Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/109



In all building materials there was a diminished supply and a diminished consumption, except in the instance of cement. This positive exhibition confirms the statistics of building construction, which show substantially the same thing. The increase in the production and use of cement is attributable to increased highway construction, for which cement has come to be largely employed. The same kind of decrease is observable in iron as in the other building materials, notwithstanding the greatly enlarged consumption of steel for the manufacture of automobiles, which industry in 1922 absorbed about 10 per cent of the production, a far higher proportion than in 1913. It is to be remarked further that there has been a greatly increased use of steel in the petroleum industry, which is closely associated with the operation of automobiles.