Q. And you have made a study of tenement house conditions and their inspection in this city? A. For twenty years past.

Q. And you are familiar with the whole subject of inspection of factories and mercantile buildings? A. I wouldn't say the whole subject, but I am pretty familiar with the subject.

Q. You acted as one of the Advisory Committee in codifying the law and you have studied these subjects very carefully? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Mr. Veiller, you have studied this questionnaire issued by the Commission and we would be very glad to have your views upon the whole subject with such facts or suggestions as you want to give us from your knowledge and experience on the subject? A. Mr. Chairman, I would like to touch on some of the subjects that have been discussed by some of the previous wit

nesses.

Q. Take it up in your own way. A. In the first place I want to congratulate the Commission in taking up this question. I think it is a very important and timely question, and there is undoubtedly a good deal of basis on the part of the property owner for complaint and criticism. On the other hand I want

to emphasize the point of view which Commissioner Lynch brought out when he testified this morning, and which Commissioner Murphy has just called attention to, namely, that there is probably a great deal of this criticism and complaint that is due to a disinclination on the part of property owners to comply with the factory laws, and it isn't so much that there is any conflict or that there are unnecessary orders as that they object very naturally to spending money on improving their property and to be called upon to comply with provisions of laws many of which have been on the statute books for twenty or thirty years, and they never have had to comply with them before. This Commission, as it is plainly intending to do, should thoroughly sift out all that and get right down to bed rock to find out by specific cases just what the difficulty is. There is no other way. Hot air will not help you a bit, but you should have the exact, specific cases, the actual orders that have been issued to every property owner from various city and State departments where there is

conflict or where departments piece-meal one order, setting aside the other. I suggest as a practical way of doing that that this Commission issue a letter of invitation to every factory owner and tenant in the City of New York besides having that published in the news papers and have it published in such organs as the Real Estate Record and Guide, which many of them are reading very carefully, inviting property owners to transmit to you in writing, not to take the time to come to you at a public hearing, because many of them will not take the time.

Q. We have done that very thing? A. Then you have done what I suggest.

Q. We thought we gave it pretty wide publicity and we asked that the information be sent to the Commission, not asking them to come here, and as I said this morning, perhaps you were not here when I said it, we received no response whatever; not a single complaint was sent to us; up to this time we haven't receivevd a single complaint of a specific instance? A. I think you will find when you get right down to the basic facts that there are very few specific instances where there have been conflicting orders. The next point I should like to call to your attention is that you should distinguish very carefully between multiplicity of inspections of the same building and conflict. Now if anyone has the idea that in a city of five million inhabitants, like the City of New York, with the diversified classes of buildings we have here you can do away with multiplicity of inspections he might as well forget that right now; as long as you have these regulative statutes and the necessity for them you are bound to have a number of inspectors going into the same building. I would like to illustrate that briefly. Let's take the case of the Building Department, one single department. There isn't a building put up in the City of New York to-day of any size where there are not three different inspectors going into that building from the Building Department alone, and there can not be anything different because the building trade is so highly specialized an industry that inspectors who have to inspect the construction of buildings have to be just as highly specialized. Now in an ordinary office building or hotel more than three different inspectors do go there from the Building Department, a

plumbing inspector, and an iron and steel man, and an ordinary general district inspector, and you cannot hire, you cannot employ, the State of New York cannot get men who can do both the iron and steel inspection and the plumbing and they cannot get men who can do the plumbing and the ordinary district work.

Q. How about elevator inspectors? A. They have a host of others. I am giving the three main ones. Then they take the ordinary district inspectors and specialize on fire escapes. They have a small squad, because for the very reason that it has been found that division of labor is advantageous and the inspection department has found it advantageous.

Q. And it is not given to any one man to know all? A. No, sir.

Q. And that is in one department? A. Three or four in one department. You cannot do anything else, and I am quite sure if you get Mr. Miller or Mr. Carlin on the stand they will tell you the same thing. The good inspector must be a practical man to inspect iron and steel. He must have worked on it. A mar cannot tell whether a joint is wiped properly unless he has wiped a joint. He cannot tell whether pipes are trapped properly unless he has been in the plumbing trade, so that I think the Commission should know in these main departments it is humanly impossible to do away with the multiplicity of inspections. Now the thing they ought to set themselves to do, and ask themselves is this: Are there two inspectors or more going to one building about the same subject-matter and giving orders about that same thing. If that is so, that ought to be stopped. That is absolutely unnecessary. In other words, if the fire prevention bureau goes into a building and gives an order about exits, and the Labor Department goes into that factory and gives an order about the same kind of exits that should be stopped, and you can devise a way of stopping that, and I believe there is conflict between the three different departments, the Labor Department, the Fire Prevention Bureau, and the Building Department, the Building Department chiefly in new buildings and the other two chiefly in old buildings, and the method of eliminating that conflict is a very big question. It is very easy to say this is unnecessary, but when you come down to providing a constructive scheme that

will not be too expensive and that will work and make for efficiency, it is more difficult. If you want that kind of suggestion I will make one for what it is worth. It is like all mens' opinions, only worth what opinions are worth. It seems a little radical at first, but my suggestion is this: I think we can assume safely you are always going to have a Tenement House Department in the city of New York, in view of the fact that you have 100,000 tenement houses, and that is a big enough job for one city department to regulate. I think with the recent trend we can safely assume there is always going to be a Fire Prevention Bureau or similar bureau, that is some department, that is going to make it its business to prevent fires. We will always have that in the city, and of course we must also assume that there is always going to be a Health Department. Now, if we admit these three assumptions my suggestion is for you to consider whether we cannot get back to the conditions we had in this city some years ago and restore to the Fire Department most of the jurisdiction which the Building Department now exercises. If we did that we would have no conflict between the Building Department and the Fire Prevention Bureau, as there would be but one department. That is not a new idea.

Q. I asked a question about that this morning? A. I think it would be interesting to tell you the history of our Building Department. Up to 1844 in New York City the building laws were enforced by the fire wardens. They were political appointees. The division was a political one. Then in 1844 the fire wardens were abolished and the work was put into the police department. Even then they talked of socializing the police. In 1849 they took away those powers from the police department and put them into the fire department, vesting the powers of building inspection in the assistant engineers. They stayed there for thirteen years. The fire department did all the building inspection of the city for all those thirteen years. Then in 1862 they created a new department known as the department for the survey and inspection of buildings, whose chief function was to do very much what the Building Department is doing to-day, and they also went around and looked after the old buildings and had them improved from the point of view of safety and fire danger. There it staid for

eighteen years, until 1880. Then the Building Department was again abolished and the functions were put back in the Fire Department, where they staid until 1892, for twelve years more. Then, in 1892, they were taken out of the Fire Department, a new department of buildings was again created, and they staid there for ten years. Then, in 1902, they broke up the centralized building department and created a bureau of buildings under each borough president. That, in a word, is the history of the building department of the city of New York, and my suggestion is a radical one, but I think a practical one, and if you will analyze the building laws and you eliminate plumbing, which should be in the health department where it was until 1892, and where it is in most cities, if you will eliminate that and then analyze the building laws you will find there is nothing in them that isn't a fire regulation - the thickness of walls, the distance of beams. on centers, the bearing of a beam on a wall, are all from the point of view of making the building safer in case of fire.

Q. In many of the cities up the State the fire marshal decides? A. Yes, sir; and throughout the United States. Now you may ask why do you suggest abolishing the Building Department and merging this into the Fire Department? Forf two reasons; first, to abolish conflict. You might say, why not abolish the Fire Prevention Bureau and put it in the Building Department? I will answer that. The man who is to administer the department must have wide experience to administer the laws he is to administer. Now the building inspector never goes into a building after it is occupied with the exception of an unsafe building which may be in danger of falling and injuring the passer-by. The ordinary building inspector does not go in it after it is occupied. He does not see the dangerous conditions. The fireman, however, is in the building whenever there is a fire. The opportunity is there for him to know how every building in his district is constructed. That knowledge may mean the saving of the lives at a fire of a company of firemen.

The department in the long run that is best fitted to enforce any given set of laws is that department the officials of which have a direct incentive constantly to enforce such laws for the benefit of the community. For this reason our Building Laws should be enforced by the Fire Department and by the Health