Year: 1877

Tall Buildings Incentive 10 Self


Murder.


It is impossible to take up a newspaper
without encOuntering the particulars of
some revolving suicide. At the present
time there is an average of three self
murders per diem in this city, while the
number of cases OF harmless insanity is
about as great. It is the fashion to at
tribute the suicide mania to the despair
and distress begotten of poverty and
hard times. Undoubtedly these exert an
appreciable influence, but there is a
growing conviction among certain medical
specialists that the harvest of suicides
and the crop of Iunatics will not end with
the existing business depression. In
other words, they maintain that there
are certain abnormal conditions being
gradually and persistently introduced
into the business life of the city which
will insure a perennial crop of insanity
and self-destructiOn. These conditions are
architectural. The rage for tall buildings,
it is alleged, has exercised a most perni-
ciOus effect upon the operatives who have
to labor at such tremendous elevations.
1t is well known that hundreds of people
are 50 organized that they cannot look
from any considerable height without
feeling nausea, giddiness and mental de-
mOraliZatiOn. There are scores of people
who dare not trust themselves to even
look down from a great elevation-they
know that they would be seized by a
mania of self.destructiOn. Many men and
women employed in the dizzy heights of
New YOrk's business houses Wrestle with
this impulse day after day, week after
week, year after year, till they find relief
from their anxiety in the lunatic asylum
or the grave.


Said a thoughtful and experienced
west-side physician TO the writer a few
days since The genealogy of a great
deal of this insanity and suicide is TO be
traced to the tall towers men and women
are now compelled to work in. Steeples
are very well for churches, yet we see
that nOVelists attribute to men who have
to be up there certain superstitiOus be-
liefs and general weakness of intellect.
These writers we're simply exhibiting a
law of which they were unconscious. An
architectural elevation like the Tribune
produces mental depreciation. knew a
score of clever writers and thinkers who
could no more work in the tall tower
than they could fly. / couldn't work
I'D there mvself. A certain feeling of
anxiety WOulu HauuL lie anu JllG JDhcI
OF banishing anxiety has an immense
| deal to do with mental soundness and
| longevity. 1t is a fact that manage
ment of the mind is, as johnson told
Boswell, "a great art, - adding that when
| a man is anxious or miserable his diges-
tive functions are para!yzed. To be
compelled TO labor at a great elevation
demoralizes certain brains. Not every
one is equipped with the balance to fit
him for an aerOnaut. There is something
in early training. MasOns and brick
! layers have often cool heads at dizzy
| heights, yet when the Messrs. Townsend
of Glasgow, Scotland, had the immense
chimney built for their chemical works
three men developed melancholia and
were unable to proceed above four hun
dred feet The total height of the i'm


mense chimney is four hundred and sixty
eight feet. Tennant & Co.'s tall chimney
also in Glasgow, four hundred and fifty
feet, and the chimney of Grossly, thr
Halifax, Yorkshire, carpet weaver, abou
four hundred feet, were built withou


loss of life, but by the loss of reason K
over a dozen persons.


eff you look at the returns of tn


average duration of life exhibited in Ger


tain trades and professions you will SCI
that the element of elevation is apparent