CHAPTER XVI.
“The conscience of well doing is an ample reward.”
[From the New York World, July 15, 1895.]
Manhattan Island, west of Broadway and south of Trinity Church, was, during the last century, occupied by the substantial mansions of the ancient Knickerbockers, and as late as the first third of the present century was not relinquished as a place of residence by people of aristocratic pretensions. Before the civil war, the annual fairs of the American Institute were held in Castle Garden, within whose walls Grisi and Mario and Jenny Lind sang, and on summer afternoons children, accompanied by nursemaids, romped upon the grass under the grand old trees on the Battery. Then the Bowling Green Fountain, with its picturesque pile of rocks, was still an ancient landmark; and the goat pastures above Fifty-ninth Street were being cleared for the planting of Central Park.
After the war the few remaining occupants of pretentious residences fled to the northward of Madison Square, and the sightliest and most picturesque portion of New York City was abandoned to saloons, emigrant boarding houses, warehouses, and shops, for, unlike the down-town section east of Broadway, it was not invaded and colonized by bankers, brokers, and importing houses.
Mr. David Morning, now widely known as the Arizona Gold King, selected this portion of New York City for the experiment of organizing pleasant and economical home lives for a class of dwellers in cities not ordinarily the subject of elemosynary effort.
The poverty of the very poor, who sometimes lack even for food or shelter, is hardly more distressing to the sufferers than the poverty of men who struggle to maintain a respectable position upon incomes inadequate, even with the most economical management, to meet their expenses. How is a married man, having an income of one, two, or even three thousand dollars per annum, derived from work which must be performed by him, as clerk, journalist, physician, or lawyer, upon Manhattan Island, to live there with such surroundings as are befitting his education and position?
He will be compelled to pay one-third or one-half of his income for a flat; an entire house is out of the question, unless he betake himself to such a locality in the city as will exile his family from social consideration. If he live in the suburbs, he must arise at daylight and stumble along unlighted lanes to the railroad station, and pass two or three hours of his time each day standing in a crowded ferryboat, or hanging to the straps of a jammed car, alternately frozen and roasted, and always stifled with the reeking perfume of unventilated vehicles and unsavory fellow-travelers, for while it may be true that all men are politically equal, they are not always equally well washed.
The alternative is to bring up his family in the brawl and small scandal of a boarding house. His wife requires always a certain amount of dresses and bonnets to maintain herself in a respectable position in the estimation of her friends, and dresses and bonnets entail an uncertain amount of expenditure. A man’s tailor will inform him in advance exactly how much his garment will cost, and one can contract for a bridge across the Mississippi at an agreed sum, but there is no force known in nature that will induce or drive a dressmaker into foregoing an opportunity for advantage taking, or persuade her to fix in advance a price for the making and trimming of a gown.
The married bookkeeper or salesman on a salary in New York City, is forever upon the ragged edge of embarrassment, unable to save the amount of the payments necessary for adequate life insurance, or to provide a fund for a rainy day. The laborer or mechanic who earns six hundred to nine hundred dollars per annum is, in comparatively easy circumstances, for he can live in a tenement house in a cheap neighborhood without loss of caste, and caste is of almost as much consequence in free America as in the Punjaub.
After some thought, Mr. David Morning devised a trial scheme for the relief of married men of small incomes, whose duties required their daily presence in New York City, below Canal Street, and in the autumn of 1894 his agents began to quietly purchase the real estate between Rector Street and the Battery, and bounded by Greenwich Street and the Hudson River. Some months were consumed in the acquisition of title to the realty, and in a few instances long prices were exacted by sagacious and selfish owners, who held out until the others had sold, but the bulk of the property was purchased at about its value, and the brokers were finally instructed to close with all persons willing to sell, without haggling as to price.
It required about $15,000,000 to complete the purchase, and for this sum sixteen hundred lots were secured of the orthodox dimensions of twenty-five by one hundred feet each. Electric lights turned night into day, and several thousands of men and hundreds of vehicles, divided into three armies of eight-hour workers, were at once employed in the work of demolition. Temporary railroad tracks were laid from the land to the North River piers, and the material and débris not needed to fill cellars and vaults was carried on cars to barges, which were towed to the Jersey flats, where their contents were dumped upon ground previously acquired by Mr. Morning for that purpose, and by the first of February, 1895, the lower part of Manhattan Island west of Greenwich Street was as bare as a picked bird.
The work, although generally prosaic, was not without its romantic and interesting incidents. In a stone house on Greenwich Street, which was once the colonial mansion of Diedrich Von Wallendorf, a walled chamber was opened. The rugs and hangings it had contained were fallen to shreds, but the Queen Anne cabinets, tables, and bedstead were in as good condition as when the room was closed with solid stone masonry, two centuries ago, without any reason now apparent for the strange proceeding.
Under the cellar floor of another house an earthen “crock” was found filled with sovereigns, coined in the last century, and through the destruction of an old wall cabinet, there came to light a package of letters from Lord North to Sir Henry Clinton, letters which indicated that the British Ministry of that day had been in negotiation with other patriot leaders than Benedict Arnold for a surrender of the revolutionary cause.
The consent of the city authorities to a resurvey and remodeling of the streets and avenues of the destroyed section of New York, was obtained without difficulty since Mr. Morning was now the sole owner of the land affected thereby, and the rearrangements proposed by him were made at his own cost, and insured greater uniformity and greater convenience to the public than those which were superseded.
The land was platted into blocks four hundred feet in length and eighty feet in width, running north and south, thus giving to the occupants of the new buildings either the morning or the afternoon sun. These blocks are divided by streets of a uniform width of one hundred feet, having a park thirty feet wide in the center of each street, with lawn, shrubs, ornamental trees, and a fountain in the center of each block. Gas, water, and sewer pipes, and electric light and pneumatic tubes, have been laid in the new streets, and by means of a powerful pumping engine, erected on the Battery, the sewers are flushed every day with sea water. The new streets are paved with asphalt, with sidewalks of cement. The city received from Morning land at the foot of Canal Street purchased by him, in exchange for Castle Garden and vicinage, and the Battery—filled with fountains, statues, and increased acreage of lawn and garden—is restored to its ancient functions, and more than its ancient glory.
The buildings erected upon each of the one hundred blocks thus created, are of uniform size and style. Each building—occupying an entire block—is four hundred feet long, eighty feet wide, and seventeen stories high. The roofs are covered with glass, making the structures eighteen stories aboveground. One-half of the area of the eighteenth story in each block is laid out in plots filled with ten feet of rich soil in beds of perforated cement, the other half in broad walks of plate glass—guarded by copper netting—so as to admit light to the seventeenth story and to the large air shafts.
In each of the buildings are one hundred and fifty suites of five rooms, each suite having a floor area of sixteen hundred square feet, and every room having an outlook upon the street. A broad hall runs through the center of the building on every floor, lighted by means of plate-glass windows at each end, and also by three shafts, one hundred feet apart, running from cellar to roof. Every room is provided with steam, dry, and gas heat, and with gas and incandescent lights. Each suite has a household pneumatic tube service connecting with the store rooms in the basement, and with the kitchen and dining rooms in the seventeenth story. Each suite has also a cooking closet, with gas range, hot water, and steam pipes, porcelain-lined sinks, and pneumatic tubes for carrying away garbage.
Six hydraulic elevators furnish ample accommodations for reaching every floor at any hour of the day or night. A network of perforated steel pipes is concealed in the walls and floors, with separate connections for each room with the great tanks on the roof, which are in turn connected both with the Croton water system, and with the great steel water main bringing water from Rockland Lake. In case of fire the walls and floors of one room, or of any number of rooms, can instantly be saturated with water, and twice in each week, at an appointed hour, a warm, gentle rain is made to descend for a sufficient length of time upon the trees and shrubs in the roof garden.
Each suite has separate sewer connections, and each room is provided with registers in the wall, from which either hot air or cold air can be turned on or off at will, the hot air ascending from the furnaces, and the cold air being forced by a pumping engine from the refrigerating room in the basement. Those whose fate it has been to swelter on Manhattan Island in the dog days can appreciate the latter luxury. The fortunate occupant of a room in one of the Morning Blocks commands his temperature. Whether the thermometer registers thirty degrees below or one hundred degrees above zero outside, he can arrange the climate in his own room to suit himself, and pater familias can connect a wire with the register in the parlor, and, if “Cholly” protracts his visits to Gladys to an improper hour, he can shut off the hot air, turn on a current from the refrigerator, and in ten minutes make the young man choose between departure and congealment.
These buildings were planned for the relief of women. The great source of waste and care in our American domestic life is in the kitchen, and it is impossible to organize a more advantageous trust for both producer and consumer than a “kitchen trust.” The daily history of every American family is one of almost unavoidable waste. In food, in fuel, in the labor of cooking, and in many other details of housekeeping, there is uneconomic use of both labor and materials. Probably one-fourth of the expenditure of every American householder who is able to keep one or more servants is unnecessary and wasteful, and where only one servant, or none at all, is employed, the health and beauty and life of the wife are expended in kitchen drudgery, and her opportunities of growth and culture are lost.
The Morning Blocks were designed as theaters of experiment, which, if successful, will be copied elsewhere, for freeing the household from the waste and vexation and tyranny of the kitchen. Mr. Morning’s plan for bringing about this beneficent result is both simple and effective. The kitchen, or general cooking room for the block, is situated in the seventeenth story, where there is one large, and one hundred and fifty small dining rooms. Each dining room is lighted either from the street or the roof, is perfectly ventilated, and has an electric bell and pneumatic tube service connecting it with the kitchen, with the market house in the basement, and with the suite of apartments below, of which it is an adjunct.
The happy householder in one of the Morning Blocks will have his choice of methods. He and family may take their meals at the restaurant or general dining room in the seventeenth story, either by the carte, meal, or week. He may use the general dining room, or his private dining room, or dine in his apartments below—the pneumatic tube service extending to all, and a private waiter will be furnished at a fixed price per hour. He can purchase cooked provisions by weight, delivered at either place, or purchase his own supplies at the market house in the basement and have them cooked in the general kitchen, or use his own cooking closet, where, without waste of fuel—gas being used—his selections may be prepared for the table and served either there or sent by pneumatic tube to his dining room above.
Prices for everything furnished, whether of materials or labor, are fixed from time to time by the manager, and all bills are required to be paid every Monday, on penalty of the tenant losing his privilege of occupancy. The prices charged are less than those demanded for similar service or material elsewhere. An account will be kept of each householder’s disbursements, and his proportion of the profits made will be returned to him at the end of the year, according to the usual co-operative process, the object being to furnish each occupant of the block with whatever he needs of food or service at actual cost.
The rent asked for the apartments in the Morning Blocks has been adjusted upon the basis of paying taxes, insurance, repairs, and three per cent per annum upon the capital invested in the enterprise.
Mr. Morning has conveyed the one hundred blocks to the governor of New York, the mayor of New York City, and the president of the New York Chamber of Commerce, who, with their official successors, are made perpetual trustees of this munificent gift. In the trust deed it is provided that the three per cent interest on cost, received from tenants, shall be invested in an endowment fund, payable, with its accumulations, to the tenant whenever he leaves the building, or to his widow or legal representative in the event of his death while a tenant.
The tenant in a Morning Block will be supplied with hot and cold air, hot and cold water, steam, gas, electric light, food, and service at actual cost. His rooms will be provided him at the cost of taxes, insurance, and repairs, and he and his family will be made the beneficiaries of a fund, which he will be required to create for the contingency of his death or departure from the building. To guard against overcrowding, no one suite of apartments will be rented to any family of more than five adults, and no subletting or hiring of apartments will be permitted.
The cost of the land is estimated at $16,000,000, and of clearing it and erecting the new buildings at $30,000,000. The taxes, with insurance, repairs, employes, and such other expenses as are in their nature incapable of apportionment among the tenants, will amount to $810,000 per annum. This sum divided by fifteen thousand, the number of suites of apartments in the one hundred Morning Blocks, will give $54 as the annual sum to be paid by each tenant for his apartments, and he will pay $108 additional annually toward a fund for his own benefit. In all he will pay about $14 a month for accommodations that it would be difficult to obtain elsewhere for five times the amount.
The manager of each block will receive a salary of $3,000 per annum, and will, in the first instance, be selected by the Board of Trustees, but on the first Monday of January, 1897, and each year thereafter, the occupants of each block, by a majority vote, can elect a manager, who will, however, in the discharge of his duties, and in the employment of assistants, be subject to the direction and supervision of the trustees.
Mr. Morning in the trust deed conveying the Morning Blocks has named the qualifications of tenants as follows: The applicant must be of good moral character, married, over the age of twenty-five and under sixty. He must have been at the time of his application for more than one year previously in the employment of some person, firm, or corporation engaged in a reputable business in the city of New York south of Canal Street, and be in receipt of a salary of not less than $1,000 or more than $3,000 per annum. If a lawyer, physician, dentist, architect, or civil engineer, author, clergyman, or journalist, his net income must be of a similar amount.
Applicants for suites of apartments must file their applications and references at the office of the Morning Blocks prior to 12 o’clock noon on the fifteenth day of August, 1895. The credentials of all applicants will be examined and careful inquiry made as to their habits, characters, and antecedents, and only those will be accepted as eligible for tenancy who can strictly comply with the requirements.
Should there be, as is most likely, approved applications in excess of the suites to be rented, the fifteen thousand who can be accommodated will be selected by lot, and the others registered, and whenever vacancies occur a tenant to fill such vacancy will be selected by lot from the list. Apartments will be apportioned by lot among the successful applicants. Tenants will be permitted to exchange apartments by amicable arrangement, but no transfer of apartments from a tenant to one who is not a tenant will be permitted. The tenant can surrender his right to occupy his apartments at pleasure, but he cannot assign it, or sublet the whole or any part of the premises accorded him.
Should six tenants who are heads of families on any floor make complaint against one of the other four tenants on that floor that he is obnoxious, and that in the general interest his tenancy ought to be terminated, a jury of fifteen tenants of that building, selected by lot, one from each of the other floors, shall be made up to try the accused, who shall have opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses against him, and to present his defense. The manager shall preside and preserve order, and if twelve of the fifteen jurors shall concur in finding that the tenancy of the accused ought to terminate, he may appeal to the Board of Trustees, and unless they unanimously exonerate him, his tenancy must cease.
Our reporter interviewed Mr. Morning, who was found at his offices in lower Broadway, and inquired of that gentleman if it were true, as rumored, that he intended to erect similar buildings on another part of Manhattan Island.
“I have secured,” replied that gentleman, “all the land for a hundred blocks in and about the locality known as ‘the Hook,’ and I propose the erection of buildings there that will accommodate forty thousand families of mechanics and laborers. There will, of course, be less room for each occupant than in the blocks just completed, and less expensive arrangements in many particulars, but the rent and cost of living will be less, and the premises will be rented and conducted substantially on the same plan, with only such difference in rules as may be necessary.”
“What will be the cost of these latter buildings, Mr. Morning?” said our reporter.
“With the land, about $30,000,000,” was the reply.
“It is a pity,” commented our reporter, “that every city in the land cannot count a David Morning among its citizens, with a gold mine at his command.”
“The mine is not necessary,” said Morning. “There are a dozen men in every large city of our land who, without any gold mine, could do what I have done. I hope,” continued the speaker, “not to be alone in the work of helping the people both to employment and homes.”
“None of our millionaires,” said the reporter, “have thus used their money.”
“It must be remembered,” rejoined Morning, “that the very, great fortunes of this country have mainly been created during the last twenty-five years, and in the eager and necessarily selfish strife incident to their acquisition, their owners have not always considered that their possession is a great trust which brings with it duties as well as rights.”
“But I see the dawn of a better day and a better feeling,” continued Mr. Morning. “I hear of many gentlemen in different parts of the country who are proposing to use millions for the erection of homes, and the secure establishment of co-operative industries for the benefit of the workers of the land. My idea is that no man should be accorded an unearned dinner who has refused a chance to earn it, but that it is the duty of society to provide every man with an opportunity of earning. Of what value at last is wealth unless one can use it for the benefit of his fellow-men? Charon will not transport gold across the Styx at any rate of ferriage. Of what use is money here except in one form and another to give it away? No man can expend on his own legitimate and proper comforts and pleasures the interest on $1,000,000 at five per cent per annum.”
“There are many men, Mr. Morning, who expend a good deal more than $50,000 a year.”
“Not in the sense of personal expenditures. Mansions, laces, diamonds, furniture, horses, carriages, and the like are investments rather than expenditures. Receptions and banquets may be classed with gifts. He must be an industrious man who can, with his family, eat, drink, and wear out $50,000 worth each year.”
“But is there not the pleasure of accumulation itself, Mr. Morning?”
“I suppose so,” replied that gentleman, “or men would not pursue it; but it is a cultivated and not a natural taste. Every man for instance, requires a pair of trousers and a hat, but after he has acquired enough of such articles for the use of himself and his family for life, and a generous supply for his descendants, why work the balance of his days to fill warehouses with trousers and hats? I do not know,” continued Mr. Morning—and our reporter thought that there was a deeper shade in his sea-gray eyes—“I do not know that I shall ever marry, but if I had boys I would leave them no fortunes larger than would suffice for a generous support.”
“Will you, then,” queried our reporter, “expend in your own lifetime all the great revenues of the Morning mine?”
“All that I can find time, strength, and opportunity to expend in ways that will help the world,” rejoined the Arizona Gold King.
[From the New York Times, July 17, 1895.]
Mr. David Morning is engaged in works of apparent charity, which to many thoughtful men will seem an injury rather than a benefit to the world. Capitalists are entitled to receive interest upon their investments, and if inducement to accumulation be taken away by the competition of such Utopians as Mr. Morning, then frugality may cease to be accounted a virtue.
On the whole, wouldn’t it be better for the business world, and the stability of property and property rights, if the tenants of the Morning Blocks were compelled to pay the full rental value of their apartments?
[From the New York Socialist, July 19, 1895.]
Dave Morning is endeavoring to throw dust in the eyes of the working masses of the country, by erecting seventeen-story palaces for boodle bookkeepers, and twenty-story tenement houses for mechanics. He has filled San Francisco, Chicago, and several other cities with his humbug Co-operative Labor Aid Societies. He is evidently plotting for the presidency in 1896, and expects to reach the White House by a golden path.
“The poor of this country should accept no employment as a boon, nor consent to engage in any wage-saving and profit-sharing corporation that will force them to accumulate, and they should take no such favors from the rich as cheap rents or free homes. Let the unnatural accumulations of rich scoundrels be distributed among the people. No man is honestly entitled to have or hold anything except the fruits of his own labor. It would be better for the world, and for the great cause of socialism which the pseudo philanthropy of Morning delays and obstructs, if this Arizona Gold King could be tumbled head first down one of his own shafts, and his seventeen-story marble-paved Edens be dynamited out of existence.”