Capitalism's Day

"This Union cannot endure half Communist and half Capitalist. ... I know Secretary Ickes and he is truly an admirable, energetic man. ... He sees ... an opportunity to promote the recovery of business by stimulating the heavy industries . . . producing building materials. ... He has gathered around him a group of admirable, clean-thinking, but not clear-thinking assistants, and they have concluded that they must . . . promote Recovery by clearing the slums and rebuilding them with modern apartment houses. . . . That hits you taxpayers right on the proboscis. . . . Secretary Ickes has the very good excuse that private lenders will not lend, and therefore private builders will not build. . . . We all have had to take it on the chin and now when those of us who met our weekly payrolls and survived are getting ready to take on responsibilities again we are told we are shirkers. We are not. We want our opportunity--we demand it!"

Thus one of the most fabulous of all U. S. rugged individualists on the New Deal's "socialistic housing program," last December. Last week, without taking back one word, the same man announced that he was going to help "break the logjam that has for five years confronted the durable goods and heavy industries." And, what was more, the Roosevelt Administration was going to help him do it. For had he not just put over a project which,' with the exception of those partly financed by Federal funds, was five times bigger than the Federal Housing Administration ever dreamed of approving?

If New York City were dissolved into its five boroughs, the biggest city in the U. S. would be Chicago and the second biggest Brooklyn. Brooklyn real estate is the favorite merchandise of Joseph Paul Day, most extraordinary of U. S. salesmen. Many times has "Joe" Day auctioned off more than $1,000,000 worth of real estate in a single day, knocking it down with the flat of his hand for a gavel. Altogether he has sold over $1,250,000,000 worth of other people's land and buildings. Some 20 years ago he bought himself a sandspit --most of it underwater--at the east end of Coney Island, paying more than $1,000,000 for it. There he developed "Manhattan Beach" which during Depression was valued at $10,000,000 on the tax lists. He expects it to be worth $100,000,000 when inherited by his grandchildren. But that is only one of his many properties.

Last week the scene of his great stroke for Capitalism against Depression was again Brooklyn, this time to the west of Coney Island. On Gravesend Bay, where ocean liners, after passing through The Narrows, almost cross his front yard, he owns 13 acres of bona fide land, some 38 acres beneath the sludgy waters of the Bay. What Joe Day wanted above all else was $5,500,000 in cash to build apartments on his land.

Mr. Day, who at 61 never wears an overcoat and who has long since discarded the eyeglasses he wore as a young man, rushed down to Washington and taking Housing Administrator Moffett by the arm, began to talk like an express train. "Look at the millions of dollars banks and insurance companies have," said he to Mr. Moffett, "but are afraid to invest. Put a government guarantee on my mortgage and they will not be afraid. The Housing Administration has never guaranteed a $5,500,000 mortgage or anything like it, you say? Well, what of it? The law does not forbid it. Give me the guarantee and put that private cash into circulation."

Back to Manhattan sped Joe Day with the Government's guarantee in his pocket. Not from Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. (of which he is a director) did he get his loan. He went, instead, to see President Thomas A. Buckner of New York Life. New York Life's Board, on which sit such G. O. Partisans as Herbert Hoover, Nicholas Murray Butler and Charles D. Hilles, considered Joe Day's mortgage with a U. S. guarantee, decided it was a good way to set 5,500,000 idle dollars earning their keep.

In Washington again last week, Joe Day spread his plans wide open to the world: Brooklyn Beach Gardena Apartments, Inc., 2,000 feet of water frontage on the Bay, 5,000 rooms, fireproof construction, automatic elevators, incinerators, radio outlets, 2,500 men to build them, 7,500 others to make the materials required. "This project will pay all taxes, city, State and Federal. All experts in consultation agreed that the property is one of the finest, not only in New York but in the country."

"I am proposing," said Capitalist Day, "this development to give the middle class people of Brooklyn the same advantages that are enjoyed by the wealthy in the new apartments along the East River in Manhattan."

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