floor was divided into two long narrow apartments, the effective width of each of which could only be 12 feet, less what was required for the width of walls and partitions. The original law, by its prescribed court areas, prevented this type of tenement on the 25-foot lot, but permitted on such a lot a front and rear arrangement, that is, one apartment in front occupying the entire front, and another in the rear occupying the entire rear. Such an arrangement was usual in the tall tenements of Manhattan, except that there were ordinarily four on a floor, two of which opened to the front and two of which opened to the rear. The tenement dwellers of Manhattan were quite accustomed to it, and the rents of the rear apartments differed only by one or two dollars from the rents of the front apartments.

If the same social habits had existed in Brooklyn as in Manhattan, the new-law house, with its two apartments on a floor, one at the front and one at the rear, with a maximum space given up to rooms and a minimum space to passageways, would have seemed preferable to the tenant from the point of view of convenience and comfort, and preferable to the builder on the score of economic construction. But the desire of the Brooklyn tenement dweller to have one room open on the street, whether it had its origin in good reason, or merely in obstinate habit, was a stubborn fact in the situation. It was urged that the rear apartments in the proposed new-law houses would not be rentable, because no tenant who took a rear apartment would stand on a plane of social equality with the tenant who took a front apartment, and that this inequality of social scale would virtually prevent the house being occupied. Tenants would not rent the front apartment of such houses because they would not wish to associate with those who rented the rear. Tenants would not rent the rear apartment because they would thereby put themselves in a position of social inferiority to those who rented the front. It would not seem as if there should be inherently any such objection to rear apartments. True, if yards were ill kept, and the rear of opposite buildings objectionable, there would be a real disadvantage in living at the rear; but if, on the other hand, yards were well kept, and particularly if there were some concerted action between owners on the same block to make the rears of their houses sightly, the rear apart ments might have a better outlook, and be quieter than those on the front.

That these considerations, whether founded on desire reasonable or unreasonable, or on fixed habit, were real and entitled to weight, is evidenced by the fact that practically no tenements of the front and rear variety have been built in Brooklyn, whereas a very large number have been built of a modified type with apartments running

through from front to rear, but with a substantial interior court made obligatory by the amended law.

Tenement law must recognize social desires and social habits, whether reasonable or unreasonable. They are factors to be dealt with quite as substantial as those which take more material form.

In the class of amendments which were founded on the further adaptation of the principles on which the law was framed, are those which have diminished the amount of fireproof construction in the three and four story tenement.

The original law, which for the first time in the city of New York properly recognized the fundamental principle of variation according to height, made no recognition of this principle in the fireproof construction of stairs and stair halls. This was to be the same whatever the height of the tenement under six stories, and above this height the whole tenement was to be fireproof.

The cost of three and four story tenements was thus increased to an appreciable amount.

It was urged that this increased cost made such tenements commercially unprofitable, or, if commercially profitable, it would only be by increasing the rents proportionately, which would be a hardship to the tenant.

It was also urged that the risk of loss of life from fire was proportionately less as the house was decreased in height.

Another argument strongly presented was that every encouragement should be given to the building of low, as distinguished from high, tenements, by decreasing their cost, because they militated against overcrowding in any particular area.

Regard was had to these considerations. By the amendments of 1902 the fireproof requirements for three-story tenements were radically and unnecessarily diminished. By the amendments of the following year, a semi-fireproof construction was permitted in fourstory houses, and the fireproof requirements of three-story houses partly restored, but made less in degree than those for four-story houses.

The logical solution for such questions will always consist in some line of equilibrium between a higher standard of construction, whether from a fireproof or sanitary point of view, with a higher rent, and a lower standard of construction, with a lower rent, and different considerations may properly govern its solution according as the question relates to such matters as fireproofing, which concern not only the inmates of that house, but the neighboring community.

Any standard of construction, however, whether it relates to protection from fire or protection from disease, or to more comfort and convenience, will always be a shifting one, and fortunately for

the future welfare of our people, will always be a higher one. Its rapid and steady rise is most encouraging.

The present tenement law, with universal approbation, not only requires running water in every apartment in all tenements but that every apartment in a new tenement shall have its own private watercloset. It is but a few years ago that the most wealthy church corporation in New York, representing a Protestant body holding most progressive views of social reform, sought to defeat in the courts such a modest provision of the tenement law as the requirement of running water in the halls, when the expense of making this small improvement, so vital from the point of view of health as well as convenience, was admittedly only $100. In the light of present day uplifting, such an attitude on the part of a religious society, even in the remote past, seems inconceivable. The most grasping owner of a small tenement, who is seeking to squeeze as much profit out of his tenants as possible, would hesitate to take it at the present day.

Another illustration of the raising of standard is found in the evolution of the water-closet in tenement houses. It is not many years since the only equipment of the low grade tenements in this particular was the old-fashioned privy, and up to 1890, only thirteen years ago, the Board of Health was ordering out privies and permitting the substitution of the so-called "school sink," a modified form of privy, in which fecal matter was discharged into a trough, and that trough was flushed at intervals with water into the connecting sewer.

The present law abolishes "school sinks," once a permissible, though objectionable, substitute for the more objectionable privy, and prescribes in all old tenements not less than one water-closet for every two families, and in new tenements requires a separate water-closet in every apartment.

The most encouraging evidence of progress, however, is not that the law compels these improvements, but that tenants demand them, and are quite ready to pay increased rents for apartments which contain them.

Some months since, a Jewish real estate operator called at the Tenement House Department, and filed plans for the alteration of an old tenement to conform to the new law, by putting in separate water-closets, opening windows into interior rooms, and lighting the previously dark halls. It developed in conversation that he had just bought the house as a speculation, but only after having first visited all the tenants and ascertained that they were each willing to pay a considerable increase in rent if these new conveniences were put in.

A tenement law stands on a firm basis when landlords find it is profitable to build and alter in accordance with its provisions.

The most difficult task which confronts tenement reform in New York is undoubtedly to make these old houses conform to the new law. Not that the enforcement of the law in any particular house, or in any small group of houses, is difficult, but that the number of houses is so great and the mere labor of inspection and reinspection so extensive.

Even though it has been demonstrated again and again that these alterations, by decreasing vacancies and increasing rent, pay a very large interest on their cost, so that many are voluntarily making the changes without any order from the department, the alterations. proceed very slowly.

Moreover, there is a sullen opposition on the part of many house owners to any interference with what they claim to be their property rights, in compelling them to make these changes at their own expense. They are quite ready to admit that the present construction of their houses is unsanitary, and that for the sake of the community, as well as of their inmates, they should be altered over. They reason, however, that because their houses were lawfully constructed under the laws in force at the time of their erection, or perhaps in the absence of any regulation, they should be deemed lawful now, and that any alteration made now, for the benefit either of their inmates or of the public at large, should be paid for from the city treasury.

It is not strange that many of them should take this attitude. The extent of the police power of the State to enforce sanitary changes at the expense of landowners, though settled now, has been a subject of much litigation in the past. Such landlords forget that they, or their predecessors in ownership, have for a long time held their property subject to this right on the part of the community to protect itself, and that the possibility of new changes being required by the community for its protection has been one element in determining the price at which such property has been bought and sold.

The difficulty of enforcing the law, however, as respects alterations to old tenements, where there must be inspection and reinspection, and conference it may be, between the owner and department as to the details of each alteration, is offset by the ease with which compliance has been secured with other features of the law, when the mere existence of adequate penalties readily enforcible by a vigilant city department has sufficed, in most instances, to secure obedience.

Among these is the one which prevents the occupation of a new tenement until after a certificate of completion is obtained from the department. Under the old law, without such a provision, hardly a tenement was completed in conformity to law. Under the new law,

with this provision, all new tenements are being completed in full accordance with the law, without any excessive burden of inspection. Builders know that they cannot bring tenants into their new houses until they are made to conform to the law in all particulars.

One of the chief problems of any tenement house law is in adapting it to the differing conditions of different parts of our cities, which vary all the way from crowded sections in which land values are so high that only tall buildings can be profitable, to country districts in which land is so cheap that it is only adapted to the two or three story frame house. The law must necessarily affect all parts of a city alike, but the degree and extent of regulation should vary according as it is to affect such dissimilar conditions.

It is not in tenement law alone that this difficulty of adaptation exists. It exists in the other regulations of modern cities. It is increased as each large city in turn is competing in size with its neighbors by including country property within its corporate limits.

A familiar illustration is that of fixing fire limits, beyond which no wooden building can be afterward erected. The older parts of our cities readily adapt themselves to this restriction. Wooden buildings still exist in the most crowded sections of old New York, but they are a detriment to the land on which they stand, and a menace to adjacent property, so that no one thinks it a hardship to prevent their future erection. Not so, however, in other boroughs. Even the larger part of Brooklyn, great city as it was before its consolidation with New York, is still outside of fire limits; and the line at which the advancing fire limit is drawn, whatever it be, is sure to be a line of hardship to some property owners who cannot make their land productive because they can no longer build the cheaper wooden houses. This difficulty is inherent; it is not entirely surmountable. Its nearest solution in tenement house law lies in the adoption of the principle of height as the determining factor.

It was the difficulty of adapting the original law in all particulars to the varying conditions of the city, suburban, and country sections of Greater New York which led to its more important amendments; and if any further amendments be needed, their reason will undoubtedly be found in the necessity for some further, and perhaps more delicate, adjustment of the law for these same reasons.

In more crowded city districts, land so invariably increases in value that low buildings cease to be profitable, and tall buildings, perforce, take their place. The tenements in such parts of the city require the largest open space for light, and the most approved incombustible material for fire protection.

On the other hand, such tall tenements cannot be profitably built