Alexandria Gazette

THE BUILDING PROBLEM

A writer in Saturday's Washington Star says:

"I notice various statements emanating from the members of labor unions, that the adoption of the eight hour system will not increase the cost of building, which seems to me to be the sheerest nonsense. If the price per day was to be reduced in proportion, then of course the cost of work on a building would be the same. It would simply require a longer time or more hands to erect it. But when the same price is charged for eight hours as has heretofore been paid for ten hours, it follows, as a matter of course, that the cost will be increased in proportion. For instance, suppose 1,000 days work of ten hours are required to erect a building. At $3 per day that would be $3,000. If now, the days work is limited to eight hours it will require 1,250 days work. and that at $3 per day will be $3,750, an increase of $750, and on larger jobs in proportion. I put over $20,000 cash into buildings here last year, and I found that it cost me fully twenty per cent. more than it did four years before to do the same, and the buildings were not as expensively finished either: the former being in hard woods, and the latter in soft wood. Why this increase in cost should be I can see no reason, for there has never been a time during the past fifty years when a dollar would buy as much of anything required to support a family as it will to-day-either in provisions, clothing, dry goods, or groceries. Sugar which cost 11 cents four or five years ago can be bought for 7½ to 8cts. now, and so of flour, and in fact of every article except. perhaps, fresh meats. At the same time wages are higher than ever before. except during the war, when the cost of living was double and, in many articles, quadruple what it is now, especially in dry goods. These are not mere assertions, but facts, as can readily be seen by any one who will compare the price-lists then and now. The reason generally given for reducing the hours of labor-that the additional time is necessary and will be used for self-culture. &c.--while very pretty in theory, is not borne out by the facts. For instance, the plasterer on my jobs employed fourteen journeymen, and it occurred repeatedly that on Monday he could get but four men to go to work, the rest of them having been on a spree, from which they had not recovered. Indeed, one of them was so drunk in the middle of the week that he fell into the area ; and at least one of the carpenters and some of the bricklayers were but little better, some of the latter frequently going off on a drunken spree for days at a time. right in the busiest part of the season ! While no doubt there are some men who would make good use of their time. I am satisfied that the great mass will not be at all benefitted by the reduction in hours, but that it will simply result in so many more hours of loafing at the saloons and about the streets, and that at the end of the year their families will not be any better. if as well off. It seems to me that if they are honest in the pretences that the object of reducing the hours is to give employment to men now idle. they should reduce the price pro rata, or better still, work by the hour. Then every one could work as much or as little as he pleased, and get pay for what he actually did. If I had a million dollars to invest in building, I would not invest a cent under the present condition of affairs in this District; not a cent."