The enduring tension between building to last and building to sell: Economics, architecture, and societal stability

“ If the engineers build a bridge, the architects say it is ugly—and are not always wrong in saying so. If the architects build a palace, the engineers think, not without reason, that in its construction the materials have been employed unskilfully, and without due economy or an exact acquaintance with their properties in point of durability and strength. ”

“ It is really not desirable for men who do not believe that knowledge is of value for its own sake to take up this kind of life. The question constantly put to us in civilization was and still is: "What is the use? Is there gold? or Is there coal?" The commercial spirit of the present day can see no good in pure science: the English manufacturer is not interested in research which will not give him a financial return within one year: the city man sees in it only so much energy wasted on unproductive work: truly they are bound to the wheel of conventional life. ”

“ A record of the development of the country’s resources through a resistless energy that seems destined to control the markets of the world, reads almost like one of Grimm’s famous tales, for after numerous trials, and the surmounting of many obstacles, the fairy wand is turning what we will into gold.
One of the effects of the Vanderbilt boom of 1885 is to be found in the enormous mileage of new railroad construction in 1887, namely 12,000 miles. ”

“ Belgium built the main lines of road at state expense for state management; but at the same time the building of private lines was also encouraged in every possible way. It was not until too late that men saw what chances for waste and corruption were involved in this indiscriminate encouragement of railroad construction. England learned the lesson in 1847; Continental Europe in 1873. In spite of the severe experiences of 1857, 1873, and 1884, it is by no means certain that America has learned it even yet. ”

“ The manner in which competition at points served by two or more railways affects those having but one has received general recognition, and is one of the most powerful causes of the too rapid construction that has burdened the country with many unnecessary, unprofitable, and bankrupt lines. ”

“ It is now more convenient to persuade them that matter was made to obey all the fancies of the artist; that serves as an excuse for explanations, and makes teaching less complicated. The tax-payer and the owner of property who has occasion to employ an architect pay for this admirable doctrine rather dearly; while, without superior guidance, the manufactures connected with building suffer perversion in endeavouring to realize the fancies of these gentlemen. ”

“ How many respectable men there are who, like M. Durosay, in proposing to build a house for themselves, first determine to erect a chalet, or an Italian villa, or an English cottage, according to the fancy of the moment, and make it quite a secondary question whether life will be comfortable in the case they are going to put up! ”

“ Both articles attribute to architects as a class a disregard of sanitary and mechanical requirements quite unwarranted by the facts, and deprecate the attention they pay to exterior design, although most critics find this the weakest side of their work. They are written in apparent ignorance of the fact that it is to the architects that we owe in great measure our municipal building laws and a large part of the modern advance in scientific construction and in sanitation applied to building. ”

“ Now it is desirable in architecture to make use of the necessities of the construction as a means of decoration, and frankly to acknowledge those necessities. There is nothing discreditable in allowing them to be seen; and it is a mark of good taste, good sense and knowledge, to exhibit them by making them contribute to the decoration of the work. In fact, to people of good taste and good sense, this is the only kind of decoration that is satisfactory, because it alone is suggested by the requirements. ”

“ Indestructible by fire; as effective as granite or marble and less costly. difference is wiped out and, as a matter of fact, the best construction is an actual economy, for in no case does the interest on the added cost of good construction amount to anything like the insurance premiums, the wear and tear and deterioration of the ordinary or allegedly cheap building. ”

“ In the last century many doors were made wide-framed, that is, doors the panels of which, framed in moulding, are from 16 to 20 inches wide; this was the fashion. But at that time they employed none but very dry wood, that had been felled and cut up for several years; and these panels, made of two boards, notched or simply jointed, did not shrink. You see doors thus made in your father’s drawing-room, and there is only one in which the panel has opened. In the present day such wood cannot be got for love or money; we must therefore be content to give up those wide panels. ”

“ But side by side with that, we must place a second Counsel, not less needed than the other—Watch with care, lest the engrossments of business should so accumulate as to overlay and crush the godliness of the soul. Amid the pressure of times like ours, this is one of the greatest perils of the market-place: it is destroying its tens of thousands. MAKING
HASTE
TO BE
RICH. Men eagerly plunge into speculation after speculation. They try to extend, to ramify, and engross, till you might suppose they have a home in city after city; nay, in kingdom after kingdom. ”

“ Material possessions, in fact or in desire, dominate our outlook, usually to the exclusion of all generous and creative impulses. Possessiveness—the passion to have and to hold—is the ultimate source of war, and the foundation of all the ills from which the political world is suffering. Only by diminishing the strength of this passion and its hold upon our daily lives can new institutions bring permanent benefit to mankind.
Institutions which will diminish the sway of greed are possible, but only through a complete reconstruction of our whole economic system. ”

“ We are, for instance, usually forced to live in the worst quarters, and our consequent death rate is noted as a race trait, and reason for further discrimination. When we seek to buy property in better quarters we are sometimes in danger of mob violence or, as now in Baltimore, of actual legislation to prevent.
“We are forced to take lower wages for equal work, and our standard of living is then criticised. Fully half the labor unions refuse us admittance, and then claim that as ‘scabs’ we lower the price of labor. ”

“ A persistent caste proscription seeks to force us and confine us to menial occupations where the conditions of work are worst.
“Our women in the South are without protection in law and custom, and are then derided as lewd. A widespread system of deliberate public insult is customary, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to secure decent accommodation in hotels, railway trains, restaurants and theatres, and even in the Christian church we are in most cases given to understand that we are unwelcome unless segregated. ”

“ The concentration of Negroes in back alleys and elsewhere in the choice residential districts has been the result of innumerable causes, the poverty following the war, the long years of depression and the great age of the town, but now that we are engaged in magnificent public enterprises for the beautification of the city, such as the construction of the Boulevard, it behooves us to take thought for the reclamation of entire residential sections. ”

“ One of the ablest writers upon "The Social Unrest" says, "At the heart of the larger labour movement is the race longing for a society in which at least the spirit of equality shall be realized. Most radical remedies are only means to this end. Beyond, and deeper than all the machinery of social reconstruction, is this master passion of democracy." ”

“ So long as men think only of the inequalities of life—and there are glaring inequalities—the unfair distribution of wealth and the comparatively obscure positions which they hold, they will be discontented and will fight to better themselves, no matter who suffers. The spirit of discontent and contention finds lodgment in the heart of the humblest working man, up through all grades, to that of the richest employer, for no man, however wealthy, ever thinks he has enough of this world's goods ”

“ A country without the means of travel and transportation may readily separate into independent fragments whenever any arbitrary institution, as that of slavery, develops antagonism between different geographical sections; and in that case the arbitrary institution would triumph, and civilization would be thrown backward. But in a country which speaks the same language, and is checkered all over by the pathways of commercial and social intercourse—since there is no place for division except by the rupture of innumerable ligaments—the integrity of its oneness will maintain itself ”

“ What is to be done with pauperism and over-supply of labor? How is the life of any country to last, when brutality and drunken semi-barbarism vote, and hold offices in their gift, and by fit representatives of themselves control a government? How, if not wisdom and authority, but turbulence and low vice are to exalt to senatorships miscreants reeking with the odors and pollution of the hell, the prize-ring, the brothel, and the stock-exchange, where gambling is legalized and rascality is laudable? ”

“ Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? ”

“ He sought to draw men together in a common brotherhood; this brotherhood was not composed of employers or of men who worked at a certain trade but of those who sought to build up the kingdom of righteousness.
There is cooperation to-day amongst men but it is the coming together to build up some trade and make it strong that it may contend more stoutly for its rights. There have been various attempts for the federation of unions, but they have too often been for the purpose of coercing a like federation of employers' unions into taking a desired course of action. ”

“ We must go methodically to work. You must know, cousin, that the more rapidly we want a building erected, the more desirable it is that everything should be perfectly arranged beforehand. Remember the trouble your neighbour, Count —— has had, who has been beginning his château again and again every spring for six years, without being able to get it finished, because he could not indicate all that he wanted at first, and his architect had not the courage to insist upon adopting a well-planned design once for all ”

“ A man may act right, may be honest and upright from prudential motives, but if his heart is evil the way of the righteous will be irksome to him and he may depart from it at any time. The unmasking of the double life of a man, every now and then, shows how the heart's desire will have its way with a man who does not love God. Heart faith in Christ leads a man to follow and be like Him.
Hence we have such a large emphasis placed upon work for and with the individual by Christ and His disciples. ”

“ THE IDEAL IN THE BUSINESS WORLD There is often a wide difference between the methods actually employed in doing business and when they should be. Good men who are in the thick of the battle of competition and rivalry with other firms in the same line of trade, are the quickest to admit this fact. They would gladly see things managed so that every employee should be satisfied with his wages and hours of work and every competitor and customer gratified by the treatment he receives. ”

“ Thus private sector investment in low-carbon technologies requires confidence that those investments, if successful, will pay off, that is, the private sector needs to have confidence that there will be a market for low-carbon technologies now and in the future. Public policies that set out a clear and ongoing mitigation path provide that confidence. Simply waiting for a technological solution, but not providing any reason for the private sector to create that solution, is not an effective policy. ”

“ The models typically assume technological progress in mitigation technology, which means that the cost of reducing emissions declines over time as energy technologies improve. As a result, it is cost-effective to start with a relatively less stringent policy, then increase stringency over time, and the models typically build in this cost-effective tradeoff. However, most models still find that immediate initiation of a less stringent policy followed by increasing stringency incurs lower costs than delaying policy entirely and then increasing stringency more rapidly. ”

“ I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the laughing George. Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of the Tryan household is expressed in that look, for George averts his eye and says, apologetically:
“I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he says it ain't no use to settle down, just yet. We must keep movin'. In fact, he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles should fall through, and we'd have to get up and move stakes further down.” ”

“ There is no condition of man that it cannot meet and satisfy. The crying wrongs of the home, society, the industrial world, the state, arise out of its neglect and condemnation. Men seek to make good their claims for things which they think belong to them, they fight for them, gain them or lose them, fight again or are fought, and in consequence race hatred, class and industrial hatred embitter the hearts of men.
This law applied to the life of the individual, sweetens it in its lowest depths and makes the strongest kind of a character. ”

“ Without the pale of the Christian faith men hold life but cheaply, they squander it and waste it in sin; they too often say, "Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die"—forever passing out of existence. The Christian faith holds human life as a very precious thing, something to be cherished with infinite and loving care, for the spirit in man is to live forever. ”

“ Virtue and honesty are "a system of weights and measures, balances struck between man and man."
Prudence no less than philosophy demands, then, that we hold ourselves constantly in readiness to discard our ancient creeds and habits and step valiantly around the corner beyond which reality will have drifted even while we were building our houses on what seemed the primeval and eternal rock. Tides of change rise from deeps below deeps; cosmic winds of change blow upon us from boundless chaos ”

“ Some architects think to create astonishment by thus adopting processes which do not harmonize with the materials they use; who, if they are constructing with brick, strive to give to their building the appearance of a construction in stone; who affect to imitate marble in wood, or wood in plaster; who seem in fact to make it their object to give to each of the materials employed forms that are not appropriate to their nature. Observe these undesirable methods, with a view of always avoiding them, if you would be an architect. ”