1 The great economic problem of this age, and all ages | The Home
2The problem in housing, particularly that of the single home, is one which is occupying the minds of many leading industrialists, architects, and educators. The problem to be discussed will be confined to that of the small house, as it is that which has received to date none of the benefits of economic pressure.
3 The small house, or home, is the composite expression of the people occupying it. Just as individuals can criticize themselves with much less facility than others, and only when forced by shocking necessity receive a true picture of themselves, so have the living quarters of the people avoided, to the last, close scrutiny, improvement in design and method of creation, in this marvelous age of industrial progress.
4 It is the subjects farthest removed from personal contact, and of the least immediate necessity, which have received the most honest and unbiased attention and design, to wit: the aeroplane, automobile, radio, etc. Force of habit, too, blinds us to the great improvements that might take place in our everyday doings. The art of house building was created long before the art of transportation, and the methods devised for building with local materials and help have persisted way into this era of transportation and centralized mass creation.
5 Two years ago Mr. Roger Babson, the great financial prognosticator, said that there was a three billion a year business for the producer of the new economical home. His figure is low.
6 When John Ruskin said: ‘‘I would have our ordinary dwelling houses built to last and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without. When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for the present life nor the present use alone’’; he did not confine himself to any stylistic description of the dwelling. He merely called for character, harmony, and the best use of materials, methods, and thought. He certainly in no way implied cessation of progress in home building. Outside of the accessories of the home, we have made no progress in method, and little in tools or materials, for the last five thousand years. The ruins of many masonry homes, as fine structurally as our best residences today, if not finer, and vastly finer harmoniously, are continually being uncovered. Certainly Ruskin’s thought is as applicable to the industrially produced home as to the custom-made. It is vastly more so from an unselfish viewpoint.
7 The world has been encouraged to spend its money first on pleasure and selfish things. The world of America is becoming satiated with futile ridings in its motor car in the packed and gas fumed thoroughfares of its suburbs, and is taking more serious account of life. This is to be seen in its upheaval of the stock market, the economic barometer. Four million share days in one market alone, are occasioned by wide public participation, actually disrupting to the organizations of other business throughout the leading commercial cities. These are not the operations of a wise few. The days of market control by a few have passed, though of course there are the winners who are prominent.
8 It is further to be seen in the economics of mental fuel. For many months past have the most prominent book stores in the most prominent avenues of the most prominent cities exhibited an ever-increasing flood of philosophic, artistic, biographical, geographical, psychoanalytical books. Essays on truth and harmony in spiritual or material fields, now rival and eclipse the purely fictionary. This is not because the publishers say so, but because the public wants it. This is economics not aesthetics. A book store is primarily economic or it fails.
9 Undeniably the ‘‘funnies’’ are the most generally inspected portions of our daily newspapers, and may be considered the economic frosting that sells the cake. It is more than significant that these funnies have completely lost trace of ‘‘Slapstick’’ and have become serials of homely philosophy. The laughs are being turned on self and improper proportions of life, its pleasures and necessities.
10 The world of America is almost sufficiently debunked to be ready for an honest-to-goodness twentieth century home. We have little time to organize the industry before the demand be upon us. By truthful, skillful thinking, this organization can take place, with capital only to cover the cost of organization of the pertinent interests, wherein the working capital is already vested, with an eye always to the scale, and awe-inspiring importance of the subject.
11 It is impossible to cover with justice so great and important a subject in a few pages. As a basis of organization discussion, however, this random, but never-the-less pertinent essay on the subject has been written. From a vast mental picture, has a word thesis of description been crystallized and set down. No matter how unrelated any portion of the thesis may seem, it was written as directly attributable to the subject. To view any portion of it, without completion is comparable to observing a painting through a microscope, endeavoring thus to learn the reason for any particular brush stroke. The serious matter of creating an industrial house that shall at the same time possibly compass and affect millions of lives in what they have to do and what they choose to do, affecting, most important of all. The upbringing of millions of children, demands the very broadest thought.
12 The authority, in dealing so largely in this subject, is born of a wide range of intimate experience in the home building field, involving contact with many of its leaders; a tour of service experience in mechanical control fields such as the navy, with its battleships, destroyers, submarines, airplanes, ballistics, navigation, and organization problems; a number of years experience in one of the most material and highly organized of necessary industries, the ‘‘Packing House’’ business, throughout its packing, and branch house system, its wholesale, specialty, and export departments, transportation, and auditing activities; apprenticeship in cotton mill millwrighting, and operation; marketing trucks, buses and rail cars to national accounts; and organization and managership of several building material concerns of manufacture and sale; with lastly a close association with the architectural profession.
13 We seem to be at the economic crisis of our era. We have industrialized all the non-essentials, and the near essentials. In competition within these lines, the margin of profit daily lessens. We are at a point when those in charge of capital must realize that we have overlooked the most essential product for industrial production,—the home.
14 In the same year the following events present themselves for our abstract proportionment; our airplanes span oceans, while multi-millions of dollars worth of homes burn to the ground (not because we don’t know what materials will or won’t burn); International telephone, telegraphic photography, and national radio ‘‘hook-ups’’ from four corners of a continent, to all of a continent, become of commercial usage, while millions are made homeless, and thousands die, as their homes are washed away, or blown, or shaken down about their heads, not the slightest scientific consideration of these events having been given to their design; Lightning is artificially created, 24-hour service is planned by airway between London and New York, while still we take from six months to a year to build a simple dwelling, in less time than which even skyscrapers are built.