Chapter 38
OLD WOMAN WHO LIVES IN A SHOE
2Eventually the government, after surveying the enormous cost of the non-integrated inefficiency of maintaining a population in hovels, will be forced, through ever persistent economy, into the transfer of unemployed city multitudes from such habitations to those of the highly modernized, efficient skyscrapers with which the government, willy-nilly, has been saddled by mortgage moratorium, et cetera.
3 The largest number of dwelling units ever built in the U. S. in one year by the combined building industries at peak load was 280,000, in 1925, and we are currently shy (this is admitted by the most conservative authorities) six million minimal-standard adequacy dwellings. Such seemingly pro-social legislation as the Wagner Housing Act, which at best might develop 20,000 new and, most questionably ‘‘low’’ cost homes in New York City per annum where 700,000 unemployed families or bachelors now ‘‘exist’’ without ability to pay rent, must be utterly futile. Such legislation is promoted, in reality, by the most selfish of the ‘‘conservative’’ finance interests to avoid even public mention of the one obvious method of wholesale relief of the housing problem, i.e., migration from the tenements to such buildings as the modernly equipped, relatively empty Empire State Building.
4 From a future viewpoint, there is rationality both in the skyscraper building of the city and in the mass production dwelling for the urban and suburban community. They do not follow contradictory forces. The two forces involved are: (1) decentralization for physical activity, work or play, and (2) centralization for mental activity, work or play. The latter is primarily transient and the former primarily of long duration.
5 Skyscraper construction companies (George A. Fuller, Inc. and Hegeman-Harris, Inc.) have recently been contracting the building of the speculative homes in N. Y. C. suburbia, throwing all the efficiency learned in the erection of the Chrysler Building in thirtysix weeks into the building of many little houses theretofore handled by relatively poorly equipped contractors and builders. Louis J. Horowitz, president of Thompson, Starrett Company, recently observed: ‘‘The near future of the building business is not in skyscrapers and not in the multiplication of the structures of government It is in housing—housing to take the place of city slums and the lonely discomfort of unimproved farm dwellings.’’
6 If an Empire State Building can be erected in 300 working days, or 2400 working hours, the operation being threaded piecemeal through the tumultuous center of New York City, and if it is the equivalent in volume and materials standard of 2400 ‘‘high-class,’’ fire-proof SING-FAM-DWELLS, then under the same degree of design and method organization that was applied to the Empire State, these senior builders ought in the open fields to be able to put up one house an hour. The builders are waking up to this argument at last, now that they have nothing else to do—no ‘‘chips’’ anywhere else. However, they are still far from the solution mark, as will be pointed out a few chapters later, in ‘‘Scientific Dwelling Service.’’
7 It is not our contention that all skyscrapers should be utilized for the slum dwellers’ rescue. There are logically highly rented business structures such as those in Radio City which have been cleverly designed around the interests of the new radio industry and its attendant high communication, publicity, advertising and news potentials, and logically placed relative to amusement and other requirements of a city’s populace, albeit their building was originally conceived as an emergency gesture. It would not be surprising if the new city of New York growing out of the nucleus of Radio City might not in time become so dominant as to bring about the natural substitution of ‘‘RADIO CITY’’ for ‘‘New York City, ’’ a meaningless title today.
8 Mr. Rockefeller’s agents in certifying the occupancy of Radio City forced, through interlocking directorate activities, literally hundreds of big business operations to transfer their headquarters to Radio City. Small fry contiguous businesses were forced to move in by the hundreds. The writer received the following in a letter in January, 1938, which, though practically impossible of ‘‘authentication’’ nevertheless ‘‘explains the process’’:
9 Anent the Rockefeller camouflage of putting up three new skyscrapers to give men employment, as announced in today’s papers, one of them had already been rented out entirely to two firms: the National Cash Register Co. and the Associated Press, before the work-making quasi-pro-social announcement. The Rockefeller interests are ‘‘taking over’’ the National Cash Register Co.’s 16 years-to-run-lease in its present quarters at $50,000 a year. They are doing similarly with the unexpired term of the Associated Press’s lease and, moreover, are paying all cost of that company’s moving, installation of wires, ‘phones, and so on. They have even agreed to name the building the Associated Press Building. How the A.P. came into the picture is interesting: One of the firm (I can give you his name) was having a cocktail at a fashionable hotel bar, idly conversing with a real estate company’s employee at the same bar.
10 Said the A.P. executive, casually, ‘‘We’d rather like to move because we need more space.’’
11 ‘‘Where would you like to go?’’ asked the real estater. ‘‘Any particular section?’’
12 ‘‘Oh, we don’t know. Most anywhere. Probably in the vicinity of Radio City.’’
13 Soon after this conversation the real estater sauntered over to the Rockefeller interests’ office. One word was all he needed to say. He was told to ‘‘drop the whole thing,’’ not even to go near the Associated Press. ‘‘We will do it all,’’ they promised, and did.
14 The real estater is receiving a $60,000 commission and the Associated Press has a building named after it.
15 Standard Brands, now a tenant of the Fuller Building, has likewise been approached. They were offered a taking-over of their unexpired leasehold and a new rental price of $1 per ft. for five years if they would move into the second of the three new buildings recently announced as planned ‘‘to give employment.’’ Standard Brands did not accept the offer. They did use it, however, to force cancellation of their present lease and the substitution of a new 10 years’ lease at a substantial reduction in the rent. American Tobacco Co., also, has been offered a lease in one of the new Radio City buildings for five years at $1 a year plus the take-over of their current lease.
16 These and similarly organized rental shifts have increased the undertenancy of multitudes of older buildings, which would be highly suitable for the housing shift to the modern skyscraper.
17 In one of the ever increasing-in-frequency panic ‘‘emergencies,’’ it is inevitable that the sparse business tenancy of these many skyscrapers will have to be shifted to an efficient industrial management tenancy of the most logically situated skyscrapers, completely evacuating enough modern buildings to provide ample space for our wholesale migration of the work-disenfranchised populace from the slums.
18 There are many other ramifications of this re-orientation of building and land occupancy in the mammoth cities which are only supposedly beyond proper revamping. A general prognostication includes the eventual tearing down of a majority of the buildings in New York City—for instance, virtually all buildings under ten stories in height, which height has been proven to be the minimum that may be efficiently serviced by central steam plants—and the conversion of the ground area of the razed buildings into all-important parking zones for the automobiles which mammoth buildings have called into the city. Our prognostication indicates, moreover, that within a few years the building code will call for the provision not only by new skyscrapers, but also by old ones, of parking space within the first ten stories above the street floor sufficient to house every automobile involved in the occupancy of that skyscraper. This means that ‘‘ten stories and under’’ must be converted to 100% garages or torn down.
19 If, for the purpose of clarification of this problem, we imagine every automobile removed from the streets of mid-Manhattan except those involved in the occupancy of Radio City, it would become readily apparent that the proprietors of Radio City have certainly built way over their ‘‘lot line’’ in all directions and for many blocks, for, be it remembered, automobiles (as developed in the phantom captain concept) are actually extension parts of people as much as are their shoes and shirts, and so a Radio City office worker’s or playgoer’s car, parked five blocks away, is a part of that office worker’s or paying visitor’s occupancy of Radio City. Actually, therefore, the Rockefellers are illegally collecting rental for the ground occupied by the worker’s car, since the streets are not their property, not their ‘‘legal’’ property at any rate.
20 Considering another phase of the problem, we find that the wholesale migration of the populace into skyscrapers would result in a reduction in populace-maintenance cost, through ±e elimination of filthy environment, articulated in hospitalization and penalization savings that would be staggering. The street cleaning bill of New York City runs into an annual figure of approximately 70 million dollars. This cost of picking up the burnt or rotting refuse of the slums, now indirectly underwritten by the central government, would be almost completely eliminated by the transfer of the populace to efficient skyscrapers and the substitution of parks for slums.
21 Furthermore, there would be stupendous basic energy saving, through the central steam plant’s ability to furnish heat to skyscrapers with a relatively low heat loss vs. the inefficiency, shrinkage and high heat loss in the distribution of coal in trucks from docks to a multitude of yards, whence they are recarted to the cellar of ‘‘Tony,’’ the coal-and-ice man, for sale in paper bags for use in heat-losing, squalid hovels, also necessarily entailing constant energy loss in the starting and burning out of little fires.
22 But Fincap, through his unrelenting though dwindling political hold on government, is doing everything in his power to avoid this efficiency. His efforts are greatly abetted, unfortunately, by the short-sighted ignorance of the people themselves who, as laborers banded together in workers’ unions, are still dominated by representatives of the at-one-time-most-important building trades. Even on the eve of the on-rushing total industrialization of shelter they continue to fight for the resuscitation of old-time building activity suitable to the limited handicrafts of the dead-as-a-door-nail building trades. It is to be noted that the crafts unions, now that the lines are being finely drawn between themselves and the industrial unions, are confined primarily to the building trades. These federated crafts unions constitute so strong a political body that Fincap finds in them an invaluable ally in the maintenance of the intrinsic worth of his one-time-important city land monopoly.
23 No one group has had a greater retarding effect on government’s official recognition of the industrially prefabricated shelter as the ultimate solution of housing than the American Federation of Labor. At its 1935 epoch-introducing annual convention in Atlantic City, when Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers, came to actual blows with Hutchinson, head of the carpenters’ union, the issue was pertinent to the major thesis of this book. Hutchinson represented the old faction, crafts unions; Lewis, the new faction, industrial unions. (This book was first being written at the time of that occurrence. Since then, the significance of industrial vs. craft organizations has come into universal consideration.)
24 Political interests have obscured the fact that no ‘‘housing’’ unit has developed in the C. I. O., which at one fell swoop would include every worker engaged in housing production, no matter whether an assembler in the field or a machine tender in a factory, thus eliminating the skull-busting, housing-improvement prohibiting, jurisdictional disputes within craft-labor’s ranks. Such a general ‘‘Housing Workers Union,’’ when evolved, will almost overnight put the American Federation of Labor, which has practically all of its eggs in one building basket, out of business, and will bring industrially reproduced scientific shelter to the fore. This has not happened as yet because popular (government) attention has been focused, by long-faced ‘‘sociologists’’ and egotistical reformers, on the scientifically untenable, outmoded methods of building construction that now only thinly keep alive the crafts with which Fincap is perforce friendly.
25 In November, 1937, the A. E of L. and the C. I. O. considered a tentative division of the labor field to facilitate a truce in their three year old dispute. The experimental formula for the division of jurisdiction, as worked out at a joint conference of peace committees, involved suspending the causes of dispute rather than first establishing a truce, as follows:
- 1.
- The Federation to grant full jurisdiction to the C. I. O. in the rubber, newspaper, maritime, furrier, steel, coal and certain other industries.
- 2.
- The C. I. O. to grant complete jurisdiction to the A. F. of L. in the building trades, engraving and particularized craft industries.
- 3.
- Compromises in fields where each group has strong unions.
26 Naturally no agreement was arrived at. No true one ever will be. Scientifically spined industry can never agree that the unscientific, consciously inefficient course is tenable or even condonable. The forces at play are far bigger than the mental activity of the current labor dictators can encompass. It may be counted on that the ‘‘random element’’ will dance his war dance around any ‘‘parleys’’ of these diametrically subscribed labor divisions.
27 The death of the old building ‘‘business,’’ which was primarily a handicraft affair, favoring the allocation of industrial workers to categories of no longer existing crafts in industry, and the general rise of the industrial principle in all other categories but ‘‘housing’’ has weakened the craft-workers’ strike power. So long as automobile workers are craft-unionized under threat, they will be impeded from going on strike by virtue of the fact that they represent an agglomeration of impertinently titled unions, that is, ‘‘unions’’ of carpenters, metal workers, et cetera. The unwillingness of heads of these crafts to subscribe to the strike as an industrial unit whole
28 has prevented workers from attaining the obvious equity adjustments which they seek in minimum wages and total hours. The C. I. O. United Auto Workers have currently dramatized this issue, wherefore Fincap has thrown his full political weight behind the A. F. of L. in Detroit.
29 Another aid to ‘‘conservative’’ Fincap’s fear-born opposition to efficiency (which he would abet if there were any integrity in his newsprint clamor for governmental operating-cost reduction) is the federated resistance of a possibly less ignorant class of humans, the at-least-academically-educated ‘‘professionals’’: architects, engineers, and lawyers who congregate ceaselessly in ‘‘society’’ conventions to work out plans for a return to the old ways of doing in the hope that the ‘‘diploma’’ may regain its profitable status. Expectantly, they delegate potent representatives, who are gladly heralded by the controlled press, to hound government officials with an infinity of plans for resuscitation of the once exploitable, now defunct tailored-building business, or to prove profoundly that a ‘‘power yardstick’’ is ‘‘impossible’’—page Mr. Einstein! He never thought of the application of his work to a ‘‘power yardstick,’’ but he has the precise formula needed.
30 A meager success in the press-supported efforts of the ‘‘professionals’’ amalgamated with Fincap is demonstrated by the appropriation of government funds for the high-priced condemnation of slum areas, bringing about a transient rehabilitation of the old property-ite and the substitution of penny-pinching, inefficient five story walk-ups for former tenements. The necessary asking rental of the new structures—despite a minimum inclusion of scientific facilities—is 50% higher than 90% of the population can afford to pay under the present retrogression of wage distribution.
31 This truth about ‘‘professional’’ self-recovery, cost and revenue applies equally to the Greenbelt communistically-to-be-run communities built under the aegis of the Tugwell regime at ‘‘no one knows how much’’ (literally) cost. From a dollars and cents standpoint, to which both communists and capitalists stick, housing cannot be solved by reform. On the other hand, it must certainly be admitted that the most significant effect of the attempts cited has been the pulling down of old buildings and the establishment of highways and parks through and around slum-glutted areas. The house-cleaning is now popularly accredited through dramatic reality, but it is the random elements indirect result of a fallacious housing argument.
32 The Federal Housing activity with its offering of building and reconditioning loans at the lowest rates in America’s history seemed a good temporary ‘‘out’’ for the property-title group (primarily banks and the custodians or investors of fourth and fifth generation trust funds) but they have not proved an ‘‘out’’ for the beleaguered professional classes for whose benefit, upon the surface, the legislation was designed. Moreover, they have not provided even a living wage for laborers, whose wage scales have precipitously dropped from an at-peak-level-by-union-strength-pegged figure to approximately 20% of the peak original.
33 By trial and error the professional and worker classes will ultimately learn that the current slum clearance project is a mirage and that the chief beneficiaries are the finance-capitalists. This is mildly to be witnessed again by indirection of volition in Housing Administrator Strauss’s policy, i.e., not to rebuild the old slum areas but to decentralize new mass housing to undeveloped marginal acres of cities. Once the technicians have mastered this fact, there will be an eventually-to-be-heard popular mandate for DOING the EFFICIENT thing. The C. I. O. unit, ‘‘The Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians,’’ so rapidly gaining strength in revolt against professional stupidity, is a manifest of this approaching mandate.
34 When the city populace has moved into the skyscraper towers, they will blow up their slums wholesale with probably the most thrilling popular fiestas of all times and convert the land into vast parks. There will emerge from the present contradictory scene a clean, beautiful and orderly settlement of towers and gardens, with retention or restoration of all historically important tracery elements, knowledge of the latter having popularly developed through inadvertence of made-work writers and artists engaged in W.P.A. projects.
35 From these tower and garden cities the populace may progressively and efficiently be deployed to activity, in the for-years-to-come high manual effort employing industrial reproduction of scientifically evolved shelters and contiguous industries.
36 The swarms of oddly-clad tenement dwellers will be incongruous when first transferred to their new environment of svelte skyscraper lobbies and elevators, but just as a transition in the stenographer’s appearance from sloppiness or dowdiness to that of a ‘‘deb’’ occurred when she found herself in a skyscraper office, so slum dwellers will quickly avail themselves of first-class plumbing facilities, adequate warmth and fresh air, and will transform their outward appearance to conform to environment. There will be many a laugh, but that’s what we are looking for: laughter and happiness.
37 It would not be efficient, however, simply to let slum exiles camp about the floors of Empire State buildings, along with their pots and pans, little cookstoves and filthy clothing, using the windows for general refrigeration.
38 No! The efficient course will be to reclothe them completely and, in consideration of the fact that the skyscrapers are to be temporary hostelries until the slum exiles can be deployed to industrial service over the land, near or far, furnish them with food as would the hotel and with medical attention as would the hospital, giving as thoughtful care to the menu or diet in relation to intestinal habits as would be accorded hotel or hospital guests. Such efficient, nourishing feeding would be no more difficult than is the solution of the dietary problem of any great city hospital. It would be efficient, also, to furnish them with the best of education and amusement. All this would, of course, save more than the whole tax bill of N. Y. C. today wherein the ‘‘debt’’ service alone calls for $ 175,000,000 in the current year.
39 It is interesting that, whereas the professional planners of the would-be resuscitated housing industry look to and even go to Europe for precedent in the matter of emergency housing, there is in reality no compatibility between the housing problem of Europe and that of America. The comparative figures of population per room in Europe with 25% of the world’s population and in North America with 7% of the world’s population show that in Europe there is, throughout compound housing centers, even today a high room shortage. In Europe the figure is in the vicinity of 2.6 persons per decentiy-dwellable room currently extant. In America on the other hand the average is only .9 persons per now-‘‘available’’ dwelling room, not including potential skyscraper hotels. It is the decentralization-mobilization shift and rising ‘‘standard’’ progression that provokes ‘‘shortage’’ in America.
40 Relative only to the currently endured standard of housing, there is, so far as four walls and a roof go, actually no housing shortage in America. The need is for an efficient re-deal of shelter, and rapid satisfaction of advancing standards of adequacy production, and service method. The true 100% housing shortage in America and worldwide is of entirely new, highly mobile, scientific shelters that may be constantly and conveniently shifted from one to another currently important industrial or play sites. Relatively permanent shelters will be required, also, for the more scientific re-housing of the agricultural populace who, in the chemico-mechanical industrialization of farming, will progressively become the mechanical supervisors of agricultural production rather than agricultural labor-slaves.
41 Scientific, mobile shelters will be utilized, also, for the constantly moving placement or deployment of city-bogged, non-employed people to play lands of the world where it would be possible for them to develop in health, strength and intellectual ability. This might never completely rehabilitate the ‘‘lost’’ older generation, but would nurture its offspring into harmonious synchronization with and responsible continuance of the emergent age.
42 The trailer has already appeared as a gesture by small man for his need in this direction, but how sadly short of the goal it falls! The trailer, however, has its random element significance; it is forcing the automobile industry which is SCIENTIFIC INDUSTRY itself, into efficient mobile housing design considerations and to the re-design of its interior mechanisms, an important baby. But more of this in the next chapter.
43 Not long ago a suggestion was made in a newspaper that all relief, popular and private, be immediately terminated; that all public schools be closed; that free hospitalization cease and that America be thrown on her ‘‘own’’ to prove her rugged manliness. If the suggested impossible scheme were to be carried out, it is probable that he himself would be among the first to be eaten by the wolves. He probably was playing for a big role with Fincap as a ‘‘practical man.’’ No! dear fellow, we are going to be truly practical and we are on the way. The way is scientific, and heavenly. Inherent in Disney’s and his army of co-artists’ ‘‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’’ is the beauty and justification of the highly-mechanized industrial age,--just beginning.