BUILDING: Let Them Eat Summer Resorts

Let Them Eat Summer Resorts

Having long expected to face the grim choice between guns and butter, U. S.

citizens awoke last week to the fact that this choice is not always real. They found that “gun” production on one front was hampered, not by too much “butter,” but by too little. It appeared that defense workers, to make guns, must have some place to live.

No economist, but the No. 1 U. S. humanitarian, put this butter bottleneck on this week’s front pages. At the annual meeting of the National Public Housing Conference, Eleanor Roosevelt stated that the U. S.’s new housing problem had become too much for local authorities. “I think it is quite true,” she added, “that in tne long run all housing is defense housing. . . . Not only is housing inadequate, but schools and hospitals must also be provided. We are going to have to be a nuisance about these questions if we are going to be fair to people all over the country.”

Mrs. Roosevelt had an illustration: in shipbuilding Bremerton (Wash.), 2,500 children of newly employed workers have no schools, no local laws authorize new ones to be built. More alarming was the story of Vice President Peter Flynn of C. I. O.’s Industrial Marine & Shipbuilding Workers of America. He claimed that many defense workers are turning down overtime work because it costs them so much time and energy to commute to overcrowded cities where they work. He may have been thinking of Bath (Me.) Iron Wofks (destroyers), to which workers are commuting over a 30-60-mile radius. In tiny Sidney (N. Y.), mushrooming with a Bendix aircraft-parts plant, vacant homes have been sought 25 miles away in Norwich, N. Y.* At Charlestown (Ind.), the Government has given up the job of housing 5,000 powder-plant workers, hires commuters from Louisville 15 miles away (TIME, Dec. 16).

To meet this serious situation, C. I. O. headquarters last week demanded a national prefabricated housing program. C. I. O. intimated that A. F. of L. building unions have created a bottleneck of skilled building labor; declared that prefabrication, using unskilled labor to assemble the houses, is the quickest way around it. In San Diego. 3,000 houses are planned for aircraft workers. But San Diego is already building at the rate of 2,400 houses a year. The local skilled-labor supply (says C. I. O.) cannot do both the normal and emergency jobs at once.

The National Resources Planning Board released a study which figured that the U. S. needs 2,500,000 new homes regardless of defense, recommended Federal encouragement of standardized small-home designs (to be adapted to varying conditions by local architects). Only by standardization, in view of the skilled-labor shortage, could both defense and civilian housing needs be met.

These and other complaints, programs and pressures piled up last week on a single head. The head was that of Charles Francis Palmer, and its neck was way out. An Atlanta real-estate man who had served down the line as the Defense Commission’s building adviser, Palmer three weeks ago vaulted into a new title—Defense Housing Coordinator in the Office of Emergency Management—which made him independent of the whole defense setup, including OPM. Williams McReynolds, one of Franklin Roosevelt s ”anonymous” assistants, had slipped the order for the new job across the President’s desk during a Hyde Park weekend. It gave Palmer equal status under the President with Knudsen & Hillman, put them in the position of having to clear all defense housing through him. More ominously for Palmer’s political future, it forced Federal Loan Administrator Jesse Jones, never known for his willingness to share power, to recognize Palmer as the ultimate boss of Jesse’s own FHA. Washington politicos felt that Mr. Palmer had perhaps gone too far too fast.

Whatever he had done to the New Deal’s power hierarchy, Mr. Palmer had not made himself indispensable to homeless defense workers. From the last Congress, he had two housing funds to spend: $100,000,000 for enlisted men at Army and Navy posts, and $140,000,000 for civilian workers in defense plants. Mr. Palmer spent the former quickly, the latter without haste.

Last week, in contrast to Eleanor Roosevelt, Houser Palmer declared that sociology was no part of his job, that overcrowding would remain the private builders’ opportunity. He also sent his special consultant, Los Angeles Realtor Philip Norton, to Seattle to make a speech that infuriated defense authorities. Said Norton :

“There’s no need for more Government building. . . . We have found, for in stance, that idle ships can sometimes be converted into dormitories for single men. Also usable are summer-resort cabins that sometimes lie idle for months each year.”

Meanwhile defense housing costs, if not defense houses, were going up. On that front the New Deal was better prepared to act. Last September, when the U. S. Army foolishly bunched its orders for cantonment lumber, it created an artificial short age that sent the price of $2 southern pine to $41 a thousand board feet (up from $21 in June). Last week, with the Army still paying close to $35, Price Commissioner Leon Henderson got sore. His idea of a good price is $25. So when some 200 members of the Lumber & Timber Products Defense Committee gathered in Washington’s Willard Hotel, Leon stood before them. They clapped.

“As far as I’m concerned,” said he, “I’ve had all of the arguments, excuses and explanations that I need . . . and a damn sight more. . . . Lumber prices are interfering with the Government program of housing, defense housing. … If necessary, I shall recommend a ‘Selective Service Act’ for the lumber industry. . . . We will draft lumber we need.” At the end of his speech, burly Leon Henderson turned on his heel and lumbered right out of the room. The visiting lumber men, who had come to applaud, caught their breaths. One of the first audible com ments from the floor: “He’ll never get southern pine for $25.” But Henderson had succeeded in making himself understood.

The lumbermen defended the new price structure on the grounds of higher costs. Furthermore, said they, the industry needs high prices to bring its marginal sawmills into the market, get maximum production. But Henderson, who knew the efficient mills were making extra-long profits, was more worried about the effect on the buyer. In this case the buyer was the construction industry, which needs all the encouragement it can get.

Because of sales taxes, slot machines and general prosperity, the U. S. mint struck off more coins in 1940 (1,209,478,982) than in any previous year.

* As a makeshift, a Government agency last week sent several hundred trailers to Sidney.