If, therefore, the owner of a building installs elevators for the convenient carriage of tenants and visitors within his property, he does so because the apparatus enhances the value of that property, and that enhancement is largely due to the public use of the appliance, in which use the unknowing users have some right to legislative protection from results of ignorance or incompetence, of neglect or parsimony.
It has taken a long time for this view of the matter to become even partially recognized, even in the city of New York, in which the use of elevators has multiplied beyond all conception of what seemed probable twenty-five years ago. The number of passenger elevators in the Borough of Manhattan alone, now exceeds nine thousand, and these increase annually by about five hundred new machines. The estimated number of freight elevators, none of which under present circumstances are subject to official inspection, is not less than ten thousand.
The regulations regarding elevators in Manhattan, commencing with feeble beginnings, have advanced under the careful direction of the present Superintendent of Buildings of Manhattan, Rudolph P. Miller, C. E., into the field of interference with private control, and the department is compiling further regulations which will go a long way towards the protection of the public in safeguarding the elevating apparatus they are compelled to use. The Manhattan regulations, while in themselves excellent, are directly applicable to passenger elevators only with such freight elevators as are within the same shaft enclosure as a passenger elevator. They require the operator to be of reliable and industrious habits, not less than eighteen years of age, with at least one month’s experience in his duties.
A number of known elements of unsafe character are prohibited and some constructive features of value are insisted upon. No provision is, however, made for automatic interlocking of gates and car movement, nor are projections in the shaft prohibited. Some good, detailed regulations and suggestions have been issued by the Wisconsin Labor Commission, but these and other State and local regulations could be substantially increased in value, by a thorough technical investigation and settlement.
Some improvement of deficiencies in apparatus existing prior to these rules has been effected by requiring safeguards to be applied upon any alteration or large repair work being sanctioned. This course has brought about the addition of speed safety appliances in a number of old installations where this elementary security was absent.
Later regulations will, in similar manner, require carefully conducted tests of all machines whether new, altered or repaired. Many minor matters of security are or will be thus provided for, yet the limited powers of a bureau can but at best halt in dealing with the entire problem. And when the regulations of Manhattan are made, as they should be, the best possible, it is regrettable that in another city or even in another borough of the same city, the same desirable conditions will not apply.
Yet the security of an elevator requires the same measures of attention, in one State as in another, as much in the merest hamlet as in the great metropolis.
The use of elevators is now widespread through all States, and in all classes of buildings, affecting the convenience and security of all classes of persons; and calling for the establishment of well considered and equalized regulation in every part of the country.
It speaks volumes for the sense of responsibility of our leading manufacturers of elevators, that among all the tens of thousands of machines turned out by such concerns as the Otis Elevator Company and their competitors, accidents due to the physical breakage of the machinery of elevators should be in number only what they are, when they include the failures of machines built in days when the industry was small and the art far less understood than it is at present.
When we reflect upon the fact that the passengers carried in elevators in the city of New York far exceed in number those carried on all the surface and subway lines, we may the more appreciate the point to which I desire specially to direct your attention, namely, the desirability in the public interest of State regulation, and as far as possible, uniform regulation, of the security and operation of elevators. The local regulations may be left to care for details of installation but the State authority is necessary to require elevators to be not only modern but progressively modernized appliances; that no antiquated and essentially dangerous apparatus shall be continued in use, and that necessary safeguards and properly qualified operators shall accompany their operation.