Rapid Transit: Its Effect on Rents and Living Conditions and how to Get it

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Committee on Congestion of Population, 1909 - Local transit - 15 pages
 

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Page 5 - In brief, although the laboring man in New York is paying more for rent than he can afford, a bigger share of his income than in any other part of any other city known, though he is actually going without food to get shelter, yet he is housed in such narrow, stifling quarters as to make decency and the rearing of good citizens well-nigh impossible.
Page 6 - rapid transit is not chiefly a financial problem; it is a social problem. It is a question not of dollars, but of human lives.
Page 4 - ... hygiene; and hygiene is less a science than a virtue. Temperance and labor are the two real physicians of man; labor sharpens his appetite, and temperance prevents him from abusing it. Men were not made to be massed together in herds, but to be scattered over the earth which they are to cultivate. The more they herd together the more they corrupt one another. Infirmities of the body, as well as evils of the soul, are the inevitable effect of this over-accumulation. Man is of all animals the one...
Page 3 - ... in America. Numerous efforts have been made to solve this question. The estimate of the Bureau of Statistics of Massachusetts is $754.* The Charity Organization Society of Buffalo regards $634 a year as the "lowest tolerable budget which will allow the bare decencies of life for a family of five.
Page 14 - ... which would not be a lien upon the city, but upon the property assessed. The only objection to this method is the comparative difficulty the marketing of these bonds would present. With an inter-municipal bank this difficulty would be obviated.
Page 3 - Rapid Transit : Its Effect on Rents and Living Conditions and How to Get It.
Page 4 - ... per cent four lodgers. Thus, counting two children under twelve as equivalent to one adult, onesixth of the rooms in these Italian quarters were found to be housing as many as four adults each. With such pestilent conditions, not mitigated, as they were in the old country, by life in the open air and the free circulation of the winds around the dwelling, no wonder that the average death rate in special blocks ran as high as 24.9 and 24.5 though the average death rate for the city is 18.33. The...
Page 10 - ... sufficient to pay interest on the city's investment. Why, therefore, could not the city accept a proposition from a private corporation to build at its own expense, a subway which shall belong to the city but which the corporation shall have the right to use and which it shall agree to equip and operate, provided the city shall contribute towards cost of operation such amount as shall be necessary to yield a certain net return upon the cost?
Page 9 - As this money was not raised by means of the City's credit the interest charge may be taken at 6% per annum, as this is about as low as money usually costs a private corporation after paying brokerage and other expenses incidental to securing it. On the basis of 50.000,000 car miles, this interest charge upon equipment amounts to 3 cents per car mile. This interest charge is upon the cost of the power plant, substations, electrical distribution systems, signal system, rolling stock and the repair...
Page 10 - ... the question of what may be best for the citv at large, admits the logical conclusion that where demands for public welfare render impossible a reasonable return upon the investment, the city should make good the deficiency. While at first this suggestion may create strong antagonism, adverse opinion...

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