Building Company in order to build "model" affordable tenements; they rented for $8–$14/month. By 1887 the company had completed six model buildings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for the sum of $155,000. Critics favored legislation and regulations to improve tenement conditions, but the model tenement was a progressive step. American foreign policy By the late 1890s, with the increase in international conflicts, Adler switched his concern from domestic issues to the question of American foreign policy. While some contemporaries viewed the 1898 Spanish–American War as an act to liberate the Cubans from Spanish rule, others perceived the U.S. victories in the Caribbean and the Philippines as the beginning of an expansionist empire. Adler at first supported the war but later expressed concern about American sovereignty over the Philippines and Puerto Rico. He believed that an imperialistic rather than a democratic goal was guiding U.S. foreign policy. Ethical Culture affirms "the supreme worth of the person", and Adler superimposed this tenet on international relations, believing that no single group could lay claim to superior institutions and lifestyle. Unlike many of his contemporaries during World War I, Adler did not believe that the defeat of the German Empire would make the world safe for democracy. He thought peace depended on representative democratic governments being non-imperialistic and their curbing the arms race. He opposed the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. As an alternative, Adler proposed a "Parliament of Parliaments", elected by the legislative bodies of the different nations and representing different classes of people, rather than special interests, so that common and not national differences would prevail. Philosophy Adler developed an original philosophy with a foundation in those of Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel that developed and transformed these roots. He considered philosophy not just a guide of life but key to improving society and the human condition appropriate to a respect for essential human dignity. Rejecting Kant's metaphysics he embraced his stress on the intrinsic worth and dignity of the person. Combining a supreme moral principle similar to Kant's with his own detailed ideas of self-realization, he emphasized free development of the individual in relation to societal concerns and fellowship. He preceded John Dewey in a concern for the "problems of men" instead of philosophical technicalities. While his ideas shared some aspects of pragmatism he was better described as "an ethical idealist with great practical reforming zeal" he