Construction Halts

An Organized Hiatus in the Building Industry--It Costs Too Much

The Building Situation. By all the accepted signs, the building industry has for some time been the victim of speculative construction, attended by a labor shortage and constantly mounting prices for materials and labor. Recently, large projects have been curtailed in Chicago, New York and other centers.

Most significant has been the step taken by the Board of Governors of the American Construction Council. Headed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and representing all factors in the construction industry, this national organization has recommended that all new construction be deferred for several months, that bankers restrict speculative building loans till fall, that wide publicity be given to the rising costs of construction and that all building by the government be halted over summer. The Federal Reserve Board in Washington has announced itself in agreement with the Construction Board's advice to curtail loans, while Chambers of Commerce all over the country have promised cooperation and support.

Several facts are apparent with relation to the building situation: demand for buildings still outruns the supply, but prices are now so high that the demand may remain potential only and not effective, with the result that a disastrous collapse in the industry may occur. It is better for all parties that this should not happen; on the other hand, the renter must not be forgotten. As the speculative builder loses, the tenant will benefit. Rentals in most parts of the country are now very high, even compared with other prices, and business cannot proceed on a sound foundation until they rest on a lower level. Too much curtailment of speculative building now would therefore prove just as undesirable as a continuance of building under present conditions.

Scope of the Industry. In other words, it costs too much to build. That is the discovery of the day and everybody is interested except the picturesque minority whose only roof is the starry sky.

Although construction is, next to agriculture, the greatest of all American industries ; although 11,000,000 men and women, one-tenth of our population, are connected with it; and although nearly 50% of the savings of American people are put into construction; very little is known about the construction industry as a whole.

" Construction " includes building of roads, railroads, houses, industrial plants, docks, sewers, mines, etc.; it is intimately associated with insurance, banking and public policy; it embraces architects, engineers, contractors and all manner of workmen; it directly affects the pocket book of every man from his log-cabin birthplace to his marble mausoleum.

The American Construction Council surveys the entire industry. And gradually it is evolving a code of construction ethics, so that eventually the plumber will cease to be the classic example of robbery-within-the-law. Simultaneously, the Council is educating the 99,000,000 people who are not constructors or constructor's wives. In normal times it teaches them, for instance, when to build, when not to. Apartments and office buildings must be built according to renting seasons which for the first is October, and for the second, February. But public buildings, private houses, industrial plants should be built to be completed at other seasons, thus giving steady employment to laborers and thereby reducing labor costs.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the American Construction Council, refuses to be categoried with Hays and Landis as a "Tzar." He apparently seeks to make his position one of moral influence rather than of responsible authority. The first step, in either case, is to bring together into a coherent whole the 1,001 varieties of building trades.

Twenty years ago F. D. Roosevelt took office as President of the Harvard Crimson. He has been a leading citizen ever since.

Parallels are not hard to find with Theodore Roosevelt,* whose neice he married. Both went to Harvard, to Albany, to the Navy Department on the eve of war, and both were shuttled into vice presidential candidates. Franklin is as good a Democrat as Theodore was a Republican. He fought Tammany as the other Roosevelt fought the Old Guard. And both are associated with a love of books, people and the out-of-doors. Both favored large families.

Poor health and the Cox catastrophe relegated F. D. Roosevelt to the comparative seclusion of Long Island. But he is no longer an invalid. " See young Roosevelt about it" was once a byword in Washington, as it now is in the World of Construction, our second-biggest industry.

* Franklin P. Roosevelt's father and Theodore Roosevelt were fourth cousins.