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CITY PLANNING
HOUSING
CITY PLANNING
HOUSING
BY
WERNER HEGEMANN
WITH A PREFACE BY
R. M. MAcIVER
FIRST VOLUME OF TEXT:
HISTORICAL and
SOCIOLOGICAL
ARCHITECTURAL BOOK PUBLISHING Co., INC.
112 WEST 46TH STREET, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1936, BY
ARCHITECTURAL BOOK PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
Reference
A?
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
872655
DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author begs permission to dedicate this book to his es
teemed friends,
ALVIN JOHNSON
and
JOSEPH HUDNUT
At the time when the freedom of learning and teaching was
eradicated from those countries in which it had formerly
flourished for hundreds and even thousands of years, these two
distinguished teachers extended the hospitality of their liberal
institutions, THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
and THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE OF COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY to the author who wishes to express his apprecia
tion in the modest form of this dedication.
The author is
greatly indebted to The Emergency Committee
in Aid of Displaced German Scholars, to Messrs. Frank Altschul,
George Gordon Battle, Cornelius N. Bliss, George Blumenthal,
Hon. William N. Cohen, Mr. Alfred A. Cook, Hon. John W.
Davis, Messrs. John A. Garver, Henry Ittleson, Henry Kauf
man, Mrs. William Korn, Miss Loula Lasker, Hon. Irving Leh
man, Miss Clara W. Mayer, Dr. and Mrs. Henry Morgenthau,
Mr. David L. Podell, Hon. Joseph M. and Mrs. Proskauer,
Messrs. Jackson E. Reynolds, Alfred L. Rose, John Schiff, Hon.
Clarence J. Shearn, Messrs. James Speyer, Max D. Steuer, Ar
thur Hays Sulzberger, Hon. Thomas D. Thacher, Mr. Ferdinand
Thun, Hon. George W. Wickersham, Messrs. Albert W. Putnam,
Frederick K. Seward, Kenneth Spence, S. M. Strook, Robert
T. Swaine, J. Du Pratt White, Henry A. Uterhart, Joseph P.
vi DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grace, and Charles H. Tuttle, who, by their endowment, made
his teaching at these institutions possible.
For valuable suggestions the author wishes to express his
gratitude to Mr. Henry Wright, Dr. Carol Aronovici, Messrs.
Albert S. Bard, Arthur C. Holden, Walter Kruesi, Albert Mayer,
and Walter Sanders.
Valuable material was supplied by Dr. Albert Lilienberg, Di
rector of the City Plan of Stockholm, and by Mr. Axel Dahlberg,
Director of the Municipal garden suburbs of Stockholm. The
author is indebted to the Appleton-Century Co. which permitted
the reproduction of the map of Washington's western tour from
their publication, "Washington and the West," by A. B. Hulbert,
1905.
For the reading of the manuscript in part or in full, the
author is indebted to Mrs. I. B. Hegemann, Dr. F. Wunderlich,
and Mr. Robert Weinberg.
Professor Robert M. Maclver had the kindness to read the
entire manuscript and offer important suggestions.
Invaluable was the critical collaboration of Dr. Ruth Nanda
Anshen who contributed to the book in its formative stage and
without whose patient assistance its completion would have been
impossible.
PREFACE
I welcome this work because it unites the knowledge of an
expert with the burning conviction of an enthusiast. It is this
union which inspires all important practical achievements. And
Dr. Hegemann is advocating a cause which demands and justifies
the enlightened fervor of his book. It is said that one half of
the people does not know how the other half lives. This is
literally true in respect of housing. If Dr. Hegemann is any
where nearly right in his statement that there are in the United
States ten millions of obsolete homes and that forty millions of
the population live in them, there can be few subjects of such vital
importance for the welfare of the country as the subject of this
book.
The history of the United States has been a patchwork of
planning and planlessness. There may be legitimate differences
of opinion with regard to national economic planning, though
that too has its roots far back in our history. There can surely
be no serious differences respecting the value, and indeed the
necessity, of civic planning, of intelligent provision and super
vision of adequate housing standards for the population, on
which their health, their comfort, and m no small measure their
happiness depend. From the beginning of the nineteenth century
we have been growing more and more urbanized, and countless
opportunities have been lost, in the scramble for unearned incre
ment, to establish the conditions which would have prevented
the development of slums and -fire-traps, of unhealthy congestion
and urban ugliness. The lesson can still be learned, and Dr.
Hegemann sets out to teach it.
One significant thing about this book is the deft use it makes
vii
viii PREFACE
of illustrations drawn from the history of the United States. It
shows that the great leaders of the past were more socially awake
and more socially daring than most of those who, with con
servative unction, appeal to them to-day. In reading American
history it is nevertheless difficult to escape the feeling that the
country would have prospered more and fared better if there
had been more, not less, planning; if more forethought and far
more statesmanship had been applied to the conservation of the
land, the forests, the mineral resources, the whole heritage of
nature, and to the reckless growth that changes thousands of
straggling villages into huddled urban areas.
You may not, you probably will not, agree with everything
that Dr. Hegemann writes, but you will assuredly carry away
from his book a new conception of the urgency of civic planning,
of the breadth and social significance of the principle, and of its
intimate connection with the present and future well-being of
the nation.
R. M. Maclver
Lieber Professor of
Political Philosophy
and Sociology,
Columbia University.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GEORGE WASHINGTON AS PLANNER OF A NEW EMPIRE
AND OF "THE METROPOLIS OF THE WEST" 1
I. THE UNITED STATES! A PLANNED COUNTRY 1
II. FORMER AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN CITY PLANNING . . 5
III. EXTRACTS FROM WASHINGTON^ LETTERS REFERRING
TO HIS1
PLANS FOR "THE NEW EMPIRE*' 10
IV. GEORGE WASHINGTON PLANNED A NATIONAL CENTER
OF LEARNING 14
V. THE FAILURE OF WASHINGTON'S PLANS 17
vi. GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FEDERAL REAL ESTATE OFFICE 20
vii. GEORGE WASHINGTON'S PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION TO
WARDS HOUSING THE NATION 25
VIII. PRESIDENT WASHINGTON LIMITS HEIGHTS OF BUILDINGS 26
IX. DOES THE FAILURE OF WASHINGTON'S PLAN TESTIFY
AGAINST PLANNING ? 30
CONCLUSION 38
II. NATIONAL PLANNING: A BASIC CONCEPTION OF THE
AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 40
III. HAMILTON FAVORED NATIONAL ACTION IN THE FIELD OF
PUBLIC WORKS, INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE 49
IV. JEFFERSON'S COMPREHENSIVE PLAN FOR NATIONAL
PUBLIC WORKS 57
V. LINCOLN APPRAISES PROPERTY. SLAVES AND SLUMS. ... 67
VI. CHRISTIANITY AND HOUSING 79
VII. HOMEBUILDERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 85
I. LINCOLN, EMERSON, MARX 85
II. HOW MARX HELPED THE CAUSE OF EUROPEAN HOUSING
AND OF THE AMERICAN UNION 94
VIII. HOUSING REFORM ORDERLY OR "FORCIBLE" METHODS'? 104
IX. COMPENSATION OF SLUM OWNERS 117
X. ALEXANDER HAMILTON OPPOSES "IMPRACTICAL COMPEN
SATION" 128
XI. ESTIMATES OF AMERICAN SLUM "VALUES" 131
ix
x CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XII. ORIGIN OF AMERICA'S "LIBERTY" TO BUILD SLUMS SYM
BOLIZED BY BURR'S DUEL WITH HAMILTON 141
XIII. NEW YORK REGION CAN HOLD TWICE THE POPULATION
OF THE GLOBE 159
XIV. CITIES PLACES TO DIE IN? "DESTRUCTION OF FICTI
TIOUS LAND VALUES" 178
XV. AMERICAN VERSUS BRITISH, MARXIAN AND RUSSIAN PLAN
NING 194*
XVI. PROSPERITY OF LABOR ESSENTIAL FOR GOOD HOUSING:
FROM THE PYRAMID BUILDERS TO PRESIDENT ELIOT OF
HARVARD 213
XVII. AMERICA IMITATES VIENNESE HOUSING 225
XVIII. WHY DOES AMERICA NEGLECT THE STOCKHOLM EX
AMPLE ? 240
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Comparison of densities of population in lower Manhattan,
1910 and 1930 xvi
Comparison of a planned country (United States) with a coun
try which "just growed" (Germany) . . .' 3
Comparison of the plans of the main streets in Saint Petersburg,
Russia, and Washington, D. C 8
MAP OF WASHINGTON'S WESTERN TOUR, SEPTEMBER, 1784.... 12
The Rape of the Constitution, Cartoon from The New Yorker . . 48
CHART OF THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OF PUBLIC WORKS PRO
POSED UNDER RESOLUTION OF U. S. SENATE, 1807 56
George Washington's Slave Quarters healthier than New York
Tenements 73
Comparison of modern garbage collector with the obsolete dirty
method still in frequent use in America 153
Modern telephone for one hand use 1 Ib. 4 ounces to be lifted
compared with old-fashioned telephone for two-hand use
4 Ibs. 11 ounces to be picked up still in frequent use and
even being newly installed 1 54
Dimensions of Egyptian, American and Russian structures. ... 196
Typical row-houses of London 201
Plans and views of old and new apartments in Vienna 227ff
Sketch-plans and views of Stockholm's Municipal cottages .... 248ff
INTRODUCTION
RECOVERY OF CIVIC PRIDE IN AMERICA
This slender volume of text and a second one in preparation
on "City Planning and Housing" and the accompanying atlas
of pictures and plans are intended to supplement and within
a small compass to bring up to date a previous and much
larger volume entitled "The American Vitruvius, an Architect's
Handbook of CIVIC ART." The text and the 1200 illustra
tions of that large volume (published in 1922) were dedicated
to civic art in its more restricted, i.e. exclusively esthetic sense.
At the time of its publication the esthetic aspects of city plan
ning seemed to demand, at least in America, primary attention.
The rest of the world was suffering from the aftermath of the
World War. But America's economic and social problems in
city planning and in most other fields would, it was perhaps
assumed, rapidly solve themselves, dissolving automatically, so
to speak into a new and permanent prosperity based upon the
large material profits accruing to America during the period
of and after her bloody sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of
her best young men.
Since the recent breakdown of "permanent" prosperity the
previous preoccupation with Civic Art in its narrower sense re
quires a word of explanation on the part of an author who re
ceived some of his first training with the great sociologists Charles
Gide, Simon N. Patten and Lujo Brentano, and who in his former
and subsequent writings has emphasized the adequate solution
of problems of social and political economy as preconditions of
artistic possibilities and civic beauty.
The dedication of the previous large volume to the artistic
problems of city planning was intended to be an antidote to
that lack of discrimination which, during the years intervening
between the Chicago World Fair of 1893 and the World War,
had made many advocates of city planning appear somewhat
ridiculous. The "city beautiful" had been advertised as a prof-
xi
xii INTRODUCTION
itable enterprise by men who had neither esthetic sensibility,
training, nor a just appreciation of economic possibilities. Even
secretaries of American City Clubs or Chambers of Commerce
and, occasionally, even architects who should have known bet
ter, had recommended expensive "beautification" schemes, some
of which were actually carried out in spite of their merits being
even more dubious from the point of view of esthetics than from
that of traffic and economics.
The first volume dealing with Civic Art began with the
assumption that "there was never a more deadly plague than
the ugliness of modern cities." Fortunately, or unfortunately,
many or most men are immune to the effect of this plague, be
cause they are indifferent to beauty other than the female kind.
And even the self-appointed civic beauty specialists often can
not agree on what they wish to designate as beautiful.
The present volume approaches the problem of city plan
ning from the more general premise that no city should be con
sidered more beautiful than its most ugly and unsanitary
tenement house. A chain is never stronger than its weakest link.
"A world that is squalid in one corner is squalid altogether";
(H. G. Wells).
But most people, ruthlessly, adapt themselves even to squalor.
Science has discovered microbes which fatten lustily on the filth
in which they live. By a similar process of adaptation and se
lection even dignified and well-to-do representatives of the human
species develop a naive or cynical blindness to any squalid or
miserable aspect that may present itself not within direct and
immediate sight but just around the corner. "Within three
minutes of Park Avenue's expensive apartments there are 1,737
families without washrooms in their tenement homes . . .
17,334
Manhattan families spend less than three dollars per room per
month for their flats." (New York Times, August 27, 1934).
However, even those fortunate ones who are able to spend more
than three dollars per room per month have lately learned not
to remain quite indifferent to such almost daily newspaper head
lines as: "400,000 Families on Relief Jn City at 201,000,000
dollars cost" ; or : "25 per cent of Homes here lack Sanitation" ;
(N. Y. Times, Aug. 27, 1934). We hear that "more than a
million and a half people in the City of New York live in houses
INTRODUCTION xiii
which are unfit for human habitation. ... As long as nearly
one-third of our fellow citizens are condemned to lives of filth
and squalor we cannot call ourselves humane, nor socially intel
ligent" (from the Radio address of the Chairman of the New
York Housing Authority, Hon. Langdon W. Post, April 25,
1935). It will be shown in this volume that, according to the
latest investigations, approximately 40 million Americans live in
slums and blighted districts.
One of the most promising indications of our time seems to
be that people are becoming weary of being huddled into bad
tenements. The New York Housing Commissioner assures us :
"The recent Harlem riot was not purely a race riot, as many
suppose the Harlem riot was a slum riot." What a perspec
tive ! Even the French Revolutions have aptly been described as
Parisian slum riots to which an end could be put only by the
billion dollar slum clearance of Napoleon III who was determined
to "slash the belly of revolutions." Will the negroes of New
York initiate similarly historical achievements and awaken the
white conscience of the world's largest city? For the 697 plate
glass windows smashed in 125th Street and 7th Avenue, the in
surance companies had to pay $147,315. This would be a low
price if it could lead to New York's realizing and improving the
unbearable housing conditions of Harlem.
The negroes of New York and other American cities are
forced to pay as much as 40 per cent higher rents than their
white fellow sufferers pay and even then to accept worse quar
ters. The negroes' healthy rebellion against this injustice is old
and has already manifested itself in some highly promising crea
tions all over the country. The miserable white neighbors
of New York's Park Avenue in their less than three-dollar rooms
present a rather poor figure compared with the prouder and
more efficient Harlem negroes living in the Paul Laurence Dunbar
Apartments financed by Mr. Rockefeller. There the colored
tenants pay an average rent of $14.50 per month. The negroes
living in the equally well designed Michigan Boulevard Gardens,
Chicago, even pay rentals averaging $16.25 per month per room.
And in making this startling comparison between whites and
colored people, one can fathom the difficulties of American hous
ing problems by remembering that even this five-fold rent paid
xiv INTRODUCTION
by the negroes covers barely one-half of what could be called a
normal interest on the capital invested in their model housing
scheme.
Can present American wages pay for what, at present, is
considered to be decent housing, or even for that minimum of
housing decency which physicians, educators and statesmen, to
day, must demand? Or are the American building codes, tra
ditional building standards, "zoning" ordinances, valuations and
assessments of real estate, so designed or depraved as to en
courage and enforce indecent and unhygienic housing for large
sections of the American people? Who has made such depraved
laws? And for whose benefit? And if American wages cannot
pay for what to-day is considered to be American decency in
housing, how is the deficit to be paid? Or is indecency to prevail
permanently? There may still be quite a number of Americans
who attach a definite meaning to the right to the "pursuit of
happiness" promised in the Declaration of Independence and to
the provision in the Preamble of the Constitution that entrusts to
the Government the promotion of the general welfare. Those
Americans who cherish such ideals may refuse to accept indecency
in American housing as inevitable. But do they realize that in
order to change the present unsatisfactory situation very com
prehensive measures must be taken and rather large sums be spent
to meet the emergency? And can these sums be spent in a hap
hazard way, patching here and there, or is a plan necessary in
dicating how these sums should be spent most effectively? What
plan should that be? Is the experience of foreign countries worth
while studying? They have made gigantic attempts to meet a
similar emergency and to stamp out indecent and unhygienic
housing. Have they succeeded? Can similar efforts be hoped
for in America?
Fortunately civic pride as well as efficiency of the white in
habitants of American cities are rapidly increasing. The old Eng
lish saying cannot be too often repeated, namely that one may kill
or disable a man just as well with a bad dwelling as with an ax.
As long as this disguised state of lawlessness is tolerated and
encouraged by building codes and law courts, the resistance
against criminal abuse must come from the surviving victims.
A grocer is forbidden to sell decayed food. As long as a slum
INTRODUCTION xv
owner is encouraged or compelled (by tax assessor and sheriff)
to sell decayed and poisonous housing, as long as such enforced
crime is
euphemistically labelled "maintaining the credit struc
ture of the country," so long does the hope for social security and
regeneration lie in the victimized tenant and in his energy for
self-assertion.
Cheering symptoms can be found in the report (written by
a prominent New York realtor, Mr. Louis Carreau) on the "Re
moval of Obsolete Buildings and the Rebuilding of Slum Districts
in New York." Here the following words refer to the obnoxious
"old law" tenements : "The sons and daughters of the immigrants
will not live in them, and ironic as it may seem, people that are
today on public relief rolls refuse to live in them."
"Ironic as it may seem," people on relief, today, have a more
just appreciation of what is good for them and for the taxpaying
community at large than the former legislators of New
York City who made the unbelievably stupid laws creating the
"old law" and the almost equally bad "new law" tenements. It
is the enlightened and vanishing slumdweller who helps in the
realization of Henry Ford's prophecy: "Nothing will finally
work more effectively to undo the fateful grip which the City
habit has taken upon the people, than the destruction of the
fictitious land values which the City traditions have set up and
maintained"; ("Ford Ideals," p. 157).
Partly as a result of this reawakening common sense, the
Lower East Side's assessed valuation on land and buildings de
clined from 324 million dollars in 1930 to 270 million dollars
in 1933. This is a decline of 16.6%. In 1933, 20% of the "old
law" tenements were left standing vacant while six years previ
ously only 8% had met this necessary fate. Such a march of
events would, indeed, look like hopeful progress if there were
not the obvious danger that the growing housing shortage would
again fill with tenants even those numerous and abominable tene
ments which ought to be destroyed as rapidly as possible. The
depression having forced many of its victims to "double up" in
"old law" tenements, a "return of prosperity" may make them
spread out again and refill some of the at present empty fire-
traps.
xvi INTRODUCTION
DENSITY 1910
PER ACRE
Z4 "
B 45O
214 Tracts As of 191O
(See text on preceding page.)
COURTESY OF THE NEW YORK MAYOR'S CITY PLANNING COMMITTEE.
DENSITY 1930
PER ACRE
267 Tract*
(See text on preceding page.)
COURTESY OF THE NEW YORK MAYOR'S CITY PLANNING COMMITTEE.
INTRODUCTION xvii
The following example, although a perhaps less reassuring
one, further illustrates the new growth of civic pride. When,
in 1934, the Massachusetts State Housing Board recommended
that Boston's slums be razed at the expense of the Federal Gov
ernment, the Mayor of Boston (according to a report of the
New York Times) did not object, but instead insisted that Boston
had no "slums." In the City Council, therefore, a resolution in
support of the State Board's recommendation had to be amended
by the substitution of the phrase "rehabilitation of substandard
areas" for that of "slum clearance." (N. Y. Times, Aug. 30,
1934.)
The increasing moral and esthetic sensibility of such au
thorities as the Boston City Council, of such badly housed masses
as the Harlem negroes and of the intelligent white slum dwellers
who have fled from lower Manhattan justifies the old contention
reemphasized in this volume that the main problem of city
planning is decent low cost housing.
"What House Can One Get for $10 a Month? This is the
Most Important Question in City Planning," was the title of
the concluding chapter of the author's "Report on a City Plan
for the Municipalities of Oakland and Berkeley, California" ;
(published in 1915 ; p. 119ff.). To-day, when more than one half
of all Americans have incomes of less than $1000 per year, a
similar slogan might advantageously inspire all city planning
in America.
The strengthening of civic pride and the recognition of the
importance of housing the masses decently must soon become
one of the main objects of social, economic and political en
deavors and of historic research. A corresponding reorganiza
tion of all human enterprise and of all human appreciation is
necessary.
The history of great cities (such as Athens and Rome) and
of nations (such as the Egyptian, the French or the English)
was formerly, for the most part, written in terms of coronations,
battles and conquests, domination and starvation. Later and
wiser historians wrote histories of "cultural" development. But
upon closer inspection this culture turned out to be largely the
preoccupation or sport of a comparatively small upper class
without due consideration for the masses slaving for their "bet-
xviii INTRODUCTION
ters." Histories of "economic progress" have been written and
were largely accounts of the achievements of "robber barons."
Although most historic writing is produced and consumed
by city dwellers and deals with the progress of cities, the history
of city planning and housing and their political background is
still for the most part unconsidered and unwritten. Only such
history, however, can reach the rock bottom of facts. It can
thus reveal the truth about the economic, social and political
position of the individual and of the masses.
How many square feet of sheltered floor area and of open
garden space, how many cubic feet of air, how much privacy,
free movement, easily accessible play area and forest, how
much water for swimming and boating can the average indi
vidual enjoy undisturbedly in a given region or country? If
we can supply the answers to these important questions, we can
not only measure the essential achievements of city planning
but we also are permitted a fairly accurate idea of the individ
ual's true opportunities in his material life; and we even come
curiously close to knowing what his opportunities may be for
a spiritual life and for communication with nature or with his
God, and also what hope there is of his escaping his devil, real
or imaginary.
The outworn term "civilization" will gradually give way
to the fresher and more specific (although etymologically almost
identical) term "urbanism" and its new, definite, but wide im
plication.
Since the conception of this volume quite a number of new
and valuable books and articles on city planning and housing
have been published (for instance, those by Thomas Adams,
Catherine Bauer, Albert Mayer, and Henry Wright; there are
also many others). Much, therefore, of what the following
volume originally intended to say has been said, and better said,
by others. There is no need for repetition. The field to be
explored is unlimited. The continuous changes of its conditions
are rapid. It is impossible to cover all phases in a few hundred
pages which do not pretend to be encyclopaedic. The present
volume tries to avoid dwelling on such phases of the subject as
INTRODUCTION xix
have recently been dealt with by other writers, unless there is
some hope of presenting a sufficiently different point of view.
For these reasons this volume makes a liberal use of such
quotations of old and new statements as seemed to the author
capable of confirming such of his views as do not conform to
current prejudice or as might otherwise appear paradoxical.
By this liberal use of quotations the author hopes to assemble
in his book a certain amount of documentary evidence and, also,
to strengthen the possibilities of a more general understanding
and collaboration. No field is more in need of reasoned co
ordination than city planning and housing where often even
cultivated persons are the victims of prejudice and ignorance.
The author of this book knows first rate doctors of philosophy
who believe with Plato that philosophers should rule the world
but who are lacking in the most primitive conceptions of presentday
justice, statesmanship and brotherly love. Much of the
abortive "city beautiful" propaganda has been compromised by
this dangerous "trahison des clercs."
The few sketches contained in this volume, for some of which
the author is indebted to his friends, Messrs. Gunther Arndt,
John G. Breck, Charles Warner and Chauncey Stillman, do not
attempt to anticipate the large atlas of photographs and plans
which is in preparation and which will be a sister publication to
the folio volume, "Civic Art."
The subtitle of this volume, "Sociological and Historical," in
contrast to the subtitle of the second volume in preparation,
"Political Economy and Civic Art," constitutes aspects of city
planning which are intimately related and which cannot be artifi
cially separated. These subtitles have been introduced at the
suggestion of the publisher.
An alphabetical index will be found at the end of the second
volume of text and another index comprising the material of all
the volumes including the one entitled "Civic Art" will be found
at the end of the Atlas in preparation.
FIRST CHAPTER
GEORGE WASHINGTON AS PLANNER OF A NEW EMPIRE AND
OF "THE METROPOLIS OF THE WEST"
I. THE UNITED STATES I A PLANNED COUNTRY
The United States, from its beginning, was a creation of
reasoning and of planfully acting men rather than a growth of
purely "natural" forces.
In darker ages and before human reason was fully acknowl
edged as a directing factor, nations were ruled by successful
soldiers, high priests, astronomers and similar allies of tran
scendental forces. To overcome the resulting disorder, Plato
wanted men to be ruled by practical philosophers, friends of the
truth, of wisdom and science. But even before Plato, some of
the greatest political achievements seem to have been due to
farsighted planners, such as the braintrusters who calculated
the irrigation works of old Egypt and made her the mother of
the white man's civilization. And after Plato, great statesmen,
such as Alexander, the disciple of Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius,
the imperial philosopher, tried to live up to Plato's great con
ception. The cultural history of the Middle Ages consisted
largely of a series of efforts to revive classical ideals, until the
Renaissance brought not only a revival, but an age of new dis
coveries in science and travel. America is the proud daughter
of this renaissance. And the Declaration of Independence
promised at least a partial fulfillment of Plato's demands that
planful reason or philosophy should rule the State.
The American Declaration is dictated by a very human and
statesmanlike philosophy. The leaders of American life were
technicians, engineers, surveyors, real estate men and architects
rather than soldiers. Benjamin Franklin, author of a first "Plan
of Union" and prominent among the authors of the Declaration
was a great "philosopher" in the sense of his time, and one of its
internationally respected philosophical minds. "Franklin seeks
1
2 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
rather to make philosophy a useful inmate and servant in the
common habitations of man than to preserve her merely as an
object of admiration in temples and palaces" (Sir Humphrey
Davy). When Franklin abandoned his printing trade and
purchased "philosophical apparatus," he did not use them for
dabbling in astrology or transcendentals. But he invented the
lightning rod and made the fire of heaven subservient to human
plans. He was deeply interested in western lands and coloniza
tion, in municipal affairs, street cleaning, and efficient fire fight
ing. He measured the post roads, caused milestones to be
erected upon them and increased the number and speed of the
riders. Although successful as a soldier, he refused a general
ship.
Thomas Paine, whose widely distributed political writings
strongly helped to prepare the American people for their Dec
laration of Independence is the author of a unique design for
iron bridges, a model of which startled Stephenson.
Thomas Jefferson who wrote the largest sections of the
Declaration, is one of the most eminent architects America has
produced. Architect is a Greek word for master-builder or lead
ing planner and engineer. George Washington, although a
soldier, was not a professional nor ah enthusiastic one, but a
large scale real estate man and, later, a farmer. For some part
of his life, he had been a practicing engineer, or rather a land
planner and surveyor just as Lincoln, a hundred years later
had been.
When Washington employed his shrewdness as a trained
realtor for securing for the government the land required for
the Federal Capital at low cost, he had to tell a recalcitrant
land owner: "Had not the Federal city been laid out here, you
would have died a poor tobacco planter." And according to a
persistent family tradition he received an impertinent answer
in broad Scotch: "an' had ye nae married the Widow Custis,
wi' a' her nagurs, you would have been a land surveyor to-day,
an' a' mighty poor one at that." (Cf. S. C. Busey, "Pictures
of The City of Washington in The Past" p. 41 f.) This was
only another way of stating the fact that George Washington
was made Commander-in-Chief of the revolutionary army not
only for his military achievements, but also "one of the main
reasons for picking him at this stage was that he was one of the
FIRST CHAPTER 3
richest and most prominent men in Virginia" and that "his choice
to head the rebel army would carry unusual weight both in Eng
land and the colonies." (Cf. James Truslow Adams, The March
of Democracy, p. 110.)
There have, of course, been among American Presidents a
large number of popular soldiers. In America, as in other coun
tries, the capacity for military planning or, at any rate, for
remaining victorious, has often been thought to be a proof of a
man's capacity for governing a state and for successfully plan
ning its civic policies. The corruption under the Presidency of
General Grant has largely cured the nation of this prejudice.
But it still appears less natural than it did during Thomas
Jefferson's administration that these States could be ruled by a
man prominently interested in architecture and engineering.
This may be due to the misfortune of an international depression
descending upon President Herbert Hoover, who before being
elected to the Presidency, was "the great engineer." Never
theless, there exists, today, some prejudice against engineers in
the White House (as there existed, fifteen years ago, some prej
udice against "professors" there). And this is rather strange in
a country which in its formative years was governed success
fully by surveyors and an architect.
One single glance at the map of the United States proves the
contention that we live in a planned country. Nowhere else in
the world do the boundary lines of States and counties sweep in
equally straight and obviously planned lines across seemingly
endless stretches of prairies and mountains. One has but to
compare the astounding map of these distinctly planned United
^TATLbOUMDAPIL!)
bOUHDAPlE!)
^ ^3^^\ 7& > > WITHIN THE
OP THL W* LXL-4 GEBMAN PEICH
UNITtD STATED
OF AMERICA
193*2
4 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
States with a map of their predecessors, i.e. with the maps of
older great unions of states, and one will realize at once the great
novelty of American planning. These preceding unions, such
as the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" were not
planned but, like Topsy, "just growed." Even if one takes the
small remainder of this "Holy Roman Empire" as it was left
after the dictatorial simplifications and amputations (operated
by such bloody would-be rationalists as Frederic II, Napoleon I,
and Bismarck) one finds a map which looks like a small crazyquilt
compared with the large and majestically simple pattern
of the rationalistically planned United States.
Such a comparison, to be sure, by no means indicates that
the powerful planning which, from the inception of the American
States, so dictatorially simplifying their map, was always good
planning. In fact, we know that in many cases American plan
ning was rather schematic and routine and that it was unconscious
of hundreds of essential features which should have influenced
the plan. (And, of course, the present author does not defend
bad planning, even if it did at times become part of American
tradition and routine, but rather good planning.) However,
the fact remains that the United States entered upon the road
of its civic existence at a time when planning thought and the
chain of the surveyor were used to tie together and subdivide
larger areas than ever before and when the rationalistic method
of solving the political and economic problems of mankind con
quered mental and material territories formerly out of bounds.
Rationalism tried to solve the old and new problems of humanity
and was by no means always successful. America may seriously
suffer from the childhood diseases of rationalism. But the future
of America depends upon her overcoming these diseases and upon
her learning to plan better than before. There is no future for
America in her trying to abandon and forsake rationalism,
which is after all the great motivating power that has discovered
and developed her. There is no permanent possibility of her
returning to the older modes of national survival which did not
rely upon rational planning but upon accidental growth or
"muddling through."
This latter mode has been praised, in the late eighteenth and
in the nineteenth centuries, as the specifically British mode of
FIRST CHAPTER 5
statesmanship. America separated herself from this obsolete
English conception by her Declaration of Independence. And
even Great Britain, before entering the twentieth century,
abandoned her old political conceptions of laissez-faire. The
English Town Planning Acts of 1909, 1925, and 1932, the
Regional Planning Laws of 1919 and 1929, and many social
insurance laws (not to speak of the numerous Acts since 1890,
enforcing decent housing for the working classes), are only a
few of the many signs indicating that England has entered the
modern communion of planning states and is, in fact, today, one
of the leaders.
H. FORMER AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN CITY PLANNING
In saying that the United States since its foundation has
been "a planned country" and that governmental city planning
has played here a specially prominent role one must define what
is meant by "planning." Since our "civilization" as even the
etymology of the phrase suggests is predominantly a civic or
urban civilization, most planning is in the last analysis predom
inantly planning for citizens, or city planning.
The word "city planning" has a variety of meanings, two
of which cover especially important fields. In both fields the
United States, from its beginning, has been an international
leader, a fact so contrary to common prejudice that it merits
discussion.
City planning, in one of its most commonly accepted mean
ings, signifies the laying out of an individual city and providing
for its physical perfection. In this sense George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson were city planners when they employed
the French engineer Major L'Enfant, to design the national
capital.
"I have thought," so George Washington wrote (Nov. 20,
1791), "that . . . for prosecuting public works and carrying
them into effect, Major L'Enfant was better qualified than any
one, who had come within my knowledge in this country, or in
deed in any other, the probability of obtaining whom could be
counted upon." And Major L'Enfant who was thus selected
for carrying out the first great public works of the American
nation could justly say (Sept. 11, 1789) : "No nation had ever
6 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
before the opportunity offered them of deliberately deciding on
the spot where their Capital City should be fixed, or of combining
every necessary consideration in the choice of situation."
L'Enfant truthfully, although in not very good English, con
cluded another letter to President Washington as follows
(Aug. 19, 1797) : "As I remain assured you will conceive it
essential to pursue with dignity an undertaking of a magnitude
so worthy of the concern of a grand empire, I have not hesitated
to express myself freely, realizing that the nation's honor is
bound up in its complete achievement and that over its progress
the nations of the world, watching with eyes of envy, themselves
having been denied the opportunity, will stand as judge."
Indeed, for the streets and water-ways of the national
capital, for the location of its buildings and "monuments," the
fathers of the nation desired the most perfect lay-out conceivable
in their time. They reaped considerable benefit from the fine
European city planning precedent of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. But unfettered by the past they adapted
its lessons to the new American situation. Out of the plans of
papal Rome and feudal Versailles, and the zoning ordinance of
Paris, they created a new plan which symbolized their new con
ception of government with its separation of executive and legis
lative powers. If the founders of America had been confronted
with the complicated technical, political and housing problems
of twentieth century urbanism, they undoubtedly would have
met them with the same creative spirit, independent of older
conceptions and antiquated regulations.
In another important meaning of the phrase, city planning
aims not so much at the planning of one individual city as it
does more generally at the planning of groups of cities and sub
sidiary settlements, at the correlating of them by well-conceived
public works (such as roads and canals) and at locating them
in such suitable areas as to make them organizing centers of
economic "regions" and states. And the capital of a rising na
tion must be the organizing center of an economic and commer
cial empire. The City of Washington, as conceived by its
founders, was to have been such a center: the metropolis of a
new world. Indeed, if the last mentioned conception of city
planning is understood, George Washington and Thomas Jeffer-
FIRST CHAPTER 7
son must be recognized as perhaps the most ambitious city and
empire planners of all times.
Alexander the Great and the Roman conquerors were also
in intention and in fact ambitious city planners and planners
of public works. In the execution of their plans they were more
immediately successful than the great Americans. The Greeks
and Romans, without delay, covered their newly acquired
provinces with a network of roads centering in new cities like
Priene, Alexandria, Paris, Vienna, London, or Cologne. The
Frenchmen were by no means impractical city builders when
(as Henry Adams tells us in his "Mont Saint Michel and
Chartres") "in the single century between 1170 and 1270, the
French built eighty cathedrals and nearly 500 churches of the
cathedral class, which would have cost, according to an estimate
made in 1840, more than 5,000 millions to replace. Five thou
sand million francs is a thousand million dollars, and this covered
only the great churches of a single century." The English, too,
were enterprising city builders when, in the thirteenth century,
they established thirty cities, like Montpazier, in Southern
France (see "Civic Art" I, Fig. 982, p. 229). Since the eleventh
century, the Germans built hundreds of similar pioneer towns
and thousands of villages in the wide territories east of the Elbe.
One of these settlements, Berlin, has subsequently grown to
capital size, just as six hundred years later, in America, the
small pioneer post, Chicago, evolved into a city of capital im
portance. When Berlin was founded, eastern Europe was for
the Teutons what later Eastern Russia and Siberia became for
the Russians and what, still later, the American West became for
the English-American settlers, namely, a field for colonial ex
pansion.
George Washington has been called "the Father of the
West." It is true that his latest English biographer, Michael
de la Bedoyere, frankly derides the idea of Washington's im
perial farsightedness. This English writer contends that Wash
ington "could never be" a "statesman," that Hamilton was the
actual leader, and that Washington's interest in the West was
primarily that of a land speculator, secondarily that of "ardent"
Virginian "provincialism," and last and least of all that of a
patriot and champion of the American Union. But John Corbin
8 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
(author of "The Unknown Washington") seems to prove that
this English contention is wrong (cf. New York Times, Book
Review, Oct. 13, 1935, p. 19).
In any case, Washington recognized, at an early date, the
immense opportunities of the West. One may even say that his
comprehension of the necessities and possibilities of planning
and city planning can hardly be outrivaled by even such large
scale planners as Czar Peter, called the Great, or the "great"
Czarina Catherine, or Lenin and Stalin, however altruistic or
selfish they may have been. The resemblance between Russian
and American possibilities has often been commented upon.
(See Fifteenth Chapter.)
Czar Peter built his new capital city of Saint Petersburg
(today called Leningrad) to be the point of vantage in a great
canal system and commercial empire, very much as a hundred
years later President Washington built his city of Washing
ton to control a new canal system and commercial empire.
Peter and Washington summoned the best European experts
they could find to plan their city. Both used the Roman-French
street pattern of three highways radiating from the main public
building. Peter's methods of city building were more violent.
He permitted no stone houses to be erected in all Russia, except
in his new capital. He forced 100,000 people to live then and
there, many thousands of whom died miserably in the swamps
of the new capital. The great swamp of Washington demanded
fewer victims. To conquer it President Washington and his
successors used gentler and, in the long run, more effective
methods. The population of Washington never experienced as
U.S. CAPITOL
m
FIRST CHAPTER 9
severe a setback as did that of Saint Petersburg after great
Peter's death. But as far as imperial ambition was concerned
Czar Peter, selecting the wide provinces of Sweden and Persia
he was to conquer, could not have acted much more imperialistically
than Washington did in his dealings with the
Indians and in taking their lands, "notwithstanding the procla
mation that restrains it at present and prohibits the settlement
of them all; for I can never look upon that proclamation in any
other light (but this I say between ourselves) than as a tempo
rary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians. . . .
Any
person, therefore who neglects the present opportunity of hunt
ing out good lands, and in some measure working and dis
tinguishing them for his own, in order to keep others from
settling them, will never regain it." Thus wrote George Wash
ington in 1763 to Captain William Crawford. And young Czar
Peter could very well have written the line contained in young
Washington's letter of October 17, 1753: "A pusillanimous be
haviour would ill suit the times."
This was written when Washington was twenty-one years
old and had just completed his journey to the Ohio River and
to the French posts on the Allegheny which still were an obstacle
to his imperial dreams. His "Journal" describing this "tour"
reveals his early realization of the historic importance of the
struggle between France and England for the possession of the
great West. In the year 1749, his brothers, Lawrence and
Augustine had become members, and Lawrence the chief manager,
of the Ohio Company, which was formed in Virginia that year
for the colonization of the Ohio country. This company had
there received a grant of 500,000 acres from the British King
and represented the first scheme for the settlement of the West
by Englishmen, emulating the older and, at that time, successful
French and Spanish schemes. George Washington took part in
England's successful war against France, and, in recognition
of his services as an officer, received 5,000 acres on the Ohio.
He gained control over the claims granted to many other soldiers.
At one time he controlled over 60,000 acres on the Ohio.
Washington's will shows that even much later, he possessed 49,-
083 acres. Washington's estimated wealth was over half a
million dollars, more than four hundred thousand of which lay
10 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
in Western lands ; and it is probable that he secured nearly all
of this prior to 1784.
Washington's plans to colonize his western possessions, by
importing Germans from the Palatinate (as the Russian empress
Catherine and the German empress Maria Theresa had done
for their colonial settlements), are but an index of the direction
his business pursuits might have taken, had he not been called
to command the Army and afterwards to head the State. When
it came to securing a speedy development of the new Federal
city, which was to bear his name, Washington renewed his
German plan on a smaller scale. On Dec. 18, 1792, he proposed
to import "indented" workmen from Germany; "because they
may probably be obtained from thence on better terms than from
other quarters and they are known to be a steady and laborious
people. . . . The compensation of the person employed to pro
cure them is one guinea per head, for as many as he may de
liver.
HIS PLANS FOE
Very early in a letter dated July 20, 1770, to Thomas John
son, the first state-governor of Maryland, George Washington
suggested that the opening of the Potomac be "recommended to
public notice upon a more enlarged plan, as a means of becoming
the channel of conveyance of the extensive and valuable trade of
a rising empire." And he became the principal sponsor of a
bill for the establishment of a corporation to attempt the exten
sion of the navigation of the Potomac. Fifteen years before
this he had recommended the construction of a military road to
the Ohio. His first thought at the close of the Revolution was
again the importance of establishing good communication with
the West. Even before peace was definitely declared, he left
the camp at Newburgh and, at considerable personal risk, ex
plored on horseback the Mohawk route. He gave an account
of this trip in a letter to the Chevalier de Chastellux, Oct. 12,
1783. Among other things he declared:
"Prompted by these actual observations, I could not help
taking a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast in
land navigation of these United States, and could not but be
FIRST CHAPTER 11
struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it, and with
the goodness of that Providence which has dealt his favors to
us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom
enough to improve them! I shall not rest contented till I
have explored the western country, and traversed those lines,
or a great part of them, which have given bounds to a new
empire." A new empire!
After his return to Mount Vernon, Washington wrote a
letter to Thomas Jefferson dated March 29, 1784, in which he
said :
"My opinion coincides perfectly with yours respecting the
practicability of an easy and short communication between the
waters of the Ohio and Potomac, of the advantage of that com
munication and the preference it has over all others, and of the
policy there would be in this State (i.e. Virginia) and Maryland
to adopt and render it facile. But I confess to you freely, I
have no expectation, that the public will adopt the measure;
for, besides the jealousies which prevail, and the difficulty of
proportioning such funds as may be allotted for the purposes
you have mentioned, there are two others which, in my opinion,
will be yet harder to surmount. These are (if I have not imbibed
too unfavorable an opinion of my countrymen) the impractica
bility of bringing the great and truly wise policy of the measure
to their view, and the difficulty of extracting money from them
for such a purpose. ... I am not so disinterested in this
matter as you are; but I am made very happy to find that a
man of discernment and liberality, who has no particular inter
est in the plan, thinks as I do, who have lands in that country,
the value of which would be enhanced by the adoption of such a
measure."
Unfortunately President Washington's opinion of his coun
trymen was by no means "too unfavorable." "The impractica
bility of bringing to their view the great and truly wise policy"
of large scale planning, did actually destroy the far reaching
plan of George Washington (as it destroyed, in 1808, the equally
extensive plan of Thomas Jefferson).
On the first of September of the same year, 1784, George
Washington started on an exploring expedition to the headwaters
of the Ohio, traveling nearly 700 miles on horseback, writing a
FIRST CHAPTER 13
journal, making maps and outlining routes some of which have
since been adopted, substantially, by the branches of the Balti
more and Ohio Railroad. The first result of this second "tour"
was a letter to Governor Benjamin Harrison, dated October 10,
1784. The following short excerpts from this long letter are
especially interesting since they prophesy the danger of secession
which would threaten the Union in case Washington's farsighted
planning for the national capital in the center of an effective
transportation system should remain unheeded. Washington
wrote :
"I need not remark to you, Sir, that the flanks and rear of
the United States are possessed by other powers, and formidable
ones too ; nor how necessary it is to apply the cement of interest
to bind all parts of the Union together by indissoluble bonds,
especially that part of it, which lies immediately west of us, with
the middle states. For what ties, let me ask, should we have upon
VQthose people? How entirely unconnected with them shall we be,
Vand what troubles may we not apprehend, if the Spaniards on
"^
their right, and Great Britain on their left, instead of throwing
O stumbling blocks in their way, as they now do, should hold out
^ lures for their trade and alliance? What, when they get
^ strength, which will be sooner than most people conceive (from
the emigration of foreigners, who will have no particular predi
lection towards us, as well as from the removal of our own
citizens), will be the consequence of their having formed close
^connexions with both or either of those powers, in a commercial
way? It needs not, in my opinion, the gift of prophecy to foreThe
Western States (I speak now from my own observastand
as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather
^h would turn them any way. They have looked down the Missis-sippi,
until the Spaniards, very impolitically I think for them
selves, threw difficulties in their way; and they looked that way
-Qfor no other reason, than because they could glide gently down
_the stream; without considering, perhaps, the difficulties of the
r~ voyage back again, and the time necessary to perform it in ; and
because they have no other means of coming to us but by long
land transportations and unimproved roads. These causes have
hitherto checked the industry of the present settlers. ... In
a word, let the waters east and west of the Ohio, which invite our
14 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
notice by their proximity, and by the ease with which land trans
portation may be had between them and the Lakes on one side,
and the Rivers Potomac and James on the other, be explored,
accurately delineated, and a correct and connected map of the
whole be presented to the public. These things being done, I shall
be mistaken if prejudice does not yield to facts, jealousy to
candor, and, finally if reason and nature thus aided, do not dic
tate what is right and proper to be done. . . .
Upon the whole,
the object in my estimation is of vast commercial and political
importance. In this light I think posterity will consider it, and
regret, if our conduct should give them cause, that the present
favorable moment to secure so great a blessing for them was
neglected."
IV. GEORGE WASHINGTON PLANNED A NATIONAL CENTEE
OF LEARNING.
Three months later Governor Harrison of Virginia, received
another letter from General Washington (Jan. 22, 1785). Har
rison had evidently been very active in behalf of the canal project
and its famous promoter. Washington answered: "The atten
tion and good wishes, which the Assembly (of Virginia) have
evidenced by their act for vesting in me one hundred and fifty
shares in the navigation of the rivers Potomac and James, are
more than mere compliment." Washington, who four years later
was to change from the presidency of a canal company to the
Presidency of the United States, accepted the proffered shares
with much greater reluctance than is customary among generals
presented with similar offers. He accepted only under the condi
tion that he should be permitted "to appropriate the said shares
to public uses." And relative to his wide waterways project he
proudly added: "Not content, then, with the bare consciousness
of my having, in all this navigation business, acted upon the clear
est conviction of the political importance of the measure, I would
wish that every individual, who may hear that it was a favorite
plan of mine, may know also that I had no other motive for pro
moting it, than the advantage of which I conceived it would be
productive to the Union, and to this State (of Virginia) in par
ticular, by cementing the eastern and western territory together,
FIRST CHAPTER 15
at the same time that it will give vigor and increase to our com
merce and be a convenience to our citizens."
Washington's interminable political labors interfered with the
bringing of his great canal project to its fruition. Washington
was deeply troubled at the growing anarchy resulting from the
post-Revolutionary economic depression, which soon afterwards
led to Shays' Rebellion (1786-87) and to the danger of a civil
war within the new American confederation. In 1783, Washing
ton had already written his famous Circular Letter to the gover
nors of the states and had stressed the need for a supreme central
power to regulate the general concerns of the commonwealth.
But it was only through the energetic efforts of Madison that the
states of Virginia and Maryland finally agreed to participate in
that memorable conference of 1785, at Mount Vernon, a confer
ence which attempted the settlement of navigation problems on
the Potomac and led to the quite extra legal conventions of
Annapolis and Philadelphia and to the writing of the American
Constitution.
All this was necessarily slow work. Meanwhile, George
Washington bequeathed (and confirmed the gift in his will) "the
hundred shares which I hold in the James River Company, in per
petuity to and for the use of Liberty Hall Academy." And his
fifty shares in the Potomac Company he gave "towards the endow
ment of a university to be established within the limits of the
District of Columbia" and to counteract "not only habits of dissi
pation and extravagance, but principles unfriendly to republican
government, and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind."
Thus Washington foreshadowed the dream of his successor,
President John Adams, who hoped to finance public education by
means of America's public resources honestly managed. It is to
be regretted that the realization of practical democratic ideas has
been left to fascistic opponents of democracy. Quite recently,
the late Governor Huey Long of Louisiana followed Washington's
and John Adams' suggestion by introducing into his State
severance taxes on oil, gas, lumber and other natural resources
which made possible free school books for all children, black and
white, rich and poor, in public and private schools. (Cf. The
New Republic, Feb. 13, 1935, p. 14.)
16 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
In endowing a University, Washington expressed his ideals
of democratic imperialism thus ; "It has been my ardent wish to
see a plan devised, on a liberal scale, which would have a tendency
to spread systematic ideas through all parts of this rising empire,
thereby to do away with local attachments and State preju
dices. . . ."
At the time of Washington's death the market value of the
canal company's shares he had given to the University was below
par, or less than 15,000 pounds sterling. But Washington was
optimistic. In a letter to Alexander Hamilton, Washington
wrote: "I have not the smallest doubt that this donation, when
navigation is in complete operation, which it will be in less than
two years, will amount to 1200 pounds or 1500 pounds of ster
ling a year and become a rapidly increasing fund." ("Works of
Hamilton," VI, 147, Lodge Ed.)
After Washington's death his favorite educational plan had
not been carried out. His successors disagreed as to its "consti
tutionality." At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia,
Madison who was Washington's agent in presenting matters to
the convention, moved to include among the enumerated powers
of Congress the power "to establish and provide for a national
university at the seat of government," but it was declared needless
as the power was already given to it to create legislation on all
subjects for the District. President Jefferson, having views dif
ferent from Washington's as to the power of the Federal Govern
ment, nevertheless agreed with him as to the desirability of a
national university and to that end recommended an amendment
of the Constitution which should expressly grant the power to
establish one.
The National University was even a favorite idea with Jeffer
son and Madison. But they could not induce Congress to act.
Congress preferring procrastination, thought it unwise to trust
the fathers of the Constitution in questions of constitutionality.
Meanwhile Washington's legacy of shares in the Potomac Com
pany became valueless by the failure of the company. So the
work of higher education in the National Capital had to be under
taken by private enterprise, notably by the Georgetown Univer
sity, founded by the Jesuits over a century ago ; also by the great
and splendidly endowed Catholic University of America, sus-
FIRST CHAPTER 17
tained by the wealth and power of that denomination, and liber
ally attended by its youth, and also by The American University,
established some years ago by the Methodists. In addition there
exists a non-sectarian institution, the "George Washington Uni
versity" ; but its fame and national standing are hardly yet equal
to the ambitious plans of George Washington. (Cf. E. E.
Trussing, "The Estate of George Washington, Deceased," Boston,
1927, pp. 186-195.) Washington had hoped that the intellec
tual elite from all America would receive its education in his city,
listening to the speeches of the leading statesmen of the nation
and uniting in a truly fraternal spirit against the local preju
dices and the envious rivalries of the individual states.
In his letter to Governor Harrison, Washington reviewed,
rather pessimistically, the various possibilities of uniting, econom
ically, the rising empire of North America. He had, for the bene
fit of the whole nation, as sharp a promoter's eye as the mighty
transcontinental railroad builders exercised seventy years later,
mainly for their own personal benefit and for the creation of
gigantic fortunes not infrequently put to anti-democratic use.
Washington wrote :
"I shall give you the different routes and distances from
Detroit, by which all the trade of the northwestern parts of the
united territory must pass ; unless the Spaniards, contrary to
their recent policy, should engage part of it, or the British should
attempt to force nature, by carrying the trade of the Upper
Lakes by the River Utawas into Canada, which I scarcely think
they will or could effect. Taking Detroit then (which is putting
ourselves in as unfavorable a point of view as we can be well
placed in, because it is upon the line of the British territory) as
a point by which, as I have already observed, all that part of the
trade must come, it appears from the statement enclosed, that the
tide waters of this State are nearer to it by one hundred and
sixty-eight miles, than those of the River St. Lawrence; or than
those of the Hudson at Albany, by one hundred and seventy-six
miles."
Washington also weighed the ambitious plan of Pennsylvanian
citizens "to cut a canal between the waters of the Susquehanna
18 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
and the Schuylkill. ... In the meantime under the uncertainty
of these undertakings, they are smoothing the roads and paving
the ways for the trade of that western world. That New York
will do the same as soon as the British garrisons are removed,
which are at present insurmountable obstacles in their own way,
no person, who knows the temper, genius, and policy of those
people as well as I do, can harbour the smallest doubt."
Soon after the death of Washington "the jealousies which
prevail" and the competitive genius of the New Yorkers outrivalled
the Virginian spirit of enterprise. The Hudson River,
the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes triumphed over the canal
system which was to have centered about the City of Washington.
As a canal center, however, New York failed to connect with the
Ohio, the Mississippi and the South. The city of New York and
its canals did not tie the northern and southern States as closely
together as the city of Washington would have done, if Presi
dent Washington's projected system of water-ways had become
effective. The outbreak of the Civil War was, in part at least,
a fulfillment of George Washington's above quoted prophecy.
He had very explicitly forewarned the country that his national
canal policy would be the necessary "cement of interest to bind all
parts of the Union together by indissoluble bonds." If President
Washington's sagacious planning had been carried out early
enough, the disastrous Civil War and the orgies of corruption and
"rugged individualism" following it, might have been avoided.
But the closing of the Mississippi River to commerce through
long periods of the war caused an increased use of railroads.
This new means of transportation connected the Northwest with
the East by stronger bonds than ever. The railroads, however,
centered in New York and Chicago. They were the creation of
northern capitalists, who preferred to extend their projects
across "free" territory. Only after the South had become "free,"
did these northern railroads also furnish the "indissoluble bonds"
with the South. They then, finally, did save the Union. They
took, belatedly, the place of the canal system, which had not been
completed in spite of President Washington's urgent recommen
dation. This victory of the railroads over the canals may have
deprived forever the City of Washington of its chance of becom
ing the "Metropolis of the West."
FIRST CHAPTER 19
Few Americans, today, realize that their greatest President
wanted his city of Washington to be the largest in the United
States. George Washington, in planning his own city, did not
intend to build some Versailles or Potsdam, some Albany, N. Y.,
or Springfield, 111., or whatever may be the names of such seats
of governments that lie more or less off the center of national
economic and spiritual life. No, President Washington intended
to build another London, the metropolis of a hemisphere, a center
of population, business and government combined. Washington
even wanted to create a super-London. By endowing a national
university in Washington its founder intended to add to the busi
ness and governmental functions of London those of Oxford or
Cambridge. Or to express it in modern American terms: Presi
dent Washington hoped to see the qualities of the Port of New
York, of Columbia or New York University, and the seat of the
Federal government concentrated on the shores of the Potomac,
in his own city. He wanted the White House, the national
Capitol, and the greatest harbor of the nation located in the key
position of his far-reaching waterway project. His City was to
be a center where the economic, governmental and spiritual life of
the nation would be concentrated.
The first pamphlet to advertise the national capital was
written by the private secretary of President Washington and
undoubtedly with his encouragement : "Observations on the River
Potomac, the Country Adjacent, and the City of Washington"
by Tobias Lear. And the English visitor Isaac Weld, (in his
"Travels in America"), only expressed the hopes of President
Washington when he wrote, in 1795 :
"Considering the vastness of the territory, which is thus
opened to the Federal city, by means of a water communication ;
considering also that it is capable from the fertility of its soils, of
maintaining three times the number of inhabitants that are to be
found at present in all the United States ; . . . there is good foun
dation for thinking that the Federal city, as soon as navigation is
perfected, will increase most rapidly in population, and that at a
future day ... it will become the grand emporium of the West,
and rival in magnitude and splendor the cities of the old world."
The phrase "Emporium of the West" was probably directly
inspired by George Washington himself who seems to have used it
20 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
frequently. In his long letter (Dec. 11, 1796) to Sir John Sin
clair, for instance, the first President prophesied that the Federal
city would soon become "the great emporium of the United
States." Speaking to, what he hoped might be, a prospective
buyer of American lands, George Washington added: "I do not
hesitate to pronounce, that the lands on the waters of the Po
tomac will in a few years be in greater demand and in higher esti
mation, than in any other part of the United States." In a
similar vein he had written to the English writer, Sir Arthur
Young (Dec. 12, 1793).
George Washington's population predictions cannot appear
to be unreasonable or over-optimistic. Even before his prophetic
expressions in America, the leading economist of England, Adam
Smith, had contemplated the time when the American colonies
would outweigh the British Isles and when the Anglo-Saxon capi
tal city would be moved across the Atlantic, as actually occurred
during the World War and for some time after !
vi. GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FEDERAL REAL ESTATE OFFICE
The methods by which George Washington tried to fulfill his
great urban plan also give, to the modern city planner, useful
lessons as to what must be done and warnings as to what must be
avoided. They are described in W. B. Bryan's, S. C. Busey's,
and other books on the Federal Capital and summarized in the
chapter "Washington America's First Boom Town" by A. M.
Sakolski, contained in his book "The Great American Land
Bubble." Here a few examples may be repeated.
The methods of urban real estate development employed by
President Washington teach us, most of all how strongly (even
today) the still prevailing laws forbidding the municipal cities
to go into land speculation contradict the more practical ideas
of George Washington and of the other founders of America.
The planning and development of American cities have indeed
been severely handicapped by the generally prevailing supersti
tion that all benefits from urban real estate speculation must go
to private profiteers. It has been declared "un-American" and
harmful that the elected municipal representatives of the public
could dare to compete, for the treasury of the public, against
private speculators in reaping the benefits of municipal expendi-
FIRST CHAPTER 21
ture and growth. Strict laws have been made (and observed!)
supporting this superstition and forbidding American cities to
acquire land, to hold and resell it, for common benefit. It has
taken decades of futile wrangling before it was deemed "consti
tutional" that cities might acquire land even for as urgent a
necessity as low-cost housing. Any far-reaching land policy for
that purpose, as is
customary in Europe, is, even today, impos
sible in America. Well meaning men and even lawyers have de
clared it to be utterly wrong for an American city to start upon
any of its numerous enterprises requiring purchase of land with
out having first given a chance to private speculators to take,
beforehand, a liberal rake-off at the expense of the public.
In selling land to the public it has become customary to
charge the public a higher price than any private buyer would
pay. The speculators perversely argue that a proposed public
initiative is going to make the land more valuable and that there
fore the public, from the beginning, should pay a higher price for
the land even before it was made more valuable, and that in all
future the public must pay to the previous private holder a trib
ute. Generally increased assessments and higher land taxes must
cover the yearly interest on the money raised by the public for
the purchase of the land required for public purposes and for the
speculators' profits inflating its price. Granting the clever
private land speculators this initial and iniquitous rake-off is
generally considered to be the just and practical method for buy
ing off their power of obstruction and preventing them from
organizing a permanent hold-up and blackmailing the common
good.
George Washington, although, or because, he was himself one
of the largest real estate speculators of American history, had
little sympathy for what today are considered "Constitutional"
privileges of the private speculators. In securing the land re
quired for the Federal Capital he deluded their cupidity and
played off the landowners of the different competing localities
against each other with a view to quickening among them a spirit
of rivalry which should result in the most advantageous terms
possible to the public.
On February 3, 1791, Washington wrote to Messrs. Stoddert
and Deakins, merchants of Georgetown whom he trusted: "The
22 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Federal territory being located, the competition for the location
of the town now rests between the mouth of the Eastern branch
and the lands on the river below and adjacent to Georgetown.
. . . The object of this letter is to ask you to endeavor to pur
chase these grounds for the public, but as if for yourselves, and
to conduct your proposition so as to excite no suspicion that they
are on behalf of the public. . . ." George Washington insisted
upon "the most profound secrecy" and wished "to prevent any
kind of speculation." It is in this traditional Washingtonian
spirit that in 1935 the Federal Re-settlement Administration had
to start snatching land, at reasonable prices, from private owners
for public use. Many of these owners had been most happy to
sell but grew furious when they learned that they had been selling
to the government and might, had they only known, have ex
torted higher prices at the expense of the public.
In planning the city of Washington, Major L'Enfant had to
contend with equally narrow-minded landowners deficient in public
spirit. L'Enfant fought the ruinous influence of their schemes
as best he could. He wrote to Alexander Hamilton (April 8,
1791) : "How far I have contributed to overset that plotting
business, it would not do for me to tell." L'Enfant attempted to
hide his plan for the city from the prospective lot owners. Even
George Washington thought he was going too far. "How," so
wrote the great President, "could the purchasers be induced to
buy to borrow an old adage a pig in a poke?"
To avoid gorging the private land owner at the expense of
the public, George Washington wanted the public to have its
own strong real estate enterprise capable of counter-balancing
the dangers arising from exclusively private initiative in this field.
George Washington, who represented the public, therefore forced
the private land owners to surrender, without compensation, one
half of their lands to the Federal Commission. Washington
could write, almost triumphantly, to Jefferson (May 1, 1791) :
". . . the whole containing three to five thousand acres is ceded
to the public on condition that when the whole shall be surveyed
and laid off as a city (which Major L'Enfant is now directed to
do), the present Proprietors shall retain every other lot and
for such part of the land as may be taken for public use, for
FIRST CHAPTER 23
squares, walks etc. they shall be allowed at the rate of twentyfive
pounds per acre . . .
nothing is to be allowed for ground
which may be occupied as streets or alleys."
George Washington thus created a fund of land which the new
city Commissioners could speculate with and from the sales of
which the municipal treasury could secure funds for building the
new city and its public structures. Later, the "Act to incorpo
rate the inhabitants of the city of Washington" signed on May 3,
1802, by President Thomas Jefferson, specifically stated that
they "may purchase and hold real, personal and mixed property,
or dispose of the same for the benefit of the said city." (This
carried out a suggestion made by George Washington in a letter
dated Feb. 17, 1797.)
Every city needs, of course, similar powers, if tolerable gov
ernment and civic development are to be carried on. The fact that
the necessity of such civic powers was recognized by the founders
and teachers of the nation, and that these powers were granted to
the Federal city by Congress, but withheld from other cities,
makes the American nation appear like a naughty truant school
boy who behaves well as long as he feels observed by his teachers,
but who becomes irresponsible and silly after the teachers have
left him. This sillyness and shortsightedness which characterizes
important constitutional features of America's urban life is, of
course, nothing but an expression of the wishes of the individual
land owners and would-be speculators. Their wisdom has been
described by George Washington, in a letter dated March 25,
1798, as follows : "It has always been my opinion, and so I have
expressed it, that the proprietors of the city of Washington,
with some exceptions, are, by their jealousies and the modes they
pursue to promote their local interests, amongst its worst ene
mies." This description of land-owners in Washington City
applies equally well to land owners in almost every other Ameri
can city.
It even seems that George Washington, for the benefit of the
municipal treasury, was a little too eager to begin with the public
sales of lots. The first sale of lots began, October 17, 1791,
before the conscientious city planner Major L'Enfant, could
complete the layout and location of lots. (This fact must con-
24 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
sole and excuse, 144 years later, the Re-settlement Administra
tion which in 1935 and 1936 evinces Washingtonian zeal in
forcing its town planners to begin construction of its new model
suburbs almost before the plans for their layout are completed.)
The framers of the American Constitution wanted to demonstrate
very publicly their approval of the new municipal authorities
going into the real estate business and competing against private
speculators. Therefore, George Washington, the incumbent
President, together with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,
two future Presidents, could one ask for more? personally
honored the first real estate sale staged by the Federal Govern
ment. This was the spirit of the framers of the Constitution in
the name of which American judges have long declared it uncon
stitutional when American cities tried to do the obvious and
protect the public against the abuses arising from exclusively
private real estate speculation.
Very instructive, furthermore, is the following feature of the
early urban history made by George Washington and his imme
diate successors. Never have private land speculators failing to
fulfill their obligations been treated with greater rigidity.
Among the real estate speculators who most liberally invested in
the land offered by the public real estate office, there seems to be
only one who kept out of prison. This was the Englishman
Thomas Law, the husband of Mrs. George Washington's grand
daughter. He had brought with him enough English money to
meet regularly his contracted payments to the Federal real
estate office. The other large speculators of the young Federal
city, such men as the "high financiers" Blodget, Morris, Nichol
son and Greenleaf, had to return all their lands to the Federal
real estate agency and (unlike many of their equally or more
deserving successors in Washington and other cities) were sent
to prison and died in poverty. This is true even of Robert
Morris, "The financier of the American Revolution" and signer
of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution.
There seems to have existed, at that time, little pity for the
unsuccessful speculator. The idea that a speculator is sacro
sanct not only while he reaps profits, but especially sacrosanct
when he fails to do so, and that the government must shoulder his
losses, this idea is of more recent growth.
FIRST CHAPTER 25
vii. GEOEGE WASHINGTON'S PEESONAL CONTRIBUTION
TOWAEDS HOUSING THE NATION
George Washington himself bought four lots at the third
sale of lots, September 1793. He again personally attended this
Federal land sale. The lots he bought were near the Capitol site,
in the south-eastern part of the city. But, so he explained (in a
letter dated Mar. 14, 1794), "being unwilling, from that circum
stance, it should be believed that I had greater predilection to
the southern part of the city, I proposed the next day, the sale
being continued, to buy a like number of lots in Hamburg,
Square 21" (in the north-western part of the city).
George Washington was being urged not only to buy lots but
also to build houses upon them. He was especially urged by his
step-grandson-in-law, Thomas Law, who was losing, at the same
time, the love of his flighty wife, and the million dollars he had
brought from India and invested in land speculation in the new
Federal city. Washington was willing to listen to his stepgrandson-in-law,
who related the following: "That the public
might have encouragement to build, General Washington com
menced two houses. This example gave confidence and houses
were seen to spring up with rapidity, notwithstanding the natural
rivalship of two adjacent towns, which had been long before estab
lished. New Jersey Avenue, then full of stump trees, was opened
to have access to the Eastern Branch, and merchants made
wharves and warehouses on the Eastern Branch. . . . Houses
also rapidly sprang up about the Capitol although double prices
were paid for workmen, bricks and materials." (Cf. "Greenleaf
and Law in the Federal City," by Allen C. Clark, 1901, p. 255).
George Washington thus fulfilled faithfully his contractural
duties which obliged him not only to make certain payments for
the land bought but also to build upon it. The residences he
built in square 632 (on the west side of North Capitol Street
between B and C Streets) were burned by the British in 1814, re
built, and remained standing until 1908, when they were torn
down to increase the area of the Capitol grounds. This disap
pearance of George Washington's own contribution to the housing
of his nation is to be regretted. Would it not be possible to recon
struct these historical monuments in a street secure from destruc-
26 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
tion? And would it not be a fine monument to the constructive
spirit of American Presidents if, in the future, each one of them
would add an equal number of houses to those constructed by
President Washington? Thus a "Presidential Street" would
come into existence which would be a truly unique and living
monument in the architectural history of America. The new
house would always be built, of course, in the style of the living
President and his period. This might be a case where a little
living "musuem's" touch would do no harm.
One might go further and say that George Washington's con
tribution towards housing the nation and the citizens of his city,
was made less in his capacity as a President than in his capacity
as an owner of urban real estate. If every American owner of
urban real estate would contribute to the same degree, i.e. in equal
proportion to his urban holdings, by building and maintaining,
relatively, as many houses as George Washington did, it might
well be that there would be fewer Americans obliged to live in
slums and blighted districts than there are today when there are
about 40 millions found in this predicament.
VIII. PRESIDENT WASHINGTON LIMITS HEIGHTS OF BUILDINGS
Diametrically opposed to the spirit of George Washington is
to be found another one of the incredible prejudices which have
fatally sickened the development of American cities. Few preju
dices have caused more wiggling of America's judicial or injudi
cious wigs than the notion that the limitation of heights of
buildings and the regulations about the permissible types of
buildings was "un-American" and "unconstitutional." This in
sult to American common sense was uncalled for, as the "consti
tutional" lawyers might have discovered if they had studied
practical city planning in America or if at least they had looked
at the regulations passed under the direction of George Washing
ton and Thomas Jefferson.
These statesmen were quick to appreciate a practical sugges
tion even when it displeased the "practical" speculator. In his
"Opinion on (the) Capital," Thomas Jefferson had written (Nov.
29, 1790) : "In Paris it is forbidden to build a house beyond a
given height, and it is admitted to be a good restriction. It keeps
down the price of grounds, keeps the houses low and convenient,
FIRST CHAPTER 27
and the streets light and airy. Fires are much more manageable
when houses are low." Here in a nutshell was whatever there is
practical in European "zoning ordinances" appreciated by a
shrewd American architect and statesman. And George Wash
ington by no means threw up his hands in legalistic horror of
alleged anti-American unconstitutionality, but he endorsed the
following regulation:
"The wall of no house to be higher than forty feet to the
roof, in any part of the city ; nor shall any be lower than thirtyfive
feet on any of the avenues." Signed: George Washington,
Oct. 17, 1791. This is only one of the regulations of George
Washington's zoning ordinance. Others determined that the
"outer and party walls of all houses shall be built of brick or
stone." Washington (and later Monroe) made exceptions to
this rule for low cost and workingmen's houses which were per
mitted to be erected of wood. L'Enfant furthermore was success
ful, this time against Jefferson's protest, in introducing "the
obligation to build the houses at a given distance from the street."
All this was "zoning" supported by President Washington.
Today this seems to be forgotten or remembered from hearsay
only, like an old saga. The comprehensive publications of the
Regional Plan Association of New York (Vol. II, 1931, p. 28)
do not quote the text of the law signed by President Washington,
but say rather vaguely: "An early visitor to the city noted the
following building regulations :"
Since lawyers who do not exclusively serve private interests,
generally have faith in "legal precedent," it is hard to under
stand how this fine Washingtonian precedent could have failed
to impress them. But even in 1916, the date of the mad "zoning
ordinance" of New York (see Chapter Thirteen), legislators and
their lawyers refused to limit the heights of buildings below the
most insane maxima. In permitting insane heights (chaotic, un
economic and inviting unhealthy lot crowding) these law-makers
maintained that they remained true to the spirit of the Constitu
tion. George Washington knew how to read the Constitution
better and how to keep his mind free from the imbecility just
described.
It must be added, however, that the realtors together with
their legal bodyguard attacked George Washington's zoning
28 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
ordinance while he was still alive. They tried to "whittle it
down" and to force the public to "kiss the zoning ordinance
goodbye." These picturesque terms were used in the battles that
were waged in New York after the introduction of the zoning
ordinance of 1916.
It was a very promising Fourth of July, in the year 1796,
when one of the leading real estate speculators of early Washing
ton, "the great financier," Robert Morris wrote to his most
prominent colleague and rival, Thomas Law : "This is the glorious
anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. ... I wish
that the President had abolished in toto the regulations about the
building and thereby let the Owners of Lots pursue their own
fancys & inclinations This I conceive will be absolutely neces
sary to give that spur to Improvement which is wanted The
King of Prussia tried to establish a City upon the same system of
regularity of Building, but with absolute authority & money at
Command he could not do it & only impeded its Progress by the
attempt."
The speculators of Washington did indeed sincerely desire
to "pursue their own fancys & inclinations." But it is not
correct that the experience of "the King of Prussia" could be said
to be a proof in their favor. This king never had made a worth
while effort to regulate heights of buildings. Correct it only is
that the Prussian king, while he repeatedly and in the strongest
terms harangued against urban speculators, had, in reality, by
his unbelievably careless law regarding mortgages, created the
legal basis for the most ruthless and widespread speculative
mortgage racket that ever became prevalent in Europe. (This
fantastic catastrophe will be discussed more fully in a later
chapter.) This racket dangerously undermined all real estate
conditions, urban and rural, in pre-War Germany. And while
the 42 billion marks of Germany's largely speculative and semifraudulent
urban mortgages were wiped out by the post-War
monetary inflation, America has since the War permitted her
realtors to actually "pursue their own fancys & inclinations":
they ruthlessly copied the destructive German mortgage system
and have, since 1929, realized the appalling loss of eight billion
dollars of "guaranteed" mortgage bonds.
This American economic catastrophe for which the excuse
FIRST CHAPTER 29
of a lost war did not exist is
intimately related to the American
attitude of lawyers and legislators who refused to follow Wash
ington's and Jefferson's practical and common sense precept in
matters of what, today, is called "zoning." Instead of "forbid
ding houses to be built beyond a certain height," and "keeping
down the price of grounds," as was recommended by Jefferson
and as was made a legality by Washington, the New York legis
lators of 1916 introduced under the guise of a strictly "consti
tutional" zoning ordinance purely fictitious restrictions of
building heights. They introduced those limitations which are no
restrictions at all but rather veiled invitations to build much
higher and more densely than is economically advisable and than
could ever be required by population forecasts even wildly exag
gerated to the extent of ten or even a hundred times of what
would ever be possible. These pseudo-restrictions of 1916 are
invitations to speculate irresponsibly in inflated land values cal
culated on such uneconomic heights of buildings as can never
form a reliable basis for the calculation of rents and future
incomes.
The effort of the speculators to "pursue their own fancys"
was already victorious under George Washington. It seems that
it was his relative, the enterprising English East-Indian merchant
Thomas Law, who was most insistent on having the President
"abolish in toto the regulations about the building." The last
utterance of Washington as President of the United States refers
to "the dispute with Mr. Law, touching the conveyance of lots."
Law had built higher than was permitted and he wished his un
lawful buildings to be accepted as a legal fulfillment of his con
tract. And he had a clever lawyer supporting him. They were
stronger than President Washington who, on the last day in office,
wrote the following: "With regard to the first" (the dispute with
Mr. Law), "however hard and unexpected the case may be as it
affects the public interest, and whatever my private opinion on
some points may be, I think it safest, and, all things considered,
perhaps the best, to let the opinion of the law officer of the gov
ernment, herewith enclosed, prevail ; and I advise it
accordingly."
So Washington's presidency ended with an expression of
regret over an anti-urbanistic victory, the breakdown of his zon
ing ordinance designed to insure the orderly growth of his Capital.
30 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
This breakdown was made less painful only by the fact that, later,
his city failed to grow as rapidly as he had anticipated.
AGAINST PLANNING?
New York's triumph as a commercial center over George
Washington's proposed commercial metropolis on the Potomac
seems to have buried for over a century the common sense the
first President had incorporated into the plan and development
of his city. The commercial triumph of New York seems to have
been interpreted as the triumph of the less ambitiously planned
city, of a city without proper restrictions of building heights and
without proper public real estate policy. The triumph of New
York became the triumph of carelessness and laissez-faire. While
the city of New York grew and overgrew by leaps and bounds,
the city of Washington remained what Tom Moore, the visiting
poet from Ireland, described in 1804 as :
This embryo capital, where fancy sees
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees,
Which second-sighted seers, ev'n now, adorn
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn,
Though naught but woods and Jefferson they see,
Where streets should run and sages ought to be.
To what a sad extent President Washington's hopes for a
capital worthy of his America remained unfulfilled is revealed in
the ridicule of such visitors to Washington as Charles Dickens
and Henry Adams. In 1842 Dickens, in his "American Notes,"
called the city of Washington, "a monument to a deceased project
with not even a legible inscription to record its departed great
ness. . . . Such as it is, it is likely to remain."
Especially valuable for the present purpose are the observa
tions of Henry Adams. In acknowledgment of his architectural
writings, he has, later, been made an honorary member of the
American Institute of Architects. His impressions shall be re
ferred to frequently in the present volume. He paid his first
visit to the American capital, in 1850, when it harbored 40,000
people, almost one-half of whom were negroes, at a time when New
York had already 696,000 inhabitants. Henry Adams, then in
Washington, ". . . found himself on an earth-road, or village
FIRST CHAPTER 31
street, with wheel tracks meandering from the colonnade of the
Treasury hard by, to the white marble columns and fronts of the
Post Office and Patent Office which faced each other in the dis
tance, like white Greek temples in the abandoned gravel-pits of a
deserted Syrian city. Here and there wooden houses were scat
tered along the streets, as in other Southern villages, but he was
chiefly attracted by an unfinished square marble shaft, half a
mile below . . . even the effort to build Washington a monument
... had failed."
It took America a century and two years to build a mere
monument to the father of the nation. Pledged by the Continental
Congress in 1783, the corner stone laid in 1848, it was not com
pleted until 1884, to be dedicated the following year. President
Washington's most practical dream of building a well-designed
national metropolis remained forever unrealized. His hopes as
to population and size have been fulfilled. He expressed it two
years before his death in the following words : "A century hence,
if this country keeps united, it will produce a city though not so
large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in
Europe." But it was New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago,
not his City of Washington that achieved metropolitan size.
Washington remained an insignificant city.
When in 1868 Henry Adams returned there, he wrote: "The
village seemed unchanged . . .
nothing betrayed growth. As of
old, houses were few; rooms fewer. . . . No one seemed to miss
the usual comforts of civilization. . . . No literary or scientific
man, no artist, no gentleman without office or employment, had
ever lived there. It was rural, and its society was primitive.
Scarcely a person in it had ever known life in a great city. . . .
The happy village was innocent of a club. . . .
Washington was
a mere political camp, as transient and temporary as a campmeeting
for religious revival . . . the life belonged to the eight
eenth century, and in no way concerned education for the
twentieth."
Even in the twentieth century the negro slums of Washington,
often located in the immediate vicinity of the most pretentious
residences were among the worst in the whole country. Henry
Adams, man of the world, in 1892 "found himself again in Wash
ington. . . .
Changes had taken place there; improvements had
32 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
been made ; with time much time the city might become habit
able according to some fashionable standard."
These were Washingtonian impressions experienced by an
observer, who "could not stay there a month without loving the
shabby town," and who, in fact, loved it more than any other
American city. These comments issuing from the pen of an
American whose grand and great-grandfathers were presidents
of the United States, make it easier to appreciate the following
criticism written by an Englishman, a searching social biolo
gist, H. G. Wells (in his book "Social Forces in England and
America"; New York, 1924, p. 379 ff.). Wells writes:
"There are many reasons for supposing the national govern
ment will always remain a little ineffectual and detached from the
full flow of American life, and this notwithstanding the very great
powers with which the President is endowed.
"One of these reasons is certainly the peculiar accident that
has placed the seat of government upon the Potomac. To the
thoughtful visitor to the United States this hiding away of the
central government in a minute district remote from all the great
centers of thought, population and business activity becomes
more remarkable, more perplexing, more suggestive of an incur
able weakness in the national government as he grasps more firmly
the peculiarities of the American situation.
"I do not see how the central government of that great Ameri
can nation of which I dream can possibly be at Washington, and
I do not see how the present central government can possibly be
transferred to any other centre. But to go to Washington, to
see and talk to Washington, is to receive an extraordinary impres
sion of the utter isolation and hopelessness of Washington. The
National Government has an air of being marooned there or as
though it had crept into a corner, to do something in the dark.
One goes from abounding movement and vitality of the Northern
cities to this sunny and enervating place through the negligently
cultivated country of Virginia, and one discovers the slovenly,
unfinished promise of a city, avenues lined by negro shanties and
patches of cultivation, great public buildings and an immense
post office, a lifeless museum, an inert university, a splendid de
serted library, a street of souvenir shops, a certain industry of
'seeing Washington,' an idiotic colossal obelisk. It seems an ideal
FIRST CHAPTER 33
nest for the tariff manipulator, a festering corner of delegates
and agents and secondary people. In the White House, in the
time of President Theodore Roosevelt, the present writer found a
transitory glow of intellectual activity, the spittoons and glass
screens that once made it like a London gin palace had been re
moved, and the former orgies of handshaking reduced to a mini
mum. It was, one felt, an accidental phase. The assassination
of McKinley was an interruption of the normal Washington proc
ess. To this place, out of the way of everywhere, come the sena
tors and congressmen, mostly leaving their families behind them
in their states of origin, and hither, too, are drawn a multitude
of journalists and political agents and clerks, a crowd of under
bred, mediocre men. For most of them there is neither social nor
intellectual life. The thought of America is far away, centered
now in New York ; the business and economic development centres
upon New York; apart from the President, it is in New York
that one meets the people who matter, and the New York atmos
phere that grows and develops ideas and purposes. New York
is the natural capital of the United States, and would need to be
the capital of any highly organized national system. Govern
ment from the District of Columbia is in itself the repudiation of
any highly organized national system.
"But government from this ineffectual, inert place is only the
most striking outcome of that inflexible constitution the wran
gling delegates of 17871788 did at last produce out of a conflict
of States jealousies. They did their best to render centralisa
tion or any coalescence of States impossible and private property
impregnable, and so far their work has proved extraordinarily
effective. Only a great access of intellectual and moral vigour
in the nation can ever set it aside. And while the more and more
sterile millions of the United States grapple with the legal and
traditional difficulties that promise at last to arrest their develop
ment altogether, the rest of the world will be moving on to new
phases."
When more than twenty years ago, H. G. Wells made these
observations, he evidently like so many Americans was not
aware of the fundamental planning implications of the American
Constitution, nor of President Washington's shattered hopes for
the Federal Capital, nor of the causes that had shattered them.
34 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Neither could he know "the great access of vigour" that Wash
ington, as a center of national leadership, would receive through
the World War, and even to a greater degree through the War's
aftermath.
Two other considerations seem, perhaps, to have been over
looked by Mr. Wells, when he made his pessimistic prognosis of
Washington's future. He did not take into account the rejuve
nating effects that aviation, radio and (some day, possibly, tele
vision) were to have on the future virility of America's historical
capital. Easily accessible airports or gyrostatic discoveries
may soon bring Washington, D. C. closer to the citizens of New
York and Chicago than the former governing centers of Versailles
or Potsdam ever were to the nearby Parisians or Berliners of the
nineteenth century. With the help of modern inventions the pe
ripheral American capital in the east may yet govern more
efficiently than ever before the continent's growing and westwardbent
population.
The new and changed situation was recognized by Mr. Wells
when he visited Washington in March, 1935, at the time of the
"raucous" radio debates between General Johnson and Senator
Huey Long, regarding the great experiment of the National Re
covery Administration. Wells then declared: "Washington is
now the capital of the world and it is surcharged with nervous
energy. America, I think, is in a strategic position for economic
and social experimentation, and I believe these debates are part
of that experiment." (N. Y. Times, March 13, 1935.)
From the excessive bitterness of these debates we must gather
that America has not yet fully reconciled herself to the materi
alization of George Washington's favorite plan of transforming
his own capital city into the directing center of an intelligently
planned country. The arguments advanced against the "consti
tutionality" of national planning (dealt with in the Second
Chapter) are among the causes for the incredible delays in the
completion of national public works, especially in the field of
housing.
Endless wranglings between Washington and New York are
apt to perpetuate the old American plight of that miscarried
capital described by Wells. The fight between the legal capital,
Washington, and the "natural capital," New York, is expressed
FIRST CHAPTER 35
in the following rather typical editorial, selected at random. It
illustrates indeed very one-sidedly, but in a popular manner
the bitterness of the fight, although not necessarily the merits of
the case. At the very moment when Wells called Washington
"the capital of the world" the New York Post (Feb. 8, 1935)
published this comment:
"Let it be recalled that the $25,000,000 PWA housing
'appropriation' has been hanging fire for fifteen months. Of the
$25,000,000 'allotted' for New York housing, $40,000 has been
spent. ... In spite of the long delay a complete site has not
yet been assembled, even in options. Many of the options are
lapsing while PWA dawdles. The rehousing fiasco in New York
is not the fault of Langdon W. Post, chairman of the New York
Housing Authority, but of PWA Administrator Ickes. The one
hope that something will be done for a part, at least, of the
500,000 New York families in substandard houses is that
authority for housing appropriations will be taken away from
Ickes. There is very little on which to base that hope or any
other. The housing picture at Washington is still a muddle."
At the same time, an equally bitter criticism of New York's
attitude in the matter could be heard in Washington. And
while this civic war was being waged, precious time was lost.
No discussion of the capital of America and of the "Metropo
lis of the West" can end with a comparison of Washington (and
its assessed realty valuation of $1.16 billion in 1934) and New
York (with a realty assessment of $17.149 billion). The real
rival stands further west, in Chicago, the realty assessments of
which have been $5 billion in 1928 and $1.55 billion in 1934.
In spite of the many new technical achievements which, today,
assist his old plan, President Washington's dream of the "grand
emporium of the West" situated upon the Atlantic seaboard may,
by now, have become obsolescent. "Westward the star of empire
takes its way," said John Quincy Adams in his oration at
Plymouth, 1802, echoing the old prophecy of Bishop Berkeley
who added: "Time's noblest offspring is the last." At present,
the star of empire seems to shine over Chicago. This "queen
of the middle west" is America's latest offspring of imperial, if
not yet "noble" size.
Since 1893 this new metropolis has made important en-
36 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
deavors and advances, physical and spiritual, towards the
center of America's city planning interest. In the years 1790
to 1810 the position of the United States' center of population
was near Washington, D. C. Since that time the center of popu
lation has moved steadily westward. At the time of the last
Census (1930) it had reached the State of Indiana, and was
located not far from Chicago. If America's population grows
further, Chicago has a fair chance of becoming the Federal
Capital.
In 1930, Chicago's metropolitan district measured 1,119
square miles and contained 4,365,000 people. At the same time
George Washington's own "emporium of the West," Washington,
D. C., measured only 62 square miles. Even after adding the
423 square miles of suburbs outside the District of Columbia,
one finds that the population of the national capital was only
621,000.
In a certain sense the triumph of Chicago may be considered
as a triumph of President Washington's western dreams and as
a fulfillment of his prophecy of a new empire. But is anything
gained by this triumph of the western village over the former
"shabby town" on the Potomac? If one looks at the civic and
urban developments in Chicago, one must regretfully reply:
not yet. Nothing could more glaringly contradict George Wash
ington's dignified ideas of orderly city planning than the chaotic
development of Chicago.
Some of the most important facts underlying the unprec
edented gambling in Chicago's urban development have recently
been assembled in an excellent study "One Hundred Years of
Land Values in Chicago" by Homer Hoyt. We learn that at
the beginning of this development, in 1830, the land sold at $1.25
an acre. The same land, or as much of it as was contained
within the old city limits was valued at $1,400,000 in 1842, at
$126,000,000 in 1856, and at almost nothing a few years later
when 98 Illinois banks closed. The land within the present city
limits (201 square miles) increased 500 per cent in value from
1862 to 1873, when another crash smashed twenty-one banks
and led to street fighting and the death of twenty people among
the eighty-nine wounded. The values of the same land decreased
from $575 million in 1873 to less than $250 million in 1877.
FIRST CHAPTER 37
Another boom and breakdown came before and after the Chi
cago World's Fair of 1893. In 1909 land values were lower
than they were in 1890. The War introduced another boom
raising the sales value of the land within the city limits (still
201 square miles) from $2 billion in 1921 to $5 billion in 1928
and resulting by 1932 in foreclosure suits involving more than
$2 billion.
The catastrophic chaos of this city in travail engendered,
since the seventies, the most earnest efforts of civic defense.
These efforts were conducted by such vigorous planners and
architects as Root, Sullivan, Burnham, Olmsted Sr., Adler, Jane
Addams, Hooker and his City Club, and many others. These
efforts produced the systems of parks, boulevards and play
grounds and the building code of Chicago, the World's Fairs of
1893 and 1933-34, and the Chicago Plan of 1908. These va
riegated achievements have in part been dealt with in the preceding
volume (Civic Art, pp. 99 ff. and 133 ff.), where also some of the
reasons for their disappointing results have been considered.
While highest praise must be given to individual and collective
prowess, a much more critical, more informed and more ad
equately organized effort would have been essential in order to
master the unprecedented chaos.
The feat of mastering the American chaos has been achieved,
in one sphere of art, by Walt Whitman. American city build
ers of commensurate stature have not yet arisen. If the superBabel
of the West is contemplated by a startled stranger, it is
apt to call forth as bitter a comment as the following one made
by the highly qualified French observer Dr. Georges Duhamel
who assures us that he writes uninfluenced by passion. To him
Chicago appears as the outstanding symbol of what he calls
"America, the Menace," the American assault on civilization.
He writes :
"Of what use is it in these days to be 'the youngest metropo
lis in the world'? Hardly risen from the marshes, Chicago al
ready seems old, already too narrow, stifled by its very strength.
Though it has only been in existence for a few decades, it already
suffers as much as a city that has endured for centuries. It did
not foresee the automobile, which stuffs and suffocates it. It
has scarcely the years of a grown man, and yet the wave of time
38 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
has already submerged and condemned it. ... Chicago ! the
tumor, the cancer, among cities about which all statistics are
out of date when they reach you, and in regard to which every
calculation must be done over again, since the figures always
change before you finish it ! .... Chicago comes howling to a
standstill on the edge of eternity. Certain fishing villages are
said to lie 'in peril of the waves'; I greet with a solemn hymn
Chicago, the proud, lying in peril of nothingness." (Georges
Duhamel, "America, the Menace," Boston, 1931, p. 79.)
In appreciating this "peril of nothingness" one must be care
ful not to become a victim of the same optical illusion which
seems to have overtaken Dr. Duhamel. He is inclined to see the
mortal peril mainly threatening American cities. He believes
that European and especially French cities are similarly threat
ened only in so far as they have become victims of the menace of
Americanism. It would be more just to recognize the growing
peril everywhere. How seriously, for instance, planlessness and
ugliness have ruined many of the better and older, and almost
all of the newer parts of Paris, may be judged from the passion
ate indictment of the French capital, by Jean Giraudoux a
French observer enjoying a reputation at least equal to that of
George Duhamel. This French disaster will be dealt with in
the following volume.
The urban problem which is so poignant in America is, at
the same time, an international one. Economically and spiritu
ally, it is intimately connected with the problematical survival
of our entire civilization. City planning and housing nothing
is more in need of the most intense national efforts.
CONCLUSION
The problem of urban and metropolitan planning, in several
of its most important aspects, had been recognized at a suffi
ciently early date by the genius of George Washington. His
urgent advice to build a well planned national metropolis and
capital in the center of a well planned national system of com
munications had not been followed. The fine original plan for
the city of Washington had been forgotten and as we shall
see largely ruined. Later after a bloody war New York
became the American metropolis and the center of a transpor-
FIRST CHAPTER 39
tation system much of which however was laid out to serve com
peting private profitseekers and organizers of national scandals
such as the "Erie Scandal" rather than the national interest.
The combination of the center of population, of national govern
ment, and of national education, as planned and desired by Pres
ident Washington, has not been achieved, either in Washington
or in New York. It may some day be realized in Chicago.
But Chicago has, as yet, by no means realized George Washing
ton's ideal of the well planned city. Large sections of Chicago,
indeed more than one half of that city, must be wiped from the
disfigured face of America before the first President's greatest
bequest to this nation, the idea of a well planned economic and
spiritual metropolis in the center of a well planned system of
communications, can bring its blessings to his people.
Can modern America live up to the high standards of plan
ning set by President Washington? Or has he overtaxed the
organizing power of his nation? Will America, in matters of
city and regional planning, stay behind England from whom
she separated herself in order to pursue what promised and, in
the beginning, seemed to be a freer and more progressive course?
George Washington's motto was: Exitus acta probat, the
outcome justifies the deeds. To what extent has Washington's
great American experiment been justified by the outcome?
SECOND CHAPTER
NATIONAL PLANNING: A BASIC CONCEPTION
OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION
Have you considered the organic compact of the
first day of the first year of Independence of The
States ?
Have you possessed yourself of the FEDERAL CON
STITUTION ?
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and
poems behind them, and assumed the poems and
processes of Democracy?
Walt Whitman (from "Marches Now the War
is Over").
The Preamble of the American Constitution states that its
objectives are "to form a more perfect Union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity."
Such a glorious national program and obligation so emi
nently stated did not protect America, in the nineteenth century
and especially in the period after the Civil War, from the in
terested meekness of those who claim that she has no political
philosophy of her own, but is bound to the English concept of
laissez-faire or "muddling through." This dangerous philos
ophy (or rather religion) fondly assumed that "nature intends
always the good of the human species" and that a supreme "un
seen hand" unerringly works for and achieves human happiness
even when man persists in remaining the paradoxical blunderer
he has proven himself to be.
Such an all too convenient reliance upon "unseen" outside
aid was, of course, an ancient idea and had little in common with
the new and more self-reliant concepts of young America. This
novel fact even the seemingly ever-young Benjamin Franklin
had to learn. And the old sceptic probably learned it with great
pleasure. In 1787, the culmination of the exhausting difficulties
40
SECOND CHAPTER 41
of the Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia induced the
octogenarian to suggest praying to God for help. Alexander
Hamilton, half a century younger than Franklin, was the driv
ing power of those days of American construction. His curt
answer to Franklin's suggestion was : "We need no foreign aid."
Hamilton, even more than Franklin, represented the new race of
men themselves planning to shape their fate and their world.
The English religion of laissez-faire, on the contrary, prom
ised a sort of foolproof harmony to be achieved automatically.
But the same creed nonchalantly accepted chaos and "bid the
devil take the hin'most." Even Adam Smith, the leading
prophet of this optimistic complacency, did not hesitate to de
nounce boldly the foundation of the newly arising modern city:
the rapidly growing new machine industry. The great optimist
frankly condemned the effects of monotonous machine labor on
man's mind, body and sentiments; ruining him as a father, a
citizen, and a potential soldier. Foreseeing this modern debacle,
even Smith had no confidence whatever that the individual human
being could be capable of intelligently recognizing and success
fully pursuing his own interests. One gathers from Smith's
writings that the only humans blessed with such intelligent ca
pacity, even on a material plane, were the newer and shrewder
mercantile and capitalist employer classes, which were able to
hoodwink the landlords and laborers. (Cf. J. M. Clark, "Adam
Smith and the Spirit of '76," p. 86f.) Such was the wisdom of
England's "classical" economy or economic religion.
Smith's chief work, "Wealth of Nations" was published in
1776, the same year in which the American Declaration of In
dependence held this "truth to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal" and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights."
The fundamental question at issue in this Chapter (and in
any American discussion of the proprieties of housing and city
planning) is the following: has the American Constitution been
written to "promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty" for all Americans "created equal," or has it been con
ceived for the profit of the newly arising mercantile and capital
ist employer classes, which were able to hoodwink the others?
Will America under her new Constitution fulfill the promise
42 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
given in its Preamble and in The Declaration of Independence, or
will she help, by permitting laissez-faire, the hoodwinking proc
ess?
In spite of its ludicrous and un-American aspects (or because
of them?) the English faith in laissez-faire has been eagerly
advertised as typically American by the American "robber
barons" of the "gilded age" and by the economists in their pay.
This obsolete English creed seems, to-day, to be quite generally
accepted by opponents of the ideas underlying the American
Constitution and by those who ignore the planning ideals of the
first President (as set forth in the First Chapter). Few people
seem to realize how strongly George Washington's far-sighted
efforts in the direction of national planning were supported by
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
That even the American Constitution was conceived as an
expression of these planning efforts, is by no means appreciated
by the general public, nor by those would-be "defenders of the
Constitution" who have criticised the endeavors in national
planning made by such American Presidents as the two Roosevelts,
Wilson and even Hoover. Even those who, since 1934,
wished to "restrain the nonsense of the Brain Trust" seem to
have forgotten that the demand for intelligent Federal care in
matters of national commerce and industry and for planful
administration of national resources has not been invented by
recent "brain trusters" or Bolshevists, but is indeed a basic
idea in the American Constitution, an idea asserted for many
years by leading American authorities. Two such authorities,
a leader in American statesmanship and a prominent historian
shall be quoted.
The Republican President, Theodore Roosevelt, on May 13,
1908, opened the National Conference on Conservation of
Natural Resources, in the White House, with the following
statement: "It was in Philadelphia, 1787, that the representa
tives of all the States met for what was in its original conception
merely a waterways conference; but when they had closed their
deliberations the outcome was the Constitution which made the
States into a nation. The Constitution of the United States
thus grew in large part out of necessity for united action in the
wise use of one of our natural resources. The wise use of all of
SECOND CHAPTER 43
our natural resources, which are national resources as well, is
the great material question of today."
Since this assertion of constitutional Federal obligations
was made, the United States has seen the Teapot Dome scandal,
the leasing of federal oil reserves to private interests, and the
attempts to hand over Muscle Shoals to Henry Ford or to the
power trust. These attempts failed, and the federal govern
ment's constitutional obligation to "promote the general wel
fare" survived.
On December 13, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt insisted that
"few but students of constitutional history remember that the
occasion and the prime reason for the founding of the Constitu
tion was to enable the central government to take charge of all
foreign trade and all interstate trade. That was the reason
and it was the prime reason why our people reluctantly con
sented to establish a constitutional government."
Similar interpretations of the reasons for the framing of the
American Constitution have been given by other American his
torians, for instance by Brooks Adams and by Chas. A. Beard
(e.g., in his introduction to the book by B. Y. Landis "Must
the Nation Plan?" New York, 1934). Professor Beard writes:
"In the decade that witnessed the close of the War for Ameri
can Independence, the United States, young and inexperienced,
was passing through a great crisis in economy and thought.
Finances were in disorder, the currency deranged, industry
languishing, unemployed in the towns clamoring for work, and
the future of the Republic darkened by uncertainty. In this
gloomy period, called 'critical' by John Fiske, three parties or
factions struggled for possession of public opinion. On the ex
treme right, one demanded a man on horseback, a monarchy, or
an 'iron hand' in some symbolic form. In the middle was the
party of planning and construction, courageous enough to put
forward positive designs for meeting the crisis and daring enough
to risk an appeal to the electorate. Far to the left, embittered
soldiers of the war, led by Daniel Sheas, were moving in the di
rection of a popular uprising against a system in which they
found only poverty and disillusionment."
And such words as the following give a contemporary de
scription of this critical period. They were coined by the Amer-
44 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
ican historian, Mercy Warren, writing in 1787 : "The youth of
fortune and pleasure are crying out for a Monarchy . . .
pro
vided they may be the lordlings who in splendid idleness may
riot on the hard earnings of the peasant and mechanic." But,
so Professor Beard adds, "the party of the middleground . . .
bent to another task. Its members had the temerity to prepare
and submit to popular discussion plans for coping with the
crisis." They formed what today would be praised or decried
as a "brain trust." "Thus they made a fundamental change in
the government and economy of the country by planning and
appealing, by proposing and inviting support."
If the American Constitution is, indeed, the work of "the
party of planning and construction" ; if national planning is a
basic conception of the American Constitution, and if only a
deviation from its spirit can deprive the nation of the benefits
of such planning, how is it conceivable that, nevertheless, a com
mon prejudice can relegate national planning from the inten
tions of the Constitution?
From the very beginning there was some doubt as to the
real reasons motivating the framers of the American Constitu
tion. Their purposes were subjected to severe criticism. Even
while the Constitution was in the process of formation, a saga
cious contemporary, the French Charge d'Affaires in America,
Louis Otto, voiced this opinion. Writing to his government in
Paris, he said that the alleged necessities of America's foreign
and interstate trade and of a united action in constructing na
tional waterways, were mainly "a pretext for introducing in
novations" which would fortify the social and political
superiority of a few ambitious "gentlemen" against the common
people of America.
It was with similar arguments that the establishment of a
strong Federal government was long and bitterly opposed by
many American patriots and friends of the people. Thomas
Jefferson especially feared the oligarchic domination by that
incipient aristocracy of wealth which later developed into the
much criticized American plutocracy. We will see in a later
Chapter with what fervor so highminded a lover and critic of
the nation as Walt Witman arraigned this plutocracy for repre-
SECOND CHAPTER 45
senting domineering wealth devoid of culture and incapable of
building artistically.
A more recent critic, Dr. H. E. Barnes, in his monumental
"History of Western Civilization," suggests that America actu
ally "created a constitution to protect property against in
dustrial workers and peasants." This echoes the French criti
cism of 1787.
The French ambassador's criticism of the motives underlying
the American Constitution found another apparent confirmation,
recently, in the phrase which Mussolini has, incorrectly, put into
the mouth of President F. D. Roosevelt. The Italian dictator
wrote (Morning Post, London, July 3, 1933) :
"... Roosevelt has doubts about the duration of the
present economic system. He says (in his book 'Looking For
ward') that laissez-faire led the United States to suffer a real
oligarchic domination by a few hundred persons to the harm of
the entire people, who, after a period of dangerous illusions, saw
themselves on the edge of the economic abyss and near a social
catastrophe."
Nothing could more closely touch upon the present discus
sion than this gentle distortion advanced by Mussolini in his effort
to make President Roosevelt appear as one of his disciples "mov
ing in the atmosphere of Fascism," towards "the Fascist cor
porative state" and towards a rather un-American kind of
dictatorial state planning. What Roosevelt actually said was
this:
"Recently a careful study was made of the concentration of
business in the United States. It showed that our economic life
was dominated by some six hundred odd corporations who con
trolled two-thirds of American industry. Ten million small
business men divided the other third. More striking still, it
appeared that, if the process of concentration goes on at the
same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all Ameri
can industry controlled by a dozen corporations and run by
perhaps a hundred men. But plainly, we are steering a steady
course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already."
In other words, President Roosevelt warned the nation
against unwittingly fostering that dangerous concentration of
46 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
wealth which, according to Thomas Jefferson, is the most serious
impediment to American freedom. It was this concentration
which Marx and Engels contended must ultimately bring the "in
evitable cataclysm of the capitalistic mode of production."
President F. D. Roosevelt did not claim it is here essential
to state that the American Constitution was driving America
towards such a critical concentration of wealth. What he did
suggest was that planlessness and laissez-faire might lead to such
concentration. "If the process of concentration goes on," (i.e.
if it is permitted to go on) is a translation of "laissez-faire." The
Constitution, however, was by no means conceived to foster
laissez-faire, but to permit enlightened national planning, which
is the opposite of laissez-faire. This Constitution has, of course,
no possible connection with Fascism, or other forms of dictator
ship. The American Constitution was conceived by men who
fought for and won freedom and self-government. The Consti
tution is, and was intended to be, the expression of high politi
cal education and freedom; while Fascism and other forms of
dictatorship are coercive dictation over those nations which as
the result of centuries of despotic oppression have lost, perhaps
forever, their power of political freedom and self-government.
The potent analysis of the American Constitution, in 1787, by
the French ambassador was as unjust as Mussolini's remarks
about Roosevelt's march towards Fascism, or, according to the
criticism of others of his "march to Moscow." Such criticism
became frequent after laissez-faire had permitted Wall Street
to undermine the economy of the nation and after President F. D.
Roosevelt by a courageous return to the practical principles of
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton
had restored some balance to the tottering structure. Now
almost daily one reads such erroneous accusations as are con
tained in the following newspaper report : "Former Senator G. H.
Moses, Republican, of New Hampshire, brands President Roose
velt as an apostle of Karl Marx and his administration as the
march to Moscow." (N. Y. Herald-Tribune, Feb. 13, 1934).
Such criticism was deprecated by Alexander Hamilton
(Works III, p. 4) as "raising upon every colorable pretext the
cry of danger to liberty, and endeavoring to disseminate among
the people false terrors and ill-grounded alarms." Branding
SECOND CHAPTER 47
"President Roosevelt's administration as the march to Moscow"
betrays an exaggerated deference to modern Russia. Such
critics overlook the fact that it was not Roosevelt who marched to
Moscow, but Marx, or rather Lenin, who marched to Washing
ton and, indeed, it was Marx himself three-quarters of a century
ago who became a disciple of the rational humanism embodied
in the American Constitution, and of the revolutionary methods
as practiced by Washington and again, most impressively for
Marx, by Lincoln. America, her Declaration of Independence
and her Constitution have started the world on its march towards
rationalism and towards the courageous rationalistic experiment
in democratic statesmanship. Certain aspects of this historical
truth including the potent comparison of the national planning
possibilities in Russia and America will be touched upon in some
of the later chapters.
It is true that in America because of the interpretations
placed by the courts on a written constitution, the political insti
tutions are unusually inflexible. It is also true, as well as even
more important (because it is a factor in causing this rigidity)
that our institutions, democratic in form, tend to favor a privi
leged plutocracy. Nevertheless it is sheer defeatism to assume in
advance that democratic political institutions are incapable
either of further development or of constructive social applica
tion. Even as they now exist the forms of representative govern
ment are potentially capable of expressing the public will when
that will assumes anything like unification. The progress
towards such necessary unification must be helped by intelligent
criticism and popular education. And there is nothing inherent
in the present forms of representative government that forbids
their supplementation by political agencies that represent defi
nitely economic social interests, like those of producers and
consumers.
It seems unbelievable that men living in this America of Jef
ferson and Lincoln could give up their ideals without a whole
hearted effort to make democracy a living reality. Such a reality
involves organization and organization means planning. The
reasons for this planning are not abstract or recondite. They
are found in the confusion, uncertainty and conflict that mark
the modern world. The task is to go forward and not back-
48 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
ward until we reach the time when intelligent planning is the rule
in social relations and is the social direction. Either we take
this road or we admit that the problem of social organization on
behalf of human liberty and the flowering of human capacities
is insoluble. But the cause of the liberty of the human spirit,
the cause of opportunity of human beings for full development
of their powers, the cause for which liberalism enduringly stands,
is too precious and too ingrained in the human mind and in the
American Constitution to be forever obscured.
"My God, Ed! The whole damned things been declared unconstitutional!'
FROM A DRAWING BY ROBERT DAY FOR "THE NEW YORKER" OF JUNE 8, 1935, AFTER
THE DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT AGAINST THE N. R. A.
THIRD CHAPTER
HAMILTON FAVORED NATIONAL ACTION IN THE FIELD OF
PUBLIC WORKS, INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE
The phrase "public works" shall be used here in the sense in
spired by Alexander Hamilton. As we will see later he declared :
"to provide roads and bridges is within the direct purview of the
Constitution." He said: "Aqueducts and canals would also be
fit subjects of pecuniary aid from the general government." And
Hamilton recommended that the Federal government imitate
European "institutions supported by public contributions which
eminently promote agriculture and the arts"; ("arts" meaning
here industry). This enumeration does not complete the list of
"internal improvements" which Hamilton wanted the Federal
government to promote. The list will be extended at the end
of the chapter.
This short enumeration shows, however, that national plan
ning for public works was in special favor with Hamilton. We
will see in the next chapter that such national planning was also
in special favor with Jefferson. This fact seems to be widely
ignored; although it is, today, of highest importance to empha
size that the two statesmen who generally are considered to be
the founders of the two parties invigorating America's political
affairs were enthusiastic advocates of Federal planning. Today,
under a Democratic administration, it is true that "the opposi
tion party, the Republican, which has continued in our public
life the spirit and the ideals of Hamilton and which has uni
formly treated the name of Thomas Jefferson with more or less
unconcern, is now vigorously preaching his doctrines and calling
upon men to return to their defense and reestablishment."
(Cf. Nicholas M. Butler, "Is Thomas Jefferson the Forgotten
Man?" Sept. 1, 1935.)
There was much greater harmony than is generally realized
between the two great opponents, Hamilton and Jefferson, espe
cially in regard to national action in the field of public works.
49
50 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
If their followers would also seriously practise their masters'
teachings in this matter, the two opposing parties might even
be compelled to merge into one huge organization for the purpose
of bringing about comprehensive internal improvements and
urbanism.
It is true that the anti-federalist Jefferson greatly feared
the threatening danger in the growth of cities. He feared them
even more than did the federalist George Washington who de
clared: "The tumultuous populace of large cities is ever to be
dreaded." Such warnings seem somewhat unjust when one re
members that Washington's and Hamilton's most noteworthy
achievement, the federation of States under a strong Constitu
tion, could never have been realized without the help of the
humbler townsmen of New York. In his chapter "New York,
the Federalist City," Theodore Roosevelt underlines this fact
when he says:
"The townsmen were quicker witted, and politically more
far-sighted and less narrow-minded than the average country
folk of that day. The artisans, mechanics, and merchants of
New York were enthusiastically in favour of the Federal consti
tution, and regarded Hamilton as their especial champion. To
assist him and the cause they planned a monster procession, while
the State convention was still sitting. Almost every representa
tive body in the city took part in it." Here Roosevelt gives a
long and entertaining description of this marvelous civic pageant
of 1786. He then continues : "For the first year of government
under the new constitution, New York was the Federal capital.
It was thither that Washington journeyed to be inaugurated
President with stately solemnity, April 30, 1789." The Ameri
can Union and its Constitution are largely created by the cities.
Closely allied with George Washington in his desire for a
broad interpretation of the Constitution was, of course, the
Federalist par excellence, Alexander Hamilton, "the most bril
liant American statesman who ever lived," as Theodore Roosevelt
described him.
Hamilton's attitude in the matter of national planning and
public works is especially interesting since the present Republican
party claims to be inspired by him, and since this party (which,
according to the dictionaries, has "generally been characterized
THIRD CHAPTER 51
by a wide interpretation of the Constitution and the endorse
ment of internal reform") today opposes the wide interpretation
attempted by President F. D. Roosevelt.
Hamilton appeared as an advocate of Federal planning when
he presented, in seventeen categories, a survey of the resources
and the prospects for manufacturing in America and suggestions
as to the means ; a statement so noble and of such proportions
as has seldom been furnished to any government. In his sharp
criticism of Jefferson's Presidential Message of 1801 Hamilton
writes :
"Considering the vast variety of humors, prepossessions and
localities which, in the much diversified composition of these
States, militate against the weight and authority of the General
Government, if union under that government is necessary, it can
answer no valuable purpose to depreciate its importance in the
eyes of the people. It is not correct; because to the care of
Federal Government are confined directly, those great, general
interests on which all particular interests materially depend."
These "general interests" are, according to Alexander Hamilton,
foreign relations, regulation of money and national finances,
foreign and interstate commerce, and "the prosperity of agricul
ture and manufactures, as intimately connected with that com
merce, and as depending in a variety of ways upon the agency
of the General Government."
Hamilton concludes : "In fine, it is the province of the Gen
eral Government to manage the greatest number of those con
cerns in which the provident activity and exertion of government
are of most importance to the people; and we have only to com
pare the state of our country antecedent to the establishment
of the Federal Constitution, with what has been since, to be
convinced that the most operative causes of public prosperity
depend upon that Constitution."
Regarding industry Hamilton says (also in his paper criti
cizing Jefferson's Message, Works VIII, p. 263) : "In matters
of industry human enterprise ought, doubtless, to be left free
in the main ; not fettered by too much regulation ; but practical
politicians know that it may be beneficially stimulated by prudent
aids and encouragements on the part of the government. This
is proved by numerous examples too tedious to be cited ; examples
52 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
which will be neglected only by indolent and temporizing rulers,
who love to loll in the lap of epicurean ease, and seem to imagine
that to govern well, is to amuse the wondering multitude with
sagacious aphorisms and oracular sayings."
And in favor of public works, of borrowing for public works,
and of "promoting agriculture and the arts" Hamilton further
expresses himself: "The improvement of the communications
between the different parts of our country is an object well
worthy of the national purse, and one which would abundantly
repay to labor the portion of its earnings, which may have been
borrowed for the purpose. To provide roads and bridges is
within the direct purview of the Constitution. In many parts of
the country, especially in the Western Territory, a matter in
which the Atlantic States are equally interested, aqueducts and
canals would also be fit subjects of pecuniary aid from the gen
eral government. In France, England, and other parts of
Europe, institutions exist supported by public contributions,
which eminently promote agriculture and the arts. Such institu
tions merit imitation by our government ; they are of the number
of those which directly and sensibly recompense labor for what
it lends to their agency."
The phrase "public works" under modern conditions must be
given a wide interpretation. The term "public works," there
fore, shall be used in the present volume so as to comprise not
only all works done at public expense, but also such institutions
or buildings and engineering works as may be managed or con
structed entirely or partly at private expense but will serve such
large parts of the country's population as to give them a public
or semi-public character, and require public supervision and
alas too often: Federal money. Public works therefore may
be roads, bridges, aqueducts, canals, irrigation systems, light
houses, parks, sewers, dams, power stations, public buildings,
railroads, subways and many other works, but also and promi
nently so housing, especially, low-cost housing "for the great
est good of the greatest number."
Hamilton's recommendation of the European example to be
imitated sounds like a prophecy of our times when the European
governmental institutions supporting low-cost housing "emi-
THIRD CHAPTER 53
nently promote agriculture and the arts," and "are of those
which directly or sensibly recompense labor for what it lends to
their agency."
It, furthermore sounds as if Hamilton had wished to specific
ally defend President F. D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" against the
Republican accusation of "undue multiplication of offices and
officers." This very accusation had also been directed by Presi
dent Jefferson, against his august predecessors, Presidents
Washington and Adams. Hamilton's response to Jefferson was
this:
"It must happen to every government that, in the hurry of a
new plan some agents will occasionally be employed who may not
be absolutely necessary; and this, where there is every inclina
tion to economy. Similar things may have happened under our
past administration, but any competent judge who will take the
trouble to examine, will be convinced that there is no just cause
for blame in this particular."
Hamilton viewed the Constitution as a structure which re
quires continuous enlargement and strengthening. In warning
America against overlooking this vital necessity Hamilton used
dynamic architectural terms speaking of the Constitution as if it
were a fort or a cathedral tower that must be built ever stronger
and higher or else fall into ruins. He wrote (Jan. 5, 1800) :
"The dread of unpopularity is
likely to prevent the erection
of additional buttresses to the Constitution, a fabric" (i.e., a
structure) "which can hardly be stationary, and which will retro
grade if it cannot be made to advance."
Hamilton again uses architectural terms when he criticizes
(Jan. 28, 1802) President Thomas Jefferson for being "far more
partial to the State Government" and for having a "disposition
to pull down rather than to build up our Federal edifice."
It almost sounds as if Hamilton had written for readers of
the year 1936 rather than for those of 1791 when he says in his
"Vindication of the Funding System" (Works, vol. Ill, p. 4f ) :
"When they (i.e. the well-meaning friends of the government)
came to witness the exercise of those (Federal) authorities upon
a scale more comprehensive than they had contemplated, and
to hear the incendiary comments of those who will ever be on
54 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
the watch for pretexts to brand the proceedings of the govern
ment with imputations of usurpation and tyranny, and the fac
tions and indiscreet clamors of those who, in and out of the
Legislature, with too much levity, torture the Constitution into
objections to measures which they deem inexpedient; it was to
have been expected, I say, that some such men might . . . add
weight to an opposition . . . the real objects of which they
would abhor."
Thus Hamilton branded the "torturing of the Constitution
into objections" against Federal action.
President Washington closely adhered to Hamilton's interpre
tation of the Constitution. And Washington's and Hamilton's
constructive interpretation of the Constitution, later, has been
adhered to by America's great Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, John Marshall, who, according to Beard, "from 1801 to
1835, never failed to exalt the doctrines of Hamilton above the
claims of the states. ... In the case of McCulloch vs. Mary
land he construed generously the words 'necessary and proper'
contained in the Constitution in such a way as to confer upon
Congress a wide range of 'implied powers' in addition to its ex
press powers. . . . With respect to the means by which the
powers that the Constitution confers are to be carried into execu
tion, John Marshall said, Congress must be allowed the discretion
which 'will enable that body to perform the highest duties as
signed to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people.' In
short, the Constitution of the United States is not a strait-jacket
but a flexible instrument vesting in the national legislature full
authority to meet national problems as they arise. In delivering
this opinion Marshall used language almost identical with that
employed by Lincoln when, standing on the battlefield of Gettys
burg, he declared that 'government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'
'
The depth, however, to which the ulterior folly of the op
ponents of the American Constitution could sink, has been touched
by John C. Calhoun. During the first two thirds of his life he
accepted the constitutional ideas of Alexander Hamilton and
George Washington. Calhoun, then, eloquently advocated the
Federal building of roads to draw the states together; he ad
vocated protection of manufacture and a national bank. Later,
THIRD CHAPTER 55
however, he made himself the philosopher and advocate of seces
sion and of an alleged right of every individual state to veto
whatever Federal law might appear unpalatable to local inter
ests. This was the great orator Calhoun who, in 1839, devoted
the bulk of his most ponderous speech to showing how everything
done by Alexander Hamilton and his school was a violation of
the Constitution. Following in Calhoun's footsteps, the Demo
crats, in their platform of 1840, highly resolved that "the Con
stitution does not confer upon the general government the power
... to carry on a general system of internal improvement."
This was intended to be a death warrant for Federal public
works. The party's declaration was repeated every four years,
until its implication led to the disastrous war of 1862.
Hamilton, who had been the driving power in achieving the
Constitution did according to these rebellious interpreters
not understand its intentions correctly. These "democrats"
claimed that only Jefferson, who was in Paris while the Constitu
tion was being framed, could be an infallible oracle on the in
tentions of the Constitution.
And what did Jefferson say about the desirability of Federal
public works and about "a general system of internal improve
ments"?
56 FOURTH CHAPTER
ROAI
CAM A
PUBLIC WORKS
PROPOSED BY
ALBERT GALLATIN
SIC'Y. OF THE TREASURY
UMDER RLSOLUTIOM OF
U. 5. SENATE. I8O7
COMPILID Y
JOHN G. BRECK
Of the two projected canals shown here cutting through Cape Cod, only
one was to be executed.
FOURTH CHAPTER
JEFFERSON'S COMPREHENSIVE PLAN FOR
NATIONAL PUBLIC WORKS
The opponents of national planning for public works like to
refer to the fact that neither Thomas Jefferson nor James Madi
son shared that opinion according to which the Constitution
originally authorized the Federal Congress to legislate united ac
tion in the form of public works benefiting the whole nation.
Jefferson's attitude in this matter is especially important today,
because he is the founder of what is now called the Democratic
Party and because the most outspoken opponents of the recent
strides towards national planning and public works call them
selves "old line Jeffersonian Democrats." They "brand the pres
ent Washington leadership as a mixture of frenzied finance, wetnursing
and Communism. . . .
We, who are opposing these
things, represent the true Jeffersonian Democrats," (such terms
were used by Eugene Talmadge, Governor of Georgia, and quoted
by the N. Y. Evening Journal, April 22, 1935).
Even the Federal building of piers, lighthouses and ports for
the U. S. Navy appeared to Jefferson as an "infraction" of the
Constitution. And similarly, President Madison made his Fare
well Address (March 3, 1817) a Veto Message directed against
national public works. President Monroe, in 1817, and Van
Buren, in 1837, followed this fatal example. The Constitution,
in Jefferson's and Madison's opinion, failed to bestow the neces
sary power to perform even the most indispensable public works.
But those who so insistently pointed out Jefferson's attitude
could have restored his claim to common sense by adding that he
was greatly in favor of Congress' being given, by means of a
special amendment of the Constitution, every power essential to
the execution of public works. The Constitution had been
framed during Jefferson's absence in France and evidently seemed
to him incomplete in an important aspect. Since 1805 it had
been one of President Jefferson's fondest wishes to liberate con-
57
58 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
siderable parts of the national revenue which might, "by a just
repartition among the States and a corresponding amendment
of the Constitution, be applied, in time of peace, to rivers, canals,
roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects
within each State." (Jefferson's second Inaugural, March 4,
1805. Similar passages can be found in Jefferson's Annual Mes
sages of 1807 and 1808.) Jefferson's ambitions in the field of
public works grew constantly. Under his administration the
plans of George Washington were continued and even surpassed.
And this great passion of President Jefferson found the necessary
response within his nation. Henry Adams tells us (in "Adminis
tration of Thomas Jefferson," IV, 364f.) :
"March 2, 1807, the Senate adopted a Resolution calling
upon the President for a plan of internal improvements. April
4, 1808, Gallatin made an elaborate Report, which sketched a
great scheme of public works. Canals were to be cut through
Cape Cod, New Jersey, Delaware, and from Norfolk to Albemarle
Sound, thus creating an internal water-way nearly the
whole length of the coast. Four great Eastern rivers the Susquehanna,
Potomac, James, and Santee, or Savannah were to
be opened to navigation from tide-water to the highest prac
ticable points, and thence to be connected by roads with four
corresponding Western rivers, the Alleghany, Monongahela,
Kanawha, and Tennessee, wherever permanent navigation could
be depended upon. Other canals were to connect Lake Champlain
and Lake Ontario with the Hudson River; to pass round
Niagara and the Falls of the Ohio and to connect other impor
tant points. A turnpike road was to be established from Maine
to Georgia along the coast. To carry out these schemes Congress
was to pledge two million dollars of the annual surplus for ten
years in advance; and the twenty millions thus spent might be
partly or wholly replaced by selling to private corporations the
canals and turnpikes as they should become productive; or the
public money might at the outset be loaned to private corpora
tions for purposes of construction."
So we find, in 1808, a Federal plan of internal improvements
of such magnitude that the present popular term "five year
plan" would hardly do justice to it. It was a ten year plan to
cost twenty million dollars at a time when conditions were still
FOURTH CHAPTER 59
primitive and the population of the United States constituted
only 6 million people. The Federal Government between 1800 and
1810 had receipts of 13.3 million dollars as a yearly average. In
1927 or 1928 the Federal Government's receipts were over 4
billions, or over 300 times what the receipts were when Jefferson
made his 20 million dollar plan. In order to rival President
Jefferson, therefore, President Hoover would have had to make
a plan costing at least six billion dollars. But, then, Jefferson
was compelled to be parsimonious because the war with England
was imminent, while Hoover, on the other hand, was in the midst
of plenty. He could have doubled and trebled in proportion
what Jefferson planned and would thereby have saved the coun
try billions. The national wealth has been calculated (by the
National Industrial Conference Board) to have depreciated from
360.1 billion dollars in 1928 to 247.3 billions in 1932. The ap
palling depreciation resulting from the loss of potential income
of millions of workers and thousands of factories, may be
visualized by the figures 83 and 39.4 billions, representing, re
spectively, the national income in 1929 and 1932.
Again President F. D. Roosevelt is in still another situation.
He did not find the country in the midst of plenty, as Mr.
Hoover did, but rather in the midst of an exigency equal, in
danger, to the World War (and economically much more crucial),
an exigency in which money had ceased to be a consideration.
Turning back to Thomas Jefferson's ten-year-plan we learn
that "A national university was intended to crown a scheme so
extensive in its scope that no European monarch, except perhaps
the Czar of Russia, could have equalled its scale. Jefferson
cherished it as his legacy to the nation the tangible result of
his Visionary' statesmanship. . . . He spoke of it as 'the fond
est wish of his heart.'
"
Thus has Jefferson's great plan been described by Henry
Adams who appreciated the kinship between the vast possibilities
of Russia and America. In another one of his carefully written
books, the same author referring to Jefferson's same ten-yearplan,
said:
"Naturally the improvements thus contemplated were so laid
out as to combine and satisfy local interests. The advantage
which Mr. Gallatin proposed to gain was that of combining these
60 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
interests in advance, so that they should cooperate in one great
system instead of wasting the public resources in isolated efforts.
He wished to fix the policy of government for at least ten years,
and probably for an indefinite time, on the whole subject of in
ternal improvements, as he had already succeeded in fixing it in
regard to the payment of debt. By thus establishing a complete
national system to be executed by degrees, the whole business of
annual chaffering and log-rolling for local appropriations in
Congress, and all its consequent corruptions and inconsistencies,
were to be avoided." (From "The Life of Albert Gallatin" by
Henry Adams, p. 352.)
Unfortunately the preparations for the war against England
interfered with the execution of Jefferson's plan. But (so Henry
Adams concludes) "had Congress been able or willing to follow
promptly Jefferson's advice, many difficulties would have been
overcome before the year 1810 which seemed even twenty years
later to bar the path of national progress."
Ten years afterwards the ambitious plan of Jefferson was
renewed and favorably voted upon by both houses of Congress,
but as mentioned before was vetoed by President Madison and
again by President Monroe.
1
The vetoes by Madison and Monroe
were especially regrettable due to the fact that the situation of
the Federal finances had greatly improved. On October 27, 1817
the former Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, received a
letter from his successor, Secretary of the Treasury W. H. Craw
ford, who said: "If, then, we do not involve ourselves in a
1 When President Monroe, in 1817 vetoed a bill authorizing national
road building, Jefferson wrote to Albert Gallatin (June 16, 1817): "You will
have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing both Houses,
was negatived by the President. The act was founded, avowedly, on the
principle that the phrase in the constitution which authorizes Congress 'to lay
taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,' was an extension
of the powers specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general
welfare; and this, you know, was the Federal doctrine. Whereas, our tenet
ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the
federalists from the republicans," (today called Democrats) "that Congress
had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but was re
strained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant
they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated
powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes
which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that
the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may
raise money. I think the passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate inci
dent. Every State will certainly concede the power; and this will be a
national confirmation of the grounds of appeal to them, and will settle for
ever the meaning of this phrase, which by a mere grammatical quibble, has
countenanced the General Government in a claim of universal power."
FOURTH CHAPTER 61
Spanish war, we shall have a superabundance of revenue, unless
we engage extensively in a system of internal improvements. I
do not know whether Mr. Monroe entertains the constitutional
scruples which governed Mr. Madison in the rejection of the bill
on that subject on the 3d day of March last. . . .
you will
perceive we are on the brink of the enviable situation which Mr.
Jefferson supposed us to be in about the close of his Presidential
career, viz., of finding out new objects of expenditure, or of re
ducing the revenue to that at present authorized by law."
Viewing the revival of his own large scale planning of 1807
ten years later under Madison and Monroe, Ex-President Jeffer
son persisted in his former opinion that the Constitution was in
need of an amendment. Referring to public works to be under
taken by the Federal Government, Jefferson wrote on April 4,
1824: "It seems to me it would be safer and wiser to ask an
express grant of the power ... It would reconcile everyone,
if limited by the proviso, that the Federal proportion of each
State should be expended within the State. With this single
security against partiality and corrupt bargaining, I suppose
there is not a state, perhaps not a man in the Union, who would
not consent to add this to the powers of the general government.''
9
Perhaps Mayor La Guardia of New York was not aware of
this precedent established by the author of the Declaration of
Independence when he clothed Jefferson's wish in juicier and
more modern phraseology: "I should suggest to President
Roosevelt that he ask the Governors of all the States to have
their Legislatures in session on a certain date so that any con
stitutional amendments can be adopted and this whining
stopped"; (Cf. N. Y. Times, Nov. 15, 1934). This was a truly
Jeffersonian suggestion. Speaking thus before the advisory
council of the Committee on Economic Security in Washington,
Mayor La Guardia urged a comprehensive Federal enterprise in
the field of low-cost housing, improvement of street crossings and
transportation and other public works, the necessity of which,
today, seems as self-evident as did the building of lighthouses to
Jefferson.
Jefferson exhorted that we "cherish every measure which may
foster our brotherly union, and perpetuate a constitution of
government destined to be the primitive and precious model of
62 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
what is to change the condition of man over the globe" ; (April
4, 1824). On January 1, 1826, Jefferson repeated his recom
mendation of amending the Constitution and added: "If in this
state of things we can make such a compromise, we shall save
and at the same time improve our Constitution." Indeed, in a
modern nation, a constitution that would preclude national plan
ning for public works, could not be saved.
In his enthusiasm for public works capable of "changing the
condition of man," Jefferson (June 13, 1817) had already
written to the famous geographer and naturalist Alexander von
Humboldt: "In our America we are turning to public improve
ments. Schools, roads and canals are everywhere either in opera
tion or contemplation. The most gigantic undertaking yet
proposed is that of New York, for drawing the waters of Lake
Erie into the Hudson. The distance is 353 miles, and the height
to be surmounted 661 feet."
To appreciate this truly gigantic American enterprise of
surmounting 661 feet, a paranthesis may remind the reader of
the fact that not long before the writing of Jefferson's letter
Napoleon I had abandoned the plan of building the Suez canal
because his engineers had reported that the level of the Red Sea
was 30 feet higher than that of the Mediterranean, an error
which remained undisputed until 1840. Thus the building of the
Suez canal was delayed until long after the death of Goethe
(1832), Humboldt's friend, who had expressed the wish of living
long enough to see the completion of the canals of Suez and
Panama, the two projects this great man enthusiastically com
mended. It is no accident that, exactly contemporary with
Goethe (1749-1832), another advocate of public works, the
English philosopher and "utilitarian" Jeremy Bentham (1748-
1832) proposed plans for the canals of Suez and Panama. This
same Bentham deeply influenced modern statesmen and, in all
likelihood, also Lincoln, as we shall see later. Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826) anticipated Bentham and Goethe in his enthusiasm
for public waterways. In his letter to Humboldt, Jefferson con
tinued thus about the Erie canal:
"The expense will be great, but its effect incalculably power
ful in favor of the Atlantic States. Internal navigation by
steamboats is rapidly spreading through all our States, and
FOURTH CHAPTER 63
navigation by sails and oars will ere long be looked back to as
among the curiosities of antiquity. We count much, too, on its
efficacy for harbor defence; . . . We consider the employment
of the contributions which our citizens can spare, after feeding
and clothing, and lodging themselves comfortably, as more use
ful, more moral, and even more splendid than that preferred by
Europe, of destroying human life, labor and happiness."
Evidently Jefferson considered it a matter of course that
citizens of the United States should offer contributions or pay
taxes to the Government only "after feeding, and clothing, and
lodging themselves comfortably." This opinion proffered by
the author of the Declaration of Independence is a valuable argu
ment in favor of tax exemption for low cost housing and for
President F. D. Roosevelt's announcement that the American
Government will not permit its citizens to starve. The previous
chapter mentioned the sometimes surprising harmony between
the two opponents, Jefferson and Hamilton regarding policies of
building and public works. It may be here added that Hamilton,
in his proposal for a "Building Tax" wanted "cottages inhabited
by paupers to be excepted" (Works, III, p. 314). Slum dwellers
should pay no taxes.
Notwithstanding his jealous advocacy of the rights of the
individual states, Thomas Jefferson could not but be a very ad
vanced advocate of a modern constructive and even revolutionary
interpretation of the Federal Constitution. It was Jefferson
himself who in drafting the Declaration of Independence had in
troduced the new conception of the "pursuit of Happiness."
Samuel Adams and other followers of the English philosopher
Locke had been content with the classical English enumeration
of life, liberty and property. But in Jefferson's hands the Eng
lish doctrine experienced a revolutionary shift. His substitution
of "pursuit of Happiness" for "property" is claimed by Ameri
can historians to mark a break with the Whiggish doctrine of
property rights that John Locke had bequeathed to the English
middle classes, and the substitution of a broader sociological
concept. (Cf. V. L. Parrington, "The olonial Mind," p. 344.)
It must not be forgotten, however, that Locke himself, at times,
goes so far as to designate as property everything that is in
cluded in "life, liberties and estates." The individual has prop-
64 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
erty in himself and in his life and activities. Property in this
broad sense is that which political society should protect. (Cf.
Locke's treatise on "Civil Government.")
But it was Jefferson who stated this conception with new
vigor and clarity. It was the substitution of "pursuit of Happi
ness" for "property" that gave to the great American document
and to practical politics the note of idealism (previously found
only in philosophical pamphlets) so perennially human and vital
which was to make its international appeal.
The words "pursuit of Happiness" signified far more than
a political gesture to evoke popular support; they were a per
sonification of Jefferson's deep conviction. His life thenceforth
was dedicated to the work of providing such political machinery
for America as should guarantee to all the enjoyment of this
inalienable right. We shall later see that no one more deeply
than Lincoln appreciated Jefferson's revolutionary attitude.
The intimate connection between great social statesmanship
and social architecture, national planning and city planning, has
never become more manifest than in the mind of Thomas Jeffer
son. Aside from introducing the "pursuit of Happiness" into the
constitutional thinking of the world, and aside from being pain
fully aware of the dangers resulting from urban slums, Thomas
Jefferson was at the same time the designer of the wonderfully
planned university grounds of Virginia and the advocate of a
surpassingly designed national capital.
Nothing is more detrimental to the "pursuit of Happiness"
than urban congestion in expensive, ill-ventilated tenements upon
land over-valued by speculators, ill-advised investors and tax
assessors. It even interferes with "Life and Liberty," let alone
with the "pursuit of Happiness." Jefferson wrote in the Decla
ration of Independence: "We hold that whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends (to secure the
inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness)
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such prin
ciples and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." In other
words : whenever the "Form of Government" decays into a con
dition encouraging ill-construed property rights or those danger-
FOURTH CHAPTER 65
ous aberrations of "capitalism" which make it impossible for
"citizens to feed, clothe and lodge themselves comfortably," then
the Declaration of Independence establishes "the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish this Form of Government and to
institute new Government." And in doing this Jefferson wished
the citizens to consider the "pursuit of Happiness" as a more
important right than the right of property.
Today America has reached the stage of development most
dreaded by Thomas Jefferson. Much as he feared the ambitions
of a plutocracy, he quite as much feared the creation of a pro
letariat. "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the
support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the
human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which
preserve a republic in vigor." (Jefferson's Writings, Vol. Ill,
p. 269).
Jefferson was convinced that American Liberty would come
to an end when the people were piled up on one another, in big
cities as in the Old World and were dependent upon the caprices
of trade. Never were these caprices more vicious than they are
now. Compared with the year 1929 the United States, in 1932,
lost 3570 million dollars of export trade. And farming and
urban communities suffered equally from these degrading whims.
The big cities must pay for keeping the farmers alive during the
time when they cannot sell their products. The States containing
big cities must make to the "processing" farmers of other States
compensatory payments supplementing their vanishing market
returns. Thus New York State pays over 22 percent of all the
Federal taxes, while New York farmers receive only about onesixth
of one percent of the farm benefits paid out by the Agricul
tural Adjustment Administration. This contradicts Thomas
Jefferson's demand that, in financing national public works by
taxes levied in the States, "the Federal portion of each State
(each state's taxes) should be expended within the State."
Jefferson had gone so far as to declare that the mobs of the
great cities were panderers to vice and necessarily makers of
revolution. However, it was this same Jefferson and his follow
ers who for their democratic views were regarded by the New
England aristocrats as "a Jacobinical rabble." And in addition,
it was a prominent scion of the New England aristocracy, John
66 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Quincy Adams, who, at an early date affiliated himself with
the Jeffersonians. As President of the United States he fought
for the preservation of the public domain as a great national
treasury of resources to be wisely and honestly managed with
a view of obtaining revenues for roads, canals, and education in
letters, arts, and sciences. "He anticipated by nearly a hundred
years some of the most enlightened measures of conservation"
(Chas. A. Beard).
FIFTH CHAPTER
LINCOLN APPRAISES PROPERTY. SLAVES AND SLUMS
It has been pointed out that America's slow progress in
matters of public works and national planning, and in securing
public control of anarchical property rights, slums, disastrous
building and zoning ordinances, has stout defenders who believe
themselves to be patriotic. Irony of fate has led some of these
champions of chaos to call for help upon Abraham Lincoln, "the
great liberal," as he is customarily eulogised at the annual din
ners in honor of his birthday. And as Lincoln was the head of
the then newly created Republican party, it has today become
the practice among prominent members of this party to invoke
"the great Republican," when they feel duty bound to oppose
successful Democrats and the national policies of the "New
Deal."
The defendants of governmental non-interference claim that
Lincoln was a liberal, that liberalism is identical with non-inter
ference and that everyone's liberty to follow unhampered the
dictates of his financial interests is a fundamental part of that
true and democratic Americanism which is best represented so
they maintain by the sublime figure of Abraham Lincoln. Here
are two typical examples illustrating the current efforts to make
Lincoln the champion of a crusade against the national policies
of the New Deal:
"We need a crusade for the return of fundamentals . . .
We should guide ourselves by the experience of Abraham Lincoln
during the time of a national crisis." Thus argued U. S. Sena
tor L. J. Dickinson, Republican, who has, at times, been
mentioned as a possible presidential candidate (cf. N. Y. HeraldTribune,
Feb. 13, 1934). And one year later, the Republican
Ex-President Hoover also chose Lincoln's birthday for a re
newed protest against the "New Deal" and said: "Lincoln was
a great Liberal . . . Whatever violates, infringes or abrogates
fundamental American Liberty, violates the life principle of
67
68 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
America as a nation. So I feel, Lincoln would judge and ex
press in illuminating phrases were he with us" (N. Y. Times,
Feb. 13, 1935).
It happens that Lincoln is probably the least fitting patron
saint of laissez-faire who could have been found. No one, in
deed, is less suitable to personify the resistance against national
and saner control of capital and property rights. It was he
who most indignantly denied the possibility of dealing with capi
tal and property independent of their deep ethical implications.
It was Lincoln who angrily refused "to assume that there is no
moral question about it, but that it is altogether a matter of
dollars and cents" (Sept. 16, 1859) ; or that "the public mind
could be so far debauched as to square with this policy of caring
not at all and to consider this as merely a question of dollars
and cents" (March 6, 1860). It was this same non-commercial
attitude of Lincoln's which was reiterated by his latest successor :
President F. D. Roosevelt when he said (in his address at the
unveiling of the Samuel Gompers, the labor leader's, Memorial
at Washington, Oct. 8, 1933) : "There are some who think in
terms of dollars and cents instead of in terms of human lives."
Nothing more seriously hinders our fight against present and
future slums than a widespread debauch of the kind referred to
by Lincoln. Today, property owners, legislators and judges
too readily think in terms of dollars and cents rather than in
terms of those true American principles laid down by Jefferson
and Lincoln. We should think in terms of human lives which
are greatly endangered by the presence of the slum and the laws
creating it.
Lincoln belonged to the Republican and therefore to the "antiJefferson"
party. But he professed to be a sincere admirer of
Thomas Jefferson "who (as Lincoln expressed it) in the concrete
pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single
people, had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into
a mere revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to
all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that today and in
all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the
very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression" ; (April
6, 1859).
Lincoln's remark referred, of course, to Jefferson's revolu-
FIFTH CHAPTER 69
tionary feat of having introduced into the Declaration of Inde
pendence the great American concept of the "pursuit of
Happiness," instead of the conventional and conservative Eng
lish term "property" which one would expect to find in this
document. (See Fourth Chapter.)
Today, the question arises : is this American pursuit of Hap
piness possible in the slum? Can happiness be pursued, firstly,
if American laws permit residential property to become slum,
secondly, if municipal building or zoning regulations and tax
assessments practically enforce the abuse of property rights and
the production of slums, and, thirdly, if American wages (not
to mention the wagelessness of the unemployed) force millions
to live in these legal slums? Are not these millions simply the
unhappy victims of what Lincoln calls "reappearing tyranny
and oppression" and what Hamilton (as we shall see in the
Sixteenth Chapter) calls "feudal rights to be abolished in all
the remaining vestiges" and to be denied as "impracticable"
compensation?
To appreciate the fundamental and even revolutionary im
portance of this question one must remember that the number
of these victims in the United States amounts to about forty
millions. (This calculation and other widely divergent ones will
be examined more closely in the Thirteenth Chapter). Do the
crushing facts revealed by this figure indicate the final defeat of
Jefferson's principles and of American ideals?
But Lincoln exceeded Jefferson. Lincoln even thought that
a mere weariness of the existing form of government justified its
overthrow and declared: "This country, with its institutions,
belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow
weary of the existing government, they can exercise their con
stitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right
to dismember or overthrow it"; (March 4, 1861).
Today, there is this consideration: To what extent has an
American slum-dweller the right or the duty to grow weary of
ruining his health and happiness by living in a slum? And since
the existing laws encourage or tolerate the slums and their per
petuation, and since the existing scales of wages and the "credit
structure of the country" force millions of human beings to live
in slums, is it the duty and the right of these millions of Ameri-
70 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
can citizens "to overthrow the government" (or even to consider
any enterprise which tends towards that dangerous end) ? These
and similar questions are often and vividly discussed when, for
instance, anti-socially-minded slum-owners wax cynical and point
out that such American rent strikes as those so powerfully
described in "The Nation" May 22, 1935, and in "The New
Republic," p. 31, August 21, 1935 were, so far, either not very
extensive or not very successful. Such cynics have disdainfully
reminded those who peacefully advocate better housing and more
Christian standards of living, of the "Communist Manifesto" in
which Marx declared: "The communistic ends" (including
better housing) "can be attained only by the forcible overthrow
of all existing social conditions."
Before discussing the fact that Lincoln, when it came to
forcible action, was more radical than Marx, serious attention
must be given to the implications of Lincoln's refusal to think in
terms of dollars and cents rather than in terms of human lives.
Lincoln calculated the market value of all American slaves
to amount to only "two thousand millions of dollars" (instead of
four thousand millions as their value has been computed by mod
ern historians). But even two billions was a huge sum. Lincoln
estimated that "about one sixth of the whole population of the
United States are slaves." The people of the United States in
Lincoln's time, were less rich than they are today and numbered,
slaves and freemen together, only 31.4 millions, one-fourth of the
present population. A financial item of national significance
corresponding in relation to the increased number of people
and to the decreased purchasing power of the dollar to two
billion dollars in Lincoln's time would easily be the equivalent
of twenty billions today. Such a sum is probably larger than
the present value of all American slum property combined, even
if this value is estimated by the tax assessors, or by the slum
owners themselves with their occasional exaggeration and blind
ness to the anti-social character and to the requirements of
amortization of their deteriorating property.
In other words : the national and financial importance of the
slave problem in Lincoln's time was relatively equal to that of
the slum problem in our time, although of course in absolute
numbers the masses suffering from the slum today are much
FIFTH CHAPTER 71
larger than the masses who suffered from slavery. There were,
in 1860, only about five million American slaves, (one-sixth of the
population), while it has been mentioned that, today, the Ameri
can slum population (including the population of the "blighted
districts" or incipient slums) amounts to almost forty million
victims (about one-third of the population).
Lincoln's attitude in the matter of the "two thousand mil
lions of dollars" of tainted slave property of his time, is at
present of special interest when, at least on every twelfth of
February, we are urged to follow his example and when, once
again, billions worth of tainted property is at stake. This time,
not slaves, but slums. Not "that movable property of yours"
(as Lincoln called the slaves), but the "immovables" (or what,
today, is more customarily called this real estate) of ours. It
so happens that Lincoln's figure of two billion dollars corre
sponds, fairly accurately, dollar for dollar, to the amount now
required for wiping out the monstrous slums and blighted dis
tricts of the national metropolis of New York City. Has America
profited by her bloody experience of seventy years ago, and can
American slums be obliterated without recourse to another revolu
tion and without again raising what Lincoln called the "momen
tous issue of Civil War"?
Before Lincoln went to war, slaves were property. This
property was just as legal as at present real estate and "newlaw"
tenement houses are legal. It was even a great deal more
legal than are most of New York's existent 67,000 "old-law"
tenements, firetraps and slum property. They often violate the
current laws, which irresponsible, powerless, or corrupt munici
pal governments fail to enforce. In order to appreciate the
original fragrance of Lincoln's oratorical references to property,
the reader of his speeches will do well to think of up-to-date
over-valued real estate or of omnipresent unsanitary tenement
houses rather than of slaves, a property which at present is per
haps not yet out of date, but has at least ceased to be legal.
Lincoln said, for instance:
"Whether the owners of this species of property do really
see it as it is, it is not for me to say, but if they do, they see it
through two thousand millions of dollars, and that is a pretty
thick coating. Certain it is that they do not see it as we see it.
72 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Certain it is that this two thousand millions of dollars, invested
in this species of property, all so concentrated that the mind can
grasp it at once this immense pecuniary interest has its in
fluence upon their minds" (New Haven, March 6, 1860).
Comparing President Lincoln's difficulties (antiquated and
vanquished as they appear today) with President F. D. Roose
velt's modern and very pressing ones, it must be kept in mind
that the danger of being blind is much greater now than it was
seventy years ago. The "pretty thick coating" of two thousand
millions of dollars has become ten times thicker. As has been
pointed out, nowadays the owners of the prevalent tainted species
of property see even the fundamental question of morals and
social justice through a coating of about twenty thousand mil
lions of dollars. This big blinding factor is represented by ten
millions of obsolete homes (inhabited by one third of the nation's
population) which their owners wish to exploit profitably and
from which the municipalities wish to collect taxes ; although
most intelligent people agree that the whole mess ought to be
destroyed, that it would be highly advantageous to do so, and
that the sooner it were done, the better, for the sake of national
health, economy and morals. One can only hope that the present
tenfold thickness of the "coating" will not make the interested
parties ten times more blind and more stubborn, and a civil war
ten times more imminent and ten times more bloody than the
slaughter of seventy years ago.
To translate into contemporary thought and language, Lin
coln's bold unwillingness to think merely in terms of dollars and
cents, one may again recall the English slogan: "You can kill
a man just as readily with a bad dwelling as with an axe." Keep
ing a man under the axe or exploiting his economic limitations
and forcing him to live in an unsanitary dwelling is at least as
immoral as making slaves of him and his family. Therefore
at the risk of repetition and in order to make the point quite
clear let it be again said that if, today, we wish to understand
how Lincoln's speeches sounded to the conservative ears of his
period, we have only to insert the word "slum-dweller" whenever
he speaks of "slaves."
Lincoln protested against the "dollar and cents" morale of
the slave-holders, who, however, were entirely within the rights of
FIFTH CHAPTER 73
their respective State Constitutions guaranteed by the Federal
Constitution and by the Supreme Court. At present, we protest
with more justification against the owners of tenements who
often shamelessly transgress the insufficient, and insufficiently en
forced, sanitation laws of their respective States and cities and
who house their tenants in a more deplorable manner than the
slaves of many a fair-minded American slave-holder ever were
housed. On President Washington's estate in Mount Vernon one
may see, still standing, the first President's slave quarters, and
one may entertain the envious hope that some day the large
urban slum population of the United States will be as hygienically
housed. One may at the same time harbor the fear that our
planless system of laissez-faire will force the forty million in
habitants of unsanitary quarters into a slavelike readiness to
follow any dictator, slave-driver or charlatan who promises or
procures for them better quarters. And if he succeeds in pro
curing these better quarters he at once, of course, ceases to be
a charlatan and becomes a demi-god, however foul or fair, com
munistic or fascistic, his methods may have been.
In other words : there is a real danger for any constitution
or system of government that permits one third of the country's
population to live in slums. Abraham Lincoln has expressed this
ominous fact in powerful language. Every one of his words
referring to the slaves of his time, applies to the slum-dwellers of
our time.
"To us it appears natural," Lincoln said, "to think that
slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the
things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independ
ence apply to them as well as to us." He continues : "I say, we
SLAVE QUARTERS IN MOUNT VERNON
74 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
think, most of us, that this charter of freedom applies to the
slaves as well as to ourselves ; that the class of arguments put
forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break
down the very idea of a free government, even for white men,
and to undermine the very foundations of free society. We think
slavery a great moral wrong. . . . Now these two ideas, the
property idea that slavery is right, and the idea that it is wrong,
come into collision. . . . The two ideas conflict, and must con
flict." Similarly the "property idea" that slums (and slumcreating
building codes and land values) are right, and the idea
that they are utterly wrong, must be brought to a quick and
decisive collision.
Lincoln gave a great deal of thought to the question as to
whether slavery should be permitted to spread into new terri
tories. The corresponding and highly pressing question, today,
is: should the laws permit the spreading of the slum into those
new territories that so far have been kept free from it? The
unfortunate difference between Lincoln's and our problem is this :
Lincoln could and most emphatically did point out that in his
time (at least until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise) the
existing laws were opposed to the introduction of slavery into
new territories. Today, on the contrary, we find that the exist
ing laws do permit and most successfully nourish or even necessi
tate the creation of new slums all over the country. Everywhere
land has been sold at prices which can be made renumerative
only by building and renting tenements in conformity with the
existing scandalous building ordinances (the senselessness of
which is described in the Eighteenth Chapter of this book).
The slums and laws permitting slum conditions are exactly as
slavery was, a very dangerous thing to plant in new soil. Lin
coln said : "When a new Territory is opened for settlement, the
first man who goes into it may plant there a thing which, like
the Canada thistle or some other of those pests of the soil, cannot
be dug out by the millions of men who will come thereafter. . . .
A thing which, once planted, cannot be eradicated by the succeed
ing millions who have as much right here as the first comers, or,
if eradicated, not without infinite difficulty and a long struggle."
Today, in justification of the existing laws which permit the
spreading of the slum, the demand is made that the "credit struc-
FIFTH CHAPTER 75
ture of the country must be maintained." This necessity is held
to vindicate the maintenance of the inflated prices, of the overlenient
building codes and of the correspondingly excessive tax
assessments of urban real estate. In this matter even representa
tives of the "New Deal" still subscribe to rather obsolete ideas.
It is only a mark of wisdom (to quote a magazine and a news
paper heading) when "that honey-voiced adulator of big busi
ness," "U. S. Secretary of Commerce, Roper, Warns of Harm
to Cities in a 'Haphazard' Decentralizing." But he also "ex
pressed himself as being opposed to any course that might be
harmful to property owners in cities"; (cf. Harpers Magazine,
p. 386, March 1935, and N. Y. Times, Feb. 4, 1935). These
property owners are, however, very largely owners of overvalued
real estate and often of slums or incipient slums. Is their prop
erty, today, more sacrosanct than the slave property opposed by
Lincoln? Both types of property are harmful to the nation.
In order to "maintain the credit structure of the country"
it would not be sufficient to maintain the size of the present slum
population. It would be necessary to increase it materially, for
two reasons. Firstly, because large sections of the slums have
been deserted. In order to make them again renumerative for
their owners, they would have to be refilled with their old or with
new victims. And, secondly, in many cases the price of unbuiltupon
land has gradually and quite definitely been inflated by
speculation (and by the permission of wildly exaggerated build
ing heights) to such an extent that only the construction of
numerous badly lighted and congested tenements conforming with
the reactionary and harmful building codes and zoning ordi
nances of the various municipalities, could maintain the speculatively
inflated but generally accepted "credit structure." And
not to maintain it, would mean "ruin" to the United States, thus
at least the advocates of high and higher real estate values affirm.
"Can any man believe," Lincoln said, "that the way to save
the Union is to extend and increase the only thing that threatens
the Union, and to suffer it to grow bigger and bigger? . . .
Many of our adversaries are anxious to claim that they are
specially devoted to the Union and take pains to charge upon us
hostility to the Union. . . . Whenever this question shall be
settled, it must be settled on some philosophical basis. No policy
76 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
that does not rest upon some philosophical opinion can be per
manently maintained."
The advocates of slavery or slums always like to invoke, as
their "philosophical basis," the usual popular conceptions of
liberty, liberalism, freedom or "popular sovereignty." Lincoln
spoke with never-ending sarcasm of this evident abuse.
"Some of you are for the 'gur-reat pur-rinciple,'
"
he declared,
"that if one would enslave another, no third man should object
fantastically called 'popular sovereignty'
"
; (March 6,
1860).
Against the fallacy of this "great principle" Lincoln set his
own and unfallacious one. As to the abyss that separates a per
son living decently from one living indecently (be it slave or
slum-dweller), he said:
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that
this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half
free. ... I say that there is room enough for us all to be free,
and that it not only does not wrong the white man that the
negro should be free, but it positively wrongs the mass of the
white men that the negro should be enslaved."
Nothing could apply more categorically to the inhabitants
of the decently built section of a city and to its slums and slumdwellers.
No city is better than its slums. And the excessive
valuations of slum property, as well as the possibility of forcing,
some day, similar valuations and overbuilding upon outlying
land, is the heaviest handicap to any effort to build new and
better shelters, and a severe handicap to every homemaker, slumdweller
or free man. The danger resulting from every degraded
settlement and slum (for every prospect of new and better living)
was expressed by Lincoln in the following words to the New
Englanders, words which read like the American gospel of free
settlement and of free labor:
"I desire that if you get too thick here (in New England),
and find it hard to better your condition on this soil, you may
have a chance to strike and go somewhere else, where you may
not be degraded, nor have your families corrupted, by forced
rivalry with negro slaves," or with slum-dwellers (to use modern
terms) whose crowding upon the land produces such high rents
and land values that a free and decent dweller can never compete,
FIFTH CHAPTER 77
nor maintain a decent home nor a pleasant garden, against such
corrupted rivalry. Or, to put it in language conforming to
New York conditions: the homelike privacy of a decent Ameri
can home, today, lacks even the most primitive legal protection
against being degraded and crowded out by slums springing up
in the immediate neighborhood. Or, further, to use the terms
coined by the eminent attorney, E. M. Bassett, the originator
of New York City's zoning ordinance which, much against his
will, has been so badly distorted, "In those districts (labelled E
or F) of New York City which are supposed to be the one-family
detached house districts, a lot owner can build a multi-family
house to accommodate 50 or 100 families, and if he chooses, pro
vide for one family in each room. . . ." Such barracks can be
worse than the slave-quarters of Washington's Mount Vernon,
and are an impossible neighborhood for American "homes."
Lincoln continued his exhortations to the New Englanders
by comparing slavery with a venomous snake endangering the
life of the nation. In using this simile which today applies so
well to the slum, he said: "I want you to have a clean bed and
no snakes in it ! Then you can better your condition, and so
it may go on and on in one ceaseless round so long as man exists
on the face of the earth !"
The comparison of slum or slavery with a venomous snake is
rich in its implications. "If I saw a venomous snake crawling
in the road," Lincoln said, "any man would say I might seize
the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed
with my children that would be another question. I might hurt
the children more than the snake, and it might bite them." These
words suggest the following question:
What will be more injurious to the United States : the return
to sane housing and land values, or the maintenance of the credit
structure compelling congestion and slums? If the inflated land
values in the cities are to be maintained, it is also necessary as
has just been indicated to automatically transfer the exploita
tion of the land by high and dense building (that must result
from inflated land values) to new territories surrounding the
older centers of congestion. Must the vices of old fashioned
city development and slum building be transferred into these
new territories?
78 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Lincoln further unfolded the simile of the snake threatening
his children by saying: "If there was a bed newly made up, to
which the children were taken, and it was proposed to take a
batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it
no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide !
That is just the case. The New Territories are the newly made
bed to which our children are to go, and it lies with the nation to
say whether they shall have snakes mixed up with them or not.
It does not seem as if there could be much hesitation what our
policy should be !"
We know that Lincoln was finally forced to wipe out the
snakes of slavery not only in the new territories, but even in the
old slave states. "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
It will be equally necessary not only to protect the new terri
tories and suburbs of our cities from the tenements which are,
now, permitted to arise there, but also to wipe out entirely the
present permissible types of closely built, badly lighted and
badly ventilated tenements and to obliterate them in even the old
sections of towns where these centers of congestion are still con
sidered unavoidable and legitimate.
An immediate change of most of the American building codes
and zoning ordinances is imperative. It must be effectuated
before "recovery" brings back rising rents and the inevitable
housing shortage (inevitable, because, during the past five years,
very few houses have been erected and decent low cost houses
have not been built for decades). If the building codes and
zoning ordinances are not revised before "recovery" makes such
a revision much more difficult than it is at present, the "snakes"
personified by the existing slums will be carried into the outlying
metropolitan regions, "the new territories" and "the newly made
bed to which our children are to go."
If the necessary revisions of property rights are not made in
due time, most sincere advocates of these fundamental rights, if
they are good Americans, may be forced to follow Lincoln's ex
ample who, although originally an anti-abolitionist, found him
self obliged, for the sake of saving the Union, to legalize one of
the most gigantic confiscations of property that history has ever
known.
SIXTH CHAPTER
CHRISTIANITY AND HOUSING
There may be, even in America, critics to whom the hu
manitarian demands made by Abraham Lincoln and his con
temporary Karl Marx appear extravagant. Such criticism is
more than likely to issue from defenders of the accepted religious
and cultural tradition. They are apt to oppose any revolu
tionary changes in the established rights of holding either slaves
or real estate. This very kind of criticism has inspired vaunted
minds to staunchly defend the cause of slavery and similarly du
bious causes. As pronounced a liberal and devoutly Christian
statesman as the Englishman Gladstone conspired with the dic
tator Napoleon against Abraham Lincoln. Also the famous
English historian Carlyle indignantly opposed Lincoln's fight
against slavery. Emerson, the American, was an ardent op
ponent of slavery, but he thought Carlyle's "merits" so "over
powering" that he could not but "forget ... the violent antiAmericanism"
of this bitter critic of Lincoln's cause. Emerson
did, indeed, believe that "we must hug ourselves" because Lin
coln's "fidelity to public interest" was evident. But he added
"you cannot refine Mr. Lincoln's taste, extend his horizon or
clear his judgment" ; (cf. Emerson's Journals, October, 1863
and December, 1865). The uncompromising advocacy of popu
lar rights and neglected justice is always apt to be criticized.
The early history of German slum statistics offers a re
markable example of the kind of criticism one should guard
against. It has been voiced in perhaps its clearest form by the
prominent historian Von Treitschke who as a promising youth
wrote an inspired biography of the great Italian liberal Cavour,
but who later became the outstanding advocate of reactionary
Prussianism and the uninspired opponent of "Socialism and its
well wishers." Under this title he wrote (in 1874) an article
condemning the publication of the official Berlin housing sta
tistics according to which the capital of German Kultur housed
79
80 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
162,000 people, or one fifth of its population in "overcrowded"
dwellings. This shameful condition had been denounced by
some leading professors of Berlin University (especially by the
subsequently famous economist Gustav Schmoller) as the terri
fying cause of real national demoralization and criminal tend
encies.
To this indictment, however, Treitschke, with equanimity
and religious pathos, replied: "Everyone is himself the cause of
his own actions. No one is so destitute that he cannot, in his
little chamber, listen to his Father in heaven." Schmoller, in
turn, answered: "To talk to morally and mentally decadent
proletarians about the treasures of the soul is just as senseless
as to invite a blind man to admire the beauties of the starry
vault of heaven." While the historian and the economist quar
reled about the possible relations between heaven and housing,
a Berlin clergyman discovered a closer and more dangerous re
lation between congested housing and prostitution. He com
plained that he had to visit some of the most destitute of his
flock in a tenement house containing 250 families, amongst whom
were seventeen unmarried couples and twenty-two prostitutes.
Similar conditions and the education of prostitute and pimp
resulting from it have been duplicated many times, in other
European cities and in New York, and are touched upon in the
report on prostitution in this city edited by J. D. Rockefeller
Jr. in 1908, or in Dr. Abraham Flexner's "Prostitution in Eu
rope" (1914). How very little this state of affairs has changed
since the publication of this report, is proved by the vice in
vestigation, headed by Commissioner Dewey in 1935.
In New York City, as in Berlin before the War, the Chris
tian or "social" attitude which is required in order to bring
about changes, has been sorely lacking. In Berlin both critics
above mentioned, the historian and the economist, were, in the
last analysis, reactionaries. They did not effectively use their
great influence to enforce a real reform in housing. It took the
World War, the breakdown of the imperial regime, and the so
cial revolution of 1918 to bring about the necessary improve
ment and that rebirth of German housing which became the
admiration of the world.
In answer to the bigoted Prussian historian's argument it
SIXTH CHAPTER 81
should be pointed out that he was perverting the meaning of a
word of Christ, the deep implications of which in the field of
housing have by no means been realised as yet even in Amer
ica. Before continuing the parallel between Abraham Lincoln
and Karl Marx and between American and European interpre
tations of property rights it may, therefore, not be amiss to
indicate that the founder of the Christian religion has suggested
the necessity of certain requirements for housing which must,
of course, influence all our conceptions in this field.
The teachings of Christ, fortunately, still hold in America
the position of high honor which they so deserve. And this
should not be doubted even when one reads such critical remarks
about American religiosity as the following comment made by
Emerson :
" 'Tis curious that Christianity, which is idealism,
is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by
the idealists." (Journals, July, 1853.)
It is known that the American respect for the Bible has
been carried, at least in Tennessee, so far as to preclude the
teaching of Darwinism or of any other biological theories con
tradictory to the Bible. In a country where religious feelings
run so high, all housing policies and the fate of forty million
Americans crowded into slums and blighted areas, should cer
tainly be influenced by the conception of residential privacy
voiced by the sublime founder of the preponderant, although
unofficial religion. On the subject of housing Jesus Christ has
concisely expressed a fundamental idea which should be taken
as a divine command and should become an inalienable part of
the program of every housing legislator, municipality and of
those many housing commissions which have sprung into ex
istence since the New Deal.
As related by Saint Matthew (Chapter VI, verse 6) Christ
said: "When thou prayest, enter into thy chamber, and when
thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret."
These are the words which the Prussian historian endeavored
to distort into an argument against better housing and against
the social planning for decent homes. Whatever interpretation
one may wish to give to the content in which these phrases were
uttered, they clearly show that Christ wished every human be
ing to have a home permitting privacy.
82 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
The ideal of everyone to have his own chamber for prayer
and complete seclusion is, however, still far from being realized
by Christianity at large.
1
It is not even realized by so Chris
tian a nation as the United States of America. Statistics show
that the recent depression since 1929 has brought about, even
in the United States, a great amount of "doubling up" and
trebling up. In very many cases two and even more families
share the same limited apartment.
It would appear to be utterly irreligious and even incon
ceivably anti-religious if so powerful and wealthy a Christian
nation as the United States should fail to take cognizance of
Christ's clear and simple precept in so fundamental a matter
as housing and common decency. After this precept has once
been pointed out and understood, it seems impossible that Amer
ica would still hesitate to carry out the Christian imperative and
refuse to rapidly modify all contravening usages and laws gov
erning property rights and real estate. These laws must be
changed in such a way as to facilitate the securing of at least
one room for every one, Christian, or non-Christian, man or
woman, young or old, rich or poor.
England has gone far in recognizing such Christian ethics.
Her latest regulations have included the recommendations of
her National Housing Committee which says: "A family can
not be accommodated in less than three bedrooms if parents,
boys and girls are to be accommodated in different rooms. We
accept the figure of 760 square feet for the three-bedroomed nonparlour
house as a fair estimate though we are quite prepared
to admit that the figure may have to be raised if the general
standard of living rises." (Cf. "A National Housing Policy,
1 A short parenthesis for friends of etymology may here be permitted.
The meaning of the word "chamber" or "closet" as given by the English
Bible translations of 1611 and 1881 expressing Christ's demand, has been
rendered even more explicit by the Latin translation approved by the Catholic
Church. In the Catholic Vulgata, one finds the Greek tameion of the original
Gospel interpreted as cubiculwm. The word cubiculum is, of course, not de
rived from the cubical shape such a chamber may have, but rather from the
Latin word cubare, which means to lie down. If this translation is correct
the chamber of which Christ spoke seems indeed to have been a bedroom.
This convincing translation makes it even more likely that Christ considered
the unhampered use of a private bedroom as the natural right of even the
poorest human being and as necessary for everyone's spiritual (not to men
tion bodily) health and salvation.
SIXTH CHAPTER 83
Report of the National Housing Committee," London 1934, pp.
8 and 55.) Since the statistics show that the "Average Number
of Persons per Family in England and Wales" had by 1931 de
creased to 3.91 persons, the minimum of three bedrooms for each
family seems fair. America is much richer than England, and
Americans have to pay fewer taxes than Englishmen. One may
therefore hope that a similar advance towards Christian stand
ards may be made possible in America.
Most likely some admirers, tax assessors or owners of old
tenement houses will claim that only superhuman qualities could
enable ordinary human beings to live up to the letter of divine
commands. Such practical interpreters of higher laws bigotedly
claim that the obvious impracticability of Christ's commands
is the very measure of the infinite distance between the Almighty
in heaven and the weak man on earth. They worship Christ
most of all because they expect him to be always ready to forgive
human shortcomings and crimes perpetrated against one's neigh
bor or tenant. Such expectations and interpretations, how
ever, are apt to be fallacious. The impracticability that
sometimes seems to mark Christ's commands is not a reality, but
a symbol of the infinite greatness of God as conceived by re
ligious men. It is the symbol of the infinite potential greatness
of God in man ! To them a command of Christ is an obligation
because it is a demand^ of their own nature (and perhaps even
of their whole nature) and, therefore, is an expression of their
innermost longings. Thus the seeming or alleged impracticabil
ity of Christ's commands is not a counsel of despair or an excuse
for dodging obvious duties, but a program for wisely planned
reform. Whoever can calmly see the ghastly housing misery
of our times, should not expect ready forgiveness for evading his
duty to plan for speedy reform, but should rather remember
that Christ promised to "send forth his angels, and they shall
gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which
do iniquity ; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire : there
shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. . . . Who hath ears to
hear, let him hear." (St. Matthew, 13, 41-43.)
Having thus based one of the most essential demands in
modern housing privacy and approximately one room per per-
84 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
son upon the rock of Christian teaching we may safely return
to the two contemporaries, Lincoln and Marx, who, in the nine
teenth century, were probably the most outstanding fighters
for the realization of practical Christianity, although they did
not care to exploit the divine name.
SEVENTH CHAPTER
HOMEBUILDERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
". . . so that every poor man can have a home."
(From Lincoln's address to the German Club of
Cincinnati, Feb. 12, 1861.)
". . .
facilitating the access of the young and the
poor to the sources of wealth and power." (From
Emerson's "Politics," 1840.)
". . . the bringing into cultivation of waste lands,
and the improvement of the soil generally in ac
cordance with a common plan . . . combination of
agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual
abolition of the distinction between town and coun
try, by a more equable distribution of the popula
tion over the country." (From the demands of
"the Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels.)
I. LINCOLN, EMERSON, MARX
Few historians have sufficiently emphasized to what a
large extent the political revolution of the nineteenth century
was a direct victory for better housing and how deeply the Euro
pean revolution has been influenced by America.
When, in 1867, the right to vote in elections for Parliament
was, after much struggle, finally secured for every English house
holder, the leading English opponent of this measure quite cor
rectly called it the political victory of "the people who live in
small houses." The man who coined this and many similar
phrases was Robert Lowe. "The conservatives made a hero, and
even an idol of him," because he "was embodying in brilliant sar
casm the fears, prejudices, and spites, the honest dislikes and
solid objections of a large proportion of English society. . . .
Workingmen's Unions, strikes . . . and a steady hatred of all
American principles; a certain disappointment that the Ameri
can republic had not fulfilled most men's predictions and gone
to pieces these and various other feelings combined to make
a great many Englishmen particularly hostile to political reform
at that moment." (Cf. Justin McCarthy, M.P., "The History
85
86 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
of Our Own Times," Chapter L.) In parenthesis it may be
mentioned that even in 1865 the British planters of Jamaica,
where slavery was "abolished," celebrated one of the most ghastly
of colonial orgies, wildly killing and flogging their negroes who
legally were freed, but who rebelled against a still prevailing
coercive system which even England's Chief Justice Cockburn had
to call "slavery."
In opposition to "the small houses" and their inhabitants
stood the famous "great houses" of Great Britain, the delightful
country-seats of an old aristocracy and of the eagerly aristo
cratic newly rich, the mercantile and capitalist employer classes.
In the "great houses" lived the "good and the wise" who alone
this was their contention could mete out good government. And
their further contention was that all standards of English virtue
and political decency were seriously endangered because the
uneducated and allegedly fatuous inhabitants of the small houses
had won in 1867 and as an immediate result of Lincoln's war
political representation in Parliament. By their sheer number,
the enfranchised masses had gained the theoretical possibility
of overpowering the select few, the guardians of political equi
librium.
"The working men, the majority, the people who live in the
small houses, are enfranchised ; we must now at least educate our
new masters." This was the much quoted phrase coined after
the parliamentary reform of 1867 by Robert Lowe (Viscount
Sherbrooke) who had been the most eloquent opponent of reform.
If this lawyer, who rose to nobility from the middle class, had
been less snobbishly conceited, he might have suggested that
the "new masters," "at least," deserved to be better housed, and
that such better housing was even more urgent than better edu
cation. This consideration was imperative because the "new
masters" of England, these dwellers in "little houses," had at that
time during America's Civil War and in one of the most de
cisive moments in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race proved
that in matters of political tact and foresight they were superior
to the inhabitants of the "great houses."
There can hardly be found a more momentous argument for
the dignity of the small home and incidentally for democracy!
than the events which between 1860 and 1870 united the
SEVENTH CHAPTER 87
workingmen and the active friends of popular government in
Great Britain and America, events which may prove to have
special interest to the student of American housing, city plan
ning and public works in general, for the following reason:
The English Tories and reactionary Whigs after the defeat
of their American colleagues, the slave-holders managed to gain
popularity and maintain their old political power by suddenly
changing from their previous reactionary attitude to the most
unexpected and far-reaching support of truly democratic gov
ernment. By thus outdoing their political rivals (the so-called
Liberals), the English Tories have set an historical example
which, some day may be copied by the American Republicans
of the present decade. As the English Tories found it to their
advantage in the crucial political exigency of their time to
suddenly abandon their opposition to radical reform and give
their decisive support to the most progressive measure conceiv
able, so the American Republicans may, before long, find their
political advantage in suddenly abandoning their opposition to
large scale public works, which is the crucial problem of our
present time. In order to outdo the Democrats, the Republi
cans may become the most energetic supporters of a sweeping
policy for state planning and the rebuilding of our cities.
Or has, perchance, America by this time developed into a
country of less unlimited possibilities than England? In any
event, the curious development of these English possibilities and
the depth of the influence of American thought upon them, the
following pages will recall to the student of modern housing.
This development forms the necessary background of England's
subsequent progressive housing and city planning policies which
have so utterly outdistanced those of the United States that
this younger nation appears today in a most amazing contrast
to her progressive days of 1776 and 1862 as an almost back
ward country.
"As the globe keeps its identity by perpetual change, so
does our civil system, by perpetual appeal to the people and
acceptance of its reforms;" (Emerson, The Fortune of the Re
public). The preservation of national power requires continual
88 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
rebirth, spiritual and economic. Fortunate is such a nation as
the United States, a nation born and reborn from the womb of
revolution, in 1776 and 1861. Its permanent rebirth can be
fecundated by its own indigenous sources. It is superfluous for
America to seek help from "Marx or Moscow" as long as Jef
ferson, Lincoln, Emerson and Walt Whitman, the "permanent
rebel," remain a living font of political and other regenerative
life.
England also, of course, enjoys the political advantage of
great revolutionary lessons reaped from her own history. But
these English lessons lie so far in the past that during the nine
teenth century they would probably have proved ineffectual, if
it had not been for the additional inspiration forced upon her
by the revolutionary events in America, Prance and other coun
tries.
The continuous rebirth of a nation in the field of economics
means a continuously wise redistribution of wealth and power.
No one saw this more clearly than Emerson (who was six years
older than Abraham Lincoln and fifteen years older than Karl
Marx). "The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man,"
Emerson said, "will, of course, wish -to cast his vote with the
democrat, for free trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of
legal cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every man
ner the access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth
and power;" (in Emerson's lecture on "Politics," 1840). And
Lincoln, on meeting Emerson, told him that he had attended his
lectures.
Emerson and Lincoln, and also Marx, were fed by the same
humanistic, that is to say social and socialistic, ideas which es
pecially inspired the first six decades of the nineteenth century
and united its outstanding thinkers in the fight for social justice.
"The homes of a free and a happy people" are a frequently re
current motif in Lincoln's speeches (e.g. March 6, 1860). And
he expressed perhaps the leading idea of his century when in
Cincinnati (Feb. 12, 1861), he told the immigrants from Ger
many "that the working men are the basis of all governments,
for the plain reason that they are all the more numerous. . . .
I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the
greatest number." And "in so far as the government lands
SEVENTH CHAPTER 89
can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands
into parcels, so that every poor man can have a home."
These and similar statements of Lincoln's are of far-reaching
significance. The second statement, foreshadowing the Home
stead Act, may be called a practical application of Lincoln's
first statement which contains a general political program. And
Lincoln's program was a remarkable synthesis of elements con
tained in the Declaration of Independence, and in Bentham's
modern code of ethics which makes "the greatest happiness of
the greatest number" the practical test of right and wrong in
both morals and laws. Jeremy Bentham was, indeed, an Eng
lishman. But his new code of ethics had by no means as yet
found practical recognition in England or anywhere else. Also,
when Lincoln reiterated verbatim Bentham's phrase concern
ing the greatest happiness, he so one may surmise hardly
thought of its English origin. He probably thought rather of
every American's "inalienable right" to the "pursuit of happi
ness."
Lincoln's synthesis of American revolutionary thought and
of Bentham's new democratic philosophy is the more remarkable
because in his youth Bentham had severely criticized the Ameri
can Declaration of Independence. "The whole of the case,"
Bentham had said, "was founded on the assertion of natural
rights, claimed without the slightest evidence of their existence,
and supported by vague and declamatory generalities." But
while Bentham thus criticized the "laws of Nature" of the Dec
laration of Independence, he had already vindicated them in his
own new way. It was in the same year, 1776, the birth year
of the American Declaration, that there also appeared Bentham's
book "Fragment of Government," in which he introduced his
famous phrase. To make "the greatest happiness of the great
est number" the practical test of right and wrong soon came
to be considered the most practical method of securing for the
individual American his constitutional right of pursuing happi
ness. This test became, so to speak, the philosophical basis of
all manhood suffrage, for which the fight was first won in the
United States. And we shall presently see how, through Lin
coln's spectacular victory over the slave-holders, the introduction
of manhood suffrage became possible and necessary in feudal
90 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Great Britain also and, for some time at least, in other coun
tries. A temporary political Americanization of the western
world was the result.
It is a pathetic, almost tragi-comical story when one sees
how John Quincy Adam's friend, the wise and famous Bentham,
from 1811 and for twenty-five years thereafter, humbly and al
ways unsuccessfully offered his services, free of charge, as a
legislator to American Presidents and Governors, and to the
rest of the world ; and how then suddenly there arose in support
of Bentham, the great fighter whom the myth-creating habits
of history today glorify as a mystical giant, deciding the out
come of the battle of ordinary men. At any rate, Lincoln was
the most powerful of the innumerable statesmen who, everywhere
and often without knowing it, were deeply imbued with the spirit
of the great Englishman. "Bentham, plundered by everyone,"
said Talleyrand, "always remains rich." And one of Bentham's
most recent American critics, Professor J. M. Clark of Colum
bia University, offers a new and rather surprising interpretation
of Bentham's philosophy. For Clark, Bentham is not an advo
cate of laissez-faire, but rather of a planned and social economy.
Clark writes:
"The most vital feature of Bentham's system was the in
sistence on judging institutions by their results and treating
them as tools for the furthering of social purposes. The full
meaning of this we are only just beginning to realize; so slowly
does a radical idea reveal its consequences and corollaries." (Cf.
"Adam Smith and the Spirit of '76"; published in 1927, p. 92.)
The practical philosophy of Bentham and of Lincoln! has
become the guiding star of the coming age: the age of planning
and social purpose.
To Lincoln the "social purpose" of this "radical idea" had
already revealed itself when, in Cincinnati, he repeated Bentham's
maxim of the greatest good to the greatest number. For him
the practical consequences were the Homestead Act (1862), dis
liked by the southern slave-holders, and the war against these
same southerners distinctly a class war.
Lincoln's statement foreshadowing the Homestead Act was in
close harmony with Emerson's wish to facilitate the access of
the poor to the sources of wealth. Emerson's announcement that
SEVENTH CHAPTER 91
history is the story of class struggles (made in his lecture "The
Conservative," 1841) antedates by six years the same assertion
made in "The Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels,
Emerson and Americanism may well have been the inspirations of
the much younger Marx.
Two years before Marx and Engels published their "Mani^
festo" the great American seer, Walt Whitman, in his "Brooklyn
Eagle" (Sept. 22, 1846), wrote the following astonishing proph
ecy concerning Karl Marx: "Amid penury and destitution,
unknown and unnoticed, a man may be toiling on to the comple
tion of a book destined to gain acclamations, reiterated again
and again, from admiring America and astonished Europe!".
The distinction between American admiration and European
astonishment was well founded. The "Communist Manifesto"
had been translated and distributed in America a short time after
its appearance in London. There for many years it remained
almost exclusively a concern of the outlaws, if this term may be
applied to the working class which at that time had no repre
sentation in Parliament, and whose unions, although already
strong, were still actually illegal.
In America, on the contrary, the "Communist Manifesto"
secured for its authors high literary standing. The New York
Tribune published (Aug. 10, 1852) "The Chartists," Marx's
important article on the suppressed nineteenth century revolu
tion of England. It is, indeed, quite probable that Lincoln had
read this essay. The English developments described by Marx
were, ten years later, reenacted in America under Lincoln's guid
ance and this time triumphantly. Marx shows in this article
how the English manufacturers in their fight against aristocracy
were dependent upon the political assistance of the workingmen
and how they exploited it : ". . . in every violent movement they
were forced to appeal to the working class." Similarly the New
England manufacturers could never have forced the Southern
planters to permit protective tariffs for American industry if
the workingmen of the American (and English!) cities had not
supported the cause of the North as long as it was the cause of
freedom and democracy.
The slave-holding aristocracy believed that "the greasy me
chanics" of the populous northern cities would not fight. But,
92 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
on the contrary, they fought enthusiastically, at least, until the
rich, instead of themselves fighting, secured permission to hire
substitutes and until the ruthless war-profiteering of the manu
facturers and bankers led to the bloody draft riots of Boston
and New York. The American workingmen would perhaps never
have fought and never have helped the industry of New England,
had the social and democratic attitude of President Lincoln and
his Homestead Act not inspired them to believe that he and they
fought for freedom.
The American attitude towards the idea of turning govern
ment-owned land into homesteads had already been well expressed,
in 1846, by Walt Whitman when he wrote (July 2) : "We desire
that somebody will be found honest enough to tell the plain
truths (even if it subject him to the awful nickname of a 'radical'
on this matter of a property which the rulers of the land merely
hold in trust for the poor, after all." Walt Whitman favored
the proposal to sell all Public Lands at (what one might call)
a reversed auction sale: The assumption was that the most de
sirable farmlands would be sold first; therefore, the prices for
land should gradually be lowered from one dollar per acre, in
1847, to 25 cents an acre, after 1859.
The words (quoted above) by which, in 1861, the PresidentElect
Lincoln supported the Homestead Act had a peculiar po
litical significance. The then governing President, Buchanan,
had just vetoed the Act (June 22, 1860), because he thought
it might foster socialism. About this bill which was to satisfy
the longing of every American heart and give a home to every
poor man, President Buchanan, in his veto message, almost per
versely wrote : "This bill will go far to demoralize the people and
repress the noble spirit of independence. It may introduce among
us those pernicious social theories which have proved so disastrous
in other countries.
9 '
Thus we find expressed, even in 1860 and by an American
President speaking against what later became Lincoln's great
American Homestead Act the demagogic language of denuncia
tion and suspicion which, by now, has become traditional and
almost dignified in America, amongst those who oppose reform,
however necessary . . . "because Americans generally are fun-
SEVENTH CHAPTER 93
damentally antagonistic to all regulation and regimentation by
alien-minded professors, visionaries and screwy-noodles." ("New
York American, Editorial Page," Nov. 5, 1935.)
Lincoln was not afraid to sign the "demoralizing" Home
stead Act and became thereby, even more than by the abolition
of slavery, the most American of Presidents. One of the main
advocates and even originators of the Homestead Act was the
socialist Horace Greeley who for much of his thirty years of edi
torial activities was the greatest single journalistic influence in
the country. It was he who brought about Lincoln's nomination
as presidential candidate and who was one of the first editors to
join the new Republican Party. Greeley's powerful New York
Tribune had been founded to provide for the laboring classes a
paper which should be as inexpensive as the then existing news
papers but cleaner and more intelligent. It became the founda
tion of American journalism. Lincoln and Marx, were occa
sional contributors. The New York Tribune's payments to Karl
Marx were most of the time his main financial support. About
the great American Socialist-Republican editor who thus nursed
modern socialism into being, Beard's story of "The Rise of
American Civilization" (I, 751) relates the following:
"The fact that men of Greeley's mental power and political
standing were drawn to the socialistic philosophy is proof that
the agitations of the middle period had reached far beyond the
obscure circles of working people and were deemed worthy of
serious consideration by some who sat in lofty places. Unques
tionably the civil cataclysm of 1861 and the free land opened
to labor by the Homestead Act of the following year checked
for decades the strong radical tendencies."
The reappearance of the same radical tendency, after the
economic cataclysm of 1929, may be called a very national and
truly American symptom and may again be checked, this time,
it is hoped without a repetition of the "civil cataclysms" of 1776
and 1861, but hardly without some kind of a thorough-going new
measure akin to the Homestead Act, a measure which only eco
nomic planning and city planning can make possible, and which
the Buchanans of today will denounce as "pernicious," "demoral
izing," "radical" and even un-American!
94 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
II. HOW MAEX HELPED THE CAUSE OF EUROPEAN HOUSING
AND OF THE AMERICAN UNION
You comprehend, as your address shows, that the
exciting rebellion means more, and tends to more,
than the perpetuating of African slavery that it
is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all working
people. . . . None are so deeply interested to re
sist the present rebellion as the working people.
(From the speech Lincoln made when he accepted
the honorary membership in the Workingmen's As
sociation of New York, March 21, 1864.)
The close spiritual communion between the elder Lincoln and
the younger Marx found its historical expression at a most criti
cal moment. This occurred when the English "aristocracy"
of mind and privilege intrigued against Lincoln, and allied itself
with the dictator Napoleon III, "the swine Bonaparte," as Marx
called him (Feb. 21, 1863). By destroying the American Union,
Napoleon wished to save his Mexican conquest, a conquest which
the United States, true to the Monroe Doctrine, refused to
recognize. And, on the other hand the English wished to destroy
the "contemptible republic" because as the cynical Lord Salis
bury said "it kept shop and was England's rival in business."
Even the leading champion of Irish freedom against English op
pression, the famous Irish revolutionist John Mitchel, was
ardently pro-Southern and an advocate of American slavery.
It was at this dangerous hour when France, England (and
even suffering Ireland!) threatened the American Union and
American freedom that Marx's communism decisively mani
fested its true American tendencies. Marx led the English
workingmen into an effective protest against the English crime
and thereby contributed, very likely in a decisive and conclu
sive manner, to the salvation of the American Union. The great
"liberal" Gladstone, together with the prime minister Palmerston
(always a strong opponent of slavery except that of the
United States), and with the often utterly eccentric his
torian, Carlyle, and other prominent Englishmen abetted the
slave-holders. At the same time, the more perspicacious Marx
wrote: "I would bet my head that these fellows will get the
worst of it;" (Sept. 10, 1862).
To appreciate the international importance of the issues at
SEVENTH CHAPTER 95
stake important in the very matter of housing! one must
read descriptions of the British slums into which the Victorian
highbrow plutocracy, contemporaneous with Lincoln, still
shamelessly dared to corral their own slaving countrymen.
Such an "aristocracy" would naturally also be ready to sup
port the cause of slavery in America. The appalling industrial
and housing conditions that were permitted to prevail in Eng
land for more than a century after her industrial revolution
(beginning about 1760) have perhaps never been equalled, not
even in America in her "old law" immigrant slums and sweat
shops, nor during her depression years beginning in 1929.
The perverse social results caused by the introduction of
"labor saving" machinery, have been described by the English
anti-Marxist historian Arnold Toynbee in his book "The In
dustrial Revolution" (1884). Describing a perversion almost
akin to that of our own time, he writes : "We now approach a
darker period a period as disastrous and terrible, because,
side by side, with the great increase of wealth, was seen an
enormous increase of pauperism; and production on a vast
scale, the result of free competition, led to a rapid alienation of
classes and to the degradation of a large body of producers."
The terrible British conditions have been detailed in the
voluminous reports of numerous British Parliamentary commis
sions, which, during the second quarter of the nineteenth cen
tury, investigated industry and housing in Great Britain. Low
agricultural wages and the somewhat higher wages of the fac
tories caused a rush to the industrial centers where, however,
there were no adequate housing facilities and but little new
building to shelter the newcomers. They were herded into foul
quarters which had not been fumigated or disinfected since
1667, the time of the Great Plague.
From these terrible conditions in British industry and hous
ing no relief seemed possible until Lincoln's successful fight
against slavery changed all the political perspectives. Previous
to that great event, England's suffering classes had no repre
sentation in Parliament ; they were practically slaves of their
employers. "For centuries our legislation had acted on the
principle that the workingman was a serf of society." So writes
the English historian McCarthy, who is by no means a Marxist.
96 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
At the time of America's Civil War, there was still in England
"a marked and severe distinction drawn between master and
servant, master and workman, in our legislation. In cases of
breach of contract the remedy against the employer was en
tirely civil; against the employed, criminal. A workman might
even be arrested on a warrant for alleged breach of contract,
and taken to prison before the case had been tried." Very much
like Southern slaves !
The enterprises of the English capitalists grew continu
ously larger. The lawyers, the medical profession, the members
of the stock exchange were permitted to unionize and hold out
for definite rates of remuneration. If workingmen did the same,
it was called a conspiracy in restraint of trade, a criminal com
bination to "fix the price of labor." The labor unions could
be prosecuted in court; they could also be plundered with im
punity by anyone. The labor unions themselves could not
prosecute. Their transactions were shut out from the protec
tion of civil law. Even the building associations were hampered
by all sorts of legal limitations. As late as 1880, doubt had to
be expressed as to whether the English legislation regarding
workingmen's cooperative and building associations "has not
done them more harm than good."
The industrial laborers of Great Britain had good cause for
feeling abused. Their political agitation had materially con
tributed to the victory of the parliamentary reform of 1832.
But this reform had only helped the middle class. It had left
the working classes out of the new franchise. After their
threatening masses had been used to frighten the formerly allpowerful
artistocrats into making concessions, the victorious
middle class, mostly manufacturers and tradesmen, at once
changed fronts. They proudly united themselves with the landholding
aristocracy against the working classes and denied them
all political rights. Great Britain very properly was de
scribed, even in 1845, as consisting of two enemy nations, the
classes of the rich and of the poor. This description (contained
in the novel "Sybil, or the Two Nations") came from the pen
of Disraeli, the very statesman who, later, in 1867, as leader
of the English conservatives and of their most amazing political
right-about face was to make far-reaching democratic conces-
SEVENTH CHAPTER 97
sions and was to give the franchise of voting in parliamentary
elections to all male house-holders, i.e. to "the people who live
in small houses." Thus was the danger of a civil war in Eng
land overcome.
The same year (1845) that brought forth Disraeli's semisocialistic
novel "the Two Nations," was also the year in which
the first scientific and comprehensive description of England's
industrial and housing misery appeared, "The Condition of the
Working Classes in England," a book of undisputed and last
ing value, written by Marx's closest friend, Friedrich Engels
(1820-95), fifteen years younger than Disraeli. Of the work
ing classes' exploitation Engels and Marx were much more
direct, uncompromising, and less romantic critics than Disraeli,
who was a master of compromise and who, thereby, concluded
his life (1804-1881) as Tory leader and Lord Beaconsfield.
In opposing the English desecration of humanity, Marx and
Engels recognized, from the beginning, that Lincoln's fight
against the American accomplices of the English slave-drivers
would necessarily help to liberate the victims of the impudently
disguised European slavery.
"The events in America are a world upheaval," Marx wrote
(Oct. 29, 1862), "and there is nothing more disgusting than the
English attitude towards them." He fully understood that
America was the real leader in revolutionary matters, a leader
ship indispensable to the political health even of Europe.
Marx's conviction expressed itself, a little later, in historic
literary phrases. Upon Lincoln's re-election to the Presidency,
in December, 1864, the "General Council of the First Inter
national" sent congratulations to the American people. The
letter was written by Karl Marx and may be called Marx's very
personal communication to Lincoln. In it he said:
"From the commencement of the titanic American strife the
workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled
banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the
territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide
whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to
the labor of the emigrant, or prostituted by the tramp of the
slave-holder? . . . The workingmen of Europe feel sure that
as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of
98 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
ascendency for the middle-class, so the American anti-slavery
war will do for the working classes. ... It fell to the lot of
Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class,
to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the
rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social
work." These words were by no means exaggerated compli
ments to acclaim Lincoln's reelection. Long after the struggle
was over, Marx inserted very similar words in the Preface to
the first edition of his "Capital," 1867. In fact, Marx only
repeated what Lincoln himself had emphatically said in his An
nual Message to Congress (Dec. 3, 1861). In this we read:
"It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if
not exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular gov
ernment the rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this
is found in the most grave and maturely considered public docu
ments as well as in the general tone of the insurgents. In those
documents we find the abridgement of the existing right of
suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate
in the selection of public officers except the legislative, boldly
advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control
of the people in government is the source of all political evil.
Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge
from the power of the people." (Lincoln repeated this state
ment on March 21, 1864.)
While the struggle was still being waged, "London created
a nightmare of its own, and gave it the shape of Abraham
Lincoln." Thus Henry Adams, who then lived in London, re
ported. And the British eye-witness, McCarthy, who makes
every conceivable effort to wash clean whatever there can be
washed of England's deplorable attitude of that time, reports
as follows: "The vast majority of what are called the govern
ing classes were on the side of the south. By far the greater
number of the aristocracy, of the official world, of members
of parliament, of military and naval men, were for the south.
London club life was virtually all southern. The most powerful
papers in London, and the most popular papers as well, were
open partisans of the Southern Confederation. In London, to
be on the side of the Union was at one time to be eccentric, to
be un-English, to be Yankee. . . . The geography of the ques-
SEVENTH CHAPTER 99
tion was not very clearly understood in the clubs. Those who
endeavored to show that it was not easy to find a convenient
dividing line for two federations on the North American conti
nent were commonly answered that the Mississippi formed
exactly the suitable frontier. It was an article of faith with
some of those who then most eagerly discussed the question in
London, that the Mississippi flowed east and west, and sepa
rated neatly the seceding states from the states of the north.
The (London newspaper) 'Times' was the natural instructor of
what is called society in London, and the 'Times' was, unfor
tunately, very badly informed all through the war."
The "Liberals" were even more eager than the Tories in
exultantly announcing that "the republican bubble" had burst.
Even after the capture of Vicksburg by General Grant, "for a
whole year or more the London public were still assured that
the Confederates were sweeping from victory to victory ; . . .
On the last day of December, 1864, the 'Times' complained that
'Mr. Seward and other teachers or flatterers of the multitude
still affect to anticipate the early restoration of the Union' ;
and three months from that date the rebellion was over."
"The conviction of the governing classes that the civil war
must lead to the disruption of the Union was at the bottom of
much of the indifference and apathy which for a long time was
shown by English officials in regard to the remonstrances of the
United States. The impression that we might do as we liked
with the north was made only too obvious. The United States
must, indeed, then have felt that they were receiving a warning
that to be weak is to be miserable."
"Disgusting" indeed, as Marx called it, was the attitude of
the government, of the Lords Russell and Palmerston, and of
the great Liberal Gladstone, who later volubly admitted his
"mistake of incredible grossness." The British government in
sidiously permitted the southern slave-holders to use, quite
openly, English harbors for the armament of their warships and
for manning them with English sailors ; and this in spite of the
continuous protests of the American minister.
One of the finest victories the American Republic ever won
was the triumph of Bostonian tact and firmness represented by
her ambassador in London, Charles Francis Adams, over the
100 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
blundering "bumptiousness" of the traditional English states
manship as carried on by her pretentious "aristocrats," espe
cially by Lord Palmerston who, like a big boy, enjoyed bullying
the world with his often impudent use of Great Britain's superior
power. And nothing could more sadly justify pessimism than
the fact that this bullying boy was greatly admired by his com
patriots. When, nine years later (1873), England finally ad
mitted her errors and by international arbitration was made to
pay 15.5 million dollars of damages to insulted America, English
opinion, by no means penitent, punished the prime minister then
in power (Gladstone; Palmerston having died in 1865) by de
feating him.
Even more ominous for the hopes for world peace is another
undeniable and now generally recognized fact. All the noble
tact of Charles Francis Adams would have been of no avail in
London without the military successes of General Grant; "and
he (Mr. Adams) well knew that nothing but military success
could rescue the Union from the diplomatic conspiracies which
were going on in Europe for the promotion of the Southern
cause." But McCarthy, who states this, reports also that the
American Union aside from her military strength had an
other great ally in England: "Most of the great democratic
towns of the midland and of the north were mainly in favor of
the Union. The artisans everywhere were on the same side.
This was made strikingly manifest in Lancashire. The supply
of cotton from America nearly ceased in consequence of the war,
and the greatest distress prevailed in that country. The 'cotton
famine,' called by no exaggerated name, set in. All that private
benevolence could do, all that legislation, enabling money to be
borrowed for public works to give employment, could do, was
for a time hardly able to contend against the distress. Yet the
Lancashire operatives were among the sturdiest of those who
stood out against any proposal to break the blockade or to
recognize the south."
Thus we see "the people who live in the small houses" re
vealing more political wisdom and farsightedness than the
conceited rich, blinded by greed and prejudice. The small
householders, without political rights and almost slaves of their
employers, at least were not bound to poison their minds by
SEVENTH CHAPTER 101
reading their employers' newspapers. However numerous errors
Marx may have committed, in the crucial problem of America
and the Southern rebellion, he was not as blind as the London
"Times" proved to have been.
Marx's decision in favor of Lincoln was accepted by both
factions of the "Communist League" which then attracted many
of the most intelligent English workingmen. Incidentally it may
be noted here that one of Marx's fellow socialists (Weydemeyer)
became a colonel, another (Willich), a general in Lincoln's
armies. Marx proudly remarked: "In America's Civil War,
Willich proved that he is more than a visionary."
The decisive day in Marx's fight for the cause of America's
liberty was March 26, 1863, the day of a labor union meeting
in St. James's Hall, London. Among the audience sat the
American, Henry Adams, son of the American ambassador to
London, and the German, Karl Marx. "Marx had started the
movement of mobilizing a protest of the English working class
against the attitude of the government" (Bimba, "History of the
American Working Class" p. 132). And Henry Adams was
commissioned to report the meeting to the American Embassy.
The main speaker was John Bright, the truly great English
statesman, who like Cobden, his equally famous fellow-fighter
was not a "socialist," but who, with Cobden, energetically allied
himself to and served the cause of the English laborers in his
campaign against the feudal land owners of his country.
Bright, as one of the remaining moral forces among the
"upper classes" of England, was bitterly hated by her privi
leged plundering class. Both he and Cobden "were classed as
enemies of order, anarchists, and anarchists they were if
hatred of the so-called established orders made them so." So
Henry Adams, grandson and great-grandson of American
Presidents, describes admiringly the best English political
mind of his time, describes that same Bright who carried his
sincere English patriotism so far as to demand what every criti
cal patriot should demand for his own planless and blundering
countrymen, namely, that "we English are a nation of brutes
and ought to be exterminated to the last man."
And Henry Adams also quotes the following words from the
historical speech made by Bright denouncing the English con-
102 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
spiracy against human decency and Lincoln. This is the speech
of a basically conservative Englishman. It received the warm
appreciation of Marx, who praised it in a letter to Engels. It
is the speech that shows better than anything else why and
to what depth Marx was influenced by American ideals and why
he so energetically worked for Lincoln. Here is the opening
paragraph of Bright's defense of America, the paragraph that
had such a "tremendous effect" upon the English workingmen
and pleased equally the American, Henry Adams (who reported
it), and the internationalist, Karl Marx. Bright anathematized
the privileged and slum-owning classes of England in such
terms:
"Privilege thinks it has a great interest in the American
contest, and every morning with blatant voice, it comes into
our streets and curses the American Republic. Privilege has
beheld an afflicting spectacle for many years past. It has beheld
thirty million of men," the population of the United States in
Lincoln's time, "happy and prosperous, without emperors
without King (cheers) without the surroundings of a court
(renewed cheers) without nobles, except such as are made by
eminence in intellect and virtue without State bishops and
State priests, those vendors of the love that works salvation
(cheers) without great armies and great navies without a
great debt and great taxes and Privilege has shuddered at
what might happen to old Europe if this great experiment
should succeed."
Commenting on the effect of this speech, Henry Adams
wrote: "The audience cheered furiously, and the private secre
tary" (Adams himself) "felt peace in his much troubled mind,
for he knew how careful the Ministry" (the English Government)
"would be, once they saw Bright talk republican principles be
fore Trades-Unions."
And so, Marx, who had played a great part in mobilizing
the Trade-Unions for the occasion, may well have contributed
materially towards preventing England's alliance with Napoleon
III and with the Southern slave-holders. The joint forces of
feudalism in England, France and the American South would
probably have sufficed for breaking up even the youthfully
strong American Union. At any rate, the ensuing war probably
SEVENTH CHAPTER 103
would have caused the Anglo-Saxon nations a setback of cen
turies.
Nothing could have more delighted the passionate zeal of
Marx than Bright's statement of American ideals and his ap
preciation of the New World of America as a revolutionary
experiment in democracy. The master mind of "this great ex
periment" was Abraham Lincoln as he then lived and fought,
and as later he has been idealized by the glorious and now
unshakable "Lincoln legend," that most precious possession of
America's pioneering democracy.
EIGHTH CHAPTER
HOUSING REFORM ORDERLY OR "FORCIBLE" METHODS?
The outstanding feature of the First Washington Confer
ence on Public Housing (January 27, 1934) was "the First
Lady's" speech on slum clearance. Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt ad
mirably restated those ideas which always imbued new life into
the hopes for the reform of American housing whenever the con
tinuous increase of slums and blighted districts seemed to have
shattered these hopes forever. Mrs. Roosevelt said (the italics
are not hers) :
"We now have a chance to work out ways in which we can
actually clear slums and build cheap housing. . . . The eco
nomic thing which makes low-cost housing so difficult of achieve
ment is the fact that in this country, particularly in the big
cities, most people have looked upon their land ... as an in
vestment in which they would eventually make a great deal of
money. . . . That is one of the things that will have to change.
... I know of no way by which this can come about except
through public opinion. I think that if we make it distinctly
understood that the holders of property who exploit human be
ings are bad citizens in their communities, we will get somewhere
in a large way on this program. . . . This thing can be done
by the awakening of the conscience of the citizens who are prop
erty owners and who have the ability to bring about in a calm and
orderly fashion what has had to be done in some places through
revolution. I believe that we can do it and that we will do it,
but it may take a little dramatization of the things that thought
less people do to their fellow citizens just in order to make a
little more money."
This renewed appeal to "public opinion" and to "the con
science of the citizens" will surely be less futile than many
similar appeals have been in the past and which with appalling
regularity have proved disappointing. They failed to be ac
companied by the additional and practical inducement of Fed-
104
EIGHTH CHAPTER 105
eral money, the indispens ability of which has at last been
realized by one man President F. D. Roosevelt. But even
grants of 125' or 249 millions of dollars, given or promised, to
expedite the construction of new low cost housing in 1934 and
1935, can lead to the building of hardly more than 100,000
homes, at a moment when nine or ten million new American
homes are needed and when the holders of tenements or tene
ment mortgages strongly oppose Federal help even for the erec
tion of the 100,000. The health and happiness of millions of
human beings are at stake. Will it be possible to depend for
their salvation upon "public opinion," "the conscience of the
citizens" and "a little dramatization"? Will it be possible to
stay "the holders of property who exploit human beings"? Will
uninterested public opinion overcome the stubborn resistance of
real estate and slum interests and build the missing 8,900,000
of 9,900,000 decent homes, the lack of which forces one third
of America's population (roughly one half rural and one half
urban), "nine or ten million families, to occupy obsolete, in
adequate, neglected shelter, damaging in varying degree to
health and to self-respect"? (E. E. Wood.)
The optimistic American belief that the peculiarities of
America's development since her bloody revolutions of 1776 and
1861 will make subsequent revolutions of a bloody character
avoidable, has also been shared by Karl Marx. He, indeed, ex
cluded the United States and England from the curse of inevi
table bloody revolution. It is true that his "Communist
Manifesto," however, stated no such exclusion. It impressively
ends with these words :
"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the
ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The prole
tarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world
to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!" And this famous
and much debated threat of the Communist Manifesto received
its American significance when Abraham Lincoln re-emphasized
its last phrase in admonishing the members of the Workingmen's
Association of New York to observe the bonds of the inter
national solidarity uniting the workingmen of all countries.
106 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Lincoln then said: "Let the working people beware of prejudice,
working division and hostility among themselves. . . . The
strongest bond of sympathy, outside of the family relation,
should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and
tongues, and kindreds." (March 21, 1864.)
But the famous threat of the Communist Manifesto was writ
ten in 1847, at a time when Marx's knowledge of political
possibilities in Anglo-Saxon countries was very limited. After
twenty-five years of residence in London Marx was more in
formed, and in 1872, when in Amsterdam, he declared: "Of
course I must not be supposed to imply that the means to this
end (the revolution) will be everywhere the same. We know
that special regard must be paid to the institutions, customs
and traditions of different countries, and we do not deny that
there are certain countries, such as the United States and Eng
land, in which the workers may hope to secure their ends by
peaceful means."
This Anglo-American privilege of securing life's necessities
and even decencies for the workers in a temperate manner and
without bloodshed, has later been strongly denied by Lenin in a
phrase which will be quoted towards ,
the end of this chapter.
First, however, some of the often complicated discussions about
the application of "force" in interior politics and reform may
be briefly examined. Such a discussion leads also to housing
and house rent problems.
Lenin's threatening attitude is much more American than
most American observers like to admit. His belief in the ne
cessity of coercive reform, even in England and America, as the
only effective means of overcoming the resistance of selfish
property owners and of securing a freer distribution of goods
and human decencies, this fatal belief puts Lenin in the class with
Jefferson and Lincoln. "The tree of liberty," Jefferson said,
"must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots
and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Also Lincoln, much
against his will, found himself compelled to use force and to
sacrifice 600,000 lives. And the outstanding American philos
opher, Emerson, even thought that forcible methods were far
better than peaceful ones. After the Civil War he wrote in his
Journal (April 1865) :
" 'Tis far the best that the rebai
EIGHTH CHAPTER 107
been pounded instead of negotiated into a peace. They must
remember it, and their inveterate brag will be humbled, if not
cured. . . . General Grant's terms certainly look a little too
easy."
However easy these terms may have appeared to Emerson,
the "rebels" (the southern capitalists) were deprived, forcibly
and without compensation, of "capital" valued from two to four
thousand millions of dollars. This great American sequestra
tion probably represents the most "anti-capitalistic" act in all
history preceding the Bolshevist revolution. It will be shown
in later chapters that the economist Marx was more just than
Lincoln in recognizing the important role reserved for capital
in modern production. Lincoln himself had been a laborer and
we remember that Marx called him "the single-minded son of
the working class." Therefore, Lincoln was more apt than
Marx to overestimate the role of labor. At any rate, we find
in Lincoln's official papers and speeches frequent statements
such as the following: "Labor is prior to, and independent of,
capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never
have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior
of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." (An
nual Message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1861 ; repeated by Lincoln
in his speech to the Workingmen's Association of New York,
March 21, 1864.)
. When Lincoln called "labor the true standard of value," he
spoke less as an economist than as a statesman and inspiring
moralist bent on securing more justice for America's heavily
handicapped laboring class a class from which he himself had
risen under difficulties which only genius or the most unnatural
luck can surmount. He was born in a one-room dwelling. He
received no education and few other benefits dependent upon
reserve capital. He had fallen into bankruptcy when he tried
to acquire capital (a grocery store). And he had, again by
court decree, been deprived of his instruments when with his
own tools, he attempted to perform his labors as a surveyor.
Not to own one's laboring tools (i.e. one's capital) is often
defined especially by Marx as the plight which transforms
free men into proletarians whom revolution alone may liberate
again. Until such a revolution, material and spiritual, occurs,
108 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
these men are forced for better or for worse, to do the bidding
of the owner of the tools. The owner is called the "capitalist."
If this capitalist chooses to work in other fields, if misfortune
overcomes him, or if he manages his affairs badly, he may
dismiss his proletarians without, or with only short notice.
They may find no other work and will then be "unemployed"
and may starve through no fault of their own. And the un
employed without capital can pay no rent nor keep his home
in good repair. The neighborhood he lives in is or will be a
slum.
If the owner of the factory a private citizen, or the state
is also the owner of the good or bad houses in which the em
ployees live, they are even more helplessly at his mercy. Lockout
or strike, and eviction from their homes often initiate the shed
ding of the workingmen's blood. But even without the owner
ship of factory and employees' houses being concentrated in the
same hand, the employees are apt to be victimized and to lose
their houses and the money they have invested in them, unless
their shelter is protected by some "homestead" act exempting
private houses from seizure for debt or unpaid rent. Until such
an act recognizes everyone's right and duty to live in a healthy
home (safely financed at the expense of whomever it may be),
until such necessary protection of the smallest home has become
general, regardless of the cost, the city planning and housing
architect finds his hands tied by economic impediments.
Can this vicious knot be cut without recourse to "forcible"
methods? In some of the "free" countries, such as England,
Holland or Scandinavia, peaceful solutions seem to have been
found, at least after the moral shake-up of the War. In such
other countries, however, as Germany, Austria and Russia, whose
governments for centuries were more or less despotic, nothing
short of the forcible revolutions of 1917 and 1918, and the even
more effective economic earthquakes of the "inflation" could
produce sufficiently cheap land and adequate reform.
Can the American architect, under existent conditions, eco
nomically design effectual and legal plans for the construction
of decent cities to be inhabited by people, the majority of whom
may at any moment be "unemployed" and be without the means
EIGHTH CHAPTER 109
of paying their taxes or the installments, amortization, upkeep
or rent of their homes?
The existing American laws enable the "capitalists" to ar
rogate to themselves all urban land within convenient reach or
to corner, so to speak, the urban land market. In order to
either make money or to at least pay their taxes, the owners of
land often build upon it the worst kind of tenements permissible
under laws made largely by the very landowners themselves or
by their expert advisors. Some of the worst tenement house
laws and zoning ordinances have been made by well-meaning
social workers and architects misunderstanding their calling or
dishonoring their profession. The owners then sell these illconstructed
"old law," "new law," and mostly bad law tenements
at the highest rental values to respectable trusteeships (of hos
pitals, orphans, widows, etc.) or to other poorly calculating
investors who soon find that they are able to pay the high prop
erty taxes (assessed in accordance with the speculatively inflated
selling prices) only if their real estate remains without repairs
and becomes overcrowded by the very proletarians (the workers
without capital) to whom practically no choice other than mis
erable crowding is left. For these proletarians, there is hardly
any possible escape "in a calm and orderly fashion" from a
vicious system of city building that coerces them into fire-traps
in winter, and into sweltering hells in summer, thus exposing
them and their families to disease and vice and creating new
burdens for the tax-paying community.
Conditions of this kind had developed in New York and in
other large American cities ever since the first decades of the
nineteenth century. Lincoln witnessed them. He received a
terrible lesson of what the slum of a big city is capable, at
the time of the "draft riots" in July 1863, when the inhabitants
of New York's tenements became disgusted with the permission
granted to the rich to grow richer from war profits. (Boss
Tweed opposed Lincoln's war policy, but picked up a million
dollars of war profits within a single year.) For $300 each, all
men of means could purchase exemption from military service,
thus leaving the fighting to the conscientious or to the materially
poor.
110 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
In righteous indignation the masses armed and burned down
numberless wealthy residences, tortured and killed policemen and
soldiers, built barricades better than the Parisians ever did.
One of the New York barricades, on Ninth Avenue from 24th
Street to 41st Street, boasted of the international record length
of almost a mile. Battalions of ragged slum children proved
a match for detachments of police. The disgusted mob plun
dered freely. Their women stripped the courtesans in the
brothels of their finery. Bold men and women resisted even heavy
artillery, and could finally be beaten down, after four days of
street fighting, only because the victory of Gettysburg had made
it possible for the Federal Government to succour the police
in the battle of New York with thirteen regiments of regulars.
The officially admitted number of killed, "more than a thousand"
civilians, policemen and soldiers, was one of those smoothsounding
understatements required by the Government's propa
ganda for the then raging war in the South. The frightful
number of wounded has never been estimated.
The evils of rapidly growing American slums were attenuated
to some extent by Lincoln's Homestead Act. This beneficent
law was made possible only by the revolutionary withdrawal of
the slave-holders' representatives from Congress. Thus it was
revolution which gave the crowded city workers a better chance
and a strong impulse to become farmers. But the evils of the
cities were made much worse after the war, when "under the
stimulus of feverish profit-making, the gates of America were
flung open to the surge of immigrants" (Beard). Tweed and
his "ring" sent their agents to meet the immigrants immediately
upon the latters' arrival and made "American citizens" at the
rate of as many as 60,000 within twenty days, when Tweed's
political game of stuffing the ballot boxes required such feats.
Although there was plenty of room in this New World, the
new American slums, at an early date, were as congested as
those of old Europe. Even today, after the growth of dense
groups of skyscrapers, the average height of Manhattan's
buildings is not over five stories. But prejudice is stronger than
reason. From an early date the prejudice prevailed as if there
were, in Manhattan, not enough room to allow building decently
and spaciously. "The peculiar shape of Manhattan island and
EIGHTH CHAPTER 111
the difficulty of transit between its extremities have tended to
crowd the population into tenement houses in the lower portion,
some parts of which rival the most crowded quarters of any
other civilized city." (The American Cyclopaedia of 1875,
Vol. XII p. 382. This source gives also the following figures:)
"There are (in New York) about 24,000 tenement houses. . . ."
The four most thickly inhabited districts of New York and
London compare as follows :
NEW
112 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
to justice is unnecessary. Engels protested: "The application
of the Ricardian theory, according to which the whole social
product belongs to the sole producer, the workers, as their
product, leads directly to communism. This theory, however,
as Marx has pointed out, is from an economic point of view
formally false, since it is an application of ethics to economics."
(Engels in his introduction, of 1884, to Marx "Misery of
Philosophy.")
It has often been said that Marx never intended to propa
gandize the "forcible overthrow" of government, but that he
only prophesied its unavoidability in Europe. Even Lenin, who
desires to be known as the most faithful interpreter of Marx,
and was himself the most ardent advocate of "forcible over
throw," even Lenin admits : "It is well known that in the autumn
of 1870, a few months prior to the Commune, Marx warned the
Paris workers that an attempt to overthrow the government
would be the folly of despair"; only later "when, in March,
1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they
accepted it, when the uprising had become a fact, Marx wel
comed the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm,
in spite of unfavourable auguries" (Lenin; State and Revolu
tion, Chap. Ill, 1).
Indeed, whoever really intends to resort to "forcible" meth
ods, generally has brains enough while he still is powerless
to avoid advertising his violent intentions in advance. Even
modern dictators, once in power, realize the advantage of pre
paring their wars by professing peaceful ends. Marx's intelli
gence cannot possibly be considered inferior to that of modern
dictators. Furthermore, any hope Marx might have had in the
possibility of a "forceful overthrow of all social conditions," to
be effectuated by internal war, would have remained as sadly
unfulfilled as his belated hopes in the success of the Paris Com
mune of 1871. Even after Marx's death, the Bolshevist Revolu
tion was made possible not from within, by starving workingmen
in their "folly of despair," but by the German Kaiser's efficient
army collaborating from without and transporting Lenin and
Trotzky, in the famous sealed railroad car, under Germany's
military protection, from Switzerland to Russia.
Marx, if he had actually believed in forcible methods from
EIGHTH CHAPTER 113
within, would hardly have committed the blunder of fatally
handicapping in advance all preparations by imposing, with illconsidered
threats, the stigma of unconstitutionality and the
alleged desire of armed crime on even the most peaceful worker
for social justice. Marx, while it amused him to frighten the
bourgeois by prophecies of inescapable violence, was not the
type to build anti-capitalistic barricades or to go to war, as
Lincoln did in order to free slaves and to confiscate the legal
property of slave-holders, or slum-owners.
Marx must have thought "forcible" methods just as "for
mally false" as the "application of ethics to economics." In
defending Marx against the suspicion of having committed the
last-mentioned blunder, Engels wrote (in 1884) : "Marx never
based his communistic demands upon ethics but upon the inevi
table cataclysm of the capitalistic mode of production, which is
going on before our eyes."
The capitalists of Europe did not care whether they were
to be wiped out by militant advocates of social justice or by
an allegedly "inevitable cataclysm of the mode of production."
Marx and Engels pleased the European capitalists just as little
as Lincoln pleased the capitalists of New Haven or of the
Southern states, when he assured them, on March 6, 1860, that
"while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to
allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with every
body else" (an equal chance, by the way, which is lacking at
present in degenerating slum neighborhoods). But while Marx,
in the library of the British Museum, waited patiently for the
fulfillment of his prophecy the early, "inevitable" and always
postponed breakdown of capitalism Lincoln, at the head of the
greatest republic in the world, was more active and more
tangibly destructive of capitalistic prejudices. Lincoln may or
may not have been familiar with the "Communist Manifesto" of
Marx and Engels. But he boldly uttered the erroneous theory
of values of Ricardo and Lassalle. With a nonchalance that,
in the mouth of a powerful leader, forebodes revolution, Lincoln
spoke of "labor as the true standard of value" and arrived at
that abolitionist (or rather deflationist) conception of property
which led America straight into her disastrous Civil War.
Following is what Lenin in 1917 said about Marx's conten-
114. CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
tion that in the future England and the United States might
overcome without further recourse to "forcible means" the
dangerous selfishness of property owners :
"This attitude of Marx was comprehensible in 1871, when
England was still a purely capitalist country, but without mili
tarism and, in a large measure, without a bureaucracy. Hence
Marx excluded England, where a revolution, and even a people's
revolution, at that time appeared and was made possible without
the preliminary condition of the destruction of the 'ready-made
state machine.' Now, in 1917, in the epoch of the first great
imperialist war, this limitation of Marx no longer holds. Both
England and America, the greatest and last representatives in
the whole world of Anglo-Saxon 'liberty' in the sense of the
absence of militarism and bureaucracy, have slid completely into
the general European, dirty, bloody swamp of bureaucratic mili
tary institutions which subordinate everything to themselves
and which crush everything under them. Now, both in England
and in America, the smashing and destruction of the 'readymade
state machinery' (brought there in 1914-17 to 'European'
general imperialist perfection) is the 'preliminary condition' of
any real people's revolution." (Lenin, Collected Works, Russian
Edition, Vol. I, XXI, p. 345.)
Evidently Lenin's utterance was influenced by the condi
tions and psychology prevalent during the World War. Lenin's
attitude, however, appears less unreasonable when one remembers
what has been mentioned before, namely, that the sweeping hous
ing reforms in Germany and Austria and even in such victorious
or neutral countries as England, Holland and Sweden, would
probably have never been instituted without the very severe
social coercion resulting from the disasters of the Great War, a
coercion which at least so far has not been strong enough
in the United States. Much talk about a new American revolu
tion is being heard. The "Farmer-Labor" movement in the
middle West, the "Epic" in California, the Townsend group and
others are gaining in strength. Recently a symposium was con
ducted by the editors of the weekly review "Common Sense."
Thirty-three men and women prominent in American politics and
literature, gave their opinions under the chairmanship of Pro
fessor John Dewey who epitomized the observations by saying:
EIGHTH CHAPTER 115
"There is something like a second American Revolution looming
ahead. And while it may not be 'the Revolution' to the disciples
of Marx, it should none the less allow no truckling to capital
ism." (Cf. Challenge to the New Deal Edited by A. M. Bingham
and Selden Rodman, Editors of "Common Sense"; Introduction
by John Dewey.)
What must be done in order to prove that Lenin's prediction
of Anglo-American revolutions is incorrect and that America
at least is still mistress of herself, able to effectuate her necessary
reforms not by "forcible overthrow" but by the strength of
"public opinion," and by a "dramatized" appeal to "the con
science of the citizens"?
Here is a realistic answer: An end must be put to the in
iquities brought about by the "holders of property who exploit
human beings." "An equal chance," must be given to the present
victims of America's slums. All "obsolete shelter damaging to
health and self-respect," one-third of all existing dwellings, the
miserable hovels of from nine to ten million Americans, must
speedily be replaced by decent homes upon rejuvenated land,
that is upon land as fundamentally revalued as the "property"
of the slave owners was revalued by means of the Civil War and
at an expense of 600,000 American lives and five billion Ameri
can dollars. The time to start this revaluation and reconstruc
tion is the present a moment just as pressing and critical as
the hour just before the outbreak of the Civil War (Feb. 15,
1861), when Lincoln said:
"If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the
Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her
on another voyage."
To save the ship of the Union has been Lincoln's sublime
purpose and will be the purpose of all who wish to follow him.
We must remember that saving the ship may necessitate the en
forcement of unexpected measures. Lincoln himself who was
finally forced to proclaim the abolition of slavery was originally
most strongly opposed to it. In his speech of January 27, 1837,
he foretold of the "danger to our political institutions" arising
from "an Alexander, a Caesar or a Napoleon . . . who thirsts
and burns for distinction and will have it whether at the expense
of emancipating slaves or enslaving free men." Shortly after-
116 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
wards Lincoln lodged in the Illinois legislature his formal protest
against the promulgation of abolitionist doctrines (March 3,
1837).
In a somewhat similar vein those who to-day see the most
serious danger in the promulgation of the doctrine tending to
abolish private property may be, on the other hand, forced to
pursue this very course. Those very owners of such property by
their reluctance to make the necessary concessions may force the
advocates of their cause to become the opponents of it.
NINTH CHAPTER
COMPENSATION OF SLUM OWNERS
Since a revision of most laws governing real estate seems
unavoidable, the conservative solution might be found in a liberal
indemnification of such land owners as are willing to forego
some of the unjustifiable benefits previously realized or er
roneously hoped for. Here again the statesmanship of Abraham
Lincoln provides us with an admirable example.
Lincoln wished to end the ruinous war. In his Second An
nual Message (December 1, 1862) he proposed "a plan of
mutual concessions." It is one of the most extensive schemes ever
conceived by the leader of a great nation. This Message of
1862 contains statistics and estimates of population reaching
even to the year 1930. Lincoln proposed an amendment to the
Constitution for the abolition of slavery by the year 1900 (as
the latest date permitted). In the light of subsequent develop
ments the plan for abolishing slavery within thirty-eight years
seems too conservative and slow (although, today, the existing
plans, for abolishing the slums of New York within fifty years
are even more conservative). But otherwise Lincoln's proposal
could well be made today the basis of a highly desirable consti
tutional amendment preparing the national abolition of these
slums and enforcing the reconstruction of our cities on more
economic lines.
The first article of Lincoln's proposed amendment begins
thus (wherever he uses the terms "slavery" or "slave" we must,
today, substitute "slums" or "slum") :
"Every State wherein
slavery now exists which shall abolish the same therein at any
time or times before the 1st day of January, A.D. 1900, shall
receive compensation from the United States . . . for each slave
shown to have been therein by the Eighth Census. . . ."
Lincoln gives the following reasons for his proposed consti
tutional amendment: "In a certain sense the liberation of slaves
is the destruction of property property acquired by descent
117
118 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
or by purchase, the same as any other property. It is no less
true for having been often said that the people of the South are
not more responsible for the original introduction of this prop
erty than are the people of the North ; and when it is remem
bered how unhesitatingly we all use cotton and sugar and share
the profits of dealing in them, it may not be quite safe to say
that the South has been more responsible than the North for its
continuance. If, then, for a common object this property is to
be sacrificed, is it not just that it be done at a common charge?"
Applied to our present conditions, it follows that the whole
nation must pay for the abolition of the slums. When it is
remembered how unhesitatingly we all use products made by
slum-dwellers and share the profits of dealing in them, it is not
safe to say that the slum-dwellers or even the slum-owners have
been more responsible than the non-slum-dwellers for the con
tinuance of these slums. The contrary is more likely true.
To raise the large sums required for the compensation Lin
coln thought it justifiable to burden the United States with a
heavy long term debt. "The proposed emancipation," he said ;
"would shorten the war, perpetuate peace, insure this increase
of population, and proportionately the wealth of the country.
With these we should pay all the emancipation would cost, to
gether with our other debt, easier than we should pay our other
debt without it."
Lincoln's calculation of the probable American population
increase must be of the highest interest to the city planner. He
submits this table of population increase from 1790 to 1860:
Year
NINTH CHAPTER 119
the seventy years from our first to our last census yet taken . . .
indicating how inflexible, and consequently how reliable, the law
of increase in our case is. Assuming that it will continue, it gives
the results demonstrated in the table" (on p. 118).
Lincoln then concludes : "These figures show that our coun
try may be as populous as Europe now is at some point between
1920 and 1930 say about 1925 our territory, at 73% persons
to the square mile, being of capacity to contain 217,186,000."
(73% persons per square mile was taken by Lincoln to be the
European average. He continued:) "And we will reach this,
too, if we do not ourselves relinquish the chance by the folly and
evils of disunion or by long and exhausting war springing from
the only great element of national discord among us."
America did not follow Lincoln's urgent suggestions. The
folly of exhausting war lasted another two years. And out of
the war there did not emerge the age of democracy, but rather
the "gilded age," an age of unprecedented anti-democratic cor
ruption. Lincoln had hoped otherwise. He concluded his
Second Annual Message with such sentences as these:
"As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our coun
try. Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. ... In giving
freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free honorable
alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly
save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth." (The Italics
are Lincoln's.)
With confident optimism he wrote in the same Message:
"Our abundant room, our broad national homestead, is our ample
resource. Were our territory as limited as are the British Isles,
very certainly our population could not expand as stated. In
stead of receiving the foreign born as now, we should be com
pelled to send part of the native born away. But such is not
our condition. We have 2,963,000 square miles. Europe has
3,800,000, with a population averaging 73% persons to the
square mile. Why may not our country at some time average
as many? Is it less fertile? Has it more waste surface by
mountains, rivers, lakes, deserts, or other causes? Is it inferior
to Europe in any natural advantage? . . . Several of our
States are already above the average of Europe 73% to the
120 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
square mile. Massachusetts has 157; Rhode Island, 133; Con
necticut, 99; New York and New Jersey, each 80. Also two
other great States, Pennsylvania and Ohio, are not far below,
the former having 63 and the latter 59."
In 1930 some corresponding averages per square mile were:
Europe 185, Massachusetts 528, Rhode Island 644, Connecticut
333, New York State 264, New Jersey 537, Pennsylvania 214,
Ohio 163, England 742, Scotland 159, France 197, and Ger
many 360.
The figures given above show that the increase of America's
population reached only fifty per cent of what Lincoln had
anticipated. Instead of relatively equalling or surpassing the
population of Europe, the population of the United States, by
1930, reached only 122.7 millions while the population of Europe
at the same time reached 550 millions (according to the esti
mate of the International Statistical Institute of the League of
Nations, Geneva).
The modern sociologist can hardly regret the slowing up of
America's population increase. This retardation, at least until
the world has better learned how to educate masses and make
their lives worth while, may be of great advantage, unless the
950 million people of Asia should, before the western world can
civilize itself, organize for war, and annihilate western progress.
One may assume that Japan after having swallowed large
sections of China will be heavily occupied, for a long time to
come, in digesting and assimilating her conquests. Japan is
already europeanizing her birth rates. She had in 1920 36.2
births per 1000 inhabitants; in 1933 only 31.6. This decline
promises a fairly exact parallel with that of a European country
in a corresponding situation and period. Germany's birthrate
was 36.3 in 1895, 31.6 in 1905; and it later declined to 16
(1931), 15.1 (1932) and even 14.7 (1933).
But even those who fear a yellow attack must admit that
modern defense relies to an increasing extent upon highly trained
men rather than upon large masses. Nothing can better protect
America than a healthy population with high standards of liv
ing and education. A serious power of resistance can hardly
be expected from slum-dwellers.
The fact that America's population did not attain the two
NINTH CHAPTER 121
hundred million mark as quickly as Lincoln assumed that it
would, has not interfered with her overcoming the economic set
back resulting from the Civil War, and from the abolition of
all slave-property. In a similar manner, in the future, the even
slower increase of her population should not interfere with her
capacity for abolishing all slum property. The recent amazing
increase of agricultural and industrial productive power has in
creased the economic capacity of each individual to such an
extent that no requirement for increasing the health and hap
piness of the nation needs remain unfulfilled. The 130 million
Americans of today and tomorrow can produce more than what
the 251 million Americans anticipated by Lincoln could ever have
produced. Thus it is perfectly practical to follow in the foot
steps of Lincoln and to burden the United States with a rea
sonably heavy long term debt in order to liberate the nation
from its dangerous slums.
On a par with Lincoln's general recommendation to indemnify
the slave-holders is his suggestion as to the extent of compen
sation to be granted them. A similar proportion might ad
vantageously be chosen today in indemnifying our slum-owners.
Lincoln's plan has been described by a prominent lawyer who
as Secretary of New York State has had personal dealings with
the great President. We read:
"In the early days of the war Lincoln argued earnestly with
his Cabinet and the leaders in Congress for authorization to
offer the South four hundred millions of dollars as a compensa
tion for freeing the slaves. To the answer that the country
could not stand the expense, he said: 'The war is costing four
millions a day, and it will certainly last one hundred days.'
After he had visited Richmond, when the war was over ... he
again urged this proposition, saying that the South was com
pletely exhausted and his four hundred millions would be the
best investment the country could make in at once restoring
peace and goodwill between all sections and furnishing the capi
tal to the Southern people to restore their homes, recuperate
their fortunes, and start their industries. But in the bitter
passions of the hour the proposition received no support."
(Chauncey M. Depew, Orations, III, p. 374.)
President Lincoln's sympathetic proposition seems to be
122 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
somewhat akin to the idea underlying President F. D. Roose
velt's Public Housing Administration. The home-owners of all
the United States have been about as badly hit by the depression
of 1929 to 1936 as the home-owners of the South were by the
Civil War of 1861 to 1865. One must, of course, differentiate
between owners of decent homes and owners of slums. To help
the owners of individual homes may be constructive statesman
ship. To help the slum-owners may be dangerous aid to ir
responsible landlords and thoughtless investors who cannot be
helped. The slum-owners of today have sinned against human
decency just as badly as the slave-owners of three generations
ago. However, for the statesman there should not exist a ques
tion of punishment, but one of redress. "Lincoln bore no
enmities and never executed any revenges. While the whole
North was raging against those who had rebelled and most
Northerners believed that the destruction of the rebels' proper
ties, the devastation of their lands and the loss of their slaves,
which was their main property, was a just punishment for en
deavoring to break up the Union, Mr. Lincoln appreciated
thoroughly the conditions which had impelled them to rebel"
(Ch. M. Depew).
But Lincoln was murdered, by a Southerner who then
shouted : "The South is revenged !" And by Lincoln's death the
Southerners lost their best friend. The four hundred million
dollars he wished to give them were never again mentioned.
The assassination of President Lincoln put an end to any
very serious thoughts of making provision for compensation for
losses of slaves ; and the fourteenth amendment to the Consti
tution, ratified by a majority of the states in 186768, abso
lutely forbade compensation being made either by the United
States or by any state. "Thus terminated for ever in the United
States the system of bondage which had been its chief reproach
in the eyes of the world and of its own people." (This view
expresses the contemporary feelings of the period. Cf. Professor
T. M. Cooley's article in American Cyclopedia, 1876, Vol. XV,
p. 102.)
May it soon be possible to say the same about the bondage
of the American slum.'
NINTH CHAPTER 123
Lincoln's most powerful argument in favor of an early in
demnification of the slave-holders, instead of continuing the war
against them, also applies to the slum-holders. Lincoln said the
war is more expensive than compensation would be. Indeed (to
quote Professor Beard), "the mere war expenses of the belliger
ents amounted to about five billion dollars in round numbers.
The outlay for three years of reconstruction was placed at three
billions more. . . . One thing was certain: The monetary cost
of the conflict far exceeded the value of the slaves."
These last calculations are, of course, quite beside the main
point, that according to a conservative reckoning six hundred
thousand American soldiers, Northerners and Southerners, had
been killed to atone for the economic shortsightedness and false
political speculation of the slaveholders. The sacrifice of six
hundred thousand lives had been required in Lincoln's phrase
"to nobly save the last best hope of earth."
The Civil War has been called "the Second American Revo
lution," although critical Americans such as Chas. A. Beard
maintain that, in a strict sense, it was the First. If the stupidity
of antiquated interests should in the future enforce another such
revolution or social war, the cost in blood and goods would, of
course, be infinitely greater.
There has recently been some rather violent animosity di
rected against the recovery measures of President F. D. Roose
velt. He came not yet as near "impeachment" as did President
Hoover, against whom a resolution in Congress was twice voted
upon, accusing him of having "dissipated the financial resources
of the United States" (Dec. 13, 1932, and Jan. 17, 1933). But
President Roosevelt "trod perilously close to impeachable
grounds" (N. Y. Times, July 24, 1935) if the assertion of the
Republican leader in the national House of Representatives can
be found trustworthy. The slum-owners of today will probably
profit more by not fostering this antagonism and by permitting
themselves rather to be imbued with the spirit of Lincoln. Lin
coln's offer of a compensation of four hundred millions repre
sented for the slave-holders a twenty per cent indemnification
if the value of their tainted property were calculated at two
thousand million dollars, as Lincoln did calculate it. Such
124 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
computations are, of course, subject to many hypothetical con
siderations. Beard for instance employs a hundred per cent
higher evaluation. He writes :
"A crucial stroke in this revolution though by no means
as significant as sometimes suggested was the confiscation or,
to use a more euphonious term, the abolition of the planters
property in labor. Whatever may be the ethical view of the
transaction, its result was the complete destruction of about four
billion dollars' worth of 'goods' in the possession of slave-owners
without compensation the most stupendous act of sequestra
tion in the history of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. Even that
was not drastic enough for some radicals. Extremists wanted
to make the execution still more crushing by transferring to
the slaves the estates they tilled, but this was too much for the
temper of those who directed the course of Federal affairs in
Washington." (Rise of Am. Civ., II, 100.)
In the presidential election of 1864 a section of the Repub
lican Party detached itself; their candidate, Fremont, ran as an
"Independent Republican" on a platform calling for the con
fiscation of the property of Confederates. These Independent
Republican radicals remained unsuccessful as long as Lincoln
lived. His assassination, however, and the following congres
sional elections brought the Republican radicalism into power
and revealed the confiscatory and predatory tendencies prevail
ing in that party. Only since 1872 has a more sensible wing,
the "Liberal Republican Party," been formed and has begun to
oppose the open scandals and the corruption of the Republican
regime under Grant.
The good temper, above referred to, of the directors in Wash
ington did not prevent their canceling the whole Confederate
war debt. Untold millions of dollars were destroyed by a single
stroke of the pen. Not only many southern but also many
northern holders of these securities, especially Chicago banks
became bankrupt.
The suggestion of transferring the slave-holders' land to the
freed slaves has found, since the world war, its very realistic
and highly beneficent counterpart in the agrarian reconstruc
tions of such countries as Czechoslovakia and the new Baltic
states. In these countries the formerly powerful aristocrats of
NINTH CHAPTER 125
German extraction have, rather summarily, been deprived of
their large estates. These lands have been subdivided and dis
tributed among the formerly landless members of the new nation
and now ruling Slavic race. Such highly political and forceful
semi-sequestrations were thought justifiable for reasons of state.
For similar reasons a national American housing policy
might conceivably enforce with some reasonable compensation
the transfer of the property rights in all tenements from their
present owners to their present tenants. Such a policy would
recall the wishes of Engels and Marx, who asked for "the ex
propriation of the present owners" and for "quartering in their
houses the homeless or those workers excessively overcrowded in
their former houses."
But neither the transformation of the present tenementrenters
into tenement-owners, nor the distribution of the expen
sive apartments among the workers who at present lack decent
homes, should satisfy the promoter of better American housing
because (as mentioned before) even many of the expensive
apartments existing at present, as well as the poorer tenements,
are not sufficiently lighted and ventilated to be fit for Americans
to occupy permanently. People will not be benefited by becom
ing owners of such tenements as long as the present status of
technology can, under sane management, give them a fair chance
of securing much better houses than any of those erected by
the exploitation of present building codes.
If the valuation of the property in slaves is taken to be four
billion dollars, Lincoln's offer of four hundred millions repre
sents only ten per cent of the confiscated value. If Lincoln's
own estimate of two billion dollars is correct, his offer of com
pensation would represent twenty per cent of the confiscated
value. It is not here important to go into detailed calculations.
It is sufficient to say that an indemnification of from ten to
twenty per cent of the tainted property's value would, prob
ably also in the case of slum property as it did in the case
of slave property correspond to President Lincoln's states
manlike perception.
The valuation of slum-properties existing at present will
be discussed in a later Chapter. Anticipating the conclusions
there arrived at, it may be said that an indemnification at the
126 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
rate of from ten to twenty per cent of present slum values
would correspond to an approximate total of from two to four
billion dollars to be paid to present slum owners. Such a pay
ment, in absolute figures, would be from four to eight times
larger than the sum contemplated by President Lincoln for in
demnifying the slave-holders. But the population of the United
States is today more than four times larger than it was in 1860
and the per capita income of the nation is today in spite of
the depression considerably higher than it was seventy years
ago.
An indemnification of the owners of slums and blighted areas
at the rate of from two to four billion dollars distributed over
a suitable number of (approximately ten) years would also
appear justifiable from the city planner's point of view. It is
true that most of the buildings in the slums or blighted districts
ought to be torn down, the sooner the better. (The New York
Housing Authority's trials of rehabilitating old tenements had
from the economic point of view very unsatisfactory results ;
cf. N. Y. Times, Sept. 14, 1935.) Most of them ought to be
utilized for living quarters as little as possible and then only
until better ones can be secured. But even if the considerable
expense of clearing the ground by tearing down the buildings
is added to the contemplated two to four billion dollar sum of
indemnification, the total arrived at may not be too extravagant
a price to pay for the bare land thus obtained. Much though
by no means all of this land may be re-used in transforming
America's plighted cities into places adequate for human
habitation. The problems and solutions discussed in this chapter
are concisely illustrated by the following extract from the ad
dress made by Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt on September 9, 1935 when
the City of Detroit's $6,600,000 slum clearance project was
started by demolishing the first one of the dilapidated houses.
Mrs. Roosevelt said:
"This district has been expensive for the city of Detroit.
Taxes are 92 per cent delinquent, 68 per cent of the dwellings
have been condemned as unsafe for human habitation. Records
show crime to be six times the average for the city, juvenile
delinquency ten times the average, tuberculosis seven and onehalf
times the average. It is lack of social consciousness which
NINTH CHAPTER 127
permits such conditions to develop, but we may thank the de
pression for focusing attention on these sore spots in our social
life."
These wise and generous words, unfortunately, had an
ominous sequel. The newspapers reported: "The First Lady's
fluttering handkerchief was the signal yesterday for demolition
of the first of numerous buildings which will be razed to make
way for low-cost, modern houses and apartments for the families
of Negro workmen. At almost the same instant, however,
United States District Judge Tuttle affixed his signature to a
court order bringing the project to a halt, at least temporarily.
The order was granted on the plea of several property owners."
(N. Y. Post, Sept. 10, 1935.)
The property owners' resistance against the abolition of
their slums and against the restoration of American decency
may be slow and painful to conquer. This resistance is ap
proximately twenty billion dollars strong ; nevertheless, it should
be conquered without another civil war.
TENTH CHAPTER
ALEXANDER HAMILTON OPPOSES "IMPRACTICAL
COMPENSATION"
Even conservative statesmen must, finally, realize that Lin
coln was the greatest revolutionary in American history and not
the patron-saint of capital and property rights they have de
clared him to be. If, however, the owners of vested rights look
to some other hero of American leadership for counsel they may
be surprised to find how greatly America's historical leaders,
even those in opposed camps, are in harmony when it comes to
questions so essential as those regarding property.
If Lincoln was evidently too much a man of the people to
be in sympathy with obsolete and objectionable property rights,
the owners of these rights might prefer to trust the aristocratic
Alexander Hamilton. In his writings he sometimes professed
an almost naive belief in the beneficent effects of having a large
funded debt and in the thesis held by preceding economists that
(in England for instance) the national debt actually enriched
the nation. From such an advocacy of national debts may the
owners of slaves or slums hope to receive a very liberal compen
sation when their objectionable property is finally condemned?
By no means!
Hamilton can teach such property-owners an even greater
disregard of obsolescent property rights than that which char
acterized Lincoln and his revolution. In his "Vindication of the
Funding System" Hamilton wrote the following golden words
about the national debt and about "feudal rights involving that
of property." Every one of these words also applies to the
necessity of solving America's modern real estate and slum prob
lems. Hamilton wrote:
"The principle which shall be assumed here is this, that the
established rules of morality and justice are applicable to na
tions as well as to individuals ; that the former as well as the
128
TENTH CHAPTER 129
latter are bound to keep their promises ; to fulfill their en
gagements to respect the rights of property which others have
acquired under contracts with them. Without this there is an
end of all distinct ideas of right or wrong, justice or injustice,
in relation to society or government. (Without this) there can
be no such thing as rights, no such thing as property or liberty ;
all the boasted advantages of a constitution of government
vanish into air. Everything must float on the variable and
vague opinions of the governing party, of whomsoever composed.
To this it may be answered that the doctrine, as a general one,
is true, but that there are certain great cases which operate
as exceptions to the rule, and in which the public good may de
mand and justify a departure from it."
The first case thus considered by Hamilton as exceptional
is war, the second is property rights. He declares : "Of the
second class of exceptions, the case of certain feudal rights,
which once oppressed all Europe, and still oppress too great a
part of it, may serve as an example ; rights which made absolute
slaves of a part of the community, and rendered the condition
of the greatest proportion of the remainder not much more
eligible."
Here we find Hamilton expressing ideas closely akin to those
of his great opponent Thomas Jefferson, who wrote: ". . . man
is the only animal which devours his own kind ; for I can apply
no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general
prey of the rich on the poor." (From: The Price of Liberty.)
Among the remaining feudal rights of Europe the right of
the rich property-owner and land-owner to prey on the poor
and landless, is one of the most dangerous and most un-American
of all. It is precisely this right which, among others, Hamilton
considered most predatory to the common good and which he
refers to when he continues by saying:
"These rights, though involving that of property, being con
trary to the social order, and to the permanent welfare of
society, were justifiably abolished in the instances in which aboli
tions have taken place, and may be abolished in all the remaining
vestiges. Wherever, indeed, a right of property is infringed
for the general good, if the nature of the case admits of com
pensation, it ought to be made; but if compensation be imprac-
130 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
ticable, that impracticability ought not to be an obstacle to a
clearly essential reform." (The Italics are added.)
Hamilton's conservative wisdom has not been practiced by
modern America in the case of the wine growers, the distillers
of hard liquor, and the brewers of beer whose large and legiti
mate property rights were, in 1916, expropriated without that
compensation which would then have been entirely "practicable."
Certainly a compensation of twenty billions of dollars for
obsolescent residential property and often illegitimate and
highly inflated rights in real estate and slum property, is much
more "impracticable" than the compensation of the alcohol pro
ducers in 1916 would have been. Large parts of modern values
of residential property and other "real" estate are illusions and
make-beliefs brought about only by the disregard of statutory
health legislation or by inexpedient speculation based upon im
possible assumptions of increased population. (These assump
tions are dealt with in the following Chapter.) To defend these
tottering feudal castles in the air and to compensate the dream
ers of these illegitimate dreams, or to use the customary
euphemism to "maintain the credit structure" of America,
would contradict the intentions of Jefferson, Hamilton and Lin
coln and would endanger the Commonwealth.
The compensation of slum-owners would cease to be "im
practicable" only in case the valuation of the slums was reduced,
to about one-tenth or to a maximum of one-fifth of the in
flated value, as Lincoln suggested in the case of the slave-holders
property.
What is the basis of the real-estate values and of the prop
erty rights in slums and blighted areas? How real and rea
sonable is this basis? What hope for maintaining it is justified?
These and similar questions are answered in the following
Chapter.
ELEVENTH CHAPTER
ESTIMATES OF AMERICAN SLUM "VALUES"
Before trying to estimate the still undetermined value of the
slums, one of America's most expensive assets, or, rather, lia
bilities, a definition of the corpus delicti is required. The
following definition given by Dr. E. E. Wood may here be ac
cepted (cf. U. S. Government publication, Bulletin No. 1, of
the Housing Division) : "A slum is most simply defined as
housing (on whatever scale) so inadequate or so deteriorated as
to endanger the health, safety, or morals of its inhabitants. A
blighted residential area is one on the down grade which has not
yet reached the slum stage."
What is the value of these slums and blighted districts?
Dr. Wood has made some rough estimates of the cost of replac
ing our unfit housing throughout the country. She puts it at
40 billion dollars ("Recent Trends in American Housing," page
287). This total would include the new construction.
What would or should it cost to acquire the present slums
and blighted districts ? They are a colossal liability ! But their
owners desire to have them treated as an asset. The butcher
who has decayed meat, must destroy it. If he sells it, he is held
responsible for the damage to public health. Not so the owners
of bad housing. Instead of making up for their deficiency and
instead of being held responsible for the damage they do with
their damaged goods, the owners want to be paid for it. And
they can claim their liabilities have, by public bodies, been recog
nized as assets and have been assessed as very valuable assets,
indeed, and that, sometimes, the respective owners have even paid
taxes in conformity with such illogical assessments. Even after
having discontinued the paying of taxes, the owners feel that
they ought to be paid for their tainted property. It is almost
a blackmailing proposition: the slum owner threatens to con
tinue ruining the health of the community unless the community
"comes across" with good cash.
131
132 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
How much cash do they want? How much are they en
titled to? This seems to be a dark subject. Have the assess
ments of American slum property ever been added up? Even
if such a calculation had been made, was it to be taken seri
ously? Hardly! The real estate assessments of American
cities contain in capitalized form a record of all that has been
described as "the Shame of the Cities" by such writers as Lin
coln Steffens. These assessments include, in permanently
capitalized form, all the money squandered by "a class of city
legislators who, with but few exceptions, are an unprincipled,
illiterate, scheming set of cormorants . . . foisted upon the
community through the machinery of bribed election inspectors,
ballot box stuffing . . .
municipal legislators who have been
educated in barrooms, brothels, and political societies" (the last
mentioned seem to be the worst; the terms quoted are from the
New York "Herald" writing in appreciation of New York's
famous Tammany Mayor Fernando Wood, quoted in "Tam
many Hall" by M. R. Werner, New York 1928, p. 69).
The real estate assessments of the city of New York, to take
a single example, include in a permanent and capitalized form
the sums stolen, since 1858, by the City government in build
ing the County Court House in Cifcy Hall Park. Originally
$250,000 were appropriated for this building. It finally repre
sented an actual value of $3,000,000. But the actual cost of
this ugly and impracticable building was $12,200,000, or (as
the North American Review calculated) more than four times
the cost of construction of the much larger and very impressive
Houses of Parliament in London. The church of St. Peter in
Rome and the gardens of Versailles were also extravagant con
structions; but they are sufficiently beautiful and interesting to
make their high original cost seemingly justified. But for
Tweed's expenditure not only the economic, but also the esthetic
and, therefore, every moral justification is lacking. Slumdwellers
may benefit from visiting a beautiful church and
grandiose gardens. But by no stretch of the imagination can
slum-dwellers benefit from visiting Tweed's County Court House.
Why should the slum-dweller have to pay for economic crimes
that have benefited only the plundering classes together with
their favorite architects and contractors? New York's beau-
ELEVENTH CHAPTER 133
tiful old City Hall (erected 1803-1812) cost $500,000 and
should forever be an asset to the City and even to its poorest
citizens. The County Court House costing twenty-four times
as much, is a monstrosity and must be pulled down. The City
controlled by "Boss" Tweed's Ring paid one of its favorite
plasterers $138,187 for two days work. The nine million dollars
stolen for this Court House in 1862 had to be assessed upon
the taxpayers, i.e. upon the "value" of New York City's real
estate. This is one of the many reasons why New York's slumproperty
is high in "value" and must be overbuilt and ex
ploited with the severity of a slave-driver.
In New York's real estate assessments are, furthermore,
permanently enshrined the huge annual rentals, etc., the Tweed
Ring received from the city for the use, as "armories," of ten
old stables, which were never used, although the City paid mil
lions for fictitious "repairs." About $2.6 million were thus
put, permanently, upon the backs of New York tenants. A con
servative estimate of the sums stolen by the City Government
under Tweed is $45,000,000. And O'Rourke, the New York
County Bookkeeper, who was instrumental, together with the
New York "Times," in uncovering Tweed's amazing frauds,
calculated that in taxes arbitrarily reduced by The Ring for
money and in return for favor, and by the issuance of bonds at
extravagant rates of interest the city lost $200,000,000 in the
thirty months that Tweed's Ring flourished. (Cf. "'Boss'
Tweed, the Story of a Grim Generation" by D. T. Lynch; New
York, 1927; p. 371.) But before going to prison, Tweed
actually plundered New York during 240 months, from 1851 to
1871. The damage which has been done by him and his hordes
and which is now permanently capitalized in New York's real
estate values amounts to billions. Even the plunder of only
200 million dollars (as occurred within the 30 months ending
in 1871) capitalized at the rate of 5% has by 1936 assumed
the proportion of over a billion dollars. And, since that time,
other huge defraudations have been continuously added to the
staggering totals placed as a permanent burden upon the backs
of taxpayers, i.e. tenants in New York.
What the fantastic defraudations in America's municipal
government really signify was expressed very clearsightedly in a
134 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
letter published by the New York "Sun" when the adulators
of "Boss" Tweed's power planned to erect a bronze statue to
this great "reformer." (Even the "Times," before it escaped
from his huge bribes hailed him as a "reformer" it was just
at the time when he stole $5.5 million in a single morning session
of the Board of Audit; May 5, 1870.)
The poor but intuitive letter writer to the "Sun" stated:
"Inclosed you will find 9 cents, my contribution toward the erec
tion of a statue of Honorable W. M. Tweed . . . the man who
for the last ten years has defrauded the public, more especially
the poor man, out of millions of dollars, so that his image may
always remain to the public gaze for generations to come. I
want to show the man who has increased our taxation, and de
prived the poor man of his hard earnings. Then their children
may point their fingers and say it was he who drove my father
to destruction by the enormous rents we had to pay."
The "enormous rents" are but an expression of the enormous
assessments that had to be put on real estate in order to make
the continuous plunder possible. These assessments have by no
means been lowered as a result of "Boss" Tweed's going to prison
or escaping to Spain. On the contrary, to finance his plunder,
Tweed had driven up New York's "Valuation of Real Estate" to
$742,103,075 in 1870. After his arrest they went up to $797,-
148,665 in 1872. This has continued even after the economic
catastrophe of 1929. In 1927 the valuation of real estate (in
Manhattan alone!) was ten times higher than in 1872, reaching
7.78 billions. Only since 1932 the "depression" enforced a be
ginning of common sense: The "Manhattan Realty" was as
sessed
in 1932 10,154,576,653
in 1933 9,513,999,726
in 1935 8,373,226,997
The letter writer to "The Sun" was right when he suggested that
Tweed's and his successors' images should "always remain to the
public gaze for generations to come."
The following statements are taken from the publication
"Tammany at Bay," written in 1933 by the "Anti-Tammany
Democrat" J. E. Finegan, supporting the successful "fusion
candidacy" of Mr. La Guardia. In spite of being written by a
ELEVENTH CHAPTER 135
partisan these statements contain much truth and special value
to the city planner. We read:
"Tammany retains high (real estate) valuations or lowers
them only slightly because it needs huge totals for borrowing
and spending. The State Constitution forbids New York City
to borrow more than 10% of the assessed valuation of real
estate. It also forbids a tax higher than 2% of the assessed
valuation. To cut assessed valuations down to actual values
would mean that the city's maximum borrowing must come down.
Existing debt would still be legal inasmuch as the assessments
were there when the debts were incurred, but Tammany fears that
bond buyers would be frightened if the truth were officially ad
vertised that the city is at or near the limit of its borrowing.
Wherefore Tammany keeps a valuation which legally permits
$465,000,000 more to be borrowed. For even more urgent
Tammany reasons, Tammany's managers do not want to cut
down assessments to a point where it will make it necessary to
drop payroll parasites and give up contract rackets in order to
keep within the 2% tax limit. Tammany doesn't mind borrow
ing to the sky, for the debt service must be met and is not counted
with the 2% constitutional taxing limit for current expenses.
Hence over-assessing is a fixed Tammany policy. It produces
money for improvements out of which Tammany insiders make
money ; it also produces money for current expenses out of which
Tammany supports its machine and makes money on the side,
too. Even after a cut of $1,600,000 in realty assessment for
1933, the Walker-Berry-McKee-O'Brien administrations have
added $6,000,000,000 to the assessment roll of $12,998,000,000
which they found when they took office seven years ago." The
last mentioned figures refer to the whole area of New York City,
not to Manhattan only, as did the preceding figures. From
18.5 billion dollars in 1932 the values of New York City's realty
(other than corporation) has gone down at the rate of about a
billion a year, and declined to $15.5 billion in 1935.
The total assessed value of real estate (land and buildings)
in the United States was in 1860 6.9 billion dollars, in 1880 13.1
billions, in 1904 62.3 billions, in 1922 129.6 billions; (figures
from U. S. Dept. of Commerce).
A large part of the fictitious "values" "created" in Ameri-
136 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
can cities are "invested in slum areas utterly overbuilt in con
formity with corrupt building codes or as a result of the corrupt
evasion of building codes. Many of these phantom "values"
have to be searched for in tenements which have long ago de
teriorated. For complete clarity's sake even in the mind of the
oblivious or the novice, the obvious shall here be restated. De
teriorated tenements have lost most of their real value and
should correspondingly have been written off, sacrificed, dispensed
with; in short they should long ago have been amortized.
Amortize in exact definition means : send to death ; ex
tinguish. Americans are accustomed most unsentimentally to
send their old autos quite regularly to the auto-dump or autograveyard.
The cities' governments even officially maintain such
auto cemeteries, where everyone, free of charge, can get rid of
his old machine. But while most people are very realistic about
old autos and rather quick when new ones are to be bought,
many owners of old tenements profess sentimentality for their
dangerous old shacks. Before sacrificing their dear property,
they demand to be consoled by the community, city, state or
federal government, and demand huge consolation in the shape of
hard cash.
Perhaps it would be better to compare a tenement not with
an auto, but with a mine. Any well-calculating owner knows
that the returns from his mine represent only in part net interest
or dividend on his investment, and that another (and often
larger) part of the return must be laid aside and must pile up
as a reserve eventually to purchase a new mine, i.e. after the
present one in the natural course of events has been exhausted.
Also tenements, even if gold mines (they sometimes are), cannot
be exploited forever. Every business-like calculation indicates
this, or should by law be obliged to realize this. Even as for a
necessarily deteriorating mine, a fund of amortization must
gradually be piled up for a tenement during the years of its
inavoidable deterioration and must in due time be available for
the purpose of razing the structure and rebuilding it on modern
lines. A continuous rejuvenation of our cities would thus go on,
if our house owners fulfilled their duty of amortization and re
building, which too frequently they neglect. They prefer to let
their buildings deteriorate (thus causing much suffering to their
ELEVENTH CHAPTER 137
tenants) and then ask the community of rent-payers at large for
compensation. And their method of procedure is this:
Instead of assembling an amortization fund for reconstruc
ting their deteriorated tenements, the owners trust that the value
of the land upon which the tenements are standing will rise more
than enough to compensate for the deterioration of the building.
Generally the owner thus not only expects compensation for the
deterioration of his building and for the high taxes he paid for
his overassessed property, but he furthermore feels entitled to
secure even a considerable profit arising from increased land
value. This complacent speculative attitude takes for granted
that either the present or the future owner who razes the de
teriorated building must replace it by a building that brings
much higher rents.
Under somewhat similar circumstances a butcher who per
mitted his meat to decay would offer new and better meat only
to a customer who is willing to pay the full price for both the
old decayed and the new fresh meat. Or, (to take a practical
realtor's experience) if six-storied tenements have to be pulled
down, they must be replaced by some State-subsidized twelve
storied Knickerbocker Village, and the new buildings must house
three times as many rent-payers as there were in the old slum.
In spite of the public subsidies, the new rent-payers must pay
from two to three times more rent than the former slum-tenants
paid. The State by its subsidy must contribute towards paying
the exaggerated municipal taxes. And, furthermore, an enor
mously increased income is necessary to pay the interest on the
greatly increased fictitious "value" of the land, because this land"value"
includes the cost of the old tenements which the owner
failed to "amortize." The uneconomic errors and the wasteful
extravagances of the past are all embodied and preserved in the
new deceptive "values." The economic sins of the past appear,
in disguise, as a new fictitious investment or as capital for which
the new tenants are supposed to pay interest. Generation after
generation of tenants is supposed to slave for paying tribute to
an erroneous method of handling and developing real estate, a
method that corresponds to a vicious and semi-feudal conception
of property "rights."
The question of the size of the American slums, which have
138 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
thus been created, and of their fictitious "values," and of the
numbers of their victims, is grotesquely disputed. The almost
Tweedian accounts and contradictions actually vary between
one percent (1%) and seventy percent (70%) of the American
population to be considered as slum-dwellers. For good reasons
(explained in the note at the end of this chapter) the following
estimate of the U. S. Suburban Resettlement Division (Professor
R. G. Tugwell) shall here be accepted. In a release issued by
this Administration we read: "On the basis of the 1930 Census
and a later inventory of real property in 64 cities, it is estimated
that 36 per cent of all our American homes are of a character
to injure the health, endanger the safety and morals and inter
fere with the normal family life of their inhabitants. More than
half of this third, or 6,093,314, were non-farm houses."
Regarding the "value" of these slums one may venture to
voice the following assumptions. One third of the American
population or approximately 10 million families, urban and rural,
live in slums, blighted districts or otherwise unhealthy dwellings.
Among them are many destitute families, white and colored, in
such sections, north and south, where realty values are low and
rents remain unpaid. The average .rent these 10 million unfor
tunate families actually do pay for their "homes" can hardly be
more than one hundred dollars a year. This would bring the
total of rent for slums and blighted areas to one billion dollars
a year. Could it be conceivable to capitalize this at a lower
rate (i.e. more advantageous for the slum owner) than 5%?
Capitalization at so advantageous a rate should satisfy some
speculative hopes which in slum areas are often high, although
as often unfounded. Capitalizing thus at 5% one arrives at a
total of 20 billion dollars.
Another way would be to assume that each one of the 10
million families' dwellings (including all the speculative hopes
the owners may have placed into these hovels) cannot possibly
be worth more than an average of 2000 dollars (and this seems
even a very high average). 2000 times 10 millions gives us again
20 billions.
If such a total of 20 billion dollars could be accepted as an
estimate of present slum values, a compensation in the spirit of
Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton, at the rate of from
ELEVENTH CHAPTER 139
10 to 20 per cent, would require from two to four billion dollars,
to be raised as a gift to slum owners, in order to win their glad
cooperation for housing reform and make them stop ruining the
nation's health, blackmailing the community, and impeding its
progress.
NOTE ON VALUES OF SLUMS
The following statement made under President Hoover's admini
stration has something of an official Federal character. We read:
"The results of careful research cited in the reports of other com
mittees have established the fact that practically no new dwellings,
and certainly no desirable types of houses, have been constructed in
recent years at costs within the means of two-thirds of our popula
tion. This two-thirds comprises 50,000,000 people, the farm popu
lation being excepted. This means that the majority of families must
continue to live in old houses which are below our present standards
of sanitation and decency, in some cases so far below as to be an actual
menace to health and family life." This statement is taken from the
publication: "The President's Conference on Home Building," Vol.
Ill, "Slums etc.," edited by J. M. Gries and James Ford, p. 67;
copyright 1932. On page 71 of the same report we read: "It is an
anomaly that during the period of our country's greatest advance in
national wealth the past twenty years the housing for 70 percent
of our population has progressively deteriorated."
These estimates of the slum-dwelling masses, varying between 66%
and 70% of the nation's population, estimates edited by Professors
Gries and Ford, are somewhat contradicted by the following state
ment made by the same Professor James Ford of Harvard in the Na
tional Encyclopedia (Vol. V, p. 328; copyright 1932 and 1933).
There he writes : "Less than one percent of the United States popula
tion lives in slums, but a great many families dwell under conditions
that are improvable. Many of the most unsanitary conditions are due
to ignorance or poverty. This is still true in rural districts as well
as in cities for there are still millions of families living in shacks of
one, two or three rooms which are unprovided with modern sanita
tion and household conveniences." This could be interpreted to mean
that less than 1.3 million people or less than 400,000 families live
in slums.
In their much quoted book "Housing America" (p. 5), the editors
of "Fortune" accept an estimate rather akin to the firstly quoted (not
to the secondly quoted) estimate of Professor Ford. They state that
"less than half the homes in this country measure up to minimum
standards of health and decency." This would mean that more than
65 million Americans or about 15 million families inhabit slums.
Above, at the beginning of the Eighth Chapter, one of the most
140 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
prominent authorities on American housing, Dr. E. E. Wood, has
been quoted. According to her estimate, in the United States ap
proximately 40 million people, or "the lowest economic third of the
population occupy obsolete, inadequate, neglected shelter, damaging
in varying degree to health and to selfrespect. Of these nine to ten
million families, roughly half occupy farm and rural homes and half
are city dwellers." (Cf. E. E. Wood, "The Housing Situation in
the United States," in "America Can't Have Housing," edited by Carol
Aronovici, New York, 1934.)
We see, while "cities grow and men decay," there is, at least
among the more or less interested observers, much latitude of doubt
as to the exact numbers of decaying men. We may safely assume
that as much as one per cent, or up to seventy per cent of the Ameri
can population is being demoralized by living in what may, according
to variegated definitions, be called slums.
The question of one or seventy per cent is of such overwhelming
and national importance that any contribution leading to a somewhat
more definite estimate is of value. Therefore a quotation from a re
cent letter written by Dr. James Ford in answer to a question about
the statement he made (1932) in the National Encyclopedia ("Less
than one per cent of the U. S. population lives in slums") may here
be permitted. He replied: "I do not agree with the statement and
believe Mrs. E. E. Wood's estimate is a rough approximation of the
truth." One may, therefore, assume that this estimate of 33%, or
the one of the Resettlement Administration that 36% of America's
population are being damaged, by bad shelter, in health and self
respect, represents a consensus of opinions and a workable basis.
In connection with these necessarily inaccurate estimates a some
what angry protest may be mentioned which the Italian review "Roma
Fascista" recently lodged against some even less accurate estimates.
The English writer Leo Forest, it seems, had published rather rough
estimates giving the money value of all New York as $30 billion, of
London as $26 billion, and of Paris as $11 billion of which $300
million were credited to the Louvre Museum. Berlin was estimated
to be worth $10 billion, Vienna $6.5 billion, and Rome $3.5 billion.
The editor of "Roma Fascista" commented thus : "Come on gentlemen,
buy Rome at this price, which no competition can underbid! Oh you
bluffers ! One marble hair carved by Michel Angelo is worth more
than all the skyscrapers of the profiteers of New York." (Reproduced
by the Czechoslovakian government publication "Prager Presse," May
29, 1934.)
TWELFTH CHAPTER
ORIGIN OF AMERICA'S "LIBERTY" TO BUILD SLUMS
SYMBOLIZED BY BURR
?
S DUEL WITH HAMILTON
"Every republic at all times has its Catilines and
its Caesars. Men of this stamp, while in their
hearts they scoff at the principles of liberty, while
in their real characters they are arbitrary, perse
cuting, and intolerant, are in all their harangues
and professions the most zealous; nay, if they are
to be believed, the only friends to liberty." (Alex
ander Hamilton, from "Vindication of the Funding
System," 1791.)
Laissez-faire and governmental planlessness benefit those who
are in possession of political power and wealth. Laissez-faire,
therefore, was British governmental policy until the parliamen
tary reform of 1867 introduced also into Great Britain more
democratic, more thoughtful and one may well say more
American methods. Since laissez-faire represents such a wanton
departure from the ideals of Washington, Jefferson and Hamil
ton, one must wonder how it could have been so persistently
promulgated as the very essence of America's political tradition
and economic wisdom. How could this dangerous travesty on
American ideals have appealed to Americans?
At an early date two very different types of men contended
for the determination of America's policies, not only in Federal
and state matters, but also in municipal government. The two
contending types were symbolized respectively by Hamilton and
Burr and by the duel which they fought, culminating in Hamil
ton's physical, yet not to be sure spiritual death.
The civic leadership of the City of New York under the sway
of Alexander Hamilton, has been described by Theodore Roose
velt in these words : "It has never since stood so high politically,
either absolutely, or relatively to the rest of the country." This
was true about seventy years before New York became famous
as the most corrupt municipality in the world, and as the hunt-
141
142 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
ing ground of "Boss" Tweed and his "forty thieves," (this poeti
cal name suggesting Arabian fairy tales was given by the
envious or disgusted people of New York to their aldermen).
Against Hamilton, "the most brilliant American statesman
who ever lived, possessing the loftiest and keenest intellect of his
time," was pitted his "arch-foe Aaron Burr, the prototype of the
skillful, unscrupulous ward-politician, so conspicuous in the later
periods of the city's development"; (Theodore Roosevelt). Long
before the fatal duel, Hamilton had thus described his foe
(December 16, 1800) : "He is bankrupt beyond redemption, ex
cept by the plunder of his country . . . He is truly the Catiline
of America."
Burr, with his secret ambition for imperial conquest, belongs
indeed somewhere in that class of demagogues and dictators which
includes Caesar, Catiline, Hitler and Huey Long. By their un
scrupulous and seductive methods, by their crimes and often,
unfortunately, by their practical common sense, they win ad
miration, disgust, and active support. Burr was the spiritual
father of the plundering and bribing Tweed whom, for some time,
even the New York "Times" had to celebrate as a "reformer"
and who while stealing preposterously is responsible for as
important a municipal acquisition as Riverside Park. He made
the City buy it, because the deal privately netted him a million
dollars or two. This graft secured lasting and incalculable
benefit for the planlessly and badly governed City.
Tweed's paternal methods of control were those which Burr
had introduced sixty years earlier and which were adopted by
those fascists who lorded over New York sixty years later.
"By his tact, address and singular personal charm, Burr had
gathered round him a devoted band of henchmen, mostly active
and energetic young men. He made out complete lists of all
voters, and endeavored to find out how each group could be
reached and influenced and he told off every worker to the district
where he could do the most good. He was indefatigable in get
ting up ward-meetings also. Hamilton fought him desperately,
and with far greater eloquence, and he was on the right side;
but Hamilton was a statesman rather than a politician." (Th.
Roosevelt.)
The following example illustrates how the seductive efficiency
TWELFTH CHAPTER 143
of the dictatorial mind sometimes fails to promote municipal
ends. At the peculiar moment when it became profitable but
difficult to obtain a bank charter in New York, Aaron Burr "took
advantage of the cry in that city for better water. He prepared
a bill chartering a company to introduce water into the city, and
attached to it an innocent-looking provision allowing the mem
bers of the company to organize 'for other purposes' as well.
The charter once granted, the company went into no other en
terprise than banking and let the water supply take care of
itself." This was one of Burr's convincing successes and led to
the overthrow of Hamilton's Federalist party in 1800. The
city of New York, at that time, had 60,000 inhabitants. Later,
under Boss Tweed's dictatorship, its population was ten times
larger, and the possibilities of plundering it a hundred times
more so.
After Burr's damaging success in the private enterprise of
providing drinking water for the city, forty years elapsed before
New York's cry for better water was answered in the form of a
municipal enterprise. By that time the slum of New York was
already well established. Equivalent to the failure in providing
good water was the failure in the equally important field of
private endeavor, that of furnishing good low cost housing, a
failure which has, not even today, led to the municipal provision
of decent shelter for the great majority of American city dwell
ers so badly in need of it. Instead, the American slums were per
mitted a full century of flourishing growth. It was only after
an entire century of the encouragement of private slums by
municipal building codes, that an official of the nation, Secretary
of State Ickes, declared (and even then aroused much animosity
by so doing) : "It is high time that we cease permitting our
cities to spawn improper living conditions and insist upon some
measure of correction and guidance. ... It is an aim of this
(national) administration to improve living conditions so that
victims of a totally discredited housing system may have a mini
mum of decency and comfort in which to live" ; (Annual Dinner
of National Housing Conference, reported in N. Y. Times, May
8, 1935).
At about the same time, the first centennial of the indecent
spawning of New York's slums was celebrated by the newspapers
144 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
which reported (August 30, 1935) that "model housing units
for 60,000 low-salaried city employees are being considered by
Mayor La Guardia and the City Housing Authority of New
York." Being considered? American patience in such matters
cannot be surpassed.
It became evident at an early date that a kind of infantile
paralysis interfered sadly with the "Rise of American Civiliza
tion." (Chas. A. Beard's book with this title is sometimes quoted
verbatim in the following paragraphs.) "To the victors belong
half the spoils" had been one of the optimistic principles of
Thomas Jefferson. And once in office he learned: if half of the
offices are taken as spoils, the other half must follow suit. "To
the victors belong the spoils" was a doctrine that had led the tene
ment house mobs of ancient Rome into the bloody disasters of
Caesarism and even into a worse kind of dictatorship. The same
doctrine had, in England, been made less dangerous and even
practicable by creating a class of rather well trained profes
sional statesmen who held or abandoned office only in conformity
with the clever rules of Anglo-Saxon parliamentarism which, in
turn, received more and more support from an increasing num
ber of highly trained and unbribable civil servants.
In America the dangerous doctrine of "to the victor belong
the spoils" rapidly deteriorated into "Jacksonian democracy"
abusing the new manhood suffrage, the idea of which had long
frightened even the allegedly "Jacobinical" Jefferson, and which
was introduced into England only after the American Civil War,
i.e. after another forty years of political education. In America,
the old doctrine, "to the victors belong the spoils," was travestied
into a new doctrine demanding that victors must be spoilers.
Young American greediness demanded rotation in office. The
terms of office had to be short, so that more party workers could
share in the delights of conquest and government be permanently
in the hands of inexperienced beginners. In the background,
however, stood a specifically American invention the perma
nent but utterly irresponsible "bosses" and masters of mobocracy.
Their plundering of the taxpayer and their degrading of the
standards of city building could due to the general disorder
and ignorance only be profitable. Often and for long periods
of time, the plundering could go on unobserved. The new gospel
TWELFTH CHAPTER 145
of an intemperate spoil-system intoxicated the average farmer
who formerly seldom had seen as much as a hundred dollars cash
in the course of a whole year; it was equally seductive for the
urban mechanics who labored at the bench or forge for seventyfive
cents a day. To them a chance at the public "trough" was
to be gratefully welcomed on any axiom of ethics, Roman, Eng
lish or Jacksonian.
Thus the solution of the most complicated political problem
of all times : the settlement of a new continent, the largest migra
tion of the white race, the creation of a new nation, the establish
ment of over a hundred million people, and, incidentally, the
sudden and most baffling economic and technical transformations
in history, all this was left to the guidance of profit-seeking small
farmers and mechanics. Trained civil service did not exist.
There were not enough people with even an ordinary education
to guide the illmixed masses of illiterates or immigrants. Any
way, the new mob refused guidance and suspected old or new
fashioned education as being too often reactionary. Quickly
there arose from the willingly blind mass and on their very shoul
ders the new plutocracy of uncultivated "robber barons" who
connived with the political bosses and boldly enriched themselves
beyond even the remotest conception cherished in previous ages.
The stakes dangling before the eyes of petty and mighty robbers
were large and promised ultimate satisfaction to anyone ready
to fight for them.
The game of hunting the million and billion-dollar land values
that jumped, as if by magic, out of the ground of Chicago has
been described in the First Chapter. The sharks of even the
smallest American town meant to devour similarly fat prey.
The local slaughter often turned into general disaster. But
even the most diverse types of predatory animals could establish
some harmony of purpose whenever economic catastrophe and
national indignation forced them to become a united pack in the
defence of the spoils they had already seized or were still long
ing to snatch. The insistence on continuing the uncontrolled
game of catch-as-catch-can or economic planlessness was stronger
than any occasional fits of national indignation. The wolves
always proved more adequately organized than any patriotic
sheep fondly hoping to bring the commonwealth back to older
146 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
and truer American ideals or modes of production. A "free
fight" for all, sheep or wolf, producer or consumer, was extolled
as the highest ideal of truly American justice and economy.
"God made the first garden and Cain the first city"; (Cowley).
The right to murder and transform God's finest landscape
into a battlefield, a slaughter house, a waste pile, into a field of
derelicts, into a spittoon of degraded urban life, or into that
wildest of all scenes, an American slum or "business district,"
such a despicable right to desecrate was considered to be the
specific representation of "American liberty" and pride.
The limited imagination of the newly glorified hunters and
flayers made them slow to realize that even the largest herd of
buffaloes can, by indiscriminate slaughter, be turned into a ghastly
reeking carrion pit, incapable of furnishing a single beefsteak.
Whenever the free fight ended in catastrophe and "depression,"
there seemed to be no power left to remind the nation of its proud
heritage of 1787, of the national endowment of rational human
ism and statesmanlike planning. There was no authority to
"insure domestic tranquillity and promote the general welfare"
as is demanded by the Federal Constitution. We have seen (in
the Second Chapter) how the timely planning of the framers of
this Constitution had overcome the national economic crisis fol
lowing the War of Independence. But the great crisis of 1837
had already found an American President utterly helpless, a
victim of the old English ideas of laissez-faire.
The rather un-American impotence of President van Buren
during the depression of 1837, and the more American power
of action of President Roosevelt in the emergency of 1933, have
been effectively contrasted by Charles A. Beard (in an article
published in "Today"). When a drastic deflation had smashed
the economy of the United States, Van Buren solemnly declared
that the Constitution granted him no power to do anything. To
the starving people Van Buren said their troubles were largely
due to their own excesses ; they should now work out of the hole
as best they could.
While President van Buren bestowed this benignant advice of
governmental non-interference and laissez-faire, he and his ad
ministration, nevertheless, seem to have found rather unique
governmental methods which "provide for the general welfare."
TWELFTH CHAPTER 147
The following description of their Federal efficiency has been
given by Abraham Lincoln in a political discussion, December,
1839. Here, he said: "I know that the great volcano at Wash
ington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there,
is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current
broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over
the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave
unscathed no green spot or living thing."
This bankruptcy of the spirit of 1787 afforded a possible
solution to the difficulties of 1837 and of some later depressions
because the seemingly inexhaustive resources of a whole continent
were still at the disposal of everyone willing to help himself. The
continent had not yet been laid hold upon, had not yet been
monopolized by the "robber barons," or irretrievably wasted by
more general efforts. The escape into irresponsible or individual
adventure, which has now-a-days become impossible, was still
feasible in 1837. While one hundred years later a return to the
original conceptions of the Constitution became unavoidable, the
solemn Constitutional obligations could in 1837 be assumed
to have had an exclusively rhetorical character.
The hotbed of allegedly democratic and of pseudo-American
lawlessness and planlessness developed its most bewildering fer
tility after the War of Secession. As soon as the heroic efforts
towards unity and united action had brought about peace, a re
turn to rugged individualism and ruthless laissez-faire seemed
profitable and necessary in order to loosen and unbalance the
strained minds just as, half a century later, this was considered
indispensable after the disciplined efforts of the World War.
At the head of the national game of corruption stood, from
1869 to 1877, a general who during the disasters of the Civil War
and after the murder of Lincoln had become the idol of the na
tion. He was as honest and as incapable of gauging or checking
the corruption fostered by his stolid benevolence as, half a cen
tury later, Germany's admired President, Hindenburg, had been.
Two plodding generals led their respective nations "to suffer a
real oligarchic domination by a few hundred persons to the harm
of the entire people" (to repeat Mussolini's words about F. D.
Roosevelt's America, quoted in the Second Chapter).
"The greatest general the world had seen since Napoleon"
148 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
was made an American President because (so his contemporary,
Henry Adams, remarked) "Grant represented order. He was
a great soldier, and the soldier always represented order. . . .
No one doubted that Grant's intention had been one of reform;
that his aim had been to place his administration above politics."
Grant had, perhaps, even city planning vision. At least he
startled many, "when he seriously remarked to a particularly
bright young woman that Venice would be a fine city if it were
drained." But true charity begins at home. Grant did not insist
upon draining the badly smelling slums of American cities. Be
fore he came to power and while he silently smoked his famous
heavy cigars in the White House, the phenomenal slum clearances
and the rebuilding of Vienna and Paris were effectuated. Was
Grant aware of it? After his plans had brought him victory in
the war he seems to have had an aversion to rational planning.
Some maintain that victory was won inspite of his plans. In any
event once in the White House, "he avowed from the start a policy
of drift." It is he who seems to have inculcated many American
businessmen with what has become their permanent aversion to
the use of brains in government. Even leaders of large trusts are
opposed to "brain-trusts."
What Grant did to tragically defeat the brains of the nation
has been described by Henry Adams, one of his most distinguished
contemporaries and personal observers. In the description quoted
in the following paragraph, Adams speaks of himself in the third
person ; what he says sounds like a vivid analysis of the beginnings
of the New Deal in 1933 and of the "constitutional" difficulties
raised against it.
The illusion that the election of Grant would institute the
badly needed reforms, had lured "all the active and intelligent
young men in the country" to the City of Washington. "Full
of faith, greedy for work, eager for reform, energetic, confident,
capable, quick of study, charmed with a fight, equally ready to
defend or attack, they were unselfish, and even as young men
went honest. . . . Most of the press, and much of the public,
especially in the West, shared their ideas. No one denied the
need for reform. The whole government, from top to bottom,
was rotten with the senility of what was antiquated and the in
stability of what was improvised. . . .
Newspapermen were alive
TWELFTH CHAPTER 149
with eagerness to support the President against the Senate. . . .
Henry Adams meant to support the executive in attacking the
Senate and taking away its two-thirds vote and power of con
firmation, nor did he much care how it should be done, for he
thought it safer to effect the revolution in 1870 than to wait till
1920 . . . the whole fabric required reconstruction as much as
in 1789, for the Constitution had become as antiquated as the
Confederation. Sooner or later a shock must come, the more
dangerous the longer postponed. The Civil War had made a
new system of fact ; the country would have to reorganize the ma
chinery in practice and theory."
A golden opportunity! Never since the defeat of Thomas
Jefferson's great plan for internal improvements had there been
a similar opportunity for overcoming the careless and compla
cent confidence in laissez-faire and economic riot that had crept
in and made American government almost ludicrous. Never had
the slain spirit of Hamiltonian statesmanship a better chance of
reconquering America from the victoriously plundering Burr-
Catilines.
But Grant refused the enthusiastic support offered him by
the most capable fighters of the nation. "Grant had no objects,
wanted no help, wished for no champions. The Executive asked
only to be let alone. This was his meaning when he said: 'Let
us have peace!' . . . Grant's administration reverted to noth
ing. One could not catch a trait of the past, still less of the
future. It was not even sensibly American. Not an official in
it suggested an American idea. . . . The system of 1789 had
broken down, and with it the eighteenth-century fabric of a priori,
or moral principles. Politicians had tacitly given it up. Grant's
administration marked the avowal." No one "could be quite
sure of Grant, except for the powerful effect which wealth had,
or appeared to have, on his imagination." He suffered the Erie
Railroad scandal (from which New York's municipal boss, Tweed,
together with Gould and Fisk drew huge profits) and the "Gold
Conspiracy." "The worst scandals of the eighteenth century
were relatively harmless by the side of this, which smirched execu
tive, judiciary, banks, corporate systems, professions, and
people, all the great active forces of society, in one dirty cess
pool of vulgar corruption. . . . Nine-tenths of men's political
150 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
energies must henceforth be wasted on expedients to patch the
political machine as often as it broke down. Such a system, or
want of system, might last centuries, if tempered by an occasional
revolution or civil war; but as a machine, it was, or soon would
be, the poorest in the world the clumsiest the most inefficient."
This was Henry Adams' convincing appraisal of America's
political and economic system as it emerged from the Civil War
and made for new civil war and revolution. "Let us have peace,"
or: no consideration whatever shall interfere with our making
money, are un-American interpretations of the French phrase
laissez-faire. If this appreciation by Henry Adams was correct,
then the post-Civil War period represents the great disaster in
America's political history. And Henry Adams' view is shared
by many other trustworthy observers. It is worth while to illus
trate this fact and the civic catastrophe after 1865 which is
comparable only to what happened after the recent World War.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, on November 5, 1865, wrote in his
"Journal" the following: "We hoped that in the peace, after
such a war, a great expansion would follow in the mind of the
Country; grand views in every direction, true freedom in poli
tics, in religion, in social science, in thought. But the energy of
the nation seems to have expended itself in the war, and every
interest is found as sectional and timorous as before. . . ."
Emerson's disappointment was not the result of the infatua
tion of a Concordian hermit. It is fully shared by modern
commentators. "The really great and noble American dream,
the dream of a better and fuller life for every man, had become
a good deal like the stampede of hogs to a trough. Such a
stampede, like the subway rush, is no place for the development
of the finer elements of life and thought." Thus James Truslow
Adams, in 1931, described American life since the Civil War; (in
his Introduction to "The Education of Henry Adams").
During the grand stampede to the trough, the "American
liberty" to build slums has been intensified into the American
"right" to trap one's fellow-citizens in old or "new law" tene
ments, and into the "Constitutionality" of such specifically
American building "restrictions" and "Zoning Ordinances" as
actually to permit and invite the erection of skyscrapers and
tenement houses capable of huddling, within the "Region of New
TWELFTH CHAPTER 151
York" alone, two or three times the residential and office popula
tion of the entire globe. Such were the rather childish devices
for corraling an international and all-inclusive herd of rent-pay
ers to be milked by the shrewd realtors or careless investors of
New York, in the name, of course, of "American liberty" and
"constitutional rights"! (The New York Zoning Ordinance
which legalizes the amazing corraling enterprise will be dealt with
in the following Chapter.)
The craving for rationalizing and nationalizing the interna
tional worship of the dollar was expressed by the Highest Court
of the State of Illinois which declared that a state law interfering
with the use of the national flag for advertising cigars was "un
constitutional." (Cf. Ruhstrat vs. The People; 185 Illinois 133;
1900.) A more truly American attitude was expressed, seven
years later, by the United States Supreme Court. It decided
that the use of the national flag as an advertisement on a bottle
of beer "tends to degrade and cheapen the flag in the estimation
of the people"; (cf. Halter vs. Nebraska, 205 U.S. 34; 1907).
America unfailingly finds her way back to her old high stand
ards which, in matters of idealism and technical achievement, had
formerly given her an enviable international reputation. Here
are some examples taken from the fields of technique and taste
in which America had an old and well-earned reputation for
genuine alertness and superior stylishness. The superiority of
the American sailing ships in the old "deep water" trade to
China was once an appropriate object of the great American
pride. The Americans lost this superiority on the high seas
ever since the introduction of steamships. Only quite recently,
American ships like the "Manhattan" began to compete again
with European speed and comfort, but this competition was
made possible only by means of large government subsidies.
Similar government subsidies will probably be necessary if
America ever wishes to compete with Europe in the field of
hygienic low cost housing.
There are other fields in which American products were
among the best. Old American furniture and houses often
evinced supreme good taste. In matters of personal apparel
America had even in the nineteenth century set new standards.
Of London's fashionable society, in 1865, Henry Adams could well
162 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
say: "Fashion was not fashionable until the Americans and the
Jews were let loose." (The Education of H. A., Chap. XIII.)
The question has been raised as to just why America, "the
land of the go-ahead tradition" (H. G. Wells) and of people
who once earned a world reputation for smartness, should have
established such preposterous devices as the American slum, the
American building codes with their incredibly low requirements
for breathing space, or the grotesque New York Zoning Ordinance
with its replicas in other American cities. It has been sug
gested that, after all, these devices cannot be as preposterous as
they seem, since they were invented by the same nation which
builds the best and most inexpensive automobiles, the finest school
buildings and takes better care of its milk supply than Germany
did even when she was still a fairly progressive country.
One of the most subtle of critics and city planners is the
American Henry Wright. He declared and it has often been
repeated by others that in matters of post-war housing America
stuck to horse and buggy methods at a time when Europe had
learned to apply, even to housing, modern automobile building
techniques. But a country daringly progressive in one field can
often modestly and persistently stick to old methods or even to
reactionary sluggishness in other fields. To understand Ameri
ca's combining the most progressive autos, even in a time of
depression, with the most reactionary tenements, even in a time
of boom, one must remember that there are numerous other fields
in which America has abandoned her old leadership or (without
having achieved such leadership) has proved to be somewhat
backward. This whole matter is so closely connected with the
future prospects of better American city planning and housing
that a few examples may not be amiss.
When young Benjamin Franklin lived in London his Ameri
can sense of cleanliness was shocked by the dirt of the London
streets. To help the unfortunate Londoners of 1735 he proposed
a set of improvements which seemed to have been conceived to
help American cities of 1935 so sorely in need of them. Franklin
specifically urged the Londoners to have their scavengers use
"close-covered carts" instead of such cleaning methods as dash
the mud "upon the foot-pavement, which is thereby rendered
foul and slippery, sometimes splashing it upon those who are
walking." "Close-covered carts" as recommended by the in-
TWELFTH CHAPTER 153
genious Franklin are now in common use in many European
cities. The well covered and closely fitting ash and garbage cans
are brought from the interior of the houses or from a secluded,
hedged-in spot in the garden and emptied without dust or
stench into the carts. In American cities, on the contrary, the
ludicrous garbage-disposal methods criticized by Franklin have
been introduced and seem to have become ineradicable. On the
sidewalks, for hours during the morning, stand open garbage
cans into which dogs stick their noses scattering the contents
"upon the foot-pavement, which is thereby rendered foul and
slippery." When the refuse is finally called for, it is emptied
carelessly into open carts, "sometimes splashing it upon those
who are walking." Dust, stench and small particles are scattered.
If the wind blows, twenty yards of the adjoining street are im
passable for tidy people, and the open windows of neighboring
houses are turned into effective catch-basins collecting the filth.
The American city dwellers re-imbibe their filth with that welltrained
indifference which to Europeans seems so inexplicable a
contrast to the effective American desire for comfort and cleanli
ness in lavatories and autos. The nation having the largest
number of bathtubs seems often curiously devoid of the most
primitive sense of comfort. The readiness with which Americans
take "meals" in "drug stores," often without backs to the stools,
without a place to hang their hats and coats, and surrounded
by displays of urethral syringes or advertisements of hair tonics,
laxatives and body deodorants, can have an almost emetic effect
on the untempered visitors from less sturdy climes.
The surprising American insensibility to technical perfection
Obsolete method of garbage collection still in frequent use in America,
and modern garbage collector.
154 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
that has crept in since the time of Benjamin Franklin, also finds
curious expression in many smaller matters. Thus the Ameri
cans have permitted their omnipotent telephone companies to
enforce the usage of an inconvenient and ugly apparatus (re
quiring manipulation with two hands and preventing the use of
the right hand for making notes). This old-fashioned telephone
is still in frequent use, in America, twenty-five years after the
general introduction of the more convenient modern tableapparatus
(for one hand use) in many European countries. In
America the new type of apparatus makes headway as slowly
as modern methods of housing and by virtue of the same economic
exploitation.
Another example is the mail box provided by some 50,000
American post offices for general use in the city streets. This
box, so one would expect, should protect letters, until they are
collected, from the inclemency of rain or snow. But the Ameri
can mail box is designed with the opening at the top: it is diffi
cult to mail a letter while it rains or snows without attracting
moisture to it and even to the contents of the box. The opening
lid instead of acting as a protective roof over the letter to be
mailed, is designed by American government engineers? to
act as a funnel for facilitating the ingress of water into the
letter box. Not much harm may result; but how could the ob
viously illogical design become the generally accepted one?
Even the self-filling fountain pen was granted by American in
dustry to the submissive American public only about ten years
after its adoption in Europe.
Are American industrialists unprogressive? Or must one
perhaps assume that their hands have been tied by strong popu
lar superstitions and by the voodooism that seems to conquer the
Modern and obsolete modes of telephone still in use in America.
TWELFTH CHAPTER 155
popular mind? It is a fact that many American buildings have
a twelfth, fourteenth and twenty-third, but no thirteenth floor.
America's multi-storied buildings are praised as triumphs of
modern rational construction. But too many modern Ameri
cans would be irrationally afraid to live or work on a floor having
such an allegedly illfated number as thirteen which, somehow,
may be connected with the Treason of Judas, the murder of
Banquo or of a certain chief in Central Africa where similar
superstitions are reported to congenitally prevail.
Indeed the international reputation of American smartness
has some curious counterparts. Vulgar though it may appear,
it is not irrelevant to mention that for several generations of
Europeans, the frequent and effective expectoration of saliva,
chewing tobacco or gum was considered a sign of typically
American smartness. American business urged the European
emigrants, even on the trans-Atlantic ships, to buy and use chew
ing gum: "If you aren't yet American, at least look like one."
Still later progress never halts the connection of chewing
gum with the new terminology applied to the American automo
bile whetted the good natured national appetite. American
cafeterias tried to make mouths water by a sign posted for the
benefit of their bread-lining clients in front of the steam tables :
"Park your gum here." With this futile joke the undertakers of
mass feeding hoped to keep their floors neater than the typical
subway station floors of New York are kept, plastered as they
are with chewing gum indiscriminately "parked."
The people of the United States spend annually a billion
dollars for cigars and cigarettes and two billions for advertis
ing. These amazingly wealthy distributors of smoke and gen
erally ugly billboards have not yet found it possible to spend
even a fraction of their waste money (a fraction yearly for ten
to twenty years would be sufficient!) to liberate the country
from the crime of the slums ruining the health and morals of onethird
of their fellow citizens.
Anyone prejudiced by such illustrations might think it un
likely that America will ever overcome her backwardness in
matters of housing, building codes, zoning and other "profitable"
political diseases. It will be necessary to remember America's
present leadership in certain fields of transportation, playground
156 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
and park systems, in order to regain one's confidence in the hope
that America's spiritual leadership may once more as in Frank
lin's, Washington's and Lincoln's time become an international
model, in many fields of city planning as well.
The extent to which America's former civic ambition will
or will not be fulfilled, will ultimately be one of the tests deter
mining the value of "the great American experiment" and the
merits of its initiators. The popular contention, that the proof
of the pudding is in the eating, is but another way of saying that
in history true success (securing as Lincoln wished "the great
est good to the greatest number") is the last arbiter.
The main difference between the usurpations of Caesar and
those of his accomplice Catiline is the success which led the
former to "greatness" and the failure which led the latter into
disgrace. One might go further and say that the difference
between Washington, "the founder of the nation" and Burr,
"the Catiline of America," is that the former is great only if his
great plans materialize. "Washington was one of the most ac
tive land speculators of colonial times ; ... he eagerly set about
to secure (for himself) the claims of the veterans (i.e. the lands
the State of Virginia had set aside as bounties for its soldiers
in the war against France)." (Cf. The Great American Land
Bubble, by A. M. Sakolski, 1932, p. 5.) Burr, on the other
hand, endeavored to get rich along with other land jobbers of
his time by buying large tracts of land on credit, at first in the
western part of New York State. Later, by some dark method,
he obtained some 400,000 acres in Louisiana, as a base for his
private ambitions and military operations against Mexico, or in
order to separate Louisiana from the United States. His im
perial conspiracy terminated in failure.
George Washington was more successful. He rebelled against
his country across the sea at the very time when this "home"
country, England, by superior statesmanship and enormous ef
forts had driven the subjects of the King of France forever out
of his northern empire in America. England had thus achieved
security for such English colonists as George Washington whose
ingratitude was called felony until it became successful and
eminent. But it will remain eminent only if the great plans and
promises of a freer and better life, as advanced in the Declara-
TWELFTH CHAPTER 157
tion of Independence, will actually bear fruit and only if the new
American conception of the "pursuit of Happiness" actually as
sumes precedence over the barren and un-American concept of
property rights so characteristic of nineteenth century Manchesterian
and American "robber barons."
It is on these semi-feudal property rights that the American
slums are built and the exploitation of which remains sacrosanct.
But equality of suffrage conquered in America is no toy for the
amusement of political children. Daniel Webster warned the
Massachusetts Constitutional Convention that all serious revolu
tions of history had been revolts against property ; that equality
in suffrage was incompatible with inequality in property; and
that if adopted it would either culminate in popular assaults on
wealth or in reactionary restraints upon democracy.
The validity of the new American ideals supported by equal
suffrage could hardly be convincingly tested as long as the new
and emancipated nation was satisfied with gorging itself with
the massive gifts of an unexplored continent. Now, the conquest
of the continent having been attained, comes the test. Now we
shall learn whether America's old liberty to build slums shall win
out against modern England's efficient methods of obliterating
slums. After the British Tory victory in the parliamentary
elections of the fall of 1935 the American voters had to learn
that even a British conservative is more liberal than an Ameri
can Democrat, not to mention an American Republican. A New
York daily commented: "A platform like that of the American
Republicans, with its opposition to all reform, its horse-andbuggy
economics, would appear not only to British Labor and
British Liberals but to most British Conservative voters as a
political atavism." (N. Y. Post, Nov. 18, 1935.)
The British Conservative Party, in order to win the recent
elections had to accept practically all the modern ideas which
the die-hards of both American parties still oppose. The Eng
lish Conservatives are reconciled not only to far-reaching unioni
zation of labor with virtually no company unions, to minimum
wages and unemployment insurance, but especially to a huge
housing program which is visibly eradicating the slum, with the
use of government subsidies ; to a permanent public works pro
gram; to extremely heavy income and inheritance taxes, far be-
158 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
yond anything proposed in America (and there is no movement
to reduce them because of their alleged destruction of business).
The British Conservatives have accepted government ownership
of many utilities, power, communication and transport; and
abandonment of the gold standard. And in England no House
of Lords or other supreme court has the power to declare an act
of Parliament unconstitutional. There is no British party in
favor of granting any such power to any court. There is no
effort made to interfere, under the guise of protecting local or
"state" rights, with the congress elected by the people. And
the decisions made by the representatives of the nation are not
decried as "bolshevist regimentation."
Did Americans fight a war of liberation against England in
order to be more helpless against the abuse of feudal privilege
than Englishmen? Did Washington fight his mother country
in order to guarantee the American liberty to build and exploit
slums? There can be nothing more reactionary and ludicrous
than America's building and zoning laws. Compared with them,
English building traditions are relatively sane.
Can American "liberty" display similar sanity? Will the
spirit of Washington and Hamilton, and of wisely planning
statesmenship, conquer the spirit of the plundering adventurer,
Burr, "the Catiline of America"? The American people of our
time, by their manner of meeting the present national emergency,
will decide how wise and how great Washington actually was and
how long the murdered Hamilton shall live.
Again Washington's maxim may be mentioned and taken to
heart: "It is by the final outcome that our deeds must be
judged."
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
NEW YORK REGION CAN HOLD TWICE THE POPULATION
OF THE GLOBE
"God made the country and man made the town."
(Cowper)
In the settlements created by the superior mind of the bees
one finds between the areas reserved for residences, nurseries,
storehouses and avenues a practical relation. Human cities are
generally not even as intelligently planned as bee hives or ant
hills. Nor do the public works of the human race promote the
"pursuit of happiness" of all its members as efficiently as the
public works of the beavers promote beavers' happiness. Beavers
do not build their dams so low, or their residences and store
houses so high or so compactly as to make their overground or
underground avenues of approach inconvenient or impracticable.
Their building codes serve better than human codes the ideal of
"the greatest good for the greatest number."
To serve this same ideal is said to be the aim of the municipal
building laws and "zoning" ordinances by means of which some
well-meaning or shrewd members of the human race try to make
urban construction conform to higher (or lower) standards, and
confine the construction of residences, factories, offices, stores,
etc., to such districts or "zones" as may be "suitable" to the
community at large or to the exploiters of real estate.
There was a time when American building laws were still in
an embryonic stage, and when the limitation of heights of build
ings as decreed by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and
Major L'Enfant had long been forgotten. At that time, before
disorder and the rapid growth of blighted areas had become
typical features of every American city, Walt Whitman pointed
out the incipient danger. He wrote in his Brooklyn Eagle (July
13, 1846) : "Over two thousand persons emigrants from
Europe landed in the metropolis from the Liverpool packets that
came up yesterday. Nor is this number unusually large, for
159
160 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
one day. A handsome city might be made out of those who come
hither from abroad, in the course of a month! The worst thing
about these emigrants, and after they come hither, is, that they
do not penetrate immediately into the interior to the far West
if possible and settle down in an agricultural way. We believe
that large tracts might be settled in this way in the West, to the
advantage of all parties."
In antiquity and during the middle ages such settling of
pioneers was conducted in a very efficient and orderly manner
and upon a grand scale. But unfortunately, in Walt Whitman's
time when immigrants arrived at the rate of from one to three
hundred thousand a year, there existed in America no "resettle
ment administration" or other authority to plan and control
rational settlement. Almost every activity in this field was left
to chance. During the ten years preceding the World War, the
number of new immigrants rose to an average of about a million
a year. Most of these newcomers had to help industriously to fill
the tenements and pockets of American landlords. Many of these
immigrants had brought some savings with them. For many
others rent was paid through private charity until they them
selves could make money. But for these paying or subsidized
guests from afar the American landlords did not build the "hand
some city" Walt Whitman had in mind. These newcomers often
came from the lowest of European slums and conditions of semislavery,
or were ready, and often able, to undergo new and un
wonted hardships. To exploit their ignorance or to crush their
stamina was even more advantageous for the individual ex
ploiter, although by no means for the community than, for
merly, was the American trade in captured negroes. Half of the
victims may have died in the crowded bottoms of the slavers ; but
the surviving half netted handsome incomes and social preroga
tives to the pious merchants of New England, "many of whom
had waxed rich distilling West Indian molasses into rum and ex
changing rum for slaves to be carried to the Southern planta
tions"; (Charles A. Beard). Into the slavers, the victims were
at least packed for only a few weeks or months ; the victims of
the tenements often suffer there for a life time.
As long as possible, American real estate owners, State or
municipal legislators, "housing reformers," and Board of Health
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 161
officers were ready to connive rather indiscriminately with almost
any conceivable exploitation of the urban soil. One of the first
New York tenements, erected about 1835, was a "model" philan
thropic enterprise. And its successors were such that an astute
student of housing had to confess : "As for New York, I defy
anyone unacquainted with the history of 'model' tenements before
the war to distinguish them from any average speculative slum."
(C. Bauer, Modern Housing, p. 81.) Indeed, these "speculative
slums" built in New York, since the "new" tenement house law of
1901, fairly delighted the contemporary philanthropists, meek
and unimaginative as they seem to have been. In the leading
American philanthropic review one could read: ". . . The new
law tenement is the best that can be hoped for, being equal to
the 'model' tenements in the essential particulars of adequate
light and ventilation, proper sanitary conveniences, reasonable
protection against fire and opportunities for privacy. That
within seven years after the passage of the act (1901) one-fourth
of the population of the city should be housed in buildings of this
class is an amazing result." (Emily Wayland Dinwiddie, in
"Charities and the Commons," today called "The Survey," p.
15'97, Feb. 15, 1908.) This indeed amazing result proved how
profitable these new barracks must have been. In some respects
they were even worse than the older types.
As long as the tide of immigrants rose the laws encouraging
their congestion in overbuilt tenements may, to the superficial
observer, have appeared excusable. Current prejudice would in
sist that "Manhattan is too small" and that crowding was neces
sary. Since 1915, however, the fresh armies of profitable new
rent-payers dwindled rapidly. In the three years from 1931 to
1933 an actual flight from America even carried back over two
hundred thousand to Europe. No longer can the American land
lord profitably fill his blighting areas by renting their obsolete
houses to the unwitting ones from abroad. Now the realtors
cry in horror: "Manhattan is too large!" With its 14,208
acres Manhattan comprises only a one fourteenth part of the
area of New York City (197,672 acres) and much less than one
half per cent of New York Region (3,537,249 acres). But (as
we shall see presently) even this comparatively small Manhattan,
even this center of past and probable future congestion is so
162 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
large that for sheer lack of people it can never be built up
and developed to as much as one per cent of such density and
height as the megalomaniac building codes and zoning laws per
mit and encourage. Not one per cent !
Since the inflowing tide of immigration has ebbed, the owners
of large sections of almost every American city now can quote
the Lamentations of Jeremiah (Chapter I). "How doth the
city sit solitary that was full of people? How is she become a
widow! she that was great among the nations. . . . Her filthiness
is in her skirts ; she remembereth not her last end ; therefore
she came down wonderfully." This drastic come-down may en
able American cities to solve their slum problems by following
Lincoln's advice, to "think anew and act anew," and to "disen
thrall" themselves from their obsolete building laws as America
had to "disenthrall herself" from her old slave laws.
Indeed, more grotesque even than the greed of the American
realtors and the connivance of the "social workers," were the
untiring legislative and legalistic and highly expensive activities
designed to make the orgies of the realtors appear less mis
chievous and even dignified. The repeated tragi-comical revisions
of the building codes and zoning ordinances regulating the ex
ploitation of land in New York and its metropolitan district
(called "Region" or "Environs") were followed by often equally
grotesque "reforms" in many other American cities.
The present obsolete legal "restrictions" of New York's real
estate exploitation by no means date from the "gay Nineties,"
nor from the time when America's "robber barons" seized power,
and when the rather English than American "tradition of individ
ual freedom and equality destroyed the realities of freedom and
equality out of which it rose"; (H. G. Wells). No, New York's
restrictions of real estate robbery today in force are quite re
cent and represent public spirited "revisions" of a previous state
of even wilder lawlessness guaranteeing (as has been pointed out
in the previous Chapter) to every landowner the famous Ameri
can liberty to build upon his private piece of land practically
anything he pleased, mingling, if he chose, slaughter and country
houses, stinking glue factories and incense-burning churches, the
most congested tenements of the world, or the highest "cathe-
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 163
drals of business" in the whole Universe, as God willed or toler
ated it.
In New York the last legal "limitations" of this time-honored
"individualism" were defined by the "new" Tenement House Law
of 1901, the Zoning Ordinance of 1916, and the Multiple Dwell
ing Law of 1929. These allegedly well-intentioned limitations
resulted from those intermittent campaigns for social education
and public improvement which furnish the periodically required
outlets for some of the surplus energy and money of America's
well-to-do citizens, i.e., from those very campaigns which surprise
the intermittent visitor to America by their everlasting recur
rence and in the case of building, "zoning" and anti-slum legis
lation by their painful futility. It may be unjust to doubt the
sincerity of the civic effort which induced the formation or at
least the toleration of these grotesque building laws ; but it must
be here questioned whether these vaunted ordinances have pro
duced more good than evil.
The most unique of these ordinances is the Zoning Resolution
of 1916 which defines the different "zones" or districts in which
a New Yorker can build either exclusively business or residential
buildings, or in other "zones" indiscriminately anything he
wishes. The mildest and, sometimes, severest critics of this or
dinance are the men who drafted it and who observed their draft
deteriorate under the sinister influence of powerful real estate in
terests. To create in a wildly growing city some more livable
and so to speak temperate "zones" of construction and to
introduce some common sense into its mad and practically lawless
architectural activities may be an almost impossible solution.
Anyway, few seem to be satisfied with the solution of 1916. But
after completing this problematical and bewildering "zoning"
ordinance its framers joined the group of planners which have
undertaken, since 1921, the even more gigantic task of designing
"the Regional Plan of New York and its Environs," a task which
purports to bring order into the whole development, not only
architectural, but also recreational, industrial, including the
furiously complicated problems of transit and transportation not
only of New York City but of the whole New York Region, which
is fifteen times larger. This great enterprise was made some-
164 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
what less difficult only by the regrettable (and sometimes fortu
nate) fact that its character is purely advisory and self-ap
pointed. The advisors were financed by the private Russell Sage
Foundation (with an outlay of 1.25 million dollars). They could
avail themselves of their freedom of executive responsibility, and
could criticize their previous work embodied in the Zoning Resolu
tion of 1916. In one of the ten interesting large volumes which
they published ("Regional Survey of the Plan of New York and
its Environs," Vol. VI, p. 372) Mr. E. M. Bassett criticizes the
Zoning Resolution, which he himself had been forced to draft,
fifteen years earlier, against or conforming with invincible op
position, when he was chairman of the Municipal Heights of
Buildings Commission. Mr. Bassett, the eminent lawyer, says
about his own badly truncated ordinance (the italics are not his) :
". . . the New York zoning resolution as it now exists makes
no reference: first, to a rational height of dwelling houses, such
as two and one-half or three stories ; second, to one family or two
family detached house districts ; or third, to multi-family houses
according to density. By reason of these omissions the resolution
has brought no worthwhile protection to many localities in the
city so far as density is concerned. Height regulations which
allow buildings to go from six to nine stories in the southern part
of Staten Island or in the out-lying parts of the Borough of
Queens, are entirely unsuitable, if not absurd. Inadequate zoning
of this sort is one of the penalties that New York City has suf
fered because it took the lead in establishing comprehensive zon
ing. Some benefit came from this early start. Localities have
undoubtedly been preserved which would have been ruined by the
lack of zoning. Nevertheless, if some other great city had es
tablished the law first and obtained progressive court decisions,
it would be possible for New York City to adopt a much better
zoning plan today than the one that it now has. ... In the
districts (labelled E or F) which are supposed to be the onefamily
detached house districts, a lot owner can build a multifamily
house to accommodate 50 or 100 families, and if he
chooses, provide for one family in each room, if only he supplies
a large enough lot and the required front, side and rear yards,
and does not exceed the percentage of coverage of the lot. In the
less restricted C and D districts there is likewise no regulation
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 165
that prevents one family living in each room. The result is that,
although zoning has had the practical effect of decreasing cubage
of residential units in the restricted area districts, it has had no
effect upon room crowding."
During a meeting at the New York City Club (Spring 1935)
Mr. Bassett explained the regrettable shortcomings of his zoning
ordinance caused by the shortsighted demands made by real estate
interests. He said: "Every request for raising the height, won
out. Every petition for increased height, if it had a fairly large
number of signatures, has been approved by the Board of Esti
mate."
After emphasizing some of the "unsuitable, if not absurd"
features of his work, Mr. Bassett commented upon its "success."
He said (the italics, here and in the following quotations, have
been introduced only for the purpose of the present discussion) :
"The success of zoning in New York has been due very largely
to four things. The first of these is that no attempt was made
to impose anything in the nature of an unreasonable restriction.
It has come to be seen that this is a proper attitude, for the
result has been that zoning has become firmly entrenched in the
law and practice of the city, and that strengthening will be a
matter of evolution toward a higher quality of zoning. The
second merit of the New York ordinance was the prevention of
arbitrariness. In the third place, success has been made possible
because of the facility with which needed changes in the zoning
maps can be made by the Board of Estimate. A fourth reason
for successful administration has been the educational work
carried on by the Zoning Committee of New York. This com
mittee consists of public-spirited citizens who are interested in
maintaining the integrity of zoning in New York."
Less leniency for New York's Zoning Resolution, its success
ful administration and its evolution toward higher quality, is
expressed by the General Director of the Regional Plan, Mr.
Thomas Adams, who does not belong to the group of men who
fathered the Zoning Resolution of 1916. He expresses no doubt
as to the great "facility" of changing the zoning maps. But, in
opposition to Mr. Bassett's confidence in the "satisfactory evolu
tion of New York's zoning," Mr. Adams declares: "The really
significant changes that are being made are being grounded on
166 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
mere expediency, and seem to ignore the foundation elements of
health^ safety and general welfare, in the mterests of dishonest
speculation . . . too much consideration is being given to selfish
interests. What else can be said about the constant reiteration
that there must be compromise here and there with land values
based on acknowledged misuses of land? . . . The zoning resolu
tion of New York . . . has failed to afford substantial relief to
congestion."
Mr. Bassett's optimistic contention that "strengthening will
be a matter of evolution toward a higher quality of zoning," was
even more spiritedly contradicted by Mayor La Guardia. Dur
ing the meeting of the Mayor's Committee on City Planning,
Feb. 6, 1935, attended by 800 delegates from the whole New
York Region, Mr. La Guardia complained about the "facility"
or, rather, ruthlessness with which the quality of zoning was
continuously being weakened. He told of regularly appearing
real estate advertisements which "guarantee," in advance, to
prospective buyers an exemption from the zoning requirements
that will suit their wishes. His report sounded like an account
of the glorious privileges which, against cash, could always be
secured from Boss Tweed and his forty thieves, the aldermen of
New York during the "gilded age" after 1865. Describing the
difficulty of resisting the well organized efforts to break down
the zoning law, Mayor La Guardia concluded that the only thing
to do is "to kiss your zone goodbye" whenever it interferes with
the aims of real estate speculation.
The other "success" claimed by Mr. Bassett for his zoning
ordinance, the "prevention of arbitrariness," has been strongly
disputed by a prominent member of Mayor La Guardia's Com
mittee on City Planning. The architect Mr. Ralph Walker said :
"Our present zoning ordinances are granting privilege to a few
landowners at the expenses of a great many, and the majority of
the property owners are paying for this privilege by not being
able to obtain an adequate return on their holdings." (Cf. N. Y.
Times, Nov. 23, 1935.)
One must, indeed, admit that Mr. Bassett's Zoning Ordinance,
instead of "preventing arbitrariness," on the contrary calls
for and legalizes the highest arbitrariness conceivable. By au
thorizing and, thereby, even encouraging land-owners to build
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 167
from two to actually fifty times higher than is "suitable," the
ordinance arbitrarily grants premiums to the least public spirited
individual. The law actually grants awards to him who is ready
first to make use of the "absurd" authorization of overbuilding
and ruining a neighborhood. The first one who commits the
legalized crime can actually benefit from it. His newly overbuilt
property will still draw enough sunlight and air at the expense
of the abused neighboring properties from which he is stealing
it. The second and third perpetrator of the architectural crime
authorized by the zoning ordinance will benefit less. The sane
people who stay behind and entirely refuse to commit the offense
will be the heaviest losers. Could there be any more damaging
arbitrariness ?
Another "success" claimed for this ordinance is that it has
"firmly entrenched zoning in the law and practice of the City."
This claim no one can contradict. But the achievement thus
praised must be compared with the "success" of a certain merci
ful doctor who has been summoned to cure an habitual drunkard.
The patient, so far, may have been drinking an average of five
large glasses of whiskey a day and only in a few exceptional cases
as many as thirty. (These numbers are selected, purely for
illustration or for purposes of comparison, because it happens
that the average height of New York's buildings, at the time of
the framing of the zoning ordinance, was about five or less stories
while there were a few exceptionally high buildings with as many
as thirty stories.) Facing so inebriate a patient the doctor was
rather distrustful of his persuasive powers. He, therefore, made
"no attempt to impose anything in the nature of an unreasonable
restriction" (to quote Mr. Bassett's explanation). Indeed the
doctor refused to limit the daily whiskey consumption of his
patient to anything less than what his patient could consume
during his most extravagant excesses. The doctor carefully
tried to use the prescription of the framers of New York's zoning
ordinance who declared: "A height limit that was lower than
many buildings then in existence in a given locality would be
discriminatory and might be pronounced void by the court."
(Cf. Regional Survey of New York and Environs, Vol. VI, p.
364.) This is as doubtful a manifestation of wisdom as if the
doctor summoned to cure the drunkard were to prescribe for him
168 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
such a consumption of alcohol as is known to be indulged in by
the tallest drinkers of his locality without intercession by the
police. Mr. Bassett explains: "If in 1916 there had been no
buildings of these heights, it is probable ( !) that the authorities
would not have established districts permitting them, since in
places where they are closely crowded together they do not con
form to the requirements of health, safety and general welfare."
In legalizing or "establishing districts" which "do not con
form to the requirements of health," etc., the Zoning Ordinance of
1916 has, indeed, been successful. But does it not seem as if the
framers of this ordinance had succeeded in killing a possibly good
idea by legalistic thinking?
As to the firmness with which "zoning has become entrenched
in the law and practice of the City" one probably has to admit
that it will be very difficult indeed to dislodge realtors from a
zoning ordinance that is so efficient a defense and legalization of
their fondest speculative hopes and vice. Perhaps only a drunk
ard whose occasional drinking excesses have been authorized or
prescribed (by his doctor !)
as a regular habit, may be less easily
separated from his depravity than a real estate man ("firmly en
trenched" behind his beloved zoning ordinance) may desist from
overbuilding and lot-crowding.
The inefficiency of the zoning effort within the area of the
City of New York (299 square miles) need not be equalled, at
present, by similar inefficiency in every individual section of the
metropolitan area outside of New York City's limits. (The total
area of "New York and Environs" is 5,528 square miles.) Very
commendable efforts have been made at the zoning of outlying
districts by such planners as Mr. W. D. Heidegger. But the
battle for crowding and unrestrictive "zoning" will be fought by
the "interests of dishonest speculation" mentioned by Mr.
Thomas Adams, only in those strategic locations where, and
whenever, they think it worth while. There is no reason to as
sume that they will be less harmfully victorious outside than in
side New York City (whenever they may think it profitable to
indulge in overbuilding and lot-crowding). Meanwhile they win
their minor battles in such growing subsidiary centers as the
City of Newark.
Mr. Bassett speaks of the "zoning disasters" in New Jersey
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 169
(which comprises 2,228 square miles of Metropolitan New York).
Especially interesting among these suburban disasters are always
those occurring in the most densely built districts where overexploitation
of the land is already permitted and where still
greater maxima would be demanded and enforced, by victorious
speculators, in case the existing legal maxima did not satisfy or
even exceeded the wishes of the insatiable. It is in these districts
of maximum exploitation where speculation wins its irreparable
victories, leaving for later conquest those districts which at pres
ent are "zoned" for lower and less congested building. In the
districts where speculation had advanced its fierce claims, the
new Newark zoning ordinance of 1930 did so little interfere with
them, that Mr. Thomas Adams wrote : "It may be said that such
zoning is almost a farce so far as limiting bulk in the interest of
public welfare is concerned, and that it matters little what other
provisions are made when such an intensity of building is pro
vided for. It is difficult to see what the social objective of this
kind of zoning is. In regard to broad effects on building, there
is nothing in conditions in Newark which would suggest that the
owners would exceed the heights contained in this ordinance were
they left to their free will." (Cf. Regional Survey, Vol. VI, p.
162.)
Mr. Bassett himself tells of the trick by which the towns in
the New York State section of the Metropolitan region were
permitted to escape even the altogether "imperfect zoning enabling-act
for towns." "The main defect of this grant of power
was that the ordinance did not apply to any property owner
who was not actually served with a copy of the ordinance." The
new Town Law in New York State (1927) opened new loopholes.
"Towns in New York that fail to place themselves within the
protection of the new law will still be open to the exploitation of
land developers. They will have no way of preventing the laying
out of streets in the wrong places. Sometimes these streets made
by developers will be too near together so that lots will be too
shallow, and sometimes the streets will not conform to the topog
raphy but will run up and down hill on grades which make their
upkeep almost impossible. Parts of many towns in New York
have been irretrievably injured by these haphazard street and lot
layouts."
170 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
It is safe to say that the laws already in force permit large
sections of New York's outer regions to develop in as bad or in
an even worse manner than is permitted, at present, within the
"zoned" area of New York proper. And even where zoning or
dinances are in force, now, outside of New York City proper,
there is little assurance that they will resist, any more than the
Zoning Resolution of New York, those "selfish interests" and
what Mr. Thomas Adams calls the "whittling down of zoning in
New York region." Unless matters are fundamentally changed,
one must expect that any real estate exploitation possible in New
York City will ultimately be possible in the whole New York
Region, i.e. whenever it will be found profitable and whenever
enough human cattle can be found to submit to this exploitation
and can be made to pay rent for the privilege of being exploited.
The only real hope for better city planning in the future
rests not in the "Zoning Resolutions" now in force, but in the fact
that the ungodly human herds required to give financial sense
to these "absurd" zoning resolutions and to fill
up the corrals
provided for the profit of the realtors of New York by their
legalistic though "public spirited" advisors can never, never be
huddled together, even if the population of the entire world were
driven to pay rent and survive in New York.
The entire population of the earth is at present only two
billion people. And what is the population capacity of New
York Region under the existing building ordinances ? More than
twice the population of the entire globe!
The New York City Housing Authority has made a "Zoning
Survey of New York City" which has not been published. But
the general results of this survey have repeatedly been quoted in
the speeches of the Tenement House Commissioner, Mr. Langdon
Post. There can no longer be a secret about this appalling
study. "The purpose of this survey is to determine the popula
tion capacity of New York City, were the city to be built up to
the limits of the present Zoning Ordinance and within the re
quirements of the Multiple Dwelling Law."
Before calculating the maximum amount of construction pos
sible upon the surface of the city, liberal areas for streets, parks,
playgrounds and cemeteries were deducted. The results for Man
hattan, as an example, were these :
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 171
Square Feet
in Manhattan
Mainland 585,725,184
Parks and Playgrounds 78,892,736
Cemeteries 914,760
Streets Bldg. Line to Bldg. Line 176,470,272
Gross Buildable Area 329,447,416
Allowing 10% for schools and other public buildings 32,944,742
Net Buildable Area 296,502,674
Number of Buildable Blocks (650' x 200') 2,281
In the same way the total for the whole City of New York was
calculated thus:
Square Feet
in the city of
New York
Mainland 8,474,509,041
Parks & Playgrounds 433,340,456
Cemeteries 177,270,912
Streets Bldg. Line to Bldg. Line 2,285,401,536
Gross Buildable Area 5,378,469,217
Allowing 10% for schools and other public bldgs 537,846,921
Net Buildable Area 4,840,622,296
Number of Buildable Blocks (650' x 200') 37,236
Therefore the "percentages of blocks for business use and
for residential use were separated for each borough, according
to the percentages of each area zoned for such uses. The per
centages of blocks for each Area District were separated ac
cording to areas zoned for such districts. The cubic contents
of each designed block were figured and reduced to floor areas,
and then to the number of persons that each such block would
accommodate."
In calculating the number of persons to be accommodated very
conservative assumptions were made. The average gross floor
area per person, for instance, was assumed to be 200 square feet
in business buildings. This may be compared with 150 square
feet of office space which Elevator Companies assume as an
average for each employee. The Equitable Building at 120
Broadway has an occupancy, according to the Building De
partment records, of 11873 or 150 square feet of floor space
per person. In hotels ("class B dwellings") the new Zoning
Survey takes even 300 sq. ft. (gross) and in apartment
houses ("class A dwellings") 250 sq. ft. per person as bases of
the calculation. How high, liberal and American the averages
thus allowed really are, will be appreciated when one compares
them with fifty square feet per person which were officially given
172 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
as the average of available floor space in Russian cities after
the execution of the first "Five Year Plan." (Cf. the richly
documented article in Wasmuth's Monatshefte fur Baukunst
und Staedtebau, 1932, p. 196 if.)
In spite of such conservative assumptions the calculation
shows that New York's building restrictions allow an amount of
congestion which far exceeds any conceivable necessity. It be
comes evident that these restrictions were made by legalistic
minds unprepared to cope with the practical and very evil con
sequences of their doings. Here are some examples of the rather
surprising possibilities created by this legalistic interference with
city building. The "Zoning Survey" of the New York City Hous
ing Authority finds :
"Even in the most restricted residential T' district in Brook
lyn or Queens, where it is generally believed that only detached
one family houses may be built, a 200 x 650 ft. block can be built
up with tall apartment buildings to house 2,746 people. This
would produce a density of population per acre (including
streets) of 539 against 118, which is the present average density
per acre in the area within five miles of City Hall.
"In business areas where hotels may be built in accordance
with the zoning law, there would be a density of 2,345 persons per
gross acre or over eleven times the maximum density of 200
persons per gross acre given by the Regional Plan Association
as proper for Central Areas. . . . There has never existed in
any block the density of population that the law allows. One
business block 200 x 650 ft. (if built up in conformity with the
present laws) could accommodate 18,158 people with only about
7 sq. ft. of ground per person, while one of the densest (actually
existing) blocks in the garment district (between 7th and 8th
Avenues and 37th and 38th Streets) has an occupancy of 6,000
to 9,000 (according to seasons) in an area of 158,000 sq. ft.,
thus allowing as much as 18 sq. ft. of ground per person. The
street congestion in this section is well known. Yet the laws per
mit two and one-half times this working population per block. In
asmuch as the area of streets amounts to 50% of buildable area,
this working population in a business block turned out into the
street at one time would have only Sy2 sq. ft. per person, using
both roadways and sidewalks. This is not walking room." As
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 173
the streets generally amount only to 30% of the buildable area
there would in reality be only 2 sq. ft. of street space for every
person.
"If New York City is developed to the full extent permitted
by the zoning law," the "Zoning Survey" shows that the following
masses of people could be huddled into this city :
Persons
Total business occupancy 343,976,983
Hotels (Class B Multiple Dwellings) >
A OQ Q(71
Apartments (Class A Multiple Dwellings) }
'>'^>y '
Total persons accommodated 420,700,954
Total persons housed 76,723,971
Thus the "business occupancy" is almost five times larger
than is the "total of persons housed" !
What do these fantastic figures signify? And what can be
said to explain, justify or at least understand them? If one in
sisted upon being as fantastically illogical as the New York build
ing laws are, one might say that the men who so surprisingly
"zoned" meant to be good New Yorkers. Perhaps they patri
otically wished to reserve for the city of New York the higher
profits which result from using property for business as compared
with using it merely for residences. When the Municipal Heights
of Buildings Commission provided space for the "business" of
343 million New Yorkers it anticipated perhaps the possibility
of forcing all the remaining parts of the New York Region to
abandon any ambition of ever accommodating any perceptible
part of New York's increasing business and to be satisfied with
extending purely residential facilities to the families of the 343
million business people of New York. In this case the metropoli
tan area of 5,230 square miles outside of New York City proper
(298 square miles) might be destined to house (aside from its
own increasing population) 343 million families, or about 1000
million to 1500 million people dependent upon heads of families
commuting and working in New York City.
But, as pointed out, zoning in the long run is unlikely to be
more restrictive outside of New York City proper than inside.
The outer regions are most eager to copy faithfully every aber
ration of New York whenever it may become profitable to do so.
When the New York Stock Exchange, in 1933, tried to escape
taxation, it threatened to move to Newark and actually acquired
174 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
there an option on land in the business district. A little Newark
boom started at once. It is to be feared that the City of New
York's zoning laws, with their pitiless lack of logic, will gradually
be applied to the whole Region. This would be equivalent to
our having to reckon upon ultimate "zoning" for an equally dense
and impossible business occupancy in the entire Region of New
York. The buildable land within the Region being more than
eighteen times as large as New York City proper, the present
legal zoning standards of this City applied to the whole Region
would, therefore, provide for 6.1 billion business men (or women)
within New York Region. If each of these New York business
people had a family somewhere (or dependents of any kind) as
numerous as two, three, or four, there would be in the Region of
New York if the dynamic standards of the City's Zoning Ordi
nance are to be taken seriously a potential demand of homes
for 18 to 30 billion people. How can they be housed? A most
puzzling enigma which even the Municipal Heights of Buildings
Commission probably could not solve.
It has been pointed out that the existing zoning provides for the
residence of only 76.7 million people within New York City proper,
or (if similarly mad standards were applied to the whole Region)
for only 1.36 billion people in the entire Region. Another serious
conundrum seems to present itself. Even granting that the speed
of airplanes and the size of commuting areas will have developed
enormously before 15' or 20 billion people ever settle upon New
York Region, a practical city planner must doubt whether the
existing lawful zoning for a business occupancy five times larger
than his residential occupancy is not the result of one of those
regrettable errors that sometimes creep in, even to law-making.
The impracticability of New York's zoning regulations can, at
least partly, be rectified by a surprisingly simple method, i.e. by
reversing them. Instead of zoning for a business occupancy five
times larger than the residential occupancy (as New York's
zoning ordinance actually does) it would be a little less unreason
able to reverse the procedure and provide for a residential occu
pancy five times as large as the business occupancy. Thus one
would arrive at the fairly normal relation of one business or
working person existing to each home for five people.
But even by entirely reversing the City of New York's fanci-
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 175
ful and fateful laws, they would become only partly reasonable.
Certainly, to figure upon a total population of 343.9 million
people within New York City proper (corresponding to 5,158
million within New York Region) and upon a business occupancy
of 76.7 in New York City proper (corresponding to 1,150 billion
within the Region) is somewhat less unreasonable than to figure
(applying the present legal standards) upon a residential popu
lation of 76.7 people and a business occupancy of 343.9 million
people within New York City proper.
The tragi-comical futility of this kind of zoning, however,
becomes at once evident, if one learns that the most buoyant
estimate of what the population of New York Region can ever
amount to presents the figure of 34.6 million people in the year
2000. This prediction, made by Nelson P. Lewis (formerly Chief
Engineer of the Board of Estimate, New York) is based upon
the assumption that the miraculous growth of the past will con
tinue indefinitely. More realistic calculations do not overlook
the fact that even the fastest growing trees never do grow
through the sky. These more realistic prognosticators arrive
at a possible population in the New York Region in the year
2000, of only 28.7 millions (Professors R. Pearl and L. J. Reed),
or only 19.7 millions (E. P. Goodrich, Consulting Engineer),
or even only 16.1 million people (Professors E. B. Wilson and
W. J. Luyten. Details of these different estimates can be found
in "Regional Survey of New York and its Environs," Vol. II,
p. 109).
Even these forecasts may prove to be too optimistic. Soci
ologists have discovered that even in the United States which
ranks higher in fertility than such countries as Belgium, Eng
land, or Germany, the population is startlingly approaching
a stationary point. "It may be said that these areas in which
population has come to a standstill or is declining, might support
urban growth for a time out of immigration, . . . but that in
the long run they probably will experience a cessation of urban
growth or even a decline in the degree of urbanization" (cf. N.
Carpenter, The Sociology of City Life, New York, 1932,
pp. 453-56).
The legal building "restrictions" of New York consider
neither the possibility of a standstill nor a decline of population,
176 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
and they are not even influenced by such buoyant population
forecasts of from 16 to 34 million people (instead of the present
11 millions) in the year 2000. Instead, the building laws of New
York represent a weak surrender to the irresponsible demands
of real estate speculators. If this fact required any further
proof, one might venture to make the following rather farcical
calculations.
According to the 1930 estimate of the International Statisti
cal Institute of the League of Nations at Geneva, all the States
of North, Central, and South America together have at present
a population of 239 millions. Makers of building laws might
claim that one half of this total of 239 millions is destined to
live in Buenos Aires. With typical South American modesty,
superior to that of most North American cities, Buenos Aires
has tried to emulate North American building codes and has
by its newest building and zoning ordinances (1930) created the
lawful possibility of housing about 165 million people within its
metropolitan district. This total of 165 millions is only little
more than ten times the present population of all Argentine.
Compared with such Argentinian restraint the zoning liberty
of New York appears to be mad libertinism: it provides for
more than 21 times the present population of all Pan-America.
But then, there is Asia ! Asia has, at present, a larger popu
lation than Pan-America. Comprising the densely settled dis
tricts of China and India, all Asia is estimated to have a
population of 950 millions, or less than one-sixth of the popula
tion made possible by the public spirited "restrictions" within
the metropolitan district of New York. This "Region of New
York" could accommodate thirty-four times the population of all
Africa which contains at present only 150 million people. All
the inhabitants of thinly settled Australia, seven millions, could
be housed 600 times within Metropolitan New York and still leave
enough room for all and every one of the populous nations of
Europe and all their future progeny. The population of all
Europe comprises today only 550 million people, while Metro
politan New York must house almost ten times as many in order
to live up to the generous permits extended by the Zoning Reso
lution of 1916, contrary to the better intentions of its original
designers.
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 177
The architect Mr. Ralph Walker is entirely justified when he
demands that the City of New York's "zoning laws should be
revised to fit a population limit of 12,000,000." If built up to
its zoning limitations, he explained, the city would "contain
dark-towered buildings of sufficient bulk to house 250,000,000
persons. . . . The area now zoned for residence," he said,
"would house 12,000,000 persons in buildings of about three
stories in height, with half of the land left for gardens and open
spaces. A business population natural to a community of this
size could be housed properly on about 10 per cent of the area
now zoned for business." (Cf. N. Y. Times, Nov. 23, 1935.)
The question of the extent to which even a sensible zoning
ordinance can help rather than hinder undesirable speculation
in real estate will be discussed in a later Chapter dedicated to
city planning in Berlin where the most intensive experimentation
in the field of zoning has been carried on.
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER
CITIES PLACES TO DIE IN ?
"DESTRUCTION or FICTITIOUS LAND VALUES"
It has been claimed for instance by the French city planner,
Eugene Henard that even bad congestion in big cities is to be
vindicated as a necessary precondition of intense cultural life.
On the other hand some systems of pessimistic and fascistic phi
losophies have abused statistics which prove that in the past
cities were not self-regenerating, that the growth of big cities has
mostly depended upon the continuous influx of sturdier immi
grants from the healthier noncitified country ; or, in other words,
that the city was a place fit to die in, but not a place to live in.
These enemies of the city conclude their argument after the man
ner of Oswald Spengler who won world repute by lugubriously
prophesying: "The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It
crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the pro
vincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has in
continently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up
awhile." (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, II, p. 105.)
Spengler has developed what Maclver calls a "curious elaboration
of a cyclic conception" of a progressively decaying society.
Spengler professes "to reveal the spring, summer, autumn and
winter of cultures and peoples."
The outcome or goal of such demonstrations has often been
highly political. Their authors advocate the denial of self-gov
ernment to cities and claim that the government of a nation must
be in the hands of the farmers or, to be more specific, under the
control of the big landed estates. Their owners in the American
South used to be called slave-holders. In Prussia where they are
still in power they are called "Junkers," a class which for centu
ries formed the strong backbone of a rather enterprising milita
rism. Spengler admires them and thinks they will bring the only
possible salvation to suffering mankind. Humanity can be saved
178
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 179
from the pest of big cities and their intellectualism only by this
"philosopher's" favorite kind of "Socialism," which he manages
to identify with "Prussianism." His slender but effective book
on "Prussianism and Socialism" strongly "supports the old mili
tarist Germanism" (to quote what the "Columbia Encyclopedia"
says about one of his later books). He wrote it in 1919. Since
that date the name Prussian Socialism has been changed to
National Socialism, or Nazism. We will presently see how closely
the leader of this new "socialism" follows Spengler in his opposi
tion to the modern city.
Even searching American critics of Spengler's "mystical theorizings"
desire "to recognize that a certain substantial basis un
derlies them." So, for instance, writes N. Carpenter and con
tinues : "Urban societies do decay. Some of them have altogether
disappeared. Population attrition probably almost certainly
has played a part in their decline. But this factor would seem
to be only one of several tending in the same direction. . . .
There are other equally fundamental forces social, economic,
political that tend to make urbanism increase in burdensomeness
and precariousness as it develops"; (cf. N. Carpenter, The
Sociology of City Life, 1932, p. 199f.). If the Chairman of the
Department of Sociology of the University of Buffalo in his
widely circulated book thus indicts "urbanism" it is necessary to
examine the foundation of such charges.
An attitude diametrically opposed to the pessimism of
Spengler was suggested in the Preface to the present volume. It
proposed a newer conception of social endeavor and historic ob
servation in terms of "urbanism" rather than in terms of "civili
zation." Instead of fearing the city as the inevitable grave of
humanity, the present study recommends the modern decen
tralized city with its highly improved health standards as the
only possible salvation for mankind.
In this connection the student of urbanism will find it inter
esting to observe the changing, hostile or friendly, attitudes
which prominent statesmen and writers have long been accus
tomed to assume when facing the progress of city life and its in
fluence upon the fate of nations. As has been mentioned here,
Thomas Jefferson maintained that the big cities are apt to be
come sores on the body politic. Modern Americans such as
180 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Ford point in almost identical
terms to the dangers of modern city life, but also emphasize the
possibilities of their remedies.
"The modern city is a pestiferous growth." Such are the
words of Henry Ford, to quote an authority who enjoys a popu
lar reputation of combining thoroughly American "rugged in
dividualism" with acquisitive power and common sense.
"Plainly," we read in "Ford Ideals," "so it seems to some of us,
that the ultimate solution will be the abolition of the City, its
abandonment as a blunder. . . .
Nothing will finally work more
effectively to undo the fateful grip which the City habit has
taken upon the people, than the destruction of the fictitious land
values which the City traditions have set up and maintained. We
shall solve the City Problem by leaving the City." This flight
seems, indeed, necessary, with or without a "Ford."
In an even more philosophic and pre-Spenglerian vein an
other exponent of American common sense, Theodore Roosevelt
on August 27, 1910, wrote: "In the past, every civilization in
its later stages has tended really to witness those conditions
under which 'the cities prosper and the men decay.' There are
ugly signs that these tendencies are at work in this nation of
ours."
This was written before the World War, at a time when the
"ugly tendencies" destructive of old fashioned family life were
even stronger in such tenement house cities as Berlin, Paris or
Vienna than they were in the predominantly one-family-house
cities of England and America. After the World War and the
moral or political revolutions which followed it, housing reform
could be undertaken in Austria, Germany and many other coun
tries on an unprecedented scale. We will see (in the second Volume)
that as astute a critic as the French writer, Jean Giraudoux,
went so far as to suggest that German democracy (before the
advent of Hitler) had practically solved the problem of the
modern city and had achieved thereby a most sublime triumph.
The success which thus inspired the Frenchman is, of course,
indignantly denied by such opponents of democracy as the dic
tator Hitler or the already quoted philosopher Spengler both
of whom equal or exceed the democratic Jefferson in their hostile
fear of big cities. This apparent similarity is curious because
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 181
Jefferson was the exponent of an earthly "pursuit of Happiness,"
while no one could have a deeper contempt than Hitler and
Spengler for such hedonistic utilitarianism as has been glorified
by the magna charta Americana, the Declaration of Independ
ence. We have seen that even Lincoln fought for "the greatest
good for the greatest number."
Such Benthamism must appear utterly despicable to a Ger
man demagogue or to a philosopher inspired by equal fallacies.
Their ethical standards are derived from heroism and sacrifice
which in history generally turned out to be the glory of the lead
ing hero and the sacrifice of the masses ; this at least was main
tained by one who ought to have known, by Frederic "the Great,"
when he once in one of his Voltairian moods spoke candidly.
What are the facts behind such gloomy forebodings as those
of Spengler who, even more emphatically than Theodore Roose
velt, warned the world that when "cities prosper the men decay"?
He claims to have proved by historical facts that all valuable
culture (fine arts and high morals, or "Kultur") is rapidly dis
appearing in the growing cities and that it is being obliterated
and results in mere "civilization," egalitarian and utilitarian,
scientific and technological, which is far from the divine breath
of creative tradition and autochthonous dignity. In his "De
cline of the West" (II, 100 ff.) Spengler writes the following
lines which in part are almost worthy of a city planner and of
a man of better insight:
"Now the old mature cities with their Gothic nucleus of
cathedral, town-halls, and high-gabled streets, with their old
walls, towers, and gates, ringed about by the Baroque growth of
brighter and more elegant patricians' houses, palaces, and hallchurches,
begin to overflow in all directions in formless masses,
to eat into the decaying country-side with their multiplied bar
rack-tenements and utility buildings, and to destroy the noble
aspect of the old time by clearances and rebuildings. Looking
down from one of the old towers upon the sea of houses, we per
ceive in this petrification of a historic being the exact epoch that
marks the end of organic growth and the beginning of an inor
ganic and therefore unrestrained process of massing without
limit. And now, too, appears that artificial, mathematical, ut
terly land-alien product of a pure intellectual satisfaction in the
182 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
appropriate, the city of the city-architect. In all Civilizations
alike, these cities aim at the chessboard form, which is the symbol
of soullessness. Regular rectangle-blocks astounded Herodotus
in Babylon and Cortez in Tenochtitlan. In the Classical world
the series of 'abstract' cities begins with Thurii, which was
'planned' by Hippodamus of Miletus in 441. Priene, whose chess
board scheme entirely ignores the ups and downs of the site,
Rhodes, and Alexandria follow, and become in turn models for
innumerable provincial cities of the Imperial Age. The Islamic
architects laid out Baghdad from 762, and the giant city of
Samarra a century later, according to plan. In the WestEuropean
and American world the lay-out of Washington in
1791 is the first big example. There can be no doubt that the
world-cities of the Han period in China and the Maurya dynasty
in India possessed this same geometrical pattern. . . . The
block-tenements of Rome such as the famous Insula Feliculae,
rose, with a street breadth of only ten to seventeen feet to heights
that have never been seen in Western Europe and are seen in only
a few cities in America."
Thus Spengler obviously resumes the fallacious advocacy of
the city without a preconceived plan, the "grown city" or the city
which "just growed" and the irregularity of which must, of
course, be religiously imitated by morbid romantic architects.
Such notions the first volume of the present publications (en
titled "Civic Art") has strongly opposed. It happens that quite
a number of the cities here condemned by Spengler were praised
by the present author, in this first volume, as models of the
finest civic art. It was also shown there that the decried "chess
board form" if properly handled is capable of producing
much strong and harmonious beauty. Spengler blames the "cityarchitects"
because they design city blocks in the shape of "rec
tangles," because they lay out a city "according to plan," and
because they delight in the "appropriateness" and in the "mathe
matical" and "geometrical" qualities of their art. Doing this
the architects become agents of "soullessness," of "inorganic
processes" and of "artificiality"; and they help eat "into the
decaying countryside." It would be equally grotesque to blame
Bach, Mozart or Beethoven for delighting in the mathematical
and architectonic qualities of their fugues, sonatas and sym-
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 183
phonies. What could be more wonderfully geometrical than the
plans of Gothic cathedrals? Gothic builders laid out many
hundreds of cities "according to a plan" and in true accordance
with the geometrical splendor of their conceptions of cathedrals.
Whenever the territory was level their city blocks were rectangles
which secured the most appropriate lot shapes for the building
of practical houses. The early Gothic town planners were very
practical and had a perfect sense of the appropriate. Only in
corrigible romantics could believe that the architects of any
worth-while period ever purposely laid out, on flat land, irregular,
seemingly unplanned streets and seemingly or actually inappro
priate lots. The supreme union of appropriateness and beauty
has always been the supreme test of architectural perfection. It
is true that the conception of beauty is often and largely influ
enced by tradition and prejudice. But no one should talk about
architecture without being able to appreciate the peculiar
character of architectural art which to a large extent is beauti
ful if and because it is appropriate, and is appropriate if and
because it is beautiful. If one were obliged to play, as Spengler
does, with mystical terminology, one would have to say that in
architecture the sacred union of the beautiful and the appropri
ate has the character of a holy sacrament. Here is the trans
lation of the classical motto of all good builders: Architecture
recognizes only one master, necessity.
There once existed among city planners, in the gay Nineties,
a romanticism that sneered at the superb architectural qualities
in the plan of Carlsruhe or Versailles, or that could not see the
then and yet largely unfulfilled architectural possibilities of the
plan of Washington. But this romanticism has long since been
conquered. The famous city planner Camillo Sitte, who some
times was guilty of such romanticism, has in his own designs
often been strongly "geometrical" emulating the superior work
of Baroque times which was never informal. Curiously enough,
Spengler himself is, in most cases, one of the most ardent admirers
of Baroque art. His criticism of the city plans of the Baroque
period shows him sinking below his own level of critical judg
ment. He continues with the following remark which would be
very good if things were not taking and had not taken an entirely
new and different turn. He writes :
184. CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
"Even now the world-cities of the Western Civilization are
far from having reached the peak of their development. I see,
long after A.D. 2000, cities laid out for ten to twenty million
inhabitants, spread over enormous areas of country-side, with
buildings that will dwarf the biggest of to-day's and notions of
traffic and communication that we should regard as fantastic
to the point of madness." This remark would, indeed, be to the
point if it were meant to be a criticism of the New York Ordi
nance "zoning" the New York Region for hundreds of millions
or for billions of people. But does Spengler take such absurd
ordinances seriously? All sane "city-architects" whom Spengler
criticizes for their desire to build "according to plan," oppose
such crazy and uneconomic expansion of urban conglomerations.
It, furthermore, happens that the most recent urban develop
ments in America do not tend towards chessboard design "which,"
for romantic Spengler, "is the symbol of soullessness." All effec
tive modern city planning introduces into the city's organism
larger and larger parks and forest reserves. The most distinc
tive feature of modern city expansion is the abandonment of mere
city planning and the substitution of state planning. This new
conception has long ago been recognized by even the highest
officials in government who often are rather averse to new ideas.
More than ten years ago a New York State Governor wrote:
"The consistent planning of highways, parkways, parks, public
institutions and public structures of all kinds, in relation to the
whole State, treating all as a unified problem of regional plan
ning, is the modern way of dealing with such a program of public
improvements on a large scale. It is no longer considered practi
cal or even sensible to permit cities to grow up in a haphazard
fashion and to let their outlying regions develop without regard
either to outside highway connections or existing streets, within
town limits." (Cf. Governor Alfred E. Smith's letter of March
16, 1925, to the New York State Legislature, transmitting the
"Report of the Commission of Housing and Regional Planning.")
Modern living quarters are no longer massed within con
gested cities but are dotted in the form of decentralized settle
ments along those novel "parkways" until hardly a suggestion
of the old chessboard plan remains. The notion that such victo
rious protagonists of the modern parkway in New York Region
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 185
as Messrs. Robert Moses and Gilmore D. Clarke were advocates
of chessboard planning or had no clear vision of its inappropriateness
is quite humorous. Spengler, however, lugubriously con
tinues his arraignment of the big cities' development:
". . . no wretchedness, no compulsion, not even a clear vision
of the madness of this development, avails to neutralize the at
tractive force of these daemonic creations. The wheel of Destiny
rolls on to its end ; the birth of the City entails its death. Begin
ning and end, a peasant cottage and a tenement-block are related
to one another as soul and intellect, as blood and stone. . . .
Here there is only forward, never back. Long, long ago the
country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best
blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and
incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till
it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste
of country. . . . Once the full sinful beauty of this last marvel
of all history has captured a victim, it never lets him go." Here
Spengler's hide-bound moralism is unmasked: the "full" beauty
of the large city is "sinful."
The phenomenon that more than anything else inspired the
historico-romantic croakings of Spengler was the spectacular
urban depopulation which accompanied the decline of the Roman
Empire. Most of us have learned in school that ancient Rome,
like Sodom and Gomorrah, decayed in righteous punishment of
the sometimes questionable "morals" of its wicked inhabitants.
Spengler refuses with contempt the much simpler American inter
pretation of classic Rome's dramatic depopulation, the unromantic
interpretation given by the economist, V. G. Simkhovitch, and
approved by modern agronomists, namely that the cities of an
tiquity were depopulated because the system of feeding their
inhabitants broke down.
The cause of this breakdown was the progressive exhaustion
of most agricultural soil from which the cities took their nour
ishment. This exhaustion is proved by innumerable documents.
The political victory of the large estates and of the slave-holders
was partly responsible for this exhaustion. The small farmer
with little land keeps relatively more cattle, thus permitting more
intensive manuring and cultivation. But, furthermore, farmers
of former times and this continued into fairly modern times as
186 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
well, in fact into the second half of the eighteenth century ! had
no artificial fertilizer, and they did not know the systematic use
of such fertilizing plants as clover which would maintain the
productivity of their fields. Extensive farming until about a
hundred and fifty years ago, was like mining. A farm, like a
mine, however rich, would some day be exhausted of its treasures.
Of course, there were Egypt and some smaller valleys reg
ularly fertilized by overflowing rivers. Their possession, indeed,
became the key to the dominion of ancient Rome. But these
granaries of Rome were not capable of alone feeding the whole
empire. "The progressive exhaustion of the soil was quite
sufficient to doom Rome, as lack of oxygen in the air would
doom the strongest living being. His moral or immoral char
acter, his strength or his weakness, his genius or his mental de
fects, would not affect the circumstances of his death: he would
have lived had he had oxygen ; he died because he had none. But
it must be remembered that while the presence of oxygen does not
explain his life, the absence of it is sufficient to explain his death."
(Cf. V. G. Simkhovitch, "Rome's Fall Reconsidered" and "Hay
and History," Political Science Quarterly, 1913 and 1916.)
Modern cities find themselves in a situation fundamentally
different from that of cities of antiquity, the middle ages and
Renaissance times. The scientists of modern cities have made
the necessary discoveries which transform exhausted or even
originally waste lands into fertile oases. The unfortunate Jew,
Fritz Haber, has taught the world how to take the efficient ferti
lizer, nitrogen, from the air. The great problem to-day is not
how to find enough grain to feed urban men and the live stock
they need. The problem at present is how to find enough citizens
to consume the oversupply of grains. Or rather: the problem
to-day is how to find new and peaceful! methods of distribut
ing enough purchasing power among urban and rural populations
so that they can buy and consume the over-flowing fat, milk and
honey of the land.
One observes that the ideas of Spengler are but a slightly
modernized adaptation of the Gospel of John Ruskin and his
followers (such as the American architect and writer, Ralph
Adams Cram) who have praised the unsurpassable medieval
"master-mason" and almost everything else medieval, but who
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 187
have for the most part nothing but contempt for modern ma
chinery and for almost everything else modern although they
often make use of it. According to Spengler, "Kultur" is some
thing noble, agrarian or at least patrician, while "civilization"
stands for vulgar democracy or dictator-driven masses in dreary
gridiron cities with slums or at their best with boresome bath
tubs, autos, radios and other standardized articles of mass pro
duction which were never found in the possession of Shakespeare,
Milton, Goethe or Beethoven and which are all, allegedly, ex
pressions rather of unpleasant mechanization than of creative
genius. This worthless "civilization" is supposed to be typical
of America whose cities are, indeed, often dreary and whose
Gothic churches are, in spite of or thanks to Mr. Cram, more
or less copies of old European originals and are often even less
pleasing manifestations of standardized mass production than
American autos. And her aristocracy built upon a slave founda
tion experienced a fatal set-back during the war of 1862-65.
Her new "robber barons" of the gilded age never acquired the
charm of fullbred aristocrats, although they picked or at least
payed such remarkable pipers and jesters as Mark Twain and
such architects or architectural illusionists as Richardson, Hunt,
Burnham, McKim, White, Platt, Goodhue, and even Cram him
self!
In fact "civilization" in its most degrading form as it is
understood by many French and German critics, is almost
synonymous with "Americanization," the grave in which all
higher purposes of humanity are supposed to decompose. The
reader may remember (from the First Chapter) juicy quota
tions from a French critic's book "America, the Menace." If
such a disparaging opinion of America's modern municipal de
velopment were justified, the ambition to build, here or anywhere
else, modern cities equal in quality or superior to the glorified
though congested cities of old would be doomed to failure. Is
this view justified? Hitler thinks so. And his opinions are the
repercussions of current arguments frequently heard in Europe
and in America. Here is an example: One of the ideas most
often advanced in this country in opposition to proposals of
orderly city planning is this : "Such fine plans are or may have
been suitable for European countries when they still had or have
188 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
centralized control and when their cities were comparatively
small; but these notions of controlled city growth are unsuitable
for our democratic America with her rapid growth of cities, with
her spoil system and municipal graft and everybody's right to
build what he pleases." In a similar defeatist vein Hitler writes,
for German consumption, in his book, "My Battle":
"At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were only
few German cities and their size was modest. The few really
big cities were mostly residences of a sovereign and they had as
such almost always a definite cultural value and in most cases
also a definite artistic appearance."
However, Hitler's suggestion (so often also heard in Amer
ica) that such cities were handicapped which (like those of Amer
ica) did not have a mighty dictator concerned with, and paying
for their beautification, is untenable. Most of the finest cities
of Germany were, in their best periods of civic art, so-called "free
cities," for example, Hamburg, Bremen, Luebeck, Augsburg,
Niirnberg, Ulm, Strassburg, Frankfurt on the Main, Rothenburg,
Wismar, the cathedral city, and many others. Their
famous civic art was free citizens' art. The harmony of their
old streets (the object of John Ruskin's admiration) is also
found in the great republican cities of Venice, Genoa, Antwerp,
Bruges. In democratic America this harmony was also visible,
and is visible even now in the old and not yet over-grown towns
and villages of the Atlantic States; it is a keen enjoyment to
everyone capable of artistic feeling. Even such American me
dievalists and adulators of the past as R. A. Cram and A. Kingsley
Porter praise, in enthusiastic terms, old America's civic art,
although they do not agree as to the date of its fatal end. For
Cram American architecture died in 1830, while Porter puts
the fatal date at 1850. Both, however, so we must conclude
from their writings, must agree perfectly with Hitler when he
further says:
"In the nineteenth century our cities began more and more to
lose their character of homes of Kultur and to degrade into pure
human settlements," whatever the word "pure" may here mean;
(it must be remembered that Hitler's manner of working and
speaking are not literary). He continues: "The lack of con
nection our present day proletarians have with the location they
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 189
live in, is a result of the fact that there is really nothing but the
accidental local abode of the individual. This, in part, is due
to the frequent changes of residence caused by social conditions
leaving to men no time for developing intimate connections with
their cities." Hitler elaborates this idea at length and overlooks
the fact that such frequent and harmful changes of residence
were at least as typical of the life of the innumerable officers
and employees of the mighty sovereigns whom he idealizes as the
initiators of urban culture although their fluctuating bureau
cratic armies (trained for war and civil service) usurped a con
trolling position in the social life of the cities and undermined
self-government and true civic life.
Hitler gives a moving description of the "ghastly housing
misery" he had experienced when as a youth he had to live in
Vienna. This imperial capital was then one of the most famous
"residences of a sovereign and had as such a definite cultural
value and also a definite artistic appearance." The Seventeenth
Chapter will relate how the socialist labor governments of 1920-
1933 could, only after the overthrow of the mighty sovereign,
relieve the "housing misery" of Vienna, and how, in 1934, their
model apartments were bombed by the returning sympathizers
of monarchy and fascism. Hitler has no word of appreciation
for Vienna's post-War housing reform. But what he says about
the "housing misery" of pre-War times affords us a suggestion of
the sufferings resulting from slum life, and of the revolutionary
virulence such sufferings may produce when from the dumb
victims a man rises who can sway the suffering masses.
Continuing in the vein of Spengler's "Decline of the West"
and renewing his favorite anti-red argumentation, Hitler con
tinues: "What shall be our experience when that day arrives
on which out of these caves of misery the slaves, unchained, will
throw themselves upon the thoughtless remainder of the world
and upon contemporaneous humanity?"
As has been suggested before, the sombre picture of municipal
decay painted by Hitler and Spengler corresponds more accu
rately to the high tenement house cities of autocratically ruled
continental Europe of pre-War times than to those English and
American cities and those European post-War cities which under
more democratic rule have acquired large park systems, vast
190 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
garden suburbs, and have transformed to an appreciable extent
the "almost uninhabited waste of country" surrounding them
into often smiling landscapes, with a sometimes already balanced
alternation of forest reserves, farms and "subsistence farms,"
parks, golf courses, race courses, and other play grounds, natural
or artificial lakes for water supply and pleasure.
This modern type of city with its regenerative powers has a
great future, but is little known or appreciated by such conti
nental pessimists as Spengler. Englishmen and Americans, on
the contrary, social philosophers like H. G. Wells, statesmen
like Theodore Roosevelt, Lenin, or Stalin, and businessmen like
Henry Ford visualize the city of the future: organized on new
lines it is going to be not the grave but the salvation of mankind.
"Very fortunately," Theodore Roosevelt optimistically wrote,
"we see now what never before was seen in any civilization an
aroused and alert public interest in the problem, a recognition of
its gravity and a desire to attempt its solution. The problem
does not consist merely in the growth of the city. Such a growth
in itself is a good thing and not a bad thing for the country. The
problem consists in the growth of the city at the expense of the
country."
In a similar vein Henry Ford, after declaring, "the cities are
doomed," continues: "It is not the advantages of cities that
are doomed, but the disadvantages the congestion, the inequal
ity which reigns even in the matter of air and sunlight and
ground space. . . . There is no city now existing that would be
rebuilt as it is, if it were destroyed ; which fact is in itself a con
fession of our real estimate of our cities." But, "practically
all the improvements that have been made in country life have
originated in the city and have passed on to bless the country. In
that we may see the city's place in the world it was a gathering
place in which men might work out those necessary devices of
successful living which, when transplanted into the country,
would make the desert blossom as the rose and, what is better,
make the gray waste of life a colorful thing. ... So while it
is clear that cities are to pass, let us not regard them as a sad
blunder ; they were a school for the race. They taught us some
thing."
Sociologists can already point to the fact that cities, more
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 191
effectively than rural districts, are able to equip themselves for
the purpose of dealing with contagious and infectious diseases.
The cities can enforce quarantine, can protect the water supply
and often have more sanitary sewage disposal than the rural
districts. There are still many more homicides, suicides and
automobile accidents in cities than in rural districts. But there
exist countries, although not the most intensively industrialized,
where city life assures longer life than rural life. "Rural death
rates are higher than urban rates in the Netherlands, in Sweden,
in Denmark, and in Japan. In the Netherlands, moreover, there
is an inverse ratio between the degree of urbanization and mor
tality the larger the city, the lower the death-rate." (Cf. N.
Carpenter, op. cit. p. 180.) It happens that the Netherlands is
one of the countries which have done the most for modern city
planning and housing.
That Henry Ford's civic optimism represents more than
wishful dreams has been recognized by the quite un-Fordian com
munist, dictator Lenin, who paid a sincere compliment to the
latest city planning progress under advanced capitalism in its
"highest development." Lenin, in his article "Karl Marx,"
wrote: "Capitalism breaks all ties between agriculture and in
dustry ; but at the same time, in the course of its highest develop
ment, it prepares new elements for the establishment of a con
nection between the two, uniting industry and agriculture on the
basis of the conscious use of science and the combination of col
lective labour, the redistribution of population, putting an end
at one and the same time to rural seclusion and unsociability and
savagery, and to the unnatural crowding of vast masses of people
in large cities." These words have become the guiding idea of
modern Russian city planning; they are reemphasized in the
book "The Socialist Reconstruction of Moscow and other Cities
in the U. S. S. R." by L. M. Kaganovich, who himself is direct
ing the extensive Russian enterprise in this field.
It is this latest type of Anglo-Saxon city decentralization
integrating city and country which also inspired dictator Stalin
when he said at a "conference of Marxian Agrarians": "The
peasant of the old type, with his barbaric mistrust of the city,
which he regards as a plunderer, is passing into the background.
His place is being taken by the new peasant, the peasant of the
192 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
collective farm who looks toward the city with the hope of ob
taining from it real and productive aid."
The implications of this remark may be interpreted as the
Anglo-Saxon-Russian reply to the arrangements of the machine
age and to the "barbaric mistrust of the city" advanced by such
philosophers as John Ruskin, R. A. Cram, Oswald Spengler and
Adolf Hitler.
However, Henry Ford's demand that we "undo the fateful
grip which the City habit has taken upon the people" is not yet
by any means completely realized. Nor have "the fictitious land
values which have been set up by the City traditions" ("the de
struction" of which Henry Ford demands) as yet ceased being
as severe a handicap to modern city planning and housing as
they ever were. Even in the United States the "highest develop
ment of capitalism" (so favorably commented upon by Lenin)
has not yet reached its full height. Even here the necessary
"redistribution of population ... on the basis of conscious
use of science" has not, as yet, been fully carried out.
The "destruction of fictitious city land values" destroys
equally "fictitious" investments, internationally, of hundreds of
billions of dollars. These investments are already suffering.
They have not been amortized in due time. They clamor for
interest and dividends which cannot and should not any more be
paid. Large parts of these investments must, now and quickly,
be written off, i. e. eliminated. This is what Henry Ford means
by the "destruction" he recommends.
To bring about this necessary "destruction" of obsolete
"values" in an orderly and peaceful way, with a minimum of
suffering and with a practicable maximum of compensation
should, during the next decades, be one of the main objects of all
political planning and civic engineering ambitions. The present
volume, while offering reflections on this subject, also deals with
the possibilities of making the new dwellings and the new decen
tralized cities equally as beautiful as, or perhaps even more
beautiful for modern eyes than the vaunted, though often
congested, dirty, disease infested historic centers of "Kultur,"
those centers of narrow guild politics and intra-state city feuds,
of ferocious class rivalry and bloody battles between patricians
and plebeians, between "masters" and assistants; centers of
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 193
superstition and witch burnings, with ghettos and religious perse
cution and quarters of prostitution and poverty.
Modern cities, of course, have by no means as yet overcome
all these medieval vices. But there exists no predestined inevita
bility, as Spengler claims, that these vices must be surpassed by
the "sins" of the modern city. On the contrary there exists a
fair fighting chance for the better planned modern city to con
quer some of the most disgusting forms of these moyenagesque
aberrations.
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
AMERICAN VERSUS BRITISH, MARXIAN AND RUSSIAN
PLANNING
Our government differs from yours in essentials
not so much as you thought, not so much as your
people think, and not nearly so much as my people
think. (From Lincoln Steffens' letter written in
1906 to Nicholas II, Czar of Russia.)
Again one may refer to Henry Adams' belief that the "great
scheme of public works" contemplated by Thomas Jefferson at
the end of his second administration was "so extensive in its scope
that no European monarch, with the exception perhaps of the
Czar of Russia, could have equalled its scale." This phrase de
scribing President Thomas Jefferson's favorite plan sounds
curiously like a quite recent editorial appreciation or rather
deprecation of President F. D. Roosevelt's "pet plan." We read :
"The NRA was the most gigantic piece of Socialistic planning
ever undertaken by any government outside of Communist Rus
sia"; ("New York American," Nov. 5, 1935). The editor con
tinued: "The American is a Profound Individualist, and he
cannot permanently be Stalinized or Hitlerized or ever reconciled
to any form of foreign despotism."
The engaging comparison of national planning possibilities
in Russia and America appears to be distasteful to many Chris
tians, Conservatives and contending Communists. The cause of
national planning and better housing, therefore, may be helped
by quoting a few of the large number of trustworthy observers
who have elaborated the theory of Russian-American affinities.
The frequent attacks directed against the planning policies
of President F. D. Roosevelt remind one of the letter written, in
1906, by the very full-blooded American, Lincoln Steffens, to the
Czar of Russia, to whom he dedicated his book, "The Struggle
for Self-Government." Steffens has specialized in the study of
American politics and asserts that there is little essential differ-
194
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 195
ence between Russian autocracy and American boss-rule, since
so he writes to the Czar "our bosses are autocrats, Sire, as you
are; no more so, but no less. They make our representatives
represent them"
Steffens claims that even the Presidents of the United States
who are elected by the sovereign American people are generally
subject to "the actual boss," and are their chosen tools. "Oh,
mistakes are made, of course. Strong men will slip in now and
then (into the White House), but with a strong hold on the repre
sentative branch of a representative government, all the actual
boss has to do is to cry out against 'the encroachment of the
executive upon the representatives of the people,' the while he
'cajoles
5
or 'checks,' 'advises' or 'rebukes,' 'humiliates' or finally
'fights' the President as a 'dangerous man.' If it comes to the
worst, you can stand pat and wait for the strong President to
retire."
In a similar vein Henry Adams emphasized the resemblance
in corruption, hypocrisy, and anarchy between republican Amer
ica and czarist Russia. Referring to American laissez-faire, he
says : "In America all were conservative Christian anarchists.
. . . The Czar's empire was a phase of conservative Christian
anarchy more interesting to history than all the complex variety
of American newspapers, schools, trusts, sects, frauds, and Con
gressmen." (Education of Henry Adams, Chapter XXVII.)
Today the most pressing question seems to be which of the two
countries has experienced a greater increase or decline in Chris
tianity, anarchy, conservatism and the vital power of reorgani
zation.
The Russian-American affinities have developed, even further,
since the World War when approximately four thousand enter
prising American engineers accepted Russian invitations and
preferred to work in the rapidly developing bolshevist republics
rather than in the American republic whose progress has been
slowing down considerably, at least since 1929. Quite a number
of these American emigrants to Russia came back rather disap
pointed. Nevertheless, there is much truth in the two following
expert opinions describing the Russian-American affinities in a
manner even more serious perhaps than was the irony of Lincoln
Steffens and Henry Adams. We read:
196 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
"The outstanding positive characteristic of American civili
zation is preoccupation with economy in practice and empiricism
and humanism in thought. Mass production, engineering and
gigantic organization have been the outward manifestations of
this primary American interest. So efficient have been perform
ances in specific industries and so great have been accomplish
ments in large-scale production that Soviet Russia, under Lenin's
early guidance, turned to the United States for evidence of what
can and must be done to bring great technology into full use in
mass production for masses"; (Charles A. Beard, in "The New
Republic," Feb. 6, 1935). Another prominent scholar wrote the
following :
"Apart from everything else, the bolshevist mode of thought
has many spiritual elements in common with the American eco
nomic mind. Russian bolshevism is neither the romantic social
ism of sects intent on reforming the world, nor the petit bourgeois
socialism of organized trades unions, which contend obstinately
for wage agreements, and try to transform the existing capital
istic world by compelling capitalism to make good the wage costs
accruing from increased wages by improving the organization of
the plant. Russian bolshevism is a brutal and deliberate 'plan
economy,' in which the engineer charms giant enterprises into
existence with all the resources of modern technique. The Ameri
cans see it more or less as a system which is conjuring up a world
of sky-scrapers out of the steppes at an even more rapid tempo
From left torifht:
Palace of Jor/eto
including statue of Ltain
Empire Jfafe tdo.
Jfafue
with, bast
Pyramid o/ Cheaps
original Aifff
present Attf&t
261'
JZ4S'
7(,ff
151'
450'
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 197
than was achieved by private American enterprise. In their eyes
it is the most grandiose attempt to set a deliberately planned
world in the place of a world that has spontaneously evolved.
This has been attempted once before in Russia by Peter the
Great. He, too here again he is the spiritual ancestor of the
bolshevists borrowed his technique from the West. At that
time the West was Holland ; today it is the United States. The
heart of the American engineer, who hears of possibilities for the
exercise of his activities in Russia, beats higher because there he
can build technical plants which surpass anything that has hith
erto existed without the cramping necessity of considering remunerativeness
imposed by the capitalistic system. A new country,
such as America once was, is here being opened up."
Doubtless the spiritual affinity between Russia and America
is much older than is exemplified by the attempts of Roosevelt and
Stalin at rational planning. The relationship goes back to the
great tradition of rational humanism and the philosophy of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is a fruit of that period's
most noble efforts in statesmanlike thinking.
This often neglected fact was emphasized in the First Chap
ter. Here may be added that the humanistic roots of state plan
ning were brought out rather surprisingly by a book on this very
subject, published in 1800, by an outstanding contemporary
representative of humanistic thought, J. G. Fichte, a classical
philosopher who was steeped in the ideas of the American and
French Revolutions. The title of Fichte's book is "The Closed
Commercial State" (Der geschlossene Handelsstaat). This ideal
state has interesting resemblances to modern countries with
highly protective tariffs. Such a practically "closed commercial
state" closely resembles the United States as contemplated by
Hamilton and his commercial policy, and as it subsequently
evolved, after the Civil War and the victory of the New England
industrial and high tariff interests over the free trading South.
Fichte opposed the former English and basically un-American
laissez-faire attitude by saying:
The Crisis of Capitalism in America" (New York, 1932, p. 204 ff.).
This book was written by Dr. M. T. Bonn, former director of the Academy
of Commerce, Berlin, now Professor at the University of London. Dr. Bonn
is one among the leading economists who used to call themselves "liberal"
in spite of their being generally termed conservative.
198 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
"We must stop leaving anything that can be planned to
blind chance with the hope that chance will bring a satisfactory
result. . . . To say that things will arrange themselves auto
matically, that everybody will find work and bread, and that
things therefore can be left to chance is
incompatible with a lawful
constitution." The last phrase is probably a direct reference to
the American Constitution and its copies in France. And these
contentions of 1800 distinctly went beyond and even directly
opposed the idea of Adam Smith (he died in 1790). As we have
seen, he believed that the poor and underprivileged would best be
served by the system of laissez-faire, that the "obvious and simple
system of natural liberty" in which the labors of the individuals
would be "led by an invisible hand" would contribute to the
common good. Ten years after the "professor of moral philoso
phy," Adam Smith, had died, his successors discovered that a less
"invisible hand" and a more insistent use of godgiven human
brains were required in order to appreciably advance the common
good. Until this common good is secured, "until it is achieved,"
the philosopher of 1800 considers the following amount of plan
ning reasonable and necessary: "Everyone must have sufficient
food and a decent shelter, before the dwelling of any one else be
made ornate. Everyone must be dressed comfortably and warmly,
before anyone should be permitted to dress ornately. ... In
order to achieve this, and until this is achieved, the available
goods must be distributed equally and planfully among all."
Similar ideas have existed in the American Republic from its
foundation until the day when President F. D. Roosevelt an
nounced that the American government would not permit its
citizens to starve. Similar ideas influenced Thomas Jefferson's
letter to Alexander von Humboldt (quoted in the Third Chapter)
in which he recommended the employment for public works of
such contributions as "our citizens can spare, after feeding and
clothing, and lodging themselves comfortably." Similar ideas
were expressed by Walt Whitman when he said: "I speak the
pass-word primeval I give the sign of democracy ; By God ! I
will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on
the same terms." And it was this very same idea which Lincoln
expressed when he said : "While we do not propose any war upon
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 199
capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to
get rich with everybody else." (March 6, 1860.)
Although Lincoln protested against the accusation of his
making war upon capital, it was he (and not the anti-capitalist,
Karl Marx) who spoke of "labor being the true standard of
value;" (Feb. 5, 1861). It was Lincoln who said: "Labor is
the superior of capital" and who condemned "the effort to place
capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the struc
ture of government;" (Dec. 3, 1861, and March 21, 1864; see the
Note at the end of this Chapter.) Even long before "capitalism
in the course of its highest development" and as an efficient agent
of the "redistribution of population, obtained the admiration of
Lenin, his teachers Marx and Engels expressed the highest appre
ciation for modern "bourgeois" achievements. They admired the
activity of capitalism especially in the field of public works, city
planning and the settlement of new continents. In their "Commu
nist Manifesto" of 1847 they proffered the following almost
exaggerated praise of private capitalism:
"The bourgeoisie has been the first to show what man's activ
ity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing
Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals ;
it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former
migrations of nations and crusades." This last climax of
Marxian praise applies, of course, for the most part to the reali
zation and even surpassing of George Washington's dream of
empire :
namely, the settling of North America from the Atlantic
to the Pacific. This was a "wonder" indeed! And Abraham
Lincoln had helped to achieve it, first by his own hand as a sur
veyor, and later by his Homestead Act and his revolutionary war
for freedom and for an "equal chance" for "the humblest man."
Unfortunately, neither Marx nor Engels was capable of draw
ing the necessary practical conclusions from their well conceived
theoretical premises. It required the mind of Lenin to arrive at
the inescapable practical realization that the "distribution of
the total proceeds of labor" and the "replacing and increasing
of the means of production" (i.e. of capital) require much skill
and a large amount of technical knowledge, in short: planning
in a highly comprehensive sense of the term.
200 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
In their "Manifesto" Marx and Engels (as early as 1847)
demand "a common plan," "gradual abolition of the distinction
between town and country ;" and they state in this document
other requirements, which, today, are very modern. But if certain
modern admirers of Marx and Engels are to be trusted, one must
believe that the two most famous communists have been rather
naive in those matters of technique and planning which seem allimportant
to the statesman, city planner and housing expert of
the twentieth century. Modern critics may admit that "much of
Engels' argument is admirable," but they are quick to add that
Engels' housing ideas "betray certain typical dogmatic weak
nesses ;" (C. Bauer, "Modern Housing," p. 96). Where Engels
should propose practical solutions he argues very much like
certain "practical" businessmen or reactionary newspaper editors
of our own time who blindly deprecate planning as being Utopian.
Engels admits that "one of the most fundamental questions is
the abolition of the antithesis between town and country." But
instead of telling us how to approach the solution of this most
difficult problem, he continues barrenly:
"As it is not our task to create Utopian systems for the
arrangement of the future society, it would be more than idle to
go into the question here." Without even suggesting anything
like a careful survey Engels light-heartedly contends : "One thing
is certain: there are already in existence sufficient buildings for
dwellings in the big towns to remedy immediately any real 'hous
ing shortage,' given rational utilisation of them. This can
naturally only take place by the expropriation of the present
owners and by quartering in their houses the homeless or those
workers excessively overcrowded in their former houses. Immedi
ately the proletariat has conquered political power such measure
dictated in the public interests will be just as easy to carry out
as other expropriations and billetings are by the existing state."
("The Housing Question," p. 36 of the English edition, "Works
of Marxism-Leninism," Vol. XXIII.)
In contradiction to Engels' rash contentions the modern
student of housing has long ago discovered that even the apart
ments of Park Avenue in New York City, or of other expensive
districts in American cities are so badly planned that they are
unfit for a workingman's family especially one with children.
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 201
Most of the side and rear rooms in these too high and too densely
built barrack-style apartments receive sufficient sunlight only
if, by chance, a neighboring lot has not yet been built up to the
limit permitted it by the atrocious building code established by
or for irresponsible and badly calculating would-be profiteers of
overvalued and overtaxed city land.
In Engels' life time innumerable apartments had already been
erected, especially in such continental cities as Paris, Berlin and
Vienna, which were as bad as or worse than those of New York's
Park Avenue today. Engels' conception that with such material
it was "easy" to remedy the housing shortage by expropriation
sounds just as humorous to the modern ear, although the humour
is inadvertent on Engel's part, as Marx's gently facetious com
ment about his housing difficulties in London. In London the
value of land for residential purposes has been kept, even today,
upon levels which are much saner, i.e. lower than those of New
York. London has victoriously preserved (even to the present
day) a fine tradition of truly comfortable one-family houses,
ERRATUM
Second line of caption should read "date to the end of
his life failed to find many 'bourgeois comforts.'
"
land Park.
1 from this
ipite of the
"American
being new,
e charming
is comfort.
200 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
In their "Manifesto" Marx and Engels (as early as 1847)
demand "a common plan," "gradual abolition of the distinction
between town and country;" and they state in this document
other requirements, which, today, are very modern. But if certain
modern admirers of Marx and Engels are to be trusted, one must
believe that the two most famous communists have been rather
naive in those matters of technique and planning which seem allimportant
to the statesman, city planner and housing expert of
the twentieth century. Modern critics may admit that "much of
Engels' argument is admirable," but they are quick to add that
Engels' housing ideas "betray certain typical dogmatic weak
nesses;" (C. Bauer, "Modern Housing," p. 96). Where Engels
should propose practical solutions he argues very much like
certain "practical" businessmen or reactionary newspaper editors
of our own time who blindly deprecate planning as being Utopian.
Engels admits that "one of the most fundamental questions is
the abolition of the antithesis between town and country." But
instead of telling us how to approach the solution of this most
difficult problem, he continues barrenly:
"As it is not our task to create Utopian systems for the
arrangement of the future society, it would be more than idle to
go into the question here." Without even suggesting anything
like a careful survey Engels light-heartedly contends : "One thing
is certain: there are already in existence sufficient buildings for
dwellings in the big towns to remedy immediately any real 'hous
ing shortage,' given rational utilisation of them. This can
naturally only take place by the expropriation of the present
owners and by quartering in their houses the homeless or those
workers excessively overcrowded in their former houses. Immedi
ately the proletariat has conquered political power such measure
dictated in the public interests will be just as easy to carry out
as other expropriations and billetings are by the existing state."
("The Housing Question," p. 36 of the English edition, "Works
of Marxisr
T -~ " v~i
In con
student of
ments of P
districts ir
unfit for t
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 201
Most of the side and rear rooms in these too high and too densely
built barrack-style apartments receive sufficient sunlight only
if, by chance, a neighboring lot has not yet been built up to the
limit permitted it by the atrocious building code established by
or for irresponsible and badly calculating would-be profiteers of
overvalued and overtaxed city land.
In Engels' life time innumerable apartments had already been
erected, especially in such continental cities as Paris, Berlin and
Vienna, which were as bad as or worse than those of New York's
Park Avenue today. Engels' conception that with such material
it was "easy" to remedy the housing shortage by expropriation
sounds just as humorous to the modern ear, although the humour
is inadvertent on Engel's part, as Marx's gently facetious com
ment about his housing difficulties in London. In London the
value of land for residential purposes has been kept, even today,
upon levels which are much saner, i.e. lower than those of New
York. London has victoriously preserved (even to the present
day) a fine tradition of truly comfortable one-family houses,
9, Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 1, Modena Villas, Maitland Park.
The two houses in London in which Marx from 1856 to 1864 and from this
date to the end of his life to find many "bourgeois comforts" in spite of the
persistent financial support of the New York "Tribune" and the "American
Cyclopedia." These are typical London row houses, the left one being new,
comfortable and without taste; the right one, part of one of the charming
London semi-circles, in better taste but old and affording less comfort.
202 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
reasonable in height and enjoying privacy, sunlight and inde
pendent gardens. Marx surely despised the comfortable homes
and ideas of the "bourgeois" whose lofty ideals did not prevent
their exploiting the health of children and women in the unspeak
able factories and slums of the Victorian period. But when the
wife of Karl Marx finally inherited a little money from her aris
tocratic mother, the Marx family could flee from their unhealthy
quarters near Soho Square, London, where Marx's health had
been failing and his comforts had been few. They moved into a
comfortable little brick house on Grafton Terrace. Shortly
afterwards, Marx wrote the following to Engels :
"Although this
prosperity did not last long, we have nevertheless enjoyed our
bourgeois comforts (burgerliche Behabigkeit) ."
Ironically it might be questioned whether it was in apprecia
tion of such enjoyable bourgeois home comforts that Marx in the
"Communist Manifesto" expressed his somewhat exaggerated
admiration for the "wonders" achieved by the modern bourgeoisie
in planning and building.
It is a curious fact that these "bourgeois" "wonders" and
technological achievements evoked the reverence, but not the
slightest emulation in the field of technological planning, on the
part of Marx. This may be sufficiently explained by his own
admission of technical incapacity. On January 28, 1863, Marx
confessed to his most intimate friend, Engels : "I understand the
laws of mathematics, but the simplest technical fact is harder
for me to comprehend than it is for the greatest blockheads."
If as conscientious a housing student and admirer of Engels
as C. Bauer is disappointed by Marxian ideas as applied to
housing, one cannot blame such an inveterate planner and prac
tical Utopian as H. G. Wells, when he somewhat impatiently
writes : "A great imperfection of our nineteenth century Social
ism, and one that seems now the most incredible, was the repudia
tion of planning. . . .
Any attempt to work out the details of
the world contemplated under Socialism was received by the old
Marxists with contemptuous hostility. . . .
They were all (be
fore the Russian revolution knocked practical sense into them)
embittered anti-planners." (Wells, Experiment in Autobiog
raphy, p. 214.)
Wells' last sentence by no means signifies his belief that
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 203
modern conceptions of planning have issued from revolutionized
Russia. We will see that Wells himself, long before the Russian
revolution, advocated "The Idea of a Planned World." But the
idea is older than Wells' advocacy of it. If America had re
mained faithful to the planning implications of her Constitution
and to the spirit of the public works program of Jefferson, one
would expect that modern demands for European state planning
had been inspired by international admiration of American
achievements. In fact, America has made valuable contributions,
especially in the field of planning urban parks and rapid transit.
But we have seen that, since America's Civil War and the corrup
tion of "Grantism," and since the Parliamentary Reform of 1867,
England progressed more rapidly than America in organizing
democracy effectively. By 1890 English communities had already
achieved many of those legal powers for dealing with low cost
housing which American communities either acquired only since
1933 or for which they are still vainly striving. In order to
understand the more advanced city planning and housing policies,
which England has initiated since 1890, one cannot afford to
underestimate the influence of the anti-Marxian English social
ists, the Fabian reformers and their allies in the British Labor
Party. They are being sneered at too light-heartedly by the
parlor-communist. The Fabian attitude as to governmental
housing and planning policies was well expressed by Bernard
Shaw, who in the middle eighties had already written the brilliant
comedy "Widowers' Houses," or (to use his own words) the
"grotesquely realistic exposure of slum landlordism, municipal
jobbery, and the pecuniary and matrimonial ties between them
and the pleasant people of 'independent' incomes who imagine
that such sordid matters do not touch their own lives."
A plan to overcome such sordid housing was expressed in
Shaw's letter to his Marriott in which he wrote (on Aug. 1,
1906) :
"Certainly London is
pretty bad; but I think it has passed
its worst. The fact that it has begun to scatter is shown by the
way in which some of the schools have been emptying. Of course
this scattering means . . . the filling up of such rural places as
the valley of the Mimram with rows of houses, but this is better
than the old congestion at the center. It is no use depending on
204 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
the millionaires ; what we have to do is to sit down and try to
settle how many people should be let live on an acre of ground,
and then pass a Building Act to enforce our conclusions. What
maddens me is not so much to see houses cropping up over the
Sunday-outing places, but to see that they are cropping up in
such a way as to form the beginnings of slums. It is our infernal
improvidence and intellectual laziness that prevent us from stop
ping the reproduction in the country under our eyes of the evils
that we have had such bitter experience of in the towns. . . .
But ... it is no use grumbling: we must make up our minds as
to exactly what we want, and then agitate for a National Build
ing Act."
The result of this agitation for a national building act is
Great Britain's comprehensive legislation on city planning and
allied subjects which, since 1909, has placed British housing on
a new plane and made it, even more than before, an interna
tional model. "How many people should be let live on an acre of
ground?" This question has been answered in a recent report on
English housing by G. L. Pepler of the Ministry of Health,
London. He wrote: "The normal rate of density of cottages
erected under the post-war assisted schemes has been 8 per acre
in rural districts and 12 per acre elsewhere." From 1919 to 1931
there were 1,109,669 houses thus erected with State aid and
grouped at the rate of from 8 to 12 per acre.
It was well in keeping with the achievements just mentioned
that H. G. Wells, since 1912, propagandized the idea of "plan
ning" in many newspaper articles. In a comprehensive chapter,
"The Idea of a Planned World," of his "Autobiography," Wells
writes with legitimate pride :
"Planning is a world wide idea now
adays, but in 1912 this attack upon the general problem of social
reconstruction was strange stuff for the readers of the leading
halfpenny daily to find upon their breakfast tables." What
disagreed with the stomachs of English breakfasters in 1912, has,
even twenty-five years later, not become wholly digestible for
many American philosophers at the breakfast table.
In one of his articles of 1912, Wells wrote: ". . .
Germany
and our own infinite higgledy-piggledy discomfort and ugliness
have brought home to us at last even the possibility of planning
the extension of our towns and cities. It is only another step
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 205
upward in scale to plan out new, more tolerable conditions of
employment for every sort of worker and to organize the transi
tion from our present disorder."
The second suggestion of Wells' that good city planning and
decent housing are attainable only if "tolerable conditions of.
employment" make them possible, will be dealt with in the follow
ing chapter. The first suggestion of Wells', that the sensible
planning of town extensions (or at least the recent revival of this
idea) originated in Germany, shows Wells' generosity in acknowl
edging foreign achievements, a generosity which honors this
English patriot and citizen of the world. This alleged German
origin of city planning was suggested by Wells in 1912, soon
after the International City Planning Exhibition of Berlin and
Diisseldorf had been transferred to the Royal Academy in
London. But Wells seems to have overlooked the following two
facts. The whole idea of a city planning exhibition came from
America (as we shall see later). And, as far as housing and resi
dential districts were concerned, almost the only good ideas
demonstrated in this large German (though at the same time
international) city planning exhibition were contained in the
plans displayed there of the English "garden cities" and garden
suburbs, above all those of Letchworth and Hampstead, both
developed since 1903. Another revelation afforded by these large
exhibitions were the American "systems" of parks and play
grounds, especially those of Boston and Chicago. English garden
cities and American areas for recreation were the "hits" of the
exhibitions of 1910 and 1912; and these achievements were not
German. They largely retain their value, even to this day; the
German contributions to the field of low cost housing, on the
contrary in so far as they refrained from being copies of
English garden cities were vitiated by exaggerated concessions
to the owners of old tenements or to the speculators in overvalued
land, who before the War controlled Germany's municipal life.
The newer and better German housing achieved, since the exhi
bitions of 1910, has been made possible only through the politi
cal and economic revolution resulting from the World War.
If the student of Thomas Jefferson's ten-year plan looks for
an early modern revival of the planning idea, he finds it neither
in Russia nor in Germany, but again in America. The first
206 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
theoretical demonstration of what to-day is called a "five-yearplan"
was initiated in Boston under the direction of Mr. Edward
A. Filene. In 1909, he and his committee, called "Boston 1915,"
conceived the plan to make the city of Boston the most perfect
city in the world by 1915, the city in which the most successful
planning ideas would be harmoniously assembled into a superior
organism. Here are a few sentences of permanent value from
the program as set forth, in 1909, in the interesting catalogue of
the "1915 Boston Exposition":
" 'Boston 1915' is a simple, practical proposition to apply
to the activities of the city what every well-managed business
partnership applies to its factory, shop or store to have every
department working in close co-operation with every other, in
order that results may be produced most quickly, economically
and satisfactorily. . . . 'Boston 1915' hopes in the next five
years to see some things finished and others so well started that
they are sure to be completed properly. . . . The reason for
selecting 1915 as the year in which Boston shall make an exami
nation of what it has succeeded in doing or in getting started, was
that much is gained by definiteness in such matters, just as a
man or woman is more certain of really doing a thing by saying
in advance, 'I will do it before the first of next month,' than by
saying, 'I will do it some time.' And while if things are to be done
right they cannot be hurried, yet they should not be dawdled
over; so for the right doing of such big things as a city needs,
five years seemed a reasonable length of time to set from every
point of view. . . .
"We propose that it shall be possible for a willing worker
earning an average wage to live, himself and his family, health
fully and comfortably ; to bring up his children in good surround
ings; to educate them so that they may be truly useful, good
citizens, and to lay aside enough to provide for himself and his
wife in their old age. A city which provides less than that directly
must make up for the deficiency in a more costly, indirect way ;
there is no escaping this alternative. . . . Nor does the propo
sition stated leave beauty out of consideration, for a community
prosperous as a whole employers and working people, profes
sional men and laymen provides the best soil for bringing forth
the city beautiful."
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 207
A definite task was set for each year and its fulfillment was
thought possible. Professor Th. N. Carver of the Department
of Economics of Harvard University wrote in the Catalogue of
the "1915 Boston Exposition":
"The people of Boston can have as fine a city as they want,
provided they want it badly enough to be willing to pay for it.
Nothing so good as a fine city is to be had for nothing. It will
cost a great deal of time and energy and some money. If the
people of Boston decide . . . that they have not energy enough
or money enough to make their city what it ought to be, it will
mean that there are other things which they prefer and for which
they would rather give their energy and their money. The whole
question, therefore, is whether the people of Boston would rather
have the finest city in the world or whether they would rather use
for other purposes the time and energy and money necessary for
the accomplishment of that purpose."
The author of the present volume had the privilege of sug
gesting and directing a city planning exhibition. It occupied,
during November, 1909, the large ground floor of the pseudoGothic
Old Art Museum of Boston and has become the father of
numberless similar and larger exhibitions ; notably those of Ber
lin, Diisseldorf and London held in 1910. The author conceived
the hope of seeing the world conquered by the idea of a general
house cleaning and rebuilding. He hoped the multiplication of
city planning exhibitions would sooner or later advance the civic
education and imaginative powers of our contemporaries. He
hoped to soon see every city in the world engage in working out a
civic five-year plan similar to the one of Boston. He hoped that
the whole world could become engaged in internal improve
ments and urban rivalry to such an extent that, during the time
required for carrying out the civic plans, international peace
would rule and even become a permanent guest upon our planet.
This idea is by no means as preposterous as it seems, today,
after Boston's five year plan had broken down even before the
World War started. The plan for peace or for a truce to be
internationally observed during a certain period of house clean
ing and internal improvements has historic counterparts. After
bloody battles the contending armies used to permit each other
to carry away their wounded and bury their dead. Our cities
208 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
are, indeed, battlefields and require rapid cleaning. An out
standing example of such a truce for civic and urban purposes
occurred under the reign of Napoleon III. He shared with other
dictators the dangerous readiness to console his own nation for
its lost liberty at home, by war-like foreign adventures and by
"glory" gained abroad. It is generally understood, however, that
Napoleon's belligerence was effectually subdued during the years
of preparation for the International Exposition of 1867 in Paris.
An important part of these preparations consisted in pushing
forward Napoleon-Haussmann's great transformation of Paris,
with its sweeping clearance of the old slums and the building of
many new or the widening of old streets. This comprehensive
city planning enterprise and the desire of showing the visitors
of the Paris Exposition the finest city on earth, "the queencity,"
this proud ambition pacified the usurping dictator, Na
poleon III. His strenuous city planning activities perhaps
interfered even with the French defense of his Mexican conquest
and helped the victorious survival of the American Union.
Today, nothing better could happen to the world at large
than to agree on a five-year or ten-year truce and a five-year
or ten-year plan for effectuating an international slum clear
ance, eliminating everywhere the pitiful mess in which we all still
must live.
In advocating farsighted planning for America it would,
however, be a grave mistake to interpret the conception of plan
ning in an un-American way. Planning in America must be
understood in a strictly American sense or, even today, in a
sense akin to the one sponsored by Thomas Jefferson when he
prepared his great national plan. Planning in the United States
cannot be understood in the sense of Stalin or his predecessors
who with their peculiarly Russian five-year plans had to solve
peculiarly Russian problems. The abyss which separates
Russian from American conditions despite certain similarities
can be measured at a glance when one remembers that the entire
Russian five-year plan inaugurated in 1928 and covering the
years from 1929 to 1933 and aiming at most of the industrial,
agricultural, social and educational activities of a population of
165 million people, represented if calculated in comparable
monetary terms a total expenditure of about 5 billion dollars,
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 209
while "in the decade 19231932 the average annual total volume
of construction in the United States was slightly less than 9
billion dollars. The entire Russian five-year plan in construction,
therefore, generally understood to compress 30 to 50 years of in
dustrial development into 5 years, actually amounts to twothirds
of the average annual American construction in the last
decade (1923-1933) including three years of unparalleled de
pression. That the far-famed Soviet Union five-year plan was
equivalent to less than one average year of American construction
has a profound economic significance for both countries." (Cf.
Engineering Analysis of Five-Year Plans for Russian Rehabili
tation, by Zara Witkin; Engineering New-Record, August 16,
1934, p. 211.)
American methods and means of production and consumption
are much more comprehensive and more developed than those of
Soviet Russia. The detailed and comprehensive planning that
may have been necessary or possible or successful in Russia
struggling against the odds bequeathed from Czarist times would
in America create difficulties of an entirely different and unneces
sary magnitude. Under American conditions the Secretary of
Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace, is probably justified when he
writes :
"I see no reason as yet why we in the United States should
go into precise detailed planning except, perhaps, with respect
to natural resources and to certain rather small segments of our
national life on an emergency basis. With the situation that
exists and is likely to exist in the United States for the next ten
years, the chief objective of our democracy should be so to man
age the tariff, and the money system, to control railroad interest
rates ; and to encourage price and production policies that will
maintain a continually balanced relationship between the income
of agriculture, labor, and industry. I know how difficult this
will be." ("New Frontiers," by Henry A. Wallace, p. 22.)
Among the "price and production policies" to be encour
aged the present author believes that a comprehensive city plan
ning and housing policy should play a prominent role. Such a
well-planned policy not only should, and very conceivably might
start the wheels of industry and make them turn at a new, more
regular and more salutary pace than ever experienced before.
210 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
This planning should also guarantee to everybody a minimum of
shelter, privacy, living and washing room, private garden and
public recreational area, a minimum without which, for reasons
of preventive hygiene and morals, no one shall in the future be
permitted to continue living. In this American (and not in the
Russian) sense, planning seems possible, desirable and necessary
in the United States.
After thus emphasizing the necessary and often extreme dif
ferences between Russian and American planning, one may how
ever be surprised to learn to what a degree extremes are sometimes
apt to touch upon each other. We may learn for instance that
the present Russian dictator, Stalin, went considerably further
than his predecessor Lenin, and that in doing so he arrived at
ideas which many "practical businessmen" in America have, long
ago, approved. It was Stalin who most scathingly opposed the
equality of wages introduced by his predecessors.
And, in doing so Stalin came to a practical conclusion which
may soon furnish the economic foundation for a certain degree
of appealing variety in the appearance of future cities and in the
cost of their residences. Stalin condemned what he calls "left
equalitarianism in the sphere of wages." This "equalitarianism,"
he maintains, tends "to destroy all difference between skilled and
unskilled labor. The consequence of equalitarianism is that the
unskilled worker is not interested in becoming a skilled worker;
he is thus deprived of the prospect of advancement. . . . The
result of equalitarianism is that a highly skilled worker is obliged
to move from enterprise to enterprise until he is fortunate enough
to find one that appreciates skill in labor."
And perceiving the city planning implications of his fight
against "left equalitarianism" Stalin continues: "In order to
attach the workers to their factories we must still further im
prove the living and housing conditions of the workers." (From
J. Stalin's "New Conditions, New Tasks," Speech delivered to
the Leaders of Industry, June 23, 1931.)
Thus it appears that communism in its most modern form is
eager to reintroduce the conceptions of competition, individual
effort and factory housing, achievements which in capitalistic
countries are equally dear to the "leaders of industry" and are
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 211
even considered indispensable in a highly technical and mechan
ized society by the advocates of rugged individualism.
It is, today, already a platitude to say that the American
Constitution as conceived and interpreted by its founders actually
was (and could be made again) an instrument for great united
action benefiting not only a few hundred "gentlemen" but also
the people at large. Indeed, even very conservative interpreters
go further and maintain that the Constitution, at present, could
and should be of benefit especially to the most unfortunate mem
bers of the nation. Quite recently Colonel Theodore Roosevelt,
a contemporary leader of the Republican party, asserted, with
true Lincolnian spirit, that "the Constitution is the bulwark that
protects the poor. It is the wall of the weak"; (cf. N. Y. Times,
Feb. 13, 1935).
Practical achievements based upon such a radical Republican
interpretation of the Constitution might outdo, by far, the ef
forts of the Democratic New Deal and even greatly improve upon
it. The neglect in restoring sufficient protection to the poor
and weak, however, was not perhaps the reason for Colonel Roose
velt's charging at the National Republican Club's annual dinner
in honor of Abraham Lincoln that the Franklin D. Roosevelt
administration had "flouted the Constitution and emasculated
Congress." This much, at any rate, is certain: a male and
vigorous interpretation of the Constitution (in the spirit of Lin
coln as invoked by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr.) may yet
solve the great planning problems of America.
NOTE TO THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
The important role of capital seems correctly appreciated in the book
"The Housing Question" by Engels. There he expounds the Marxian theory
as to the rights of labor and capital, representing the instruments of pro
duction, and their reproduction and increase. Engels wrote:
"With social production conditioned by modern large-scale industry, it is
possible to assure each person 'the full proceeds of his labour,' so far as
this phrase has any meaning at all. And it has a meaning only if it is
extended to mean not that each individual worker becomes the possessor of
'the full proceeds of his labour,' but that the whole of society, consisting
entirely of workers, becomes the possessor of the total proceeds of its labour,
which it partly distributes among its members for consumption, partly uses
for replacing and increasing the means of production, and partly stores up
as a reserve fund for production and consumption."
It has been mentioned here that it is not Lincoln, as it should be, but
Marx or his Russian followers, who are generally blamed or praised for
having instigated revolution by sponsoring the anticapitalistic theory accord-
212 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
ing to which economic values are to be measured (or even produced) by
labor alone. Many opponents of Marx maintain that according to his theory
every laborer is entitled to possess his whole produce thus denned. If this
alleged theory were true, most private capitalists, speculators and land
owners would be little more than parasites. They would be in danger of
feeling uncomfortable and out of place. Their sense of fair play or social
justice would demand their rapid self-elimination from a commonwealth
they are debauching and destroying. Who has defended the arraigned capi
talists against such sad consequences? Not Lincoln. At least Marx and
Lenin seem to have had a more correct appreciation of capital and its im
portant role "in the structure of government." It is Lenin who wrote (in
his "State and Revolution," Chap. V. 3): "In the 'Critique of the Gotha
Programme' Marx goes into some detail in disproving the (Lassallean) idea
that laborers under Socialism receive the 'undiminished' or 'full product of
their labour.' Marx points out that from the total of social labour, it is
necessary to deduct a reserve fund, a fund for the expansion of production,
for the replacement of worn-out machinery, etc. Also, from the means of
consumption there must be deducted a fund for the expenses of manage
ment, for schools, hospitals, homes for the aged, and so on."
Lenin does not mention in this connection that the conception of Marx
found expression to an often surprising degree among such American "bour
geois" capitalists and mass producers as Rockefeller or Carnegie who ac
cumulated liberal "reserve funds," used them for new machinery and ex
penses of management and, in their old age, somewhat belatedly, distributed
large portions of these funds for "schools, hospitals and so on." But Lenin
(as shown in the previous Chapter) praised the efficiency of "capitalism in
the course of its highest development" as an agent of "redistribution of
population." And Lenin turned to the United States for evidence of what
can and must be done to bring great technology into full use in mass pro
duction for masses.
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
PROSPERITY OF LABOR ESSENTIAL FOR GOOD HOUSING:
FROM THE PYRAMID BUILDERS TO PRESIDENT ELIOT
OF HARVARD
The homes of the lowest paid workingmen are the most essen
tial units, the basis of all cities, for the very reason given by
Lincoln when he said: "The workingmen are the basis of all
governments, for the plain reason that they are all the more
numerous; . . . without entering upon the details of the
question, I will simply say that I am for those means which will
give the greatest good to the greatest number;" (Feb. 12, 1861).
When a great statesman such as Lincoln gives his weighty
support to such simple teachings as the one of the "greatest good
of the greatest number," he joins the ranks of Socrates, Plato,
Christ, Confucius, and other great thinkers upon whose utter
ances most philosophical and theological schemes are erected.
They do not give us scholastic arrangements purporting to rest
upon foundations of reality and self-consistent reasoning, but
assertions of good submitted to the judgment of mankind. At
the heart of all these teachings whatever their theological im
plications is a conception of the highest ideals and also of an
indispensable minimum of material requirements necessary for
a simple or more abundant life. This minimum includes hygienic
shelter and what Karl Marx enjoyed for a short time and called
"bourgeois comfort."
The statesman-philosopher intuitively sees and demands the
promising environment which only good town planning can se
cure. He demands new and better inner conditions of the human
spirit ; but at the same time and with equal emphasis the modern
statesman demands those outward modes of human work and re
lations which conform to his period and stage of human progress
and, therefore, must be deemed desirable in themselves. They are
conducive to a desirable order of things political and spiritual.
213
214 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
These assertions are not proved by deduction, induction and
discrimination. They are put forth on their own merits out of
experience and belief. Their practical validity depends upon the
degree of their appeal to human beings in various conditions of
life, not upon dialectical elucidations. When all is said and
done the great systems of ethics, as distinguished from mere
scholastic glosses and compilations, are assertions of values. A
conception of the good and more abundant life lies at their core.
Decent life on this earth may be attained, more or less perfectly,
by practice, by capable effort, fair play, and so Lincoln be
lieved by "allowing the humblest man an equal chance to get
rich with everybody else."
The ideal elements of the more abundant life demanded by a
more truly social society are not all mere theories in the air.
Fragments of the ideal are being realized in practice, illustrating
the extensions and applications to be made in the conquest of
misery, poverty, and ugliness, the crisis in thought and econ
omy. The construction of better houses, factories, officebuildings,
parks, highways, bridges, the design, production and
marketing of many commodities, this huge and complicated eco
nomic mechanism of our times requires new elements of ethics and
aesthetics which it is the function of policy to effectuate on a
national scale. The movement "Boston 1915'" was quite correct
in its assumption that a state of things approaching the ideal
would be brought into being, if all the best features of every
American city were incorporated in the physical and social
structure of a single city.
If the best that is known and practiced in social and economic
relations were brought to the center of American thinking,
dramatized, and employed in education, the dynamics of the ideal
would be swiftly accelerated. The problem of ethics and
aesthetics in statecraft is not, therefore, one of levelling all
things, but of selection, exclusion and emphasis of building
upon the knowledge and experience already established.
This broad process of building requires a plan. Even the
best plan, however, remains mere paper, as long as the masses
who are to benefit from it lack the intellectual and economic means
of understanding its main purpose and of bringing about its
realization. The realization of good planning is
impossible with-
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER 215
out a high degree of mental and material prosperity of the
masses, without real social well-being of the whole community.
The homes, schools, gardens and areas of public recreation de
termine the face of democratic cities much more than monu
mental public buildings or the palaces of the privileged that
used to determine the architectural aspect of former ages.
Architects and students of sociology will always remember
that the meagre reports of old social history frequently dwell
on the strikes among masons and among the builders of what
should have been useful public works, but too often were only
monuments of costly display. The beating down of masons'
strikes seems to have been the eternal sign of oppression, of
social waste.
Fifteen hundred years before Christ, a great king of Egypt
"re-established quiet and silence" (so the papyrus records)
amongst the fifty thousand ill-fed masons slaving for the erec
tion of his giant and beautiful, but otherwise utterly useless
pyramid. He ordered a massacre of several thousands of them.
Nine hundred years later, so we learn, a great emperor of China
enforced order among the larger part of thirty thousand strik
ing workers engaged in building dykes for the more useful work
of river control. The emperor ordered the decapitation of as
many of the strikers as would be required for the purpose of se
curing peace among the rest. Seventeen hundred heads had to
fall.
King Herod "the Great" was not only the author of the
children's famous massacre that intended but failed to in
clude young Jesus Christ. The same King Herod also built him
self a large palace in Jerusalem and had to employ the Roman
garrison to beat down a strike of the Jewish masons. In Rome it
was the emperor Nero who, after the enormous slum clearance
by fire, had to call out his army. By armed force he sped the
construction of his gorgeous "golden house," the work on which
had been interrupted by a strike of starving masons. "At last
I will be housed like a human being!", emperor Nero, who was
accustomed to receive divine honors, very modestly said. He
probably deserves none of the credit usually given to him for
starting the great conflagration which cleansed old Rome and
obliberated its vast slums. But he aroused opposition by his
216 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
dissatisfaction in not being housed like a human being. After
the great fire he rashly desired all Romans to be housed better.
He therefore rebuilt the burned city with broader streets, re
moving the population of the former slums to newly developed
and previously almost deserted areas on the right bank of the
Tiber. His stupid cruelty, however, has forever ruined the
fame he seems to have deserved as a city planner. His masons
were among his most pitiful victims.
Shortly afterwards many of the Jewish slaves, compelled to
build the triumphal arc of emperor Titus, in Rome, were cruci
fied in order to make their recalcitrant colleagues more eager to
work. In Byzantium it was the impeded construction of a new
church for the higher glory of Christ, the former carpenter,
which led to a great strike among carpenters and masons. This
happened under Constantine "the Great," the very emperor who
introduced Christianity and its symbol, the cross, into the Roman
Empire. He had the strike leaders crucified in front of the holy
building under construction. There he kept the tortured
corpses until putrefaction ensued. By this warning example he
enforced the completion of the church in honor of the god of
brotherly love.
Also the great kings Charlemagne in Aix-la-Chapelle, and
William the Conqueror in Hastings, and Philip II in Spain, build
ing his Escurial, and many other great potentates, knew how
to beat down, with an iron hand, the strikes of masons threaten
ing to check the construction of their feudal masters' prodigious
castles. A faint American echo of such strikes were the riots of
the stone cutters who in 1833 were employed in erecting the old
pseudo-gothic buildings of New York University at Washington
Square. These masons struck because the stones to be laid had
been dressed by Sing Sing convicts. A novel cause !
Today, many of us are startled by the social indifference of
previous ages. Even a Pericles, who stands so high among the
historic masters of popular government and public works, does
not seem to have given effective thought to a permanent improve
ment of the social standards of his country. When he had to
find some work for his countrymen who were feeding (for what
a short time!) on the spoils of their young Athenian empire, he
locked up the wealth taken from the newly conquered colonies
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER 217
into buildings that, even today, are superb, but that from a
strictly economic point of view were unremunerative, or rather,
unproductive, of those small but healthy immediate social and
economic benefits to the average citizen which develop his civic
stamina. Many of Pericles' sublime public works served no other
purpose than display. They did not prevent, or they even
helped form the citizens of Athens into that arrogant populace
depicted in the comedies of Aristophanes, who was one of them
and who rather stupidly scoffed at city planning. This mob
killed Socrates, and banished the best statesmen. On a some
what smaller scale this Athenian mob equals the later Roman
landless proletariat. Both had lost their common sense and their
productive strength. Both were utterly powerless to resist such
demagogues and "great" dictators, as Cleon, Philip, Caesar and
his worthy or most unworthy although "divine" successors.
Throughout the ancient world there was a constant tendency
to sink accumulated wealth in palaces, temples and decorative
buildings rather than in a democratic land policy and in improved
housing for the masses. This habit is still conspicuous in our own
time. The failure of the Roman Gracchi in their great effort
to enforce a democratic land policy is one of the tragedies of
human history. The bloody terrors of Caesarism became possible
only after the control of the country had passed from the hands
of moderately prosperous peasants and citizens into those of
enormously rich owners of slaving workers and landed estates.
These great exploiters were the patrons of the arts, of the famous
"grandeur that was Rome," and of that gorgeous and un-social
architecture which in our times, shortly before and after the re
cent World War, became the inspiration of the "Triangle" in
Washington and of similar imperial demonstrations.
Unfortunately, even the "great" among classical statesmen
and authors, such men as Aristophanes, Caesar, Cicero or
Lucretius, show hardly a vestige of constructive sympathy with
that vast mass of suffering humanity, both bond and free, with
which the world of antiquity was populated. In the midst of
this vast and international army of misery the Roman pro
letariat secured a historical and politically unique position.
These formidable regiments of Roman unemployed received their
peculiar name of proletarians because they were considered
218 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
capable only of prolifically procreating useless offspring (proles).
Their masses were large and threatening enough to force Roman
statesmanship to notice their misery. The numberless doles and
laws in their favor, however, did not reconstruct the social life
and the basic living conditions of this miserable populace. In
stead, the whole Roman empire was made to pay for an expensive
policy of giving unfruitful relief, doles, bread and circuses, to
the "free" citizens of Rome! In the time of emperor Septimius
Severus (A.D. 193211) the treasury spent annually the equiv
alent of $2,250,000 for the free distribution of grain. And it
has been estimated that during the three centuries of Caesarism
(from Caesar to Diocletian) about $600,000,000 were spent for
gifts of free bread to the Roman proletarians.
For the same "free" Romans the main avenues of the eternal
city were lined with gorgeous monuments of "imperial" architec
ture, colossal circuses, baths, temples and basilicas. But im
mediately surrounding these show-places there again arose, soon
after the great slum clearance of Nero's time, the closely built
five or more storied slums. Their congestion seems to have been
unfathomable. Serious historians in estimating the population
of the imperial city of Rome offer totals as widely different as
800,000 (Beloch), 1,200,000 (Gibbon) 4,000,000 (Lipsius),
or even 14,000,000 (Vossius). (Cf. Louis, Ancient Rome, p. 151
to 239. For other statements made in the text cf. Cunningham,
Western Civilization, Vol. I, pp. 120 and 184; Fowler, Social
Life, p. 235-6, Scott Nearing, Twilight of Empire, p. 243 ff.)
In the year 58 A.D. there actually seem to have lived in the
city of Rome 320,000 paupers who received a free dole of corn.
The majority, however, of the lower classes of antiquity by no
means enjoyed the special privileges of the Roman proletariat.
Many of them were serfs or semi-serfs and their masters were
hard.
One of the most tragic events in the later history of striking
serfs and masons is intimately correlated with the history of city
planning. It occurred under the well-meaning king, Louis XVI
of France. Trying to atone for the sins of his fathers he intro
duced democracy into his kingdom, a land ruined by despotism.
At the same time, he assembled in Paris a powerful army of work-
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER 219
men for the most beneficent and urgent purpose of pulling down
the antiquated city walls which so badly interfered with the
healthful expansion of his crowded and socially fermenting capital
city. But the king's well-motivated actions were too late. Out of
his army of masons rushed forth the men who conquered his
Bastille and razed it. This was the French signal for imitating
the American Revolution. The French nobility's and the church's
unlimited urban and rural real estate were confiscated, without
compensation !, replanned and subdivided. The well-meaning king
was beheaded. We shall witness a somewhat similar fatal occur
rence when Napoleon III and his "white bloused" masons made
another attempt to clear the old slums of Paris.
It took over three thousand years, from the time when the
first masons' strike had been recorded, before the leader of one of
the largest countries in the world publicly declared: "I desire
that if you get too thick here you may have a chance to strike
and go on somewhere else, where you may not be degraded. . . ."
Thus spoke, on March 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln and thereby
proved himself to be a better slum abolitionist, city planner and
empire planner than his contemporary Napoleon III, who has
become so famous for his endeavors in these three fields of plan
ning.
When Lincoln, from the White House, wrote letters to the
popular newspaper of Horace Greeley, the socialist "Tribune,"
he even shocked so liberal a New Englander as Emerson who
called Lincoln a "clown" and asked for more "refined taste."
(Emerson's "Journals," Oct. 1863.)
During the formative years preceding the Civil War, however,
America had profited from a high tide of critical and revolu
tionary literature. Emerson himself, although ostracised by
Harvard University, was representative of this fine American
efflorescence. It was the period when forceful revolutionary
writers gained high repute. The first "American Cyclopedia,"
a very learned and ambitious achievement, secured for its staff
of contributors not only many New Englanders including the
avowed "chartered libertin" Ralph Waldo Emerson, but also the
avowed socialists, Horace Greeley and Karl Marx. (The con
tributions signed by the latter, however, seem to have been actu-
220 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
ally written by his reliable friend Engels ; enlightened America
evidently appreciated both founders of "scientific" socialism
equally as well.)
Lincoln was by no means ashamed of his radicalism. He
chided the dangerous pseudo-conservativism of his opponents.
He ridiculed the slave-owners thus : "You say you are conserva
tive eminently conservative while we are revolutionary, de
structive, or something of the sort" (Feb. 27, 1860).
Today, it has again become customary to designate the
conscientious petitions for necessary reform as "revolutionary"
and "destructive," or as "marxistic." There has developed an
un-American fear of that reconstructive and, if necessary, revolu
tionary spirit which built and saved the American nation in 1776
and 1860. At present this fear jeopardizes the imperative re
organization of American city planning and housing. The mere
fact that the required reform may have new or even revolutionary
aspects, by no means arouses enthusiam or the "spirit of 1776,"
but seems sufficient to prejudice some chauvinistic Americans
against it. It is not amiss, therefore, to repeat here that the
most American of great Americans, Abraham Lincoln, was a
social reformer and re-organizer who not only went further than
the revolutionary and even "Jacobinical" Jefferson, but when
it came to forcible action went further even than Marx. If this
outdoing of Marx is a sign of progressiveness, Americans may be
proud of the fact that Lincoln (18091865) was certainly in the
lead. Marx (1818-1884) was nine years his junior. When
today the members of Lincoln's political party accuse President
F. D. Roosevelt of Marxism, he might well reply that, even if he
were following Marx, he would still be more conservative than the
first Republican President, the dangerous revolutionary from
Illinois.
Those Marxists who take their orientation from Moscow speak
of Lincoln as "one of the best representatives of bourgeois democ
racy" (so do, for instance, the editors of Marx' and Engels'
correspondence, in the English edition authorized by the MarxEngels-Lenin
Institute, Moscow, p. 136). Lincoln may have
been a "bourgeois"; would that there were more like him! He
was certainly a democrat. But more than anything else: he was
in many important aspects of thought and action at least
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER 221
as radical as Marx, or even more so. This has been demonstrated
in the previous Chapters.
It was to be expected that Lincoln, in his appreciation of
labor, would outdo Marx, who, although poor in his later life,
came from the "bourgeois" class, had received a good old world
bourgeois education, had married a noblewoman, and had never
done manual labor. His collaborator, Engels, enjoyed bour
geois comforts even more consistently. Lincoln, on the other
hand, was called, by Marx, "the single-minded son of the working
class" (Dec. 23, 1864). As late as September 6, 1859, at the
time when he did "not think himself fit for the Presidency,"
Lincoln thus referred to himself : "It is bad to be poor. I shall
go to the wall for bread and meat if I neglect my business this
year as well as last." A few months afterwards, Lincoln declared
(March 6, 1860) : "I am not ashamed to confess that twentyfive
years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a
flatboat just what might happen to any poor man's son !" And :
"When I became of age I did not know much. . . . There was
absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education." So he
described his inadequate American frontier surroundings in a
little autobiography written in December, 1859. Lincoln's envi
ronment did not acquaint him with an exalted cultural inheritance.
So he could continue to believe that "labor is the great source
from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities
are drawn" (Sept. 17, 1859).
Thus spoke Lincoln, he whom his newest Republican partymembers
cited, in 1934, as a witness against the recognition of
the rights of labor by the National Recovery Administration. In
New England, where American industry in Lincoln's time, had
begun to take its first strong roots, this fervent advocate of
laborers' rights sided with the striking shoemakers and declared :
"/ am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England
under which laborers can strike, when they want to ... I like
the system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it
might prevail everywhere. One of the reasons why I am opposed
to slavery is just here." (The Italics are Lincoln's ; cf. "Consti
tutional Edition" of his Writings, ed. by A. B. Lapsley, Vol. V,
p. 168.)
It has been mentioned here that Lincoln encouraged labor-
222 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
unionism by emphasizing the solidarity of the workers of the
world above their respective national ties, and that he said : "The
strongest bond of sympathy, outside of the family relation,
should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, tongues
and kindred."
Originally labor unions in America, just as rigidly as in
England, were condemned by the courts as being "guilty of a
combination to raise wages." But since the forties the enfran
chised American laborers and their trade-unions were much more
powerful than the disfranchised laborers of the English mill
towns. American strikes were never more volcanic than in the
decade that preceded the Civil War. (Beard, Rise of Am. Civ.
I, 645.)
Lincoln said: "Strike and go on somewhere else where you
may not be degraded !" One of the most inhuman kinds of degra
dation is caused by dwellings which damage the health and the
self-respect of the individual. But there exist, even today, and
in America, some states where the right to strike for better living
conditions is not yet, or is no longer recognized and where influen
tial people yearn for a return to the repressive methods of the
pyramid builders and of emperor Nero. Whatever excuses and
reasons may have condoned the tyranny of Nero, they have no
validity in the America of Jefferson and Lincoln.
It is a very noble and American desire to limit not the right,
but the necessity of strikes. The diminishing of strikes, however,
cannot be achieved by the old methods of repression nor by the
enforcement of lower standards of feeding, clothing and shelter.
The common sense of our era demands such new methods as have
been authoritatively described by the former President of
Harvard University, Charles W. Eliot, who was not a "Marxist"
and whose unimpeachable qualities as an American leader have
been gratefully acknowledged by the whole nation. Following
are some of the requisites demanded by President Eliot:
"Abandonment of every form of despotic or autocratic govern
ment in factories, mines, transportation services, and all other
industries which deal with the necessaries of modern life. Uni
versal adoption of cooperative management and discipline
throughout the work or plant, the employer and the workman
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER 223
having equal representation in managing committees. Adoption
by all corporations, partnerships and individual owners of every
means of promoting the health and vigor of employees and their
families, including the provision of free medical and nursing serv
ice, good housing and all feasible protection against accident,
sickness, alcoholism and vice, not as a matter of charity, but as a
sound business method. Prolonged education for adults who are
already earning their livelihood should be included among these
means. . . . General adoption of a genuine partnership system
between the capital and the labor engaged in any given works or
plant, whereby the returns to capital and labor alike after the
wages are paid shall vary with the profits of the establishment,
the percentage of the profits going to payroll being always much
larger than that going to shareholders or owners and payroll
never to be called on to make good the losses. As in ordinary
partnerships the annual or semi-annual accounts should be open
to the inspection of all persons directly interested. As a means
of securing to employees full knowledge of the partnership
accounts they should always be represented in the directorate.
Constant effort on the part of managers to dimmish monotony
and increase variety in the occupation, from day to day and year
to year, of every intelligent and ambitious employee. . . . Uni
versal acceptance of collective bargaining through elected repre
sentatives of each side." (Cf. "New Jersey," published by New
Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, March, 1919, Vol. VI, No.
6, pp. 75-76, article entitled "A Basis of Discussion," by Charles
W. Eliot, President Emeritus, Harvard University. Reprinted
in "Political and Industrial Democracy, 1776-1926" ; by W. Jett
Lanck; Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1926.)
In such a well-balanced set of economic and social requisites,
"good housing" takes its proper place from which it can be
removed only by making it a permanently insoluble problem. If
America can be educated to live up to Dr. Eliot's suggestions for
warding off strikes, the economic basis for our new cities and for
decent housing will finally be secured. As long as Dr. Eliot's
demands remain unheeded, the "Marxists" are justified when they
claim that under "capitalism" the workers do not receive suffi
cient value for their labor and that the "capitalists" fatten on
224 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
exploiting the vitality of the laborers and their families by forcing
large numbers of them to live in blighted districts most injurious
to health and morals and detrimental, in the long run, to the
budgets of the municipalities and even of the capitalists them
selves.
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
AMERICA IMITATES VIENNESE HOUSING
What is this you bring my America? . . .
Is it not something that has been better told or
done before ?
Have you not imported this, or the spirit of it, in
some ship?
Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness? is the
good old cause in it?
Who would assume to teach here, may well prepare
himself, body and mind, . . .
He shall surely be question'd beforehand by me
with many and stern questions. . . .
Walt Whitman (From: "Marches Now The War Is Over")
One of the most American of philosophers, Walt Whitman,
was also the most impatient with the unnecessary imitation of for
eign examples. This did not preclude his criticizing American
conditions, nor his urging with an earnestness equal to that of
Alexander Hamilton the American imitation of good foreign
precedent. He called his city of Brooklyn "the city of dirt" and
its streets "a surface of nastiness, repulsiveness, and diseasegenerating
decay." "And why, indeed," Walt Whitman asked,
"could we not have, in Brooklyn, a couple of free baths? They
have them in many European cities. Intelligent foreigners fre
quently notice the rarity of baths and the custom of bathing
among the better order of Americans."
This, of course, was written at a time when not even the
White House in Washington (nor the King's palace in Berlin!)
had a bathroom and it was long before America became the coun
try that could rival England in the number of private bath
rooms. It is rather humorous to read how Whitman admonishes
his countrymen not to be alarmed at "the trouble of bathing.
. . . And if you do not choose to go to the bath house, it is well
to have the purifying operation in your own room. All that is
necessary is a basin of water, a sponge, and a coarse towel."
225
226 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
(Cf. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 10, 1846.) Whitman concludes
his recommendation to imitate European bathing habits by say
ing: "And it were perhaps not an unprofitable inquiry to cal
culate how much actual outlay might be saved by the superior
sanative condition of the poor how many of these diseases, which
the public purse has directly or indirectly to pay for, could
have been altogether staved off. . . ."
Since this was written thousands of similar remarks and
comparisons referring to public health, city planning and hous
ing have been made by equally patriotic Americans. Especially
during the last years has it become customary to urge "Uncle
Sam to take firm hold of his hammer and trowel and to follow
in the footsteps of Europe, where practically every country has
resorted, since the Great War, to one form or another of public
subsidy of low-cost housing." (Survey Graphic, March 1, 1934.)
Following is a list (compiled by Ernst Kahn, for the Architec
tural Forum, Aug. 1935) of the number of dwellings erected and
the amount of money spent in different European countries, since
the World War:
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER 227
Is the recommendation of unsuitable models perhaps one of
the reasons for Uncle Sam's surprising inactivity in housing mat
ters? The appropriateness of the European models is today
much more debated than ever, even in their home countries. In
the heat of this debate the "Christian-Socialists" of Vienna, in
February, 1934, bombed many of the 58,667 municipal model
dwellings built between 1920 and 1933 by the previous "social
democratic" city government. These famous five- and six-storied
tenements cost about 115 million old dollars which had been
raised mostly by taxes (not loans). Municipal enterprise thus
housed almost one-eighth of the whole city's population (totaling
1,868,000 people). The municipal tenements generally cover
less than 50 % of the building site. They have kindergartens,
playgrounds, libraries, some public bathrooms, and laundries.
Karl Marx-Hof, plan and view after the bombardment by the government
troops; Feb., 1934.
228 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Before fascism interfered the tax-payer received the essentials of
housing very much as he (and the American tax-payer) receives
for less than cost the equally essential schooling for his chil
dren. The low rent of the new Viennese apartments covered only
the cost of maintenance. It amounted to about one dollar (in
cluding the house building tax) per month for a walk-up apart
ment consisting of living room, bed-chamber, kitchen with gas
stove, water, toilet (measuring all together about 400 square
feet), all well ventilated and well lighted, not only by electricity,
but also by sunshine coming in at an unobstructed angle of not
less than 45 degrees (measured from the vertical wall framing
the windows of the rooms). This means that the height of the
buildings is not greater than the width of the streets or court
yards. These model tenements, however, had neither central
heating nor individual bathrooms. And tenements measuring
only 400 square feet appear small when compared with the 500
sq. ft. which are a minimum in New York's new Knickerbocker
Village, or with the 760 square feet now considered as a minimum
in English housing activities; (cf. end of Sixth Chapter).
The new Viennese housing standards appear even lower when
compared with modern aspirations (not necessarily achieve
ments !) in America, where the "National Association of Housing
Officials" (in publishing its minimum requirements for new hous
ing; Nov., 1934) regarding walk-up apartments declared:
"More than three flights is hardly humane."
But in Vienna even the less humane housing standards of
1920-1933 represented distinct progress; and they would prob
ably do so in many sections of American cities if they were here
instituted and enforced. They might even arouse here the same
furious opposition which they met in Vienna. The Viennese
"Christian-Socialists" are a political party representing many
heavily indebted owners of the older tenements which cover from
70 to 80 per cent of their sites and which used to be covered
generally far beyond 100 per cent of their value with mort
gages. In such over-indebted and over-densely built tenements
had been crowded, before the War, 578,000 people or about 30
per cent of Vienna's population at the rate of more than two
people per "room." And even kitchens, bathrooms and front
halls were considered as "rooms" in this barbaric calculation of
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER 229
averages ! The census of 1910 shows that at least 355,000 people
had to sleep in rooms having no outside ventilation and receiving
light and air only from hallways or narrow lightshafts.
"I am still shuddering when I recall those miserable dwellings
or rather caves of Vienna I had to share, and the somber pictures
of dirt, repelling filth, and even worse things I had to see." Thus
wrote Hitler (in "My Battle," cf. the fuller quotation given here
in the Fourteenth Chapter) . Before the War he suffered in these
hovels, and after the War, quite perversely, he made himself the
saviour of the fascistically inclined middle classes which in Ger
many and Austria owned the miserable pre-War tenements and
Typical dwellings (block plan and floor plan) of the masses in imperial
Vienna.
230 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
wished permanently to exploit them. Living in this "ghastly
housing misery" of Vienna, Hitler acquired the moral and ever
lasting indignation which ingratiated him with his wide audiences
and even with such observers as Bernard Shaw who otherwise are
repelled by the barbarism of the "Nazi" creed. But having
come to power, the Fascists in Germany (Hitler) and Austria
(Dollfuss) had to please their middle class followers, the despair
ing owners of obsolete tenements. The "social democratic" labor
unions, which had fought too efficiently "the ghastly housing
misery," were obliterated.
In Vienna, the "Christian Socialist" owners of old tenements
claimed that the new municipal tenements were built in anticipa
tion of un-Christian socialism and as fortresses against social
revolution. These Christians had always forced their tenants
to use dark interior toilets facing hallways only; so they were
shocked when the laborer's architects dared to introduce into the
outer facades of the new tenements regular toilet windows. The
real purpose of these small openings, so the "Christians" main
tained, could obviously be no other than to serve as machine gun
portals from which the ruthless laborers planned to pour death
into the hearts of Christian owners of depreciated old tenements.
In vain did Dr. Breitner protest. Until his incarceration
in Dollfuss' concentration camp, he was the financial dictator of
Vienna and the ingenious father of its municipal housing. His
statistics prove that among the 200,000 tenants in the new mu
nicipal tenements there lived at least as many non-Socialists as
Socialists.
Multiple dwellings versus the individual house is an eternal
Old World subject of debate. It has now become important in
the 257 American cities which contemplate public action to com
pete against their traditional slums by means of new decent
housing. There seems to have always been a greater demand
for dwellings in small houses than for those in multiple houses.
Private enterprise in these American cities provided for houses
as shown in the table on the following page.
Not all observers of Vienna's municipal housing considered
its large model barracks as hotbeds of revolutionary agitation.
In 1931 the Mayor of Montevideo, Uruguay, for instance, told
me that he was eager to copy the Viennese model, because he
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER 231
In the
year
232 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
subsistence garden in the open suburbs of Vienna. Kampfmeyer's
success, however, was meager. Of the 58,667 dwellings subsidized
by the City of Vienna only 5093 were in suburban cottages.
After a decade of struggle he left Vienna disillusioned and found
a more responsive field of action in the garden suburbs of Frank-
fort-on-the-Main.
It was not sound economic considerations, but rather the
difficulty of changing the centuries-old routine of building and
living which, according to Kampfmeyer, established in Vienna the
victory of the huge municipal tenement over the small house. He
could point to the fact that tenements with floor space averaging
519 square feet cost 14,400 shillings (or about 2016 old dollars)
while cottages with a floor space of 695 square feet cost only 14,-
000 shillings (or give 40 per cent more value for the same money).
The value of the land being less than three cents per square foot,
it is only the expense of public utilities and of new schools that
could be used as an argument for crowding the people into six
story walk-ups and into much smaller quarters. And even this
argument could have been overthrown if, instead of free-standing
cottages, practical row houses (as are used in many of the Eng
lish model developments) had been introduced.
A point of view more congenial to Kampfmeyer's garden
suburb idea than to the building of huge apartment houses has
been expressed in a recent publication of the Brookings Institu
tion, Washington, D. C., which criticizes the policy of investing
too much capital in solidly built tenements of a city with a
declining birth rate. One or two storied row houses of less
permanent construction would probably have been a wiser in
vestment.
"With the funds available the housing shortage could have
been relieved more quickly, without sacrificing the improved stand
ards of health and comfort, by devoting the available resources
to the construction of a larger number of plain temporary oneor
two-story brick or hollow tile dwellings of a barracks type,
than by the erection of structures which if permitted will stand
for two centuries." This report of the Brookings Institution,
from which the following quotation is taken, gives the name
"barracks" to these row houses, which in English and other gar
den cities such as Sunnyside, Long Island, have proved to have
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER 233
much charm. This term "barracks" is not meant to have any
evil implications here. We read about the Viennese situation:
"Some added investment for land, and for transportation and
other utilities, would have been necessary; but not as much as
the cottage settlement plan" (for entirely detached houses) "de
manded, and certainly not enough to offset the saving in building
costs . . . The real emergency was temporary ; in the long run,
if Vienna survived as a great city, newer and better housing
standards were bound to develope; if the city did not so survive,
temporary structures would suffice. In the short run, the same
expenditure of money in the building of (one- or two-story)
barracks would have emptied a much larger number of old bad
dwellings and the city would not have been committed for an
indefinite future to the conspicuous deficiencies of the present
standard the long upward climb to the five-story dwelling and
the downward climb to the bathroom; the lack of central heat
ing; and the extreme compression of the population." (Cf. The
Housing Program of the City of Vienna by Chas. O. Hardy and
R. R. Kuczynski; Washington, 1934, p. 108 and 111.)
What hope or danger is there of seeing the Viennese housing
experiment imitated in America? The features just described
making for economy will not be copied here, nor one should
hope the slight grotesqueness and the false modernity which
often mars the design of the huge tenements of Vienna. But in
several other respects New York has probably gone farther than
MEHRFAMILIENHAUi
MUUI FAMILY HOUif
MAiSCNi'OUR PlUSlEURSfAMiuev
Typical floor plan of one of Vienna's post-war "model"
apartments. No through-ventilation, no outside win
dows for the W. C.
234 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
any other city in imitating Vienna. It is only in New York that
the colossal mass-housing of Marx-Hof with its 1400 tenements
could be surpassed. Here we find Knickerbocker Village with
1600 and Hillside Apartments with 1416 dwellings. However,
in order to produce a total in public housing comparable to that
of Viennese achievements it would be necessary to build in New
York Region about 400,000 municipal apartments giving shelter
to approximately 1,300,000 people, or one-eighth of its popula
tion of 11 millions. The erection of these apartments with the
land and required improvements would cost more than 1.5 billion
dollars. In metropolitan New York this expenditure might be
opposed by the present owners of obsolete tenements. They
might sigh for Dollfuss' heavy artillery with which to bomb the
unwelcome competition of decent housing against their disease
and crime breeding hovels. But such lack of public spirit will
probably in the long run be counteracted by the omnipresent edu
cational campaign for better housing and even more efficiently
by some financial compensation Uncle Sam may be able to
afford as balm to the vendors of deteriorated housing. There
is small hope or danger that this may happen as quickly in
America as it did in Vienna. In Vienna's city hall sat a strong
socialist majority to guide and enfore its famous housing ac
tivities, while the American Socialists mustered only 2.5 per cent
of the votes polled in the presidential election of 1932.
It is likely that America in the near future will have a major
ity of voters ready to finance low cost housing for approximately
one eighth of the population at the expense of the other seven
eighths? One may answer "no" and "yes." One should say "no"
for the two following reasons : First : Viennese housing activities
were facilitated by the inexpensiveness of building land resulting
from the economic revolution and monetary inflation following
the War. Such a complete revolution is unlikely to affect in the
near future American real estate conditions, at least not as long
as interior and exterior peace is preserved. Urban land holdings
in America are probably still more widely distributed and are a
more democratic investment than they were in pre-War Austria
and Prussia where urban land was largely in the hands of a
special class of politically privileged land holders including large
banks. Such a limited distribution of land made its expropria-
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER 235
tion or devaluation easier than it would be at present in America.
There is a second reason why in America public housing ac
tivities will probably not soon approach as relatively large
proportions as in Vienna. Viennese housing was rather unpreten
tious. But publicly supported housing in America, so far, has
produced rather expensive results. The Director of Housing,
A. R. Clas, of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public
Works, announced on November 8, 1935 : "A total of 50 Federal
housing projects is
being installed in 35 cities throughout the
country, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, with allotments
totaling $129,725,100 from the Works-Relief and PWA funds.
These projects will provide more than 25,000 modern, fireproof
'living units.' This means that over $5000 are being paid per
'living unit.' But this average conceals the prices per living unit
of $2900 in Montgomery, Alabama, and $3500 in Columbia,
South Carolina. In New York the 'Williamsburg' project with
1625 living units it is estimated will cost $12,783,000 or $7866
per dwelling, and the Harlem-McCombs Place with 574 units will
cost $8185 per dwelling. In the case of the 120 apartments in
'First Houses' rebuilt by the New York Housing Authority, the
confounding of slum clearance with housing problems produced
an average cost of $10,000 for the three room apartments. Unit
prices of from 5000 to 10,000 dollars are considerably higher
than the cost of apartments produced by private enterprise for
the average American in the middle and lower third of the in
come brackets. He must pay taxes but does not belong to the
select small class which without paying a corresponding share
of taxes benefits from the expensive Federal housing activities.
In the case of 'First Houses,' for instance, probably no taxes at
all will be collected. The tenants straightforwardly will receive,
at the tax-payers' expense, rooms worth about $15 at $6 a
month."
Upon closer inspection, however, one finds that these nega
tive arguments can be reversed. The general level of America's
urban land values is exceedingly high very largely because ut
terly obsolete building and zoning ordinances have flimflammed
the owners, speculators and tax assessors into the belief that the
insane maxima of exploitation permitted and encouraged by the
ordinances might and must some day materialize. But the fact
236 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
that the taxes are assessed upon and their collection attempted
from these unrealizable castles in the air, has a curative effect
and may before long lead to the wholesale revision or "destruction
of the fictitious land values" so strongly advocated by Henry
Ford. This destruction would facilitate every conceivable pub
lic-spirited housing policy and would, therefore, also help any
desired imitation of the Viennese example.
The second argument that the tax-paying seven eighths of
the American people might like to pay for the 100 per cent
over-expensive apartments of the one non-taxpaying eighth may
be entirely wrong. The strong American gambling spirit, on
the contrary, may be highly pleased by as favorable a winning
chance as one eighth. The Hoover depression has taught the
American that practically no values are quite secure, not even
"guaranteed" gold mortgage bonds. The shrewd calculator
may soon realize that one eighth of a chance of occupying a wellplanned
and comfortable apartment without his having to pay
taxes is a new and decidedly better gambling chance than any
thing the stock market ever offered, a better chance especially
than was offered by his former readiness to play the older game
of rugged individualism which makes him less often a Pierpont
Morgan than a pauper.
In this connection it is a rather impressive fact that even as
conservative a man as the former New York State Governor,
Alfred E. Smith (who prides himself on having risen from the
slum of New York and survived), that even so victorious an
exponent of rugged individualism had to confess his doubts re
garding what he calls "the existing system" and its "undisputed"
inefficiency in matters of low cost housing. In his message to the
legislature of February 22, 1926, Governor Smith says:
"One outstanding fact still remains as a result of all the
investigations and that fact is that the construction of certain
types of homes for wage-earners of small income is unprofitable
under the existing system. All of the investigations disclose the
undisputed fact that the building of homes has in the past been
looked upon as an enterprise conducted like any other business
in which the element of speculative profit has been the compelling
force. Until this situation is changed it will be impossible to re
build the tenement areas which continue throughout the years to
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER 237
be a menace to the health and the morals of the country. The
report of the State Commission on Housing which I transmit
herewith furnishes a list of old law tenements in New York City
still standing and still inhabited which were condemned as foul,
unsanitary and unfit to live in by the Tenement Committee of
1885."
If as enlightened and as popular an American as "Al Smith"
thus urges his countrymen to doubt the efficacy of the "profit"
motive in eliminating bad tenements and in producing decent,
inexpensive homes, we must not be surprised if the so-called man
of the street will soon and energetically demand socialistic meth
ods of home building akin to those of Vienna.
There is another surprising similarity between the housing
aspects of Vienna and those of New York. For different reasons
both these metropolitan cities have become oversized industrial
centers. And in both cities the housing policies in Vienna from
1920 to 1933 and in New York beginning with "First Houses"
in 1935 seem to be based on the assumption that the city must
not be made systematically smaller but even larger. Vienna is
too large an industrial center due to the fact that in the World
War Austria lost most of the provinces for which Vienna's in
dustries had been working. Austria-Hungary's former size was
equal to that of the state of Texas. Austria's present size is
hardly larger than Maine. The rather naive nationalism of the
different "succession states" which had formerly been united in
the large customs or tariff union of the empire of Austria-Hun
gary was too rash. In their eagerness to get rid of the Hapsburg
domination they almost inadvertently also got rid of their
economic basis of survival, which, indeed, had been this very
tariff union so easily sacrificed. The "peace" treaties of SaintGermain
and Trianon instead of wisely creating economically
possible conditions ruined what had been a complicated but
economically functioning organism. Instead of uniting the for
mer Austrian states with their Balkan neighbors into a larger
and more efficient tariff union, this intolerable peace created
thousands of miles of new tariff barriers and half a dozen eco
nomically independent "nations" establishing new competitive
industries. This was done in an age where large economic organ
isms such as the United States, the British Empire, Russia,
238 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
France and her colonies, Argentine or Brazil, had the best chance
of the effective division of labor and of peaceful survival. And
Vienna, the capital of a disrupted empire, could survive only by
means of the economic alms granted her by those states which
wished to prevent her union with Germany; and even that wish
did not promise an economic solution. These international alms
in the form of loans made, not directly but indirectly, Vienna's
splendid housing policy possible. It would have been even more
splendid if the working masses served by it could have hoped for
economic survival and if a policy of resettlement and national
regrouping had not been more immediately imperative than sub
sidizing by cheap tenements an industry which had lost its
market.
The situation in New York City although fundamentally
different from that of Vienna, nevertheless, offers other curious
resemblances. It has long been recognized that the congestion of
industries in New York is very expensive and largely unnecessary
and often detrimental. It is in many ways a mere hang-over of
an old routine way of doing things.
One does not have to go as far as Dr. Lyman Bryson who at
the Rural Life Conference at Rutgers University declared that
"of the people who live in New York City, only 5 per cent actually
have to live there and the others would be better off if they lived
elsewhere; they are here needlessly." (N. Y. Times, May 1, 1935.)
But it is an indisputable fact that millions of the people crowded
into New York Region have to make unwarranted sacrifices of
time and energy to get to and from their work, that they have
to use crowded, noisy and nerve-racking subways which cost
enormous sums to build and to operate and that this mad ex
pense is cumulated by many other difficulties such as securing air
for the congested areas, providing water and disposing of the
sewage of the congested masses who transform even as big a
harbor as that of New York and the adjoining beaches into dan
gerous cesspools.
Under these circumstances the policy of state planning and
resettlement so often urged by Governor Alfred Smith, Clarence
Stein, Henry Wright and others would have been the great city
planning measure which deserved and required the most earnest
support. It was a contradiction of these acknowledged neces-
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER 239
sities of state planning and decentralization when aid was given
for the construction of as oversized, uneconomic and unnecessary
a concentration of offices as is represented by the still largely
unoccupied Empire State Building. The same is also true, to
some extent, of the heavy subsidizing of New York's business and
industrial concentration by building apartments, at the tax-pay
er's expense, to be leased cheaply to New York workers. On the
contrary, so it seems, the most strenuous efforts should have
been made to induce stable industries to abandon the congestion
of New York City, to create creditable garden cities where the
relation between residence, work and play can be pleasant. In
order to further such a necessary movement of decentralization
even the inducement of subsidized housing, i.e. at the tax-payer's
expense, might have become justified. To dot the congested area
of New York City with expensive subsidized housing enabling
further congestion of the metropolitan area is more difficult to
justify. But one may say that, as long as millions live in slums,
any conceivable kind of better housing has definite value, even if
it is expensive and contradicts the tax-payer's rash and ready
sense of justice.
It would be wrong, however, to believe that the method of the
Viennese City Council or of the New York Housing Authority
supported by Secretary of the Interior, Ickes, the method of un
economic housing at the general tax-payers' expense, is the only
one which can be imitated after "Uncle Sam has taken firm hold
of his hammer and trowel to follow in the footsteps of Europe."
The following chapter will show another method which is less
"charitable" and less "socialistic," but more economic and, per
haps, more American in the older sense of the term.
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
WHY DOES AMERICA NEGLECT THE STOCKHOLM EXAMPLE?
Recently Americans have heard much about prefabricated
houses. They were promised wonderful residential comfort be
cause some new master-minded Henry Ford was soon to build a
few huge factories for turning out ready-made homes with all
the latest gadgets and delivering them all over the country for
small monthly installments spread over many years and not ex
ceeding the amount of a reasonable rent. Good automobiles
which formerly cost five thousand dollars can now be had for
one fifth of that price. Why should not comfortable houses also,
so it is asked, which formerly cost $10,000 or $5000, in the
future be produced by modern big factories and sold at a retail
price of $2500?
This plausible argument would be even more convincing if the
prefabricated houses on the market at present actually did cost
$2500, instead of from three to six times as much, while their
producers, for various reasons, feel obliged to procrastinate,
marking time. If we want to find a fairly comfortable house
"with all modern conveniences" for $2500 we must go to Sweden.
Her capital, Stockholm, has 520,000 inhabitants. There we find
2220 wooden cottages, erected since 1927, which cost from 9000
to 13,000 Swedish Kronor, or, figuring the Krone at 25 cents, an
average of $2500, without the land. They have been built with
the intelligent help of the municipality, but without charitable
subsidy at the expense of the general taxpayer.
These Stockholm cottages are not entirely prefabricated but
semi-prefabricated. Their appearance is by no means scream
ingly "modern." But as far as their methods of production go
they are among the most modern and most interesting demonstra
tions on the international housing map.
There are other reasons why Sweden is especially interesting
to the American student of housing. Sweden is a country where
private property is religiously respected, where the standard of
240
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 241
housing is comparatively high and where building is quite ex
pensive. The climate there is not as mild as it is in England
where housing can thus be cheaper than it is in America. No, the
Swedish climate is as severe as that of New York or Boston and
even the smallest house is built with a cellar.
The attitude of the Swedish labor unions is especially in
teresting. The small houses which will here be described come to
Stockholm, in a semi-prefabricated condition, on trucks from the
saw-mills in the wooded rural districts two hundred miles away.
This, of course, encourages the employment of cheaper unskilled
labor in assembling the houses and leads to a greater elimination
of unionized labor in the big city than would have been permitted
by certain American unions under similar circumstances. Never
theless, the Swedish labor unions are relatively more than four
times as strong as those of the United States. The Swedish
unions' membership of over 638,000 represents more than one
tenth of the whole population of Sweden while in America less
than one fortieth of the population belongs to unionized labor.
In spite of their strength the labor unions of Stockholm have not
seriously opposed the municipal introduction of semi-prefabri
cated housing. When the economic depression grew serious and
building activities were greatly reduced, the labor unions ob
tained the concession that certain jobs connected with the erec
tion of the semi-prefabricated houses should, "as much as
possible," preferably be given to their members.
Sweden repeatedly had and also at present has a socialistic
state government. Approximately 13 per cent of Sweden's popu
lation lives in houses built since the War and are profiting from
government loans at low interest but by no means from state
subsidies except in the form of statesmanlike intelligence. Also
the majority of Stockholm's City Councillors is socialistic. But
the housing policy described in this chapter has originally been
proposed by a non-socialistic City Councillor. His proposal
found the support of all political parties. In the City Council
the representatives of labor (social-democrats, socialists and
communists) have 53 of the 100 mandates. As, however, the
municipal housing activities are financed by borrowed means and,
as in all matters concerning the loans of the city a two-thirds
majority is required, the support of the non-socialistic parties is
242 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
necessary. All resolutions concerning small cottages have been
unanimously passed. In America, recently, Arthur Brisbane,
expressed his disappointment when the leader of the miners' union,
John L. Lewis, seemed to consider his possession of a platinum
watch as the highest achievement of which a miner can dream.
Brisbane quite appropriately stated: "Miners might prefer a
comfortable little house." (Cf. N. Y. American, Feb. 7, 1936.)
Many thousands of them live in miserable shacks. But while in
America it is yet difficult to interest even the labor unions in
active municipal housing policies, such an activity in Sweden is
viewed with equal interest by the right and the extreme left.
The city of Stockholm has organized a corporation which is
conducted in accordance with true business principles and enables
even the inhabitants of congested tenement sections to become
owners of free-standing small houses with gardens. The land is
owned by the city which rents the lots for less than a cent a year
per square foot under leases extending to 60 years and are re
newable after that period. The most interesting point in the
calculations is the fact that the combined monthly installments
on lot, house, taxes, etc., do not exceed the normal price of the
rent charged for the typical, much less spacious city tenement.
The methods of financing the houses, their arrangement and
the use of well-tested types of frame construction, are the results
of long and careful planning based on popular traditions and
preferences. A few men, among whom Axel Dahlberg is the
leader, have shown the true constructive genius of adaptation, in
terpretation and divination of popular demands. There could
probably be found similarly ingenious men in America ready to
serve the public. But are they given a chance?
These semi-prefabricated houses are erected with the help and
under the supervision of experienced municipal officers but about
one half of the actual work is generally done by the prospective
owner. The City extends loans up to 90% of the value of the
cottages at an interest of from 4 to 5 per cent, to be amortized
within 30 years. The person desirous of building such a cottage
must be able to deposit $75 in cash for the ground rent of the
first year, premium on fire insurance and fees of deeds. All in
all the builder must bring in an equity of at least 10 per cent
of the value of his cottage but, with the exception of the first
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 243
$75, he can pay this 10 per cent in the form of his own or his
friends' labor helping him to erect the cottage. After its erec
tion, he is the legal owner and pays yearly charges which (on
a cottage costing 9200 Kroner and carrying a municipal loan
of 8280 Kroner) amounted in 1933 for the
Annual installment payable on the loan, to about $134.75
Ground rent 37.5
Taxes 7.5
Fire insurance 2.5
Chimney sweeping 4.25
Removal of garbage 4.0
Street scavenging 5.0
Water rate 5.0
or a total of 802 Kronor equal to $200. In 1935 this total was
lowered to $190, or $15.85 per month. For this money he has
what represents four or at least three and one half rooms upon
a lot of about 54 by 100 feet. This is equal to a monthly charge
of $3.95 to $4.50 per room for property rights in a house which
lies at a distance of about 30 minutes by street car or bus from
the center of the city and contains about twice as much space
as could be secured for the same amount of money, in a newly
built apartment house in the city where the owners of the new
cottages were formerly apt to live.
These two-story houses are quite complete and seem especially
so when compared with the previous tenement homes of the own
ers. The new homes are electrically lighted and contain from two
to four principal rooms, in addition to a bathroom, a kitchen
with gas-range, sink, running water, the typical Swedish interior
W. C., connecting with the city sewer, a basement with furnace,
laundry and ample space for a garage. The unfulfilled wish
President Hoover expressed for America is not always fulfilled
even in Sweden : instead of two cars in each garage and, twice a
week, a chicken in the pot, one often finds only a few chickens in
the garage, occasionally in the company of a bicycle or a motor
cycle. But the presence of a garage waiting for a prospective
auto seems to have a stimulating effect on human beings, at least
as long as they are not threatened by unemployment.
Stockholm's Municipal Corporation erects these popular
houses in numbers that have grown from 200 to 400 a year. But
the demand is greater than the supply. The houses therefore
244 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
are a fairly secure form of investment for the savings of their
inhabitants. Title of ownership is given immediately upon the
completion of the house. These titles are certainly far superior
to the "guaranteed mortgages" for which thrifty Americans
have developed such a self-sacrificing craze since the Great War,
having learned to calculate their losses in billions of dollars.
After an American Black Friday has smashed the New York
Stock Exchange the holder of guaranteed mortgage certificates
often can use them only for wallpapering his parlor. But when
some Swedish Kreuger has upset his country and the credit struc
ture of the world, the holder of a Stockholm cottage, at least
in most cases, remains in undisturbed possession of his house and
garden. As a result of the economic depression the City of
Stockholm had to take back sixty cottages, and a credit institu
tion controlled by the City had to take back another ten out of
the more than 2000 cottages erected. The former owners were
permitted to stay in their cottages at a rent lower than the
required monthly installments. Quite a number of sales of cot
tages were made by owners affected by the depression who were
able to realize prices which materially exceeded their own in
vestment.
The building plots belonging to the small cottages occupy on
the average about 500 square metres (5400 sq. ft.). During the
last few years a great number of cottages of the smallest type
have also been erected on smaller plots with an area of 350 square
metres (3580 sq. ft.). Care is taken to choose such ground for
the small cottages as to permit the building plots to be used for
gardening. To a very great extent the owners of small cottages
utilize the plots for this purpose but some of them prefer to lay
out only pleasure gardens. As the environs of Stockholm are
hilly and partly woody, the greatest part of the area intended
for small cottages has also a limited number of wood and park
plots. Although these are more difficult and more expensive to
put in order, they are in great demand.
The garden cities of Stockholm are connected with the inner
city either by tram or bus lines. The time taken for travelling
from these districts to the central parts of the city is generally
from 15 to 20 minutes and does not as a rule exceed 30 minutes.
The single fare, considering certain reductions, varies between
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 245
20 and 25 ore (i.e. 5 to 6 cents), the bus fare being higher.
Through tickets to the lines of the inner city are not issued.
The planning of the areas intended for small cottages has
been done, on the whole, without any regard for the industries of
Stockholm. But this is less serious than the same planless method
adopted in Vienna or New York. Sweden's political and economic
situation seems much more secure than that of Austria. And
Stockholm is not yet so awkwardly oversized, as New York is,
that further growth implies economic insanity. However, the
city of Stockholm has striven to supply a great number of build
ing plots so located that the prospective owners were in a position
to choose their places of residence where it has suited them con
sidering their places of employment.
Strict economy based upon standardization and wholesale
buying under experienced municipal supervision must, of course,
play a great role in producing these houses at so reasonable a
cost. More important, however, for the future of sane housing
is the clear, simple and direct distribution of financial responsibil
ity. Whatever advantages the big tenement house of the Viennese
or New York-Hillside type may have, it will, as far as its financ
ing is concerned, always be a huge unwieldly affair. Few ordi
nary citizens will be able to fathom the million figures connected
with its purchases of land, building materials, commissions, taxes
paid or remitted, government loans, grants, mortgages, economic
rent required and uneconomic rent paid, and, last but not least,
the heavy expense and difficulty of maintenance for these enor
mous properties the owner of which is absent or does not visibly
exist. These million figures in many European examples have
proved to be mazes in which the profiteer prospered and the tax
payer was cheated. Huge tenement house blocks and superblocks,
one might almost say, are a less democratic, less
republican, because less controllable affair than small houses
which can be estimated as to appearance, quality and finance by
the average house-holder. This is only repeating one of the late
Eberstadt's main criticisms of the German pre-War tenement.
This master in the science of housing insisted that the individual
two-story row-house, continuously under the watchful eyes of its
owner, is the economic unit for housing the masses and for dis
tributing the heavy financial burden connected with a large-scale
246 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
project. He came close to proving that the higher the dwelling
is the more apt it is to be burdened with unproductive expenses.
The large tenement house is burdened by just such numerous ex
penses even as its usable volume is burdened by expensive hall
ways, stairways, more costly foundations, necessity of greater
stability and by other forms of unprofitable dead weight than is
warranted by economic living. The entire building methods of
a country can become vitiated by false conceptions regarding
building heights and standards of construction.
Recently an excellent study was made in New York by the
architects Aronovici, Churchill, Lescaze, Mayer, and Wright,
which revealed a similar conclusion: "Two-story flats permit
lowest rental, as the characteristic way of living in them does
not demand the complex services required in apartments." This
may be "bourgeois" wisdom unpleasant to the impatient dreamer
of a future perfect state. But this prosaic calculation shows
that a room in a two-story building on land in Astoria, Long
Island, at 83 cents a square foot (built with 30 per cent Federal
grant and building tax exemption) requires a rent of $4.85 a
month ; while a room in a six-story building erected with a similar
Federal grant and tax exemption on land at $8 a square foot on
the Lower East Side requires a rent of $9.30 a month, or about
twice as much.
The question of the extent to which "complex services" should
be provided in building new and "model" housing will be an
swered very differently by adherents of different political, techni
cal and sociological creeds. The small cottages of Stockholm
are by no means a type of shack for those who are declasses. On
the contrary, their method of construction corresponds very
exactly to that of more expensive houses, only it is more rational
and is standardized. But even the smallest types costing $2250
could become the satisfactory nucleus of an expensive house.
After adding some wings it could be made into a $10,000 house.
The nucleus, however, contains the essentials of housing.
In order to convey an idea of the general attitude towards
these smallest cottages of Stockholm an extract from a manu
script by Mr. Axel Dahlberg, the director of these housing ac
tivities, may be given. The reader can thus judge for himself
as to whether the Stockholm point of view is too socialistic, too
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 247
bourgeois, too paternal to be of value in free America or whether
it is, perhaps, even reminiscent of the pioneer spirit of this land.
Director Dahlberg wrote, in 1933 :
"The city authorities have all the time been fully aware that,
if the 'small-cottage' scheme was to be a success, only quite trust
worthy poor people, who could be depended upon to perform the
obligations devolving on them, should be selected as home build
ers. The number of applicants having been considerably in excess
of the number of cottages included in the various building opera
tions started so far, no difficulties have been presented in the
selection of the right kind of persons. Preference is as a rule
given to families to whom residence in the garden suburbs would
be of special benefit, such as families with several children of
tender age.
"As a rule the preparatory plans and investigations for the
inception of a small-cottage project will have been started dur
ing the summer of the year preceding the one in which the actual
building is to be carried into effect. After the City Council on
the strength of the reports of the investigations has approved of
the plans and decided on the number of cottages the project shall
embrace, the necessary purchases of materials and agreements
with contractors are concluded during the winter months. Simul
taneously the streets and mains in the new area are laid out.
"The applications received from persons who wish to build
small cottages are as a rule considered during March and the
applicants selected are requested to call at the Bureau for the
desired particulars and the selection of the type of cottage. On
certain days, usually in April, the available sites are shown for
giving the applicants, in the order of application, an opportunity
to select their sites. The official who conducts this showing will
give them the number of the site they have selected on which they
receive an option for one week. If they then call at the Bureau
before the option lapses, sign the agreements required, and pay
the small initial charges and fee they become the possessors of
the site in question with a so-called ground-right. When these
formalities have been concluded the home builders can immedi
ately begin working on their sites under the auspices and control
of the organization the city has established for the project.
"Advice and directions as to how to pursue the work are
248 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
furnished by the city's instructors. They assist the home builder
in determining the profiles showing the exact location of the
cottage and carry out the levelling, thus enabling him to judge
how deeply he has to dig, etc. When materials are required for
making concrete foundation plates and for other extra work he
has merely to give an order to the municipal storehouse (erected
within the new garden suburb) on a form out of his requisition
blanks. If solid rock or boulders are encountered in the course
of the digging, the necessary drilling, blasting and, if so desired
by the home builder, the removal of the stone will be undertaken
by the city. Also, he can obtain assistance from the city if the
ground conditions are so poor that an ordinary foundation re
inforcement under each wall is insufficient. The installation work
to be done by contractors is carried out as the home builder is
ready with his share of the work.
"The work the home builder himself must do is no light
task. Most of the work, by means of which he contributes
capital towards his house consists of comparatively heavy jobs.
For most of the home builders, moreover, it is additional work
after the day's regular duties. To a great extent it must be
performed in the evenings or on Sundays. Nor are all the home
builders fortunate enough to have a fixed summer vacation that
might be devoted to this purpose. Indeed, to many of them
summer is the busy season in their respective trades or employ
ments. This is particularly the case with building workers,
who, however, have a great advantage over the others through
their skill and experience in this kind of work. Another ad
vantage they have is that of being able to exchange work with
Typical view of street and back yards in the Municipal garden suburbs
of Stockholm.
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 249
other building workers, enabling each one to work mainly in his
own trade.
"The home builder must not only do heavy work, he is in
many cases forced to lead a regular camp or settler's life which,
however, is not altogether devoid of charm. This charm is per
haps not quite so apparent to the eager home builder who rushes
out to dig on his plot before the frost has left the ground and
the chill April blasts sweep over the still barren fields. Even
in May while trudging around ankle-deep in the wet clay at
the bottom of his foundation pit the poetry of the enterprise
may not touch him very keenly, not even if the lark has arrived
by that time and is warbling in the sky over his head.
"But by June the real building is well under way and has
put its stamp on the area. There is life and movement over
all the grounds. Most of the home builders have erected tem
porary tool sheds made out of automobile cases and the like
on their plots. In these are very often arrangements for cook
ing, and it is
customary for the whole family to camp out there,
each member doing what he or she can in the way of assistance.
In the beginning of June many cottages are already erected and
under roof and in order to make the best use of the time the
newly erected cottage frequently serves the family as night
shelter from the very beginning. In July and August a good
many cottages are usually so far advanced that the families
can move into them permanently. The sooner the removal can
take place the more quickly the cottage owner can cut the ex
pense of paying rent for his former city tenement. It may be
that the gas range is still missing and the electric light not yet
installed, making the cooking troublesome and necessitating the
evening work to be carried out in the unsatisfactory light offered
by a lantern or oil lamp. But it is safe to say that the spirits
are not dampened by the inconveniences endured during this
period of occupation. To most home builders the reminiscences
of these early troubles will stand out as dear memories of 'the
time when we built the cottage.' By the first of October, which
in Stockholm is the date on which most leases of flats expire,
the majority of the home builders are installed in their new
homes but as a rule the cottages are not quite ready until about
the New Year.
250 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
"According to the agreement with the city the home builders
are required to have the cottages ready for the final inspection
at this time. On condition that surety is given for increased
interest charges, the building time, however, can be prolonged.
One of the reasons why comparatively few builders must request
such prolongation of the building time is the spirit of emulation
which is a notable feature of this kind of cottage building.
"The competitive spirit is already in evidence at the show
ing of the sites on which occasion a whole group of applicants
are conducted over the sites at the same time and it is up to
them to pick the best plots still available. Afterwards the com
petition is continued, but with other goals, such as who will be
the first to get the cottage erected, the first to move into it,
and so on. But it is not exclusively competition in time, it is
also a matter of doing the best job and getting the finest cot
tage, in other words, of outdoing the competitor in the results.
"During the actual building time the spirit of emulation is
undoubtedly an asset of no little importance. It helps the home
builder to buckle down to work when tired or out of spirits. The
families, too, are infected by the spirit of competition between
the different members to contribute as much as possible to the
new home. It should hardly be necessary to refer to the great
influence exercized by the women in the promotion of the scheme,
or to point out that very often indeed the wife is the moving
spirit in the building of the new home. Apart from this allimportant
mental force, the women often contribute a good
deal of actual physical work to the venture by participating in
all kinds of labour.
The Municipal garden suburb of
Olovslund near public park and
pond. The houses with the gambrel
roofs are of an older type.
The Municipal garden suburb of
Olovslund with public school in the
foreground. In the background,
the Municipal garden suburb of
Nockeby.
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 251
"The Small-Cottage Movement does not derive its strength
solely from personal acquisitiveness and it does not only pro
mote egoistic and family feelings. The organization of the
movement is well adapted to open the eyes of the participators
to the importance of cooperation on a large scale. Thus, the
home owners in the small-cottage settlements very quickly form
associations for safeguarding mutual interests. And it seems
only natural that a cottage owner should regard with quite dif
ferent feelings the home he has himself built than a person living
more or less transiently in someone else's house can regard his
place of residence. The influence of the Small-Cottage Move
ment as a social factor is yet to be proved but there is reason to
hope that it will be a means of giving the rootless city popula
tion the firm attachment to the soil and to the community that
it now lacks." Here the quotation from Director Axel Dahlberg's
manuscript ends.
It has been said that American backwardness in low-cost
housing and the slum conditions of modern American cities re
quire a cure different from that of the comparatively medieval
city of Stockholm. There exists, indeed, an important differ
ence. In the matter of real estate, Stockholm has not followed
the naive method of non-interference, which has become the rule
of American cities oblivious of George Washington's urbanistic
teachings. On the contrary, Stockholm has entirely in Wash
ington's spirit (as described here in the First Chapter) in
stalled a Municipal Real Estate Board for the benefit not of the
gamblers in real estate but of the general public. Stockholm
has since 1910 acquired for its housing policy 20,000 acres of
land, largely outside its own city limits, at a cost of about three
cents a square foot. With this large fund of lands the city
has helped to make good housing available for all classes of so
ciety and protected its citizens from too drastic impositions by
realty speculation. Only a small part of the municipal lands
is required for the city's activities in lowest cost housing as is
described in this Chapter.
It would be unjust, however, to overlook the fact that in
the state of New York there also exists an important public
office which deals exclusively with problems of real estate and
attempts to solve them for the public. This office, however, does
252 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
not propose to protect the people from the excesses of real estate
speculation but rather takes care of them after they have been
committed. The office in question is the foreclosure division of
the New York State Mortgage Commission. Its chairman, Mr.
Wendell P. Barker, could recently boast that: "The foreclosure
division probably constitutes the largest foreclosure law office
in the world. Pending in this department at present are about
2,400 foreclosure actions." (Cf. New York Times Real Estate
Section, Feb. 9, 1936.) While the activity of this New York
Office is painfully curative, the work of Stockholm's public real
estate office is fortunately preventive. An ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure.
However, this seemingly fundamental matter of municipal
land ownership should not be over-rated in America. And the
legal situation which makes a similar land policy in American
cities impossible offers no explanation nor excuse for its inac
tivity in housing matters and negligence in the execution of its
duties in regard to the healthy low cost housing of the masses.
Housing reformers who urge American cities to acquire land
in advance of their immediate necessities forget that under the
American system of land taxation, private land ownership is
the goose that lays the golden egg, the goose which would im
mediately die upon too hasty an acquisition by the city. Ameri
can land taxes rise automatically with each rise of private land
values. The city has a first lien upon all private property and
is, so to speak, the preferred proprietor of all the land within
the city limits. That is to say, the American city has a quasiCottage,
type II; cost, 12,000 Kroner Cottage, type V; cost, 9,200 Kronor
or $3000. Total annual expenditure or $2,300. Total annual expenditure
for items (as specified in text, page for items (as specified in text, page
243) is 975 Kronor or $244. 243) is $190.
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 253
ownership of at least the better third part of each lot, or rather
of its value.
This method of land taxation not only makes it easy for the
city to acquire title to land owned by delinquent tax-payers, but
it also makes the city the most powerful potential buyer of any
real estate desired for public purposes. High land taxes force
most land owners to be ready sellers whenever a fair price is
offered. Furthermore, recalcitrant land ownership may be con
demned under the extension of the power of eminent domain by
the new housing legislation. This new rule can, of course, be
come useful only if some fair and realistic method of evaluation
and compensation ultimately takes the place of the older Ameri
can method of paying speculative and fantastic prices to the
expropriated land owner. We will see that such a fairer method
has been instituted in England. It does not permit speculative
prices but pays only for such value of the land as is warranted
by its actual future use, for instance for low cost housing.
In America, the difference in actual land ownership is not a
factor that should make conditions in Stockholm and in Ameri
can cities incomparable, nor should it make the Swedish method
of offering good and economical houses unsuitable for America
emulation.
The latest American legislation which provides federal funds
for the remodeling of old houses and the building of new ones
seems to make possible and invite comprehensive public-housing
schemes modeled on the Swedish pattern. But there is a danger
that whatever American housing construction may effectuate as
a result of these new laws will be scattered in a topsy-turvy fash
ion among older and out-moded suburban developments. There
would be some hope for modern developments worthy of Amer
ica only in an organized flight from the congested urban centers
to safer and more agreeable modes of living not by building
new tenement districts and prospective slums, such as the al
ready too numerous ones of the Bronx and Brooklyn, but by
developing upon well-selected and well-planned sites new types
of light housing which might be as artistic and distinctive as
the present conditions of American education and taste will al
low, and which might be as novel, comfortable, reliable, and in
expensive as the American motor car.
254, CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
Public authorities who desire to advance the cause of re
housing the nation and of stimulating building industries which
have been paralyzed by the depression might well be inspired by
the example of Stockholm and of other European cities where
similar housing procedures have been successful. American mu
nicipalities might offer awards for the best new types of pre
fabricated or semi-prefabricated houses and might encourage
building and loan associations to finance the sale of these truly
modern commodities. American cities might collaborate and
unite their housing policies for the encouragement of competi
tive private industries by guaranteeing large orders for such
new houses. It would require orders of tens and hundreds of
thousands of units to produce comfortable homes at a cost of
from two to three thousand dollars each. But if once such a
vast new industry were started its powerful development would
benefit the whole economic life of the nation and the benefit would
be more substantial and more lasting than that derived from the
LIVING ROOM
iei * FT
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 255
new industries of making radio and air-conditioning apparatus,
or from the resumption of alcohol production. Ideas similar
to these (developed by the author in an article for "Survey
Graphic," Nov. 1934) have, in 1936, received strong endorsement
by the "Home Building Program" of "The Committee for Eco
nomic Recovery" whose Chairman is A. S. Freed. It repre
sents approximately twenty establishments among which are
some as large as the Westinghouse Electric Co. This committee
in a report to President Roosevelt expressed its confidence that
good American homes can be built for as low a price as $2500
provided that such modern building methods are introduced as
are at present still lacking in America. The committee boldly
states that in America "there is no home building industry. One
must be developed if we are to expect a successful program. . . .
One London company builds as many as twenty-one communities
at one time. Several build from five to fifteen, simultaneously."
The beneficent influence such rationalized large building activi
ties has upon the economic recovery of England has been em
phasized in a publication of the New York Trust Company.
"Housing in Great Britain" (cf. "The Index," Feb. 1936). As
has been pointed out previously, housing in England is subject
to climatic and traditional conditions which are different from
those of the United States and Sweden. This will be dealt with
in one of the first Chapters of the Second volume of this publi
cation.
One may here conclude by reminding the reader of the fact
that in designing beautiful new garden cities to accommodate
the new type of semi-prefabricated house, most American mu
nicipalities would have to revise completely their building codes
and zoning ordinances. At present building regulations like
those of New York City make an advance into new fields dif
ficult and even impossible.
The obvious criticism housing reformers may make of the
Stockholm Small-Cottage plan is that it burdens the man having
a small income which under the present industrial conditions
is necessarily insecure. This burden is the responsibility of
owning a home and the confinement to some definite place when
the possibility of change in accordance with the economic needs
of the home-owner would be more advantageous. The answer
256 CITY PLANNING AND HOUSING
to this criticism, in turn, may be that as long as the combined
charges which the home-owner must carry are not greater than
the rent he previously paid for a tenement in a congested part
of the city, he would not be the loser even if he had to abandon
his cottage without finding a buyer. As has been mentioned
before, however, such buyers, in Stockholm, could always be
found. Furthermore, it would not be difficult to organize a
system, for example, one taking the form of a large cooperative
building and loan association, which would guarantee a fair pur
chasing price to each home-owner compelled to move to another
section of the country. In this connection the elaborate system
of the exchange of dwellings developed during the severe German
housing shortage immediately following the World War might
profitably be studied.
Another answer to the criticism just mentioned is the fol
lowing: new cottage areas should, of course, not be laid out
in a haphazard fashion, but rather in strict conformity with
a carefully considered state or regional plan for the healthy
and economic redistribution of industry. The prospective owners
of cottages in these new and coming districts would, therefore,
have the greatest possible opportunity for proximity to the
most promising new centers of employment.
We have too often been told that the pioneer in America
is a thing of the past. This may be an error. There is indeed,
no little evidence that the possibilities of pioneering which are
supposed to have vanished into the Pacific Ocean with the
conquest of the West have reappeared in the immediate vicinity
of every large city. Between New York and Philadelphia
tracts of waste land are said to be available for approximately
$50 per acre. Experts assure us that modern chemistry and
agronomy can, with an additional outlay of $150 per acre,
transform these deserts into fertile land. It is here that some
thing analogous to Lincoln's Homestead Act in semi-urbanized
proportions, influenced, possibly, by the Stockholm example,
might become effective. Lincoln's Homestead Act did not solve
all the urban and social problems of his time but it was a potent
factor contributing to that greatly admired equilibrium which
one likes to consider as being characteristic of "OUE AMERICA"
before 1893.
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER 257
It seems that one of the most salient objectives of modern
city, state and national planning should be to provide a new
and adequate kind of homestead for every city dweller who
wishes to move into new surroundings and who is desirous and
seems capable of sustaining the yearly financial charges which
can liquidate such an establishment without unduly burdening
the general tax payer. The Stockholm plan seems to have
proved that under far-sighted management such a solution is
economically expedient. And this task of meeting such annual
obligations, it may be repeated, can be facilitated by strate
gically locating the new homestead districts in the immediate
vicinity of the coming centers of a wisely redistributed industry.
The Stockholm housing activities will be fully illustrated
by many large photographs and plans in the atlas in prepara
tion.
PUBLISHERS ANNOUNCEMENTS OF OTHER BOOKS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE AMERICAN VITRUVIUS, an ARCHITECT'S HANDBOOK of
CIVIC ART
by WERNER HEGEMANN and ELBERT PEETS. Folio, 300 pages of
text with 1200 illustrations.
THE ARCHITECTURAL BOOK PUBLISHING CO., NEW YORK.
Garden Cities and Town Planning Journal, London: Undoubtedly this is the
most ambitious work on town-planning, both in size and richness of contents,
that has come into our hands ... it is a kind of encyclopaedia of townplanning
from ancient to modern times.
Journal of Proceedings of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, Mel
bourne: It is impossible to conceive of a more comprehensive or illuminating
volume upon the subject; whilst the sumptuousness of its production in letter
press and illustrations is in line with highest craftsmanship ... Of keenly
observant intellect, the authors' powers of analysis are exceptionally great,
and their painstaking equally so, and one wishes a summary of many of their
remarks could appear in a far less costly edition and be circulated widely . . .
The authors are undoubtedly masters of Garden Art, and supply a series
of splendid plates to emphasise their convictions.
Town Planning Review, Liverpool: The finest collection of town planning
views, elevations and sketches that has yet been got together . . . The text
is full of vivid and interesting comments.
GOTHENBURG 1923. International Cities and Town Planning Exhibition.
The English catalogue; 390- pages, 400 illustrations. Published by the
Municipality of Gothenburg.
Raymond Unwin in "Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects,"
London: It was a fortunate circumstance that Dr. Hegemann with his en
cyclopaedic knowledge of town planning work, and his experience of former
exhibitions, enriched by some years of life in America, was available to con
tribute to the informal discussions, and produce the catalogue.
FACADES OF BUILDINGS: Fronts of Old and Modern Business and
Dwelling Houses.
E. Benn Limited, London, 1929.
The Architect, London: Dr. Hegemann is renowned one might almost say
notorious as a critic who combines fearlessness with considerable knowledge
and erudition. He respects neither period nor person. His principal con
clusions are eminently sound and form the basis for a badly-needed enquiry
into street proportions.
REPORT ON A CITY PLAN FOR THE MUNICIPALITIES OF OAK
LAND AND BERKELEY, 1915. Published by the municipalities and
several civic clubs.
Charles Mulford Robinson in the "National Municipal Review": The most
elaborate single publication of the year among city planning reports is Dr.
Hegemann's Report on a City Plan for the Municipalities of Oakland and
Berkeley. Americans must grant that the report is of great excellence
PUBLISHERS' ANNOUNCEMENTS
surprising in its combination of breadth of scope and thoroughness of treat
ment.
Dr. Frederic C. Howe, author of "The City: The Hope of Democracy": Dr.
Hegemann's report on a city plan for Oakland and Berkeley treats in a
thorough and authoritative manner all the essential features of the subject.
It is full of sound, practical advice and feasible suggestions. Based as it is
on a long and intensive study of the conditions and needs of these cities and
reflecting the author's wide knowledge of town-planning development in
Europe and America, the report contains the sanest and most pertinent sort
of constructive criticism.
DER STAEDTEBAU NACH DEN ERGEBNISSEN DER ALLGEMEINEN
STAEDTEBAU-AUSSTELLUNG IN BERLIN UND DUESSELDORF,
1910.
Two volumes; 425 illustrations. Published by Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin, 1911
and 1913.
The official report of the results of the two first international city planning
exhibitions of Europe. The first volume was republished, including addi
tions, in 1930 with the title: Das Steinerne Berlin; Geschichte der groessten
Mietkasernen-Stadt der Welt.
Professor Patrick Oeddes in "Cities in Evolution" London, 1915: Of foreign
manuals Dr. Werner Hegemann's two volumes "Der Staedtebau" may be
especially recommended.
The Journal of the American Institute of Architects, Washington: City
planning exhibits are generally prepared for the purpose of educating public
opinion and rendering possible the comparison of essentials. The subjects
dealt with, however, are so complicated, so difficult for the ordinary public
to understand, and so subject to difference of opinion that no exhibit renders
full service to the community, or to the world at large, unless its various
departments and individual charts and maps are weighed in the balance of
expert knowledge, and with a proper understanding of the local conditions
which have called forth their creation. This Dr. Hegemann accomplishes in
his work. His book represents an impartial and critical interpretation of the
value of past and existing plans, and their social, economic and esthetic
significance. It must be conceded that the author has mastered his subject.
From Schmoller's Yearbook, a leading German periodical for Political
Economy: The author has written a most excellent work on city planning in
Berlin, and on city planning, housing and land problems in general. By its
abundance of evidence, clearness of judgment and captivating eloquence the
book compels the reader's sympathy and action.
OUR SERIES ON Civic ART, CITY PLANNING AND
HOUSING CONSISTS OF FOUR BOOKS :
The Encyclopedic Volume:
THE AMERICAN VITRUVIUS
AN ARCHITECT'S HANDBOOK OF
CIVIC ART
By WERNER HEGEMANN and ELBERT PEETS
"Undoubtedly this is the most ambitious work on town
planning, both in size and richness of content . . .
an encyclopaedia of town-planning from ancient
to modern times" Garden Cities and Town Plan
ning Journal London
300 pages, 12 x 16 inches, of text and 1200 illustrations,
handsomely bound in buckram. Price, $40.00
And the three supplementary volumes:
CITY PLANNING-HOUSING
By WERNER HEGEMANN
First Volume of Text. HISTORICAL AND SOCIOLOGI
CAL. The volume within this cover.
Second Volume of Text. POLITICAL ECONOMY AND
civic ART. With a chapter on the recent de
velopments in Washington, D. C. by Elbert
Peets. In preparation.
Third Volume. This will be an atlas volume, size
12 x 16 inches, containing large photographs
and plans of the most interesting developments
in recent city planning, housing, and public
works executed since the publication of the first
large volume: The American Vitruvius, An
Architect's Handbook of Civic Art.
ARCHITECTURAL BOOK PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.