Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/116

94 estimate of one house to each four of the people. Even more striking is the exhibition that the housing capacity increased but little following 1916, showing that new comstruction scarcely more than made good the losses by fire and obsolescence. It is shown, moreover, how even with the increasing population it was possible to get along comfortably until 1920 without much increase in capacity. In fact the normal surplus was taking care of the growing needs, but with 1920 substantially all had come into occupancy and then the situation became acute. It is before us now to provide not only for the urgent and immediate needs, but also to recreate a surplus of, say, 5 per cent. Obviously, however, there will be no natural over-building until costs fall 80 low as to make anticipation of needs an attractive speculation.

At the end of August, 1921, there were under construction in New York 446 tenements, to provide 11,176 apartments, at a cost of $55,501,300, or $4,966 per apartment. How this cost compared with pre-war costs I do not venture to indicate. Many materials had come down greatly at the middle of 1921, but building labor only a little, though its efficiency had improved. It is not improbable, moreover, that the construction of this kind in 1921 was even more of the “jerry-built” order than in 1913.

According to the census for 1910 the average value of the implements and machinery on the farms of the United States was $199. In my previous inventory for 1916 I estimated $250. The census enumeration for Jan. 1, 1920, gives $558. This large increase is explained