Montana Labor News

HOUSING PROFIT CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST

Building Materials Profiteering Hampering Construction Program On New Homes

Washington--FP--Facts are stubborn things, they cannot be argued away forever.

The fact that profiteering in the building materials and construction field is hampering rather than helping the construction of homes for American workers and their families is coming home now to those who brought it about.

One of the most persistent heroes of the real estate and builders lobby has been freshman Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R., Wis.). His basic idea on housing is that people will do anything for money--therefore, we will get lots of housing if we offer lots of profit in the housing field. He hammered away consistently on this line in the senate banking and currency committee.

A foe of rent and price control, McCarthy tried to make every witness in committee hearings say yes, when he asked "if more rental housing would come on the market if we took controls off spare rooms, attic apartments and basements to let?" He would stall hearings until he got his answer.

Killing rent control would make more people rent out space, he argued, and killing price control on materials would make producers speed up operations for a profit killing. This, he insisted, would make housing follow the dollar.

Aside to reporters he smirked that high rents would make a lot of fast-livers give up their "out-of-the-way apartments, which they use only for lovenest purposes." The idea was that the homeless could then move in.

A New McCarthy?

But starting September 11 McCarthy found himself in temporary control of a joint committee to investigate the housing shortage which looks no better even after his ideas on materials prices were carried out and the weakened rent bill he pushed was enacted.

Top government housing officials told his committee the US needs some 11 million new housing units a year but that the present "market demand" is only 820,000 because prices are so high the customers aren't biting.

After listening to some of the facts of life--that the general index of building material prices is 77 per cent above those of 1926, with lumber costs 169 per cent over that year--McCarthy agreed something should be done and by the federal government.

Up to now opposed to Washington's saving boo to a business man, McCarthy suggested an investigator check into materials middlemen's profit situation. As a last resort, he said, congress may have to crack down on them. He even mentioned something about "unnecessary profits," which almost amounts to sacrilege of his dollar-god.

Again, some of the federal government housing officials told the group that the steel industry was not turning out nails for housing fast enough because nails are a low profit item.

Once more McCarthy suggested duress on private enterprise. This time it would be in the form of a conference to threaten the steel men with legislation for an allocation plan. The threat, he thought, might do the trick.

It is too early to draw the conclusion that McCarthy represents a great change in the thinking of the people in congress who voted to stimulate home building by offering bigger profits. But it does show that they are now in a spot where they have to offer a program. They are concerned about public dissatisfaction, and next year there is a presidential election.

Perhaps the GOP leaders will decide passing the Taft-Ellender-Wagner general housing bill, long boosted by labor, will be a wise move. If they do, though, don't be fooled into buying a pig in a poke. Under the name of that bill they are likely to carry on such an amendment campaign that if the measure emerges with the OK-GOP stamp it may be as weak as dishwater.

That move will bear watching.