A mass of further statistics from the public authorities of the various boroughs of the City of New York will be found in the record, the result of which is that apart from any question of making good the shortage of the war years, the average yearly construction of residential houses and apartments judged by the standards of pre-war times, is still far below normal.

3. As instancing the extent of overcrowding, the following figures submitted by Health Commissioner Copeland of the City of New York as the result of investigations in two widelyseparated blocks in the City of New York will be found interesting.

These surveys were made at three different periods in 1921: To wit, February 7, September 9 and December 30, and they show that there has been no appreciable relief from congested conditions in this class of buildings.

HOUSING SURVEY, 1921

Sanitary Bureau, Department of Health

Block A-E. 112th Street to E. 113th Street-Second Avenue to First Avenue (Italian)
Block B-Rivington Street to Stanton Street-Columbia Street to Sheriff Street (Hebrew)

CHAPTER 4.

EXTORTION AND ABUSES BY LABOR UNION OFFICIALS.

(1) Building Trades Council; Brindell.

At the very threshold of its investigation, your Committee made the amazing disclosure that except as to a few of the building trades, organized labor in the county of New York had come under the absolute dominion of one man Robert P. Brindell; that under his guidance all the Unions connected with the building trades except the Painters', Bricklayers' and Plasters' had been gathered together in October, 1919, under a single head known as the Building Trades Council; that Brindell exercised absolute despotism over the unions in the Council and that he, together with certain others under his control, were using their positions in the labor world and their control of Union labor in a vast campaign of extorting money from builders and building

contractors.

The Council operated under a charter from the American Federation of Labor. It was in the form of a Federation. The unions represented in the Council had a membership of about 115,000. Members of the unions forming this Council did not thereby become ipso facto members of the Council. It was necessary for the workingmen who were members of the constituent unions also to become members of the Council and to pay initiation fees and monthly dues therein.

The appeal of Brindell to the Unions that thus became constituent members of the Council was based on the following inducements to the various Business Agents who were in control of their respective Unions: (1) That no Union would be eligible to admission to the Council unless the Business Agents were elected for a term of three years; (2) That they were to be paid at the rate of $75 per week; (3) That through such a combination of forces the respective Unions would be better able, by making common cause, to protect themselves against non-Union labor.

The governing body of the Council was made up of the business agents of the various Unions. The election of these agents for terms of three years made them independent of their Unions and placed them more completely under Brindell's control.