The alternative is to bring up his family in the brawl and small scandal of a boarding house. His wife requires always a certain amount of dresses and bonnets to maintain herself in a respectable position in the estimation of her friends, and dresses and bonnets entail an uncertain amount of expenditure. A man’s tailor will inform him in advance exactly how much his garment will cost, and one can contract for a bridge across the Mississippi at an agreed sum, but there is no force known in nature that will induce or drive a dressmaker into foregoing an opportunity for advantage taking, or persuade her to fix in advance a price for the making and trimming of a gown. The married bookkeeper or salesman on a salary in New York City, is forever upon the ragged edge of embarrassment, unable to save the amount of the payments necessary for adequate life insurance, or to provide a fund for a rainy day. The laborer or mechanic who earns six hundred to nine hundred dollars per annum is, in comparatively easy circumstances, for he can live in a tenement house in a cheap neighborhood without loss of caste, and caste is of almost as much consequence in free America as in the Punjaub. After some thought, Mr. David Morning devised a trial scheme for the relief of married men of small incomes, whose duties required their daily presence in New York City, below Canal Street, and in the autumn of 1894 his agents began to quietly purchase the real estate between Rector Street and the Battery, and bounded by Greenwich Street and the Hudson River. Some months were consumed in the acquisition of title to the realty, and in a few instances long prices were exacted by sagacious and selfish owners, who held out until the others had sold, but the bulk of the property was purchased at about its value, and the brokers were finally instructed to close with all persons willing to sell, without haggling as to price. It required about $15,000,000 to complete the purchase, and for this sum sixteen hundred lots were secured of the orthodox dimensions of twenty-five by one hundred feet each. Electric lights turned night into day, and several thousands of men and hundreds of vehicles, divided into three armies of eight-hour workers, were at once employed in the work of demolition. Temporary railroad tracks were laid from the land to the North River piers, and the material and débris not needed to fill cellars and vaults was carried on cars to barges, which were towed to the Jersey flats, where their contents were dumped upon ground previously acquired by Mr. Morning for that purpose, and by the first of February, 1895, the lower part of Manhattan Island west of Greenwich Street was as bare as a picked bird.