accordance with his own ideas. He buys a house, or rents it , and has to take what the market affords. And, under the pressure of competition, the real estate man and the speculative builder usually put into the market whatever brings the most profit, not what most permanently contents the householder. The usual house for sale represents the desires rather of the seller than of the buyer. Thus, even before the war, this go-as-you-please expedient often proved a failure. A number of indns
heartbreaking delays begun to appropriate Government money to provide—among other things— necessary housing for war workers in munition plants and shipyards.
It is evident that this money will be spent efficiently only if it induces the workers to live in the houses and to do their work. The end product of this housing activity is the contented, efficient worker; and—of course without waste, without an unnecessary expenditure of any kind—everything
PROGRESS PHOTOGRAPHS OF HOUSES, TYPES E-i and B-i
trial plants themselves undertook housing for their workers, as a necessary business procedure to “stabilize their labor.’’ These, too, were not always successful, again largely because they represented, or were thought to represent, only one side of the business interests concerned—that of the employer, not that of the employee.
The present war has put this problem forcibly before us in its entirety. In the case of munitions of war and of ships, it is we, the people of the United States, who are investing the money, who are furnishing the labor, and who are vitally concerned, in profit, safety, and honor, in the rapidity and amount of production.
We are at the beginning of the problem; we have not solved it, but we have at last and after
as to living conditions essential to making and keeping the worker contented and efficient is a legitimate item in the list of costs.
For the unmarried man, who takes up the war work for the high wages, for the adventure, for patriotism, or to be concerned in something big and important, efficient living conditions may consist, for a time, in nothing more than a clean and decent room, a chance for a bath, a chance for rest and recreation.
For the married man with a family, and for every person in the long run, efficient living conditions comprise all those things which we recognize as necessary to a complete town: not only proper houses. properly located and arranged, but roads, water, sewerage, fire protection, stores, markets,