TENEMENT HOUSE REGULATION. 



BY ROBERT W. DK FOREST. 



[Robert Weeks DeForest, lawyer; born New York, 1S4S; graduated Yale, 1870; ad- 

 mitted to New York bar 1S71; general counsel since 1874, and vice president since 

 1902 of the Central railroad of New Jers(>y; president of the Charity Organization 

 society since 1888, organizer of the first philanthropic pawn-broking establishment in 

 America; chairman of the Tenement Commission of New York since 1900; president 

 of the Municipal Art commission of New York, 1905.] 



When Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of the state of 

 New York, attended the opening of the tenement house exhibi- 

 tion of the Charity Organization society of New York, and 

 looked over the models of tenements, old and new, and the 

 charts which showed the close connection between the housing 

 of the vast majority of that city's population and health, 

 pauperism and crime, he said to the few of us who had or- 

 ganized this exhibition: "Tell us at Albany what to do, and 

 we will do it." The result was the New York State Tenement 

 House commission of 1900, the enactment last year of the most 

 advanced code of tenement house laws as yet put in force in 

 any American city, and the creation for the first time in this 

 country of a department directly charged with the oversight 

 of the construction and proper maintenance of tenement 

 houses. 



The tenement house problem we had to meet in New York 

 was the most serious of any city in the civiUzed world ; for in 

 New York, according to the last census, out of 3,437,202 in- 

 habitants, 2,273,079, or more than two thirds, lived in tene- 

 ment houses, and there were 82,652 of these tenements in the 

 city. 



The interest in this particular phase of the housing ques- 

 tion is not confined to New York. No one who has followed, 

 even carelessly, pubhc opinion on this subject can fail to realize 

 the hold it has upon the public conscience. It may be that 

 some tremble at the effect upon their own fortunes of a possible 

 social revolution, and seek to protect themselves, for their own 

 sake, by trying to make what they call the lower classes more 

 comfortable in their homes. But the large body of men and 



Vol. 10-13 193 



