Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 | Page 4

and most enterprising spirit.
They leave behind them the very young and the old and those enfeebled by disease or habits. To this cause must be attributed in part the exceptional record of Pullman in death rate, as it is a new town. Yet there can be no question that the sanitary conditions of the place are excellent. It is difficult in mixed enterprises of this nature to tell what the rate of profit upon the tenement part of the business is, since the rental and the factory react upon each other; but in the American instances quoted in this article the investment as a whole is remunerative. In the Godin operations at Guise, which have been co-operative for the last five years, the capital is put at $1,320,000, and the net earnings have averaged during that time $204,640 per annum, or 15? per cent.
At Pullman a demand has arisen on the part of the tenants for a chance to acquire proprietorship in their homes; and while the company has withheld the privilege from its original purchase of 3,500 acres, it has bought adjoining land, where it offers to advance money for building, and to take pay in monthly installments. This assimilates so much of the enterprise to that at Mulhausen, and shows the drift toward a co-operative phase of capital and labor. Indeed, this tendency will probably prove to be strongly characteristic of all similar schemes as fast as they attain to any magnitude. Tendencies which can be resisted in communities of few hundreds become overpowering when the population rises into thousands. But from the purely commercial point of view, this drift is hardly to be deprecated, so long as the operation of selling houses returns the capital and interest safely.
Projects of this nature go far toward modifying the stress of antagonisms between labor and capital, because if they are successful these are harmonized to an appreciable extent, and this gives public interest to them. The eventual adjustment must come, not from convictions of duty, doctrinaire opinions, or sentiments of sympathy, but on business principles, and it is a sure step in advance to show that self-interest and philanthropy are in accord. How great the field for experiments of this nature is in the United Spates may be gathered from the census of 1880, which shows 2,718,805 persons employed in the industrial establishments of the country, with an annual production of $5,842,000,000, and a capital of nearly half that amount. Of these hands and values nearly two-thirds belong to the north Atlantic States,--_Bradstreet's_.
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HOTEL DE VILLE, ST. QUENTIN.
This charming building has an uncommonly well-designed facade, picturesque in the extreme, rich in detail, and thoroughly dignified. We are indebted to M. Levy, of Paris, for the loan of M. Garen's spirited etching, from which our illustration is taken. The arcaded piazza on the ground story, the niche-spaced tier of traceried windows on the first floor, the flamboyant paneled cornice stage, and the three crowning gables over it unite in one harmonious conception, the whole elevation being finished by a central tower, while at either end of the facade two massively treated buttresses furnish a satisfactory inclosing line, and give more than a suggestion of massiveness, so necessary to render an arcaded front like this quite complete within itself; otherwise it must more or less appear to be only part of a larger building. The style is Late Gothic, designed when the first influence of the Early Renaissance was beginning to be felt through France as well as Belgium, and in several respects the design has a Flemish character about it.
[Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE, ST. QUENTIN.]
St. Quentin is situated on the Goy, in the department of Cotes du Nord, and the town is seated in a picturesque valley some ten miles S.S.W. of the capital, St Brieuc, which is a bishop's see, and has a small harbor near the English Channel, and about thirty miles from St. Malo.--Building News.
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FIRE DOORS IN MILLS.
[Footnote: From a lecture before the Franklin Institute by C. John Hexamer.]
There are few parts in fire construction which are of so much importance, and generally so little understood, as fire doors. Instances of the faulty construction of these, even by good builders and architects, may daily be seen. Iron doors over wooden sills, with the flooring boards extending through from one building to the other, are common occurrences. We frequently find otherwise good doors hung on wooden jambs by ordinary screws. Sliding doors are frequently hung on to woodwork, and all attachments are frequently so arranged that they would be in a very short time destroyed by fire, and cause the door to fall. In case of fire, a solid iron door offers no resistance to warping. In an iron lined door, on