Page 10 Advertisements Column 3

Taranaki Daily News, 9 October 1920, Page 10 (Supplement)

HAS IT WORKED? So much for tlie American plan-—the question is: how does it work? The propagandist literature gives no indication of this, hut at the International Housing Congress, held in London at the beginning of June last, Mr. Veiller. of the American Housing Association, candidly admitted the difficulties which American individualism put in the way of Government action. Very little building was going on, owing partly t'o the high price of labor and materials, and the fact that no one put capi'tal into building, for fear of a fall in costs in a few years. American workers were willing' to put their increased wages into luxuries, but were unwilling to pay more rent —liciiee the difficulty of obtaining an economic rent for new houses. Dr. Copeland, Commissioner of Health for New York City, displayed a chart, showing the terribly overcrowded conditions of the tenement houses of the. city. "I say," he declared, "it is time the Government interfered, otherwise we shall have socialism of a had sort, Bolshevism. and all sorts of crime committed by people who cannot he blamed if they are so much neglected by the Clovewimeut."' So it would appear the American plan has not worked so well in fact as it promised en papsr.