Corporation were built as a demonstration of an ideal method of producing wage-earners' housing. In essentials, the ideal is this: a home of five or six rooms and bath and "modern" conveniences, set in a beautiful environment of architecture and gardens; this home to be produced and operated on sound business principles and to be rented to yield a moderate return on the capital invested, and at a figure which the average thrifty wage-earner could reasonably afford to pay. It will be seen that there is no philanthropy in this ideal, but that it has both an economic and social basis.
The instrument created to undertake the enterprise, the Bayonne Housing Corporation, represents national interests among its stockholders who include representatives of corporations having industrial plants in Bayonne, and a few individuals. These corporations are the Standard Oil of New Jersey, Tidewater Oil Company, Vacuum Oil Company, Pacific Borax Company, Babcock & Wilcox Company, The International Nickel Company, Bayonne Supply Co.; and among the individuals are Messrs. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., John D. Rockefeller, Jr., E. S. Harkness, W. M. Cosgrove, of the American Radiator Company and J. E. Johnson, with Mr. George E. Keenen of Bayonne as President of the Housing Corporation. One of the most interested backers of this enterprise was the late J. H. Mahrken, a public-spirited citizen of Bayonne.
Housing based on business principles
From the first the sponsors of the Bayonne Housing Corporation decided that a more rigid application of business methods in housing was needed in order to bring the ideal home which they had in mind within reach of the wage-earner. They knew that houses were being built everywhere in great numbers, especially in smaller centres, but too much of this housing was of inferior types, and was too expensive in both production and operation costs. The expensive character of this new construction served to set an exorbitant level of rent and sale prices, to which the prices of older houses must inevitably rise in the course of a few years. In fact, such a situation had already developed in the metropolitan area of New York City. There, in a number of instances people were paying for the privilege of living in antiquated, depreciated, insanitary, inflammable, dark,
10
