in the city of New York directing their attention to their risks? A. No, I haven't heard of that. Q. Do you believe that the Fire Prevention Bureau is maintained more for the benefit of the insurance companies and the property hazards than the life hazards? A. I think the efforts of the Fire Prevention Bureau are more to save property than to save life. I think from the very beginning Mr. Johnson instituted it with the idea that it was to save property and incidentally, of course, to save life, but the property hazard was stated as the great hazard in the city. Q. The Fire Prevention Bureau, so far as you know, never issues any orders affecting fire escapes? A. All the orders I have had were for sprinklers or for tanks. Mr. ELKUS: I think they do issue orders. Commissioner MCGUIRE: I have never heard of any. If they have issued orders were they in relation to the enclosure of stair cases? Mr. DOYLE: No, none to me. All my orders have been sprinklers or tanks or fire drills or fire alarms. That is about all. Q. Then really the orders issued out of the Fire Prevention Bureau so far as you have been able to observe are mostly directed at the property hazard? A. Yes. By Commissioner JACKSON: Q. Mr. Doyle, in answer to a question of Commissioner McGuire I understood you to say that the Labor Department had ordered fire escapes down provided they were required means of exit ? · A. I think those orders are from the Fire Prevention Bureau. Q. Not from the Labor Department? A. I think not. I don't remember I don't know them it seems to me I have had orders where there were fire escapes in the rear and there was a required exit in the front, or where there was a three feet wide through passage or fireproof passageway say from the rear to the front the fire-escape was ordered closed or taken down. Q. Isn't it near a fact that the Labor Department might have said that they did not care what was done with the fire escape so long as the required means of exit was maintained inside of the building? Mr. ELKUS: What they did say was that these fire escapes could stay there if they made them safe. Mr. DOYLE: I have orders to take down fire escapes. Mr. ELKUS: They finally said they could stay there if they were made safe. By Mr. ELKUS: Q. Now what do you suggest now, Mr. Doyle; are you in favor of consolidation of these departments into one? A. I am in favor of having one department of buildings in charge not of housekeeping but with everything to do with the alteration or construction of buildings. If I had my own way about it I would have that a central department. Q. City department or borough department? A. City department with deputies in each borough, but that bill you could not get through and I think it is best under the circumstances to compromise with the Borough Presidents. Q. Then you are in favor of the tentatively proposed plan? A. I am in favor of the proposed plan with such a change. I do not think you can beat the Borough Presidents. By Commissioner JACKSON: Q. You would not be in favor of anything that would lessen the protection now thrown around workers in factory buildings, would you? A. No, the housekeeping and all of that I think should be left with the State Labor Department in the factories and I think what they have done has been excellently done but I do not think they ought to have to do with structural changes in this city. By Mr. ELKUS: Q. Where there is a building department in the city you think that ought to be transferred to the building department. A. Absolutely. Q. You know in several of the other parts of the State they have no building department? A. Then it should be under the State. Labor Department. By Mr. HELMS: Q. Are you in favor of the Board of Appeals? A. I am in favor of retaining the present Board of Examiners. That really is one of the most efficient bodies in the city of New York and one to whom we can always go and get absolute justice. By Mr. ELKUS: Q. That board is selected now by certain organizations who have had that power for a number of years; I suppose you would like to see that power extended? A. Yes, I would. By Mr. HELMS: Q. Outside of political expediency do you think that there is any serious objection to the borough departments? A. There are reasons for and reasons against borough departments. The reasons for are, it is always best if you can get a board closer to the people and yet sometimes it has turned out badly. Q. Has not previous experience shown that the central department has turned out badly? A. Well, yes, in some ways. By Mr. ELKUS: Q. We have had a central Fire Department? A. The central Fire Department has turned out all right. Q. And Health Department? A. Yes, and the Police Depart ment. By Mr. HELMS: Q. As far as this proposed law is concerned? A. The Health Department has not turned out well. A year ago the Health De partment ordered that all manure should be removed from the farms in the suburban boroughs every twenty-four hours and various other orders were issued showing a lack of knowledge of local conditions. Mr. O'BRIEN: Can you see any analogy between the Police Department and these other departments we have been talking of? Mr. DOYLE: No. Mr. JOHN W. MOORE (Superintendent of Buildings for the Mr. ELKUS: Go right ahead Mr. Moore. Mr. MOORE: I will be very brief about the general proposition. I am in favor of the consolidation of all of these departments but I believe they ought to be under the borough president for the same reasons as stated by our borough president this morning, with one additional statement that he did not make and that is this, that there is no overlapping of authority between the two boroughs and that is what brought about this investigation that was the elemental point that started this matter. There has been no case and there can possibly be no case in which the Borough of Queens overlaps Manhattan, Brooklyn or any other place. That point was also made by Borough President Marks. The point I want to make particularly is the question of unifying the rules in the various building departments. I believe that first of all the five superintendents should constitute a board that would elect a chairman and be required to meet at stated intervals for the purpose of establishing rules such as standard forms of application and things of that kind that are going to be used in all of the boroughs and they should be obliged to meet every week or every two weeks. Now the five superintendents up to probably the first of the year 1913 endeavored to carry out that policy in an informal way and they met regularly in the office of one of the superintendents and finally one superintendent got a notion in his head that it was time wasted and he turned his back on the whole proposition and we went there twice after and finally we transferred the meetings to another borough and the four that were in the meeting continued to meet until the first of the year and we got along and cut out a lot of objectionable stuff in that way in at least four boroughs. Now the other point is, the Board of Examiners. It would be a mistake to interfere with that proposition. The Board of Examiners today are the best body that can hear appeals and there has been no time since they were organized that the same conditions did not prevail. Mr. ELKUS: Who appoints them today? Mr. MOORE: The Mayor appoints them. Mr. FRANKLIN: No, they are appointed by the Board of Fire Underwriters. The CHAIRMAN: You mean they are recommended by them. Mr. FRANKLIN: They are confirmed by the Mayor. Mr. ELKUS: They are nominated by the Mayor. Mr. MOORE: If that be the case I would recommend a change and I would require that those various organizations submit names. and let the Mayor make his appointments from those names. The CHAIRMAN: As a matter of fact you could not do it any other way; it would be unconstitutional. By Mr. ELKUS: Q. This redraft is practically the same with a few additions? A. You in your redraft make the Board of Standards and the Board of Appeals one body. I think they should not be; and I also call your attention to one provision incorporated in your draft in which you say that the owner of a building may submit his plans to the Board of Standards and Appeals and get their decision on them and then go back and give them to the superintendent. and say to the superintendent, there is my plan, approve it, this is approved already. That is how it works out. That isn't right. It's like going to the Court of Appeals first and saying we will have the opinion of the Court of Appeals on this proposition and the trial judge has nothing to say about it. Q. Your point is that he should have to go to the Building Commissioner first? A. Exactly, that is on page 19 of the tentative draft. Now I want to say this about a remark that was made by Commissioner Lynch. A law is a law. As long as the party who is enforcing the law is competent and honest it doesn't make a particle of difference who enforces it. I want to say that the superintendent of buildings if he is honest and competent is as well fitted to protect life and limb as the Commissioner of Labor and has that interest as much at heart. That, it strikes me, is all I care to say. By Mr. O'BRIEN: Q. Your inspectors inspecting in your department now, when I file that plan, for rooms of such and such a height and size, |
