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Show HOW COME, HIGH COST? Americans need new homes there is scarcely a town or city in the whole United States that isn't crying for more and better housing. Even those who are comfortably housed in 10 or 15year-old homes are casting covetous eyes on new models that have been built in the last few years and wishing wish-ing that they might scrap their old model for one of the super de luxe jobs that has more contraptions and gadgets in a compact six-room frame than their old gangling model has in eight or nine. Well, what's holding them back? "Materials cost too much", complain the uninformed. So we started on a hunt to find out about cost. On that subject the current issue of Nation's Business has some pertinent per-tinent information. It says that the total cost of building a house last January Jan-uary was about six per cent more than in January, 1940. A $3,000 house in January, 1940 would have cost 3,180 in 1941. It doesn't seem that $180 should be a deterrent to a man who can afford a $3,000 house, but even if it were, it seems even more ridiculous to charge the material suppliers With making exorbitant demands. In the first place, more than 50 per cent of the cost of a house is for labor, and a government source says that the wages of building mechanics mechan-ics increased 10.1 per cent over this same period, while the price of building supplies increased only 5.1 per cent. We are not advocating that labor should be satisfied with less, but it seems that business men might . be more vociferous in pointing out that they have been able to climb only half as far up the price ladder as the boys who wield the trowels and hammers. |
