6 Analysis of the market—Its scope and demands.
2In introducing to the market an extremely advantageous new material and improved method of building a portion of a house, over a five year period, with excellent financial, moral, and architectural backing, the following many conditions are intimately known to have been encountered. They became indirectly the occasion of this essay. This material was exhibited in several successive years at ‘‘Own Your Home’’ shows in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. This particular system of building was said to create possibly more interest than any other exhibit at these shows. It had over 50,000 visitors at one of them, the vast majority of whom were landowners, possessed savings accounts. These should have made possible their ownership of a home, yet not one prospect ever culminated in an order, from these particular shows. In substantiation of the product it must be noted, that hundreds of houses employed it and its system of building, with great satisfaction to their owners and architects. In the great majority of cases its use was only possible in the more expensive home due to the vicissitudes enumerated. Literally thousands of enthusiastic prospective homeowners had every intention, over many months, of building with the new system, and were therefore entitled to constant advice and other attention. Incidentally they took ready advantage of it; yet one or another of the many obstacles such as building departments, finally prohibited their home. This is true of many thousands of good materials and devises today. Consider the cost of such waste effort. Every last small item is directly marketed by its producer clear through to the unorganized retail field. All waste cost must be born by the consumer.
3 The same building system under discussion, though it had been passed upon as acceptable in such cities as New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Indianapolis, etc., and approved by such universities as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Armour Institute, and the University of Illinois, the latter even making a large purchase of it, it was often times prohibited in a small township such as Glencoe, Illinois, where not even an engineer was on the excluding committee. In this particular instance the owner, who had ordered it for his house, was a recognized national authority in building, an engineer and author of the most widely used estimating handbooks in the building trade.
4 It became evident that the introduction of any improved substitute of any portion of the present system of house building could only be marketed through the expenditure of millions of dollars, and then to little profit. The decentralized building industry doesn’t want improvements, and there is no sense in trying to cure them. The unprogressive elements will disappear, like the old local garages, being replaced by the service station of centralized business, with fixed prices, and reliable service.
5 The architect is the judge advocate general between owner and contractor in our present system, and being such, and every job being different, it is necessary that he graph out and specify every last detail so that there may be no disputes. It is not without exaggeration that there are probably 20,000 draftsmen daily in offices in the United States who are all detailing the same window, for the thousandth time. Think of the cost of this. It is ghastly but unavoidable in the present system.
6 The same new material previously referred to was employed in 1927 in two model houses erected in the Chicago area by The Chicago Herald and Examiner. They embodied only nationally advertised materials, or at least heavily advertised local materials, without which it is significant that the public will no longer have them. Though the houses were almost the minimum in size, their final costs were in the neighborhood of $18,000.00 each. On their exhibition days, though well out in the suburbs, many thousands of people went through them, from early dawn ‘til late at night. There is no lessening in demand for small houses or interest on the part of the public, yet the F. W. Dodge Corporations, building statistics, generally accepted to be the most authoritative on the subject, showed a falling off in the neighborhood of 50% in the erection of 5 room houses (The average) throughout the country during 1927. And yet they are singing prosperity. The building industry, without central perception merely attributes this fact to the popularity of the city or the surfeit of the market. The small house has passed beyond the price limit of its market. That is the answer. The latest model house of the New York-Herald-Tribune cost $45,000.00 of which but $800.00 was for mechanical time savers.
7 In the reports of the Department of Commerce of the US for 1927, we find that the moving picture industry, among others, was equivalent in value for the year to the home building industry. Yet those who are confined to the bare necessities of life, will find through inspection of their carefully kept expense account, that the annual cost of the home as opposed to the moving picture expenditure ranges more nearly in the vicinity of 70 to 1. There are prominent men here and abroad, who studying the situation, even go so far as to predict revolution and calamity if a solution of home building is not soon brought forth.
8 Henry Ford with his automobiles and airplanes, the great railroad systems, for long the backbone of national investment, are providing transportation of excellence hardly realized, greatly enhanced by the new vast bus mileage. Everything points towards decentralization. But there is no 20th century home for them to decentralize to.
9 The great automobile, railway and, potential airways industries are like a giant broadcasting system, prematurely organized. It would be analogous to the radio industry having organized its broadcasting system before manufacturing and distributing its radio receiving sets, not even having a standard hookup to recommend to the trade. Obviously this is an inconceivable condition in our modern economical organizations. It is due mainly to the home building habits having been so thoroughly ‘‘fixed’’ prior to the era of industrial organization, and to the other habit of minding everyone else’s business but our own, that this most uneconomic condition has been overlooked. Of course there are many other contributory reasons, but in any event the further we delve into these facts, the more we find business to be ‘‘Kind of all dressed up and no place to go.’’
10 The home the composite of closely related individuals, just like individuals themselves, should be absolutely independent and self supporting, though subject to coordination and cooperation with others where this is agreeable to the absolute individual, and at his own election. The economic answer tells: - two people cannot share the same mouth or heart, and surmount the obstacles of life with the same facility as two individuals. The cooperative apartment house violates this principle and equities are unsaleable without great loss. The exception to this statement is in the case of the equity purchasing especially desirable social associations. It is the fact of the latter occurrence that permits of the high pressure selling of ‘‘coops’’, which will in due course be recognized as a feudalistic racquet or exploitation of the public. An energetic and scheming man with a piece of property worth but a comparatively small sum, can with the cooperation of bank and a builder, cash in to the tune of a cool million or so, by turning the land into equities, representing a fictitious value. So long as we have progress buildings will depreciate and the equities must go down.
11 By a reading of the articles referred to in the attached list of current references, written by acknowledged leaders in almost every great field of endeavor, the certain coming of an entirely modernized home, subject to the great benefits of mass production and transportation, will be evident. In hospitals, moving picture theaters, the modern drugstore, restaurant, ocean liners, airplanes, etc., where the need for expeditious and healthy handling of masses of people and catering to their needs takes place, we find great improvements can only be applied to the house when complete redesigning of the building takes place, through centralized economic authority.
12 In pursuit of these concepts is it possible to research, analyse, and design a harmonious and efficient home, with mechanical solutions from submarine, airplane, hospital and theater. Those things, material, which when too long, heavy and oft repeated are known as drudgery can be almost eliminated.
13 The new home will be of immeasurable benefit to the farmer, who, with the many others going back to the land, will eventually come to be the watchman of his property, tending the continual growth of his fields. Annual planting will be eliminated by science. Reaping will be done by large centralized concerns who can make their machinery pay through continued use, it being moved continually from farm to farm.
14 There are 197 million square miles to the earth’s surface. 72% of this is water. Of the 28% which is land, approximately one half or 15% is not only within the temperate zones, but is of good living and vegetation conditions, that is 29 million square miles decently occupiable.
15 There are approximately one and three quarters billion people occupying this land. At the present rate of population increase it will reach two billion about 2000 A.D. That is 300 million new inhabitants of the earth to be housed in the next 80 years. With the present rate of increase in longevity, the vast majority of present population will live to see 2000 AD. So, outside of our responsibility to posterity there is intimate concern in dealing with these figures.
16 If within the next 80 years by virtue of the bettered transportation and housing and communication the population were to cease dwelling primarily where they work, and were to remove to the country, merely congregating in cities for work, trade, and pleasure, and they were only to occupy the habitable portions of the temperate zones, every last person could have twelve acres of land to himself. Families would have their family number times that, including tropics and polar region land every individual would have 23 acres. Remember this is on the basis of 2000 AD. figures.
17 Now compare these future figures with those of the present most significant areas. 400 million people',', now occupying China, average 5 1/2 acres each. England with a population of 35 millions has approximately but one acre of land per inhabitant; while the United States with its population of 117 million averages 23 acres apiece. In Rhode Island, due to the congestion at the landing coast of the country, the population is almost as dense as in England, there being but one and one half acres apiece. To those familiar with Rhode Island, however, the sensation is not one of crowding. The cities are small and numerous, and country homes easily accessible. Therefor in 2000 A.D. if the worlds population were all averaged out into the habitable land there would be 12 times as much room as there is per inhabitant in England today.
18 These world statistics are very pertinent to a proper consideration of the housing problem, particularly in view of the apparent removal of dwellings from the crowded areas which it seems to involve. 300 million new world civilians to be housed in the next 80 years, almost three times the present population of the U.S. and ten times that of England, as yet unborn, and therefore in no way wedded to stylism or materialistic inconsequentialities. Certainly these figures give the mind some much needed exercise in acquiring the abstract viewpoint necessary to the proper consideration of this most important of problems.
19 To acquire a proper moving picture conception of the trend, view these startling changes in civilized population in the last 300 years in the United States; - In 1624 when our forefathers first came to this country, only eight generations ago, the countries population was but 9000, so small that one person could know almost everyone, about the size of a small suburban town; then at the close of the American Revolution, but five generations ago, the population was 5 million, approximately that of the greater Chicago area today, one half that of New York State at present; at the time of the civil war, three generations ago 23 millions; in the gay nineties but a generation ago 70 millions, and today almost 120 million, almost doubled since our birth. So great and rapid is the growth of the picture, that few people are taking the responsibility upon themselves of trying to comprehend it and make proper provision for it.
20 For the sake of those whose help and cooperation will have to be enlisted, in the solution of the problem it must be clearly stated that there is no measure of contempt or lack of appreciation of the charm and character of our ancestral houses. The functions are however no longer adequate. That is all.