Prospect Op"ned bv Housing Law

(From Los Anseles Times, Julv 19,1949)

For better or worse we have a new Federal housing law, and President Truman may celebrate a triumph over what he has called the vicious real estate lobby.

To some of the sincere members of Congress who supported the housing bill its final acceptanee will seem to be a victory for the principle that the government is obligated to do for the people what they are unable to do for themselvesa principle that was first stated in this country by Lincoln. Even Sen. Taft subscribed to the bill on this ground; he stated that there is a submerged element of the population which wiil never rise of its own effort and that the government ought to provide homes for it. In his opinion government housing is a charity in which all the taxpayers participate, contributing to the rent of the inmates of the government's flats.

It's un-Christian to argue against charity, but it's quite proper to wonder whether these sincere gentlemen haven't been taken in. Sen. Taft is a sturdy free enterpriser and he might be indignant if he were accused of hurting the cause he usually champions. Yet there is a pretty good case against him and his like-minded colleagues. By supporting the housing bill they seem to acknowledge that private enterprise has foundered, so far as housing is con'cerner!.

The facts are to the contrary, and here are some of them:

At the beginning of 1949 there were 7,000,000 more homeowners in the Ijnited States than there were in 1940. The number rose from 11,413,000 to 18,275,000. That's an increase of aboft 60/o. In the same time the population increased less than 10/o.

The Bureau of Census reported in 1948 that in the seven years through 1947 we made unparalleled progress in improving our housing situation. The 1948 survey showed 93.2% of all urban homes to be in satisfactory repair, as compared to 88.6/o in 1940.

Interpreting the Census Bureau report in the Saturday Evening Post last July, Melchoir Palyi said: "Every year ot prosperity will whittle the sub-standard housing count further. Both quantitatively and qualitatively American housing is at an all-time high and getting better every year, although this fact is somewhat obscured by population growth and migrations, as well as by artificial forces, such as income inflation and rent control."

There's still a lot to be done, of course; but the record of progress doesn't support the argument that the government must step in to do what the people cannot do for themselves. Sen. Taft is probably correct in saying that there is a dreg ot the population which will never have depent housing unless charity provides it. This element, however, does not seem to justify a law which contemplates the building of 810,000 government-owned housing units in six years and the spending of additional millions for slum clearance.

When the new law is studied in the light of the building record of the last several years, it seems to say, between the lines, that while private enterprise may have done pretty well with housing, government can do better. And a more fantastic claim than that couldn't be made' It revives an old suspicion: even though Sen. Taft was one of the sponsors, the law seems less the reflection of his charity than the itch of the big-government faction to take over something else.

The government expansionists are always ready to accusc the failureS of private industry as the pretext for government intervention. Outrageous charges were brought against the American steel industry in preparation for the proposal that the government build steel mills. The British Socialists, incidentally, made the same unfounded charges against the most efificient and productive industry in their country before they rammed through their steel nationalization law.

The Federal government already has a $20,000,000,000 stake in housing through ownership and mortgage guarantees, and the new law will increase that stake by several billions in the next six years. If that stake should increase to the point where the government held a controlling share of housing (it wouldn't have to be a majority share), then the government would control the national economy more easily than if it held the steel industry.

Such control is an admissible prospect. As government building increases, private building is likely to fall off. When government builcls, material prices go up and private builders are forced out of the market. One expert expects a l5/o rise in prices as soon as the government starts to build under the new law. And as private building decreases the fact is presented as an even more cogent reason for further government building.

So this new housing law, strangely compounded of charity and statism, may not be the last. Government rent bargains will be a powerful inducement in the hands of the bureaucrats -a standing temptation to the considerable number of voters who believe that desirable things can be had at cut rates from the government.

H. H. Hobcrt Retires

On July 1, H. H. Hobart, vice president and general sales manager of Curtis Companies Incorporated, Clinton, Iowa, retired after almost 40 years of outstanding service.

I\{r. Hobart joined the Curtis organization as a territory salesman in 1910. His rise in the company was rapid and in 1927 he was made vice president and general sales manager. He plans to take life easy for some time and to take a long trip to the West Coast. He is succeeded as general sales manager by I. H. Ramsey, a Curtis employee for 2I years, and for the past several years a sales supervisor at the Clintort office of the company.