Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/91

CITIES, TOWNS AND VILLAGES to public health and sanitation, and especially by standards of living and their dependence upon the minimum wage.

From the point of view of economics—and I believe that the ultimate solution of this problem is to come mainly in that direction, housing is big business, and should be handled as big business is handled. Building operations in the United States amount annually, it is said, to $4,000,000,000. More than half of this great total is spent in dwellings—much of it, in fact from an economic point of view most of it, is not well spent or permanently invested. A large percentage of the houses, especially the cheaper sorts, are poorly conceived for their purposes, and 80 per cent of all of them are built of wood. A frame house may be a satisfactory house provided the space between and around houses makes it reasonably safe. Too often there is an excessive depreciation and a fearfully costly fire risk. This constitutes a huge economic loss amounting by the most conservative estimate to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, which sum must be paid, as other carrying charges are paid, out of production, and finally must come out of the wage earner's pay envelope.

The first step in the solution of this problem is to recognize that the subject is primarily one for the right application of broad economic principles. We must in some thoroughgoing way convert the great forces working through regular channels which now produce bad housing, to produce good housing, and we must do it by bringing into control and cooperation with them the forces that believe in good housing and will gain from it, which are mainly the manufacturing and business interests that depend upon the efficient and happy workman. This great change in housing methods will come, if it does come, from the substitution for exploitation and excessive return, of the reasonable profits of business, from the transfer of housing