dimension does not necessarily control the frontage of the building, and the tendency in such districts in New York is to build tenement houses of wider frontage, which admit of better court arrangement, but there are usually so many lots separately owned, and so many which are situated between lots already built upon, so that their enlargement is impossible, that any proposed legislation prescribing court areas which, however desirable, puts the prevailing lot unit at a disadvantage, will meet with overwhelming resistance. No better illustration of this can, perhaps, be found than the story of New York legislation this winter, of which I intend to speak. From the point of view of proper tenement house construction, happy that city in which land is sold by the front foot, instead of by any procrustean lot unit.

There is another practical limitation, not necessarily to the enactment of tenement house law, but to its permanence, in the extent to which it, either actually or supposedly, interferes with the profits of builders and material men, and perhaps no better illustration of this practical limitation can be given than a simple recital of the contest over the radical amendment of the New York law which has been waged at Albany during the past few weeks, and which terminated only a few days ago. The New York law of 1901 marked the longest step in advance that tenement house reform in that state has ever taken, though in its provisions for court areas, the particular point in which it was assailed this winter, it does not go so far as the Philadelphia law, and but little further than the previous Buffalo law. It unquestionably increased the cost of construction by its fireproof provisions, as well as, though in a less degree, by its larger court areas. That there would be, this winter, organized effort on the part of building and real estate interests to modify it was certain and inevitable. Many bills were introduced amending it, but my illustration only concerns two, the City Administration bill, in the preparation of which I myself had part, and a bill introduced by a Brooklyn member of the Legislature in the interest of Brooklyn builders and material men, who claimed that they represented the people of Brooklyn. It is a fair question whether Brooklyn did not really have a grievance against last winter’s law. One of the prevailing types of Brooklyn tenements is a three-story house on a twenty-five foot lot, with two families on a floor, making six families in all, each apartment running through from front to rear. These houses had been built with interior courts or air-shafts about two and a half feet wide and ten feet long. These light-shafts were supposed to light and ventilate the interior rooms of each apartment. As a matter of fact, they furnished little light or ventilation to any bedrooms below the top floor. The same type of air-shaft in taller tenements of Manhattan was one of the chief evils against which the new law was directed. These evils were undoubtedly less in a three-story building, but still existed. The minimum interior court or air-shaft permitted by the new law in such buildings was eleven feet wide by twenty-two feet long. Such a court prevented the building of this type of house, and no tenements of this type were consequently built on twenty-five foot lots from the time when the law went into effect. The Brooklyn bill sought to amend the law, as respects three and four-story houses, by permitting a return to the old air-shaft, with an increased width of six inches, and with a somewhat increased length, making it three by twelve. We conceded that under the law it was impossible to build this particular type of tenement on a twenty-five foot lot, with each apartment running through from front to rear, but we demonstrated that it was perfectly practicable to build what seemed to us a much better two-families-on-a-floor tenement on such a lot, by putting one apartment in the front and another in the rear; that it was perfectly practicable to build, under the law, apartments running through from front to rear on a somewhat larger lot, and that the law interfered with no other current type except the one in question. The separate front and rear apartments, which were practical under the new law, are usual in Manhattan, and the rent obtainable from the front apartment differs but little from that obtainable from the rear apartment. Our Brooklyn friends insisted that though Brooklyn was a borough of New York and only separated from Manhattan by the East River, Brooklyn people were so accustomed to apartments running through from front to rear that they would not rent rear apartments, and indeed, that the social distinction between families who could afford to live in the front apartment, and those who would be forced to live in the rear apartment, was so great that they would not rent apartments in the same house.

This proposition may seem strained, but we of the City Administration were finally satisfied that so much regard should be paid to local habits and customs, that it was wise to modify our minimum court areas in three-story houses to such a point as would permit the building of this particular type of Brooklyn house. Plans were then made which demonstrated beyond peradventure that by reducing the minimum court area to 8x14, instead of 3x12, this particular type of house could be built, with bedrooms infinitely better lighted and better ventilated than those opening upon the narrow shaft. One would have supposed that this improved plan, which permitted Brooklyn builders to construct a front-to-rear apartment, for which they claimed so many advantages, would have been received with acclamation as a solution of the difficulty. Not at all. Some insisted that Brooklyn must have what it was accustomed to, narrow air-shaft and all. Others more openminded, while frankly admitting that the new plans made better apartments, which should bring in an increased rental of from fifty cents to a dollar a month, insisted that tenants would not pay more rent, and that because the buildings under these new plans cost say $800 per house more than under the old plans, they would not be commercially profitable, and therefore would not be built. Not a word was said as to the interests of tenement dwellers. There was no dearth of apartments in Brooklyn at current-rents. Indeed, the supply was far beyond the demand. The whole issue turned on the commercial profitableness of building under the law, as amended by the City Administration bill, to meet this Brooklyn condition. The Brooklyn builders were perfectly frank in their arguments. They started with the premise that the building of tenements in Brooklyn must be made commercially profitable; that buildings under the new plan, with a minimum court area of 8x14, would not be commercially profitable, because about $800 was added to their cost, and therefore insisted that the law should be amended to meet their ideas of commercial profitableness. That the purpose of the law was not to promote building operations, or increase the value of real estate, but to provide healthy habitation for tenement dwellers, and that that purpose was certainly being accomplished under the new law so long as tenement dwellers could house themselves without any increase in rent, was ignored, nor if it had been urged would it have seemed to them an argument worth considering.

I am happy to say that they did not succeed, but they demonstrated the influence which can be exerted upon the average legislator by men of their type through their trade and allied labor organizations, and had those who, at the moment, represented the unorganized public in the cities been less active, and had the force of public opinion as voiced by the press been less outspoken, the result might have been different.

The advance of tenement house reform undoubtedly means some diminution in the profit of the landlord, or some increase in rent. Improved tenements must cost more. Someone must pay that cost. If any material rise in rents would produce such opposition to the law as to repeal or modify it, then either the cost must be borne by the landlord, or the law must be modified. Whether the landlord’s rent will by the law proposed in any city be diminished below the point of legitimate profit, cannot be certainly demonstrated until the experiment be tried. Some enlightened landlords, with a sense of their obligations toward their tenants, are perfectly willing to suffer this small diminution of income. Others are not, and the others, who usually constitute the majority, in alliance with the builders and material men, will always seek to prevent legislation which affects their pockets. Tenement house reform must always be militant, not only to gain ground, but to hold the ground that has once been gained.

There is something for almost everyone to do. Let none suppose that our cities, however small, will remain free from the evils of the tenement house, which in larger cities has necessarily evolved in self-protection tenement house regulation. The tenement has come to the United States, like the Canada thistle, to grow and to multiply. The smaller cities need not go through the bitter experience which is teaching New York and other cities their lesson. They can, by timely regulation, prevent the crystallization of unsanitary conditions into brick and mortar. I do not recommend the adoption in every city of the New York law. It was framed to meet the special conditions there existent. The remedy should be no greater than the prevailing or expected disease warrants. A few elementary regulations with regard to court areas, vacant spaces, and regular and official inspection to make certain that these simple regulations are followed in construction and that ordinary sanitary rules are complied with in maintenance, will suffice, if there always be a keen eye to look some years ahead, to meet future needs before they make themselves unpleasantly manifest in your own surroundings, and before conditions are created, as in New York, which cannot be changed except at great cost to owners and to the municipality.