Golden Age, November 24, 1920
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Nov. 24, 1920, Vol. 2, No. 31
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Volcms 2 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1020 Ncmbui 31
CONTENTS of the GOLDEN AGE
LABOR AND ECONOMICS. SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL MANUFACTURING AND FINANCIAL
Not Where to Lay Cost ot Building Materials 103
^ortrTerrlble.......... " Wage and Other Cost.........IM
Predicament ....................100 Concrete and Adobe
Boosing Outside of Houses ...... -.......107
Ho^/cSnditfOM’ 102 The Contracter's side ot It 108
Ahmad ...................103 Builders Extraordinary 116
POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
fntice and the Poor^........109 Decisions of the
Supreme Court
AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY Why Dissatisfied Farmers
SCIENCE AND INVENTION { A Polar Paradise Coming
HOUSEWIFERY AND HYGIENE
Oxygen the Basis of Life....11“ Rheumy rism aud Its Diet._113
TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY Color andl the Messiah......110 In Foreign Lands. ........
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Reason for Considering Certain Historical Facts Considered Indelicate ......
The Books of Moses and the Laws Therein Promuleated
Israel's Government Different From Any Before or Pi nee. 120
Juvenile Bible Study ..
The Reformer (poem).............t............. .
Fubliotad •▼try other Wodooday U 15 Myrtle Ar«nv«. (Bon of Krooklvni New York, W. T. b» WOODWORTH. HVDGrS’CS «nd MARTIN
Ten Cests a Cupv — S j ihi a Year Make remittances to The Selden AgW, Mauer U a. T.e
Golden Age
Volume II New \ wk, Wednesday, November 24. 1920 Number 11
Not Where to Lay Their Heads
THE large financial interests of the country are spending millions of dollars in flooding the country with propaganda in their own favor; but it must be conceded that they are not showing the same amount of interest in the welfare of the common people, as that welfare centers in the housing problem. They must have made billions out of the blood and tears of the World War, but quite overlook their opportunity of seeing that their workers are properly housed.
Put a hundred people on an island. Let all their belongings get into the hands of a minority, and an ever diminishing minority, and what happens ? The answer is so simple that any one can understand it. Yet this is just what we are coming to in the United States, it seems.
In 1890 the percentage of American people paying rent was 52:2; now, after the lapse of thirty years, it is 57:1. Thirty years ago an average of 110 families occupied 100 homes; there was an extra family in every tenth home. Today there- are 121 families for every 100 available dwellings in this country: there is an extra family in every fifth home. We are moving in the wrong direction and have nearly reached an impasse.
Family life is the greatest guaranty for the security of the state. Young people are the same now as they always were. They want to get marked and have homes of their o«n, but there is n'o place for them to go. Weddings continue at the rate of 1.040.000 a year, but only 70.000 new dwellings were built in 1919 and in the year previous there were 71 percent as many buildings destroyed by fire as there were new dwellings bq|lt.
Neither young people nor old people can be happy when crowded into the quarters occupied by others. Two million new Americans are born every year, and the natural result should lie that they and their parents should have quarters of increased size. The present conditions of things is having a tendency to discourage marriage and child-bearing. It is forcing husband;; to seek boarding houses and wives to return to their parents.
Most people, if properly housed, in suitable -surroundings, will take the other troubles of life philosophically; but put them into unsatisfactory quarters and they will become irritable and inefficient. Crowd them into narrow space, and their powers of vital resistance wane. Where the average number of persons per room is two, the death rate is more than twice what it is where the average number of persons is less than one. Most people wish to own their own homes and to have their homes to themselves, for they find this to be better for them and for their children than to be with others. In homes that are owned by the parents the death rate of children is less than half of what -it is in the houses that charge the lowest rent.
The most efficient way to overcome industrial unrest is to see that labor is comfortably housed. Unrest will not spread among home owners, nor will a mechanic leave town in wrath if he owns his own home. A man owning his own home takes more interest in the community and is in a very special sense an asset to the town where he lives.
If Big Business would divert a portion of its capital—namely, the insurance funds, hank deposits and other savings of the people which it uses to carry on its great enterprises—toward the building of moderate-priced homes, and if it would cease to think of larger and ever larger dividends as the aim and end of existence, it would get far better results in its fight against Bolshevism than by its present method of making up funds until which to propagandize the people against it.
One of the first things that the Bolshevists did with the Russian mansions was to allot their rooms to the homeless. Do you want to know how near we are to the edge of that very thing in America today? Read the New York Times of August 27, 1920, and note the proposal of The Nation, therein set forth, that in every large city in the United States where the housing situation is acute, the city should at once take possession of every unoccupied loft, store, shop or dwelling where human beings could be sheltered, fix a fair rental for the recompense of the owner, and let the people in. If that were done, how long dp you think it would be before every disused or half-used church or dwelling would be made to shelter those in need of it!
In the month of June, 1920, members of a Manchester, England, tenants’ defense league seized fourteen unoccupied houses and turned them over to ex-soldier tenants who were without homes. Of course the owners at once made application to the courts to regain possession of their property, but this shows what the present situation is developing.
Tenement House Commissioner Frank Mann said before the United States Senate Committee on Reconstruction and Production: “It is the job of the men of wealth to take up the question of housing. The wealthy should take up this question seriously to save their own skins.”
To get the country hack to 'where it was before the war the United States would have to build 1-,140,000 new dwellings, and to get it back where it was in 1890, with a home for 110 families in 100 apartments, it would need to build 2.190,000 new dwellings. Before the war it built about 430.000 dwellings annually: and counting on the usual increase in the population the present situation is already so bad that it cannot he overcome for at least five years.
Not only are 57.1 percent of the people without any property, and therefore discontented and on the verge of revolution, but the condition of those who do own property is gradually growing worseTnstead of better. Of the owned homes, .34.4 percent were free of encumbrance in 1890, but this has fallen to 28.6 percent in 1920. The prosperity of the few has been at the expense of the many, The war produced 23.000 new millionaires, and they have been taking from the common people every cent they can extract.
Besides the 2.190,000 new dwellings which it should have, and which would now cost about $12,000,000,000 to build, the country needs about 128,000 factories costing $100,000 or over, about 325,000 smaller factories, 6,000 hotels, 5,000 schools, and 14,000 railroad stations, or a total building requirement of approximately $15,000,-OOO^pOO. This amount is somewhat less than one-third of the amount spent by this government on the World War. Why not top off the Victory Loan with a Place-to-Live Loan and thus make the United States safe for democracy!
New York's Terrible Predicament
IN THE old style tenements constructed in
New York city up until thirteen years ago, and comprising more than half of the living apartments of the city, three-quarters of the rooms have no window openings on the outer air, and no light except that borrowed from adjoining rooms. In one block of the city one-half of the rooms are dark. The courts constitute space for the ventilation of toilets and receptacles for garbage, and living or sleeping rooms open out to these courts. Food and coal must be hauled up five flights of stairs. Garbage and ashes must be carried down. In thousands of them there are no bath tubs and no wash tubs, and water pipes and even gas pipes are rusted nearly shut. Eighteen thousand of those apartments are unfit for human habitation, having neither water nor toilets in the buildings, and being never repaired. But nevertheless they are inhabited, and that is enough in itself to-explain New York’s unrest. The janitors of such places get $6 a month and the use of a few dark rooms in payment for their services.
Normal construction in New York city is 2S.0OO apartments a year; and normal growth of population is 125.000 per. year. Ordinarily the one takes <-are of th<- other, and there have been times when many apartments were idle, awaiting tenant’. But the war has changed all this. Euildimr lias practically ceased, except for business purposes: but the city is growing faster than ever. Between July 1. 1919. and July 1. 1920. ifl-ini to the tearing down of old buildings or to their conversion for business purposes, there w> re actually 271 less homes in the city at the later date than at the former one.
It is well known that for every dollar put into factory construction there must be four dollars put into housing construction, in order to take care of the workers; yet in the Queens district of New York alone there have been $20,000,000
It is estimated that New York is short of ’ homes for 100,000 to 160,000 families. One of the contributing causes for this is that so many people made fortunes during the year and a halt the country was at war and have come to New York to spend their money. These new rich can Outbid any of the workers for anything they wish to rent or to buy.
As a consequence rents are going up, and will continue to go up until they reach the level of the now frightfully high building costs. In some localities three-room apartments that rented a year ago for $35 per month now rent for $95. Five-room apartments that rented for $45 per month were made into two smaller apartments, and each of the smaller apartments now rents for $80, as stated in our last issue. • Many of the rent increases are caused by tenants bidding against each other, but this is not the case with all of them.
Speculative builders claim that they cannot afford to build apartment houses unless they get $20 per month per room rental, and apartments recently completed command this figure. • At New Rochelle, a suburb, reports show an $18.50 rental raised to $32 per month, another from $20 to $42 and a third from $13 to $30. In a suburb of Brooklyn a landlord raised the rent of a tenant from $75 to $225 per month at one jump. A doctor had his rent raised from $150 to $400. •
New York tenements are built as poorly as the law allows. While they are new and in good condition they are filled with tenants, and, if necessary, at low rents. As soon as the house is filled it is sold, and before long the new owner sees his profits going in patching and repairs. He raises the rent, and the tenant has to pay it or move. The landlord justifies himself with the thought that he is getting a smaller return . on his money than he could obtain in other lines. Big Business does not consider such buildings good investments.
The profitable apartments are the elaborate ones, the ones which command the highest rentals. One of the latest of these in New York city contains three thousand rooms. Its largest apartments rent for $15,000 a year, with no leases given for less than five years. The cheapest apartment has six rooms and three baths, and rents for $4,000 a year. More than one hundred of the city’s millionaires live in this new apartment house. .
of new factories built in the last three years, and no provision made for the workers. During the past year Brooklyn issued 6,348 building permits, and these permits showed a greater interest in automobiles than they did in people; ■ Tor out of the total number there were 229 more permits for garages than for all classes of buildings for housing purposes combined.
In New York's 982,408 apartments there are 60,000 apartments that are housing more than one family. Virtually the whole population live in apartment houses; for out of the total of nearly 6,000,000, less than 5 percent own any interest in land or homes. This is bad enough, but in addition, the apartments are so dimintt-five in size and so crowded!
■ In a single block in New York, comprising four and one-half acres of land, 5,021 persons find their homes. Two other blocks show 4,456 and 4,370 respectively, and there are 235 blo,cks in the city that hold over 2,000 persons each. It is not unusual to find two families living in three rooms, each family comprising father, mother and several children. Four of these , poor souls sleep in the kitchen every uight.
Children by the hundred are sleeping in bath-F tubs in which crib mattresses have been placed.
There are places in New York where twenty-five persons are living in apartments that were ' designed to accomodate five persons.
A building erected for fifteen families was housing thirty-five families, and these had taken in twenty roomers. Another house constructed to house thirty families was sheltering forty, with thirty roomers added. In 109 houses built for twenty families each there were 1,033 roomers: in 150 houses built for twenty-four families each there were 1,209 roomers; in 358 houses built for twenty-eight families each there were 2,500 roomers. Such a multitude of roomers has caused the ruin of large numbers of girls occupying the same crowded quarters.
May first and October first are moving days in New York; and when the May moving day came around in 1920 there were 26,930 families, . who before the war would have had their housing needs supplied, that were forced to break up their hofiies, "Store their goods and go in with other famines because there were no other places for them to go. For a considerable time a portion of this army of 107,722 persons was quartered in the city's armories. The storage warehouses are filled with their belongings.
The housing situation in New York is so serious that in May Mayor Hylan named a committee of eighty-two of New York’s most prominent men to consider the problem, and in September the Governor of the state called a special session of the legislature to deal with the same matter. Progress is slow because there are so many conflicting factors to the problem.
One of the greatest of these factors is the financial one. Big Business refuses to invest in low-priced apartments because it can earn more money elsewhere. The law prohibits a mortgage rate of interest higher than 6 percent and mortgages are subject to income taxes and surtaxes. Because of this the estate of Marshall Field is now said to be making 15 percent only on its mortgages where other concerns, with funds differently invested, are making from seven percent upward.
. A great manv suggestions have been made. Some have urged that income taxes on mortgages should be abolished so as to attract capital. Others have urged that new dwellings should be exempted from taxation for several ■ years as an offset to their high cost of con> struction. The Labor party has urged state credits for home building, and au act enabling cities to acquire, hold and lease land.
If a city can spend its money to assist in building subways it is difficult to see why it cannot build dwellings. It is no more important that people should be transported to and from their work than it is that they should have a place to live. In some of the newest and most beautiful cities of Europe the city itself is the largest landlord and the largest landholder.
Lawyers claim that before the city can build houses on city owned land, financed by municipal bonds, an amendment to the state constitution must be passed. Such amendments, even if unopposed by Big Business, usually take about two years to put through; and the problem will not wait "so long. A few of the larger concerns of the city are doing something for their own employes by arranging with owners of I,>ts to accept mortgages covering the value of the lot, usually alymt 20 percent, securing Ioans from money-lenders for 00 percent, the concern itself supplying the remaining 20 percent The employe thus has a house huiit lor him w ,,H advancing anything himself, and pays for his home gradually on a monthly payment basis. “
A few tenants have undertaken to organize cooperative societies t o protect themselves against further rent increases. In many in- < stances they have been defrauded into paying more for the properties than they were worth; and then after all their savings were invested in the properties the owners have called the mortgages, ruining the tenants financially and cancelling their leases. The owner then evicts them and gets a new class of tenants to go through another such experience.
Meantime New York continues to struggle * ■with a problem which is growing worse every day. Apartments are being cut down into ever smaller and fewer rooms, until finally the bedroom has appeared which is too small for a bed; and the two single beds which it contains are built into the wall one above another in the form of steamer berths. The one room and kitchenette apartments have been found a bad . thing socially. They make lazy and immoral . wives and increase the number of divorces. All this while there are 24,000 vacant farm houses in the state, and more farms are being • abandoned and more farm houses vacated right . along.
Housing Outside of New York
WHAT is true of New York is true of its suburbs. Commuters to New York have increased 50 percent in a year, and that notwithstanding the raise in commutation rates. Rents in the Oranges- run from $20 to $35 per room per month. Newark has had a tent city of two hundred army tents to shelter the homeless. Five hundred Passaic families have their goods in storage because they have no home.
Philadelphia is short of 30,000 homes, but most of its 400,000 homes are owned by the occupants. Tenants of Roxbury, Dorchester and other Boston suburbs have organized for mutual protection. Washington is 10,000 dwellings short. The Federal Rent Commission has reduced the rents of some apartments. One l;imdr--d dollars charged for four rooms, kitchen and bath "as reduced to $62.50: $65 charged for two rooms, kitchen and bath was cut to $37.50. The United States Housing Corporation was abolished in January. One of its considerable
-v?,a fyb-, nf Govern
ment dormitories <in the Union Station Plaza, at an expense of $1,500 per room. These tem-
porary structures are in good shape and will probably be used for years. The temporary structures erected in Paris during the Franco-Prussian war remained in place for thirty years.
Throughout the mining regions of Pennsyl-
<, vania, West Virginia and elsewhere the average company town is a place with no sidewalks, dirt roads and four-room houses without running water or inside toilets. The towns are ■without trees, grass or shrubbery; and the houses ar<> all of one design and all in straight rows. In the coke regions the homes of the workers are frequently located in gaseous spots where they are enveloped in smoke much of the time and whore no vegetation can grow. The oft-repeated statement that the people that live in these homes do not mind it, do not want anything better, and would not know what to do with it if they had it, is all a plain old-fashioned falsehood.
The Ignited States Steel Corporation is beginning to see the light, and will now build comfortable homes of any preferred design for any employe who will advance ten percent of the cost and pay the balance in ten years. This is a liberal and sensible arrangement. By the way, the housing situation is worse in Pittsburgh and Cleveland than it is in New York.
Akron reported that housing was needed for 25,000 people. Detroit is short 30,000 homes and is so crowded for hotel space that, at the request of hotel and business men of the city, the Northern Navigation Company sent its steamer N'oronic there to serve as a floating hotel. Detroit has under construction a $10.-000,000 hotel, containing 1.000 rooms on 23 floors. Flint, Michigan, wage earners have had their rents advanced forty percent. People are leaving the farms and crowding into the cities. Nine percent of the farms of Michigan were wholly idle in 1920. and there are 30,300 vacant farm houses in that state.
Tn Kglem. Indiana, the Monon railroad provided the foreman of a section crew with a combination si- ping and dining car for use as a home until lie could find another. Chicago has a shortage of 100,000 homes and has less than halt' tlu^ building trades workers it had six yoarsnago. Ono year ago it had 16.000 carpenters, and now there are about 9.000. An organization of wealthy Chicago business men purchased a square of land on the outskirts of the city and is building 2,000 houses which it will sell to workingmen at cost, the selling price covering only the principal and six percent interest.
Chicago and New York each have in contemplation new hotels, the expense of which will be $15,000,000 each. The one in Chicago is planned to front three city blocks on Lake Michigan. A leading hotel of that city, with all its rooms filled, recently lowered its rates, explaining to its patrons that it considered it was making too great a profit. Chicago takes . the prize for a high rent asked but not obtained. During the Republican national convention a wealthy home owner offered to rent-his honse to the National Committee for one week for the sum of twelve thousand dollars. Several hundred residents of Chicago are living in houseboats which, it is claimed, cost them about $1,000 apiece to build, contain five rooms and may be. moved anywhere on a moment’s notice.
St. Louis is reported short 2,000,000 feet of factory space. A family in Kansas spent the whole of last winter in an army tent. Scores of the residents of Sioux City are living in shacks made of discarded building materials, packing boxes and old strips of tin, sheet iron and building paper.
Houses in Los Angeles that formerly rented for $15 per month are now renting for $60, and in some instances landlords are charging tenants $1.50 per night for any visitors that stay over night with them. In one of its lots 50 feet wide and 100 feet deep 25 Mexican families pay $225 per month rent for '•accomodations” that cost altogether about $1,200 to build and that have as their outstanding feature a ■'community” water faucet and a “community” toilet room.
In Seattle and in Portland, Oregon, rent of wage-earners has gone up forty percent. At the Ambassador Hotel, San Francisco, the sky limit has been reached in rents. Five-room apartments are listed at $20,000 to $30,000 per year, and three-room apartments at $12,000 to $19,000. all of which goes to show that some people have more money than they have brains.
Housing Conditions Abroad
LATS in London that rented for $10 to $15 a week before the war now bring $50 to $60 per week. There is such shortage of office space that £220 per annum are- being paid for the temporary wooden huts erected by the Government in squares and other open spaces, a sum
■ formerly sufficient to secure convenient accoino-e dations in substantial stone and brick buildings. ~ Thousands of big houses in London are for sale. It costs too much to maintain them and too much to turn them into apartment houses.
U Not long ago one of America’s leading £actresses, after visiting twenty-five London sjf * hotels in a vain effort to find a vacant room,
S j had to sit up in the railway station all night.
Guests at another hotel, learning .that their g" hotel was to be torn down, and not knowing
I where they could find other quarters, bought
K* ~ the hotel themselves rather than be put out
p on the street. They now run it as a cooperative
H home.
il ' In Bradford, England, are 5,000 old stone
t’ ' houses built back to back so that they cannot fall over, and long ago pronounced by medical 'J science as unfit for human habitation; yet today they are occupied.
. _ In Blyth, Northumberland, nine adults of
I mixed sexes occupied one room, and that tum-
f bling to pieces.
■_ In Hull ten families resided in one large house * and six families shared an eight-room house. « At Feltham Woking a landlord complained
> to the court that his tenant had eight persons ? \ sleeping in one room, and the tenant replied
’ I - that he knew of an instance where thirty-six persons slept in one room.
y At Silverson a widow and six children sleep
in one room, well and ill together.
1 At Rotherham a woman -with six children was
admitted to the workhouse because she had no I other place to go. The husband and eldest son
I . were boarding. but no one would admit the
family.
I In .Glasgow, August 23, many of the workers
went on a one-day strike as a protest to the government expressing their disapproval of the fact that permission had been given to the landlords to raise their rents 25 percent.
* It ispestimated that there are 795,000 new
houses ilTgently needed in England and Wales alone ; and some have estimated that in all of the
, British Isles together there are at least 7,000.-000 persons that are not adequately housed. With the bulldog tenacity which is the admiration of all the world the British are wrestling determinedly with this great problem. The government itself is taking the lead, planning to spend in home building $3,500,000,000, a snm
1 equal to the entire pre-war debt, and it is the belief of many that if it had not taken steps in this direction there would have been one of the typical British bloodless revolutions. Indeed, it is not so certain but that the steps are being taken too late, anyway, although the government has taken the first necessary steps toward the building of 300,000 houses and work has actually started on 20,000. The govern- ’ ment has a very sensible law in effect that ' tenants paying $350 a year or less rent cannot be ejected unless there is alternative accomodation available.
London’s largest department store, Selfridge’s, has been selling five-room concrete houses, of its own design and construction, complete for $2,250. This is an extraordinary piece of enterprise for a department store to engage in. A concern in Vancouver, B. C., is making and shipping to England five wooden houses a day under a contract that will keep them going a long time. Some of London’s worst shuns have recently been turned into beautiful home groups.
Of England’s male population, including the babies, one in every seven was in the battle line of the World War. How this spirit of indomitable courage has affected the land may be seen in the fact that there is a shortage of 200,000 •. workers in the building trades, and of these needed workers 60,000 were killed outright in ( war. There is a shortage of 15,000 bricklayers. Conditions are such that, as a general rule, building is three times as expensive now as it was before the war. Houses that formerly cost $2,000 to build cannot now be erected for less than $6,000 and six-room cottages that formerly cost $1,200 now cost $4,000. .
In Germany from 500,000 to 800,000 apartments are needed; but on account of scarcity of eoal brick cannot be manufactured with whichx to make the needed buildings. Basements and attic rooms are being utilized. The government is utilizing its power to commandeer partially unoccupied houses, fix rents and compel owners to rent out rooms. In Berlin it is finding beds for 3,000 nightly by utilizing 150 sleeping ears which are standing idle in the railroad yards. ।
The shortage of homes in Belgium is esti- |
mated at 300,000 and in France at 1.500,000 In | France the government is financing the con-struction of 550,000 homes in the devastated t regions. The great consumption death-rate in I
France is attributable largely to the fact that ?
I ■
: for many years they have had such insufficient
and such poorly constructed houses. The French ! law ■which requires a tax on every window is i really a tax on health.
•' Isolated items from other lands tell us that |n Argentina a fair average expenditure for living one day in a decent hotel is $6.50, and
’ that the Duke of Wellington has ordered whole, sale evictions of his tenants in Granada, Spain,
i because they could not pay the increased rents
"which he demanded. The duke business is in
' need of funds.
! In some parts of New Zealand the State owns : large tracts of land. This cannot be sold, but
* it can be rented, and the tenants have every
, advantage of ownership. The tenant may even
' leave the property to his children to live in,
I but neither he nor his children may speculate
; with it. The increased value that comes to the
j land as the community grows goes to the State.
। In this country we do things differently. The
public builds subways and the land speculators
5 ! get all the profits. The greatest fortunes that have ever been made in New York city have
* been made by the Astors and others that had nothing to do but sit down, fold their arms 1> and wait for their property to increase in value.
.«*» ■ L
11 Cost of Building Material*
BUILDING material is almost wholly the product of brawn. During the. war the ; brawny men were withdrawn from the building i industry, The young men were sent into the
* ! army and the older men into essential indus
tries. No building was permitted without the ! consent of the government.
* At the conclusion of the war the great financiers of the country who had accumulated untold billions of war profits engineered the greatest propaganda against foreigners ever witnessed in America. The purpose of this propaganda was to divert attention from themselves and prevent, prosecution for their thievery and knavery until it should be forgotten. The man with the wheelbarrow was denounced as a Bolshevist, a socialist, an anarchist and every other kind of ist. The result was that a vast number of honest, inpvt^it, industrious men were fright-■ ened out of their wits, and there followed a
! great exodus to Europe of just the kind of labor
the United States needs. As the profiteer saw America swallow the bait, he smiled, raised the rent and smiled again. He could afford to smile and to lead in the cheering, and he did. The rest of us cheered feebly as we paid the higher rent: and if today we were asked why we cheered because the workers in the building material industries were being chased out of the country ' we could not tell. Yet if the newspapers started it up again we would doubtless “bite” as of A yore. Now another Wall Street propaganda is T seeking to get the European workers back.— jhus getting their steamer fares both ways.
In normal times the building material industry produces annually $3,000,(XX),000 in perma- ' nent taxable wealth and employs more than one-quarter of the railroad tonnage of the ceuntry. Now the estimated shortage of workers in all branches of the industry is about 4,000,000, and material is hard to obtain because the lumber ■ mills, glass mills, brick yards and cement plants - k-s
are running short-handed, or not at all. Not 3 all of these workers have been chased back to ’ _x Europe. Some have been drawn into the auto- ' mobile, industry, catering to the new disease which the British have named squandermania. ;
Not only are the building material industries ' producing but 40 percent of their pre-war < quota, but much of what they have been producing has been sold abroad for high prices, d
spot cash at the American dock. This has >
materially cut down the supply available for s domestic use. :
In the limestone industry for" 1920 not more than sixty percent of normal was being pro- j duced. Steel had risen from $38 a ton to $110 a ton. Cement had risen from $1.95 a barrel p to $2.90. Sand that was 45 cents a cubic yard brought $1.90. Crushed stone and gravel that ’ sold for 85 cents per cubic yard brought $3.25. ;
Cement bags that used to cost $112 per thousand 1 cost $280. Laths were $13 a thousand; glass is practically out of the market. Spruce lumber soared from $40 to $75 per thousand. Oak-floor- ' ; ing went from $60 to $300 per thousand, and under-flooring from $20 to $60. Bath tubs that i were $14.50 sold for $40 and were not nearly ! as good; sinks that were $8 cost $28, and wash 1: basins that used to bring $7.50 were $25. ;
In British Columbia last year four plants f alone on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway cut 154,000,000'feet of lumber and paid out $1,500,000 in wages. It thus appears that the labor cost in producing lumber is about $10 per M.
Transportation conditions have been very " difficult and this has affected the building
material industry. The railroads have been congested, and there are almost no lumber schooners plying the Atlantic seaboard. The increase in freight rates has been another blow at the prospective home-builder because it has <dded to material costs. And then, do you suppose the building material men overlooked their chance to gouge while everybody else was gouging! The profits of ten representative concerns for the years 1916-1918 were nearly three times as much as for the years 1912-1914. In the one case the average annual profits were $10,154,722, which would seem sufficient, but in the latter period they were $27,729,685. The investigations of the Department of Labor show that thirteen years elapsed before building material prices resumed the levels that prevailed prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.
New York has been greatly stirred up over the brick situation. The city is largely built of that material, made in yards along the Hudson Biver. These bricks used to bring $5.25 at the dock in New York, and now they bring $25. Delivered at the job site they now cost $31, and New Yorkers are trying to figure out why the same kind of brick is delivered at the job site in Chicago for $16. Answers are not very satisfactory.
The following table shows the pre-war costs and profits compared with the 1920 costs and profits in the brick business, as reported by
investigators: ... ’ Pre-War In 1920
Labor........... $0.83
Freight ............ 1.25
Unloading..........45
Harbor towing.......03
Lumber and fuel ....
Profits, including selling expense .... 2.69
Wholesale price
delivered at dock . .$5.25.....$25.00
Does Tbseem rath<>r strange to you that men who beast tha1 they tire one hundred percent Americans, ana till good members of Chambers of Commerce, and probably church members, should be piakpig over eight times as much profit on brick a's their workers got for mal’hio the brick. aiiTl till this while New York is in such a terrible housing plight Well, it -should be sufficient for you to know that these men are influential business men, and that influential business men should not be criticized, no matter what they do.
Wage and Other Costs
THE basic wage for building mechanics is now v about $1 per hour. Bricklayers are getting more, and properly; for they lose much time on account of bad .weather and the work is very dangerous. Builders complain that bricklayers that used to lay 1,500 bricks a day when they were receiving $5 for a day’s work, now get $10 for a day’s work and lay only 700 bricks. In England the bricklayers usually lay about 400 bricks a day. It is estimated that there is a present shortage of 10,000 bricklayers in the United States. Plasterers are not willing to work at all on Saturdays now, but will work on Sundays if paid double time.
Wages per hour of some of the building mechanics that have come to our notice are as follows:
Bricklayers $1.12} ?
Plasterers 1.12}
Stone masons_________________________________1.00 ’
Cement finishers.............................I............
Carpenters 1.00*
Lathers 1.00
Structural iron finishers________________________________________
Sheet metal workers.
Slate and tile roofers______1.00
Composition roofers______._____
Plumbers and gas fitters 1.00*
Steam fitters............................ -_______________._____________________ 1.00
Elevator constructors.............................................
Portable hoisting engineers......................................
Tile layers...........
Structural iron workers................. .:.
Painters
Inside electrical fixture hangers.........1
Inside wiremen_____________________—
Cement finishers helpers.
Plaster laborers..................
Hod carriers.
Cement laborers......
■Ruildino- laborers
Elevator constructors helpers
Structural iron finishers helpers
Steam fitters helpers .
Composition rooters helpers
Bricklayers helpers______
•As ire to press ire hear of wages of $1.50 per hour being p-.iid to carpenters ainl plumbers in some places.
Costs of building are so great, and have risen £o rnnidly. that a company in New York which started to build and rent at $9 per month per
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room (on the basis of cost plus 5 percent interest on money invested) was compelled to make the rent $14 per month per room in order to meet these terms. Speculative builders generally demand a return of 12J percent on their investment, and figure on the average three-decker fire-trap wooden tenement of the suburbs paying for itself complete in five years.
Detailed figures compiled by the government showed that a small house built tor $4,117 in 1913 would cost $6,833 in the spring of 1919. as follows:
1913 1919
Net cost of building.—..................... $2,932.36 $-1,930.58
Cost of land at $1,000 per acre............ 143.00 143.00
Cost of publie utilities...........................400.00 680.00
Contractor’s profit and overhead,
15 percent-...... -..... 439.85 739.59
Architect’s fee, plans aud supervi
sion, 6 percent-------------------------------- 202.33 3-10.21
$4,117.54 $6,833.38
Everything indicates that people who own homes should not part with them until they have provided for themselves elsewhere and that those who can buy homes at a modest price should take advantage of the opportunity to do so.
Concrete and Adobe Houses
PRIOR to the war, when lumber was selling for $25 to $35 per thousand feet, the frame house was the cheapest form of construction. Today concrete houses are as cheap. Concrete cannot rot/ is sanitary, fireproof and cyclone proof. A concrete house is vermin proof, rat proof, and no insurance need be carried. There is a complete elimination of annual repair expenses.
Experience has shown, however, that the walls of concrete houses must be made hollow in order to protect the interim- of the house against sudden or extreme changes of temperature. Unless this is done the house will become danYpj^and even moldy. Houses not thus built are huntid in summer and cold in winter. Tin-reason for this is the condensation due to ence in temperature between the inside of the wall and the air within the room. The principle may be withered in noting that on the same day when ther.$ is condensation on the window panes of hen.-,ipr| sjn,,|p windows there
is no condensation on windows where storm windows are used.
Jn the past some concrete houses have been . poured and left in their natural state. This is very unsatisfactory. Seams show and are hard to remove, and the color is not attractive. All concrete houses should be stuccoed, preferably with three coats. Moreover, it is the opinio^ of the majority that to be attractive to its occupants, warm and cheerful in appearance, a -house should have wooden windows, door frames, " ' trimming, baseboards, floors and stairways.
A great variety of methods of concrete con-.- truction is in use. We have mentioned the
fourteen four-room houses built at Union, N. J,
by Charles H. Ingersoll, using the plans and molds of Thomas A. Edison. These houses cost
$2,200 each and rent for $23 per month. Some
of them were built and occupied in ten days.
The molds cost $7,000 and can be used for A •- < hundred houses. After the molds are- erected the entire house is poured in a single day. This was permitted to harden for two days, after which the frame was removed. It takes longer to put the finishing touches on these buildings than it does to build them. When finished they • present a very pleasing appearance. Seventy-five houses, after the same plans, and by the same methods, some of four and some of six rooms each, were constructed at Phillipsburg^ N.J.
Another form of concrete construction is that . i’’. which forms are set up for a course a certain number of feet in height, and as soon as the concrete is set sufficiently to bear its own weight another course is poured. Another form is the building of concrete frames and the stretching of expanded metal on the outside, the nieshaB of which are filled with gunite.
In another system a steel stud is erected to which metal lathing is attached and the exterior wall is stuccoed on the outside and back-plastered on the inside so that the metal cannot rust. Subsequently the inner wall is erected and plastered.
Many well-built old wooden buildings have b--m made over by concrete construction. Any s”.ch structures to which metal lathing is at-ta-'hed should be well braced. Otherwise cracks will develop due to the movement of the structure. If the metal fabric is not completely embedded in the cement the stucco is liable to break !>;>d|v.
Some concerns are engaged in tin- con.-truc-tion of unit-built concrete houses. Wal: and floor
slabs, beams, girders, partitions and columns are made at the factory, conveyed to the building site and "''ire assembled to form th? finished structure. Lite too's are either framed in timber and covered with tile or are made of concrete. As much as ninety percent of the building is 'made in molds and' afterward assembled on the foundation walls. Stair stringers are cast in place. Metal lathing is used, to provide airspace. In some instances the inside walls are heavily escalloped or channeled from top to bottom. Heavy building paper is drawn over these scallops, then metal lath and then plaster, to secure dead air space.
At present there are four thousand plants in the United States working overtime trying to supply the demand for concrete block and tile. Concrete blocks are no longer built to mutate building stone. The present high cost of day brick has opened a wide field for concrete brick. Any face or texture can be produced, the same as in the clay brick. Structurally the bricks are stronger, and their absorption is less than clay brick. Co'‘?rcte tile will produce a concrete house as cheaply as any other method, and when treated with'stucco finish will give any desired architectural effect. In France the debris of former buildings is ground together and made into concrete for new buildings. By using ground stone and ground brick separately the builders have been able to produce colored panels in the walls.
Adolie, the, oldest of building materials, is again coming to the fore. Adobe, be it known, can lie made of the soil which a man digs out of the ground when he makes his cellar. It is simply wet soil, mixed with straw, kneaded by the hare feet, cast into molds and dried in the sun. It can be made by anybody and provid.es a building material which is everlasting, soundproof, fire-proof, and always of normal temperature. cool in summer and warm in winter. Of all the,building materials it is the least affected by changes of temperature. It will stand a compressive strain of 4-00 pounds to the square inch, and can be niade on the snot for half the cost of brick, tile, stone or concrete.
■ The old ^tyle adobo houses were built w:th walls two feet 'thick, but modern science 1ms found that fliis is not necessary, and has discovered means to insulate the adobo above the foundation and prevent capillary attraction of moisture. A hard cement plaster thoroughly
anchored into an adobe wall insures it against ' ' deterioration. '
In Walnut Park, near Los Angeles, are one -hundred new adobe houses, embodying every form of artistic taste in Spanish architecture. -
The Contractor’s Side of It : ,
THE National Federation of Construction
Industries of the United States held its -first annual convention in Chicago in March. Jt ■ . 'seeks uniformity in the dimensions of doon, window-frames and staircases, in the spacing * ' of studding and joists, and in the height of ■ room,s. This Association has before it considerable possibilities for good and evil.
Contractors have been in a very difficult
position during the past year or two. It costs
$100 to $500 to estimate on each new building
enterprise; and as very few of the new buildings estimated upon have been built, contractors have lost considerable sums in this way besides the sums lost through advances in prices of i labor and materials. They are now in agreement that hereafter bids must be acted upon ■ -promptly, contract prices must fluctuate according to changes, if any, in the freight rates, in j
the wage scales, in the prices of materials and .*
in the quantity of materials used as compared with estimates.
Monthly estimates are to indude materials *. delivered and stored. Work done in one month ; is to be paid by the tenth of the next month> ’ ■ with interest on the first payment. Contractor may stop work on three day’s notice and recover profit and damages if work is suspended three months by court order, or if architect fails to issue monthlv cortifmate for payment on time, or if owner fails to pay such certificate in seven days from the time it is due, or if owner does not permit contractor to begin work promptly. ■
Retained percentage must not exceed ten percent. Surety bond is to be reduced proportionately as work is finished; Contracts for penalty '» must contain sirrlar clauses providing for \ Imniis. Contractor is not to be held liable for -a/’ts of Hod <->r of a public enemy. Time for completing work must bo based not upon calendar . : days hut upon weather-working days. Material ■ must be inspected at the source and not on the job, whenever that is possible. Architects are not to be mad,* final indgm: of rr.r.dation of ’ drawings and specifications or of performance of contract.
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Justice and the Poor; Reginald Heber Smith, of the Boston Bar
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THE Second Defect: Court Costs and Fees.
(Part 2) Costs in the Trial Court: The actual expenses in a trial court, exclusive of witness fees, may be reduced to the writ of 'summons, the service of process, entry fee, calendar fee, trial fee, entry of judgment, and issuance of execution. It is proper to eliminate the jury fee; for as long as a trial by a judge is possible, no denial of justice can fairly be alleged. For a similar reason fees for attachment or garnishment are excluded.
Each court uses a different combination of these items: in some one or two payments cover everything; in others the charges are made separately. Since our inquiry is only to determine the actual expense, all the various items may be rolled into one total. The figures given below are not absolute; they may be varied by the distance traveled for service, by the number of motions or interlocutory proceedings, and by other factors; but they fairly represent the minimum cost in an ordinary case: .
<"Ity Minimum Cocts
Baltimore_________________People’s Court$ 2.40
Boston------------------------Municipal Court
Chicago________________________Municipal Court.............
Cincinnati------------------Municipal Court
Cleveland...............Small Claims Court_______
Dayton...........................Municipal Court 2.00
Hartford_______________City Court 5.76
Hartford...........................Superior Court________________
Jersey ...........District Court____________
Los Angeles.................Justice’s Court......
Los Angeles.................Sujx'rior Court...........
Minneapolis .Municipal Court
New York...................Municipal Court.......
Philadelphia................Municipal Court_____________________
Pittsburgh.................County Court___________
Richmond.............. ......Tusticc’s Court............_
Richmond................I,aw Court................................. .
Portland............................Small Claims Court
St. Paul............................Justice’s Court
TheSe^ figures would be much higher, were it not for the advent of municipal courts, which have done much to reduce costs. In Cincinnati. Columbus and Dayton. for example, it is provided by the Court Act that costs, exclusive of witness fe£s, shall not exceed two dollars. While these actual expenses may seem small in substantial causes, they loom large in the troubles of the noor. Tn claims under $50, an immediate expenditure of four or five dollars may well be disproportionate: in any event it is often more than the needy litigant can afford, particularly where additional outlays for witnesses and attachments are necessary.
Costs on Appeal. Costs paid to the court on appeal consist of the entry fee and the expense of making up and printing the record of the • case on appeal; or on exceptions, or on writ of error. Such costs in the aggregate are seldom less than $25 and often run to over $100. While appellate costs affect the poor only in a proportionately small number of cases, it is highly, desirable in the interests of justice, and for the sake of a well-rounded development of our common law, that it lie possible for poor persons to obtain decisions on questions of law which arise in their cases. The condition which has been too common under the compensation acts, of having cases appealed, briefed, and argued only by the insurer, the employ^ being Ttnable to meet the expense, is not heal th v. Onesided argument inevitably tends to produce a ■ one-sided construction of the law.
These expenses represent a waste and ar? unnecessary. With proper organization of courts they will automatically disappear. In * unified court, as in England, there is no entry • r fee; for the appeal is affected merely by transfer -from the trial to the appellate division. There is no necessity for printing of records, transcripts, bills of exceptions, certificates of evidence, and the like; for, since the appellate and trial tribunals are simply branches or divisions of one court, each judicially knows the records of the others, and uses all the orginal files, papers and documents.
Witnesses. Briefs and Transcripts. Exnensea incurred in litigation for witness fees, briefs and transcripts of evidence, which counsel invariably needs for his own preparation, raise an entirely different problem. Their amount varies indefinitely according to the number of witnesses summoned, the complexity of the points to be argued. and the length of the trial. The peculiar difficulty which they present is • that they are not payments which the state-can waive. Persons who are compelled to leavw their work to testify in courts, printers and stenographers are unquestionable entitled to he paid. Such expenses cannot be scaled down, nor can they be eliminated, by any reorganization of courts or procedure.
There is no solution except for the state to provide a fund to be disbursed by, and under the supervision of, its judicial department, or legal aid bureau. Such a proposition is not wholly without precedent. It is a general rule that the state will reimburse for expenses incurred in disbarment proceedings. In the municipal legal aid bureaus provision is made for the expenses incurred in the litigation of the bureau’s clients. The Duluth Legal Aid Bureau has expended out of the public treasury the following amounts: in 1914, $150: in 1915, $126.01; in 1916, $108.18. In Los Angeles the Public Defender is authorized to apply to the county treasury for litigation expenses, although he has never done so, fearing that such a course might be unconstitutional. The 1913 Bules of the English High Court of Judicature, in making provision for poor litigants, call for the defraying of their expenses by a Treasury grant. Mr. Taft, in speaking before the Virginia Bar Association in 1908, after arguing for “a mandatory reduction of court costs and fees”, said: “I believe that it is sufficiently in the interest of the public at large to promote equality between litigants, to take upon the government much more than has already been done, the burden of private litigation”.
Dexial of Justice Through Costs. Certain it is that until thorough-going changes are made, denial of justice to the poor because of inability to pay the required court costs and fees will continue. That the present system of costs works daily to close the doors of the courts to the poor is proved by ample evidence. In Boston the Legal Aid Society has kept precise figures since April 1, 1916. During the seventeen months ending August 31, 1917, there were 551 cases which could not be settled out of eoufb^nit which were meritorious and required court action: 386 were taken to court and won, 36 were taken and lost, and 129 could not be brought before the courts because of the client's inability to pay the costs. Tn other words, the fees requited ly the state caused a total failure of justice^to 23 percent of the persons who needed to invoke the aid of the machinery of justice.
How thn existing system of costs liternllv forbids resort to the courts by the poor is illustrated by the laws requiring security for costs. A plaintiff not only must pay the costs for summons, service, entry, trial, judgment • and the like, but in addition he must, on motion, furnish a bond to guarantee that the defendant, if successful, shall not be out of pocket. In the Connecticut law, for example, the bond is in the ' • sum of $15 in the City Court of Hartford, and $75 in the Superior Court. The defendant may bring such a motion on the ground that the plaintiff is a poor person. The net result is that a poor person who is unable to give or . secure such a bond may be thrown out of. Court altogether. In Campbell v. Chicago, etc. R. Coe, a defendant, moved that the plaintiff, a poor person, be required to furnish a bond. The judge .
continued the case for a week to give the plaintiff time to file such a bond and, on his inability to do so, dismissed the case. On appeal the court said: “We have no statute which permits a person to sue in forma pauperis. It seems almost like a hardship that a poor person should not be able to litigate. But this is a matter for the legislature to regulate and not the justice.”
Laws requiring security for costs, despite their patent harshness to the poor, have uni- ■ * formly been upheld. In striking contrast are the early English decisions which, perceiving the injustice of a rule of exclusion, and without hiding behind the absence of a legislative mandate, gave to the common law the proceeding in forma pauperis. If, as excellent authority has stated, this -was done as “an indulgence arising out of the humanity of the judges'*, what can be said for our twentieth century judges who, acting in a democratic country, were not even willing to follow the fair provisions of the common law?
The result is no different from what it would be if our bills of rights read :“Every subject who can furnish a bond for $15 or $75 ought to obtain justice freely, completely, and without delay; to all others the courts are closed”. In a democratic government of laws "where the state exists to guarantee through its administration of justice the security of fundamental rights, it is » a sad perversion for the state by its law to cut ; off any class of citizens from the protection of the courts. On the one hand, the state through its criminal statutes respecting breach of the peace and larceny forbids persons to redress their own wrongs or collect'thoir debts by selfhelp. and remits them to the courts; and on the other hand it imposes conditions as to the use of the courts which the poor cannot satisfy.
An epoch-making decision by the Supreme Court of California, rendered in 1917, lends judicial sanction to the ideas expressed in this chapter. The case is striking. It will be recalled that jury fees in California are $24 a day, to be paid in advance. A day laborer, the father of ten minor children all wholly dependent on him for support, desired to bring suit in the Superior Court for the wrongful killing of his daughter, and claimed his right to a jury trial. He filed an affidavit that he did not have more than $25, and asked leave to sue in forma pauperis. There is a local statute permitting such a proceeding before a justice of the peace, but none making provision for suits in the courts of record. The Superior Court refused the application.
The attorney for the San Francisco Legal Aid Society intervened as “amicus curiae’’, and the case Was appealed. The Supreme Court held that the in forma pauperis proceeding was a part of the English common law, which had become part of the American common law, and that the court had inherent power to grant leave to sue without costs so that justice might not be denied to the poor.
Parts of this decision, which is the first ever to translate into action the fundamental constitutional principles of freedom and equality of justice, express the situation so clearly that it is difficult to understand why the majority of courts hav6 always been blind to it:
"Imperfect as wa- the ancient common law system, harsh' as it was in many of its methods and measures, - . it would .-trike one with surprise to l>e credibly informed. .« that the common law courts of England shut their doors upon all poor suitors who could not pay fees, until _ Parliament came to their relief. Even greater would be the reproach to the system of jurisprudence of ths ' state of California if it could be truly declared that ih this twentieth century, by its codes and statutes, it had said the same thing.” . . . "Again we say that it would bo an unmerited reproach cast upon the legiri- , lative branch of our state government to hold that it . . . designed to forbid such a poor suitor from prom-cuting his actions according to the laws of the laafl ** in a court of record, when rights might and could be allimportant and his recovery of the utmost importance.?*
Costs have their place as a deterrent; but they should serve to discourage, not all litig%-tion, blit false litigation, specious pleas, vexatious proceedings taken for delay, and to insure prompt compliance with court orders. The system of costs in equity approaches this plan, and in England the use of costs for such purposes is established.
Costs, like delay, present in the main no fundamental or inherent difficulty. A reduction, of costs and provision for in forma pauper proceedings can easily be effected. It is a question of the will to do it. . . :
(This is the sixth of a series on "Justice and the . Poor" by Mr. Smith, published in an important booh . of limited circulation by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, of New York. Tlfe > article to follow is: The Third Defect: Expense rif ■ Counsel. Issues of The Golden Age which have cori-tain.x] previous installments of this important subject are March 3. March 17. March 31. April 28 aad June 23. 1920).
Decisions of the Supreme Court
MAXY thoughtful people are alarmed at what they think is a tendency of the Supreme Court of the United States to encroach more and more upon the rights of the people. These enertx^hinents date from the time of President Taft, the first president m appoint to the bench of the Supremo Court men who have sworn allegiance io a foreign potentate, an allegiance which, by that potentate'.- oft repeated admissions in its claims to reverence and olvedience, is superior to the Constitution of the United C.‘ i ... •
President Lincoln, in his first inaugural a'1 Ir.'ss, .-aid: If the policy of the government
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