STEEL HOUSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 30, 5 February 1925, Page 5

STEEL HOUSES.

NEW SCHEME AT HOME. NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN'S HOPE. LONDON, February .1. Progress is being matle with the itlea of steel dwelling bouses, specimens of which will be shortly erected in London and the main provincial centres. The idea was recently opposed by the building unions, drawing a retort from Mr. Neville Chamberlain in a speech that the unions were afraitl of competition, but the public was not going to tolerate obstruction ill any form or from any quarter. He was willing to give the Wheat ley Act a fair trial provided its opponents treated his schemes similarly, i Renter. I

f.'rcat Britain could do with -.000.000 houses in the next two veins. It is impossible to build these* of brick and mortar in the ordinary way, and British people at Home arc- averse to the temporary type of expensive wooden houses common to the Dominions. All all-steel house is already under consideration by a committee appointed by flic, previous (Labour) Government, and it is to this bouse that the Conservatives are pinning their faith. The cost of houses of this type will range from £200 upwards. They can be put up in a few weeks, are absolutely damp-proof, and can be let at a rent which even the worst-paid workers in the country can pay. Of course. Britain wants to get back to brick in the end, when the competition of the si eel house, has brought prices down. So if and when the committee considering the all-steel house report-s favourably, it is intended to form a public utility company to supply the steel castings and other material to the municipalities. The transactions would be financed through the Trades Facilities Art. The plans and specifications— there are apparently only two types, largo and small—ufc already in the hands of the Ministry of Health and will be available free of charge. A short one-clause bill will be introduced into Parliament suspending the local housing by-laws, and presently vast new mushroom cities will be springing up all over the country—steel tents, the

"Monitor's" informant called them— only to disappear when the need is past. Such nt least is the proposal. Tf it materialises, the argument continues. it will of course lead to a great boom in the British steel trade—the industry most severely hit by the post-war slump. Such a boom must inevitably have repercussions in other trades. Coal and oil for fuel, belting for the engines, transport for the ore and finished material are only v few of the things that would be needed, and over and above all there is the increased spending capacity of the workers in these trades! Then would be the time to straighten out the present anomaly by which an unemployed man with a"wife and three children may be drawing 42/ a week, while a skilled engineer next door working full time earns only .'l7/6.