TENEMENT HOUSE REGULATION 205 



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 apart- 

 ments in Brooklyn at current rents. Indeed, the supply was 

 far beyond the demand. The whole issue turned on the com- 

 mercial profitableness of building under the law, as amended 

 by the city administration bill, to meet this Brookljm con- 

 dition. The Brookljai builders were perfectly frank in their 

 arguments. They started with the premise that the building 

 of tenements in Brooklj^i must be made commercially profit- 

 able; that buildings under the new plan, with a minimum 

 court area of 8x14, would not be commercially profitable, be- 

 cause about $800 was added to their cost, and therefore in- 

 sisted 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 accom- 

 plished 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 

 demonstratecl 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 pubhc 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. 

 Some one must pay that cost. If any material rise in rents 

 would produce such opposition to the law as to repeal or mod- 

 ify it, then either the cost must be borne by the landlord, or 



