exceed any structural operations, excepting only Government work, brought out since the early months of the world war. Plans for many of these projects are now complete, and work will undoubtedly be started as soon as labor troubles have been adjusted and contracts awarded. From the architect’s viewpoint, D. Everett Waid, F. A. I. A., states that there appears to him to be plenty of building work to do and that there will be a good volume of building, if not a boom, provided labor difficulties show some sign of early solution. He believes the problems of financing operations and even high prices are minor ones in comparison with the importance of some stability in labor conditions.
The prevailing opinion is that material prices will lower somewhat and that labor will work for a lower wage, due to the law of supply and demand. A prominent engineering firm of Boston favors maintaining labor prices at the highest possible point, but not even labor can go counter to the laws that control prices.
Among the many statements received by The American Architect, the following conclusively show the trend of opinion on the necessity for an immediate resumption of building and the method of financing:
* * *
From Samuel H. Beach, president, the Savings Banks Association of the State of New York:
“The slowing down on building was undoubtedly owing to the reluctance of real estate men and owners to start new projects during the uncertainties of a world war; to the steadily mounting prices of labor and materials and to the difficulty of financing ordinary building operations when every nation on earth was calling for money on an unprecedented scale and every manufacturing corporation was stretching its credit to the limit.
“But now, with war practically ended, with skilled carpenters and mechanics daily being released from cantonment erection, ship building and other war construction, coupled with the return of thousands of soldiers and sailors to their usual occupations, there is bound to be a strong reaction along all ordinary building lines.
“Farmers have prospered and are seeing the need of more properly housing their crops, tools, machinery and live stock. Fire from lightning and other causes every year plays havoc with buildings all over the land, and the reconstruction of the barns, houses and sheds which have thus been destroyed in the five-year war period will form no small part in the building demand.
“In the cities, with their constantly growing population, the housing need is especially pressing. The building of apartment houses, which in normal times goes steadily forward, has, with everything else, been at a standstill and the need along this line is particularly in evidence.
Owing to the drastic changes which the going into effect of the recent prohibition legislation will cause, the demand for new stores will for some time not be urgent, but the remodeling and making suitable for other lines of business the places now occupied by the liquor trade will in itself be a great consumer of both labor and materials.
“The question naturally arises, ‘How will all this work be financed?’ And if conditions, such as have in the near past prevailed, should continue, this would be a difficult
question to answer; but conditions are changing; they have in fact already changed. Thousands, yes even millions of dollars, since the armistice was signed, have been steadily flowing into the savings banks, and while these institutions in common with the other banks in the country will have to do their full share in subscribing for the fifth Liberty loan, they will undoubtedly endeavor to supply the necessary building demand for money in their several localities.
“In making loans on new work not only savings banks but life insurance companies and building and loan associations must take into consideration the higher values now ruling. Many years must elapse before a building can be constructed at anything like the costs prevailing in the pre-war period. Lumber, a large factor in nearly every building, is just now seemingly very high in price; but lumber is a crop not produced in an ordinary human lifetime and, while the production of copper, concrete, iron and steel is limited only by the amount of labor employed, the production of lumber is not only limited by the scarcity of labor and the lack of sufficient snow this winter to render logging operations in the northern latitudes normally productive, but is every year having to be hauled from longer distances and obtained in less and less accessible places owing to the constant and rapid disappearance of our forests; and the present high level of prices must necessarily continue over a considerable period.
“A strong feeling is prevailing in financial circles that small annual payments of principal should be required on all mortgage loans, and under such a plan of loaning money the lender would be safe in making a fairly liberal loan even based on prevailing high costs, for the gradual reduction of the principal would counterbalance the possible eventual fall of values to a lower level.”
* * *
From Ernest K. Satterlee, president, the Franklin Savings Bank, New York City:
“Just what may be expected to occur does not always occur as expected. Since the signing of the armistice the keen minds of the country have engaged the reconstruction problems and are endeavoring to wrest from them signs indicating how and when and in what manner men taken from productive industrial pursuits to defend the cause of the nation can be returned to their several occupations at a minimum expense of efficiency. At the moment they ceased to be ‘producers’ in the economic sense they became totally dependent upon the power of production of their fellow citizens for their means of support, together with those who in turn were totally dependent upon them. The manner in which the nation has shouldered the burden beggars description. Letting the burden down after the emergency has passed—and doing it without shock and strain—is the question which is stirring legislative bodies, newspapers, organizations and the multitudes of individuals whose forceful personalities always bring them to the forefront of any great agitation into the arena of opinionative conflict out of which will presently emerge ‘the plan.’ This is the American way—direct, blunt, courageous and ultimately sound. The Babel of conflicting ideas is after all healthy, because utterance has been given to every extreme and the fittest essentially will survive.
“Among the vitally important considerations we find the problem of housing a population which, in New York City, is increasing approximately twenty-five souls an hour, night and day. Try to find a suitable apartment, flat, hotel suite or lodging room in New York City today and you will gather rich material for a thesis on the subject of domestic surroundings.
“If we probe the subject, even to no great extent, we very shortly find ourselves staring straight at the principal reasons: (1) Shortage of space; (2) no new building. and (3) high rents.
The prevailing opinion is that material prices will lower somewhat and that labor will work for a lower wage, due to the law of supply and demand. A prominent engineering firm of Boston favors maintaining labor prices at the highest possible point, but not even labor can go counter to the laws that control prices.
Among the many statements received by The American Architect, the following conclusively show the trend of opinion on the necessity for an immediate resumption of building and the method of financing:
* * *
From Samuel H. Beach, president, the Savings Banks Association of the State of New York:
“The slowing down on building was undoubtedly owing to the reluctance of real estate men and owners to start new projects during the uncertainties of a world war; to the steadily mounting prices of labor and materials and to the difficulty of financing ordinary building operations when every nation on earth was calling for money on an unprecedented scale and every manufacturing corporation was stretching its credit to the limit.
“But now, with war practically ended, with skilled carpenters and mechanics daily being released from cantonment erection, ship building and other war construction, coupled with the return of thousands of soldiers and sailors to their usual occupations, there is bound to be a strong reaction along all ordinary building lines.
“Farmers have prospered and are seeing the need of more properly housing their crops, tools, machinery and live stock. Fire from lightning and other causes every year plays havoc with buildings all over the land, and the reconstruction of the barns, houses and sheds which have thus been destroyed in the five-year war period will form no small part in the building demand.
“In the cities, with their constantly growing population, the housing need is especially pressing. The building of apartment houses, which in normal times goes steadily forward, has, with everything else, been at a standstill and the need along this line is particularly in evidence.
Owing to the drastic changes which the going into effect of the recent prohibition legislation will cause, the demand for new stores will for some time not be urgent, but the remodeling and making suitable for other lines of business the places now occupied by the liquor trade will in itself be a great consumer of both labor and materials.
“The question naturally arises, ‘How will all this work be financed?’ And if conditions, such as have in the near past prevailed, should continue, this would be a difficult
question to answer; but conditions are changing; they have in fact already changed. Thousands, yes even millions of dollars, since the armistice was signed, have been steadily flowing into the savings banks, and while these institutions in common with the other banks in the country will have to do their full share in subscribing for the fifth Liberty loan, they will undoubtedly endeavor to supply the necessary building demand for money in their several localities.
“In making loans on new work not only savings banks but life insurance companies and building and loan associations must take into consideration the higher values now ruling. Many years must elapse before a building can be constructed at anything like the costs prevailing in the pre-war period. Lumber, a large factor in nearly every building, is just now seemingly very high in price; but lumber is a crop not produced in an ordinary human lifetime and, while the production of copper, concrete, iron and steel is limited only by the amount of labor employed, the production of lumber is not only limited by the scarcity of labor and the lack of sufficient snow this winter to render logging operations in the northern latitudes normally productive, but is every year having to be hauled from longer distances and obtained in less and less accessible places owing to the constant and rapid disappearance of our forests; and the present high level of prices must necessarily continue over a considerable period.
“A strong feeling is prevailing in financial circles that small annual payments of principal should be required on all mortgage loans, and under such a plan of loaning money the lender would be safe in making a fairly liberal loan even based on prevailing high costs, for the gradual reduction of the principal would counterbalance the possible eventual fall of values to a lower level.”
* * *
From Ernest K. Satterlee, president, the Franklin Savings Bank, New York City:
“Just what may be expected to occur does not always occur as expected. Since the signing of the armistice the keen minds of the country have engaged the reconstruction problems and are endeavoring to wrest from them signs indicating how and when and in what manner men taken from productive industrial pursuits to defend the cause of the nation can be returned to their several occupations at a minimum expense of efficiency. At the moment they ceased to be ‘producers’ in the economic sense they became totally dependent upon the power of production of their fellow citizens for their means of support, together with those who in turn were totally dependent upon them. The manner in which the nation has shouldered the burden beggars description. Letting the burden down after the emergency has passed—and doing it without shock and strain—is the question which is stirring legislative bodies, newspapers, organizations and the multitudes of individuals whose forceful personalities always bring them to the forefront of any great agitation into the arena of opinionative conflict out of which will presently emerge ‘the plan.’ This is the American way—direct, blunt, courageous and ultimately sound. The Babel of conflicting ideas is after all healthy, because utterance has been given to every extreme and the fittest essentially will survive.
“Among the vitally important considerations we find the problem of housing a population which, in New York City, is increasing approximately twenty-five souls an hour, night and day. Try to find a suitable apartment, flat, hotel suite or lodging room in New York City today and you will gather rich material for a thesis on the subject of domestic surroundings.
“If we probe the subject, even to no great extent, we very shortly find ourselves staring straight at the principal reasons: (1) Shortage of space; (2) no new building. and (3) high rents.