102 COMMISSION ON BUILDING DISTRICTS 



from which trade and industry will be excluded. This, in my judgment, will 

 undoubtedly tend to reduce the frequency of street accidents. Manufac- 

 turing operations carried on extensively in sections of the city which are also 

 used for residential purposes and which involve an extensive use by truck, 

 vans and express wagons, in residential streets, increases the number of 

 accidents in the street. I believe that the same would be true if the mer- 

 cantile use of the streets could be eliminated or reduced in residential 

 sections. 



No general statement can be made as to the time necessary to take 

 tenants out of high buildings by means of the elevators, because the condi- 

 tions in each of the buildings vary. There are, undoubtedly, some buildings 

 of more than twenty stories in height in which it would require considerably 

 more than half an hour to take the occupants out by means of the elevators 

 There are others, in which this could probably be accomplished in approxi- 

 mated a quarter of an hour. The higher the building, the longer the time 

 necessarv, in proportion to the number of floors. 



As a very rough test, I think that upon the average, it might be stated 

 that an office building was well equipped which could discharge its occupants 

 by means of the elevators, at the rate of a minute a floor. In a loft building, 

 the time required to clear the building of occupants by means of the ele- 

 vators is greater than in an office building of the same size, because the 

 elevator equipment is less complete in proportion to the number of persons 

 occupying the building. 



The fact that elevators used by the employees in loft buildings are also 

 used for freight purposes, makes the danger from panic more serious in the 

 case of loft buildings, than in the case of office buildings. Freight elevators, 

 or combined freight and passenger elevators, cannot be made as satisfactory 

 for the quick movement of passengers as elevators used solely for 

 passengers. 



Statement by Abram I. Elkus, United States Ambassador to Turkey, 



May 24, 1916 

 Work of the State Factory Commission 



I was counsel for the State Factory Commission. The work of this 

 Commission, which occupied between three and four years, covered factory 

 conditions in cities of the first and second class, and in some other parts of 

 the State and also industrial conditions in mercantile businesses, and then 

 there was an investigation into wage earning conditions, upon which a report 

 was made to the Legislature with reference to a minimum wage commission. 

 The results of our investigations were published in a report of thirteen 

 volumes. 



Districting a great benefit to city 



Knowing conditions as I do, particularly in the factory and working 

 districts of the City of New York, I would say that the plans proposed by 

 the Commission are an urgent necessity at the present time from the stand- 

 point of health, safety, convenience, comfort and general welfare. It would 

 be a very great benefit to the whole community to have it districted, not only 

 to those who do the work, but to the general citizenship. 



I look upon most of these things as having an economic value besides 

 merely a health benefit to the persons directly involved, for the reason that 

 it has been proved over and over again, if you adopt measures which make 

 for the safety of life and the preservation of the health of the people, you 



