he can, no doubt. They
were too high always, for what they bought. In the case of the builder
the state can add force to persuasion, and so urge him along the path of
righteousness. When it comes to the rent collector the case is
different. It may yet be necessary for the municipality to enter the
field as a competing landlord on the five-per-cent basis; but I would
rather we, as a community, learned first a little more of the art of
governing ourselves without scandal. With Tammany liable to turn up at
any moment--no, no! Political tenements might yet add a chapter to the
story of our disgrace to make men weep. I have not forgotten the use
Tammany made of the people's baths erected in the Hamilton Fish Park on
the East Side--the Ham-fish, locally. They were shut from the day
they were opened, I came near saying; I mean from the day they should
have been opened; and two stalwart watchmen drew salaries for sitting in
the door to keep the people out. That was a perfectly characteristic use
of the people's money, and is not lightly to be invited back. Rather
wait awhile yet, and see what our bridges and real rapid transit, and
the "philanthropy and five per cent" plan, will do for us. When that
latter has been grasped so by the tenant that a little extra brass and
plate-glass does not tempt him over into the enemy's camp, the usurious
rents may yet follow the double-decker, as they have clung to it in the
past.

But if the city may not be the landlord of tenements, I have often
thought it might with advantage manage them to the extent of building
them to contain so many tenements on basis of air space, and no more.
The thing was proposed when the tenement house question first came up
for discussion, but was dropped then. The last Tenement House Commission
considered it carefully, but decided to wait and see first how the new
department worked. The whole expense of that, with its nearly two
hundred inspectors, might easily be borne by the collection of a license
fee so small that even the tenement house landlord could not complain.
Lodging houses are licensed, and workshops in the tenements likewise,
to secure efficient control of them. If that is not secured in the case
of the workshops, as it is not, it is no fault of the plan, but of the
working out of it. I do not expect the licensing of tenements to dispose
of all the evils in them. No law or system will ever do that. But it
ought to make it easier to get the grip on t