463
foundation of granite capable of supporting any possible strain. It was accordingly an architectural 
possibility and an economic advantage to increase the height of the buildings, and this height was, 
in its turn, limited by economic considerations. 
The early architects went gaily ahead. They saw no reason to suppose that they need ever stop, but 
presently actuarial calculation showed that thirty-six storeys represented the maximum of economic 
efficiency. Beyond that height the disproportionate increase in the cost of building and the 
difficulty of renting the loftier suites, on account of the fear of fire, made the higher buildings 
unprofitable. It is of perculiar interest, by the way, to observe that the artists were so impregnated 
with with the Buddhist ideal of impermanence that in even the costliest buildings they calculated 
the life of the plumbing as at no more than twenty years; that is, they expected, from one cause or 
another, that the building would be superseded within that period. 
The actual situation, by the way, is critical. There are, roughly speaking, two and a half of the 
seven and a half million people of Great New York put to grave inconvenience by the congestion and 
all alike are embarrassed by the ratio of rent to income. In Europe we reckon that rent should not 
absorb more than one tenth or at most one eighth of one's earning. In New York, this proportion is 
rarely less than one fourth and sometimes more than on third. Again, despite all efforts to establish 
a satisfactory system of transport, conditions are appalling. In the rush hours, the people are 
crushed like corn in a mill. One sees clusters of citizens hanging to the steps of a trolley car like a 
swarm of bees. The surface traffic is practically paralysed. I have know it take fifty minutes for a 
motor bus to get from 34th to 58th Street, walkable easily in less than twenty minutes. Except the 
few plutocrats with automobiles of their own, or residences within reasonable distance of their 
places of business, the average citizen has anything from fifty minutes to two hours to travel in this 
packed and pestilential conveyance twice daily. The waste of energy, the nervous strain, the 
physical fatigue and the annoyance all tell on his health and spirits. No wonder if indigestion and 
neurasthenia make him an old man at thirty-five. 
But the worst is yet to come. Every year the congestion increases. The percentage of time and 
strength and money wasted and unnatural effort becomes more oppressive and exhaustive. Every 
desperate device imaginable is being tried,but the problem grows faster than the palliatives and 
one really wonders what will happen when things reach a deadlock, when 
{733} 
nobody can pay his rent or get to his business; when, in short, it becomes impossible to carry on, 
what will follow the crash. Any diminution in the population would mean that rates and taxes would 
have to be further increased and so drive more and more away from the city. The logical issue 
seems to be desertion and decay; this obviously involving the collapse of the machinery of export, 
and so the ruin of the producer in the interior. 
In the past, if my suspicions be sound, cities like Nineveh perished in some such way. Their 
prosperity led them to live beyond their means. They made up the deficit by constantly bleeding 
the provinces, thus eventually killing the goose the laid the golden eggs. To me, the present 
prosperity of the United States, like that of England under Queen Victoria, is due to the coincidence 
of various favourable but temporary conditions. In England, the invention of the spinning jenny, the 
steam engine and similar automatic ways of producing wealth, the opening up of new markets, the 
expansion of commerce and colonial success made us rich factiously. Similar processes are still at 
work in the States. 
The vast wealth in almost every commodity became easy to exploit through the introduction of 
scientific methods and labour-saving machinery. The supply of cheap labour from exhausted Europe, 
and the removal of all restrictions to expansion by the extent of elbow room and the overcoming of 
natural obstacles; all these conditions have made America the commercial mistress of the planet. 
She has not even been disturbed and hampered by any serious internal or external struggle since 
1865. The Spanish War was a holiday and the A. E. F. little more than an organized extension of the 
normal tide of tourists. She has never had to fight for her life; she has never had a serious sickness,