The Factory Buift House Threat

When the depression was new the idea was early advanced that our machine-age mass production had overdone and overwhelmed the necessities of the world and therefore plunged us into this depression, with its tremendous unemployment. Scoffers at this suggestion were everywhere. But today they have chiefly disappeared and our best thinkers seem unanimously of the opinion that such WAS the case, and that we've got to do a lot of back-tracking before we can put all of our needy people to work again.

And THAT conclusion is a rather fortunate one for the lumber people in their role of home builders to the nation. For most engineering minds seem to have arrived at the also unanimous conclusion that the most reactionary and out-of-date industry today-and therefore the one offering the most indu,cements to business seekers-is the industry of home building. The idea spread like wild-fire in the past three years and has attained ,considerable proportion. To hear the proponents of factory-built, unit-made, standardized, low-priced homes tell their story you'd be forced to the conclusion that the people of this country have thus far been living in caves.

Scores upon scores of prominent men and conspicuous firms have burst into print with declarations that what this country needs most is "better houses-houses better planned, better engineered, better executed, and cheaper." We are quoting from a bulletin from a nationally respectqd engineering firm. They say further: "Consider the relative perfection of the automobile. It is more or less a standard produ,ct. The efficiency methods of one manufa.cturer are the methods of the entire industry, with allowan,ces for individual plans. The product represents the best efiorts of great technical staffs, with continuous experimentation and .continuous research necessitated by competition. The result is a good product at a low price, available to millions, and a great new industry developed within a generation.

"Consider by contrast the average house. It is a clumsy affair, consisting of walls and roof and floors, with some desultory conveniences. It has very few of those well planned, highly developed improvements whi.ch go along as a matter of course with the automobile-even with the cheapest automobile. The automobile gives so much more for the money than the house that it is no wonder people seem to take greater interest in their automobiles than in their homes. There may be no simple, social or economic reason for this, but certainly one reason lies in the cheapness of the automobile as a quality product, and the costliness of the house as a relatively inferior product.

"A large majority of the fifteen million who do not own their own homes live on an income of $2,000 a year or less. This is enough to support a self-owned house if the production of the low-priced house can be engineered, systematized, and promoted to fit the income of the prospective buyer. But building trades, because of their loose organization which makes industrial unity difficult, are handicapped in the development of the low-priced house. And the handicap is felt all along the line, extending to. workmen, architects, mills, dealers, railroads. and countless others.

"Centuries ago the house was built by hand, and it is still largely built by hand. Materials are assembled at the building site, labor is brought to the materials, and the house is erected on the spot from a multitude of small pieces. Nails have repla,ced wooden pegs, glass has replaced oiled paper, some machine-made parts are used, but the assembling is still a slow and wasteful procedure. Advances in the materials whi,ch form the house have not been matched in the methods of putting them together."

The previous paragraphs are a summing up by engineers who are thinking a lot about the prospe,cts of building a new industry by re-making the home building industry. The statement in the preceding paragraph to the efiect that houses are built by hand and have always been, is today one of the strongest arguments that will be advanced in favor of the home of today, built after fashions of today. For turning the home building of the nation over to the factories would mean loss of work for actually millions of mechanics during ordinary times. And the nation is not in the mood today to encourage any further employment-killing mass production. This very fact is going to give the lumber and other building people, in the days that will follow the termination of present depressed conditions, a breathing spell in which to put their own houses in better order, and arrange to so improve their home product, its quality, efficiency, ,cost, etc., that the threat of the factory-built home will be thrust far into the ofiing.

The same article previously quoted from, takes wise cognizance of the fact that there is something to a home besides simple shelter, protection, and cleanliness ; that there is a sentiment that must be considered by those who would rebuild our homes and our home fashions. They truly say that "One of the chief faults in the experiments (with factory built homes) lies in the attempt of the experimenters to jump too fast from conventional designs to new designs which are more adaptable to factory fabri,cation. The house is, after all, a thing of sentiment and tradition, and people do not change within a few years their inherited ideas as to what is a proper h*ouse.'

And there, Mr. Lumberman, is your safeguard in this threatening situation. The sentiment and tradition that clings round the home as we have come to ,consider it, even though the reformers mav easily point out in pra,ctical terms how impractical and uneconomical are scores of things about a wooden home of today, are tl-re things for you to stick to and fight for. But in doing so we must remember that the law of change, of improvement, of progress, is the law of life, and when this nation goes back to home building again, this industry that has basecl its prosperity upon the foundation of the American l,ome, must use its every ingenuity to combine with the traditional and sentimental things that cling to the home of he past, the progressive things desired by the people of today and tomorrow.

Thus the threat of the machine-built house will evaporate, and the homes of the nation will be built in the future-as in the past-by this lumber industry and its allied industries, and not in the factories of the sooty East.

Opens Hardwood Yard

P. H. Winsor has opened a yard at 2302 East 48th Street, Los Angeles, where he will carry on a general retail and wholesale hardwood lumber business under the name of the Winsor Hardwood Company. The telephone nurnber is JEfferson 3653. Mr. Winsor has been connected with the hardwood business in Los Angeles for many years and prior to going into business for himself was salesmanager and buyer for the Pacific National Lumber Co.