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

under seven in
1,000 per annum. In Great Britain the rate is a small fraction over 22 in
1,000. The vital statistics of the United States show a smaller mortality
than this, but they are rendered abnormal by the heavy immigration
which pours into the country. Emigrants are, in the language of
insurance men, a selected class. They are usually at the most vigorous
time of life and of hardiest 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
15½ 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_.
* * * * *

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.
* * * * *

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