Accidental Shanty

One complication that will need to be addressed as I move forward is the distinction between intentional squatters and accidental shanties.
Most of the time what I want are the real squatters, those who moved in on a property with the intention to act illegally. In this regard I have discovered that prior to 1900 many people thought of property rights as something malleable and slightly inconvenient. Sort of like jaywalking, which is something everyone does but can be infuriating in others when you are driving the car that nearly runs them down. Actual occupancy and usage was the standard these people held property to. Idle property was a kind of crime against society. That perspective not only justifies squatting but makes it a moral imperative. Progress demands that the land be put to some productive use, and some squatters enthusiastically and loudly pursued this goal to extremes. Most were quieter and more modest consumers of others land but the rationalization among squatters is strikingly uniform: Empty Land is Aristocratic and squatters were the ultimate urban yeomen, democrats and levelers without exception.
The progressive rationalization of squatter sovereignty is possibly intentionally ironic since the squatters themselves were viewed by the mainstream as key obstacles to progress. And here is where things get complicated.
The ideological front loading of "squatter" with its intimations of anti-progress and illegality made it an effective smear tool in eviction battles. There is no doubt that the inhabitants of the shantytowns of Manhattan, Brooklyn, or East San Pedro and many other locations knew that they were taking use of the land away from the rightful owners. These are the intentional squatters. The tricky ones are those who got sucked in to squatting through no fault of their own. Problem is, it isn't easy to tell who is who. An example from the June 5, 1901 New York Daily Tribune:

JAMAICA BAY SQUATTERS MUST PAY RENT.
The action brought by the New-Jersey Co-operative
Land Company, of which F. W. Dunton is secretary,
to oust Edward Essix from the occupancy
of certain lands in the meadows of Jamaica Bay,
of ¦which the company claims to be the lessee, tried
before Justice Kadian in the Municipal Court, at
Jamaica, having been decided in favor of the petitioner,
a warrant of eviction was issued and executed
yesterday. The petitioner proceeded upon
the theory that Mr. Essix. who had built a house
on the land, which he occupied as a summer residence,
was a squatter, as his occupancy was without
authority.
The defense set up that the lease held by the
company, which was originally granted by the
town auditors of Jamaica when they were in
authority, prior to the consolidation, and since
then continued under the commonalty of the city
of New-York, was invalid, and that the company
had no legal control over the land.
Justice Kadian held that the validity of the lease
cannot come in as part of the case— least, not
in his court—and. further, that the lease was before
him. and he had no choice but to treat it as
a good lease. He signed an order for the removal
of Mr. Essix from the land.
Th. order was placed in the hands of Sheriff De
Bragga for service. With deputies he went to the
house in question yesterday. and found no one
there. The house is situated on Shad Creek, and
is a two story one. costing, perhaps. $1,500. The
Sheriff forced an entrance and his men carried out
all the furniture, depositing it on the beach. The
doors and windows were then sealed and a sheriff's
notice posted, warning all persons from entering
the house. The company will now demand
rent from the twenty-five other squatters, and if
it is not paid will evict them.

How does one read this? Are Mr Essix and others acting in good faith? The New Jersey Land Co-Operative won this case, but only on the merits of a a lease that the judge refused to question. Call me a cynic, but it might be that the leases were as invalid as claimed by the defendant and the NJ Land Co-Operative stole land from the rightful owners. Maybe the Co-Op is the squatter in this story, albeit a successful one.

Anyone know where Shad Creek was? I think it was on an island in the bay, just south of the wildlife refuge, but I can't be sure.

NYC sets the pace.

New York City gets a lot of attention from urbanists, probably too much but it is the nation's largest city and the national media is based there so there is lots of information and the largest possible audience. Also, and this is the part that bothers me as an urbanist, there is a long standing sense that New York City is the farthest along the path that every other American city will follow. NYC is the future of other cities as they grow and age.
That perception has waned a great deal as the developing world has spawned one megacity after another that not only fails to follow the trajectory of the NYC example but also have failed to even resemble each other in any meaningful way.

But New York's status as an impressively narcissistic urban entity stuffed with excellent print media archives means that NYC is where one turns for accounts of pre-Civil War comments of city squatters. Like this...

From the New York Daily Times, July 12, 1854

Squatting is a weakness of universal humanity, and squatters are in every land a terror and a scourge. The lately civilized inhabitants of San Francisco have just passed through a series of squatter riots. The squatters engross, almost monopolize the legislation of Australia, and in some parts the great advantages secured to the United States by the new treaty with Japan, are presumed to interest, more than all others, the Squatter Sovereigns, for whom the home settlements are getting too hot.
 You think good reader, that we talk of distant lands and regions removed by continents or an ocean. Ask any owner of a vacant lot up town if he believes it. He will tell you that a squatter has his cabin on his lot, and very likely raises radishes or cabbages off his dearly-bought square feet. Nor is it easy to get possession from the intruders. They pay no rent, -they will submit to none. We heard of one simple fellow who did pay a mere nominal charge, - just enough to confess that the title was not in him, - and the consequence was that his cabin was mobbed, and he obliged to flee. They say that they are banded together to support each other in their mutual defense; that they have their lawyers to defend them when suits of ejectment are brought; that the fees are paid by taxes assessed upon each other. We have here additional reasons to pity the rich. The owners of lots, especially of lots about Yorkville, have not taxes only to pay, nor rents only to collect, nor nuisances to keep off, but these squatters to fight with, and their possession to dispute when they are ready to improve their property.

Sometimes it takes something like this to point out the obvious: anyone who breaks ranks and pays ground rent to the nominal owner needs to be forced out. This needs to be developed as an idea.

New York City, 1854

Military subsidy

With Veteran's Day closing in I present this, a thematic squatter post.

What if you are a country that has to fight a large number of wars on a regular basis that leave you cash poor, but pay off with immense territorial gains?
That was the United States in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Very early on the Continental Congress determined that the surest way to gain the loyalty of the populace and recruits for the army was to promise to pay soldiers in the land liberated from the British. Depending upon where they enlisted, privates were promised 50 to 100 acres to serve out their term of service, while an officer might be entitled up to 5,000 acres of their own choosing. Similar generosity to the extent of 50 to 800 acres was extended to Hessian mercenaries as an enticement to desert. From the perspective of the congress this policy of land bounties had few downsides: men would fight for the promise of land more readily than some distant payoff, the underpopulated (and hence vulnerable) frontier gained settlers with military training, and best of all there were no short-term costs and only long-term gains. Win-win-win.
So through the decades Military Land Warrants were an expected benefit of fighting for one's country, and the grants remained generous right up until the policy was suspended in 1855. Of course not everyone wanted to move to the frontier, and what does one do with 5,000 acres of Indiana swamp anyway? The answer is: sell it. Some states, like Ohio, were developed in a speculative land craze that created huge fortunes. Both Virginia and the Continental Congress set aside prime territory along the Ohio River and Lake Erie for redemption through these grant warrants. The city of Cleveland, for example, was originally platted by the speculative Ohio Company who paid for the site in part using Military land Warrants that they bought on the cheap from veterans who had no interest in moving west. A similar speculative boom set off in Indiana after the War of 1812 is given credit for slowing the growth of the state for decades.

These bounties created endless problems. Because the warrants were as good as cash, actually better than cash given the frontier epidemic of counterfeiting and wildcat banks, people were loath to redeem them for land. The federal government honored the last bounty warrants in the 1960s, and some states still have militia warrants in circulation. Our friend Mrs Hamilton also tried to obtain East San Pedro using warrants, but failed.
The waves of speculation fueled in part by capitalists buying out bounties also created a crisis of title similar to the one we are experiencing today. By pooling warrants and cash purchases capitalists bought prime real estate and left it to rise in value. This led to squatting.

Anyway, the policy of distributing land to veterans ended long before the sentiment that they deserved a bounty as a reward for their service.

One recurring story is that of the ancient veteran living on a military base long after their service has ended. Because of the time period I am looking at most closely during the period of  intensifying sentiment against squatters at the turn of the twentieth century, most of these veterans fought in the Civil War. As a rule these vets aren't tossed off the reservation without a crust or roof over their heads. Instead these former soldiers are something like mascots that have become too infirm to care for themselves or need to be removed because of new policies.

Typical is the story of Jack Johnson, a Civil War vet who lived for decades in a shed on the grounds of the Annapolis, MD Naval Academy. Here is the article from the Baltimore Sun:

OUT OF THE NAVAL ACADEMY
Last Squatter on Property Acquired Has to
Go - Officers Build Him a House
ANNAPOLIS Md., Feb 29 (1904) - The last
person to occupy an abode on that part of
Annapolis recently added to the Naval
Academy is John Jackson an old sailor
grown to be a town character who performed
a splendid feat of gallantry in the
civil war, and for which he received a medal
from the Government.
The latest part of Annapolis to be taken
in the Academy was thickly settled
and nearly all the inhabitants left nearly
a year ago. Jackson, however, who has
been reduced on account of his habits, to
absolute penury took his quarters in a
shanty which been used to store fish
nets. From this shelter the authorities
have not had the heart to move him. It
has become imperatively necessary how-
ever to clear the area and several naval
officers clubbed together and built him a
small home in another part of the city.
Jackson's heroism was shown during the
siege of Charleston when he was a sailor
on the United States monitor Miantonomoh.
Several torpedoes were drifting down on
the ship, which was in a such a position
she could not avoid them. Jackson swam
to them and unscrewed their caps thus,
rendering harmless.

There are similar stories from all over the country demonstrating that a kind of informal charity bounty was in place for veterans for decades after the land bounty system ended and decades before the GI Bill created a modern analogue.

In between we have the Bonus Army.

More Circles...

Happy Vet's day.

Furs, cars, and big circles

Home again, at the expense of two dead computers I have blocked out the San Pedro section pretty well. I don't assume I am done with it, but I can start to look to other parts of the chapter. What do I know about Tammany anyway? Time to learn.

As a relief to those of you waiting patiently for more I offer: Detroit.
Yeah.
In 1901 Detroit was a growing city of diverse manufacturers and a rail hub into Canada that had nothing but bright prospects ahead. Like most American cities of its size, Detroit was a magnet for immigrants and country lads looking for a future and a fortune. Oliver Zunz is the go to person for Detroit in this era, his Changing Face of Inequality is a model of social science research.  But as I am arguing here, there is another angle to the story of urban housing than segregation and slums and since it is Detroit (the ultimate corporate city) it is fitting that the origins are in America's first great corporation.

 The American Fur Company was born from a chance encounter of John Jacob Astor with a fur trader on board the ship bringing him to America from Germany in 1783. Astor left the ship determined to invest in the trade and within twenty years had already amassed a quarter of a million dollars and incredible influence over the beaver pelt trade. The lack of organized American trading companies west of the Alleghenies and particularly in the Louisiana Purchase provided the opportunity for Astor to gain even more control, and he invested heavily in land and posts throughout the Northwest Territories. In 1808 Detroit was a central hub of the business, a situation that was cemented in place when Astor incorporated the American Fur Company that year in Michigan and based his operations there. Detroit prospered under the three decades of Astor's fur monopoly, growing from a frontier town of about 1,000 residents to a city of 10,000.

J.J. Astor (1763-1848)

Forbes estimates that (adjusted for inflation) Astor's estimated $20 million worth at his death makes him the richest American who ever lived, but most of that was Manhattan real estate and none of it furs. Six years before his death came the bankruptcy of the American Fur Company, which had been losing increasingly large amounts of money as silk replaced beaver as the fashionable hat material. As part of the dissolution of the company the courts handed control of the properties to Mr. George Ehninger, the company secretary and Astor's nephew, for sale and disposal. Detroit took decades to regain its economic footing.
And so in 1842 the company that built Detroit and made America's greatest fortune ended operation. Except it didn't.

Detroit 1897

Return to 1901 when Detroit is booming once again with a population of ~290,000 persons and the American Fur Company is again an active business for a few short hours. I imagine that some speculator walking the margins of the city accidentally resurrected the company when he asked a few shanty dwellers what it would take for them to sell out and discovered that they had no title. Or perhaps our would-be developer looked into the tax records of a property he had an eye on and discovered that the lands were fifty-nine years in arrears.
There being no living heirs to Mr. Ehninger there was no competent agent to sign over the deeds to the properties or pay the back taxes. So for the time that it took for the state court to appoint an agent to the time that agent signed away the last of the company property the American Fur Company lived again and the squatters lost their homes.
You will notice what became the usual pattern as the twentieth century advanced; the squatters lost despite having more than enough tenure to claim adverse possession.

Now advance another century and some to 2010. The corporations that built the city and created some of the greatest fortunes in America have gone bankrupt. Detroit has lost its economic footing and there are thousands of unsalable vacant properties throughout the city. Result: Squatters.