DR. CHAS. L. METZ has spent the past twenty-six years of his life in research work, and, since 1876, has exhumed 7,000 skeletons of the early inhabitants of America, besides more than 10,000 earthenware vessels and utensils used by these people. Since his connection with the Harvard University research work 3,000 of these skeletons and thousands of trinkets and curious articles made by the aborigines have been found, all taken from an old Indian burial ground located on the top of a hill overlooking the Miami Valley near Madisonville, Ohio. The finds have been so plentiful that universities throughout the United States and Europe have been supplied with skeletons and utensils of prehistoric man found by Dr. Metz. In a year or so Harvard University will publish a report extensively illustrated with rare photographic reproductions of his work. This report has been in preparation for many years and will be of immense and unique value to archaeologists of this and other countries. VERYBODY expected that Dr. Wiley, head of the Bureau of Chemistry, would be exonerated by President Taft. That does not mean that everybody was pleased when the expected happened, for he has many and bitter enemies. But the friends of the Pure Food Act are Wiley's friends and they agree heartily with the expression of a New York newspaper quoted above, and rejoice in his vindication from a petty charge and in his protection against the machinations of interests whose aim was to oust him from a place where he has done immeasurable good. To these the suggestion contained in the President's letter of decision that investigation is more greatly needed in some other directions than in this, gives an added satisfaction. Meanwhile we shall have the continued services of a man who has made good. Dr. Wiley was born in Kent, Indiana, in 1844 and has held many important posts in college work and in special government service with credit and honor to himself and his aims. VANDERBILT OPEN STAIR TENEMENTS, NEW YORK CITY. The balconies are built of iron, and are private. The windows are full length. The frames on the roof are to be the covers for the open stairs. A MAKING CHARITY PAY By JONATHAN A. RAWSON FEW weeks ago a body of philanthropists held a conference in New Jersey to talk about charitable work in general and the living problems living problems of the poor in particular, and one philanthropist, whose outlook on life is obtained from behind a beautiful desk in the office of a charitable organization, got up and settled the tenement house problem-for a minute. There need be no tenement house problem at all, he said. Simply tell the tenement dwellers to move to the country where they can live in real houses. There's plenty of room in the country and there's plenty of country. So why need the working class pack themselves away in the city and deprive themselves of all the comforts and delights of country living? The next speaker was a man of millions, some of which he has inherited and others of which he has acquired by his own hard work and sound business sense. But he has not devoted his entire attention to the accumulation of wealth. He knows how to make money, but he knows also how to do things worth while for those who lack the knack or the opportunity for money making, and whose hard lot always makes them more or less dependent upon the help and guidance of the more fortunate. What was more natural, then, than that he should apply his money-making the actual working day must be added two or more extra hours for travel between home and shop, there's mighty little time left for waking hours at home. Adding to all of this the fact that the laborer cannot see how he could save money by moving into the country, and you have in that man an immovable body which no form of force, either physical or moral, can transplant from city to country. What, then, are we to do, says our philanthropistfinancier? The simplest thing in the world! Demonstrate that sanitary, wholesome, inhabitable city tenement houses are a paying investment for the capitalist, then there will be plenty of sanitary, wholesome, inhabitable city tenement houses, and the workers can live where they like. They will certainly live in the sanitary, wholesome, inhabitable city houses, the profits from which will thus be assured, and both landlord and tenant will be satisfied, and the problem solved. INTERIOR COURT OF THE VANDERBILT TENEMENTS. Two of the four flights of open stairs in one unit are shown at right and left. The archway in the center is the direct entrance from the street. ideas to his charity problems? Well, anyway, that was what he did. No, said he, there need be no tenement house problem. But there must be tenement houses always. You can't drive the working classes to the country, for they don't want to go. They want to live in the city-near each other, and close to what to them are the city's attractions. When the work day is over, they are tired and they want to be in their own homes as soon as they can. Nor do they want to spend money for long car rides to the country, or to pack themselves in crowded cars for an hour or more, to be taken away from the benefits and advantages that the city holds out for them, but that do not appeal with equal force to those who are better able to provide themselves with their own sources of entertainment, recreation, and amusement. Then again, a man who works by the All of which appears to be eminently correct, provided sanitary, wholesome, inhabitable tenements can be shown to be paying investments. Well, no less a personage than Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Sr., thinks that they can, but this is not saying that she is putting up her open stair tenements in East 77th Street, New York, exclusively as a business investment, for she is not. Also, the strong group of business men and women who have formed the Open Stair Tenement Company, think that they can. Furthermore, the aforementioned philanthropistfinancier and his associates think that they can, and to lend interest to this statement, this gentleman, it may now be said, is Mr. Richard Stevens, whose family has for generations led in New Jersey in many good and worthy deeds Mrs. Vanderbilt was the first to adopt the open stair idea for her tenements. Mr. Champlain L. Riley, the organizer of the Open Stair Tenement Company, was the second, and the Stevens Estate of Hoboken was the third, chronologically speaking. Mrs. Vanderbilt's first move was to engage as her architect Mr. Henry Atterbury Smith, the original designer of recessed open stairs as applied to modern tenement buildings. Almost before work on her buildings had begun, Mr. Riley engaged Mr. Smith, and the Stevens Estate, the first to carry the open stair outside New York City, has promptly done the same. Mrs. Vanderbilt's idea with her tenements was first of all to provide suitable homes for families with members suffering from early stages of tuberculosis. She believed that suitable quarters could be provided for such families right in the CLOSER DETAIL OF STAIR SEEN ACROSS THE CENTRAL COURT. heart of the City with all provisions for curbing or perhaps curing the disease, without breaking up the family by sending the afflicted member away to some remote sanitarium. Moreover, she believed that this purpose could be achieved on a strictly business basis, on the theory that people have to pay for their living quarters anyway, and that sanitary living quarters can be provided as cheaply and, therefore, rented as cheaply as unsanitary ones. She selected the open stair type as the most promising medium for the practical carrying out of her idea. Precisely the same system of reasoning was followed by Mr. Riley and Mr. Stevens, except that their groups of buildings are not designed primarily for tuberculous families, and, therefore, are without some of the features of the Vanderbilt houses. All three groups will be managed strictly on business lines. The prevailing rates of the neighborhood will be charged for rent. In other words it will cost the laboring man no more to live in an open stair tenement than in any other. Careful calculations have more than justified the expectation that even on this basis, the tenements will return a fair percentage of profit. It is the purpose of the Open Stair Tenement Company to sell its buildings after they are completed and occupied at a profitable rate of income, then invest the proceeds in further operations of the same kind, and thus continue the work indefinitely, and at the same time to demonstrate to other builders the advantage of the type and encourage its adoption by them. For open stairs are not a patented device, or the exclusive property of anybody. They are designed in their present form by Mr. Smith, but Mr. Smith has made no secret of his idea, nor could he do so for long if he chose. The plan is available for any architect or builder without a legal right on Mr. Smith's |