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Show Behind The Scenes In Wash ington By JOHN CRADDOCK NEW YORK, . BUSINESS It's pretty hard for the layman to figure but what this "real income," in-come," that economists are always al-ways talking about, is. Boiled down, it means how much goods you can buy, as of a given period, with the money income you have, compared to what you could buy with the money income you had In a previous period. So if your money incomes goes up at a better bet-ter rate than the prices of things 1 you buy, then your ''real income is going up." Which makes it good news that the Investor's Syndicate .finds the American consumer having a real income 11 per cent higher in April than a yea ago. That doesn't mean that a dollar in you pocket today will buy what $1.11 would buy a year ago. In fact, war-induced price rises have made it so that it now takes $1.01 to buy a 1939 dollar's worti?1 which isn't so much oC a gain as might be feared, at that. But the reason "real income" shows a favorable instead of unfavorable trend is that, on the whole, there has been more of a rise in wages based on steadier work and all than in prices. WASHINGTON Though the decennial census taking : was planned as a "blitzkrieg", to be mopped up in two weeks, the work has been going on six weeks and is still far from completion. com-pletion. It's not only the large number of additional questions that has slowed it up, but the fact that so many more women are away from home, working, than in 1930, that handicaps the" enumerators. Also the sideline housing census contributes to delay. de-lay. So far only 2,000 of the 17,-000 17,-000 municipal units have been completed, with returns coming in at the rate of 500 to 1,000 a day. This rate should speed up steadily. After all the whoop-te-doo about the ''nosiness" of the questions relating to income, there has been exceedingly littel sensitiveness on the part of the citizens. Only 100,000, in fact, have chosen to mail their answers in secret although 15,000,000 cards ahd been prepared for this purpose. SMALL HOUSE BOOM That there is opportunity for a vast and semi-permanent building boom in this country has been contended for several years by students of our housing situation. situa-tion. Last week Carlton K. Mat-son, Mat-son, public relations director for the Libbey-Owens-Ford glass company, told the Retail Lumber Dealers association of America that this opportunity beckons now as never before that, if properly fostered, it could amount to $2,000,000,000 worth of private housing every year for the next five years. Essential Essen-tial features needed to sell 4,-000,000 4,-000,000 small homes he Hated as attractive architecture, smart use of glass to create a feeling of spaciousness and luxury, pleasing interior design and practical prac-tical modern conveniences. He laid down a five-point plan for builders and materials dealers: 1 cooperate with FHA; 2 spread Information on building eratlpn of building trades labor; ideas; 3 secure practical coop-4 coop-4 eliminate the "shack and garage" ga-rage" type of small home from the public's thinking, and 5 advertise and promote the satisfactions satis-factions of home ownership thru the building pages of newspapers. |