as a novelty for his building. And to complete the scheme, he is talking of having a roof garden, with a variety stage, to while away the evenings of tenants and to catch the pleasure-seekers who now pass through the lower part of the city to go to the theatres uptown.

To make changes suggested by a tenant in this way it is necessary that the manager should have consulted with him before the building was completed, and should have power to carry out his ideas. In a properly conducted enterprise, the manager joins the council of builders before any thing is done. He begins his work with the real estate man, sometimes in his stead, and is as busy as the builder throughout the period of construction; for the future of the building is in his charge, and he represents the tenants who are to use it. The time has passed when the capitalist can put so much money into brick and stone regardless of any fact except the insatiable demand for office room in crowded neighborhoods. All the fads and prejudices of a fastidious tenantry have to be anticipated now, and new luxuries may have to be suggested and provided to draw men from buildings equipped only with all the necessaries of business life. The manager, who has to rent the building, knows these things, and he is supreme from the start in all matters of internal arrangement. The only excuse for not heeding his directions is the plea that they are structurally or financially impossible. It is he who decides whether the first floor is to be planned for a bank or a number of stores, and divides the upper floors into small offices or large suites, according to his judgment or knowledge of the needs of the neighborhood.

Usually it is knowledge. The manager keeps himself posted on the movements of business firms, getting in the form of gossip the names of those who are dissatisfied with their quarters, and of owners of old buildings who are preparing to tear down and rebuild, thus threatening the tenure of their tenants. To these people the manager of a proposed new building goes with his offer to let them space with the privilege of subdividing it to suit their requirements. Getting them pledged, he hastens to others, and though he may not secure many tenants so soon, he learns exactly what is wanted on

the spot where his building is to be. There may be conflicting demands; he may be on the boundary between importers who require lofts or store-rooms, and lawyers who wish offices, and it is often a difficult and delicate task to arrange with the architect for a compromise plan that will satisfy both clients. But the man for such a place has to be able to solve many nice problems, as many as any of the other experts engaged in building operations.

When the manager has determined the character of the building, the contracts are drawn, and the date of completion is set. That limits and drives him just as it does the builder and the contractors, for when the building is delivered he is expected to have ready the occupants, who are counted on to make the capital invested begin again to pay interest, and any failure on his part disturbs the calculations of the financier in the same way that the builder's delay does. And there is another factor that whips on the manager. In every city there are what are called "moving days," when old leases expire and new ones begin. May rst, for example, is the date when "downtown" New York makes its general shift. Above Chambers Street, and as far north as Fourteenth, the change is made on February 1st, chosen, doubtless, because the old stock of merchandise is low at that time, and the new goods are not yet in. The residence districts of the city move on October 1st, which is about the time when the people who have been out of town for the summer are returning. Why the extreme southern end of Manhattan Island picked out May 1st, no one has been able to explain, but settled it is unalterably, and the new buildings erected there are hurried through so as to be ready for occupancy by that day; and the manager who rushes around seeking tenants knows that he will have in his building all the first year only as many as he has secured on May-day. He may add a few firms who happen to open business in the interval, and chance may throw in his way two or three tenants who are so dissatisfied with some other building that they move out at a sacrifice of rent paid; but, as a rule, the space vacant on the moving day remains a losing investment for a year.

Hence, besides the advantage of offering the tenant a voice in the planning of

his space, the manager is urged to commence early the canvass for occupants by the time limitation and the serious consequences of exceeding it. While the architect is drawing the projected floor plans, the manager takes them, and makes up his schedule of rents. He has already told the committee what he can get for the space per square foot, and the financier has calculated on that figure for a certain income, which has now to be arranged for in detail. It has to be divided among the floors, and then among the rooms. If he has set $3.50 a square foot as the average, the manager now starts with, say, $8 as the rate on the ground floor, $5 on the second, and $2.50 on the others up to the top stories, where he can charge $3 or $3.50. Then, as he puts in the partitions asked for by his first clients, he raises or lowers the rates for the other rooms according to minute considerations of light, convenience, and conspicuousness, taking care, however, to make the sum of his various prices produce the total expected of that floor, and yet have each charge fall within the general market rates.

When this is done he prepares his prospectus, a handsomely printed paper book with diagrams of each floor, a description of the building, with the names of the specialists engaged on it-the architect, the builder, the elevator-maker, the electrician, the plumber, the mason, the carpentry-men. There are pictures of the front and sides of the proposed building, of the main hall and the machinery-room, views from the windows, sketches of the interior decoration, and little essays on the novelties and special features. The pamphlet is sent out to possible tenants and to the newspapers for "written notices" which are free advertisements, but the most effective use of it is in the hands of the staff of renting agents.

Personal solicitation of the cleverest and most alluring kind is necessary to fill in a year one of these great buildings that will house from one to four thousand people. There are ten or twelve other buildings to be ready, and for them also an active canvass is being made. The competition is almost desperate in some cities where there has been overbuilding in hard times. In New York the stress is such that it is said the only sure source of tenants is in

the continuance of the process, as the tearing down of more old buildings for the next year's crop of new buildings supplies the tenants for this May's openings.

Despite the scramble, however, the best manager is the one who knows when to reject an application and stand a loss in vacant space; for a building, like a neighborhood, has character, and if it is a new structure he has to create that essential to

permanent success. The reputation of the building affects the trade, custom, and clientele of its inhabitants, injuring those who are above it, and injured in turn by those who are below it. Anyone can call to mind well-known buildings that would be creditable as business addresses; they might help to sell a bill of goods. And there are others, equally familiar, that would cause a doubt as to a man's credit, unless his "line" were as low as the reputation of his building. The experienced manager is well aware of this, and, eager as he is for tenants, hard as he labors and plots for good men to come into his space, he resists the temptation to take everybody who applies.

The method some managers follow to give their place a fine start toward respectability is to get an old firm of national renown to head their rent roll. There are many such that have stuck to the ramshackle, antiquated building where they began their careers fifty years ago. Again and again they have been urged to move into the pretentious new buildings. The darkness of their rooms, the inconvenience of the arrangements, bad plumbing, bad air, slow elevator service, all these and other disagreeable conditions of their environment have been pointed out by the eloquent man with the beautiful little pamphlet ; in vain. The old firm has always been there; their clients know the familiar place; they are making a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year as it is; their books and papers could not be moved. It is hard to persuade the head of the profession to the top of the town. But one by one they are pulled up, almost by the roots. Perhaps the most obdurate member of the firm dies or his energetic son joins the office. The sharp-witted manager, who knows everything that touches his business, hears of the change, and he reopens his case for a last trial.

Sometimes the case is won by making sacrifices. In New York, a year ago, the manager of a new building, desperate for a brilliant opening, went to a grand old firm of lawyers, offered them his best floor, ripped out and rearranged to suit, at a lower rate than they paid in the old building, and undertook to move them free of charge in one day and night-furniture, papers, books, documents, pictures, all to be taken up as they were, and set down in relatively the same positions in the new quarters.

This was an extreme case, but it paid. The name of that firm was used as a charm to draw other firms of equal stability though of less fame, and many more that were seeking in obscurity a similar practice. And the manager foresees that when so immovable a firm is once established in his building it will take root for another half century, while the branches it shoots forth, younger men reared in the office, will seek growing space near the old trunk. The character of his building is assured.

An example on the other side, of a building that made a bad beginning, was furnished by an expert manager who tried to reclaim it. At the time of its completion it was the tallest structure in New York. The man who erected it was a man of low tastes, but of great ability as a sensational business manager. His creation was like him, and it soon expressed his character as well as his mind. He let the first comers settle about him, and did not see he had made a mistake till he discovered that his low class of tenants were not good pay. Then, after himself trying to mend the case, he asked the trained specialist to see what he could do. It was a novel experiment at that time, and the manager entered upon it with energy and ideas. He turned out the worst tenants, and induced respectable people to take their places at very low rents. That was as far as he got. He says with a laugh that he might have succeeded if his exemplary tenants had stayed, but they could not stand it; they told him they would not have minded for themselves two or three months of being crowded and jostled about in the elevators by their neighbors-the trouble was that their clients did not like to see and smell the obnoxious clients of the neighbors, and, besides, thought it disreputable to be seen

going into the building. The manager had to give up the task, convinced of the futility of reformation of buildings in general, and more impressed than ever with the necessity of starting aright.

As the opening day approaches, the manager has to organize his system and staff for the conduct, the maintenance, and the cleaning of his building. Everything must be in perfect order on the first day when the tenants arrive, so the staff often enters the building while the last workmen are there, and follows them up with the cleaning, room by room. From twenty to a hundred men and women are employed, according to the size of the building and the manager's notion of economy, and since these people are to furnish the permanent service for possibly six thousand tenants, and their twenty thousand (in one building the estimate on an elevator count of one day was forty-five thousand) clients, each employee, from the machinist down to the scrub-woman, is chosen with the scrupulousness of a civil service examination. The "pull" that used to decide in this business, as it still does in politics, has been abolished by the competition for efficient service.

The methods of running the business of a modern high building are so various that it is impossible to determine either a typical case or the drift of practice under experience. Some owners have a superintendent of the building, an expert machinist and electrician, who attends to the maintenance and reports to the manager, whose functions are renting and financing. Other buildings are in the control of the manager, who lets out the cleaning and heavy repairing by contract, and has in his janitor and chief engineer executive heads of staffs for routine work. One corporation that has fourteen buildings distributed over the United States, Europe, Australia, and South America has in New York a financial manager for all, with local managers in each building to rent, supply, and keep them in good condition. The central office receives the rent and authorizes extraordinary expenditures, requires regular reports in detail of all changes and expenses, and supervises all the business of each building through a travelling inspector.

These are corporation methods. Indi

viduals who own modern buildings usually abandon the management of them after they have tried it long enough to learn that it is a distinct business, requiring expert direction. They turn it over to some real estate firm that has a staff of men who do nothing else. There is the manager or superintendent of buildings, who is an able organizer of men and a keen executive. Under him is a corps of renting agents and collectors, bookkeepers who carry the general account of expenses for all the buildings and separate individual and proportionate accounts of each owner. Outside this office staff there are an inspector, who visits each building every day, and a machinist, an electrician, a carpenter, a plumber, and a painter, whose duty it is to direct repairs. Then, each building has its own janitor, with his squad of hall and elevator men, scrubwomen, sweepers, moppers, dusters, and outside window-cleaners; and the engineer, with his assistants, electrician, and firemen. The janitor makes weekly reports in writing to the central office of repairs, of changes, complaints, and requests of tenants, while the engineer accounts for the coal and other supplies used by him in amounts and in the power expended in heat, light, and elevators.

The cost of maintenance for a year, including taxes, insurance, supplies, repairs, and service, is from two to three per cent. of the capital invested, and increases with the age of the building. One manager, who had eleven years' experience in a building about fifteen years old, said he spent an average of $5.50 a day to repair pipes and plumbing; $4 a day for bricking and tiling; he replaced 2,000 of his 11,000 lights a year; bought sixteen tons of coal a day. But the new methods of construction of everything that goes into the later buildings are expected, and indeed promise, to reduce these items to absurdities. The latter-day managers are setting the builders, contractors, and man

ufacturers who supply the plant fresh problems of economy by their close figuring on expenses. A boiler that needs more than so much per pound of power for repairs is not satisfactory. Masonry must wear only so much a cubic foot a year to be within the specifications. Lights and plumbing and wiring and tubing that have to be renewed at a cost of more than so many cents per thousand feet are charged up against the supplier of them; and the manager is equally exacting with himself. He doles out coal at so many tons the week per thousand cubic feet of rentable space, and hires scrub-women on the basis of 32,000 square feet of floor a day for each mop.

Despite all his precise reckoning, however, and his reduction of the problem to an accuracy of calculation that is almost scientific, the inexorable laws of the market gradually cut down his income. The building earns less year by year. The manager's own requirements of economy and ingenuity of construction involve the solution of fresh problems, lowering the cost of building, which entails the increase of new and higher structures; and that carries with it higher values of the ground built on, and correspondingly lower rents.

But it is capital that loses by the inevitable process, capital and labor. Competition and progress reduce the one to two or three per cent. a year, the other to $1.50 a day. But the same forces stir up brains and strengthen character; they develop a sky-scraping builder, earning $50,000 a year, whose name is an advertisement for the buildings he puts up, out of a master mason who began life as a bricklayer. And the end is not yet; our cities, as their ragged sky-lines show, will be rebuilding for many years to come. The grind between capital and labor will go on, while the financier, the architect, the builder, the manager-the brains of business enterprise-will grow and profit mightily.