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 problem of the unskilled worker, married and with a normalsized family, it may be a long time indeed before he can be provided for.

With the recital of the high prices of nearly all the things which enter into the cost of a wage-earner's home, and of the overwhelming burden which is placed in consequence on the budget of the wage-earner, this painful summary of the high cost of a wage-earner's home ends. The account shows clearly how economic changes have gradually wiped out those differentials of low prices of land, of municipal and site utilities, of construction, finance, taxes and maintenance, which have enabled the traditional real estate system of producing industrial housing to function with some success in certain parts of the United States. Now, however, with the support of these differentials removed, the inherent weakness of the system—its small-scale, inefficient, speculative and loose organization—are causing it to break down.

The effect of this breakdown was pictured in the beginning of this chapter, and perhaps the reader will now agree that it was not overdrawn. It is a picture of a reduced standard of living for the nation's workers, of present and future slums. It springs from the colossal economic waste in land, in municipal and private construction, the cost of which accumulates until it becomes a crushing burden on housing. This burden is further weighted with an excessive load of charges for speculative financing.

How can the wage-earner, even the fairly prosperous individual, be expected to carry this burden? Of course he cannot. He is helpless in the face of the relentless operation of factors which he, as an individual, cannot control. He finds it impossible to stop the process of deterioration in his home conditions which inevitably sets in. First, he sees sound architectural standards