The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-01-31
Document Created With Shears and Pastepot Ap- parently to Cost City
 $3,491.25 As Proposed Legislation Contains 5000 Words,
 This Is at Rate of
 7Cents a Word Code Is Costliest Piece of Plagiarized Literature Ever Offered to a City Government.

In the list Of apprOprlatlonS recOm- ! mended by the City Auditor appears 1 the following:
 Revision of building laws, First District, $3,491.25." It is the sum the taxpayers are ex- pected to pay for the Building Code. This Code contains about 5O,OOO l words.
 1 It is the most expensive piece of l literature in which the, city has ever l been entangled.
 | Each and every one of those words 1 is charged a t substantially seven cents. 1 This would be a pretty high price for original literature, especially of 1 the didactic school. But the Building Code is not original
 /, It is on the contrary, a plagiarism 1 and has been scissored enblock, and reassem bled with such changes as would impair the clearness of the ten commandments should they be treat | ed to the same process. There is a building code recom- mended by the National Board of Fire Under writers. It is furnished to cities ready for adoption, in whole, CT in part.
 The City of Cleveland. also has a l building code, which is thought to be one of the best in the country. The Bridgeport Code is substantial ly a compilation of these two codes. It is such a compilation as fairly 1 with a paste pot, and pair of scis- sors, a few sheets of paper, and a lead pencil in about four hours. Such changes as have been made ought to be accomplished, with the assistance of a reasonably competent lawyer, inside of six or seven hours, so that the. total labor involved to prepare the code ought not to have taken at the outside, more than two days of ten hours each. Thousands of words of both codes
 have been embodied outright in the Bridgeport Code.
 In other cases the Cleveland code
 and the underwriters code have been
 sandwiched without apparently inn proving either.
 Sometimes the source of the bor- rowed is obscured by very slight changes in the language. Sometimes the paragraphs of bor-
 rOwed portions are rearranged. Usual ly the encouragement does not inn prove the original draft The Underwriters Code is remark
 a bly, clear and convenient because of
 the manner in which the subject mat ter is arranged in chapters, and be-
 cause of the manner in which these chapters are subdivided into para graphs, and divided by appropriate titles and sub-titles. In the Bridgeport code borrowed
 portions, thus conveniently arranged, have been showed together so that the clearress which came out of the arrangement is sacrificed. Some slight changes in the verbiage are certainly no improvement over the original
 For instance portions of the Under writers Code have been borrowed, in N.E md a in siroI1 octr is provided that the thickness of va shall be increased four inches. The language half a brick has been several times substituted Tn ! place of four inches, but not every time. A brick, is sometimes one
 dimension, but four inches is always
 four inches.
 Sometimes the spirit of the bor- | rowed codes has been departed from without any good reason. Here is an example.
 The Bridgeport Code provides an 1 inner fire limits in which all build irgs shall bo of fire proof construc- tion.
 But it says that grain, elevators, coal pockets and ice houses may be
 built within the inner limits and not be fire proof.
 But the Underwriters Code says of
 grain elevators and coal pockets that they shall not be erected as usually constructed, except Gin isolated locali- ties'' and under such conditions as the commissioner of buildings may prescribe.
 And the Underwriters Code further
 provides that sheds on piers or wharves, IT on the water front shall 1 be of iron, or other ncombustible
 materials
 The timer fire limits of a city, are
 not usually locality of isolated sites. Two excellent building codes have
 been badly chopped to make one code not so excellent.
 But 50,000 words at cents a word
 seems a bit stiff for production em- 1 bodying solittle original effort as does | the proposed new Building Code. Among the portions of the proposed l code that have been borrowed prac- 1 tically verbatim from the Cleveland code and which are not much obscur- | ed by rearrangemen are two galleys 1 of definitions and tables giving factors | of safety, calculation of stresses. ma- i sorry, safe load for brick work,
 strength of columns, direct compress sion strains for various materials, bending stresses, floor and roof loads, and many others.
 Among the principal portions of l the proposed code, lifted from the
 National Underwriters code, are the
 provisions relating to constructions of 1 theatres and constructions of fire prOoi 1 buildings which comprise more than a third of .he entire draft. MISS STERLING TO WED mour Brown of Ansonia and Miss I,,,+o Drin61o Stoy.1ipo thic cifu v1IioJ